EU hands out holidays paid for by taxpayer

Tens of thousands of political activists, including hundreds from the BNP, have been given free or subsidised holidays by British and European taxpayers.

Even as it grapples with the financial crisis, the European Union is paying almost £25 million this year to subsidise the trips, arranged through MEPs.

The BNP, which has two Euro-MPs, has made heavy use of the scheme to thank some of its most prominent members at taxpayers’ expense. One BNP official boasted that it was “a good way of rewarding our activists” that “didn’t cost the party a penny”. The trips are ostensibly “study visits” to the European Parliament buildings in Brussels or Strasbourg, but the holidaymakers need spend only a fraction of their time at the parliament to claim the full subsidy, which can be collected in cash without the need for receipts.

One subsidised trip to Strasbourg last week, promoted by the Labour MEP Peter Skinner, lasted six days, with only a few hours spent at the parliament. The rest of the visit, according to a programme seen by The Sunday Telegraph, included a river cruise, a tour of the cathedral, a visit to the city’s Christmas market, champagne tasting, a battlefield tour in Ypres and sightseeing in Reims. Like most MEPs, Mr Skinner did not join the party, but hosted a free dinner for the participants.

Just under 30 people went on the tour, according to Mr Skinner’s office, staying in £100-a-night hotels in Ypres, Reims and the German spa town of Baden-Baden, near Strasbourg.

“After a buffet breakfast in the sunny Great Room, take your coffee on to the terrace to enjoy views of the picturesque Black Forest,” the Baden-Baden hotel’s website says. "Stroll beside the meandering River Oos and admire the Belle-Epoque mansions on Lichtentaler Allee. Play for high stakes at the glamorous Spielbank casino, and unwind in the soothing waters of Caracalla Spa.”

The cost of the six-day trip, including some meals, all accommodation, tours, coach and ferry, was £272. If booked directly, the hotels alone would have cost about £500 at this time of year.

One of those who went on the trip, Juan Leahy, who works for Mr Skinner, declined to comment when asked if it was mostly a “holiday”.

A spokesman for the European Parliamentary Labour Party said: “We believe the public should have the opportunity to see their elected officials at work, and we do not want this opportunity restricted to the rich who can afford travel.”

Stephen Booth, of the reform group Open Europe, said: “Spending taxpayers’ money on what are effectively subsidised holidays can only further erode public trust in the EU institutions. The European Parliament seems to exist in a parallel universe, completely ignorant of economic realities.”

Politicians of all parties help to arrange the trips. Hornchurch and Upminster Conservative Association advertised a break to Brussels, including return travel by Eurostar and a night in a city centre hotel, for £80.

“We have almost a whole day to sight-see, wander around the Christmas market and pick up inspiration for gifts,” said the association’s website.

Bill Newton-Dunn, the Liberal Democrat MEP, promoted a three-day weekend break in Brussels this month for £205, advertising it on his website as a “Christmas shopping” trip. The visit to the European Parliament lasted two hours on the Monday morning, just before the guests left for home.

The BNP has made extensive use of the subsidies to reward donors to its Trafalgar Club, who last year were hosted on a three-day visit to Bruges at EU expense by Nick Griffin, the party’s leader and an MEP. Ninety-two Trafalgar Club and life members took part.

Mr Griffin said: “Everyone really enjoyed the opportunity to meet and socialise with like-minded people who care about our country.”

Other BNP outings include trips to the First World War battlefields and Waterloo. Pictures on the website of Eddy Butler, a BNP staff member, show the party enjoying their “second breakfast of the day” at a Brussels café. In the evening, the group enjoyed a taxpayer-subsidised dinner, at what another participant, Chris Beverley, called “the wonderfully atmospheric Bivouac de l’Empereur restaurant”.

“Everyone knew they could let their hair down and relax, safe in the knowledge that they were among good nationalists, men and women of honour,” he added.

One BNP trip, in March last year, cost taxpayers €10,791 (£9,775) for 44 participants, an average of £220 a head. It was free for those who took part, according to the organiser, Mr Butler, and even made the BNP a profit.

“The subsidy is for a set amount,” said Mr Butler. “There is no provision to pay back what you don’t use. The organiser of the trip can use any residue for whatever he sees fit: this is quite legitimate.”

Mr Butler said he had donated the profits to the BNP.

In a report last month, the Court of Auditors, Europe’s spending watchdog, criticised this aspect of the scheme, warning that “the procedures in place do not require groups to provide evidence of travel costs, resulting in a risk of overpayment as most groups use cheaper collective transport”.

The subsidy for the journey from London to Brussels amounts to £85 a head, but Eurostar offers a return ticket for £69, and travelling in a privately hired coach can cost as little as £25. From Edinburgh to Brussels the travel subsidy would be £225, but a return flight with Ryanair costs as little as £49. The meal subsidy is set at £30 a person, but since no receipts are required visitors can buy cheaper meals and pocket the difference.

