Brewing up in Yorkshire

It's been a pretty devastating couple of months for the BNP in Yorkshire, even more so than the rest of the country. Here are some brief highlights:-

The granny pornmeister Ian Kitchen becoming and then resigning as the Yorks organiser in place of the slightly effectual Chris Beverley -

Jordan "woodteats" Pont laughably becoming the Sheffield organiser -

A very bad result in the recent Barnsley By-Election and the "OMG the other parties have used a graphic designer who knows what they are doing" response -

Nick Griffins' number one bestest fan Tom Holmes is

'staying at the crisis centre for a while, they're helping me with my medication'

Hurry back soon Tom, your political talents are our greatest fear -

The very funny spat between Adam Walker who is the third Yorkshire organiser this year and Nick Cass who set up a "this is not a BNP Reform Meeting" a couple of weeks ago and is now suspended for six months which will rule him out of running for the leadership this year.

Now comes the news that earlier today Chris Beverley, Andy Kershaw (no not that one this is a different one) and Gary Pudsey have been suspended by text message (classy touch) to stop them attending a Yorkshire officials meeting tonight. This in turn has led to the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth from members on various fora, blogs and Facebook pages and the slowly dawning realisation that the BNP is well on it's way to being finished.

Don't Panic! Everything's Fine On Planet Griffin!

The Welshpool Bunker. Earlier today (Artist's Impression)

The BNP is on her deathbed. A few Mourners sit around in the darkened bedroom weeping silently while others, downstairs in the kitchen, discuss the state of the Old Girl's finances and who's going to get what when the estate gets divvied up.

The Priest has delivered the last rites and she's asleep now: A Doctor checks the pulse from time to time to see if She's still with us.

But wait! Something's wrong!

She's still Tweeting! And all is well! She's FINE!!

Have a look:

October 18th.

News reaches us at L.U that the Party is, in effect, insolvent. Jim Dowson's astonishing letter offering Creditors 20p in the Pound to settle up is published.

This, in itself, would be enough to finally proclaim to the World that the Jig Is Up, and the BNP have now ceased to function in any meaningful capacity.

Over on Nick Griffin's Twitter Account, however...

“When I think back to the bewilderment when we started I see how far we've come in a year.”

He helpfully adds;

“All votes for tomorrow worked out in good time. The team is really effective now.”

Phew! That's alright, then: The mere fact that the Party has no money and is reduced to desperately touting an insulting last-ditch offer around its own Suppliers might, dare one say, worry a lesser man. Nick, however, is made of sterner stuff, and can obviously see The Big Picture denied to we lesser mortals.

Two days later the Party make the National News, with the not-entirely-mystifying revelation that the Derbyshire Police Service would quite like to know just where they're planning on holding their 2010 Conference in December (which, displaying a keen grasp of satire I'd long thought beyond the BNP is subtitled “Moving Forward Together”. Presumably in the same way as lemmings are said to “Move Forward Together” in times of famine).

Quite understandably, Superintendent Gary Parkin would like to have a bit of notice of the Event in order to tell several hundred of his Bobbies where to go and stand; his years of Exemplary Service having given him the insight that several hundred of us will be planning on turning out to yell at the Delegates.

Nick Griffin MEP takes the matter in hand and cuts right to the heart of the Vexed Issue:

“Walking round German vineyard on phone gone 1 a.m. Working out admin systems with Nat Organiser.” A couple of minutes later he adds “Actually rather surreal. A very strange life. Good night to all BNP late birds.”

There's Cool for you: This man's Upper Lip must be so rigid you could hammer nails into seasoned Oak with it.

Onto the 22nd. From out of nowhere (well, actually from out of The Guardian's Jobs website – with a few words changed) appears a job vacancy on the BNP's Site.

Specifically, it's Jim Dowson's job. Suddenly vacant.

The specification states that the successful Candidate will be charged with raising £4 Million over the next three years. Not an issue, apparently, as the current Incumbent has been (it says here) raising £1.5 Million a year anyway...

But what of Dowson? Pray tell, Nick, what of the Good Reverend?

Here, the mask slips. Unable to ignore so momentous a piece of news as his Great Industry Expert – the Clyde to his Bonnie, one might say – leaving the Party, Nick can barely keep his moby dry from the tears as he Tweets of Dowson's “sad” decision not to renew his contract;

“All in all a remarkable man to whom we owe a great deal and who remains a good friend and true patriot.”

Of course, this isn't all that's occurred over the past week: The BNP have also “lost” (or mislaid?) Communications Director Paul Golding, three more Councillors, and have handed several vital Party functions over to Patrick Harrington (a Leader of rival organisation the National Liberal Party) and dim-bulb Party Enforcer Clive Jefferson.

The BNP Leadership have also been lambasted by ex-stalwart Nick Cass, embarrassed (if such a thing is possible – such a thing could easily be an alien concept within the Party) by Jim “The Bruce” Dowson's bizarre rants and infantile, scatological taunts on various Far-Right Talkboards and, only this evening, we hear that the BNP have been locked out of their own Nerve Centre – the Belfast office owned by (surprise, surprise...) one J Dowson, esq. Who's changed the locks.

“All in all a remarkable man to whom we owe a great deal and who remains a good friend and true patriot.”

Griffin, on all these matters, has been silent since Friday.

Interestingly, Paul “Green Arrow” Morris has also remained quiet on his beloved BNP's Demise until now. Only tonight has he finally broken his silence - if only to attack one of the Councillors who has resigned. In the grubby, confused little mind of Morris it being, of course, a far greater crime to resign over the Party's woeful treatment of its Creditors than to continue to fleece Suppliers, Members and Anyone Else Who Happens To Be Passing At The Time And Looks Gullible Enough. Go on, Kinsman: Show 'em the Black Flag.

(One of Morris' Followers adds in the Comments - displaying a level of optimism sure to melt even the stoniest of hearts - "The BNP will continue to grow =)".)

I look forward to reading Griffin's next Tweet.

It'll probably tell me how great everything is for the BNP.

Or maybe how nice Croatia is at this time of year.

Barnbrook announces a new leadership challenge.

No, not Little Dicky, the other one.

The BNP's very own super dooper sleazebuster Michael Barnbrook has announced his intention to run for the BNP leadership next year in this statement published on another forum:-

Leadership Challenge

I am very concerned at all this talk of starting up a new political party. It will not work. Eddy Butler would be the first person to tell you that. The British National Party is a brand name and with the right leader, who knows what might happen. There are hundreds of thousands of voters out there who would vote for the British National Party if it had a leader who carried no baggage. In just over one year I will be able to put myself forward as a leadership challenger. I carry no baggage and with the support of commited nationalists such as Nick Cass and Eddy Butler I am prepared to put myself forward as a leadership challenger. I urge you all to hang on in there. I am no spring chicken but totally committed saving the British National Party.

Michael Barnbrook
BNP Sleazebuster


Now my first impressions of the statement are that he isn't aware of the BNP's current rules about their leadership challenges as "In just over one year I will be able to put myself forward as a leadership challenger" really means he won't be able to challenge Griffin until the summer of 2012. Unless of cause it's a cock up on his part and that really won't inspire confidence in his campaign.
After looking closely at how Eddy Butler has operated in his leadership challenge over these last few months there is no way that post went anywhere near Butler unless he was pissed up in a brothel.

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

Bishop's call to beat the BNP

The Bishop of Wakefield says people should show the humanity in their hearts by not voting for the BNP.

During the Easter weekend religious groups are pleading with voters to use their vote wisely at the European election in June.

The Rt Rev Stephen Platten, bishop of the Wakefield Diocese, said: “I would encourage people to vote, because my inclination is that the vast majority of people would be voting for one of the mainstream parties. But I want to say I would hope they would use their vote not just responsibly, but with the most generous view of our humanity in their hearts, so they did not appoint any party they thought was being exclusive or divisive on racial grounds.”

All of Yorkshire is represented as one constituency with six Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) elected by proportional representation. There are six BNP candidates standing for the seats, including Wakefield candidate Nick Cass.

The Dean of Wakefield, the Very Rev Jonathan Greener, said: “There is an old saying that applies here, the only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing. What we are trying to do is tell people to get out there and vote so that we don’t get a Yorkshire candidate with racial policies voted in.

