Property investment for fascists - the Croatia story continues

An article in a national newspaper last Sunday (22 July), and reproduced all over the internet, claimed to reveal how BNP leaders were setting up a self-sufficient rural bolthole in Croatia in preparation for when the oil runs out.

In fact the story, which was full of errors, was the result of an attempt by the BNP to build a smokescreen around some plain old-fashioned property speculation.

Last October Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, was a guest speaker at a well attended meeting of the party's Leeds branch. He normally turns up in a suit, but on this occasion he made his excuses for wearing jeans, saying that he had just returned from a visit to Croatia. He then regaled his audience about the ethnic problems following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

What Griffin did not mention was that much of the "ethnic cleansing" in Croatia at the start of the 1990s, consisting of torture, rape, murder and mutilation of bodies, was carried out by the reborn Ustasha movement. Some 50 years earlier the Ustashi had carried out their first attempt at genocide, in conjunction with the Nazis, against Serbs, Jews and Roma. More than a million Serbs of all ages were butchered in their homes, in forests and in concentration camps. Another 250,000 were forcibly converted to Catholicism, and around a further 300,000 were driven out of Croatia into the remote mountain areas of Serbia.

Hero worship of the wartime butchers of the Ustashi remains widespread in Croatia and it is one of the areas of eastern Europe in which Roberto Fiore, the Italian third-positionist fascist and long-term friend of Griffin, has taken an interest in recent years.

Griffin's visit to Croatia inevitably gave rise to speculation in the BNP, especially when news started to leak out about at least one other senior BNP officer visiting the country, about a property purchase there and even offshore bank accounts to shift BNP funds into the new project.

Older BNP members recalled with dismay two earlier overseas property ventures involving Fiore. The first was a ruined hamlet in northern France in the days when Griffin led the National Front Political Soldiers. A member of Fiore's family had their name on the title deeds and volunteers were shipped out to try to turn it into a political commune. The project was eventually abandoned, money raised from British supporters poured down the drain.

A decade later Fiore bought an abandoned village in Spain. Again work on making it habitable was carried out by volunteers, now from the successor group to the Political Soldiers, the International Third Position.

Yet again it flopped and Fiore had to rush in a lawyer to bail out a leading member of the ITP who had been thrown into jail for attacking the local mayor's property. Back in England the man was given a job in Fiore's extensive UK property empire. The project vanished.

And one must not forget how Griffin got Young NF members to work free of charge to convert a barn at his parents' property in Suffolk in the mid 1980s and later got the BNP to pay for renovation of a barn on his farm in Wales.

BNP members are not keen to see the party's hard-earned funds squandered on yet another potentially disastrous property venture. The BNP is not a party where people can freely ask awkward questions of their leader and get honest answers, so instead disgruntled members started leaking bits of interesting information about the Croatian plans to the anti-fascist Lancaster UAF blogsite.

This could not have come at a worse time for Griffin, who is currently facing a leadership election in the BNP. A huge amount of dirty linen has been paraded before the public in the past six weeks, including talk about property in Croatia.

Knowing that the story was likely to break beyond the anti-fascist movement, Griffin engaged in a classic manoeuvre to control the situation by orchestrating the delivery of a "scoop" to a national newspaper. Anti-fascist blogs and others immediately reproduced it, though Kirklees Unity soon removed it after realising that the story was riddled with errors and half truths and was just an attempt to divert attention from Griffin's property venture.

The story claimed that Andrew McKillop, an expert on "peak oil" – the theory that the world's oil reserves are about to run out – briefed the BNP leadership last September at a secret weekend meeting at a hotel in Hampshire. Those present were so concerned about this that they decided to buy 1,100 hectares of land in Croatia as a bolthole for when civilisation breaks down, the story continued.

But there were many errors.

The story quotes McKillop saying that he had only been contacted via the internet to give the presentation in the New Forest, giving the impression he has had little to do with the BNP. In fact Griffin has reproduced and promoted McKillop's articles on the BNP website and they have been published in the BNP's monthly magazine, Identity.

McKillop was also invited to join the BNP's shadowy think tank, which Searchlight exposed in March. The story says McKillop lives in the USA. When we spoke to him earlier this year he was living in Paris.

Another man named in the story is the BNP's economics expert Alan Goodacre. The writer seemed to think he uses the name Ian Fletcher when visiting the USA. In fact Ian Fletcher is a well known US rightwinger who lobbies against migrant workers. They are not the same person. For one thing an expert analysis of their articles show that Goodacre writes in British English whereas Fletcher is very definitely a North American.

One of the story's most obvious errors is the description of Lee Barnes as the BNP's second-in-command. Far from it: although Barnes acts as the director of the BNP's legal department, he is not actually a party member. This enables him to front up various money raising schemes for the BNP from which the party prefers to distance itself.

