Britain’s Most Expensive Party?

With the BNP in terminal decline, you would have thought that Nick Griffin would be trying his hardest to hang onto what is left of the party’s membership?

Apparently not, and with the BNP’s finances in a terminal nosedive, Griffin and Co. have devised a cunning plan to milk the remaining few members of every penny they possess. They have increased the membership rates by a whopping 60% and in turn have become Britain’s most expensive political party to join.

From December 1st the standard membership fee has shot up from £30 to £48 per year. That in itself is a huge rise; however the BNP are actively encouraging its members to pay monthly via direct debit with BNP treasurer Clive Jefferson explaining “I cannot emphasise enough the importance of moving the membership over to a monthly collection payment system. It will help the members by making membership affordable to all”

That’s an interesting concept by Clive, and one that perhaps explains why the party is in financial meltdown. He actually aims to make the membership more affordable by charging the members more?

Using the monthly direct debit scheme which costs £4.50 per month, members will be paying a gigantic £54 per year for the privilege of seeing the BNP potentially shrivel and die. That is an 80% increase from the standard £30 membership.

According to the BNP, “One-off annual payments can also be made but are not going to be encouraged because steady monthly income makes budgeting and management much easier, and ALL new members will have to join using the monthly payment method.”

What is also means is that the BNP will have your bank details and with the way the finances have been run over the years, that is not a position most financially astute people would want to be in. So let’s compare the current BNP membership rates to other well known political parties in the UK:

Figures shown are for new members.

The BNP: Standard Membership = £54 (Existing members can make a one off payment of £48)

The Labour Party: Standard Membership = £41 (This is over a 12 month period. You are not charged extra for paying via direct debit)

The Green Party: Minimum Membership =£31 (This is over a 12 month period. You are not charged extra for paying via direct debit)

UKIP: Standard Membership £30

Plaid Cymru: Minimum Membership = £24 (Plaid Cymru do not charge extra for direct debit)

The Conservative Party: Standard Membership = £25

The Liberal Democrats: Minimum Standard Membership = £12

Scottish National Party: Standard Membership =£12 (The SNP do not charge extra for direct debit)

So, £54 to join Britain’s fastest shrinking but most expensive party. To see it go “belly up” however, remains priceless.


Hope not Hate

Missing: the BNP’s 2010 accounts

The British National Party has again failed to submit its accounts on time in contravention of electoral legislation. This is the fourth time the party faces fines for late accounts and news of it emerged just ten days after Clive Jefferson, the party treasurer, claimed in a document issued in support of Nick Griffin’s campaign to retain the party leadership that criticism of the BNP’s financial position was merely “black propaganda”.

This time, however, the BNP might face more than just the fines of £1,200 it usually pays for submitting accounts nearly six months after the deadline of 7 July. Announcing the absence of the 2010 accounts of the BNP and the Christian Party, the Electoral Commission said it was now “reviewing the circumstances of these cases” and that “late submission of accounts without reasonable excuse is a breach of party funding rules”.

It went on: “The Commission has a range of sanctions enabling it to deal with those who do not comply with the rules. These include issuing substantial fines and serving compliance notices requiring parties to take specific steps by a required date to ensure compliance with their obligations in future; where a party does not comply within the timescale set, they may face additional fines.

“When deciding what sanction is appropriate the Commission considers a range of factors including whether parties have failed to comply with their obligations in the past. Repeated non-compliance is an aggravating factor which can significantly increase the penalties issued.”

A fourth failure in five years, coupled with the fact that the 2009 and 2008 accounts when they did turn up contained material deficiencies, must surely attract the highest sanction.

Peter Wardle, Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission said: “The rules on party funding are intended to ensure that voters can see where political parties get their funding from, and how they spend it. The 2010 statements of accounts which we have published today help to provide transparency about the finances of the larger parties and their organisations, covering the period during which the campaigns for the 2010 UK general and local elections took place.

“The majority of parties and accounting units have complied with the law by submitting their accounts on time. However, despite the guidance and advice we offer to help parties comply with the law, two parties have yet again failed to provide accounts on time. This is not acceptable. We have commenced formal case reviews into the circumstances; if we are satisfied that the rules have been broken and the parties concerned do not have a reasonable excuse, we will use our new powers to impose sanctions in accordance with our published enforcement policy, to ensure future compliance with the law.”

Hypocritically, Jefferson had boasted about the party’s “financial transparency”. In an attempt to show that the BNP’s accounts were reliable, he explained that political parties with a turnover of more than £250,000 must have their accounts audited by an independent firm of chartered accountants before they are submitted to the Electoral Commission where they are “examined in minute detail … to ensure that the highest of standards and financial transparency are met”.

He added: “In previous years, the British National Party has had advice from the Electoral Commission and the Auditors, and, each time we have acted on advice, our system has become more robust and open.”

It is now very clear that the BNP’s accounting systems are far from “robust and open” and that he and the BNP are barefaced liars. Griffin had already secured election as party chairman for four years three days before the Electoral Commission’s announcement. The timing of the BNP’s leadership ballot is unlikely to have been accidental.

When Jefferson’s document and an accompanying Myth Busters leaflet, which claimed the BNP hardly had any debts, were published, we noted their silence on the 2010 accounts and concluded, correctly as it turned out, that it was business as usual for the BNP treasury department.

Jefferson ended his document by stating that the BNP intends “within the next few months” to publish its management accounts in a quarterly report to members and online. If its financial records are in such a dire state that it cannot even produce its annual accounts, Jefferson and the “retired chartered accountant” he says the BNP has employed are unlikely to be able to produce up-to-date management accounts, at least not accurate ones. That would Jefferson’s promise just another lie in support of Griffin’s campaign to stay in post despite all the disasters over which he has presided.

Thanks to Sonia Gable at HOPE not Hate/Searchlight

It's still the accounts, stupid

Getting on for three weeks ago all links from the BNP main website to Andrew Brons's blog were removed, an overt signal that in the eyes of Nick Griffin and Patrick Harrington the Yorkshire BNP MEP had become far too dangerous for comfort and was uttering heresies good BNP members and their wallets should not witness.

In late March, ostensibly preserving his alleged neutrality in the BNP's civil war by taking swipes at both sides in an article lumpily entitled "The Unacknowledged Complementarity That Is Destroying The British National Party", Brons decried the litany of expulsions, suspensions, demotions and sackings of the last year and scathingly rounded on old enemy Harrington:

The person who was the architect of using the disciplinary machinery as a weapon of mass destruction in 1986 re-emerged in the middle of 2010 to become a favoured adviser of our Chairman. He is rightly admired as a no-nonsense man who does not waste valuable time learning from his own mistakes. [Our emphasis]

Shortly before the recent round of local and assembly elections Brons again underscored his antipathy to Griffin's continued leadership, claiming that the BNP was "quite deliberately" being dismantled. Brons, all too well acquainted with the machinations of Griffin and Harrington from his 1980s days as sometime chairman and directorate member of the National Front, alluded to a number of points of deep concern, but particularly to

** the constitution;

** the finances of the Party;

** the leadership and/or advisers to the leadership;

all of which were matters of pressing concern a quarter of a century ago, when Griffin and Harrington were trialling their destructive methods in the National Front.

Brons has never liked serial failure, fake trade union boss and renowned fantasist Harrington, never respected his pretensions, despises his vanity and has never trusted him. In that much he is a member of a very large club.

Coincidental with the removal of Brons's links on the BNP website was the appearance, in the "Resources" section, of the single option "Opposition". This contains several articles that are claimed to be a "dossier" (a favourite Griffin/Harrington word) on the external and - more importantly - the internal opposition faced by the BNP. Dubbed by some "Attempted Murder 2" in memory of that gloriously insane Griffin/Harrington original of yore, "Attempted Murder: the State/Reactionary Plot Against the National Front", AM2 bears more the stamp of Harrington than of Griffin.

A melange of fiction and derangement from the borderlands of nuttiness, the "dossier" is mostly an attack on the English Democrats and Eddy Butler, written largely in the groaning but comically quasi-Stalinist style of Harrington, who - despite the decades long evidence that he just isn't very good at it - has always rather fancied himself as a propagandist. Happily smearing the memory of the recently deceased former NF leader Ian Anderson, AM2 accuses Anderson of "incompetence, petty theft and habitual lying" while neglecting to mention the numerous occasions on which the same charges have been made against the living bodies of Griffin and Harrington.

Reaching into the dim and distant National Front past to attack Butler, AM2 is in part a justification and apologia for the terminal ructions Griffin and Harrington visited upon that party in the 1980s, and in that much it demonstrates that the mindsets of its authors have changed little in the twenty five years since the original "Attempted Murder" shrieked its way into far-right history. Indeed, in his March article Andrew Brons charged that "the movements and language of one side seem to come from a script that was written in 1986".