“We don’t want those people elected just because of the apathy and laziness of people who haven’t bothered to vote. People don’t always make the effort to vote, especially in the European elections, but there will be certain enthusiasts who will. We want to encourage people to get out and off their backsides to vote.”

Other churches groups, across the district say they do not want Yorkshire represented by a racist MEP.

Clive Barrett, ecumenical officer for West Yorkshire, said: “The Christian message is of hope and unity; the BNP promote hate and division. I would urge every Christian to ‘use your cross’ and to cast your vote for one of the other parties.”

The European election takes place on Thursday, June 4.

Wakefield Express

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

Sexuality and Aids and the concept of a relationship, how does a man and a woman relate, going through history, between Captains Scott and Oates, between Christ and John the Baptist and the Mother Earth walking through carrying the flag...it's almost like a still-born child, how does people relate to each other...it was dealing with the bigotry of attitudes towards people.

Before you conclude that Barnes had been at the funny fags again, the quote was actually Richard Barnbrook speaking to the Independent, as posted by a bemused Antifascist.

Even by the standards of the extreme Right Barnbrook is an exotic oddity. Antifascist noted:

There are certain snippets in the interview that reveal rather more about Barnbrook than the general membership of the BNP might care to know. He presents himself for the interview in a sand-coloured linen suit (with matching socks) and a gold tie. His ex-council house home, we are told, has cream carpets and visitors have to remove their shoes before entering. His television is covered by a cream throw and his mobile ringtone features a chorister singing Jerusalem.

But the oddest thing about Barnbrook (to that date) concerned his claim to have had a relationship with the actress Tilda Swinton, which Ms Swinton - not unnaturally - vehemently denied. Barnbrook's response was: "I've got DNA proof that I went out with her."

What the nature of this proof was, Barnbrook didn't tell - or if he did, the Independent thought it too disgusting the publish. Perhaps future girlfriends should be advised to back off at some speed if approached by a Barnbrook armed with a cotton bud?

Barnbrook's lucky elevation to the Greater London Assembly also elevated him above the BNP's small number of common or garden district and borough councillors, and made him, after Nick Griffin, the BNP's best known personality.

Things like that make Griffin twitchy, and sensing future danger to his position the BNP leader immediately saddled Barnbrook with deputy-leader and toady-in-chief Simon Darby as one of Barnbrook's "researchers". Acting, we believe, more as his Nickship's eyes and ears than as a researcher for Barnbrook, this at least gave former the rubber magnate something approaching real work to do, though we imagine Barnbrook would soon tire of Darby exclaiming "Yes, Nick, superb Nick, marvellous Nick" at least thirty times a day on one of his extensive collection of mobile phones.

Antifascist commented:

Barnbrook has become the BNP's most high profile member - of far more interest to the membership and the media than its leader Nick Griffin. Which really should make Barnbrook nervous. The last time someone became unaccountably more popular than Griffin - the BNP's then 'Cultural Officer' Jonathan Bowden - the attack dogs were set on him and he was forced into resignation. Griffin has never liked competition and will destroy anyone who looks set to usurp his position.

Barnbrook is clearly setting out his stall for both the assault on Parliament and leadership of the BNP. My guess is that if the former doesn't work out in two years time, he'll go full pelt for the latter.

Barnbrook's keen interest in the preservation of DNA is shared by the police, who used it in evidence against BNP supporter Kevin David, of Leytonstone. David was convicted for sending a hate letter to local councillor Maria Pye, who is disabled. DNA from David was found on the envelope. In language not a million miles removed from that found on many BNP blogs, David wildly emoted:

I see you talk a lot about the regeneration of Leytonstone and how there are going to be new shops and businesses. But the whole world can see how these scumbags are pushing the British people out. There are five million of these scumbags wanting to live here and open shops here.

Leytonstone has become a cesspit and ghetto for these scum. I see you walking around with a walking stick. Why don't you f**k **f you f** c**? Now there are 50 million scumbags in the UK. BNP for ever. Don't look for the real cockneys because they have already left. Asians out. Africans out. Europeans out.

Later David, with an existing conviction for ABH, was given an 18-month supervision order, and ordered to attend a six-month rehabilitation course. He was also ordered to pay £100 in compensation to Maria Pye and £70 in court costs.

We had cause to revisit the world of fantasy and fiction inhabited by Patrick Harrington and his tiny band of Third Way/National Liberal Party supporters when this strange confection of old National Front failures and tall-story tellers lighted upon the (stolen, of course) idea of bringing down upon their greying heads the proceeds of a "Money Bomb" for "liberty".

Patrick Harrington (or PA Sharp as he prefers to be known when conducting certain financial transactions) apparently being blessed with the ability to "order" a website into existence at a time of his choosing, a tacky website duly appeared calling upon 10,000 of the internet's most credulous dimwits to donate £10 each in return for a vague promise that "Everything given will go towards promoting a Liberty Party in the UK".

We said:

Exactly what the Third Way/NLP is intended to achieve - aside from cushioning Patrick Harrington from the truth of his own abject irrelevance - is unclear. For an organisation (if so large a word may be employed to describe something so insubstantial) to find itself with only twenty members after eighteen years of existence is the clearest of proofs that its only achievement has been utter failure.

However, even in the fantastically unreal world of Third Way/NLP there persists a belief that there is money to be made from the gullible and the deceived, and Mr Harrington and his colleagues have fixed themselves to make it through the mechanism of an appeal warped into the guise of a "mass donation" for "Liberty" aimed at putting £100,000 into the Third Way/NLP purse.

Or more specifically putting it into the pockets of certain Third Way/NLP individuals via the servicing of regular expenses claims.

After our story went up, something wonderful happened on the hitherto lifeless Third Way/NLP scam website - people began donating. Allegedly.

At the end of play the bogus appeal had supposedly raised £3,510, 10,000 credulous dimwits not being to hand. This was a mere £96,490 short of the extravagant £100,000 target, but we're sure that Mr "PA Sharp" ("it's my married name") and his little troop of fellow fantasists will account for every penny when they file the Third Way/NLP's returns with the Electoral Commission this year.

Also on the scrounge was Mr Sharp's friend Nick Griffin, who also prefers to deal in large sums of money but has a better chance of obtaining it. Nick thought that the British people needed to be told "the truth", and decided that the best way to do it was to haul a terrifying picture of Nick Cass up and down the by-ways of the country on the back of a 7.5 ton lorry. To this end he needed £39,000 sharpish and the begging letters went out. The "Truth Truck", as Nick christened it, would be brand new and would incorporate a state-of-the-art PA system together with light display features. Stormfront cynics with healthier bank-balances than the average appeal-prone BNP member were quick to label Griffin's latest wheeze the "Lie Lorry". As the truck eventually purchased was not new and incorporated neither a state-of-the-art PA system or light display features, the cynics were proved right, and the name "Lie Lorry" has ever since stuck as fast as Nick Cass's grinning face to the mobile propaganda project.

As the campaign to stop the BNP holding its annual Red White and Blue festival at Denby in Derbyshire continued, the one BNP member in the world who had no intention of going got into a strop when the police objected to the festival on public order grounds. This was Paul Morris, better known as the Green Arrow, who - perhaps with an empty whisky bottle rolling around his feet - angrily typed out the following into his blog:

Denby Police, sh*t eaters, who will one day have their pensions stripped from them by a vengeful British Public [read: fascist BNP] who never forget.

The UAF, pathetic sad losers who must blush with shame when they take their pieces of silver from their government pay masters. Rest assured we will not forget them.

The BNP learns the lessons of history and never forgets and will use the same tools against those who assist in the betrayal of the British People. Think about that Plod if you are capable of thought. We are watching you watching us.

Morris illustrated his point with a large picture obtained from a pornographic website catering to those with a deep interest in "scat" activities. This was removed by Blogger following complaints, followed by the entire post when the idiotic Morris realised that the BNP candidate in the Henley by-election was due to hold his press conference, and might be asked awkward questions about his fellow BNP member's blog. A chastened Morris replaced the post with one using an image of a beheaded young Muslim girl, and with his heroic friends resumed a campaign of intimidation and abuse against a young woman of Pakistani extraction who - it was the most curious thing - found herself unable to heap praise on the BNP or to show respect for its members in their ancient online mission to connect their feet with their mouths at every available opportunity.