Griffin's deputy is Simon Darby and the party's vice-chair is Scott McLean.

The story claims the land is owned by a BNP sympathiser whose late father "is understood to have made a fortune in the pizza business". No name is given and the story sounds a bit like it is based on the pizza billionaire who funds a community in the USA.

The article ends with an obvious bit of padding, with a rapid trawl through the bombers Tim McVeigh and David Copeland and William Pierce's The Turner Diaries.

It is interesting that the BNP chose to dump this story on a journalist who does not have a track record of writing about the far right but works for a newspaper that is very keen on ecology.

The very worthwhile team at Lancaster UAF are to be congratulated on opening up a can of worms which the BNP leader will have great difficulty closing.

Stop the BNP

Solidarity update - BNP's Nick Griffin heavily criticised for interference

Much information has been received by Lancaster UAF over the past week, the bulk of it concerning the Solidarity disaster, its unconstitutional and possibly illegal Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) and the bizarre and very probably fraudulent election that led to putting Patrick Harrington and the BNP firmly in control of the breakaway Solidarity - the one we'll refer to as Solidarity B.

First things first. If you've not been following the Solidarity fiasco, you're going to be easily confused, in which case you should check out some of our previous posts from June 22nd, June 25th, June 26th, July 5th, July 11th and July 17th.

It has been announced (and repeated ad nauseum) that the support for an EGM was overwhelming, with an excess of the two-thirds membership requirement voting in favour. We've now received five emails from members who have all reported that they never received a ballot paper at all, clearly indicating that there are one or two porkies being told. Based on past experience, we would suggest that the Griffin/Harrington camp are the liars.

The postal ballot itself was described as a 'nonsense', a 'farce' and a 'sham ballot' by a poster on the Stormfront nazi forum who said;

'The "voting paper" that i received was a nonsense. there was no number to the slip and no way of proving who was sending in the slip, and who would count them and how. It was a farce reminiscent of a Zimbabwean election...'

Indeed it was. There was no independent officer to oversee the process, nobody except Griffin and Harrington to send out the ballots, no tellers to count the votes, no indication of how many voted for, against or abstained, nor was there any proof that any ballot papers had been sent out at all.

All the information we have received indicates that the EGM was attended by just fifteen to twenty members - at least we assume they were all members - and a number of heavies, presumably to keep out the riff-raff like the rightful President and Vice-President of Solidarity, Clive Potter and Tim Hawke.

From this fifteen to twenty in attendance, seven were chosen to represent the Executive Committee and one, Graham Williamson, was clearly put in post as the union's public relations guru - despite the fact that he has no experience of public relations at all. More on Williamson here. Near as dammit half of those who attended then, went along in the sure and certain knowledge that they would be voted into a position of some authority - assuming we concede that the Solidarity B union has any authority at all, which we don't.

Whether you like them or loathe them, unions are rightly famed for one single thing - their strict adherence to the rules of the union, or the Constitution. The Constitution of any union is sacrosanct and no member or officer would consider breaking any part of it or bypassing it. A change in a union's Constitution will only be carried out (generally) at the Annual General Meeting.

Part of the problem with Solidarity B is that there is already a Solidarity union (Solidarity A) in place complete with a properly drawn-up and agreed Constitution. Harrington deciding, for whatever reason, that Solidarity A is not for him, and running off and forming Solidarity B, is, whatever way you care to look at it, entirely unconstitutional.

Disregarding all the convoluted facts and outright lies that have been told about the Solidarity split, the simple fact is that it was reported that Tim Hawke and Clive Potter had problems with Patrick Harrington's version of the accounts. It's worth remembering that that is what started the whole Solidarity fiasco off. Harrington then promptly denied the bona-fide President and Vice-President of Solidarity access to the Paypal account which holds the union's funds (in other words, the member's fees that were paid to the properly constituted Solidarity), and denied them access to the membership list and the union website.

With Nick Griffin's collaboration, he hastily presented his version of events and the wheels were put in motion for an entirely unconstitutional EGM. He also announced (again with the BNP's help) the establishment of three new Solidarity (B) websites, announcing repeatedly that they were the proper sites to visit. You'll note that Griffin and the BNP is prominent in this mess but only on Harrington's side. So much for the BNP's belief in fair play and (excuse my laughter) democratic values.

Just my opinion but all this has a distinct taste of cover-up and, rather more importantly, fraud.

Since Harrington's rapid departure from Solidarity A, the internet has been awash with lies and misinformation about Hawke and Potter. They did nothing to present the union as professional, they did nothing at all, they didn't want to see a membership campaign, they didn't want a stall at the BNP's Red, White and Blue event, that they were 'State-controlled', that they were part of a 'far-left' plot etc etc. Anything, in fact, to discredit them in the eyes of the membership - repeated by Harrington and the BNP in the clear hope that if it's repeated often enough, it'll be believed.