Brons has emphatically stated that he has no ambition to lead the BNP or even to fight for a second term as an MEP, the fact of which leaves him three clear years to continue as a thorn in the side of Griffin and Harrington, neutral on the surface but knowing that every time he kicks the ball Griffin and Harrington reach for their codpieces.

For the majority of what remains of the BNP membership, including many who continue to support Nick Griffin more out of antipathy towards Butler and his reformers than out of love for Griffin, Andrew Brons would be the dream leadership candidate, perhaps the only person of stature remaining in the BNP who retains sufficient goodwill and enough cross-party support to end Griffin's reign.

Ignoring Brons's stated lack of ambition (as we are quite sure Griffin and Harrington do not and can not), Brons, more than anybody else, knows what he would be up against if he ever were to launch a challenge. He knows that Griffin would destroy the BNP much as he did the old National Front rather than step aside; and he must know, in his heart, that Griffin will never allow the access to the BNP's historical accounts that a handover of power would entail.

That, as always, is the bottom line. The accounts.

And that is why BNP founder member Richard Edmond's leadership bid is doomed.

Whereas Richard Edmonds, a close friend of founding leader John Tyndall, could once be looked upon as a fairly typical Nazi-leaning, anti-Semitic Holocaust-denying BNP member, the large intake of unideological "Nu Nats" in recent years has rendered Edmonds and his kind an increasingly rare species. Even so, the fact that he is a founder member, can lay claim to near 40 years of far-right activity, is the keeper of the keys of hardline Tyndallism and is fairly well known makes him the next best prospect as a leadership candidate capable of toppling Griffin.

The problem is that Edmonds's past does not endear him to all Nu Nats and he is eminently smearable. The most unlikely thing about Edmonds's prospective challenge is the fulsome support given him by self-proclaimed "sleazebuster" Michael Barnbrook, who has mixed-race grandchildren and who holds views that a Richard Edmonds must consider well beyond the nationalist pale. I have read Barnbrook's writings and listened to his outpourings at length, and even I cannot think of him as anything other than the same kind of animal I used to meet on the dottier fringes of the Tory Party, the kind you would quietly stifle when sane people came too close.

Regardless of that, assuming this strange alliance of hardliners and Nu Nats does hold togther for the next two months, what are its prospects of success - and by "success" I mean the minimum position of forcing a leadership ballot?

Well, things have moved on a bit since last year's abortive leadership challenge. There has been almost unremitting bad news for Nick Griffin, a continuing exodus of members, the abject failure of the recent elections, former Griffinites defecting to the Butler and non-Butler reform camps or leaving altogether, Andrew Brons's increasingly belligerent disaffection and contempt... all these things are making Griffin and Harrington jittery, knowing that support has ebbed away substantially. They suspect that the jiggery-pokery that worked last summer won't work this, and that even if it did, this time threats of legal action may not be as hollow as those uttered by Butler. They are also nagged about Brons and the slight possibility that he may step in at the last moment while Edmonds pulls out - the very worst of the possibilities running through their minds.

It is no coincidence that this week Griffin is holding a series of "Way Forward" meetings, allegedly for activists but effectively for a chosen few. Dressed up as being to "discuss ways of moving the party forward", the real motive appears to be to guage support for Griffin and to win approval for an early EGM to discuss (if that is the word for something that will be pre-planned down to the last detail) new constitutional arrangements.

Under current arrangements, the period for leadership nominations opens on July 20th, but - crucially - Griffin plans to hold the all-important EGM six days earlier, on July 14th. Any variation in the BNP's constitution would apply from that date.

Exactly what changes Griffin plans are unclear. What we may be certain of is that they will be geared solely to saving his skin. To that end he may risk the continuance of the current nominations process but increase the percentage required to trigger a leadership contest to something he believes cannot be obtained. He may do this in conjunction with a proposal to extend a chairman's term of office to four years.

Another possibility is that he will press for his current term be extended to four or five years, perhaps in return for the "concession" that the existing Byzantine challenge process be ditched or modified.

Whatever, Griffin and Harrington and their inner circle will strive mightily to ensure that no challenge can be mounted on July 20th. Their control of the BNP and their ability to (shall we say?) "influence" vital meetings is the last weapon they have, all that stands between them and defeat.

And all that stands between Griffin and an open analysis of those mysterious BNP accounts - the core and locus of it all.

Fascist group’s secret Irish bank account

The BNP is funnelling all its cash through a secret Northern Ireland bank account, we can reveal.

And we can further reveal the party – which has debts of around £500,000 – is busy setting up phoney groups to channel money and assets through in case the party folds under the financial strain. The party’s ‘Doomsday Scenario’ is also hiding money from an ever-growing list of disgruntled creditors.

A Sunday World investigation has found the race hate party – run by convicted racist Nick Griffin – is putting all its money through an account with the Bank of Ireland. However the Sunday World understands the bank doesn’t know because the account is in the name of an accountant based on the outskirts of Belfast.

Bank chiefs at the bank are believed to be looking into the claims although publicly they told the Sunday World they couldn’t comment on an individual’s account.

Meanwhile there have been rumblings that the party is using the vast sums both their MEPs are getting from the Brussels gravy train to prop up the BNP. Leader Griffin and former NF pal Andrew Brons won seats at the European Parliament last year. The election success has brought hundreds of thousands of pounds into the BNP coffers.

An MEP is entitled to a monthly salary of €4299 plus a staggering €304 ‘subsistence’ allowance for every day they attend which they aren’t required to show any receipts for. And that doesn’t include the €19,709 which they receive every month which is designed for staffing costs. Yet last year Nick Griffin was forced to send out a grovelling begging letter to all BNP members saying the party needed donations or else it would fold.

“The BNP are totally insolvent with debts of around £500,000 yet they continue to trade incurring more debts and seriously damaging many small unsuspecting British and Irish businesses,” said a source.

“They are unable to pay the few remaining employees not shunted onto the European parliament payroll. Of the 23 employees they have 17 of them are being paid with European money. Griffin and Co have also left the staff recently paid off in Belfast and Nuneaton with not even the back wages they are entitled due – the only thing propping up the rotten edifice is the European Parliament payroll money.

“This huge pot of cash is strictly and legally only to be used to pay for European staff exclusively. Around 75% of all BNP staff are on the EU payroll, even though they work primarily for the BNP itself.”

And he says the BNP had great difficulty getting any bank to open an account on their behalf.

“No bank wanted to touch the BNP so they managed to set it up through a local accountant. He then doles the money out to the party people and nobody is any the wiser. This £40-50 grand per month is all that is keeping the BNP and Griffin afloat. The accountant was originally blamed by Griffin for the financial problems which beset the party even though it had nothing to do with him.

Sunday World by Steven Moore

Those Accounts Again: Someone Smells Something Fishy...

Among the Far-Right, some things are just painfully predictable: Paul “Green Arrow” Morris loses yet more of his coterie of writers until he's reduced to publishing the addled rantings of religious fundamentalists who seem to have taken time out from the 16th Century to knock up a quick post for him (in Latin, too-for all the sense they make). Over on the BDF we can enjoy the regular spectacle of Simon Bennett suffering a succession of vein-popping meltdowns as the mighty political juggernaut that is the British Freedom Party (33 members and counting...) disintegrates like a canoe made of Rizlas. We can also, as ever, thank the Heavens for the Gift of Laughter that is Nick Griffin's idea of a finely-honed political machine as he appoints a new Yorkshire and Humber Organiser in the crumpled shape of Ian Kitchen, a man best known for dressing (in what looked like a survival blanket and a colander) as “Saint George” (and who's less-than-pedestrian favoured pastime is said to be producing unusual “home movies” with the assistance of his elderly - but enthusiastic and supple, I'm assured - Missus).

Oh, and the Truth Truck still hasn't been spotted... (Apparently, it needs tax, MoT and a service. To suggest it also needs buying back from Adlorries.com Ltd is, frankly, potentially libellous and quite beneath me.)

And just as predictably, as soon as Mr Griffin thought the travails of the past year were over and he could begin to relax, enjoy a bacon roll, breathe freely, enjoy another bacon roll, put his feet up (and enjoy another bacon roll because the other two were so moreish...), he's in the mire again.

But this time it's serious.

The Electoral Commission, having waited longer for a look at the BNP Accounts than some us have had to wait for a new series of Nurse Jackie, have decided the document merits a “formal review”, in light of the fact that even the Nazi's own auditors weren't entirely convinced by them, and (in a separate issue to the Accounts) the revelation that one of Griffin's favoured (although not favoured enough to have escaped Jim Dowson's insulting “20p in the Pound” offer to call it quits) printers is still owed £15k for election printing.

A bill that should have been settled – by law – within a month of the 2010 General Election.