Financial probity and the BNP having much the same relationship as ships that pass in the night (a very dark night, and at a very great distance), it was never going to be very long before yet another tale of BNP economic woe arrived to fill our pages. This came with the news that treasurer John Walker (left, a suspect in the later membership list leak scandal) had been removed from his post and shifted sideways into the gloriously titled position of National Dispatch and Logistics Manager.

Opening a well-written piece on some strange goings-on, Antifascist reported:

There's more chaos in the British National Party this weekend as branches reel from the news that once again their accounts have been rifled to prop up an incompetent and extravagant party management.

Furious fundholders have been in touch with us to complain that their local accounts have been raided again because head office has disastrously overspent and can no longer manage to balance the books without thieving from the branches. Another fundholder with a direct line to the treasury has revealed that the main BNP account has hit rock-bottom and stood at less than £3000 a few days ago - not a great deal for a so-called 'major' political party.

It's a measure of the distrust endemic within the BNP that many of the party's officials place more confidence in their enemies here at Lancaster Unity than they do in their own organisation, and are prepared to rely upon us getting out truths that would otherwise be buried beneath Griffinite spin and bluster.

In respect of the unpopular raid on BNP branch funds, Antifascist wrote:

Incompetence in the BNP is endemic but nowhere is it more evident than in the treasury. The File on Four programme, broadcast by Radio Four back in February, produced a whole raft of accusations of mismanagement, skullduggery and incompetence against Walker and his merry band of idiots, including the revelation that the BNP is behind with its PAYE payments (that is, the tax it takes from employee's wage packets that it is then supposed to pass on to HM Revenue and Customs). Naturally, the party still hasn't paid the bill and part of the reason for the sudden attack on branch funds was that Her Majesty was getting a tad ratty about the lack of revenue coming from the BNP. Not that the raid helped all that much - last month alone, the party paid out nearly forty thousand pounds on wages, expenses and part of the debt to the Revenue plus a further part-debt to Royal Mail.

Just how rocky the BNP's finances were was revealed in internal documents that fell in our way later in the year.

Walker's sideways shuffle into the post of National Dispatch and Logistics Manager, based at the then secret Deeside Excalibur merchandising operation, attracted the attention of disaffected BNP councillor Colin Auty, whose leadership challenge was clearly failing as Griffinite intimidation deterred members from signing his nomination papers. Antifascist believed that John Walker had been moved rather than sacked to buy his silence. Auty was more forthright:

He has been privy to a great deal of the shady and downright deceitful dealings of Mr Griffin over the last couple of years, so much so in fact that Griffin has been, for sometime, completely perplexed on how he is going to get rid of him without risking John doing the honourable thing and exposing the corruption and pressure that he has himself been compliant with for so long.

Auty wasn't backwards in coming forwards in the matter of Griffin's purging tendencies, either:

'He would merely isolate the victim by concocting lies about them concerning financial ‘irregularities’ (somewhat ironically), aimed carefully at his victim before unleashing his attack-dogs to finish the job with personal attacks and slanderous gossip. Occasionally the victim would then be pulled apart at an Advisory Council meeting in their absence complete with the customary ‘such a shame’ crocodile tears. Without being afforded the opportunity to defend themselves, the victim would be cast out as a leper from the Party. Those sat around the AC table, however shocked or confused that the ‘evidence’ spewed out regarding one of their comrades is entirely unsubstantiated, would very often sit in silence though fear of becoming the next victim. This is a standard Griffin modus operandi, as many of his decent and hardworking victims have been only too happy to confirm and share with us.'

Auty threw in the towel a few days later

With Richard Barnbrook hauling his exalted carcass about the corridors of City Hall, the leadership of the BNP group on Barking and Dagenham Council fell to f-word specialist and megaphone expert Bob Bailey, who was not best pleased with Barking College for hosting a Love Music Hate Racism event. Confronting principal Ted Parker, Bailey darkly warned of "trouble" if the college continued to host such events. Mr Parker told the Barking and Dagenham Recorder:

He was perfectly civil but he was obviously agitated. He seemed to be saying our students were in danger. As he left he said 'you have been warned', which sort of stuck it my mind. I thought it was a little strange. We have been involved with LMHR for a couple of years now. We oppose racism and promote harmony between people of all backgrounds, that's our ethos.

Bailey told the Recorder that "people should be able to speak freely without fear", just as he did when yelling obscenities at the paper's staff.

"Speaking freely without fear" is not a concept readily encouraged within the BNP, where "fear to speak freely" are the usual watchwords to heed unless you are possessed of a pressing urge to attract accusations that you are State, a Searchlight mole, in the pay of Lancaster Unity, Red, Nazi, mad, bad or any permutation thereof.

The scales fell from the eyes of the party's Scottish webmaster Paul Johnson after less than a year of membership. Johnson was shocked when an inquiry he made on behalf of another member was answered with a mixture of contempt and paranoia by Simon Darby. All Johnson's friend had wanted was a copy of the BNP constitution, an item always available to members of other political parties, but in BNP-land wanting to see the much revised and Griffinised constitution is akin to an act of treason.

Johnson said: "His [Darby's] words on the subject were why do you want it? Just tell him to "F*$k Off!" He is only a 'red' trying to wind you up!"

Johnson's resignation statement began:

What have I learned about the BNP in almost a year of being a paid member and as a BNP Scotland official, that a lot of the rumours are true and the party is corrupt, and is not democratic in any shape or form. Infact one might go as far to say that its not necessarily British but more of lets follow Griffin and blow smoke up his arse!

The party is full of a lot of lemmings that think Nick Griffin/ Mark Collett are some sort of 'Gods' in the making. I suppose when you surround yourself with lemmings it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you are the greatest person who walked the earth.

Before jumping to the conclusion that Johnson is a fundamentally decent man, he came to notice again on The Croft blog at the time of the membership list leak:

Paul also has a nice sideline in making cheerful wee button badges extolling such wonderful sentiments as:

England: Love it or leave it!
There Is No Black In The Union Jack!
White Power!

…as well as some fetching SS badges, Enoch Powell Was Right! badges and the ubuiqitous No To Immigration!

Lovely stuff!

Surely Mr J isn’t a white settler himself? Coming over here, taking all our racist badgemaking jobs…

Quite.

To be continued...

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

Observing the convention that it really is very cruel to mock the afflicted, Lancaster Unity had rarely paid more than passing attention to the ravings of the BNP's most prominent case of spittle-flecked derangement, one Lee John Barnes, the party's foul-mouthed legal advisor, UFO-spotter, scientific researcher, cosmologist, philosopher, composer of E.J. Thribb-style poetry and possible future winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Barnes had long ground and gnashed his teeth in angry tirades against this little outpost of anti-fascism, and probably would have bitten his own tail too, if he had one. All winter Lee smouldered and fumed but what seemed to push him over the edge was the surprise of the Decembrist revolt, which he attacked in interminable screeds of mis-spelled prose so maniacal that we wondered if he wouldn't soon find himself in the guest book of some nearby Happy House.

As Nick Griffin felt that Lee Barnes was sane enough to hold a leading position within the BNP, we forsook convention and opened March 2008 with a post devoted to the antics of the loopy legal advisor, highlighting some of his incisive takes on well-known personalities and even a government ministry:

Jeremy Paxman: "Jeremy Paxman, BBC journalist on a million quid a year and hypocritical liberal arsehole... Paxman your a fucking arsehole mate."

The RMT's Bob Crow: "...retarded Marxist thug... The RMT is run by a clique of political dinosaurs around their own little tin pot Stalin, Comrade Bob."

BBC producer Nasreen Suleaman: "Stupid lieing Taqqiya bitch."

The Home Office: "(for members of the press / government / police reading this I have copyrighted the words THE MYSTERONS to describe the non-Muslim Islamist terrorists who are not motived by Islam/ Islamism. Therefore if any overpaid fifthwit in the Home Office uses my copyrighted phrase to describe Al Qaeda / THE MYSTERONS then I will sue your ass )."

Among other Barnesian treasures we recorded his libelling of journalist (and, apparently, "liberal wanker") Fergal Keane, and noticed the first of his empty threats to take legal action against this site.