Though we're reluctant as a rule to credit anyone on the far-right with any decency at all, Potter and Hawke have generally maintained a dignified silence throughout this disaster, quietly working in the background maintaining their union and sticking to the Constitution rigorously. Having said that, we believe that Solidarity - both versions - should be barred from becoming a bona-fide trade union when they are patently not a trade union, simply a support group for so-called nationalists run by a combination of the NF, the ITP and the BNP - all of them arguably fascist groups.

Following, as far as we can see, the proper procedure, Potter and Hawke eventually expelled Harrington. The letter of expulson is enlightening and well worth a read;

'With reference to an Extraordinary Executive Meeting held on the 8th July 2007 I inform you that you have been instantly expelled from the Union due to gross, unacceptable behaviour in your refusal to accept your suspension dated 3rd of June 2007.

Your refusal to accept an investigation of your irregular behaviour regarding union funds, and still refusing to comply with the Official Union Executive in these concerns is no longer sustainable.

Also the other main reasons for expulsion from the union are as followed:

1. Hijacking the unions website and claiming you were illegally suspended from your office – which is false. In this matter you can refer to the Union Constitution on the following
Section 1 (b), Section 7 (a), Section 8 (a) (b), Section 12 (c) – specifically.
Section 12 (e) – specifically.
Section 14 (a) – specifically unless you appeal – no executive member is subject to the same rules as its members.
Section 15 (a) – your refusal to accept an investigation by the Executive through their nomination of a Special Auditor on this matter.
Section 19 (d) – your long-term refusal to submit the books to the Unions Head Office.

2. Bringing the Unions Governing Body and the Union into Gross Disrepute by working with the BNP leadership to undermine their independence and hijacking the unions website by their abuse of relationship of this union in this matter.

3. Manipulation of Account with regards to your apparent transfer of £700 from the main HSBC Solidarity Account to a Business account, many days after you were notified of your suspension.

4. Stating on Union Accounts that their was a loan to a member of £150 which is not true as the loan was given to the union, not the other way round.

You have gone to extreme lengths to circumscribe being investigated by this union, to such a degree that you issue publicly gross malicious and false lies, concerning the actions of this governing body in your suspension. You falsely claim that we are duped, by several Marxists, and we look forward to you naming such ghosts. These malicious and false lies will be in due course answered at an appropriate time.

This union’s Executive in the position of President and Vice-President take great umbrage to the false use of our Names in your illegal use of the unions website and request you stop this at once. In any serious professional union the processes of its governing body and its relationship with members, is clearly defined, in its constitution, which ours also reflects in this matter. You have totally disrupted and attempted to destroy this good order and discipline of the union in such matters and brought it into Gross Disrepute. On these grounds alone let alone other serious charges, no serious professional union could allow such a destructive personality, which you are, to exist within its body in any capacity. On this ground alone you are immediately expelled from this union on these charges.

Please note that you have SEVEN days from the date of receipt of this letter to appeal and present any claims that you believe is illegal in your expulsion on these grounds.'

Assuming points 3 and 4 to be correct, these seem to me (as a person with no formal legal training but with a reasonable sense of right and wrong) to be criminal in nature and one wonders whether this has yet been passed on to the police. Rumour has us believe that it has but, if not, we have to ask ourselves why not?

There are now two unions claiming the name Solidarity. There are people who will join one simply because they loathe the people involved in the other. Griffin, in yet another attempt to deflect any well-deserved humiliation at his unwarranted interference, will try to persuade the BNP membership to switch to the Harrington/BNP coalition Solidarity, then will claim the takeover as a huge success leaving many members less than happy. One Stormfront poster expressed his disatisfaction with Nick Griffin's unwanted interference thus;

'...no leader should be free of criticism and I must say that criticism here is well-deserved. He has made a very flawed judgement and a crucial error in regards to assisting the hi-jacking of this Solidarity Union. By allying himself with an old National Front comrade over his own members and destroying any concept of decency, truth, right and constitution then he has sadly behaved dishonorably and unlawfully. He has given his enemies, both on the Right and on the Left, the ammunition that they need. He is now a damaged man who has shown his weakness and ineptude and his failure of leadership. This is very sad for someone like myself who truly believed and followed Nick Griffin, who still admires his achievements and his talents, but has seen his followers betrayed.'

