Christmas chaos hits BNP (again) as Chris Jackson and Mike Easter resign

As one of our readers commented the other day, Christmas seems to be a difficult time for the BNP. It was pointed out that 2007 saw the end of the then high-flying career of Sadie Graham and many others, while 2008 saw the chaos that followed the release of the full BNP membership list.

This year seemed to be following the same pattern, though in a less focused way, with the sudden resignation of Alby Walker as leader of the BNP group at Stoke Council, Dicky Barnbrook's embarrassingly poor apology for being a liar, the laughably appalling accounts (which earned the party a £1100 slap on the wrist for tardiness) and a threat of future legal action from the Electoral Commission, plus a swathe of dreadful by-election results.

Now however, things seem to be coming to a head with the resignations of former contender for the BNP leadership (in a rigged election that he couldn't possibly win) Chris Jackson (pictured), his former campaign manager Mike Easter and someone named Kev Bryan, who was apparently the Rossendale Branch Organiser. The resignations are announced in an open letter posted on the mostly defunct jackson4leader site:

'Disbandment of reform Group

What is the point of the BNP if you admit foreigners?

Sadly we have come to the conclusion that the BNP is breaking up and there is no practicable likelihood of it recovering.

In our opinion the root cause of the failure is the Constitution of the Party. The Constitution, that is the Party Rules, makes the Party Leader a dictator. The current leader rather than reforming the Constitution toward that of a normal English association has (probably illegally) made alterations to the Constitution making his removal virtually impossible.

The Party is now a nationalist party in name only and has abandoned many of the fundamental principles on which it was founded.

A further major problem is that of money. Under the Constitution, all money is controlled by the Party Leader. The Party Leader appoints the Party Treasurer and Party Auditor. The Leader has carte blanche to dispose of the funds as he pleases.

This has never been a satisfactory situation, and now that the Party is alleged to be turning over a million pounds a year, is nothing short of a scandal. There have been four different Treasurers this year and the 2008 accounts are way overdue. The Party has been fined by the Electoral Commission for late publication of accounts. This is a re-run of last year when the accounts were also late and when published were endorsed by the Auditor as unsatisfactory.

A separate, but related, issue is the Trafalgar Club. This Club raises money directly to support the Party Leader. No accounts for this club have ever been published and they have not been appended to the Party accounts, as clearly they should be.

We recommend that no further money be sent to ‘Head Office’.

Whilst the BNP has been going downhill, the National Front has reformed itself and now is led by a group of reliable people and has the Constitution of a normal democratic association. Consequently, we believe that BNP members should transfer to the National Front.

Mike Easter
Chris Jackson
Kevin Bryan'

Regular readers will no doubt remember Jackson's failed leadership challenge back in the summer of 2007. Although resoundingly beaten, the results were not quite what Nick Griffin apparently expected, with Griffin himself receiving a mandate from only 39% of the party membership. Were I Jackson, I would regard that outcome as something of a success in itself - it showing the lack of confidence in Griffin that truly exists even in the BNP. However, rather than follow-up the one successful aspect of his challenge, Jackson chose to keep his head down and say nothing very much for the next two years.

So why resign now? The main reasons are made pretty clear in the letter above - the action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to force the BNP to open its membership to non-whites and the financial shenanigans of the party leadership, though we suspect the former is the real reason and the latter is just a handy and always-relevant sideswipe at the morally-impaired Griffin.

It was pretty clear from the moment the EHRC began its action, that there would be repercussions from the hardcore racists in the BNP - one of whom is obviously Chris Jackson. There is though a lot of support for Jackson's views within the party and as Searchlight pointed out during his leadership bid, his campaign was backed by some heavy-hitters: five founder-members, two advisory council members, three councillors, eight branch organisers and 20 election candidates came out openly in his support.

There are mixed immediate reactions to the resignations, though I don't doubt we can expect a LOT more. Griffin-loyalists are, naturally, critical of this trio's announcement and stated intention to join the National Front. One surprisingly witty nazi on Stormfront said;

'The NF may have a name, although like a cheap can of Polish beans, they have a fancy label but the product inside is cheap and of little nutritional value.'

The response was less witty, though rather more cogent;

'Ever since June, which was supposed to have been the BNP's moment of greatest triumph, its members and supporters have been simply walking away. Last month, Andrew Brons spoke at a long-planned meeting in Bridlington which attracted fewer than thirty people, even though BNP members had travelled from as far away as Scarborough, Hull and Leeds to attend. If even a MEP and nationalist of AB's calibre can't draw the crowds anymore something is seriously wrong.'

Over at the North West Nationalist blog, the statements were a little more terse;

'The root cause is traitor Griffin !'
'Fingers in the till anyone?'
'Only surprised it took CJ as long as it did to pack it in.'

The NWN forum was a little more informative;

'I rather think that there will be a bit of a deluge over to the National Front here in the North West.'
'Croydon BNP branch has crossed to the NF, and a large group in Southampton joining next week Strong rumours of Stoke BNP and councillors from other branches crossing over to the NF.'
'I do know that both Burnley BNP & Halifax BNP are quite close to Chris Jackson'
'We must leave crook Griffin with the rubbish personnel.'

Like everyone else, I do enjoy a good disaster movie over Christmas - and the BNP generally provides the best. It's a bit late this year but what the hell - I suspect this one will be a biggie and just as much fun to watch as all the others.

Compliments of the season to all our readers and happy viewing. :-)

The democracy dodge and the 4 year rule

Some time ago we remarked that in the 25 year history of the British National Party only two leadership elections had ever taken place, and that only one of them could be described as a relatively fair contest.

That long-plotted election saw Nick Griffin unseat BNP founder John Tyndall in a campaign notable for its rank dishonesty, and during which Griffin (largely responsible for the destruction of the National Front) openly threatened that a Tyndall win would “lead inevitably to a most disastrous split”.

The second leadership election came eight years and several self-serving constitutional changes later - years of ruthless purging and disruption by a leader beset with accusations of financial mismanagement.

It was, as we know, anything but a fair contest, the terms on which it was fought laid down by the incumbent Griffin, who shamelessly appointed his own man as Returning Officer, and then proceeded against challenger Chris Jackson's campaign in his habitually odious style of threat, smear, vilification and disinformation. And when Griffin inevitably won his Mugabe-esque victory the purging began.

In the aftermath Griffin spoke of changes to come in his infamously deranged "vermin, liars and thieves" blog post, but never quite got around to making them - unsurprisingly, with the BNP apparently insolvent at the time according to figures coming into our possession some weeks ago, and the Decembrist revolt brewing in the background.

Two would-be challengers came forward in the spring, Kirklees councillor Colin Auty's doomed campaign perhaps best expressing how widely discontent with Nick Griffin's leadership has spread on the so-called moderate wing of the party; while - incomprehensibly - hard-liner Chris Jackson again threw his hat in the ring.

The BNP's dirty tricks department set out to defuse both men (especially the dangerous Auty) very quickly and their challenges lapsed through lack of support - a lack of support not least engendered by threats that anybody exercising their consitutional right to sign nomination papers would face expulsion.

Early on came Griffinite talk of yet another change to the BNP's (apparently unobtainable) constitution that would allow a leadership challenge just once every four years. This is clearly the change that Griffin never got around to last year.

In light of simmering internal disaffection for Griffin, the existence of well-connected anti-Griffin factions on the moderate and hard-line wings of the party, the abortive challenges and the Decembrist disruption, it would be unwise for Griffin to simply impose the all important change since he would hand his numerous opponents a very thick stick with which to beat him.

To stave off accusations that the intended change is little more than the dictatorial stitch-up it is, the matter has to be dressed up in democratic clothing and presented to the membership as essential to the stability and security of the party.

For some time Griffinites have been busy selling the "stability and security" line, with dark talk about shadowy external forces manipulating leadership challenges against good-guy Griffin. "Stop the challenges and you stop the disruption" is the claim - despite the fact that those making the most noise and behaving in the most disruptive manner were the Griffinites themselves.

Rather ingeniously, Griffin has chosen the forthcoming Red White and Blue event to be the simultaneous venue for an EGM of voting members - ingeniously because the RWB will afford a whole weekend of glad-handing by the man himself and a whole weekend of pro-four year rule propaganda to put the voting members onside when the EGM considers the matter.