One person on the extreme-Right not impressed by Barnes was former BNP member and barrister Adrian Davies, characterised by Barnes as "The Mekon - sad, inadequate dwarf".

This same Adrian Davies, posting on the Nazi Stormfront under a nom-de-plume, had an interesting tale to tell about "an incompetent saddo wannabe lawyer" (Barnes) who took on the case of a BNP member expelled by rail union ASLEF. Davies wrote:

Wannabe had the use of the train driver’s computer to help him to prepare the case. He used it to post grossly libellous attacks on several ASLEF officials on a website called trueaslef.com. These libels were complete inventions of Wannabe’s, but he used the train driver's name when posting, because after all, Wannabe is in his own estimation (though no-one else’s) a very important person indeed, and working class nobodies such as train drivers are expendable.

Barnes had, apparently, posted that the ASLEF officials had stolen union funds and used them to finance five-star Cuban holidays in the company of prostitutes. Davies again:

When the case came to Court, Wannabe went on holiday to Cornwall because he is a coward and a liar, and was afraid to give evidence. The train driver went down for a huge amount despite his barrister's best efforts. The trouble was, the jury wanted to know why Wannabe wasn't there to 'fess up and dig the train driver out of the hole into which he had dropped him.

Another likely candidate for the funny farm was millionaire businessman Paul Cromie, a councillor and then recently appointed Bradford BNP organiser. According to the BNP website, Cromie "is not only a man who talks the talk, but also walks the walk". What this means in BNP terms is anybody's guess, since Cromie had come to the notice of the Standards Board on a number of occasions, notably over allegations of vote-buying and that he had sent pornographic emails via his council email address.

Bradford BNP had been falling apart through 2007, its members openly feuding in a snake-pit atmosphere that brought it to the edge of collapse by the end of the year. In particular there was entrenched hatred between Paul Cromie and former councillor James Lewthwaite, who Cromie wanted expelled from the BNP.

Lewthwaite's siding with the December rebels effectively achieved Cromie's dearest wish, but Cromie was so beside himself with glee that he couldn't resist misusing an internal BNP email list to send out a large number of mails containing a scanned newspaper report of a driving ban earned by Lewthwaite, together with the message that "everything Lewthwaite touches turns to" guano.

Later in the year the BNP would be screaming to the rafters about the Data Protection Act and its leaked membership list, but was curiously silent on the matter of rich donor Cromie's alleged abuse of the same Act. We said:

It's hard to believe that a cretin like Cromie is a retired (and wealthy) businessman and currently a Bradford councillor, and it's difficult to work out why Cromie would apparently breach the Data Protection laws just to cock a snook at Lewthwaite. Perhaps he's just over-excited at having recently been appointed to the organiser role at Bradford, much to the disgust of the rest of Bradford's BNP except for the also-recently-appointed Yorkshire Regional Organiser, ex-Combat 18 thug Adrian Marsden. Marsden and Cromie are friends from way back.

The BBC began its "White" season, a series of programmes allegedly focussing on white working class attitudes. Condemned as "patronising" by some, and as pandering to racism by others, "White" satisfied few and settled nothing. It did, however, provide the flagship Newsnight with an opportunity to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin into the studio and - despite later unconvincing dissembling on the part of the BBC - gave him a perfect and entirely predictable opportunity to vilify Muslims as being responsible for the drug trade in Britain.

The harshest criticism for allowing Griffin on to Newsnight came from the unlikely figure of right-wing former Sun columnist and broadcaster Jon Gaunt, who was appearing on the same programme:

Putting on somebody like that knuckle-dragger. I don't really understand the point. He doesn't represent me and doesn't represent most working class people. He's not a working class guy himself, and the foul things he was coming out with there about the drugs and Islam and the rest if it, and the nonsense about coffee culture just makes me want to puke.

Gaunt, previously idolised by the racist Right, shot to the top of the BNP's hate list in a trice.

With the BNP's campaign for the May local elections well underway the last thing the party of people "just like you" needed was proof positive of "just how unlike you" it really is.

It came with the conviction of would-be London policeman Ellis Hammond, who had lied about his BNP membership on his application to become a Police Community Support Officer. Hammond was convicted of possessing a Tazer gun and CS spray, but according to Searchlight a search of his home turned up the following interesting items:

* 1 CS tear gas canister.
* 1 police-style ASP retractable baton.
* 1 pair of Metropolitan Police issue Handcuffs.
* 1 knuckle duster.
* 8 combat knives.
* DVDs containing hate material.
* Various items of British National Party literature.
* Some obscene material.
* 25-30 mainly imported T-shirts from the USA bearing nazi and white power group symbols and hardline racist and nazi slogans.
* 4 BB guns.
* 1 replica AK47 assault rifle.
* 1 copy of The Turner Diaries, the US publication that has served as a blueprint for nazi terrorism in the USA, written by the late William Pearce, a close friend of the BNP who has played host to them at his National Alliance HQ in the USA and was guest of honour at a BNP annual meeting in east London some years ago.
* And finally, to top it off, a BNP membership card.

Searchlight had deep suspicions about Hammond, who appeared to be doing a stint as a PCSO as a means of easing his way into the Metropolitan Police proper:

It would appear that he was not active in any of the three local BNP branches in Greenwich, Bexley or Croydon, although members of Croydon branch had hinted for several years that they had connections with people serving in the emergency services and possibly the police.

We think that Hammond had been talent spotted by one or more senior BNP officers who were either ex-police or military and groomed to join up and play the long game, acting in spy parlance as a sleeper or deep mole.

In May 2000, 21 year-old Rachel Whitear overdosed on heroin and died in a kneeling position, which, as part of their duties, police photographers at the scene recorded. Later, Rachel's parents bravely authorised the use of one of the distressing police photographs of their dead daughter to be used as part of a nationwide anti-drugs campaign.

The racist BNP, desperate to "prove" Britain's drug problems to be the fault of the Moslem community, shamelessly hi-jacked the photograph to use in its own odious leaflets while never troubling to ask the permission of Rachel's parents, and raining venom down on them when they had the effrontery to object. Rachel's mother, Mrs Pauline Holcroft, branded the BNP's actions "an insult" to her daughter's memory.

This irked the BNP no end, and chief idiot Lee Barnes was quickly on the case with this pop-eyed tirade:

She [Rachel Whitear] was not an angel, she was an accomplice to genocide, terrorism and a funder of the most vicious criminal gangs on the planet as she funded the terrorists and gangsters that cause such misery across the planet. The idea that she should be regarded as a victim is repulsive. Every junkie is a criminal, not a victim. The body of every dead junkie should be photographed and hung on a wall of shame in every community so that young kids can see the real price of heroin. Their lives should be regarded as a disgrace not as victims.

I bet Rachels parents either funded her addiction directly through giving her money for smack (to stop her becoming a prostitue or a dealer) or indirectly when she stole off them. If she didnt steal off of them then she was even worse than a junkie, she was a pathetic heroin tourist who used heroin as a bit of a laugh, a middle class drug culture tourist idiot scumbag. The sort of people who say to other people ' hey man you can dabble a bit with smack and you will be alright' - a facilitator of addicition, a seducer of others into becoming addicts.

The idea we should treat with reverence the image of their dead junkie daughter is repulsive...the idea we should ask your permission to use the image of your dead junkie daughter is not something we need to do.

"The BNP's Lee Barnes: just an arrogant idiot or seriously disturbed?" we asked in our post title on the matter, and our readers were minded that Barnes was seriously "mental".

For the record, the BNP failed to distance itself from Barnes's disgraceful comments, nor did it discipline him or offer any apology to Rachel Whitear's parents.

Lee Barnes's derangement reached new heights shortly after the Whitear debacle, when the Medway Madman began publicly naming fellow Nazi Stormfront posters found guilty of harbouring less than positive thoughts of BNP chairman and friend Nick Griffin. "If you attack us - then we will respond and we will post your name on this site so that the public can see who you really are," Barnes raved about the "gutless cowards", "cockroaches", "red trolls, searchlight spies, scumbags and sectarian filth" he saw under every Stormfront stone.

This was the cue, shortly after, for a night of metaphorical blood-letting on Stormfront Britain, ended only by the intervention of foreign moderators. The upshot was the banning of several Griffinites, and their losing control of SFB's moderation.