The Solidarity fiasco started off as something of a joke which has descended rapidly into a farce. Considering the union has only existed for roughly a year and a half, its short life has been plagued with chaos (as is relatively normal for anything involving the BNP) and the only sensible thing to do is to put it out of its misery. Consequently, we would like people to write to the Certifications Officer, asking for an investigation of the union(s) and the appalling mess in which it seems to have got itself. A decent investigation by an outside body might uncover a lot more than just interference from Nick Griffin and co. It wouldn't hurt to send a copy or separate letter/email to the TUC, the Trade and Industry Secretary (now the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) and your local MP too. Addresses below. It's time to shut this rubbish down before ordinary people start getting sucked into it because someone tells them Solidarity is a great union. It isn't. It's crap and it needs to go.

David Taylor
Certification Office for Trade Unions and Employers' Associations
Brandon House, 180 Borough High Street, London SE1 1LW
Tel: 020 7210 3734
Fax: 020 7210 3612
CERT@certoffice.org

Trades Union Congress
Congress House
Great Russell Street
London
WC1B 3LS
Tel: 020 7636 4030
Fax: 020 7636 0632
No email? Shameful.

Rt Hon John Hutton MP
Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
22 Hartington Street, Barrow in Furness, Cumbria LA14 5SL
Telephone: 01229 431204
Fax: 01229 432016
huttonj@parliament.uk

You can find out who your local MP is and write to him/her here.

Martin Webster has another go at the BNP's Nick Griffin

In the latest edition of his ebulletin, Electronic Loose Cannon, the far-right's extremely loose cannon, Martin Webster, has again attacked the BNP leader Nick Griffin. Webster, who has had his claws deep into Griffin since the announcement that there is to be a BNP leadership contest, regales us with a list of small but far from insignificant facts (?) which, added to the body of evidence collected over years by both the anti-fascists movement and his opposition on the far-right, show Griffin to be a shyster on rather an impressive scale, if true.

For the most part, we'll repeat the allegations from Webster verbatim but there we feel the need to comment, we'll enclose our comment in square brackets [like these].

'I have no knowledge of Nick Griffin's father, Edgar, beyond that he is a chartered accountant and that his father, Edwin, was a leading Freemason who left Nick, £300,000 in the late 1980s (which he quickly lost in stupid property deals).'

[Curiously, considering what an enormous amount of money £300,000 is, isn't this just after Griffin declared bankruptcy? If so, perhaps that's how he managed to be discharged.]

'On the one occasion in the mid 1970s that I stayed over-night at the Griffin family home (then at Hill House, Huntingfield, near Halesworth, Suffolk) the kitchen was filled with oriental carpets, giving it the appearance of a souk.

Mrs Griffin had bought a job lot of these and was proposing, somehow, to merchandise them. She asked my opinion as to their quality. I was surprised she didn't remark: "Never mind the quality -- feel the width". It became evident to me on that occasion that the entire Griffin family were money mad.'

[It shouldn't take anyone long to come to that conclusion.]

'I was informed last year by Daily Mail feature writer David Jones that Nick Griffin's sister is "Susan Patricia". Jones said he had tried to locate her via a search of the on-line Registry of Electors, but had no luck. There is a real mystery concerning why she has broken off all contact with her family and made efforts to cover her tracks.

Susan Patricia was once engaged to Ipswich National Front branch organiser Tony Williams, a boyhood friend of Griffin's. At the time (late 70s/early 80s) Williams (whose father was a wealthy businessman) was building up a very successful off-licence business in East Anglia. During the 1970s Susan Patricia stood at least once (I think in Ipswich) as an NF local council candidate.'

[There's nothing about Susan Griffin on the net but it would be interesting to find out more about her. Any information would be welcome.]

'I don't know when or why the engagement between Susan Patricia and Williams ended. It may have been something to do with the following:

'NICK GRIFFIN'S FIRST SWINDLE?

In the mid/late 1980s Griffin swindled Williams of a couple of thousand pounds. Griffin told Williams that he had got news about a bargain supply of CDs somewhere on the Continent, but that he didn't have the cash to take advantage of the offer. He implied the purchase was for his own private business enterprise and promised to repay Williams in cash "within two weeks". As they were friends, the deal was transacted without paperwork.

Weeks went by and no repayment was made. When Williams asked for his money, he was astounded to be told by Griffin that the money was "a loan to the party" (i.e. what remained of the National Front, or one of its splinters) not a personal loan to him, or a loan guaranteed by him, and that if Williams wanted his cash, he should chase the party.

But this was at the time that the remnant of the NF was splintering into little grouplets and Griffin was helping Roberto Fiore set up the International Third Position, so in effect there was no identifiable "party" to chase and any litigation against the then impecunious Griffin would be futile.'

[If this is indeed true, we doubt very much if it was Griffin's first swindle but this does sound very much like Griffin's first foray into the music business, Rock Against Communism, a cash-generating racist music scene that eventually evolved into the enormously successful Blood and Honour.