According to the Court of Auditors, 78 per cent of the payments to trip organisers last year were made in cash. This “limited the possibility of applying internal control procedures”, the watchdog warned.

Mr Butler defended the visits, saying: “Everyone had fun and it didn’t cost the party a penny. The trips are a good way of rewarding our activists for their hard work and dedication. Should we feel guilty for the Euro taxpayer? Certainly not.”

Each of the 736 MEPs is allowed to sponsor up to 110 visitors a year, although not all use their full quota. The visitors must travel in groups of at least 10. The trips are promoted to supporters on email lists and websites. Some are advertised on the MEPs’ websites and are not confined to sympathisers, although in practice most of the holidaymakers are political activists.

The European Parliament declined to give the number of British participants in the trips, but figures for the last available year, 2007, show that British visitors claimed €938,000 (£600,000) in subsidies.

The cost of the schemes for all 27 EU nations this year is €29.7 million (£24.9 million), a 40 per cent rise since 2007. As Britain’s share of the EU budget this year is 12 per cent, taxpayers are contributing £3 million to the programme.

A spokesman for the European Parliament said: “It is essential to the exercise of democratic rights within the European Union for members of the public to be granted access to the parliament’s proceedings and premises.”

The parliament said that better controls on the payments would be too “complex and time-consuming”.

Telegraph

BNP plays musical chairs

Nick Griffin has reshuffled several of the top positions in his dysfunctional British National Party in an attempt to maintain control, reward his supporters and sideline any criticism of his dictatorship.

Chris Beverley has been sacked as regional organiser of the big Yorkshire and The Humber region, one of the two that elected BNP representatives to the European Parliament in 2009. His replacement is Ian Kitchen, the party’s Wakefield organiser and Griffin loyalist. The BNP claims this will allow Beverley to spend more time on his European constituency job for Andrew Brons, the region’s BNP MEP.

Eddy Butler, who was expelled from the BNP after unsuccessfully challenging Griffin for the leadership last year, took a more jaundiced view. Claiming the party was desperate for Beverley not to show up Jefferson by achieving a better result in the coming Barnsley by-election than in Oldham, he added: “Chris Beverley was one of the last remaining competent Regional Organisers, one of the last capable election campaigners and one of the last independent voices left on the Advisory Council. As such his replacement was inevitable and long overdue.”

Stephen Squire has taken over as the party’s London organiser after serving a six-month apprenticeship under Griffin himself, who stepped in as the acting London organiser after the party’s May election debacle and the departures of a series of previous organisers.

Clive Jefferson has given up his job as North West regional organiser, to spend more time on the elections department, according to the BNP. The party’s elections function is sorely in need of competent leadership after a string of by-election failures, but whether Jefferson will be able to devote any more time to it is unclear. He also heads the BNP’s failing treasury department, which for three years has failed to maintain anything near adequate financial records, resulting in the party failing to achieve clean audit reports for 2008 and 2009, with 2010 expected to be similar.

In addition Jefferson, who has difficulty writing coherently, has just been appointed editor of the party’s Voice of Freedom newspaper, replacing Martin Wingfield, who Butler says is very “much out of favour”, though he remains communications and campaigns officer for Griffin’s European constituency.

Jefferson’s replacement in the North West region is Mike Whitby, the party’s Liverpool organiser. Whitby became Liverpool organiser at a heated branch meeting last July when Jefferson kicked out all the existing officers in a purge of dissidents. They had committed the crime of supporting Butler’s challenge.

Whitby seems suitably qualified to move the party towards the “increased militancy” that Griffin promised last December. After clashes between BNP activists and anti-fascists in Liverpool, which resulted in an assault conviction for one BNP man, Whitby promised that anti-fascists’ identities would end up on “a website far worse than Red Watch”, the hate site that encourages supporters to attack anti-fascists and their homes and families.

Another post Jefferson has given up is National Organiser, which has gone to Adam Walker, who also regains his job as staff manager. Walker works closely with Patrick Harrington, Griffin’s old mate from their days in the National Front Political Soldiers. Harrington was appointed the BNP’s head of human resources last autumn, but appears to act more as a general manager for Griffin. Many party members resent Harrington’s presence at the helm because he remains leader of a rival political party, albeit a very small one.

Butler claims that Walker was promoted “just to boost his profile in case he is needed as an alternative Chairman, should something ghastly in the realms of the judiciary happen to Nick Griffin”.

Finally, Jennifer Matthys, Griffin’s eldest daughter, is gradually assuming a greater role and now runs all party operations from a small office in Wigton, Cumbria. But according to Butler, “not enough money is coming in each week to cover the basics, via the appeals that Pat Harrington is now tasked with producing”. Perhaps engineering the departure of Jim Dowson, Griffin’s fundraising consultant, and Paul Golding, the party’s former national communications officer, was not one of Harrington’s smartest moves.