Months later the hysterical Barnes would be bleating about the leaking of BNP members' names and addresses, apparently oblivious to his own very similar sins.

A North Wales town councillor who defected to the BNP after swallowing their "we're not racist" lies soon found out differently when an Asian family asked for help in a dispute with their local council. Councillors are, of course, expected to help and represent all their constituents, regardless of political loyalties. The BNP saw things differently and criticised Llysfaen councillor Pat Pattison's actions. Pattison (left, with Griffin) thereupon decided to "dump" the BNP, but the party became aware of his intentions and disowned Pattison first. "The man is a liability," grumbled Simon Darby, "and when you have someone like that carrying your name you have to act."

"Someone like that carrying your name"? This is the party of Lee Barnes!

Shortly afterwards Cllr Pattison contacted Lancaster Unity, saying:

My mistake was joining the BNP. They assured me that they were a non racist party. Well, I can assure you they are racist. They refer to anybody who is non white as 'Pakis'. This shows their ignorance.

At first when racial remarks were made at meetings, I put this down to sheer ignorance and bigotry but in the short time I was a member the situation became intolerable and the last straw came when I tried to help a Pakistani family who are also Muslims.

Now, the BNP hate all Muslims with a vengeance. They don't think that there is good and bad in everyone.

...

The only standards you need in the BNP is to be a racist but people should not under estimate them. They have friends in high places, they are known within the party as 'friendlies'. They are a highly dangerous and misleading organisation and I can assure your readers that I will do my utmost to let everybody I come in contact with, know just what they are up to.

Unwelcome news came when the BNP held Havering Gooshays ward in a self-inflicted by-election. Even the BNP's own pundits, uncertain that the party could retain a seat it thoroughly deserved to lose, tempered their predictions. The BNP had poured resources into Gooshays, and the other parties fought a fierce campaign. In the event, the BNP increased its percentage share of the vote at the expense of the UKIP and (possibly) the Conservative candidate, who stupidly went on holiday when the campaign was underway, allowing the BNP to keep their seat. The turnout was very low at just 22.6%, down from 31% the previous May, indicating that the real winner in Gooshays was apathy, always the BNP's best friend.

The BNP's hatred of Muslims was given an airing in Solihull when the Solihull Muslim Community Association (SMCA) sought planning permission to open a cultural centre. This brought out the worst in the local Nazis, who got up a campaign against the "Islamification" of Solihull and issued dire warnings of "conflict" and "discontentment" to come.

The BNP's pot-stirring fell on deaf ears. A local mother told the Birmingham Mail that BNP leaflets distributed in Solihull could provoke racism. Though objecting to SMCA's plans for perfectly legitimate reasons, she said she was "sickened" by the BNP's leaflet, adding "... for the BNP to seize on these objections and attack the plan on the grounds of race and religion is disgusting. Since that leaflet appeared I've heard people saying property prices will go down, which is ridiculous and dangerous. We all get on really well around here but I'm worried this might stir things up."

The BNP attempted to "stir things up" on Facebook, where they established a page in support of their racist cause, which quickly filled with the usual obscene comments from the party's keyboard army. Hollow man Simon Darby, also as usual, denied that the BNP was racist and fell back on empty threats: "The law stipulates there is a difference between religion and race. If we are accused of incitement by a named person we will sue for libel."

They never have yet. And as if to underline disgust with the BNP, their vote share would tumble yet again all across Birmingham in the close-by local elections.

The Decembrist revolt had by now become all but a memory, but Nick Griffin kicked some life back into their cause when he began a High Court action in Manchester against core rebels Steve Blake, Ian Dawson, Cllr. Sadie Graham, Matt Single, and Kenny and Nichola Smith.

Initial injunctions were granted preventing the six using equipment owned by the BNP, which included its membership list. Of the list, Simon Darby said: "There are thousands of names on the list. They have been using it since December. It upset a lot of people."

This is the very same list that would be leaked in November, when the BNP would hold the rebels responsible for the leaking, then the Labour Party and Searchlight - then deny it was a membership list at all.

A further hearing was scheduled for April, the rebels vowing to contest the injunctions.

Undeserved publicity came the way of dole-scrounger, possible state agent and slug look-a-like Peter "Sid" Williamson (above, with Jill Jerome) when he exhorted the racist legions of Stormfront to join him in opposing a Muslim "march against Easter" in Redhill, Surrey on Easter Sunday. Apart from Williamson himself, only three others turned up - all, like Williamson, associated with the Nutzi British People's Party.

The "march" was in fact a Mawlid procession celebrating the birth of Muhammad, which happened to fall at Easter last year.

Lancaster Unity only noticed Williamson's Redhill adventure as an amusing side-dish to complement our usual fare, Williamson being one of the far-Right's pre-eminent idiots. This Is Surrey Today, online version of local papers Surrey Mirror and The Post, gave rather more credence to the ridiculous Williamson and his three acolytes than they deserved, saying that the 450-strong Muslim procession was "confronted by Union flags".

As always, Williamson's "confronting" took place at a safe distance and on the right side of police lines. Afterwards he raced back to Stormfront to crow about his victory, which the processing Muslims failed even to notice. While Williamson tapped out his words of hate, the procession's organiser, a bemused Mr Mohammed Khalid of Redhill Islamic Centre, said: "I wish a happy Easter to all my Christian fellows."

As the local elections loomed closer and the prospect of losing seats became very real, the BNP attempted to overturn democracy in Kirklees and went to court to have postal voting stopped. The attempt failed, and the BNP member cajoled into making it fell liable to costs. Kirklees council leader Councillor Robert Light said:

"This was simply a gimmick by the BNP to get cheap publicity. Postal voting is part of electoral law that all councils follow. All the BNP has done is waste the time of council officers by going through the process of addressing what was always going to be a futile action by the perpetrators of this bogus case. The judge clearly considered that the application was ill-conceived by not only rejecting the application but also in awarding the council its costs against the BNP. It is an absolute waste of time to challenge statute in this way.”

Also in Kirklees, prominent BNP man Nick Cass spelled out exactly what lies in store for the BNP's opponents should the party ever come to power. In an email to Labour councillor David Sheard Cass fulminated:

This country is falling apart because of the likes of you, but its not finished yet, and let me assure you that like the rest of the people who have sold our people and way of life down the drain for a few shekels, in time when we take control, you and the rest will be facing trial for treason and ultimately the rope.

Not the best advised of messages with important local elections coming up, but nobody ever accused Nick Cass of saying anything intelligent in his whole life.

To be continued...

Truth truck or lie lorry - Sonia Gable uncovers another BNP financial scandal

“After months of research, we have come up with a better way of spreading the ‘Nationalist Message’ right across this country,” says the message that the British National Party has been sending out to its supporters for several weeks.

“Our very own personal advertising lorry, a ‘Truth Truck’ – brand new and custom-built, complete with a high definition special lighting system for night-time use, and a massive audio system for addressing the public. Can you imagine it?” continues the appeal in terms designed to pull hard at the purse strings of “nationalists”.

There have been personalised letters from Nick Griffin, the party chairman, headed and “last chance to help ‘Operation Truth Truck’”, imploring in underlined type: “Just imagine how you will feel, being part owner of our very own British National Party advertising lorry …”. The party website has carried a picture and online donation form for several weeks.

But behind all the excitement lurks yet another dodgy deal by the BNP to hoodwink its own members.

One appeal letter puts a figure on the cost of buying and equipping the “truth truck” of £39,550, arrived at after Griffin personally “worked very hard researching this project”. It then suggests that “we can knock £13,000 off the amount needed” by opting for a “used lorry in first class condition”. Yet there is no indication on the website appeal that the lorry will be anything other than “brand new and custom built”.

Such a compromise could be explained away as a better use of members’ hard-earned and generously given donations, though that is no excuse for pulling the wool over potential donors’ eyes long after the decision to go for a second-hand vehicle has already been taken. But the lies go further than this.

At first the excitement rubbed off onto BNP members. Posting on the members’ internet forum, one person, who claimed to have “surprised myself by not even hesitating to donate £100 towards the campaign”, said the truck would also “counter commie smear leaflets”.