It is believed by many who were involved in the scene at the time that Griffin realised that the 'white power' music scene was a money-making scam of epic proportions but it appears he was eventually sussed by none other than Ian Stuart Donaldson, the late lead singer of Skrewdriver, one of the most famous bands in the whole Blood and Honour movement, who, with a few others who were involved (Nicky Crane of the British Movement being one) got the hell out and largely separated the music from the politics (and the thieves from the money). Great White Records doesn't seem to be doing quite as well.]

'JUNK PRINTING EQUIPMENT AND A DRUNK'S LIFE-SAVINGS

You will know that Griffin was eventually forced to quit the ITP after a deal which involved the purchase of printing equipment which turned out to be only just so much scrap iron; and swindling one of its members, Colin Todd, caretaker of the Fiore-owned building Liss House at Liss Forest, Hants.

Somehow Griffin persuaded Todd to "invest" his life savings in a venture. It was a scam and Todd lost the lot. When confronted with this cruel swindle Griffin shrugged it off, remarking that "Todd is a drunk".

The two thousand pounds loss which [Tony] Williams sustained as a result of Griffin's crookedness was not the worst aspect of the sting. It was the crass and cynical dishonouring of an agreement between two long-standing friends. Williams just could not believe Griffin could be so dishonest and so brazen - and so casual about a long friendship.'

[Which is precisely what he's going to do to the membership of the BNP - take their money and run.]

'THE FIRST FARM BUILDING RENOVATION SWINDLE

This made Williams loathe Griffin and, decades later, prompted him to make available to me a DVD copy of a video he had shot of a building restoration project which had taken place in 1984 on Hill House, the Griffin family home in Suffolk.

Griffin told the NF that he had persuaded his parents to grant the National Front's youth wing, the Young National Front, free use of a number of outbuildings of their farmhouse, but that restoration work would need to be done free of charge.

YNF and NF members went to the farm for weekend after weekend during that year and did hard and dangerous building work for no wage. They paid their own fares to and from the site and slept on the floors of the buildings they were renovating.

A SWINDLE WITH GRATIS AD LIB LAGER FUNDED "FREE MEALS"

They were given "free" meals, but the meals were in fact paid for by means of a petty swindle.

Williams had delivered to the site before work commenced a van-load of tins of continental lager which had just gone by their 'sell-by' date and could not be sold via the off-licence trade. Williams GAVE the lager for FREE distribution to the young idealists. Griffins knew a business opportunity when they saw it and they set to work grinding off off the 'sell-by' date from the cans, which were then SOLD to the workers at £1 per can! Easily £2 in today's values. But this was only a trivial side swindle.

The worst aspect of the main swindle - the building restoration - was that the youngsters were put to work on an a major asbestos clearance.

"IF HE DOESN'T BREAK HIS NECK HE'LL DIE OF ASBESTOS POISONING"

By that time a law had been passed requiring asbestos clearances to be conducted by specially licenced asbestos clearance contractors whose staff had been specially trained and who use special protective equipment and who bagged and disposed of asbestos waste in a prescribed manner.

Needless to say, the NF/YNF people were ignorant of the dangers and of the law governing such work, and they simply climbed on to the roof of "the Asbestos Barn" and hurled the asbestos sheets to the ground, sending up clouds of potentially lethal dust. This and other aspects of the work was filmed by Tony Williams on his video camera.

Griffin wrote and spoke a commentary to the video. His voice is unmistakable. At one point in the film John Field, then the organiser of Hackney YNF, is shown on the roof without any protective equipment or safety harness, hammering down asbestos sheets as clouds of dust rise.

Griffin remarks in his commentary: "If he doesn't break his neck, then he'll die of cancer due to asbestos poisoning".

This remark was made with cold matter-of-factness.

WHY SHOULD ALL THIS BE DRAGGED UP NOW - AFTER SO LONG A TIME?

Some may ask why such wickedness should be made an issue now.... "after all, it was a long time ago". There are two equally important answers, as follows:

Firstly, asbestosis is a terminal condition which takes decades to manifest itself. The people who as young men worked on the asbestos clearance at Hill House are now coming into the time when, if they have been unlucky, symptoms will start to present. They may have no idea what is happening to them, or why.

Secondly, anybody who in his 20s (an adult) who could perpetrate such a thing against anybody, let alone "comrades", and who could perpetrate sundry other swindles against friends and associates, is not somebody who at any subsequent time should have any trust reposed in them.

Needless to say, the property, once renovated, was never made available to the NF (nor was the video!!). The whole thing had been a trick whereby the Griffin family exploited their political connection to con young idealists to get dangerous, expensive and potentially lethal work done for free.'