Holding an EGM will also have the happy effect of intimidating the more weak-minded and of identifying those prepared to risk openly opposing Griffin's will.

The result will be a foregone conclusion.

Griffin will have his way, as his spokesmen on BNP web hangouts have promised, and no matter that the manipulated and bamboozled membership will have effectively turned the BNP into a one man dictatorship - something even the Nazi Tyndall never attempted - they will leave the EGM having convinced themselves of how very democratic it all was.

To put this in context, Nick Griffin has only ever faced one challenge to his leadership. He won it by a long mile.

Paranoia, anybody?

Nine years of vision and vermin

It's been nine long years since Nick Griffin unseated John Tyndall as BNP leader in what can fairly be described as the only relatively honest leadership election (in purely mechanical terms) the BNP ever held. And it's only ever held two.

Naturally, neither man was entirely honest in how they conducted their campaigns, and still less honest with their respective supporters as to their future intentions - but of the two only Nicholas Griffin was presented with the opportunity to demonstrate the fact, and upon winning lost very little time in giving the BNP a hefty dose of the control freakery and paranoia he had once administered to the National Front, the same which sent that organisation into terminal decline.

What is striking at this remove is John Tyndall's magnaminity in allowing the then recently arrived Griffin's 1999 challenge, to the point of permitting Griffin the full use of BNP structures and mechanisms even as the six-month campaign quickly descended into a long series of visceral dog-fights. It is, after all, John Tyndall who we see pictured in Nazi uniform, not the alleged "moderniser" Nick Griffin.

In 1999 Griffin claimed to be running an "open and honest" leadership challenge based on "positive ideas for the future", calling himself the candidate with "flair and vision". This certainly struck a chord with the BNP's newer members, and even appealed to some hardline BNP veterans all too aware of Tyndall's advancing years and of the tiredness of his leadership.

It did, however, obscure Griffin's woeful record in the National Front, where he spent much of his time engaged in factional activities, seemed to view political positions as expendable commodities, and was even then the subject of much disquiet in the matter of finance.

Griffin passed himself off as the BNP's "unity candidate", threatening that a Tyndall win would "lead inevitably to a most disastrous split" (presumably Griffin would be the leader of this putative split) - words that would earn anybody in today's Griffinite BNP instant expulsion. There were also dire warnings of purges ahead at the hands of Tyndall, while, "in happy contrast", Nick's "mature, level-headed and fundamentally decent approach" would restore unity and stability to the BNP. There would be "not one single expulsion" if Nick were to assume the leadership - "No cronysim, no favouritism, no grudges" he promised.

History tells a very different story.

One of Nick's first "positive ideas" as leader was to ensure that no challenger would ever again have the scope or freedom to campaign as he had done, and there began the first of a series of changes to the BNP constitution that should have rung loud alarm bells among those who had taken Griffin at his word

People like convinced Griffin supporters Steve and Sharron Edwards, who, within a year of Griffin's assumption of the leadership found themselves asking some searching questions about the new man's financial probity and as a result became victims of paranoic accusations that were the pretext for expelling them from the party.

They were among the first, and many legally dubious expulsions have passed under the BNP bridge since then.

That first proof that Griffin the BNP leader preserved exactly the same frame of mind as Griffin the National Front chairman (and author of the insane and infamous "Attempted Murder" pamphlet), gave wider currency to Tyndallite grumbling and opened the eyes of many early Griffin loyalists, few of whom have remained in place, due either to being cast aside as their usefulness to Griffin came to an end, were purged, or grew disillusioned.

The problem was that the only person capable of mounting a credible challenge against Griffin was John Tyndall, at the time subject to a campaign of vilification for that very reason - but Tyndall, with his Nazi past and barely reconstructed views, was anathema even to those Griffinites who had come to loath their leader.

Tyndall's death removed the biggest thorn in Griffin's side, and there has since been no other personality within the BNP who stands out even remotely as likely leadership material - not that a personality likely to present a future threat to Griffin will ever have the chance to stand out, as Jonathon Bowden discovered last summer.

Had the BNP not begun to experience its first real electoral successes as disaffection with Griffin began to rise then it quite likely that the party would have descended into vicious faction-fighting, which might have been the end of the extreme-Right for a decade or more. But election success - albeit localised - did come, and Griffin was quick to take the credit.

BNP members - more like the "sheeple" they despise than they care to believe - were happy to go along with him, and in so doing were prepared to overlook their leader's less savoury character traits and blind themselves to the stark evidence that the BNP was increasingly beginning to look like what Martin Webster christened "the Griffin Family Business".

Of course there are many reasons for the BNP's initial spurt of electoral success, none of them much at all to do with Nicholas Griffin.

It might be argued that the best election agent the BNP ever had was Blairism and its apparent (if not intentional) attempts to disconnect itself from its core electorate - an electorate unlikely, especially in the northern towns where the first BNP gains came, to find any merit in voting for the then divided and demoralised Tories, or the Liberal Democrats. We must add in to that the 2001 Oldham riots, and the fact (much as it grieves us to say it) that in certain areas of strength the BNP did have capable organisers who ran intelligent, competent local campaigns with which Nick Griffin had no connection at all.

Further gains followed, of course, and Nick identified himself with every success, to the point where many BNP members really did (and still do) believe that without the guiding hand of Griffin the BNP would have achieved nothing at all.

This is utter nonsense. If there were any truth to it at all then the BNP would have achieved comparable results to those it obtained in places like Oldham and Burnley over the remainder of the country. Save for some small pockets where the circumstances outlined above pertained, it did nothing of the kind - but Nick was never eager to take the credit for that.

The probable truth is that finding himself the leader of the most electorally successful British racist party to date came as of much as a surprise to Griffin as it did to anybody else. Even so, Griffin seemed fixed on undermining "his" achievement by continuing the ludicrous (and legally expensive) hunt for John Tyndall's scalp, the unending litany of expulsions and proscriptions, and was quite prepared to wreck the BNP in its strongest electoral areas (Burnley being the textbook case) if he smelled the least whiff of personal disloyalty.

To many, even the BNP's enemies, these seemed like the actions of a demagogue more interested in preserving his hide than those of a man possessed of "flair and vision" with "positive ideas for the future".

Tyndall died, and the BNP's then electoral high point came and went, Griffin and his leadership team reduced to promising breathroughs to come.

Last year, as we all remember, along with the BNP itself we expected the party to add to its tally of 49 sitting councillors at the 2007 local elections. Everything seemed set fair for them to do so. We gritted our teeth, the racists prepared to crow - but early into the election night results it was clear who would be doing the crowing, and it wasn't the BNP.

The next morning we wrote:

The BNP's march to power turned into a cul-de-sac of indifference yesterday, with the racist party failing to make any impression in the English local elections.

Predicting at least a doubling of their 49 councillors, a devastated BNP finds its tally (at the time of writing) remains 49. Though the BNP did pick up seats it lost the same number, making no net gains. Of the nine BNP councillors up for re-election only one successfully defended his seat.

Claiming "mixed results" in an attempt to hide an electoral calamity from its shell-shocked members, there was no real disguising of the BNP's utter failure over large swathes of the country. The party's fortunes stalled and went into reverse in areas where its hopes were high, notably Sandwell and Birmingham, where thousands of votes were lost. Votes in cities such as Coventry were barely improved over those obtained thirty years ago by the National Front. In an effort to distract attention from the Birmingham debacle, the BNP is focussing attention on the fact that it gained more votes than the renegade Sharon Ebanks and her tiny number of New Nationalist Party candidates.

Griffin did not rush to identify himself with this particular set of results, nor did he attempt to explain why, when - by its own assessment - conditions had never been better for the BNP, all that could be reported was abject failure.

Of course, Griffin had other concerns by then, the lacklustre leadership challenge of Chris Jackson assuming a new and threatening importance in the light of the appalling election results, which challenge had to be hamstrung (as it was) before any damage to Griffin's position was done.

The paranoid sequel to Jackson's challenge was well enough reported here and is fresh enough in our minds not to bear a full re-telling, save to recall Griffin's infamously insane "vermin", "thieves" and "liars" blog diatribe, backed up by an equally hysterical and inventive four page spread in the BNP's "Identity" magazine - and, naturally, the purging and proscribing quickly followed.