One discerning poster was more cautious. “Just one thing What happened to Bodicea [sic]?” asked “the benwell hopper”. “Boudica”, as “Captain Black” was quick to correct, was a second-hand “battle bus” and the target of an appeal in 2006 for money to put it on the road. Agreeing that “a few people will be very miffed that it has never been seen by the rank and file”, Captain Black could only plead that “the failings of the Boudica hobby horse should not detract from the ambitions of this new venture”.

Others smelt a rat. Despite Griffin’s claims to have carried out “months of research” before coming up with this “new, innovative” idea, if it comes to fruition the BNP will not be the first organisation in the UK to pin its hopes on a “truth truck”.

Two years ago the anti-abortion UK LifeLeague boldly announced the “Launch of Britain’s first ever ‘Truth Truck’”. A press release on 21 April 2006 thanked supporters who “donated generously to make this project possible” and claimed this would be: “the most innovative and what will possibly be the most effective campaign in UK Pro-life history”. “Operation Truth Truck” would: “enable the pro-life message to reach the unreached across the towns and cities of Britain. These vehicles are wholly owned and operated by LifeLeague activists,” it continued.

There was a picture. And it was no coincidence that the only difference between the LifeLeague’s “truth truck” and the BNP’s one was the particular lie on the billboard, because it was the same vehicle.

The UK LifeLeague and the BNP had milked their gullible supporters twice over for the same truck.

This is not the first time the BNP has had dealings with the UK LifeLeague, and more particularly its founder and national coordinator, James Dowson. Earlier this year many BNP members were angry when they found out that the party was sending key BNP officers on management training courses in Spain. Why could the training not be held in the UK, asked irate, xenophobic party members on a popular nazi internet forum until the site administrators pulled the discussion thread.

The courses were organised by Dowson’s Belfast-based fundraising and management training business, the Midas Consultancy, which has signed a three-year consultancy contract with the BNP. Whether it was because of the BNP’s growing financial difficulties or because Griffin was reacting to criticism of his poor administrative skills, the party has handed over key organisational functions to the self-styled vicar and militant anti-abortion campaigner.

It was Dowson who wrote the “truth truck” appeal letters in professional fundraising style. The Building to Grow appeal at the end of last year was also his work. The BNP claimed that appeal had raised £70,000, which paid for the party to move into the new Excalibur warehouse and buy “a vast array of new equipment” including “an envelope stuffing machine”, which by June had mysteriously disappeared when Simon Darby, the BNP’s deputy leader, appealed for volunteers to stuff election leaflets into envelopes by hand.

The involvement of Dowson has already upset some BNP members who do not share his extreme anti-abortion views and think he is a Catholic, which is anathema to many in the nationalist party who view the Battle of the Boyne as one of England’s greatest historical triumphs. In fact Dowson is a Protestant but has been linked to far-right Catholics in Ireland, including Justin Barrett, an anti-EU campaigner and vocal opponent of immigration, which he describes as a “genetic” problem. Back in 2001, when Searchlight first exposed Dowson, Barrett had donated £50,000 so that Dowson’s outfit could produce anti-abortion hate CDs and videos to distribute in schools and churches in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Dowson is a former member of the Orange Lodge in Northern Ireland and has admitted involvement with hardline loyalist groups in the West of Scotland. His tattooed arms are evidence of his extremist hate connections.

The LifeLeague, which is secretive about its finances, uses highly provocative tactics, such as publishing the home addresses of abortion clinic staff. Similar actions by anti-abortion groups in the US have resulted in the murder of doctors.

Dowson’s professional “begging letters”, as one disillusioned party member described them, have not been universally welcomed in the BNP. Some see their “tone of desperation” as indicative of the BNP’s “very serious financial trouble”, according to the blogsite set up in support of Colin Auty’s failed attempt to challenge Griffin for the party leadership.

One member is quoted saying: “These bloody letters are an embarrassment, I’ll not pay another penny so he can go and waste it or lose another blimp”, in a reference to the BNP’s helium balloon that slipped its moorings in June because, Darby suggested, David Shapcote failed to secure it properly. The BNP later blamed the loss on a faulty rope.

The letters themselves may have been professional, but Dowson fell down in compiling the mailing lists. Naturally he needed to dispatch the letters to a much wider audience than the BNP’s members, who have little left to give after constant appeals at branch meetings and to support election campaigns. However Searchlight has received a stream of complaints from anti-fascist trade unionists and members of the Jewish community who have received them.

The website appeal for the “truth truck” shows it adorned with the BNP’s ubiquitous election picture of Nick Cass and his family alongside the slogan “Decent people vote British National Party”. The picture, which adorned election leaflets and newspaper advertisements all over the country in this year’s May elections and several by-elections, concealed Cass’s less than decent “tree of life” tattoo.

The symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide and, under Hitler, was used to represent a project that 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.

A lying picture for a lying appeal. How appropriate.

This article is from the August edition of Searchlight magazine

The Fearless Moderate

Painter and decorator and part-time BNP councillor Colin Auty shocked his party last week when announcing he would challenge Nick Griffin for the leadership. It's caused a rift in the local and national BNP, but does it signify high ambition from the candidate or frustration at a fading political movement? DANNY LOCKWOOD spoke to him.

On the Friday lunchtime, two years ago, when the returning officer for Kirklees Council announced Colin Auty as the duly elected BNP councillor for Dewsbury East in the main hall of the town's Sports Centre, there were various reactions.

Nick Cass and his hard core of BNP activists danced in jubilation: here was proof positive that their extremist party was inexorably on the rise. Or so they thought.

Eric Firth, the deposed long-serving Labour man, stood stunned, as grey as his beard. Colin Auty looked up at me, standing among the journalists on the sports hall balcony, with a bemused look on his face and shrugged his shoulders as though to say 'crikey, what next?'

Crikey indeed. The only leaflets Colin had distributed during his election 'campaign' had belonged to his Labour rival Firth. He'd found them so hilariously and (he thought) hypocritically targeted at working class parts of Chickenley, that he took Eric's leaflets and shoved them through letter boxes in the posher Bennett Lane area.

Three days after his election, Colin, dressed in his painter and decorator's overalls, stopped for a chat in Dewsbury town centre.

I told him I'd never painted him as a BNP type. He described how he'd got fed up of being the bloke at the end of the bar, moaning and complaining and doing nothing about it. How he was sickened at what was happening to the town of his birth, with his perceived 'British' way of life being diluted by the day, washed away down the Calder.

He spoke of a new breed of ordinary people flocking to the BNP flag. How even then, he found some of the party's hardliners 'distasteful'. (That probably wasn't quite the word he used in hindsight.)

Two years on lots of things have changed. Colin among them, though that's not an observation he might recognise. At the age of 57 he has found a new articulation; there's a confidence born of public speaking, though as a sometime musician he's always been comfortable on a stage. But there's also been a closer forming of his political convictions - and that's unfortunate for the British National Party, depending on how you care (or otherwise) for their fortunes.

Dewsbury was the "jewel in the BNP crown" as their adored/reviled leader Nick Griffin described it after the 2005 General Election, and the district was again the centrepiece of their march on Kirklees Council in 2006 when they polled almost 20,000 votes and boasted three councillors. But 2008 paints a very different totem.

The election results of just two weeks ago defined a political party in as much of a local decline as Labour was nationally.

Their group leader, David Exley, lost his Heckmondwicke seat to the clinically mobilised Labour vote. In Auty's own Dewsbury East ward any shenanigans involving the Tories fielding an Asian candidate failed to either dent Paul Kane's dominant position or rally voters to the BNP flag.

Their performance in Dewsbury South, where Thornhill has always been a stronghold without quite yielding a seat, summed up the BNP's declining fortunes. Their vote dropped by a third, as the Tories wiped the floor with all comers.

It was a result generally mirrored across Kirklees, and perhaps unsurprising given that the local party is in turmoil.

High profile boss Nick Cass has barely been seen since the execrable 'BNP Wives' documentary aired on national television - a massive embarrassment to the party, with Cass and his pretty wife Suzy front and centre.

There is a schism generally between the new generation of moderates and, not to put too fine a description on it, the 'Paki haters'. It translates onto the national BNP stage with Colin Auty fronting up the moderate BNP membership's assault on the hardliners, challenging Nick Griffin for the party leadership.