After Griffin announced last summer that he would relinquish the leadership of the party in 2013, speculation mounted that he was grooming her as his replacement, following the example of Marine Le Pen, who has just succeeded her father as leader of the National Front in France. However unlike Ms Le Pen, a lawyer who has held senior roles in the party for over 12 years and has built a firm political base as a regional councillor, Matthys has few qualifications for leadership and is unlikely to be accepted by party members in that role for some considerable time.

Searchlight / HOPE not hate by Sonia Gable

Incompetents reign as BNP staggers into the new year

An influential far-right activist has called for union between the UK Independence Party and British National Party in an attempt to whitewash the BNP’s racism and nazi past by hiding behind its larger, anti-EU rival.

Eddy Butler, who was expelled from the BNP after trying to challenge Nick Griffin to a leadership election last summer but remains an important figure on the extreme right, said in a message for the new year that a party that united the UKIP, BNP and the various smaller groups “on the patriotic, nationalistic, ‘right-wing’, populist, non-politically correct, identity-related side of the spectrum” would “have over 30,000 members” and “instantly be a major force in British politics”.

He recognises, however, that “it would take compromise” and “putting aside preconceived ideas about each other” – a reference to the BNP’s violence and extremism and the image of the UKIP as “Tory types” – and that “jealous personalities”, the biggest of whom is Griffin, will not let it happen.

Butler believes such a union would benefit the UKIP as it “would give them relevance” between European elections. For the BNP “it would provide respectability and distance form a more violent and hard-line past”.

According to Butler only a “tiny minority” in the UKIP “hate everything to do with the BNP”. However a spokesman for the UKIP told Searchlight “[Unity] is not going to happen. We reject the whole concept completely out of hand”.

The BNP meanwhile continues to demonstrate its incompetence and dictatorial nature. When Butler appealed against his expulsion, which he considers was “irregular” under the terms of the party constitution, he was told an appeal tribunal would be arranged for January.

This has now been denied. Knowing that Butler probably had a strong case, Andy McBride, the BNP’s South East regional organiser, decided that Butler was not entitled to a tribunal because he was only a “probationary member” with less than two years’ membership, despite the party’s earlier acceptance that he had the required five years’ continuous membership to stand for the leadership!

The basis for the decision by McBride, whom Butler describes as “ineffective and semi-literate” – so no different from most other party officers – is that Butler was 18 days late in renewing his membership in 2009. However he retained the same membership number and renewal date.

Griffin law

“I can recall a time in history, in another country, during the last days of a (ahem) controversial regime, when all sorts of decrees were sent forth from ‘ze bunker’ pronouncing severe punishments on those who were deemed to have transgressed”, wrote Butler. “The last twitches of a dying organism.”

Commenting on the way Griffin and the BNP keep changing the rules to suit themselves, Butler continued: I think Mr McBride believes in Griffin Law – that parallel legal system, a bit like Sharia Law. It would seem that I am to be further punished by ‘political admin’ (as opposed to a Sharia court).”

Mark Walker, described as the BNP’s political administration officer, clearly comes from the same stable. Responding to a letter of resignation from the party from Chris Francis, Walker wrote: “Clearly you have very negative feelings towards the Party and our membership and this would, in any case, likely have resulted in actions leading to disciplinary proceedings. Best to jump before you were pushed.”

Francis had done no more than express the widespread view that the party is “a cult dedicated to Nick Griffin … The BNP has lost very many decent people over the last couple of years and there are very few decent people left in the party now. The party is now festering with **** & yes men and I for one am glad to be gone,” he added.

Another demoralised former activist is Roy Jones, who was the party’s North East Scotland organiser until he resigned last month over “King Nick and his rotten corrupt regime”. Among his complaints are Griffin’s waste of hundreds of thousands of pounds in dragging the party through the courts and the party’s inability to conduct a leadership action “without resorting to hatefull [sic] smear campaings [sic] against the challenger (Eddy Butler) and suspending /expelling anyone who supported a challenge (myself included)”.

Jones claims that the BNP in Scotland “has been wrecked by the Sycophantic Mentally unstable liar” Gary Raikes, the party’s Scotland regional organiser. Like Butler, Jones points out that the party has still not produced its 2009 accounts, which were due six months ago. On 31 December Griffin wrote on Twitter: “Just finished my report to go with 2009 accounts which auditor says are now virtually ready”.

As Butler commented: “This person is congratulating himself on almost having the 2009 accounts ready when they should have been handed in before 7th July”. If the national and regional accounts are submitted after 7 January 2011, the party will be liable to £2,500 in fines. The record delay follows several declarations by Griffin and the party’s succession of treasurers that all the party’s financial functions were being run in a professional way with the sort of controls one would find in a multinational company.

Griffin’s statement contrasts with Butler’s revelation that the party’s independent auditors, Silver and Co, were still trying to verify with branch treasurers that the bank and cash balances in their local records were the same as the figures provided by the regional treasurer. Butler claims “they are massively out” and local treasurers are refusing to confirm the figures.