Unsurprisingly, the E.C's Investigators have also noticed (and are less than impressed by) a few “gaps” in the “Accounts”. They'd quite like to know where the money went.

So give yourselves a slap on the back: If it weren't for people like yourselves contacting the E.C with tip-offs, information and suggestions, the “Accounts” might have been quietly filed away and forgotten about.

Just as Griffin and Co were hoping...

Is No-One Being Held To "Account"? (See what I did there?)

The 2009 Accounts are finally out and in the public domain.

And now we see Nick Griffin's finely-honed BNP operation at it's finest and most dynamic. No; not in their sucking it up, presenting a brave face and putting a positive spin on a set of thrown-together figures so dodgy you'd imagine they were dreamed up in an alternate universe where Polly Peck's Bookkeeper was Robert Maxwell, but in a far higher and more noble cause...

Stopping the Membership – at any cost - getting the slightest inkling of what's going on.

We begin our survey with the Leader's own Facebook and Twitter pages.

“Passing Cambrai, first place that tanks were used in battle...”

Ah! There you go, then: The proof is out there that the BNP are no longer a going concern (as suspected by even their own Auditors), and Griffin gives us a fascinating history lesson.

Later, he reaches his Welshpool home (with its £33,519 “security systems”) and his poetic soul really goes into overdrive: “A gloriously sunny, frosty day. Red kite over the hills. Pigs happy. Dog bouncing. Great to be home.”

This, of course, elicits the kind of response he likes from his cringing Faithful. Whereas many might be tempted to respond with “**** the livestock and the weather report, Griffin – where's the ****ing MONEY?!”, I feel that “Noel Thfc Rushton” speaks for many simple folk with unenquiring minds with the touching sentiment “Every day is a good day to be British :)”.

Having established that the pets are happy to see him, Mr Griffin helpfully fills us in on the state of play with his Estate, helpfully illustrated with a photograph: “One of 100 hazels I planted two years ago. Hope the pic shows the new buds (It does, Mr Griffin – it does!). As the Bard said, If winter comes, can...”

And, by the way, it wasn't the Bard, it was Shelley.

But of the Accounts; nothing. (Not that this bothers “Pierce Daly”, whose comment is a touching “Go nick!!!”. Unless that's meant as an instruction rather than an endorsement.

On to the official BNP Facebook page, where surely the membership will have been discussing little else...

Oh dear. Not a sausage. At time of writing (about 1.10pm), there's a bit about the latest Peer to be caught with his fingers in the till (well, not so much “the till” - I prefer to think of it as my bloody pocket...), the burning question of the day about the BNP's non-appearance on Question Time (over which, to be fair, they should think themselves lucky), the usual parade of non-stories regurgitated from the Mail and the Express (“Not Racist – But Number One With Racists!”), and a bizarre rant from Paul (“Green Arrow”) Morris headlined “Will The Boy Scouts Be Getting A New Uniform?”.

From what I hear of that man's surfing habits, I guess he's hoping for one in soft leather, cut high on the thighs.

Discussion of the Accounts that show Griffin to be a serial liar, an inveterate chancer and possibly a thief?

Zero.

Discussion of the discrepancy between the claimed Membership figures and the dismal reality?

Zilch.

Discussion of the mysterious disappearance of the “Truth Truck” (claimed to be “needing a service, tax and MoT...)

Zip.

Over the next few days and weeks, I expect that something for Member's consumption will appear concerning the accounts. And I'm perfectly sure it'll be the standard concoction of spin, blame and outright lies.

I'm also perfectly sure the wilfully naïve Faithful with fall for it...

Again.

(Looking forward to the 2010 accounts? Expect them sometime in 2012. If the BNP survive that long.)

BNP’s delayed accounts reveal financial disaster zone

The British National Party’s treasury department appears to have “lost” nearly £90,000 of funds belonging to its local groups, according to the party’s 2009 accounts, released today.

The BNP’s national and regional accounts were submitted to the Electoral Commission on 6 January, two days before the fines for their late submission would have doubled to £2,500. They reveal the full horror of the disaster area that is the BNP’s treasury department.

Even Griffin could not deny it. “The patchiness of our professionalisation programme inevitably produced internal stresses and gaps, including in due course the late submission of accounts,” he wrote in his introduction.

Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s fifth national treasurer since the start of 2009 – four are listed in the accounts, Jenny Noble being omitted – spoke more plainly. “From what I have been able to determine, the root of the problem was the inability of central treasury and accounting unit staff to implement new system adequate to cope with the massive increase in income and expenditure in 2009, compounded with the failure of professional accountants brought in to address the weaknesses they were expected to rectify. Both I and the party Chairman are frankly at a loss to understand why this was the case”.

It was not of course the moronic Jefferson’s fault. “I was appointed the Party’s Treasurer on 28th October 2010, which was subsequent to the records for 2009 being made available to the auditor. I can provide no information of any value regarding the accounts.”

The “professional accountants” were those supplied by Jim Dowson in Belfast, until late last year the much hyped fundraising and management consultant, until he fell out with Griffin and Patrick Harrington, Griffin’s old comrade from his National Front political soldier days, who now helps Griffin run the BNP.

The regional accounts, which bring together the income and expenditure of all the party’s local groups, similarly include an “I know nothing” claim by the new regional treasurer James Mole, who took over from David Hannam in mid September 2010. No doubt he is hoping not to be blamed for the dire consequences of the party’ inability to maintain bank reconciliations and account properly for its income and outgoings. A reconciliation of branches’ and groups’ balances on the very last page of the regional accounts shows that only £4,496 is available to meet the £93,579 the party supposedly owes its branches, which means that local units are only “entitled to 4.8p in the pound”.

No explanation is given for how this happened. But on 16 January, Eddy Butler, who last summer failed in his challenge to Nick Griffin for the party leadership, wrote: “I recommend that all local units open their own bank accounts … If you want to be able to hold on to your locally raised money it is vital, no it is essential, that you do this. …

“If you pay into the BNP bank account your hard earned money will be drawn out and wasted by Nick Griffin to pay for the court cases he has negligently embroiled the BNP in.”

That wastage is not yet apparent in the 2009 accounts, which show only £52,122 spent on “legal costs”. Far more can be expected in 2010, which includes the damages paid over the stupid Marmite copyright breach, and 2011. However, in his introduction to the national accounts Griffin gave full vent to his hate for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which took legal action to force the party to end racial discrimination in its constitution. “Parallel to the officially sanctioned mob violence against us [a reference to the demonstrations against Griffin’s appearance on Question Time in October 2009], a campaign of ‘legal’ persecution was also launched,” wrote Griffin, an action “motivated not by genuine concerns about alleged ‘discrimination’ but by political malice”.

Griffin also reveals his continuing anger at having to admit ethnic minority members, who were “hitherto excluded primarily in order to provide at least one forum in which members of the indigenous community could discuss the problems inflicted upon them by the ruling elite’s policies of enforced multiculturalism”.

Griffin judges that 2009 was the party’s “best year ever” because of its European election success, but that victory held within it the seeds of the party’s subsequent decline. Admitting that the party’s activity had fallen off in the second half of 2009, Griffin ascribes it largely to the “energy that had to be expended at the top of the party getting to grips with the mechanics and responsibilities of representing British interests in the European Parliament”. In other words he accepts the criticism Butler has voiced recently that being an MEP means he cannot lead the party properly.

“Several new members of staff were brought in with the intention of avoiding this new focus leaving a management gap back at home, but by November it was becoming clear that this measure had failed and that clearing the problem up was likely to involve tough decisions and key personnel problems early in 2010,” Griffin continues. The results, in terms of legal expenses and settlements with former employees, will no doubt be revealed in the 2010 and 2011 accounts.

The audit report, by Silver & Co, who have audited the party’s accounts for many years, is surprisingly less devastating than the previous year, considering the admitted failures to keep adequate records, many of which are detailed in the accounts. Unlike in 2008, they consider that the financial statements “give a true and fair view of the state of the Party’s affairs as at 31st December 2009 … in so far as a full disclosure of the facts has been made in these accounts. But they cannot be classed as ‘true and fair’ under the usual definition of that term.”

Quite what that means is anyone’s guess, especially as the audit report goes on to state: “we have to accept that we cannot form an opinion as to the completeness of the financial statements, as we have had to base them on the information submitted, and controls were not in place to ensure the information on which these financial statements are based is complete”.

One suspects that the fudge of a report was the product of long and hard negotiations between Jefferson and the auditors to avoid a second wholly negative judgement and another investigation by the Electoral Commission of the party’s failure to comply with the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

As for the accounts themselves, they confirm that the party did indeed increase its income to nearly £2 million although only £1.3 million is shown donations, the result of the controversial appointment of Dowson’s Midas Consultancy. The figures may be way out, however, as “whilst details of donations made were entered into the membership data base that information was not reconcilied [sic] to the bankings”.