[If the story about the lager is true, it simply shows what we already know - that Griffin will exploit anyone to make a quick buck. It just shows the actions of a petty thief. It's the other story that should concern us more - the asbestos story. If that's true and if evidence exists in the form of a film, it should be passed on to the police, Environmental Health and the Press with a view to pursuing criminal charges against Griffin. Without the film or at least evidence from the other people who were there at the time, this is all hearsay. With the film, Griffin could end up nicely tucked away in Strangeways. Come on Webster, do what's right.]

'VIDEO MADE TO CREATE ILLUSION OF "A HISTORIC PROJECT"

Griffin had only asked Williams to make the video to give the YNF lads the illusion they were engaged in "a historic project" - and how those innocents played up to the camera! Williams says he was as much conned as to the real purpose of being asked to make the video as he was conned by the use made of his supply of lager.

The work which those lads did added greatly the value of the Griffin property. When the property was sold, not a penny of the enhanced value created by the renovation work was directed to any nationalist political movement, as promised by Griffin at the outset.

Fiore and other of the Italian ITP prominenti occasionally turned up to Hill House inspect the good work, since the concept of a "rural community centres" was then very much one of their ideological fads.

One would have thought that the swindle they saw Griffin perpetrate against the NF would have warned them off trusting him with their financial affairs...but Fiore and his gang were then and are now greedy for money, so perhaps they admired Griffin's style.

THE SECOND FARM BUILDING RENOVATION SWINDLE

Griffin performed another "Barn conversion" swindle soon after he became chairman of the BNP in 1999 - in about 2001/2.

The BNP put up the money for the materials and provided free skilled labour for the renovation of his barn on his 'Y Gribbin' farm in Wales. This barn is supposed to function as a venue for party meetings. If as and when it is used as such, the party is invoiced by Griffin for its use. Griffin did not grant the party any equity in the property in return for its "investment" so that if as and when the farm is sold, the added value created by the barn renovation go entirely to Griffin and not a penny to the BNP.

For some reason Griffin never secured the video (with his commentary dubbed on it) of the Hill House outbuildings renovation of 1984. Perhaps in the hurley-burley of political splits and financial shenanigans he forgot all about it.

WILLIAMS' HILL HOUSE VIDEO GOES WALKABOUT

Williams left the NF at about the time of its final disintegration under Griffin's (mis)management and some time in the 1990s became head of the minuscule National Socialist Movement. The NSM became exposed by the media for one reason or another and Williams fled the country and settled in a far-off land. He took with him the video of the Hill House renovation.

Eventually he made a DVD conversion of the video and made available a copy to me. The ownership of the copyright of this film is retained by Williams under contract.

Information about this DVD has been given to a wide cross-section of the media. I have retained the complete file of all the negotiations which took place. In all instances there was an initial flurry of keen interest and then, in all cases, the interest suddenly evaporated without any explanation.'

[Share it with us - we'll spread it around!]

'THE STRANGE REACTION OF THE MEDIA

Can one imagine what the reaction of the media would be in normal circumstances where a politician - of ANY party - was on record on a DVD of being involved in such a matter and of commenting sarcastically about the possible death of one of his duped helpers?

To put the gravity of the current situation into some kind of perspective, one would have to recollect the kind of huge smears, based on the most trivial of pretexts, levelled at personalities in the National Front during the 1970s.

In 1978, for example, the Daily Mirror concocted a double-page spread exposing the organiser of a local branch of the NF as "a Nazi" because part of the minute pattern on his tie, when hugely enlarged, could be said to resemble a "pattern of swastikas"!

The NF official concerned (Paul Kavanagh) was a respectable middle-class importer of machine tools with no "Nazi" background whatsoever. Indeed, he was widely rumoured to be an MI5 informant (but that is another story!). He was co-founder with Andrew Fountaine of the "National Front Constitutional Movement".

How does that bit of nonsense about Paul Kavanagh's tie compare with Griffin's outrageous record?'

[A nazi is a nazi whether his tie identifies him or not. Griffin's record though, if all this is true, is appalling.]

'WHO KILLED-OFF DOMINIC CARMAN'S BIOGRAPHY OF NICK GRIFFIN?

My recent experiences of the media via-a-vis Griffin seem to be very similar to that of the author Dominic Carman (son of the famous libel lawyer, the late George Carman QC).

Three years ago Carman was engaged in researching Griffin prior to producing a biography. Carman subjected me to two long in-depth interviews, the first was video-taped, the second audio-taped. He took copies of a lot of documents I have on file. The questioning covered a lot of ground, including most intimate matters.

In-between Carman's first and second interview with me, he had visited the Griffin farmhouse home in Wales. I understand he spent the weekend there and took the opportunity to interview Nick's wife Jacky separately from her husband Nick.

She was very frank on delicate matters. Carman also took information from former pupils at a girls public school in Suffolk, whose sixth form Nick and one or two other lads were permitted to attend. The information which they gave chimed with that provided by Jackie and provided context for my information in the same general area of sexuality.'