Staff not paid

The accounts are unlikely to reveal the full extent of the BNP’s current dire financial straits as much of Griffin’s reckless spending on legal actions and employment tribunals has occurred since 31 December 2009. The BNP is reported to have closed most of its offices and not paid party staff for two months, apart from Patrick Harrington, Griffin’s comrade from his National Front political soldier days, who now works for the party while still heading a rival group.

Life members are calling for a refund as they did not receive their four free copies of the party’s Identity magazine, which it cannot afford to print. A bequest of £65,000 received in September in the will of a supporter who appeared to have no family and friends probably went straight to lawyers to cover the BNP’s huge legal bills. Unfortunately a further £109,000 was due to follow from the same source.

Last month the Electoral Commission pronounced the BNP guilty of breaching electoral legislation by “failing to keep accounting records sufficient to explain, with reasonable accuracy, the financial position of the party at the time”. The verdict followed a long investigation into the party’s 2008 accounts. However the BNP will suffer no penalty as the legislation, which has since been amended, did not allow for anything less than criminal proceedings against the treasurer at the time, who no longer holds the post.

Butler is calling for members not to fund Griffin by renewing, a turnaround from his previous position. Griffin is clearly feeling the pinch. At the party’s annual conference in December he admitted that the party had made mistakes and lost members. He appealed for them to return, claiming the party had moved on. Where the party has moved was revealed in Griffin’s speech at a dinner on the eve of the conference, in which he called for “increased militancy” against Islam. In attempt to revitalise the beleaguered party he promised it would “start acting as well as talking about protecting Britain”. The party is currently targeting a mosque planned for Bletchley.

The just over 100 people at the conference were also the first to see the BNP’s new logo, a heart-shaped cut-out from the Union flag. “This logo will illustrate exactly what this party is about,” said Griffin, incongruously describing it later as a “combination of innocence and love”. Others pointed out the similarities with a Conservative party emblem and Searchlight dubbed it the “broken heart”.

Some party members felt it was too soft and conflicted with Griffin’s call for street militancy. Griffin’s replied that the party still wanted to win elections and needed an image that would not “frighten the horses”.

© Searchlight Magazine 2011

BNP leadership challenge fails

Eddy Butler has failed to obtain enough nominations to challenge Nick Griffin for the leadership of the British National Party this year. After several weeks of campaigning he says he collected 500 signatures from activists and officers around the country on his own forms, which the party does not recognise. He would have needed the support of 840 party members of at least two years’ standing.

Butler says he will not take legal action against the BNP over the unconstitutional rules that Griffin imposed for the challenge because “it would be very costly for us and for the party”. Butler is no doubt influenced by the fact that the BNP is insolvent and already has many unpaid legal bills, so even if he won he would be unable to recover his costs.

Urging his supporters to stay in the BNP, Butler writes: “Rather than get embroiled in legal action we will continue our battle to save our party from destruction at Griffin’s hands through other means”. He also hopes that his supporters will stay in their party positions if they can square it with their conscience.

Butler says that the requirement to obtain the support of 20% of long-standing members was “an impossibly high total”, which is why Griffin imposed it. He also claims that many members did not receive their nomination forms because the BNP’s membership database is “incompetently run” and that Griffin’s action in persuading two “stooges” to stand for the leadership as well complicated matters.

Griffin also used “political intimidation” by suspending many supporters of Butler. For that reason he has not handed in his forms as he does “not wish to compromise anyone”.

On the official forms, which members had to complete and send individually to the party’s official scrutineer, Andrew Brons MEP, Butler only obtained 214 signatures. The stooge candidates, Richard Barnbrook and Derek Adams, got 23 and four signatures respectively, while 971 people ticked the box indicating that they were satisfied with Griffin’s leadership.

The failure is testament to the fact that most BNP members do not go to party meetings or follow the various blogs that have exposed the gross mismanagement in the party and the way in which Griffin and his consiglieri, Jim Dowson, are using it as a cash generating machine for themselves. Griffin’s main interest now is in securing re-election to the European Parliament in 2014 so that he qualifies for a pension when he eventually leaves office.

Whether Griffin will allow any Butler supporters to remain in official party positions is unclear at this stage; likewise whether Butler’s supporters will want to stay in a party in which Griffin and Dowson are now even stronger than before.

Many activists, though not the bulk of the ordinary members, are now well aware that Dowson owns the BNP, that the party is insolvent and has been managed incompetently, and that Griffin never hesitates to lie blatantly to preserve his position. Many have already said that if Butler’s challenge fails they will leave, though most are undecided whether to join one of the tiny opponents of the BNP on the far right or to form a new party. Neither option is attractive for them.

Lee Barnes, the BNP’s former legal officer who resigned yesterday, can be expected to reveal more about what has been going on in the BNP, now that he has seen the truth about Dowson, whom he has described as the “Gollum” of the BNP and Griffin’s “cut price Rasputin”.