Membership income rose from £166,006 in 2008 to £626,180, although membership numbers only went up from 9,801 to 12,632. Noting the inconsistency, the accounts add: “The figure shown seems high and may include an element of donation income”.

Income from commercial activities is well down – from £130,000 to under £30,000. Partly that is due to the party apparently not being able to sell a single copy of its two publications, Voice of Freedom and Identity. Income from “merchandise” – books, mugs, t-shirts, etc under the Excalibur operation – is down because it was franchised out to Arthur Kemp, the party’s South African website editor, during the year.

Costs of commercial activities grew to £450,000, resulting in a huge loss. However a note admits that this is the result of the party not having systems in place to split the huge costs of printing, postage and delivery between commercial activities and election material. If that split could not be made, it must surely follow that the party’s return of expenditure for the European election, which showed £283,000, cannot be correct. The accounts themselves declare £271,000 spent on the European election.

The list of admitted accounting failures goes on. “A considerable amount of the ‘Trafalgar Club’ costs could be considered to be more to do with printing costs. The total cost covered is £23,900,” another note states, adding: “In the nominal ledger the ‘description shown’ is either ‘inv Held by D Hannam’ or simply ‘D Hannam’, indicating that the invoice is not available within the Party’s records.

Hannam was widely derided as incompetent at the time of the internal rebellion in winter 2007/08 when he was regional treasurer, but was promoted to national treasurer in February 2010 and in July boasted that everything was in place to ensure all financial statements were submitted on time. By October he was out of the job.

Simon Darby, the BNP’s former deputy chairman, also failed to account for expenditure, with “no documentation” available to cover a payment of £3,000 for “security costs” during the period while he was treasurer.

And in the first four months of 2009 a total of £37,450 was “entered in the Purchase Ledger as J A Walker payments” for which “No documentary evidence was put through the records to show what these payments covered”. John Walker has held various jobs in the party, including national treasurer, and is currently on the staff of the BNP’s MEPs, paid out of European Parliament funds. The unexplained payments to him occurred while Noble was treasurer, but the accounts for some reason avoid mentioning her name.

The accounts also show the party spent £168,000 on additions to its vehicles, equipment, fixtures and fittings, much of it the result of appeals during the year. Such an investment might be expected to stand the party in good stead for the future, except that “The Treasurer is in the process of reviewing the schedules which back-up the schedule above, which the auditor has provided, both in terms of what assets were in existence at 31 December 2009, and after the current re-organisation of the Party and the closing of certain offices”. In other words the BNP has no idea whether its assets still exist or ever existed, and many have been scrapped because the party has closed most of its offices, including the Belfast call centre, which was under the control of Dowson.

Writing off the doubtful assets in the 2009 accounts would of course have increased its loss of £57,202 for the year, a far cry from the profit the party has at various times claimed it achieved in the year. The loss increased the party’s net insolvency to £361,000, as a result of which it owed over £355,000 to suppliers and £37,000 to HM Revenue and Customs in PAYE tax and national insurance on staff wages and VAT.

Among those owed money was “Ad Lorries Ltd”, actually Adlorries.com Ltd. The accounts confirm what Searchlight revealed many months ago, namely that “a considerable amount of transactions were paid through and processed through” this company, which is owned by Dowson. The full amount the party was invoiced by Dowson’s company in 2009 was £741,290, which included £58,680 of management fees for running the Belfast call centre, part of the £162,000 a year Dowson was paid by the party. However even Dowson had to wait for his money. At 31 December 2009 the BNP owed his company £71,967, the accounts reveal.

The amount going through Adlorries represents a huge proportion of the party’s total expenditure of just over £2 million, justifying Searchlight’s accusation that Dowson virtually owned the BNP. Another accusation that the accounts prove correct is that the party massively inflated its payroll, providing jobs for those in Griffin’s favour. Expenditure on staff costs more than doubled to £660,000 in 2009, though this includes around £100,000 of consultancy fees paid to Dowson.

One person who always gets whatever he wants from the party is its chairman. During 2009 the party spent the huge sum of £33,519 on installing a security system for him. Andrew Brons, the party’s Yorkshire MEP, only merited £9,136, as did a person by the name of “Ms E Uttley”.

Jefferson states that a programme has been agreed with the auditor to ensure that the 2010 accounts are submitted on time and that “we are able to repair to a large extent any possible deficiencies in the operation of the Treasury department in 2010”. Deficiencies in the party’s finances will be harder to repair. The party ended 2010 unable to pay its printers, with staff waiting for their wages and mounting legal expenses from failed court actions and employment tribunal cases.

On 18 January 2011 Griffin was required to pay £45,000 into court as a result of having to withdraw a court case against four former employees. The total cost is expected to be £115,000. He failed to make the payment. And with donations drying up and demoralised members deserting the failing party, the BNP is unlikely to dig itself out of its deep financial hole.

Thanks to Searchlight / HOPE not hate by Sonia Gable

Edit The BNP's Statement of Accounts can be found here

BNP found guilty of 'failing to keep accurate financial records'

The British National Party was guilty of a "clear failure" to keep accurate financial records for 2008, the Electoral Commission said today. But the commission said that although this was a breach of the law, no sanctions were available to punish the BNP.

After an investigation into the party's affairs for 2008, the commission said: "The registered treasurers for the party in 2008 breached the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 by failing to keep accounting records sufficient to explain, with reasonable accuracy, the financial position of the party at the time."

However, there was no sanction or penalty available to punish the treasurers. Penalties were brought into force this month, but cannot be applied retrospectively.

The commission said because of the state of the records, it could not be certain that the party's submitted reports of donations were accurate. But the investigation "found no specific evidence to lead to the conclusion that they were not accurate".

Chief executive of the Electoral Commission Peter Wardle said: "Political parties are required by law to keep accurate financial records, and this clear failure to do so is a serious matter. It undermines the party's ability to demonstrate, and the commission's ability to verify, that the party is complying with the law. It is frustrating that, although we established that the party breached party funding law by not keeping adequate financial records, there are no sanctions available to us in relation to this breach.

"This has now changed for breaches of the law that occur after December 1 2010, when we have access to a new set of powers and sanctions. We have written to the party setting out our concerns. We will be meeting with senior party officials as soon as possible to ensure that their procedures for complying with the law are adequate, and monitoring the party to ensure they implement any necessary changes without delay."

24dash

The BNP: Unbelievable Goings-On

Yesterday I had to go down to that London on for a business meeting. Being from Derbyshire, I duly marvelled at the sights (electric light, horseless carriages, etc), and, having time free before my train home, I called on an old friend for coffee and a chinwag.

She's a radio producer who once researched a documentary about the BNP, and conversation naturally turned to the state of the party...

I filled her in on the splits, the recriminations, the fraud and financial mismanagement, and much of it was news to her (since making the programme she has a passing interest, but she isn't obsessive about it).

Then I showed her a series of screen grabs of threads that have appeared in the last few days on one of the BNP talkboards where Griffin and Jim Dowson (as “the Bruce”) had (supposedly) made an appearance.

To say she was astonished doesn't quite do it justice. If it were a bad 1950's comedy, the poor woman would've done a double take, then looked, bemused, at her glass of wine and carried on to a triple take while clapping her hand to her forehead and shouting “Yikes!”.

“They actually carry on like this?” she laughed. “It's like a nursery!”

Perhaps a nursery for severely damaged adults who constantly threaten one another with psychotic violence, run by neo-Nazi rapists and thieves, I thought, but not any nursery I'd ever want to send my own kids to.

She suggested we go up to a different floor and see a Colleague of hers. I was surprised to see that he was completely up to speed with the current goings-on; he was perfectly au fait with all of the names and personalities involved.

His “special project” has, for some months now, been a documentary charting the last days of the BNP, from the Question Time fiasco to the (increasingly) bitter (and twisted) end. Other than that, he played his cards close to his chest. He claimed a “very senior” figure in the Party is prepared to go on the record, but wouldn't be drawn as to who it might be (Any ideas, Chums?).

He, too, was fascinated by “The Bruce” and his septic waffle. He said he'd even joined the forum in question, and had made contact, privately, with some of its inhabitants. He took a copy of the grabs and said he'd look into it further.

The problem with the BNP's recent travails getting the coverage they deserve from the media has, before now, been the insanely Kafkaesque nature of the saga. Sadly, the fact is that (even if you were to confine your programme to, say, just the Truth Truck scam or the Belfast story), the vast majority of the Audience would soon be lost in a morass of minutiae and bizarre characters. But quite apart from this, the whole sorry mess is simply too far-fetched for regular people in the Real World to believe.

Who, after all, could ever be reasonably expected to fall for the story of a National Political Party who manage to keep on finding excuses for not having their accounts in on time? (I'm still half expecting Cyclops to try using one involving Ledgers + Pet Dogs + Hunger.)