[This is presumably yet another reference to Griffin's interestingly hypocritical past.]

'THE ESTABLISHMENT IS HAPPY WITH GRIFFIN AS BNP CHAIRMAN

Two years rolled by but Carman's book did not appear. A brief article about Griffin by Carman appeared in the Daily Mail colour supplement about a year ago which was clearly based on his book researches, but since then there has been complete silence.

Intrigued by this, I e-mailed Carman on 25th April this year, saying:

"..... you will understand my wondering if the reason why your book on Griffin has not appeared has anything to do with my experiences of trying to get quite crucial information about Griffin's character and background into the public arena at a time when the mainstream media profiles of him are edging towards hagiography. Any reply will be kept confidential by me if you so request....."

Carman received my e-mail but has sent no response. I quite understand. He wants to be able to continue to earn his living from the mainstream media.

For want of any other explanation, I feel entitled to propose that the media was and is being orchestrated not to do anything to dislodge Griffin from his perch at the top of the BNP.

It is evident that the Establishment has every reason to be happy to have [a] creature like Griffin at the head of the premiere "nationalist" party in Britain, just as it is happy to have corrupt creatures at the head of every other political party which strives for the rewards which only Establishment patronage can bestow.'

Apart from detesting Griffin for all the reasons laid out above, we can't see any particular reason for Webster to make all this stuff up. Apart from anything else, the information in the article simply confirms much that is already known (but from the other side, as it were) except the shocking asbestos story, which we feel deserves a far wider readership than we can give it.

Webster clearly has his own agenda and appears to be driven to write all this down by his loathing of BNP leader Nick Griffin. Nevertheless, the items in the article should be essential reading for anti-fascists and BNP members alike. The latter should at least be afforded the opportunity to quiz their party leader to discover how much truth there is to the items. If they could see the film too, it could dramatically change the way the current party loyalists view their not so glorious leader.

NICK GRIFFIN: profile of a fascist

As we approach the beginning of the Hope not Hate Anti-Fascist Fortnight, we thought we'd pinch the odd useful article from the website to help spread the word. Here's the first, starting at the top with Nick Griffin, fascist and Holocaust-denier.

The British National Party (BNP) leader, Nick Griffin, presents himself as a modern, respectable politician but he is nothing of the sort. For over 30 years he has been a hardline fascist. He denies the Holocaust happened, believes that Jews are conspiring against white British people and even today cavorts with some of the world's most hardline Nazis.

Born in 1959 Nick Griffin comes from a wealthy right-wing family. His father, Edgar was a Conservative party member, involved in Iain Duncan Smith's campaign for election as party leader until he was discovered answering a BNP hotline in the absence of Griffin's mother who had also stood as a BNP candidate against Duncan Smith in during the 2001 general election.

Influenced by British Union of Fascists literature on the "Jewish Question" Griffin attended his first National Front aged 15, though did not officially join the party until he was a student at Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied law gaining a lower second-class degree. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming the national student organiser in 1978.

In 1980, Griffin launched Nationalism Today, a font of "Third Positionist" fascism, which claimed to transcend the evils of both capitalism and communism. Both ideologies, Griffin claimed, were identical as both concentrated private ownership in very few hands, infringing on the right of independence of nation states and, most fundamentally, being Zionist (that is, Jewish) controlled.

Strange bedfellows

During this period Griffin became influenced by Italian fascist Roberto Fiore, a member of the Italian Third Position who introduced Griffin to the blood and soil philosophy of Italian nazi theorist Julius Evola. Under Griffin the NF embraced Third Position politics. Becoming known as "political soldiers" NF representatives met with Colonel Gaddafi's regime through the Libyan People's Bureau in London, and expressed support for Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Griffin and other leading NF figures then took an all-expenses-paid fundraising trip to Libya as guests of the Gaddafi regime.

Expressing his support for Muslim fundamentalism (which the BNP now paradoxically deplores) Griffin wrote in National Front News that "common interest must be turned into practical cooperation" and that he and his colleagues were not afraid "to be seen standing side by side with Third Way nations such as Libya and Iran." Griffin also backed black separatist Louis Farrakhan who likewise called for racial apartheid.

In 1989 Griffin left the NF to form the International Third Position, a small reactionary fascist sect, which campaigned against Coca Cola, McDonald's, urbanisation and "Zionism" (the Jews). Griffin's involvement was not to last.

In 1990 he lost an eye in an accident. In 1991, after a failed business venture, which cost another member several thousand pounds, Griffin went his own way.
Political chameleon

In 1995, Griffin joined the BNP. His personal journal The Rune, an antisemitic quarterly produced by Croydon BNP served as a platform for opposing the "modernisation" of the BNP, accusing those who wanted change of "rainbow Conservatism". He also announced that the BNP should prioritise denying the Holocaust to schoolchildren.