Most recently Barnes has described Arthur Kemp’s March of the Titans, a huge tome much praised by Griffin’s BNP, as “a regurgitated sub-SS handbook” and its author as a “Rhodesian Nazi terrorist” who “hates everyone and everything and believes everyone on the planet is below him”. According to Barnes, Kemp was known in the party as Napoleon. We look forward to further insights such as these.

Searchlight / HOPE not Hate by Sonia Gable

BNP heavyweight supports Eddy Butler leadership challenge

Eddy Butler, who is challenging Nick Griffin for the BNP leadership this summer, has announced that Nick Cass, the popular former Yorkshire BNP organiser, will be his running mate to become deputy chairman of the BNP in the event of a Butler victory.

In a “BNP TV” video posted on YouTube and some BNP-supporting websites, Cass explains that Griffin does not have the time to be BNP leader because since his election to the European Parliament he is focusing his attention “across the water”. Party members feel that the leadership has become detached from them, he adds.

Cass, 36, says that Butler is asking sensible questions to which members want to know the answers, but the party leadership is ridiculing them. He has been “shocked” by the campaign against Butler. He expected the party, in which he has been an activist for 20 years, to be “straight-talking and honest”, not to come out with smears against Butler.

Cass is helping Butler in the hard task of obtaining the signatures of 20% of BNP members of two years’ standing. He says every senior BNP officer in Yorkshire wants change in the leadership. The BNP’s Liverpool branch, a centre of activity in the region in which Griffin is an MEP, also supports Butler.

It did not take long before Griffin’s supporters went onto the attack on one of the most extreme nazi web forums with a thread –withdrawn after a few hours – titled “Nick Cass Scum Traitor”, in which commenters suggested that Cass might be a Searchlight agent, state asset or, worse from a nazi viewpoint, Jewish.

The insult was ironic. Cass with his wife and three children have appeared on many BNP election leaflets as the typical wholesome white family that votes BNP.

It was also highly unlikely. Cass sports a prominent “tree of life” tattoo on his right arm, between shoulder and elbow. This symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide, several of which have adopted it as their logo. Under Hitler it was the symbol of the SS Lebensborn project, which encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with “Aryan” mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans. To white supremacists today the tree of life signifies the future of the “white race”.

The tattoo was pictured in Sky TV’s BNP Wives documentary. The same programme revealed that Cass had instructed his wife, Suzy, to insist on a white European midwife when giving birth to their children, which reveals his attitude to women as well as his racism.

This is not the first time that Cass has fallen out with BNP colleagues. It was widely reported in 2007 that Cass was sacked from the job of BNP party manager two minutes before a meeting, after he had been given a role for which he was unsuited. Cass disputes this, saying that he resigned so that he could spend more time with his family.

The announcement of Cass’s support for Butler put paid to malicious rumours from the Griffin camp that Butler was putting forward Lawrence Rustem as deputy leader. Rustem, a former BNP councillor in Barking and Dagenham, suffers from the fatal flaw in the eyes of the BNP’s racist members that he is of part Turkish Cypriot descent.

Griffin supporters have also tried to link Butler with Sharon Ebanks, a former BNP activist who fell out with the party after Griffin reneged on a promise to meet her legal expenses for a challenge to a council election result in Birmingham that the party encouraged her to mount. She is widely derided in the BNP because of her West Indian father.

Meanwhile the anti-Butler blog run by Paul Golding, the BNP’s national communications officer, has listed reasons why Butler is unsuitable to lead the BNP. Butler is accused of being “bland and boring and grey and colourless”, “rude and arrogant”, having “no intellectual ability whatsoever”, “pure repellent”, “defeatist”, a “raging control freak” and, horror of horrors, “arranging the most disgusting food ever served at a BNP event”, a feat that takes some doing, judging by the reports we have received of typical BNP catering.

Griffin, in contrast, has “heaps of charisma”, is an “accomplished writer and intellectual”, “affable”, a “visionary” and “able to command respect and loyalty”. Unfortunately for Griffin, a growing number of BNP members are rejecting Golding’s sycophancy.

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate

BNP official sacked by Nick Griffin challenges him for leadership

Nick Griffin is facing a leadership challenge after the British National Party’s disastrous general election performance.

Eddy Butler, who until recently was a senior official in the far-right BNP, announced his candidacy yesterday and began to seek nominations from members. He accused Mr Griffin of an “authoritarian leadership style” that “inhibits new ideas and stifles debate”.

Mr Butler wrote on his blog: “Funding has dried up. Our financial liabilities are mounting. Inquiries to the party from the public have plummeted. Our electoral progress has all but halted. Our activist base has lost its enthusiasm.

“After 11 long years Nick has accumulated a massive amount of baggage which makes him less popular with the public than the party.”