Is he serious? A two-year councillor, a BNP member for only five years? Best known for writing an insulting ditty about Saville Town and performing it outside MP Shahid Malik's office in Daisy Hill?

Colin is pragmatic about his challenge:

"I don't think I will be allowed to win. I won't be allowed to address party meetings. I've had one cancel already and I was only going along with my guitar to sing a song.

His challenge has certainly ruffled feathers across the BNP. Their national election officer, Eddie Butler, has said members should refuse to sign Auty's nomination, describing his challenge as "pitiful and moronic", him as a "joke candidate" and saying that if a leadership challenge must be staged it should be "quickly, quietly and with no publicity".

So much for good old British democracy, but then again democracy has very little to do with the British National Party's traditional way of doing things. And that is why Colin Auty has chosen a bloody collision course and may or may not have a future in the party by the end of the summer.

The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, has an advisory panel but can override them. He has a virtual dictatorship - which the BNP's many critics will nod sagely at. Ring any 1930-ish bells?

"I will not follow a dictatorship," said Cllr Auty. "I don't want to see the party accountable to one man. I want to see the one man answerable to the party."

At a meeting in Leeds a few months ago, Griffin called BNP councillor Chris Beverley "vermin". Beverley, like Auty, is one of the new breed of BNP members calling for a more reasoned approach to politics.

"I find that abhorrent," Auty continues. "Just because the man is a moderate who wants to promote change? He is called vermin by his own party leader?

"I'm a councillor. I've stood in the firing line. I know what it's like to have the spears chucked at me. Nick Griffin comes out of his fort in mid-Wales to preach to the faithful every now and again.

"People see the media dwelling on the negatives, and it all surrounds people like Nick Griffin and Mark Collett.

"My voters say to me 'it's the image'. Nick Griffin is causing the stagnation of the party, with his holocaust denial, saying Islam is a wicked religion. It stops people voting for people like me and David Exley."

It would be interesting to hear Griffin's view of Colin Auty enjoying hospitality in the homes of Muslim politicians. To hear Colin describing how he gives respect to Labour councillor Shabir Pandor, the Lib Dems' Karam Hussain, the Tories Mohammed Mahroof and Khizar Iqbal - and they him.

"They are all due my respect. Everyone is worth respect. I never hurt and I never hate. I sail through life and I try to have a pleasant attitude to things."

It's ironic that the most hate and bile he has endured has been from white politicians. At the election count a fortnight ago a senior Labour figure threatened to punch his lights out - and got a real surprise when his bluff was called. There's not much fear flowing in Auty's veins. But then again like so many of his generation, he grew up in the school of hard knocks. Bullying, and attempts at it, receive short shrift.

The Kirklees Council learning curve has been steep.

"I remember my first time at a planning meeting. It was like the first day at a new school. I was sat on the bus on my own."

But it wasn't all cold shoulder. One councillor came up and offered him a sweet.

"Some individuals have managed to separate the badge from the person. They see that I'm a moderate kind of guy. They don't see me as a Nick Griffin type. I don't live in a fort, and only come out surrounded by bodyguards wearing shades."

After two years the experience of being a councillor has witnessed changes to the way he sees both politics and his party - though not his town, or his own beliefs.

"I've never been afraid of losing votes or even my council badge over what I say. This just gave me a chance to give a voice to the average people I meet on the street. But I don't have to hold onto the 'voice', because I really don't have any personal ambition at all.

"It seems to have created a vacuum for me though, in so much as although people are listening and agreeing and saying 'that's right Colin' and 'we agree with you Colin', they aren't necessarily behind me. It doesn't show itself in the vote. And I end up feeling a lone voice.

"Some people vote for me, but others cannot because of the image of the BNP. I'm trying to sell a new car with a scratched bonnet.

"My attitude has changed towards the BNP. It's changed locally as well because you get a better insight when you are involved within the council. You see issues differently on the inside.

"It's about power - the council. It's certainly not about people. Whether it's the parties or the individual politicians whatever they believe is right and just, they would relinquish it for a vote. That's probably my naivete, but I could not tell someone something wrong or go against what I believe, just to further my own ends. There aren't enough people out there telling it like it is.

"I got into politics to do something, achieve something. To see issues addressed, issues debated honestly, and then a positive outcome. That's not the reality, I'm afraid."

He enjoys to healthy debate of the closed room, trying to get things done for the district.

"But it's not the same in public. In a non-public arena we will get more people willing to talk. Once in public they feel the (BNP) badge comes to the fore and they are tainted if they at all acquaint themselves with me."

He speaks bitterly of credit for his work being claimed by political rivals, of seeing his contributions to local stories edited out of the Dewsbury Reporter, of local projects being schemed to suit political ends. But beyond that he gets great satisfaction out of simply being an effective ward councillor. "I like helping people, and you get to help lots of people in this job. Isn't that what it's about? It should be."

For now Colin Auty's political future is defined starkly by the next two months, when the BNP will be expected to stage manage the cursory dismissal of his leadership challenge. He knows that, but hopes his effort might begin a process of democratic change within the party. He is guarded about what the outcome will mean to him personally.

Certainly the way feral elements of the local BNP have turned on him have left a mark that won't be soon forgotten. Steve Cass, father of Nick, a regular Press letter writer and very much a Griffin acolyte, has been violently insulting of Colin Auty's leadership challenge.

But the core beliefs of the bloke no longer just moaning at the end of the bar endure still.

"Our children's children have to have a country that they can call their own. If you're from Hungary or Pakistan you can go back to your roots and they are there, your culture and heritage and traditions. But we are eradicating our own heritage, our own children's heritage, to accomodate all these people. It is sheer madness and there isn't another nation on earth would do it.

"Wherever they come to this country from, they still have their history and roots. And we won't have any in 20 or 30 years. That's a good enough reason in itself for me to stand as a politician, all by itself. To fight for our children's right to have a country still theirs.

"It's not because you don't like the colour of someone's skin or their religion. It's because they have their culture guaranteed and we have a country of white politicians trying to give away ours."

And after the Griffin challenge?

"I'll face that when I come to it. I'm stuck between the left-wing elements of the established parties and the right wing of the BNP, but I'm straight down the middle. And I think that's where the people are."

The Press (no link to this story)

People like him voting BNP

Arguments have raged over the decision by local newspapers in London to accept an advertisement from the British National Party last week. Searchlight is more interested in the “wholesome” white family that featured in the ad alongside the slogan “People Like You Voting BNP”.

For a start the adults of the family will certainly not be voting BNP in the London elections on 1 May. That’s not because they don’t support the BNP – they do. This is the family of Nick Cass, a longstanding BNP organiser and local election candidate, from that well known London suburb of … West Yorkshire! In this year’s elections he is standing for Kirklees Council as the BNP candidate in Mirfield.

In the newspaper ad, Cass is wearing a dark jacket. When he appeared in the Sky TV programme BNP Wives in January, he was having a massage, which gave us the chance to find out whether his nazism was more than skin deep. For prominent on his right arm, between shoulder and elbow, is a “tree of life” tattoo.

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 BNP’s slogan also is not quite what it seems. In fact it was copied from the Front National in France, the leader of which, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has convictions for hate crime and Holocaust denial. Like Cass, Le Pen is not a man Londoners will readily identify with.

Many people have condemned the editors of the various newspapers that ran the BNP ad. Searchlight has discovered that in many cases the decision was imposed on the editors by the papers’ owner, Archant, which describes itself as “the UK’s largest independently-owned regional media business”. Its portfolio includes many London titles including the Hampstead and Highgate Express, the Hackney Gazette, the Barking and Dagenham Post and the Recorder group of papers in East London.

But Archant is unlikely to be to blame for the strange appearance of the BNP ad. The Cass family photo is strangely elongated, as if the designer was unclear how to resize a picture to fit the space. Now the BNP’s chief designer is one Mark Collett of Leeds, a man widely derided in the BNP as incompetent. We see what they mean.

The BNP are definitely not people like us.

Searchlight

Have you heard the one about...

A quick look at the lunatics of the far-right (the BNP)

We are all accustomed to the fact that the idiots in the BNP tell some of the biggest whoppers around. However some tell bigger whoppers than others.

Take Alan Girvan for instance,Dewsbury East BNP candidate. Can you spot the lies in this coverage on Alan from 2005? Just to help any fascists who might be looking in, we've highlighted the bullshit in bold text (which is pretty apt).