Post the 2007 locals, the BNP continued to fight in by-elections, where it could concentrate its resources in pursuit of the best possible showing. Their results were lamentable - though there were areas, the East Midlands and adjacent districts being salient cases, where the party could produce a good first-time vote. Unfortunately for them, where the party's performance could be measured against previous outings in the same ward, their vote invariably fell.

Seeking a crumb of comfort, the party was overjoyed to retain a seat in Loughton, making a great deal of fuss over this "achievement" - and going to great lengths to silence wiser voices which pointed out that the BNP vote had fallen by a notable 5% and that the seat had been retained by a margin of 20 votes against a candidate who did not belong to one of the major parties. To say, as some did, that this was no small cause for concern was to invite attack as a "troublemaker", a "splitter", an "anti-BNP Red" and all the usual epithets beloved of the Griffinite BNP.

All that mattered was that the seat had been retained, and to hell with any unwelcome analysis - thank you, Nick!

They were to pay for this self-deluding complacency.

Ignoring for now the damp squib of the BNP's Decembrist revolt, the BNP began mustering its electoral troops early for the 2008 locals. As was clear from their numerous blogs and their posts on their usual internet hang-outs, they had worked themselves up for a real breakthrough.

This was going to be their year - they could feel it in their bones.

We couldn't. Everything we'd seen and recorded of BNP performances over the past year told us that though some gains were likely, nothing much was going to change and the established picture of electoral stagnation and reverse would continue.

For once, the BNP leadership cultivated a healthy restraint in its predictions, even inventing the meaningless spin-phrase "quiet revolution" to explain the BNP's snail's pace growth (or lack thereof) to a potentially restive membership. And there was a distinct air of unreality in the lead up to election day.

What struck us was the idiotic claim made by BNP deputy chairman and Griffin cheerleader Simon Darby that he had made a "breakthrough" by sealing a deal with the Pensioners Party whereby that party would recommend its members and supporters to vote BNP. The only fly in the ointment was that the PP had a total of six members, was completely unknown and without influence, and its leadership seemed to be unaware of any deal with the BNP. Members of other parties might have resented this cynical attempt to con them, but, all too typically, the BNP sheeple seemed more outraged that the con had been exposed.

Unreality continued as virtually powerless parish councillors became equated in Griffinite BNP spin with district councillors, an exercise designed purely to push up the total number of BNP "councillors" gained and to prove to an all too gullible membership of how well things were progressing for the BNP - proof in itself that the BNP's leadership had no great expectations for the 2008 locals. Several non-political parish council seats fell unopposed into the hands of the BNP, each "gain" being proudly reported on the BNP website.

It was so much whistling in the dark.

The BNP gained a grand total of ten "real" councillors, and its vote in its own heartlands fell, frequently by considerable margins.

Nick Griffin did not rush to bask in the reflected glory of this particular success, and though many BNP members still regurgitate the Griffinite smoke-and-mirrors line that something remarkable happened on May 1st, it is apparent that hard reality is finally beginning to bite for some of their number.

The plain fact, which they cannot ignore, is that by its own lights electoral conditions were never better for the BNP than they were on May 1st. A long serious of immigration controversies preceded the elections, some in the same week, there was the 40th anniversary of Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech, falling together with the BBC "White Season" series, and the party frequently received completely uncritical press coverage. They themselves were reporting on ecstatic doorstep receptions for their canvassers.

And still Nick Griffin could deliver only 10 extra councillors from the 612 seats fought by the BNP.

Following the locals we had to wait 24 hours for the results of the London Mayoral race and the GLA elections - 24 hours in which Griffin must have prayed for a miracle. At all events, the BNP's spinmeisters began to play down expectations (and with good reason), uncertain whether they would gain anything at all.

Disaster seemed to beckon for what party apparatchniks were calling the BNP's finest campaign, but finally the much-hyped Richard Barnbrook scraped a GLA seat with 5.4%.

In the wake of this apparent "landmark" victory, as they touted it, the BNP seemed oblivious to the fact that 30 years ago the more honestly racist National Front averaged pretty much the same vote and better over large swathes of London. The truth is that the BNP should have achieved election on 7-8% of the vote if there was to be any credibility to their claim of "progress". They did not.

Again Nick Griffin failed to deliver.

After nine years of Nick Griffin's "vision and flair", in the most favourable circumstances imaginable, the BNP still manages a miserable grand total of 55 (real) local councillors and one elected (just) member of the GLA.

This is not a record that would wash in any political party other than the BNP.

To sum up the nine years of Nick Griffin's leadership, then, there has been, from the beginning and ever since, a long series of legally challengable expulsions of those who either cast doubt on Griffin's financial management of the party or who were deemed a threat to his position. There has been a ruthless willingness to wreck the BNP in its own areas of strength for no better reason than that members in those areas felt their loyalties to the party over-rode any presumed loyalty to a man they did not trust or in who they lacked confidence. In short, there has been continual internal strife since 1999.

If the incessant amendments to the BNP's risible constitution were not enough to make Nick feel safe, then, as some of you will be aware, the party has issued "Activist Declaration" forms - the only case we know of in British politics where ordinary members of a political party are being forced to swear something not a million miles removed from the Nazi oath of allegiance, and at the same time to give themselves as hostage to fortune to whatever constitutional changes Griffin chooses to enact.

Clearly a trap is being loaded, since: "I agree to abide by the British National Party’s Constitution and any amendments made to it under the provisions of the Constitution".

Those signing this (Barnsian?) document, especially those closely allied with Griffin's internal opponents, may as well hand the man a loaded gun and wait to be shot the moment the inevitable constitutional amendments are made.

It can have no other purpose.

Perhaps the sudden appearance of this scurrilous document can be best explained by the fact that elections for the European parliament are now a year away, and if there is one thing we know Griffin longs to do it is to bag his ticket on the Euro gravy-train.

To that end he has already deposed Chris Jackson as North-west Regional Organiser in favour of himself, and parachuted himself in as the BNP's number one candidate in the region. We also saw, when a general election seemed but weeks away last autumn, that Griffin's overarching concern was to preserve BNP finances for the Euro elections - strange behaviour for a British "national" party.

You or I might think a good general election performance would be of more lasting benefit to the BNP than Griffin's flying off to Strasbourg and the riches of an MEP on the back of a tiny vote in north-west England, but the BNP have convinced themselves that this is the way forward - failing to notice that a similar exercise has done the UKIP no good at all, and never really asking themselves exactly what a lone BNP representative in Europe is going to achieve for the party.

However that may be, with the prize now in sight the Griffin Family Business must be protected from hostile takeover, and we can't help but to think that the "Activist Declaration" form is a large and sinister part of that protection.

In perspective, then: in nine years Nick Griffin has taken the BNP from nowhere to next to nowhere. In the most favourable conditions ever to exist in which a racialist and nationalist party could expect to grow, the BNP under Griffin has remained stunted, its membership numbering well under 10,000, despite the regular repetition of the lie that hundreds join every week.

It remains electorally moribund, and where it has met with success it has done so despite the turbulent Griffin, not because of him. His record is, by any measure, lamentable, nine years of effort and eye-watering expenditure on the part of the BNP producing a paltry crop of 55 local councillors who all too often are not up to the job and all too prone to find themselves confronted with past indiscretions.

That Griffin has managed for so long to pass off his leadership as a story of unparalleled success is an achievement of sorts, we suppose, but we on our side of the fence really do thank our stars that the BNP chose to land itself with the most divisive and incompetent leader ever to grace the stage of the far-Right in Britain.

"Flair and vision"? It seems more like stuff and nonsense to us.

Auty leadership campaign in rapid decline

Making a bid for the leadership of the British National Party is no easy matter. An ordinary member is required to have five years uninterrupted membership, has to obtain one hundred signatures from supporters (as opposed to a present officer who only needs ten signatures), is banned (or at least discouraged) from attending meetings to proselytize for him/her self and faces a barrage of criticism, accusation and misinformation, while the current leader Nick Griffin attends all the meetings he can and lays the propaganda on with a trowel himself and via his minions.