Mr Griffin announced last month that he would step down in 2013 to concentrate on his European Parliament re-election campaign. The decision was widely seen as an attempt to avoid an immediate challenge, amid growing internal criticism about the party’s performance in the election.

The BNP failed to win any parliamentary seats, notably the key target seat of Barking, East London, where Mr Griffin was relegated to third place and trailed Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP, by 18,000 votes. The party also lost all but two of its council seats across the country.

Mr Butler said: “We do not have the luxury of waiting for several years before the current chairman feels it is time to leave. In bringing the party forward Nick has become more of a public liability than an asset.”

Mr Butler, prominent in nationalist politics since the 1980s, was the BNP’s campaign co-ordinator until March, when he was dismissed by Mr Griffin. For a leadership election to take place he must be nominated by 20 per cent of those who have been members of the party for two years. If he succeeds, the campaign will take place over the summer and a postal ballot held in October.

Mr Griffin will try to persuade members that he is the best person for the leadership because of his national recognition. This week The Times reported that he had been invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace, owing to his position as an MEP.

A contest would be a bitter one. A website purporting to “expose” Mr Butler has already been formed by Mr Griffin’s supporters. Mr Griffin saw off a challenge in 2007 and also faced a plot by dissidents to overthrow him during the recent election campaign.

The BNP has been plagued by internal turmoil. Members have questioned why Mr Griffin performed so badly given the party’s increased media exposure after the European Parliament breakthrough last year and an appearance on the BBC’s Question Time.

The party did not respond to inquiries from The Times.

The Times

BNP disasters continue - Jefferson promoted

Clive Jefferson - mad and unpopular

There's likely to be even more chaos in the BNP in the future as it appears that the former National Elections Office Eddie Butler has been replaced by much-loathed thug Clive Jefferson, according to the most recent Organiser's Bulletin.

'BNP Organisers’ Bulletin - March 2010

URGENT BRIEFING MEETING

An urgent briefing meeting for Regional Organisers and key officials will take place on this coming Monday 5th of April.

The meeting will cover recent events, urgent organisational matters, including a crucial update from our new National Elections Officer Clive Jefferson, and future plans.

It is expected that every Region will send a minimum of one full car and a maximum of two full cars. It is really important that key personnel from every Region are attend [sic].

Please liaise with your Regional Organiser to ensure a good geographical spread of key officials attending whilst ensuring election activities proceed unhindered...'

Keep us informed, folks, and when commenting, beware of libel.

One Flew Over The Pig Farm: the BNP and us in 2008 - July

Even the meanest of the BNP's councillors conform to the party's petty racisms, as was shown in early July when Simon Deacon, a Markyate Parish Councillor and former leading National Front activist, voted against the council's Equal Opportunities Policy, describing it as a waste of time. No great surprise there.

Another non-surprise, was the complete collapse of Colin Auty's leadership challenge: Auty didn't even manage to get the required number of nominating signatures for the challenge to go ahead.

Griffin, clearly nervous of Auty's popularity (not something that the pig farmer has ever experienced), enlisted the help of the big battalions in the dubious forms of fruitcake Lee Barnes and 'election guru' Eddie Butler, both of whom wrote possibly illegal letters to the entire membership warning it to avoid Auty like the plague, Butler referring to Auty as a 'joke candidate' while Barnes stated that anyone who supported the challenge would be 'tried for conspiracy and treason'. Such power.

Meanwhile, Dicky Barnbrook, who takes his politics very seriously indeed, learns to ride a bike with fruit on it...

Dukinfield Labour councillor John Taylor apparently earned the ire of the BNP's Andrew Gatward, the party's West Lindsey organiser, and promptly found himself on Redwatch complete with death threat.

'Congratulations, you're on Redwatch. I am going to take you out. Six .22 rounds in the back of your head should do the trick. I would bring my .38 special but it makes one hell of a mess. I'll be seeing you.'

Whether it was Gatward who put Taylor on Redwatch is impossible to know but the fact that the former writes the occasional hate mail to the latter should give us a clue. As should Hexapla's article about the bizarre and violent fantasy world that Andrew Gatward seems to inhabit.

July saw us asking questions about how closely Nick Griffin and the BNP were working with Patrick Harrington and his micro-party, the National Liberal Party. Certainly there's a strongly incestuous relationship between them which becomes even more intimately entangled when the BNP's fake union Solidarity, its fake PR company Accentuate and Third Way are factored in. More investigation needed, if anyone wants to take it on board.

To no-one's surprise at all, Dewsbury East's BNP councillor Colin Auty quit the party (and eventually his seat) after his failure to get a leadership challenge going, moaning about the lack of democracy in the BNP. Odd how it hadn't bothered him up to this point. His campaign manager Roger Robertson also bit the dust, though in his case he was expelled for bringing the party into disrepute by setting up the challenge to the leadership and having the audacity to talk to the press. Bringing the BNP into disrepute? You couldn't make this stuff up, could you.