What Viewer in their right mind would believe the tales of self-styled clergyman, fantasy Loyalist and pretend “Industry Expert” Jim Dowson and his hold over the Party?

And just how out of whack with reality would anyone have to be to fall for the bizarre notion that the Leader of a National Political Party and an elected Member of the European Parliament would not only be reduced to endless, increasingly tacky, appeals for donations, but would routinely tell outrageous lies to his own Members, allow a fake “vicar” to hold “services” at official events, change his Party's constitution to ensure his own position to be practically unassailable and, by now a virtual dictator, round things off by using an elderly Welsh fantasist with drink issues and a somewhat unsavoury personal history as his mouthpiece and main cheerleader?

A few years ago, a friend wrote the screenplay for a war film – now considered a classic. Everything that happened in the movie was true. Nothing was invented for dramatic purposes. The problem was, that the acts of heroism shown were so extraordinary, so far removed from people's own reality that many critics simply didn't believe them.

I reckon people might have much the same reaction if they were told even a fraction of the zany carry on that is the Fall Of The Griffin Empire.

Inside the BNP bunker

It has become the heart of the BNP operation and the focus of the growing backlash against the party leadership. Searchlight has exclusively pieced together life inside the Belfast bunker.
By Matthew Collins

The Carrowreagh business centre in Dundonald, on the outskirts of east Belfast, separates two quite different elements of Northern Ireland. To one side lie the scenic green hills of County Down, sprawling farmland and narrow country lanes edged by stone walls. It’s a stone’s throw away from the home of the former First Minister Peter Robinson. On the other side, is the Ballybeen Estate, Northern Ireland’s second largest housing estate, where the local paramilitaries mark their territory with colourful reminders of their deadly existence.

Separating these two worlds is a nondescript cul-de-sac ringed by steel-framed business units. At the far end is number five. Purporting to be a printing centre, it is in fact the heart of the British National Party’s administrative and fundraising operation.

From the mythical new Jerusalem of Dundonald in Northern Ireland, strangers have plundered the BNP’s membership files in search of cash. There are shutters and newly installed shredders to deter prying eyes. Only the most favoured have visited the call centre, unceremoniously ushered upstairs upon arrival and into the offices of Jim Dowson’s empire where he could hold court in privacy.

Downstairs, the staff bickered, fought and betrayed the professionalism that Dowson and the BNP leadership went out of their way to present to the membership. Dowson originally set up the Belfast operation to promote his anti-abortion and fundraising campaigns across Ireland. The BNP was an add-on, an afterthought, after Dowson persuaded the BNP that it needed his professional services.

Sparks first flew with the arrival last year of Jennifer Matthys, the newly married daughter of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader. Matthys and her husband moved to a flat above a petrol station in the staunchly Protestant village of Comber and were presented with a Volkswagen car as part of their moving package. Some thought Ms Matthys was there to provide an ideological input and perhaps become Griffin’s eyes and ears in Dowson’s base.

Instead of the ideology she was supposedly sent to deliver, she became embroiled in a clash of personalities with the eldest of Dowson’s children, James Jnr, who ran a plumbing company, Ultraplumb.com Ltd, from the upstairs offices, a company that does business with Catholic communities.

Dowson Jnr had developed a swagger not dissimilar to that of his father and Ms Matthys took exception, in particular to his insistence that he was about to be installed into her old job as head of the BNP’s youth wing. Dowson Jnr quickly found himself not only out of the call centre, but seemingly out of the BNP. To the rest of the staff it became obvious very quickly that there was only room for one golden child in the call centre, and there seemed little room for dissent. Ms Matthys is silent but deadly while working in the upstairs office, bereft of friends, life or humour.

Shattered

Any pretence that the call centre was a secure haven for BNP members’ details was shattered in October 2009 when Searchlight investigators revealed to the Irish press that the party had recruited casual staff to work on its European election campaign using the recruitment firms Office Angels and Grafton in Belfast.

This came at a time when staff at the call centre were actively encouraging supporters not to join the party via its website, claiming it was insecure and suggesting members and supporters should take out and renew membership over the phone. Their details were in fact manually taken down on pieces of paper and stuffed into envelopes. Call centre staff were being paid commission on recruitment, sales and subscriptions to publications, and so began an ongoing campaign against the party’s webmaster Simon Bennett, who also had an interest in membership sales and subscriptions. The falling-outs and excessive competitiveness in the call centre were always going to lead to difficulty. Among the staff was a woman who offered sexual services to high rolling clients from the office, another woman who lived in a hardline republican area and Peter Dempster, a foulmouthed evangelical racist whom Dowson had entrusted with the care of Ms Matthys and her husband Angus. It was an explosive mix.

Later that month, the BNP’s membership list was leaked for the second time within a year. What the call centre did not reveal was that not only had there been a report to the police that a laptop had been stolen from the call centre containing details of thousands of BNP members and the party accounts, but that there was a very real fear that this information was now in the hands of Irish republicans.

Inside the call centre, staff were offered more bonuses and overtime as hundreds of angry and abusive members and supporters rang the office to vent their fury over the leak. There then followed a ludicrous propaganda film from the call centre of a member of staff sitting typing away on a keyboard in the absence of any terminal or computer screen.

Party members were turning against the call centre.

A series of high profile exposes by Searchlight followed, including publication of a picture that Dowson distributed of himself holding what appeared to be a sawn-off shot gun, to allegedly intimidate a former employee. Driven by paranoia, Dowson began to feel he was under threat not only from republicans but also from loyalists who had read of his apparent louche lifestyle and fundraising ventures. Of particular interest to loyalist paramilitaries, who are quick to seize upon any suggestion of available cash, is Dowson’s Europe-funded post-conflict cross-community work. A stern message to staff was soon posted around the centre forbidding them from standing outside, and the door from the call centre to the upstairs offices was shut permanently as a further security measure.

By the new year, the call centre had come under increased scrutiny. The party had agreed not to recruit new members, as a result of ongoing legal action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and was in the midst of a series of punishing court cases. But Dowson’s Jeep Cherokee was nowhere to be seen while office staff began to tire under the weight of the endless numbers of begging phone calls and letters going out to party members. Fewer of the party hierarchy were visiting the call centre and as new security shutters went up, a desperate sense of paranoia and suspicion set in.


At one party meeting in England, Dowson turned up with his own minder in tow, the self-confessed English football hooligan and club doorman Martin Ambridge, who went on to feature as an employee in the Northern Ireland office.

Dowson’s wife Ann began spending more time at a property he owns in Spain for his supposed charity work at Plaza Del Corazon De Jesus. Dowson, meanwhile, moved into a log cabin he laughably describes as the “guest house” at the back of his family home.

In Dowson’s absence, his sister-in-law Marion Thomas and his longstanding accountant John Thompson, who was appointed as the BNP accountant, took over the running of the office. Another Englishman and relative by marriage, Alan Turner, took over the running of call centre telephone inquiries, while Ambridge and Karen Lowrie, the wife of a serving Northern Ireland police officer, assisted him.

Threatened

Shortly before the general election Dowson claimed his life was threatened by Mark Collett, the BNP’s head of publicity. However this accusation appears to have stemmed from Dowson’s power grab for greater control of a party he once claimed he had never even joined. Desperate to keep his credit flowing with the printer Romac Press Ltd in east Belfast, Dowson offered the company the contract to print the BNP’s literature as well as his own anti-abortion material. Dowson used the alleged threat to move against Bennett to disastrous effect when Bennett pulled the plug on the website on the eve of the May elections and launched a barrage of attacks on Dowson.

Tom Gower, the party’s election candidate in Coventry North East, was sent to Northern Ireland from Nuneaton to give the office some backbone.

The persistent scrutiny not just from Searchlight but also by BNP members themselves prompted Thompson to quit the thankless role of BNP accountant, taking Zack McAdam, his evangelical computer guru, with him.

For the Matthyses, the move to Northern Ireland has become a nightmare. Ms Matthys was appointed a director of Dowson’s front company Adlorries.com Ltd in July 2009, but all it has these days appears to be a mountain of debt. She faces being further shunned in the small publicity-shunning community where she lives after Searchlight revealed that she carried the flags, along with Dowson’s daughters, for the Goldsprings True Defenders Flute Band. Often tearful, Jennifer frequently flies to her father’s side, leaving Angus to lock up the call centre alone.

For Angus, the highlight of his emotionally austere life in Northern Ireland is his responsibility for opening the volumes of mail that arrive daily. It’s hardly the life he studied for or even expected when he agreed to marry Jennifer. With two large rubber gloves he sifts through razor blades, excrement, needles and used prophylactics in search of cash donations that he can present to his wife for counting. It must be the highlight of Jenny’s life there as these unsolicited donations sometimes amount to £2,000 a week, though that is a far cry from the donations of up to £40,000 in one week during the election campaign..