Griffin became editor of Spearhead, the flagship BNP journal in 1996 and set out to take over the party, initially seeking a merger with the National Front. In the process Griffin jettisoned many of his core beliefs - at least publicly. Recognising that the BNP was unelectable with some of its policies, Griffin dropped its commitment to compulsory repatriation - though the small print allows for the option to be considered if not enough people accept their financial offer to return home.

In 1998 Griffin was found guilty of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred and was given a two year suspended sentence.

In 1999 he ousted BNP founder John Tyndall to become BNP chairman. In a bid to emulate the success of groups like the French National Front, with which the BNP has close links, Griffin has deliberately toned down the hardline rhetoric of the "old" BNP in exchange for limited electoral success.

Puzzled by Griffin's apparent conversion to the ballot box his former ITP comrades asked pointedly: "He has been a conservative, a revolutionary nationalist, a radical national Socialist, a Third Positionist, a friend of the 'boot boys' and the skinhead scene, a man committed to respectable politics and electioneering, a 'moderniser'. Which is he in reality?"

Replying to criticism within the far right, Griffin told a private meeting of American nazis and racists that while the BNP needed to change to get elected, his core beliefs - that of the superiority of the white race - remained his driving force.

Out of the glare of the British media Griffin maintains close links with white supremacists and racial scientists who promote spurious racial science. Griffin denied being a racist but is only too happy to consort with leading American extremists including former KKK leaders David Duke and Don Black through forums such as American Renaissance, which seeks to promote the "clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites".

Griffin speaks of the need for community-based politics to build respectability for the BNP in the eyes of voters. Yet this is the same Nick Griffin who only a few years before wrote in The Rune that the only "well-directed boots and fists" could back up BNP policies "not of rational debate."

Griffin stood in Oldham in the hope of exploiting race riots during the 2001 general election. He gained 16%. During the 2005 general election Griffin stood in Keighley, West Yorkshire, again trying to exploit racial tensions. He polled 4,240 votes (9.16%).

In 2006 he was charged again with inciting racial hatred after calling Islam "a wicked, vicious faith" and that Muslims were guilty of turning Britain into "a multi-racial hell hole." He was acquitted of all charges, subsequently basking in unheralded publicity, which helped raise the profile of the BNP ahead of the May 2006 local elections.

Griffin is a typical fascist - a man for all people. He is also an outrageous opportunist. There is not a bandwagon or campaign he would not exploit or a political belief he would not jettison if he thought he could benefit.

Griffin the Holocaust denier

Despite Griffin's new moderate image, he remains a Holocaust Denier. He has attacked Holocaust denier David Irving for being too moderate (!) for admitting that some Jews did indeed die during the Holocaust claiming the "True Revisionists will not be fooled by this new twist to the sorry tale of the Hoax of the Twentieth Century." His views on the Holocaust led in 1998 to a conviction for distributing material likely to incite racial hatred. He received a two-year suspended jail sentence.

Griffin remains an ardent Holocaust denier. Even today, he still refuses to accept the Holocaust happened. In 2006 he was quoted in the Mail on Sunday as saying: "It's well known that the chimneys from the gas chambers at Auschwitz are fake, built after the war ended."

On his farm in Wales Griffin has, according to Wales on Sunday, two pigs one called "Anne" and another called "Frank" - a crude anti-Semitic parody of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl whose wartime diary, written whilst she was in hiding in Amsterdam is a world famous indictment of Nazi persecution of the Jews. Anne Frank was later betrayed and died in a concentration camp. Apparently Griffin thinks this is funny.

Griffin admitted to the Mail on Sunday that the legacy of Hitler gave British Nationalism a bad name, but in the same interview he traces the roots of the BNP back to the 1930s - to the British Union of Fascists who were praised in Griffin's own magazine The Rune during the 1990s.

Griffin the anti-Semite

In 1997 Nick Griffin produced Who are the Mindbenders? Adapted from a US Nazi publication of the same name, it claims to prove that the minds of British people are brainwashed through Jewish control of the media. The booklet includes a list of all known Jews working in the media as though they are working together for a joint cause. He proves Jewish control of the BBC by naming a mere 19 Jews who work for the corporation. He has never repudiated this work.

Griffin in quotes

On the Holocaust

I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat… I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter-day witch-hysteria."

On Race

Without the White race, nothing matters. [Other right-wing parties] believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create 'Black Britons', while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land."

On power

When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate. We have to have a body of trained young men capable of defending our organisation. If people come to crack our heads we will break theirs."

On Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf

The chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation - there were some really useful ideas there."

Hope not Hate Anti-Fascist Fortnight