Racists and anti-semites Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle are convicted of publishing racially inflammatory material on a website. Both face further charges though mid-July saw them in the news again, this time for not turning up in court. It emerged that the pair had run off to the US, seeking political asylum across the pond.

An old friend reappears in court (albeit briefly), to answer a charge of attacking a pub landlord. Football hooligan, violent thug and former Burnley BNP councillor Luke Smith, hits the news again by doing what he does best - creating havoc. A couple of days later, Smith is found dead, having hanged himself.

Clive Jefferson, who desperately wants to run the BNP's security because he's a tough guy, brought some of his more idiotic pals down from Cumbria to Lancaster just to irritate shoppers by illegally setting up a stall in Market Square and getting in everyone's way. After a kicked-over table, numerous leaflets covered in spilled fizzy and a very noisy spontaneous demo, Jefferson and his morons buggered off - though not before the police nicked him for driving around in a car with an illegal numberplate (for which he was done the statutory £80).

Drifting towards the end of July and we see Nick Griffin writing to the December rebels trying to get them to back off from the forthcoming court case. In his letter, Griffin appears to libel the rebel's barrister Adrian Davies in a number of ways - though Mr Davies doesn't seem too keen to take the pig farmer to court on his own behalf. What Griffin is trying to avoid, of course, is showing the world that he can no longer afford to pay for decent legal representation and may have instead to rely on his own quick wits and those of the party's legal lunatic Lee Barnes. Gawd, I almost feel sorry for him. But not quite.

Too late to make any difference and presumably in angry response to Griffin's letter, Sadie Graham suddenly pops her head over the parapet to declare that

'I truly believe that there has never been a political leader in this country so hated by his own people.'

Her statement, posted on the Voice of Challenge blog, rips into Griffin, calling him a liar and a coward, but the overall effect is that it is too little, too late. Had she issued such a statement six months before, she would have got a massive and positive response. In fact, it comes across as the death knell of the rebellion - which in fact it turns out to be.

Yet another financial scandal within the BNP is uncovered by Searchlight - this one centering on the much-vaunted 'Truth Truck' or Lie Lorry. BNP members were asked to donate towards the purchase of a brand new advertising vehicle, effectively a mobile hoarding, which would help spread the BNP's lies even further. Members were asked to donate a staggering £40,000 to this appeal and many responded though BNP members on its own forum sounded a note of caution, wondering what had happened to the battle bus, a similar idea that was used to obtain donations a few years back.

Eventually, it was discovered that the BNP had conned its membership - again - and that the truck was actually being shared between the UK LifeLeague, an anti-abortion outfit based in Belfast, and the party.

We'll let the late Luke Smith round off July. His funeral seems to have followed the pattern of his life, being marred by vandalism and violence. Around forty drunken so-called 'mourners' were dispersed by police after they were found hurling bricks off a bridge on to a road below, presumably in tribute to Smith being a well-known thug and hooligan throughout his life.

Steve Smith, uncle of Luke, former member of the BNP and now leader of the utterly insignificant England First Party, said of his nephew;

'He was a lovely, lovely lad who, like a lot of people, was just too sensitive to exist in what is effectively an extremely cruel world...'

Whatever.

Tony Lecomber dragged out of storage to persuade Bowden to return

Tony Lecomber, the former Group Development Officer in the BNP and Griffin loyalist, has a fine reputation. He has received two prison sentences of three years apiece, one for possession of explosives (caught en route to blowing up a left-wing group's offices) and the other for wounding a Jewish schoolteacher who he observed removing racist BNP stickers. These are just two of his twelve convictions (so far). He was finally booted out of the BNP after he was found to have approached Griffin's former bodyguard Joe Owens to attempt to persuade him to join a plot to assassinate leading government figures. Fortunately Owens realised that there was either an attempt at entrapment going on or Lecomber had gone insane and promptly blew the whistle on him.

Following an attack on the BNP's 'election guru' Eddie Butler earlier this year, Lecomber was finally half-heartedly proscribed by the party.

At the time there was all kinds of speculation about exactly why Lecomber attacked Butler but up until now not many people know the truth. It has now been revealed in a widely-circulated letter from former Griffin-ally (and more, if you believe the rumours) Martin Webster that Lecomber, after a period of job-hunting but being able to find one thanks to his appalling criminal background, had approached one of the BNP councillors at Dagenham for a reference. This was to be made out to a false name and written on Barking and Dagenham Council official notepaper. According to Webster, Butler got to hear about this and put his foot down, absolutely forbidding any such thing to be done in the knowledge that, if it ever got out, there would be outrage flying at the BNP from all directions.

Lecomber, furious at Butler's intervention, launched the attack on him as he left Loughton Underground station and during the struggle, had his balaclava pulled off, thus revealing his identity. Following this astonishing event, Lecomber was promptly proscribed and cast into the wilderness.

Or so the members of the party were led to believe...