Not altogether surprising then, that the Colin Auty leadership challenge is in trouble. The major purge of members that took place after last year's leadership challenge is clearly making the membership wary of signing for Auty - a tacit admission that they are unhappy with the current leader. There have also been strong hints that if this challenge goes ahead, Nick Griffin will make it his business (with the help of an impotent and pointless Advisory Council) to change the system so that a challenge can only be made once every four or five years - a rumour that horrifies the dissidents within the party who have managed to persuade Auty to make the challenge in a doubtless vain attempt to see the former rebels reinstated and a few of the older members returning to the fold.

Although the result of the challenge last year was lauded as a mandate for Nick Griffin to continue his role as party dictator, it was clear that only 39% of the party membership had voted for him. Spin that as you will, 39% does not make a mandate. Nevertheless, Griffin's leadership was made more secure, and despite continually mediocre election results (just ten new councillors at the recent elections as opposed to the BNP predictions of forty) and with conditions as near-perfect as the BNP could hope, his position remains internally unassailable.

And unassailable it will remain, if Griffin and his acolytes have anything to do with it. Since rumours of Auty's challenge have emerged, the dirty tricks department of the BNP has been on overtime. Lee Barnes, the party's insane legal beagle, dashed out a letter to the membership as soon as the news became public, attacking Auty as being a 'puupet' for the machinations of the December rebel's group (or Voice of Change, as they call themselves). Certainly, they have openly given their backing to Auty though, as time passes, rumours of fragmentation reach us. Indeed, it was announced only yesterday that Steve Blake, one of the key rebels, has decided not to support Auty's challenge after all. Others, it seems, are following his example. Chris Beverly, former Griffin blue-eyed boy, has also backed off following pressure from above.

Barnes' letter was swiftly followed by another, this time from the party's National Elections Officer, Eddy Butler. Butler, like Barnes, made no bones about his contempt for the challenger:

'But the backers of this ridiculous bid should reconsider their aimless tactic. People should refuse to sign the nomination papers. It is a distraction and a waste of time and effort and it will end up almost certainly with the constitution changed in a way that destroys the important Right of the possibility of a yearly election. Standing a no-hoper is stupid, mindless and fatally undermines our Constitution. It is a pitiful and moronic – a bankrupt tactic by people who can only be described as having gone giddy to the extent that they are now without the imagination to think how they can raise issues in a legitimate way.

This election, if it goes ahead, should be carried out in the most rapid manner possible with zero publicity allowed for the joke candidate...'

We're told that the party has banned ALL discussion on the Auty challenge on its own forum, thus stifling the possibility of dissent and avoiding giving Auty the opportunity of presenting the reasons for his opposition to Griffin. Stormfront, the playground of the many nazis within the BNP, has been awash with anti-Auty propaganda - much of it instigated by a character calling himself 'Walk towards the light' (Lee Barnes), and other far-right forums are being flooded with anti-Auty propaganda.

Rumour also reaches us that branches have been warned via regional organisers that Auty is not to be allowed a platform under any circumstances. Apart from stopping him speaking on his own behalf (while Nick Griffin zooms up and down the country attending meetings with his entourage at the expense of the membership) this is putting a severe dent in Auty's musical career, such as it is. Auty, the BNP's answer to Keith Richards, was apparently booked to play his rubbishy songs at several branches over the coming few weeks. These have now, we're told, put him on hold. Whether this is because he is challenging Griffin or simply because he's crap, we don't know.

Insults aside, it has been reported that when Auty loses (as he certainly will if the challenge goes ahead) he will be kicked out of the party, as will his supporters. His campaign manager, Roger Robertson, the BNP's former South-East Regional Organiser, has already been told that he faces a disciplinary tribunal on July 6th.

Furthermore, there is another aspect of this leadership challenge that needs to be watched. Griffin has let slip that he is sick of being challenged - using the pretext that it interferes with election planning and electioneering - and that he intends to begin the process to have challenges limited to four or five-yearly as soon as humanly possible. Even less democracy in the BNP - that least democratic of political parties.

Auty's career is in decline and will end with his failure to become party leader. Like Chris Jackson last year, Auty will, if the challenge is allowed to go ahead and he manages to get enough signatures, only have three weeks to campaign. But to whom will he campaign? Griffin, we are told, is refusing to allow Auty access to the membership list on the dubious grounds that such access would breach the Data Protection Act. This effectively kills Auty's ability to reach out to the members who might possibly give him their vote if they know of his existence. A devious and surprisingly clever move by Griffin though the Data Protection Act doesn't seem to have stopped the Barnes and Butler letters being sent out to the entire membership. Interesting how rules can be bent, isn't it.

There is one further complication for Auty that will do him no good at all; the rumour that Chris Jackson intends to stand again. If this is true, the opposition to Griffin will have two people on which to pin their single vote, thus ensuring that neither of them get any respectable numbers in the ballot. This second attempt by Jackson will do nothing for anyone except Nick Griffin, and it has become clear that Jackson is generally regarded as a stalking horse, used last year to flush out the malcontents within the party so that they could be entertainingly purged and used this year to split the vote, thus ensuring Auty's failure, and to prop up Griffin's position in the party.

Open support for Auty is, to say the least, sparse. Just twenty-three members appear on his site under the banner 'We're proudly (and openly) backing the challenge!'. Of these, seven are suspended members, one has had his membership renewal rejected, two are about to be kicked out and Auty's position is itself looking increasingly precarious. If Griffin has his way, this leadership challenge will collapse before it properly gets started. Even if he doesn't, Auty will lose and Griffin will get the security of four or five-yearly terms in office. Either way, Auty's career with the British National Party is over because he had, in Eddy Butler's curious phrase, the 'temerity' to wish to stand for the leadership of the BNP.

BNP invented excuse to expel Griffin rival

Mike Easter, who acted as agent to Chris Jackson in the challenge to Nick Griffin's leadership of the BNP in July, has appealed against his expulsion from the BNP.

He claims that the reason given, namely that he failed to submit a return of Jackson's expenses in the leadership contest, does not stand up because there was no legal requirement to make such a return. His letter to Tina Wingfield, the party's membership secretary, makes some other interesting observations.

We reproduce the letter, as well as an earlier one to John Walker, the BNP treasurer, in the interests of keeping readers informed about the somewhat paranoid way in which Griffin is running what he claims is Britain's fourth political party, and the accusations that are going back and forth within the party.

Letter from Mike Easter to Tina Wingfield 10th September 2007

Dear Tina,

Re Your letter of 31st August 07.

I am sorry that you have been forced to write the above letter to me. It seems to many of us that Nick Griffin is getting totally unbalanced and believes that no-one should challenge him for the Leadership of the Party, despite the fact that the Constitution allows for such challenges. You will know that the Party has lost, by various means, several key members over the last few weeks. I believe this is due to Nick's refusal to run the Party openly and properly:

Andrew Spence, the very successful Sedgefield parliamentary candidate, praised all over the Party newspaper. He is alleged to have said, "He couldn't get on with the sleazy people close to Griffin."

Simon Smith, Sandwell Councillor and Black Country organiser. Left because he queried BNP accounts and expenses. Are the Party Accounts still overdue with the electoral Commission?

Clive Potter, President of Solidarity union. Expelled because he insisted on receiving the union accounts.

Scott McLean, resigned as Deputy Chairman and Chairman of the disciplinary committee, in particular, because Nick prevented him doing his job and disciplining Mark Collett. I understand that Scott has remained an ordinary member.

Jonathan Bowden, Advisory Council member, for similar reasons to Andrew Spence.

Before answering your letter in detail, I must point out, as any experienced person dealing with personnel matters knows, that proper reasonable procedures must be carried out. In this matter no steps have been taken. The expulsion came out of the blue.

In your letter, no doubt drafted by Nick Griffin, there is a reference to my relationship with John Tyndall.

Presumably, this is meant as a smear. Unfortunately for you that problem was resolved with a handshake between John and myself and the agreement, "That no dispute had occurred." You will need to delete this paragraph if this matter goes to Court.

In our recent Leadership Challenge, we refrained from repeating the very many stories that are around concerning Nick, for example, his relationship with Martin Webster and his continual incompetence with money. It seems to me to be very foolish of Nick to get into a slanging match when he, himself, is so vulnerable!

In your letter you make assertions that I have not complied with a request from John Walker for information concerning the Reform Group of the BNP. This is a blatant lie!

Please see copy letter attached to Mr Walker dated 7th June 06.

No reply to my letter was ever received. Also, I was working with John Walker for over 5 hours on Thursday, 23rd July 07 and he did not mention any problem to me. If there was a problem, "Is this likely?"