The Dundonald base has become the heartbeat of the BNP and, given how Dowson has made himself irreplaceable in Griffin’s party, it is likely to remain so for as long as the leader remains in place.

Thanks to Matthew Collins at Hope not Hate

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Griffin takes over in London

Nick Griffin last night closed another destructive day in the life of the rapidly disintegrating BNP by declaring himself London Regional Organiser in place of the recently sacked Chris Roberts, purged for supporting Eddy Butler's leadership challenge.

The move came on the heels of the news that two more BNP councillors had declared themselves "independent" and the highly dubious suspension of Griffin gofer Paul Golding came to light.

Clearly not trusting local London officials, even those he had just hand-picked, at around 10 p.m. Griffin tweeted: "Busy evening putting together a great new London management team. I'll be acting as their Reginal [sic] Organiser while they find their feet. I pass by while on the way to Europe anyway, so a bit of hands on leadership won't be too hard. Vital we organise now to maximise chances in 2012 gla election. I did the same in the North West before handing over to Clive Jefferson. It worked well."

Distrust and disaffection for Griffin is so advanced in London that imposing himself as the top regional official is more likely to entrench existing divisions and create new resentments than it is either to bring the bickering factions to heel or to initiate a period of calm in which some attempt at reconciliation can be effected.

In fact, reconciliation appears to be the last thing on Griffin's mind. London, and particularly East London, being one of the hotter spots in the BNP's fevered post-election discontent, is ripe for a thorough pruning, and it would seem that Griffin is placing himself in the best position possible to oversee it.

Griffin's careless attitude towards the BNP's dwindling number of elected assets was exemplified in his obvious contempt for the newly "independent" Richard Barnbrook, expressed via his Twitter account: "Disappointed by Richard. Have appealed to him to do decent thing and either come back to fold or . . ."

Since even Griffin might think Barnbrook's honourable suicide a step too far, he presumably means that Barnbrook should resign his GLA seat.

Griffin's contempt for Barnbrook long predates the current troubles, but Barnbrook also earned the open contempt of the Butler camp when, with the intervention of the oleaginous Patrick Harrington, he back-tracked on earlier promises to support the Butler camp and allowed himself to become a stooge candidate for Griffin. Barnbrook was quickly discarded when his usefulness ran out and has no political friends left. Even if - and it is a possibility - he were to further humiliate himself and return to the fold, his inglorious career in racist politics will end with the next GLA elections.

Shrugging off the BNP label with better grace than Barnbrook, West Hertfordshire organiser and county councillor Deirdre Gates has also resigned from the party. Three Rivers district councillor Seamus Dunne has declared himself an "independent", but remains a member of the BNP.

Gates may have sought to pre-empt her own purging, but in resigning from the party has defied the advice of her friend Eddy Butler, for whom she was a prominent campaigner. Why Gates took this course is open to speculation unless or until she makes a public statement explaining her actions. There is a suggestion that Gates's time as a county councillor may have have had a maturing influence on her, something that has happened in the past when BNP councillors have glimpsed political life beyond the BNP's inane world of Marxist plots and Muslim takeovers, but, equally likely, she may know something of Butler's plans which would render her continued membership of the BNP superfluous.

The suspension of one of Nick Griffin's chief lackeys, Paul Golding, was greeted with derision by the Butler camp, suspicious of every move made by the embattled BNP leader. Golding was apparently suspended for abusing the official BNP e-mail lists, which he used to promote the infamous "attack blogs" and for transmitting a personal attack on Eddy Butler.

According to Butler: "Obviously Paul Golding will not really be punished for these ‘transgressions’. It is sop designed to imply that the leadership will be even handed when they try to expel certain people who supported me during the recent leadership challenge. It is a blatant fig leaf."

Butler also claims to detect the hand of the sneakingly ubiquitous Patrick Harrington in the ploy, since: "Harrington knows that Paul Golding’s unwise attack e-mail gave grounds for other members of staff who were the subject of abuse, to claim constructive dismissal if no action was taken."

Griffin is clearly positioning himself to take decisive action soon. Will he pick off Butler's people piecemeal, or will there be a bloodbath?

Griffin's reckless behaviour suggests to us that he really doesn't care, and would rather see the BNP's last councillors jump ship and the membership dwindle to a few Green Arrow-type fools before he will allow those oh so well guarded account books to fall out of his control and into the hands of a deeply interested membership.

Michaela Mackenzie sticks the boot in once more.

I'm getting the feeling that Griffin & Dowson Enterprises might have made a monumental cock up when they unlawfully sacked Michaela Mackenzie.

A couple of weeks after she released her Employment Tribunal Statement which can be found here she went a step further yesterday in her utter condemnation of Dowson and his business practices within the BNP.

In a speech lasting over 20 minutes at an Eddy Butler leadership campaign meeting she outlined her sacking and the incompetence of Griffin and Dowson and the three videos are worth watching.

BNP faces fines for third accounts failure.

The British National Party has failed to submit its 2009 accounts to the Electoral Commission, the third time the fascist party has been late.

The Electoral Commission said today: “The British National Party and the party’s Regional Accounting Unit were both granted an extension to the deadline for submitting their statements of accounts. Both have failed to deliver their accounts within the extended deadline so the party will be fined a minimum of £500 and the accounting unit will be fined a minimum £100, this figure will increase if the accounts are more than three months late.”

The 2008 accounts, which were submitted nearly six months late, remain under investigation by the Electoral Commission because the auditors reported that they did not give a true and fair view and did not “comply with the requirements of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 as adequate records have not been made available”.

At the time, Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, described the accounts as “inadequate”. In his introduction to the 2008 accounts Griffin claimed that “the task of maintaining central office accounts had become too big for any one individual”. However, he continued, the problem had now been solved because the job had been “outsourced” to “an independent Chartered Accountant and Accounts Technician with the aim of presenting acceptable accounts for the accounting year 2009”.

The independent chartered accountant was John Thompson, a close business associate of Jim Dowson, the man whose web of financial links with the BNP is such that he in effect “owns” the BNP.

The failure to submit accounts will add to Dowson’s unpopularity with many BNP members and plays into the hands of Eddy Butler, who is currently trying to collect enough nominations to challenge Griffin for the party leadership. Butler’s response was: “Nick Griffin has brought disgrace upon the BNP yet again. There is only one way that you can change this. Sign the nomination form and vote for change.”

That the accounts have not appeared was no surprise to Searchlight. Given the BNP’s huge liabilities as a result of Griffin’s long list of reckless legal actions, the party’s independent auditors are likely to have had difficulty certifying that the BNP is a “going concern”.

In recent years, although the party has been insolvent, the auditors have assumed it can meet its liabilities by raiding the funds of its groups and branches, something with which many local officers are unhappy. Now, the liabilities are so big that branch funds are not enough, and many branch treasurers have adopted measures to keep head office’s hands off their money.

An organisation that is not a “going concern” cannot operate unless it pays for all goods and services in advance, something the BNP does not have the money to do.

Many party members are beginning to realise that although Dowson has raised unprecedented sums in donations, Griffin has been spending far more on madnesses such as using an image of Marmite on a BNP election broadcast, which attracted an injunction from Unilever, defending indefensible unfair dismissal claims from former employees and dragging out his response to the Equality Commission’s action over the party’s racist constitution to the extent that the legal costs are believed to be running at £300,000 so far.

Another problem the auditors might have had is that the party apparently no longer owns any of its assets. One of the sections of the new BNP constitution that Griffin slipped in without telling anyone states that all the party’s assets belong to the so-called Founders’ Association. That body is not defined in the constitution but it is understood to be all BNP members who joined before the new constitution came into effect in February and are still members. If the party does not own its assets, they cannot correctly be included in its accounts, which would greatly increase the party’s insolvency.

The BNP, however, is hoping its members will keep their heads firmly in the sand. The day before it emerged that the party’s accounts were missing, Dave Hannam, the party treasurer, sent out an email listing all the party’s financial achievements but admitting that he had been forced to implement new stringent financial controls and submit to monthly inspection of his “treasury office” by “an outside accountant”.

According to Hannam the party lacked “financial stability”. One reason was: “the large number of court cases launched at this party in a deliberate attempt to derail us,” skating over the fact that almost all the legal costs were entirely the fault of the BNP. Another reason was “a general lack of accountability with regards to the National Treasurer and his office”. And it had been “discovered that some officials has incurred expenditure that was both unauthorised and previously unknown to the Treasury department”.

In other words, Hannam had been as incompetent as most people, other than Griffin, Dowson and their sycophants, always knew he was from the time he first became the party’s deputy treasurer.