Never one to take any notice of the rules of his own party, Nick Griffin ignored the proscription notice (something that would have earned any mere member immediate dismissal) and contacted Lecomber shortly after the resignation of Jonathan Bowden in an attempt to get him to persuade Bowden to come back to the party following his angry decision to leave after the appalling accusations made against him by the Griffin attack dogs over at the Covert site.

Bowden, who already believed that the smears against him were inspired and encouraged by Griffin in revenge for his signing Chris Jackson's nomination papers in the recent leadership challenge, ignored the plea to return, publishing a resignation letter showed his anger at his mistreatment in no uncertain terms:

'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...I will seek to have police action carried out against this vile Internet site [Covert], 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 [Griffin-ally Tommy Williams], I gather, is a convicted drug dealer and career criminal with a string of convictions.'

Indeed, and the guy Griffin sent to try to persuade Bowden to come back to the BNP was a convicted terrorist and violent criminal with a string of convictions who shouldn't be anywhere near the BNP or any of its members. Once again we see the double-standards that the BNP leader lives by - one rule for him, one rule for everyone else.

And we wonder again - what precisely has Lecomber got on Griffin? It must be something good because he's always been kept close. If anyone knows, do tell.

BNP's Advisory Council to be shut down - the disasters continue...

The BNP's Advisory Council, which is in place ostensibly to oversee Griffin and the running of the party, is to be completely dismantled to make way for the new membership tier known as the 'Voting Membership'. As we reported here, Griffin regards the new VMs as an 'activist elite', by which he presumably means they do as they're told and they would support him whenever he embarks on yet another one of his lunatic schemes.

According to information we've received, the unelected VMs will include organisers and active councillors at branch level as a matter of course, regional organisers, those officers of the party that remain after the coming reshuffle (or bloodbath, as one of our correspondents put it) but curiously (or perhaps not) not fundholders/treasurers - or certainly not those at branch level.

Considering that Griffin made a point in his blog post of August 11th of specifically mentioning 'effective powers of scrutiny over all central party finances', we're surprised that he intends to keep local financial managers out of the loop - but maybe we shouldn't be all that surprised at all. BNP branches from all over the country have been griping for the last couple of years that money gushes eternally into the black hole that is BNP HQ, and is rarely returned in any way, even, it is frequently said, in the form of election leaflets that have been bought and paid for. The last thing Griffin would want is someone demanding financial accountability all the time, which is why he will effectively keep the financial side of things directly under the control of the party's treasurer (currently John Walker though not, we suspect, for very much longer).

One sign that clearly indicates the diminishing role of the Advisory Council is that though it is intended that it should meet 'no less than three times each year' according to the BNP's website, it has in fact not met since last September - very nearly a year. And this is the body currently charged with a number of crucial tasks:

'The purpose of the Advisory Council is to inspect the party's accounts, ensuring proper conduct of the party's finances, and to act as a forum for the party's leadership to discuss vital issues and carve out the party's agenda, without hindering the Chairman's ability to make the final decision on all matters.'

The lack of Advisory Council meetings might then go some way towards explaining why the party accounts are so late.

Problems seem to be rife for the BNP's Advisory Council at the moment, despite the usually politically-somnolent summer period. Jonathan Bowden left both the Advisory Council and the BNP itself in a fury after Griffin's attack-dogs at Covert were set on him at the end of July, Scott McLean has resigned the Advisory Council and his post as Deputy Chairman over the Andrew Spence debacle and Steve Blake now appears to be directly in the firing line over a constant stream of criticism of the BNP website, which is about as bland as a political site can possibly get without anasthetic, and far worse, having signed Chris Jackson's nomination papers in the recent leadership election. It looks like he's a strong candidate for the bloodbath, probably alongside his pal Eddie Butler, the former BNP election guru (attacked by fruitcake Tony Lecomber a while back) who, after the lacklustre results for the party in the May elections is now apparently frequently described by Griffin as a twat (and worse). We confidently expect to be waving goodbye to both Butler and Blake in the very near future.

Thus the Advisory Council dissolves around Griffin's ears, ready to rise again in the form of a loose body of activists, the Voting Membership, and Griffin will only have to suffer the ignominy of answering to it once a year at the party's annual conference. This will effectively hand dictatorial powers to the leader of this already far from democratic party, giving him carte blanche to do as he pleases when he pleases with nobody to answer to except his unelected hardcore activists who he has himself placed into their positions of authority. Who in their right minds would give any party leader that kind of complete power over his party - especially someone as notoriously untrustworthy as Nick Griffin? And who would want to be a member of a party where the ordinary membership is regarded as of no value at all except for the price of their membership card?

We hear Jackie Griffin is swanning around showing off her nice new Peugeot sports car - a snip at around six and a half grand. The election results for the BNP might be crap, the executive of the party might be collapsing, the fake businesses dying off as fast as they are formed and the membership figures stagnating but the money still appears to be fast-flowing into the Griffin household. If I were a party member, I'd be worrying about that.