The situation has not changed from the 7th June, which is the Reform Group has never raised any money.

Again during the Leadership election, I neither received money nor any invoices.

There is no requirement to report such monies below £1,000. Please see confirmation from Electoral Commission attached.

Consequently, I believe without further comment that the whole basis for your letter collapses.

Please write to me by return that your letter of 31st August has been cancelled.

Please take this letter as formal notice of Appeal against the decision to expel me from the Party.

Yours sincerely,

M.D.S.Easter

Letter from Mike Easter to John Walker 7th June 2006

Dear John,

Thanks for your letter of 30th May enquiring about the "Reform Group" within the BNP. (I have been away and only just read it.)

As you can well imagine, I would need to consult with others before replying to your letter in any detail. However, I can say straightaway that there is no intention to raise cash, if at all, that would come under the Electoral rules.

Generally the Reform Group is concerned with getting the structure of the Party into a normal one for a society or corporate body. We want to get away from the current dictatorship system.

Also, and this is my own special area,* I would like to see the politics of the Party laid out once and for all and not, as now, changed every few minutes. In particular, and just as two examples, the current Party Leader has an obsession with Moslems, just as his predecessor had a similar obsession with Jews.

These obsessions have obscured the real aims of the BNP, one of which is the repatriation of all invading foreigners.

Religion does not come into it.

Again the Party is concentrating almost exclusively on 'grotty' northern towns, or areas closely affected by foreigners, and is making no real headway in the English counties.

Enclosed is a leaflet that has been produced to explore possible approaches to the English electorate outside the rundown northern towns. Why are we not fighting the Orpington byelection?

In my opinion, the current leadership has no idea of how to go about it and by default leaves the field open to UKIP and Cameron.

Remember the current Leader is Welsh and JT was Irish – perhaps we should have an English Leader!

Yours sincerely,

M.D.S.Easter

[As an addendum to this, NWN has posted a copy of a letter to Mike Easter from the Electoral Commission, which provides evidence that Easter has broken no rules at all. Letter reprinted below.]

Email received from the Electoral Commission 9th September 2007

Mr. Easter

I write further to our telephone conversation earlier today.

I can confirm that there are no reporting requirements to the Commission that result from the BNP leadership campaign.

There is a requirement that regulated donees provide details of donations received by them of an amount of over £1,000. Regulated donees include members of political parties that receive donations that relate to political activity, such as an internal party leadership campaign.
From the information discussed today and contained in your email it would appear that this threshold was not reached during the campaign and accordingly there are no reporting requirements arising.

I hope this information is helpful.

Regards

Jon Spillett
Compliance Manager

Stop the BNP

The BNP purge continues: Griffin to discipline/expel Mike Easter?

In a move that is so full of irony that the BNP had better check it for rust, news is emerging that Mike Easter, election agent to leadership-challenger Chris Jackson, is to be disciplined for late submission of the challenger's election expenses to the party treasurer.

One would expect a party that is a couple of months late with its own accounts submission to the Electoral Commission to have had more sense that to make itself a target for ridicule in this way but Nick Griffin is presumably so anxious to punish those who assisted the challenger that he is prepared to ignore the laughs to get his revenge.

Regular readers will no doubt recall his description of Chris Jackson's supporters as cranks, Hollywood Nazis, congenital losers, thieves and vermin - and all this in a single blog post - despite the fact that they included five founder-members, two advisory council members, three councillors, eight branch organisers and 20 election candidates. Not a great deal of respect there then.

The response from other 'nationalists' is predictably angry though as usual the nazi Stormfront forum (run by Griffin's friend, ex-Klansman Don Black and ably assisted by the forum's pro-Griffin UK moderators) is keeping a lid on any discussion by disabling the accounts of anyone who shows any sign of having a go at the BNP leader under any pretext. A couple of other sites are displaying their anger though, one of them with this classic comment posted to it;

'...this comes from a party of THEIVING BASTARDS and INEBRIATE LOSERS who can't even get their accounts IN ON TIME. WHERE ARE THE BNP ACCOUNTS AND WHY ARE BNP MEMBERS SUCH A BUNCH OF BRAIN-DEAD IDIOTS? WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY SCARED OF, EH? Surely they cannot be scared of the one eyed wonder of a sheep farmer and his pervert security chief?'

along with the omnipresent Sharon Ebanks, a former supporter of Griffin, sticking it to him thus;

'Do you think it ok to allow a jumped up twat with a 3rd rate degree and an insecurity complex larger than Snowdonia national park to just go around chopping people willy nilly? When you cease kissing Griffins arse you'll be next. The very idea that such a man even dreams of running this country makes me want to take up shooting practice.'

One angry contributor asks the same two questions that many others have asked;

'What I can't get my head around is why the BNP election process (that's to say the terms imposed by Griffin, etc) weren't challenged legally. It still can be. Likewise all the trumped up expulsions.'

These are reasonable questions though the first one is really only answerable by Mike Easter himself and the challenger Chris Jackson. When Nick Griffin dictated the terms of the election, it was suggested that a legal challenge to the terms was likely. Sadly this never materialised (though it certainly should have). To have completely ignored the ludicrous restrictions placed on campaigning was tantamount to agreeing to lose, and lose Jackson subsequently did.

The second part of the question is far more dangerous to Griffin - that those expelled from the party could legally question their expulsions. This is not only true but has happened a couple of times before, following Griffin's repeated expulsions of the late founder of the British National Party John Tyndall for being a 'disruptive influence'. Tyndall was reinstated by the courts, the embarrassment caused to Griffin was profound and it cost the party a small fortune, also having the distinct advantage of showing Nick Griffin up as the pompous buffoon that he is.

Of course, disciplinary action isn't necessarily the same thing as expulsion and it may be that Easter will just take what's coming and carry on doing whatever he does but judging by Griffin's words above, he's determined to force all of his opposition out of the party by using any means that are available to him. Simon Smith and Jonathan Bowden have already been forced out, Easter's turn has come and we confidentally expect Jackson-supporter Richard Edmonds (another one to have been expelled then reinstated) to be in the firing line before long. One only wonders how long it will take for Griffin to expel all 337 party members who supported Chris Jackson.

BNP's 'Cultural Officer' resigns after accusations

The so-called 'Cultural Officer' and member of the Advisory Council of the British National Party has resigned following a series of accusations that have been posted up on the Covert blog.

Bowden, former member of the Tory Monday Club before joining the BNP, became a target for the Covert Crew, headed by Tommy Williams, an old pal of Nick Griffins, when he supported Chris Jackson in the recent BNP leadership challenge - his being one of the hundred signatures required before the challenge could take place. Covert, ever-ready to suck up to the Welshpool pig-farmer who leads the BNP, printed the question, 'Is Jonathan Bowden A Nonce?', followed by a piece of fairly innocuous text but which included a reference to Bowden's 'Gary Glitteresque sideburns'.

The really offensive content is tucked away in the comments to the piece, where Williams and his little gang have allowed the more venomous of Nick Griffin's supporters to attack at will.

Bowden's resignation letter to Nick Griffin gives more detail.

'During the middle of Saturday afternoon the party head of security, Martin Reynolds, texted me to inform me that Tommy William’s tendentious and lying filth about me had been taken down. It appears that not only is this not the case but the criminal abuse has got ten times worse.

I have given a lot of time and effort to this party over the last 4 years. I am now being accused repeatedly of being a paedophile on the Internet by one of your quote unquote old mates.

I am sick and tired of the human scum and vermin which proliferate in such shallows waters. To be accused of being a child abuser is amongst the lowest thing that can possibly be imagined. To even refute such allegations from criminal psychopaths like these is beneath one’s dignity.

None the less, I REFUTE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEIR LIES AS DISTASTFUL GARBAGE.

I will seek to have police action carried out against this vile Internet site, but I also intend to resign as cultural officer, advisory council member and member of the BNP. I do not wish to associate-even tangentially-with such low-grade lycanthropes and psychotic criminals. Williams, I gather, is a convicted drug dealer and career criminal with a string of convictions.

I have many other and better things to do with my life in future.

The stench of this rabble, lumpen and canaille is displeasing to me. I shall devote myself to the world of the arts from which I originate and to which I shall return.