The email said nothing about the 2009 accounts being late, appealed for new regional treasurers – in other words new people Hannam can blame the next time it all goes wrong – and ended with a “donate” button, in the hope that the party’s stupid supporters will throw more money into Griffin’s bottomless pit.

Searchlight / HOPE not Hate by Sonia Gable

Watchdog begins BNP accounts probe

The Electoral Commission has launched an investigation into the accounting records of the British National Party, it was announced today

The commission, which is the independent party finance watchdog, said it had began the probe into the party's 2008 statement of accounts. This follows concerns raised about its "adequacy" by the independent auditor's report that accompanied it. But the fact that an investigation had been launched did not mean there should be assumptions made over any alleged breaches, the commission stressed.

In January this year the commission began a review following the concerns raised, and this has now developed into the investigation announced today. It follows comments by the registered auditors, Silver & Co, that the financial statements submitted did not "give a true and fair view of the state of the party's affairs at December 31, 2008".

The auditors went on: "In our opinion it cannot be said that the accounts comply with the requirements of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, as adequate records have not been made available."

A statement released by the commission said: "In January 2010 the Electoral Commission, the independent party finance watchdog, began a case review following concerns raised in the independent auditor's opinion about the adequacy of the 2008 statement of accounts of the British National Party. The case has now become an investigation.

"However, it is important to note - particularly during an election period - that no conclusion has been reached and therefore no assumption should be made as to whether a breach of the rules has occurred."

The Independent

British National Party accounts investigated by Electoral Commission

The British National Party’s financial accounts are under investigation by the Electoral Commission over an alleged breach of the law.

The commission said yesterday there were a “number of concerns” and that the far-right party’s latest accounts were “under review”. The investigation concerns a suspected breach of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, which requires all party treasurers to file full and accurate accounts each year.

The revelations come as Margaret Hodge, the Labour incumbent in Barking, East London, has threatened the party with legal action over campaign material. And the moves cast doubt on the credibility of the BNP at a time when Nick Griffin, its leader, is trying to persuade voters that he is a serious alternative to mainstream politicians at the general election.

The BNP has already been fined over its failure to produce its accounts on time and was recently exposed for exaggerating its spending during last year’s European elections.

It is also facing court action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over its policy of excluding ethnic minorities from membership. Its membership meets tomorrow to discuss changes to its constitution.

The commission’s investigation relates to accounts for 2008, which the BNP filed six months late. The party was asked to provide more information last month but it is understood that the extra information was unsatisfactory and the party has still failed to meet the requirements of the Act.

Penalties for giving inaccurate or incomplete information include prosecution, with a maximum penalty of a £5,000 or one year imprisonment.

John Walker, a BNP spokesman, said: “We’re not the only party to have problems with finances.”

The Times

BNP faces prosecution for submitting ‘misleading’ accounts

The British National Party may face prosecution after providing accounts to the Electoral Commission that failed to give a “true and fair view” of its financial circumstances.

The far-Right party, which has already been fined for filing its accounts six months late, must produce further details by Friday. The news comes as figures released by the commission yesterday reveal how the party exaggerated its spending during the European elections, in which it won two seats, including that of Nick Griffin, the party leader.

Mr Griffin has often claimed that the BNP spent more than £500,000 during the campaign. In fact, the party spent much less, £282,843 — only £54,000 more than it did during 2004. Mr Griffin’s claims had raised eyebrows, —particularly because the party had declared less than £25,000 in donations since January 2008.

Simon Darby, the BNP deputy leader, yesterday blamed bureaucracy for the errors and said the party needed to exaggerate because “if we had said we wanted to spend 10p, it wouldn’t do us any good. ... there’s a bit of hyperbole with politics”. He refused to comment further on the discrepancy, saying that it was not a “worthy question”.

The BNP was fined £1,000 for filing its 2008 accounts in December — nearly six months after the original deadline. Even then, the commission concluded that the accounts were inadequate and requested further information.

In his report, which prefaced the accounts, Mr Griffin blamed poor accounting on changes in the party’s treasury department. He said that the accounts had become too big for one person to manage, and had since been outsourced to a chartered accountant. He said the changes were made “with the aim of presenting acceptable accounts for the accounting year 2009”. “We recognise that it is not acceptable to present inadequate accounts,” he wrote.

The independent auditor of the accounts concluded that the party’s financial statements did not “give a true and fair view” of its affairs. Silver & Co wrote: “In our opinion it cannot be said that the accounts comply with the requirements of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, as adequate records have not been made available.”

A spokesman for the Electoral Commission said: “We have reviewed the statement of accounts and have concerns about them. We have written back to the party requesting additional information. Until we have received that information we cannot say what further action will be taken.”

TimesOnline

DG adds: You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Other facts that came out of the accounts have already been highlighted on here, but two that deserve further mention concern membership numbers and the extortion of a massive loan from the Regional Accounting Unit - that is, BNP members' hard-earned money, paid over to benefit their local branches and groups.

On the matter of membership, the BNP's own figures for 2007 were 9,784. We all remember the hype about "rocketing membership figures", "hundreds joining", "best year ever" etc., etc. The BNP's figures for 2008 were 9,801 - an increase of just 17!

This begs the question as to how many of the alleged 4,000 apparently wetting themselves as they wait to join the BNP when the membership block is removed will turn out to be real and how many figments of Nick Griffin's fertile imagination.

On the matter of the "loan" made by the BNP's Regional Accounting Unit (RAU) to the central party, it seems that the membership has been well and truly turned over.

One of the most interesting items listed in the RAU's 2007 accounts was an acknowledgement that “During 2007 central office borrowed from the regional accounting unit", borrowings that were to be repaid by monthly standing orders.

The BNP's auditors, Silver and Co., took a dim view of this, saying that at the close of 2007 "... the party owed the Region £42,000 and the reason why this is the case is that it had insufficient funds, which places doubts on the ability of the Party to repay this money.”

These doubts were well founded, and a con had to be worked that would allow the BNP to keep its own branches deprived of their own much needed money. How it was worked came in this glib sentence, which appeared in the RAU's 2008 accounts:

“In 2009 certain costs were incurred on behalf of the Branches, by the Central Office, in connection with the European election. These are to be recharged, and will cover the money due by Central Office to the Branches."

So, "certain costs", unspecified, and "in connection with the European election" - and that cancels the debt owed to the branches on a loan they were never consulted about making?

How many times over did the BNP membership pay for Nick Griffin's Euro-seat? Or did this money really go elsewhere?

The RAU's treasurer (and supposed guardian of the branches' interests) David Hannam and his good friend Nicholas Griffin have some serious questions to answer, and we can but hope that they eventually come to be answered in the proper place, because we are certain sure that the gullible sheeple of the BNP will never have the wits to challenge the parasites who have for so long fed on them with such unalloyed contempt.

British National Party required to explain ‘inadequate’ accounts

The British National Party’s former treasurer could face criminal proceedings for delivering “inadequate accounts” to the Electoral Commission

The BNP’s 2008 accounts finally emerged three weeks before the fine for their late submission to the Electoral Commission would have doubled to £2,000.

Like the 2007 accounts, the latest financial statements do not give a true and fair view of the state of the party’s affairs at 31 December 2008 and of the year’s results, in the opinion of Silver & Co, the party’s regular auditors. However this year the BNP had no easy target to blame of the likes of Kenny Smith, one of the leaders of the party’s internal rebellion in winter 2006, who was used as the excuse for failings in both the 2006 and 2007 accounts.

In 2008 the party simply could not get its act together. As Nick Griffin, the party chairman, explained in his introduction to the accounts, soon after June 2008, when Jenny Noble took over as party treasurer from John Walker, it “became apparent that the task of maintaining central office accounts had become too big for any one individual”. So the job was “outsourced” to “an independent Chartered Accountant and Accounts Technician with the aim of presenting acceptable accounts for the accounting year 2009”.

In other words the BNP gave up on the 2008 accounts, though Griffin admitted lamely: “We recognize that it is not acceptable to present inadequate accounts”.

The failure meant that the accounts not only did not give a true and fair view but also did not “comply with the requirements of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 as adequate records have not been made available”. In 2007 the accounts did comply with the PPERA, despite not giving a true and fair view.

A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission told Searchlight that they had “a number of concerns” about the financial statements and the inadequate records referred to in Griffin’s report and have urgently requested more detailed information about the inadequacies from the party’s auditors. The BNP has until 8 January to reply, after which the Electoral Commission will consider what further action to take.

Under the PPERA 2000 the party’s treasurer on 31 December 2008, the last day of the accounting period concerned, commits a criminal offence by not complying with the regulations governing party accounts. Although the 2008 accounts are presented by Philip Reddall, he was appointed BNP treasurer only in autumn 2009. At the end of 2008 Noble was still the treasurer, until she was shunted out in April 2009 to run the Trafalgar Club, a task she appears to have performed with similar lack of success.