Bush's man makes independent bid for Yorkshire seat

A former advisor to American president George W Bush is fighting the Dewsbury seat as an independent.

Alan Girvan said today he thought he could be the right man in the right place for fed-up voters. Father-of-two Mr Girvan, 36, was born and educated in Heckmondwike. He is a film director, writer and producer and recently left his job as IT sales account manager at AA Training, Batley, to fight the election. He was immediately involved in the United State's response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 when he was called on by Mr Bush's former cyber security chief, Richard Clarke, to create a secure airport computer system.

Invitation

Mr Girvan said he had been previously been invited to the US to create an alternative to the Internet.

"It was when I was working on that, the 9/11 attacks took place and I was one of the people they called in to ask about setting up a secure computer system for airports."

The idea was rejected by Congress because of the cost.

Mr Girvan said of his decision to stand in Dewsbury: "I think there is a sense of apathy and despair but you don't have to vote for the same old parties. I am standing on a number of issues, important to Dewsbury, chief among which is the state of the hospital. Taxpayers are paying a lot of money, yet they still might have to spend £40 on a taxi to get to Pinderfields, or get six buses. I am also concerned about the future of Dewsbury Market and our estates, which need funding. The people have long lost out to a Huddersfield-centred Kirklees."

He added that the politicians had over-estimated people's feelings about Iraq.

"It might be a bigger issue down south but in this area I think people are more bothered about heroin addicts shooting up in the street, or burgling to feed their habit."

Other candidates are Shahid Malik (Lab); Sayeeda Warsi (Tory); Kingsley Hill (Lib Dem); Brenda Smithson (Green); Alan Girvan (IND) and David Exley (BNP).

Yorkshire Post

Yet another Yorkshire BNP criminal

It is getting hard to keep up with the felons that call themselves the BNP.

On March 17th at Leeds Magistrates Court John Powell was found guilty of assault by beating/battery of it is believed his wife.

Powell who stood as a BNP candidate in Beeston & Holbeck in 2004,Garforth and Swillington in 2006 and Killingbeck and Seacroft in 2007 received a 12 months community order. It isn't known if the BNP in Leeds intend to stand Powell again in this Mays council elections.

Of course Powell isn't the first BNP member to raise his hand to his wife. Brian Turner from Burnley was convicted of attacking his wife and a police officer whilst a councillor yet the BNP refused to disown him. In fact they even defended him by issuing a statement saying: “we are not in the business of persecuting our members because the state considers someone guilty.”

Brave patriots attacking women.

Nick Cass sends threatening email to councillor

Here is an email Mama Cass sent to local Labour councillor David Sheard

From: kirklees BNP
To: Cllr David Sheard
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 7:45 AM

Your a traitor to your own people David.

I will never forget your childish behaviour in the Old Hall last year when you made a complete prick of yourself pissed out of your head. If we had been half as bad as you and your pathetic leaflets make out I would have kicked you down those steps and not just asked you to leave when you gate crashed our party looking for trouble..

Still time will tell wont it and this area under you and the other traitors in the 3 'main' parties is not going to get any better that is for sure. And you can continue kissing the arses of the local Muslims and do deals with your fellow traitors in the Lib-Dems and Greens to try and win the ward for all we care.

That just shows the contempt you have for the real local folk.

This country is falling apart because of the likes of you, but its not finished yet, and let me assure you that like the rest of the people who have sold our people and way of life down the drain for a few shekels, in time when we take control, you and the rest will be facing trial for treason and ultimately the rope.

Nick Cass

Our thanks to our mates at Kirklees Unity for the heads-up

Updated: A Right sight

The problem with interviewing people who only half-think is that they generally only half-talk. For the BNP wives of tonight's self-titled documentary, a glaze-eyed pause comes about five ­seconds into any reply.

It follows three women – and we soon realise Sky chiefs are taking liberties with their title. It implies we're following the wives of active BNP ­members, looking at Nazi love-ins, ­indoctrinated spouses and cowering nod-a-long wifeys.

But of the three, only one (fitness instructor Susie Cass) has a husband who's a fully paid-up member of the BNP. The others – Marlene Guest, busy giving idiocy a bad name in Rotherham; and Lynne Mozar (above), the BNP's Southeast regional secretary, proving you can be a Southeast ­regional idiot as well as a ­village one – are out on their own. Just BNP Women, then.

As Marlene explains her theory of exaggerated ­Holocaust deaths ("Um, to put the Germans on a guilt trip? I never really thought about it...") and Lynne campaigns against a mosque being built, perhaps the most telling ­moment comes from Susie. Would it be that bad if we were all interbreeding, asks the ­interviewer? "Don't you think it would be?" she asks ­rhetorically. But then rhetoric is all you have when you've never thought further than it.

So, standard BNP docu-stuff then. And yet, watching women explain their race-hate feels more shocking.

We're told the BNP is using women to escape its image of boots-and-braces thuggery. But then, at least in that ­context, the BNP almost makes sense – like football hooliganism, it gives bonding and purpose to the IQ-lite and violence-happy.

Yet these women seem to use it as displacement: race hate as a "thing to do". If we had more on that, we might have had a real documentary on our hands. As it is, we've only got half of one.

The London Paper

Documentary exposes BNP nazi morons

Last night's BNP Wives TV programme showed that the BNP has learned nothing after a serious error of judgement allowed Mark Collett to star in Young, Nazi and Proud in 2002. Collett's revelation of his deeply held Nazi sympathies in the Channel 4 documentary, and Nick Griffin's insistence on standing by his close colleague, is one of the issues that prompted the current crisis in the BNP.

The Sky One programme featured three BNP women. There was Marlene Guest in Rotherham who thought the number of deaths in the Holocaust had been exaggerated and that Jews were putting Germany on a guilt trip, but felt some good had come out of it. "Well apparently didn't they get a lot of dentistry and plastic surgery", she said, referring to the Nazis' barbaric "medical experiments".

Then there was the Southeast regional secretary Lyn Moser who admitted to referring to black people as niggers "in private sometimes" and called a woman objecting to a BNP anti-mosque campaign a "fat slag".

Suzy Cass, whose husband Nick Cass was smarting from his sudden sacking as party manager, was busy adding to the "white race". The couple, who both stood as BNP local election candidates last May, had requested a white Anglo-Saxon midwife. She did not seem too upset when an Afro-Caribbean midwife turned up, indicating that it had really been the idea of her husband, who sported a Nazi SS-style "tree of life" tattoo on his right arm.

Nick Cass was also shown at the lock-up where the BNP keeps its merchandise carrying a large pile of books by the convicted Holocaust denier David Irving.

A commenter on the BNP rebels' blog summed the programme up nicely, "what a total and utter bunch of morons those people have just made us look", accusing Griffin of being "so stupid let alone so arrogant" for allowing people like Guest to talk to camera crews and walking away when he was being talked to at the BNP's Red White and Blue festival.

Stop the BNP

Yorkshire turns the screws on Griffin

When BNP leader Nick Griffin told Yorkshire party activists at the now infamous Leeds meeting that he was willing to dispense with the current regional set-up and start again he was already acutely aware that most branches were already against him. However, it is now clear that these comments, coupled with the manner he abused and humiliated his fellow panel speakers Ian Dawson and Chris Beverley, has widened the chasm between him and local activists.

Now it appears that his opponents are turning the screw on his leadership. The BNP officials in Hull have resigned their positions en masse and are prepared to stand as Independent Nationalists in May’s local elections.

This announcement comes just days after Kirklees BNP voted en masse to back the BNP. In a letter reproduced on the Enough is Enough blog, local BNP councillor Colin Auty added his voice of criticism towards Griffin’s leadership. He ended his letter by saying: “Personally, I am very unhappy about these events. The leadership appears to hold the emotional blackmail of patriotism over many good people who feel like myself. A storm in a teacup Mr G, don't think so!”

It seems that his views are shared by Kirklees’ two other BNP councillors, David Exley and Roger Roberts and the former regional organiser Nick Cass, who until now has remained silent.

Only Halifax branch and Paul Cromie’s small rump in Bradford South now appear loyal to the party leadership so this could spell disaster for the BNP in the run up to May’s local elections.

BNP in crisis