Yours ever
Jonathan Bowden'

Williams and his fellow loons on Covert, using different names on the nazi Stormfront forum, have announced repeatedly and forcefully that the BNP will be purged of everyone who dared to support Chris Jackson in the leadership election campaign and it appears that they are starting with the bigger guns.

Bowden, as a member of the Advisory Council, might have been expected to be close to Griffin but this appears not to be the case. When the appalling Tony Lecomber was finally thrown out after trying to recruit Joe Owens into a bizarre assassination plot, his name took ages to be removed from the BNP website. Anyone looking in might have thought he was Group Development Officer of the party right up until he attacked Eddie Butler earlier this year. Bowden hasn't been so lucky. His name has already disappeared.

In our article reporting on the election result, we warned that those who had supported Jackson could expect a repeat of the Night of the Long Knives in the BNP. It looks like it's already started.

Updated: BNP leadership election result - no surprises

The British National Party leadership election results are in at last and, according to a post on the nazi Stormfront forum (and eventually the BNP web site), the results are as follows:

Griffin: 3363 (91%)
Jackson: 337 (9%)
Turnout: 43%

No great surprise there except that a large number of people chose to deliberately abstain.

The numbers are all important in this contest. The BNP has (it claims) a total voting membership of 8604, which means 4904 chose not to vote, leaving 3700 who did. 337 BNP members voted for Chris Jackson - substantially more than the 100 signatures he had to gather simply to be allowed to stand in this patently rigged contest.

For a virtual unknown - or at least unknown outside the North-West of England - Jackson did remarkably well, particularly when one considers the short period between announcement and election and the many limitations placed on him regarding anything to do with having direct access to the membership. Had it been a fair fight, we would have expected Jackson to easily double his votes. In fact, in our opinion he could have done a lot better had he actively campaiged. We wonder why he didn't.

Griffin is now in the peculiar and uncomfortable position that has affected every real party leader for decades - he's a minority leader, chosen to lead the BNP by a minority of the available votes in his party. In fact, working on the percentages alone, he only has a mandate from 39% of the party - hardly 'a resounding mandate', as one idiotic Stormfronter put it.

It's pretty clear from the immediate reactions to the result that we can expect something of an old-fashioned purge in the BNP in the near future - a clear-out of those undesirables who don't seem to appreciate either Nick Griffin's dictatorial style of leadership, the numerous dodgy deals he has on the go at any given time or the energetic expansion of the BNP into an apparently limitless number of bizarre and disparate business ventures. The Night of the Long Knives beckons and the supporters of Chris Jackson had better watch the shadows for a few months. Despite having absolutely no loyalty to the BNP membership himself, Griffin demands absolute loyalty from his subordinates and the leadership challenge has already been labelled an act of treachery a number of times.

Griffin staggers into a new year as leader with none of the spring in his step that he should be feeling after a failed leadership challenge. The result - or rather, the turnout - was lacklustre, reflecting the party's performance at the council elections back in May. The troops are demoralised, the income, we are assured by people who certainly know, is drying up and the membership is stagnating as it waits for triumphs that never arrive and holiday camps that will never materialise.

In fact this leadership challenge seems only to have left bitterness and recrimination behind it. Possibly the next one will be better - it's rumoured that pornmeister Dickie Barnbrook has his eye on Griffin's seat (so to speak), which might explain why he's recently been pushed out to challenge the unbeatable Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London. A challenge from Barnbrook might just be a challenge worth watching.

BNP leadership campaign hots up at last

Ever eager to keep the public informed we present an exchange of emails between the current leader of the British National Party Nick Griffin, and Mike Easter, who is the challenger Chris Jackson's Campaign Manager.

This exchange appears on the 'Chris Jackson for Leader' site, where his statement calls for 'a proper structure and Constitution for the Party: "A recognisably normal Constitution of a 'corporate body' under English law."' We've no idea what it all means but even we can see that it's a crap slogan for an election campaign. Apart from anything else, hasn't Griffin already got the party operating more as a 'corporate body' than a political party?

'Email to Mike Easter from Nick Griffin
30th June 2007

Dear Mr Easter

Following receipt of Mr Jackson's nomination papers for the 2007 BNP leadership election, and the close of nominations, I write to set out the way in which the contest will be run.

In setting this I am mindful of two key aims: To ensure that the process is both fair and seen to be fair; and to minimise the opportunities for troublemakers to damage the party.

Each candidate shall send via email an official statement not exceeding 200 words, together with a photograph of himself, to the editor of the British Nationalist BNP members' bulletin, Kenny Smith (administration@bnp.org.uk), by noon on Thursday 5th July at the latest. Each candidate or his agent should also check with Mr. Smith on 01324 555187 before that deadline to ensure that he has received these.

Additionally, each candidate shall send via email to Mr. Smith a longer and complimentary, (sic), official statement not exceeding 800 words which will be published with the photographs side-by-side on a section of the main BNP website which will be open to members only with a URL which will be published in the July issue of British Nationalist. www.bnp.org.uk/leadershipelection

The statements will set out each candidate's stall as potential leader, and may contain any material they wish, provided it is not potentially libellous and contains no errors of fact. If Mr. Smith believes that such material has been included he will contact the candidate or his appointed agent to discuss revision. For this purpose it is recommended that the statements for British Nationalist be submitted no later than noon on Wednesday 4th July, as failure to have a statement agreed by then may result in unilateral action by Mr Smith – who is of course legally responsible for the contents of BN – to correct the statement by making the least number of changes possible in his opinion.

The candidates' statements and photographs will then appear in the July issue of British Nationalist, which will be sent to members who are paid up for 2007 by 30th June (EBNS will not be issued in July). A single sheet ballot paper, designed to be as proof against forgery as is reasonably possible, will be mailed out together with British Nationalist on 9th/10th July.

The statements for the website should be submitted to Mr. Smith by Tuesday 10th July and will be published simultaneously online by our web editor Steve Blake on Wednesday 11th July.

Ballot papers must be returned by post to PO Box 87, Ossett, Wakefield, WF5 8WN to arrive by Thursday 26th July at the latest. All ballots received before that date will be safely stored unopened. The opening of the ballot papers will commence at 3 pm that afternoon at the Excalibur/Great White industrial unit in Morley near Leeds. You will be notified of precise directions in good time in due course. Each candidate and agent may attend and may bring an additional two telling agents with them should they so wish. The whole proceedings will be under the control of the Returning Officer, party manager Nick Cass

The opening and counting of the papers will be carried out by four currently paid up members of the party, two nominated by each candidate by notifying Mr. Cass at the PO Box above by Monday 21st July or Mr. Smith via email. Any spoilt or unclear ballots will be adjudicated upon by the standard method used in UK elections, with the decision of the Returning Officer being final.

The result will be announced immediately after the count and the winner will be the leader of the party from that moment.

From now until the close of polls, both candidates and their supporters are at liberty to appear and speak at any party meetings to which they are invited by local officials, and to organise campaign meetings of their own.

In order to avoid giving an unfair advantage to the incumbent, or encouraging the illicit collection of membership data, neither candidate nor their agents or supporters shall distribute any information, in any form, by post, phone or email, except in response to a direct request from an individual member for information for him- or herself.

In setting the date of the election I am mindful of the fact that you do not approve of the Red-White-and-Blue family festival and also have again not applied to attend the Summer School. Clearly this would place you at a disadvantage if the election took place after these major BNP events. In addition, even a long campaign would not reach more than a limited number of members at meetings and, in view of the bitterness of the ad hominem attacks already made by some, no good purpose would be served by holding hustings meetings in a few places or in dragging the campaign out.

As per the precedent set by Mr. Tyndall when he laid down how the 1999 leadership election was to be run, neither candidate nor his agent nor supporters should make any comment to the media about the contest until it is over. This is an internal matter for the BNP and interviews to a fundamentally hostile media are not acceptable. Any approaches should be dealt with by way of a simple statement along the lines of "The election is a matter for the members of the BNP and I have no comment to make."

Your press statement of 29th June, having been issued before you were notified of these rules, is of course exempt, but should not be reissued. However, in view of the insinuations and allegations contained within it, the BNP Treasury Department will be issuing a clarification and explanation of the true position to all BNP officials early in the coming week. This Treasury statement will not be issued to the press as it is clearly not in the interest of the party to involve the left-liberal media in our internal affairs.