Her only defence, if the Electoral Commission decides to prosecute, would be that she took all reasonable steps and exercised due diligence to ensure the accounts were adequate, or that the failures were attributable to the period before she became treasurer and she did her best to put things right.

Despite the unreliability of the accounts, the figures are very interesting as they prove that the BNP has lied repeatedly to its members and donors.

The BNP started its main fundraising drive at the tail end of 2007 and built it up throughout 2008 with a number of appeals for objectives such as the launch of its provocatively racist Racism Cuts Both Ways booklet, the May 2008 election campaign and the notorious Truth Truck appeal.

The accounts show that the party did indeed raise more money than ever before. Income from donations and fundraising activities (the distinction is unclear) amounted to £688,764 compared to £221,456 in 2007.

Nevertheless the party ended the year with a loss of £82,642, an increase of £32,000 over the previous year’s loss. It was also a far cry from the £100,000 profit claimed in June 2009 by Jim Dowson, the militant anti-abortion campaigner behind the BNP’s fundraising efforts, who controls its Belfast telesales centre and other essential party functions. It was Dowson too who supplied the “independent chartered accountant”, John Thompson, who works for Dowson’s various business interests in Belfast, now charged with getting the BNP’s books into better shape for 2009.

The loss left the BNP bankrupt to the tune of £168,233. While that may not be much compared to some political parties, it is a significant proportion of the party’s turnover of under £1 million and the latest in a trend of growing losses. To stay afloat the party continued to raid the funds of its branches and groups, stayed in arrears with its tax and VAT payments and relied on the advance payment of membership subscriptions for the following year.

Far from spending the increased income on campaigning, most of the money has gone to paying party staff and propping up the party’s lacklustre publications and its failed Excalibur merchandising operation.

The start of 2008 had seen Excalibur’s move, to great acclaim, into new premises with a “vast array of new equipment”. At the end of the year Excalibur was out on its ear after Searchlight, in conjunction with Lancaster Unity and Wales Friends of Searchlight, had tracked it down to a Deeside Industrial Estate (click here for details).

According to the accounts, Excalibur’s stock, consisting of tatty, cringe-making and overpriced goods, including white mugs reading “I’m a white mug”, may have been worth £5,000 to £6,000 at the end of the year, but “the very nature of the stock raises questions as to its realisable value”. In other words, no one wants to buy them – even the BNP doesn’t have enough white mugs to buy its white mugs.

The total cost of the BNP’s “commercial activities”, consisting of Excalibur, Identity, Voice of Freedom and unspecified other printed material, amounted to £285,341 compared to income of £130,526, a loss of £125,000.

Staff wages and “professional fees” – a term that includes staff paid without accounting for income tax and national insurance – grew by over £100,000 compared to 2007. The accounts state there were 13 staff. Management and administration costs rose by £96,000 to £263,000. Rent and associated costs of the short-lived Excalibur unit undoubtedly pushed up this total.

Campaign expenditure was a mere £74,580, of which only £41,095 was on leaflets and £14,325 was the cost of fundraising. Back in March 2008 a BNP appeal letter asked for donations towards the 2008 London and local council election campaigns, promising that the London campaign would cost at least £80,000. That now emerges as another lie.

The party did buy £29,000 of equipment, far less than it made out when it moved into the Excalibur unit. It also spent £19,550 on buying vehicles. The figure does not include the “truth truck”, an advertising vehicle and trailer better known as the lie lorry. Contrary to statements in fundraising appeals that the lorry was “bought and paid for”, Searchlight established that the party was renting it from Dowson’s Adlorries.com business. The accounts do not refer to the “Truth Truck” by name but state that the party leases one vehicle under an agreement that does not give “rights approximating to ownership”.

The accounts also reveal some interesting non-financial details. The Young BNP was “defunct” during the year, “with the failed head being removed at the end of the year and replaced by a new team”. The reference is to the summary dismissal of Danny Lake and his replacement by Mike Howson, a man in his mid-forties, after Lake raised concerns about the “psychopathic” behaviour of Mark Bulman, an erratic and alcoholic teenage YBNP member who was also treasurer of Howson’s BNP branch.

The BNP’s security department is described as responsible for running party events “correctly to ensure the health and safety of all those attending”. This is the bunch of thugs who surround Griffin wherever he goes and have scant concern for the “health and safety” of those on the receiving end of their activities.

The South African influence remained strong, with both Arthur Kemp and Lance Stewart on the party’s 15-strong Advisory Council. Kemp is the BNP’s website editor and during 2008 was also in charge of Excalibur dispatch and “developing Voting Membership educational material”. Stewart, a former high-ranking officer in the South African Police, heads the BNP’s “Intelligence Department”.

BNP members, of whom the accounts state there were 9,801 at 31 December 2008, will not understand or care about the shambolic state of the BNP’s finances revealed in these statements, the potential criminal charges faced by the former treasurer or the proof that the party’s fundraising appeals were a pack of lies. They will not doubt go on pouring money into the bottomless and unaccountable pit that is the racist BNP.

Hope not hate

Kray twins admirer is big BNP donor

The notorious Kray twins (left) and the inglorious Crap twins (right)

A close friend of the murderous Kray twins is one of two major donors to the British National Party in the third quarter of 2009. Eileen Sheridan-Price, a former beauty queen, gave £5,105 to the BNP in September.

Sheridan-Price says the East End of London was “a much nicer, safer place” when the Kray twins were around. Reginald and Ronald Kray were notorious gangsters who ran organised crime in the East End during the 1950s and 1960s. They were involved in torture, armed robberies, arson, protection rackets and murder to enforce their will. They were both convicted in 1969 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

One can see the attraction of the BNP for an admirer of the Krays.

The other large donor in the period was Charles Hancock, who gave £8,700 in August. Neither name has previously appeared in the list of people giving more than £5,000 to the party. The BNP has still not submitted its 2008 accounts.

Hope not hate

More on the law-abiding cuddly Kray twins here.

Electoral Commission to fine BNP - again

From the Electoral Commission website, July 29th:

Regulatory Action

The British National Party and the party’s Regional Accounting Unit were both granted an extension to the deadline for submitting their statements of accounts. Both have failed to deliver their accounts within the extended deadline so the party will be fined a minimum of £500 and the accounting unit will be fined a minimum £100, this figure will increase if the accounts are more than three months late.

Peter Wardle Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission said: “Political parties play a crucial part in our democracy. But, now more than ever, voters need to be confident that party funding is transparent and that parties will comply with the law.

“While we are disappointed that the British National Party and its accounting unit have failed to submit their accounts on time, I’m glad to see that the majority of the large parties and accounting units have understood the need to ensure their accounts are submitted to us by the deadline set. Transparency about party finances is one of the key factors that can help public confidence in politics.”

In May, the Commission published the financial accounts of 281 political parties and 483 accounting units whose gross income and total expenditure were each £250,000 or less. Accounting units with income and expenditure that are both £25,000 or under are not required to submit their accounts.

The Commission has published a comparison of the parties’ gross annual income and total expenditure from 2003 to 2008. This is available on our website.

The Commission is currently reviewing all the accounts submitted. Where this review suggests that there may have been any breaches of the law we will raise this with the parties and where necessary use our regulatory powers.

Electoral Commission

British National Party begs for money in desperate memos

The British National Party has sent out a series of memos appealing for donations in a move that raises further questions about the finances of the party.

Political organisers as well as its leader, Nick Griffin, have sent “desperate” pleas for relatively small sums of money, despite claims by the BNP that it has £500,000 for the European and county council elections.

Mr Griffin sent an e-mail this week saying that the party needed to raise £5,000 to pay for hardware for its website that it “simply could not afford”.

“I have personally donated £250 to this appeal to set things in motion,” he wrote.

Another memo from Bob Bailey, the London organiser for the party, said that it had been unable to raise enough funds to produce an A4 leaflet. “We desperately need donations no matter how small,” he wrote.

The party has declared donations of £21,132 for the first quarter of this year. Only those of more than £5,000 must be submitted to the Electoral Commission and Mr Griffin said that the remainder of its funding for the campaign came from “ordinary” Britons.

However Searchlight, the organisation that campaigns against the BNP, claimed that the party had exaggerated its resources and was “essentially running a paper campaign”.

The accusation was denied by Mr Griffin, who told The Times: “The leaflets have gone out, the election broadcasts have been made. It’s everywhere. It’s a huge campaign.”

Further questions were raised about the party’s funding after Mr Griffin admitted that he paid a £5,000 political donation into his personal bank account without declaring it.

The Electoral Commission confirmed that it was reviewing the donation, which appeared to come from an elderly woman who wished to remain anonymous. Mr Griffin said that he had passed the money to Solidarity, a trade union, because it would have been declared if given to the party.

The Times