Also in order to avoid the possibility of unfairness – primarily to you – campaign meetings will not be reported on the BNP website or in its publications. The website may be used, if necessary, to correct any lies or disinformation which end up in widespread circulation. If at any time you feel that Mr Jackson's candidacy is being adversely affected by such things please do not hesitate to contact me to arrange such a statement. Our members have eyes to read and brains to think for themselves, so propaganda of all kinds is to be avoided and the whole outcome left to the members' personal and private judgement based on what they already know and what appears in British Nationalist and in the dedicated section of www.bnp.org.uk

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Nick Griffin M.A. (Hons) Cantab.
Leader, British National Party'

'Reply from Mike Easter to Nick Griffin
2nd July 07

Hi Nick,

Before commenting on the main part of your email/letter of 30th June, please may I confirm what we do agree.

1. We agree to Nick Cass holding the returned votes and supervising counting.

2. We agree to 200 words and a photo appearing in "British Nationalist".

In considering your letter we have taken regard to three principles:

1. English law.

2. The BNP Constitution, in particular, section 4,4 – "provided always that it is in compliance with the letter and the spirit of this Constitution".

3. The precedents made when you challenged John Tyndall in 1999:

a. You announced your challenge on 9th February 99.

b. You formally confirmed the challenge in June 99.

c. Ballot papers were sent out to members at the end of August 99, PLUS an A4 sheet printed both sides from each candidate and paid for by the Party.

d. Votes were counted at the end of September 99.

e. Each candidate had a copy of the then current members' list.

f. For some time before the election and during the election, you were involved with a special magazine, "Patriot" which was designed to promote yourself.

Commenting on the points made in your letter in the order that they are written, except we will first comment on the proposed timing of the election, as this is of over-riding importance.

The timescale that you are proposing is quite ridiculous and would prevent any meaningful campaigning. Is this the purpose of the suggestion? Don't you want members to discuss and debate how the Party should be organised and run?

We require a timetable that is sensible and counter propose the timetable set by precedent, so that ballot papers go out at the end of August and are returned by the end of September. Such a proposal is also in tune with section 4,4, of the Party Constitution. Further, because of annual holidays, August is regarded politically as a 'dead' month.

Failure to agree such a reasonable proposal will be regarded by us as a refusal to hold an election.

Your letter talks about "seen to be fair" and "opportunities for troublemakers to damage the party". Your proposed timescale blows "seen to be fair" out of the water even before considering any further sections of your letter. "Troublemakers", who have you in mind? How can they damage the party? What relevance have they to this election?

The statements for the website need to be seen by both sides prior to publication, again this was the precedent with your own challenge to John Tyndall. Accordingly, we suggest that both sides exchange drafts on 10th July and submit their final copy on say 17th July.

"Both candidates and their supporters". Members do not need permission to attend Party meetings.

"In order giving an unfair advantage". We will campaign as we see fit.

"Red-White-Blue". This remark is just a 'stocking filler'. In fact, we have agreed to attend for approximately 2 hours.

"Bitterness of the ad hominem* attacks". Nothing to do with us, or this campaign. Your enemies are your problem.

It is a fundamental part of our campaign that we want openness and normality in the running of the Party. In a democracy, it is normal and proper for journalists to ask questions of politicians. Accordingly, we reserve the right to speak to journalists and answer their questions in a responsible way.

Regards,

Mike Easter.

0799 058 7575

* Note: ad hominem is attacking the man rather than countering the argument. This debating style is not being used by Chris Jackson.'

Easter has a point - in fact he has several. The timescale issue - just three weeks to campaign - isn't that unusual but given the peculiar limitations on campaigning it clearly gives the advantage to Griffin as the incumbent leader. Without access to the membership list or some other method of access to the members of the party, how precisely is Jackson to make his points clear to everybody in the party including those without internet access? The veiled threat from the Jackson camp following the suggested revised timetable is an empty gesture. 'Failure to agree such a reasonable proposal will be regarded by us as a refusal to hold an election' leading to a Jackson withdrawal, will be regarded by the membership as a cop-out and, if Griffin rejects the proposal and Jackson stands down, there simply won't be an election.

The phrase in Easter's email 'Your enemies are your problem' is a telling one. Jackson is patently aware of Griffin's propensity for creating enemies where there was never a need, the sacked/proscribed ex-members for a start - the Edwards', Mike Newland, Sharon Ebanks, Keith Axon, Joe Owens et al, the other far-right groups like the British People's Party, England First, N9S (or whatever they're calling themselves this week), the National Front, the New Nationalist Party and so on which Griffin's BNP always tries to destroy by force of numbers - and the fast-growing anti-fascist internet presence which is certainly having an effect if readership is a reflection of interest.

One poster on the nazi Stormfront forum remarked that this leadership election 'sounds like an election in North Korea. Come to think of it, a parallel universe ruled by a vainglorious, egotistical tyrant who has lost touch with reality, and lives in a palace while his subjects starve isn’t a bad comparator [by which we assume the writer means 'comparison]'.

The leadership election campaign is plainly hotting up after a pretty slow start. We will be watching developments very closely.

Legal challenge to make BNP leadership election democratic?

Rumour has it that Chris Jackson, the challenger for Nick Griffin's leadership of the British National Party and the party's former North-West regional organiser, is about to make a legal challenge against the election rules as set by Griffin himself. These rules, though played down by the Griffin camp as standard, are intended to make it almost impossible for any challenger to win.

Since the modern BNP was formed back in 1982 there has been just one leadership challenge, when Nick Griffin took over from the party's founder John Tyndall after a campaign of lies and distortion in 1999. Tyndall was far from being an angel but Griffin knew how to manipulate the truth far better than he and, with the help of many of his friends who had moved with him from the old National Front, he was able to oust Tyndall and take the party off in a new direction.

Sadly, the direction Griffin chose was as far from democracy as could be imagined, with Griffin ruling the party as a dictator. This is clear from the contortions that the BNP is going through to ensure that Jackson is denied a voice during the pre-election period.

Griffin laid out the rules in a list that appeared on the main BNP website:

'Each candidate shall send via email an official statement not exceeding 200 words, together with a photograph of himself, to the editor of the British Nationalist BNP members’ bulletin, Kenny Smith (administration@bnp.org.uk), by noon on Thursday 5th July at the latest.

Additionally, each candidate shall send via email to Mr. Smith a longer and complimentary official statement not exceeding 800 words which will be published with the photographs side-by-side on a section of the main BNP website which will be open to members only with a URL which will be published in the July issue of British Nationalist [which we would appreciate taking a look at, if someone would like to let us know where it is]. The candidates’ statements and photographs will then appear in the July issue of British Nationalist, which will be sent to all members.

A single sheet ballot paper, designed to be as proof against forgery as is reasonably possible, will be mailed out together with July’s British Nationalist bulletin. The statements for the website will be published simultaneously online by our web editor Steve Blake on Wednesday 11th July.

Ballot papers must be returned by post to PO Box 87, Ossett, Wakefield, WF5 8WN to arrive by Thursday 26th July at the latest. All ballots received before that date will be safely stored unopened. The opening of the ballot papers will commence at 3pm that afternoon. You will be notified of precise directions in good time in due course. Each candidate and agent may attend and may bring an additional two telling agents with them should they so wish.

The whole proceedings will be under the control of the Returning Officer, party manager Nick Cass. The opening and counting of the papers will be carried out by four currently paid up members of the party, two nominated by each candidate. Any spoilt or unclear ballots will be adjudicated upon by the standard method used in UK elections, with the decision of the Returning Officer being final. The result will be announced immediately after the count and the winner will be the leader of the party from that moment.

From now until the close of polls, both candidates and their supporters are at liberty to appear and speak at any party meetings to which they are invited by local officials, and to organise campaign meetings of their own. In order to avoid giving an unfair advantage to the incumbent, or encouraging the illicit collection of membership data, neither candidate nor their agents or supporters shall distribute any information, in any form, by post, phone or email, except in response to a direct request from an individual member for information for him or herself.'

So Chris Jackson has around three weeks to prepare and present his manifesto, travel to speak to all of the numerous BNP branches in the country (at his own expense) to state his case, is not allowed to send a mailout to all party members or even telephone party members who may be sympathetic to his challenge but need the personal touch to clinch the deal and has no chance of checking the returned ballot papers as they come in and are 'safely stored' by Griffin's old chum Nick Cass.

One wonders how easy it would be for the Griffin team to pack a few thousand envelopes with Griffin votes and put them in the post. Not too difficult, I'd imagine. Quick, someone call the United Nations.

Apart from being the incumbent, Griffin has another few advantages. He has plenty of money and no doubt will be zooming all over the place kissing babies and shaking hands wherever he is invited to do so. Also, while denying Jackson the opportunity of getting his message out to the members, he has an excellent and continuing opportunity in the form of the nazi Stormfront forum. In spite of being proscribed to BNP members, Stormfront is packed with them and has shown a very clear bias over the last couple of months since news of the challenge became known by closing any anti-Griffin/pro-Jackson threads and, over the past couple of weeks at least, closing any thread that dared to highlight or discuss the epidemic of corruption at the top of the BNP.

Jackson frankly doesn't stand much of a chance though a legal challenge to the Griffin-dictated election rules might push a lot of votes his way. Even so, we would expect Griffin to win fairly resoundingly. The BNP membership is conservative by nature and dramatic change is not something it generally wishes to see, still less participate in. Nevertheless, we may be surpised. A membership sick to death of the numerous get rich quick schemes that inevitably go wrong, a membership that remembers that not a single seat was gained in May's council elections or a membership that has realised that the party hasn't had a single by-election win for years might actually get it together to vote for change and let's face it, if he's not kicked out, Griffin will stay leader of the BNP until he considers he has enough money to retire on or he manages to bankrupt the party.

Martin Webster joins in attack on BNP's far from democratic Nick Griffin

We received an email from Martin Webster yesterday, referring to the proposed leadership challenge in the BNP. Webster, not being a noted fan on the BNP leader (despite having something of a history with him), has launched a fierce verbal attack on the ludicrous and undemocratic tweaks to the internal election rules that Griffin has made to ensure his victory.

Griffin's further tweaks to the leadership election 'rules'

In recent weeks there has been much internet traffic about a possible challenge to Nick Griffin's Chairmanship of the British National Party. One name mentioned in this respect was that of Chris Jackson, the party's competent NW of England Regional Organiser.

I have issued to a small circle of friends and acquaintances within the BNP and elsewhere a number of commentaries about the situation, both in terms of the corrupt nature of the BNP's 'constitution' and the appropriate time for such a challenge. To any who receive this but who have not received my earlier commentaries, please feel free to contact me for copies of the same.

Meanwhile, somebody has just forwarded me a page from the BNP web site concerning the party's rather opaque 'rules' [reprinted below this item] for staging an election for the post of party leader/"chairman". The contents of this page rather confirms my earlier observations.

I have not had time to give this document a forensic examination, but already I can see that it contains a number of splendid jokes, not least when it talks of the BNP's system for organising leadership elections as:

'...an unusually democratic system for choosing - and replacing - the leader'

Griffin makes it clear in the last ten words of paragraph 6 how he will 'load' the dice against any opponent should a challenge be launched against him:

'All candidates receive equal space in the internal members’ bulletin, British Nationalist for a 'manifesto' statement. No party publications or web facilities may be used to recommend or promote any candidate, although they will continue to report normally on party activities.'

In other words, during the campaign period the party's publications and web site will contain a high degree of personal publicity for Griffin while his opponents will only be allowed to publish a brief 'manifesto' in the party's tatty, small format bulletin.

Paragraph 6 also makes it clear that challenger candidates will not be able to balance Griffin's monopoly domination of the party's print and electronic media by issuing their own print or electronic propaganda to the membership.

Any criticism of Griffin and his policies will be even more rigorously censored than they are at present in BNP web site 'discussion' forums, though contributors will have full freedom to express how very wonderful, wise, brave and competent 'The Dear Leader' is.

It should be noted that while paragraph 7 states...

'Candidates and party members supporting them are of course perfectly entitled to speak on the issue at party meetings.'

...it forgets to mention that Griffin will be able as usual to travel around the country with his retinue of bodyguards at the expense of the membership, while any candidate standing against him or spokespersons for the same will have to find their own travel expenses, over-night accommodation and other out-of-pocket expenses.

Perhaps the most outrageous announcement is made in paragraph 8:

'Precise final details of how a leadership contest is to be run are decided and publicised immediately after the 30th June in any year in which valid nominations are received from a challenger or challengers.'

But as the period for nomination of candidates in the election (see paragraph 4)...

'...opens on 1st June and closes on 30th June each year...'

...then it means that persons seeking to challenge Griffin for the leadership of the party in an election will only know the 'precise final details of how the leadership contest is to be run' after Griffin has seen what kind of challenge confronts him and what kind of arrangements and rules he has tweaked to give himself the best possible advantage!

What person with more than half a brain would enter any kind of contest - even a tiddlywinks game - without knowing in advance precisely what rules apply?

Who but a moron, a crank exhibitionist or an agent provocateur would enter an electoral contest where the rules are set by one's principal opponent - and after the closing date for involvement in the competition?

This is why I say that the assertion that the party's (correction: Nick Griffin's) arrangements are '...an unusually democratic system for choosing - and replacing - the leader...' is a tremendous joke.

From all this, it will be seen that BNP candidates standing in Parliamentary and local council elections get a far fairer deal from the Establishment's political system that Griffin grants to his fellow party members.

Those BNP members put up with Griffin's Robert Mugabe-style travesty of an election system are either as corrupt as Griffin himself (the minority, mainly in Griffin's coterie) or they are as politically ignorant, stupid and brain-dead as the vast majority of the rest of the native British population.

However, the decent and aware members of the BNP, however large or small a proportion or the membership they may be, must not give up in despair. They must 'hang on in there', argue the principles of the issues involved, keep their powder dry and await their moment of opportunity.

Unfortunately, that moment is not now or on the immediate horizon. But that moment WILL come. Griffin is a deeply corrupt man and he is soaping the stairs for himself. Let us hope that the cause of British nationalism does not take a catastrophic tumble along with him.

Martin Webster

The rules for the leadership election as set out on the BNP web site [paragraphs numbered by M.W. for ease of reference]

1. The constitution of the British National Party was designed so that the party leader has more power than in many other parties. This system was adopted when the BNP was founded as a result of more than a decade of prior experience, of the way in which rule by a directorate or committee was a recipe for disastrous factional in-fighting and division in a nationalist party.

2. It was, however, acknowledged right from the start that such a concentration of power needs to be balanced by a high degree of accountability by the leader to the membership, and by an unusually democratic system for choosing - and replacing - the leader.

3. The constitution therefore states that the current leader may be challenged in any year by any member with more than five years’ unbroken membership who is also either an office holder within the party or who secures the backing of 100 members in good standing paid up for the current year. The signing of such a paper is taken simply as an indication that the assenter recognises the right of the challenger to stand, and does not necessarily indicate support for any or all of the candidate's proposals.

4. While there does not have to be any such contest (there has only been one in the party's history -- in 1999, when Mr. Griffin was elected by a substantial majority), the period during which nominations must be submitted via registered post to the BNP's registered headquarters, PO Box 14, Welshpool, SY21 0WE, opens on 1st June and closes on 30th June each year.

Secret ballot

5. In the event of no valid nominations being submitted, the current party leader is deemed to have been elected unopposed for a further year. If a contest does take place a secret postal ballot of all members paid up since January of the current year is held before the end of September.

6. All candidates receive equal space in the internal members’ bulletin, British Nationalist for a 'manifesto' statement. No party publications or web facilities may be used to recommend or promote any candidate, although they will continue to report normally on party activities.

7. In order to avoid either benefiting the incumbent leader or encouraging the illegitimate collection and use of membership details, no candidate may issue or have issued on his or her behalf any separate promotional material by post or email. Candidates and party members supporting them are of course perfectly entitled to speak on the issue at party meetings.

8. Precise final details of how a leadership contest is to be run are decided and publicised immediately after the 30th June in any year in which valid nominations are received from a challenger or challengers.

9. The current party leader, Nick Griffin, has indicated that he intends at present to continue in that position for several years longer at least, but that he would welcome a properly conducted challenge as a way of confirming his popular mandate to continue running the party along present lines, and of displaying the BNP's unusually democratic leadership selection system to the British people as a whole.