Racists blamed for Co Antrim pipe bomb attack

Councillor says attack on Polish family was 'negative and sinister' as homes evacuated and access to school restricted

A pipe bomb attack in Co Antrim on Wednesday was carried out by racists targeting a Polish family, a local councillor has claimed. Grainne Teggart, the SDLP's group leader on Antrim borough council, said the attack was racially motivated and described it as "negative and sinister".

"I condemn this attack. It's totally unjustifiable and inexcusable," Teggart said. "People in the area are angry at what has happened. This is not in their name. The positive contribution Polish families and other immigrant families make to the local community is in stark contrast to the negative, sinister and despicable contribution of those responsible for this. Not only is this an attack on the family, but everyone else in Antrim."

She said residents of the Oaktree Drive area had been evacuated from their homes, and urged anybody with information about the attack to pass it to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Following the discovery of the explosive device outside the Polish family's home at around 8am on Wednesday, a number of homes were evacuated and access to a local primary school was restricted.

Antrim town has in the past been home to a number of small racist factions linked to the now defunct Loyalist Volunteer Force as well as the Ulster Defence Association. Meanwhile, Republican dissidents are being blamed for a shooting in west Belfast in which a man in his 20s was shot in the legs. He was shot in the republican stronghold of Ballymurphy, the former home of the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams.

The PSNI said the shooting happened at around 9pm on Tuesday night in the Downfine Gardens area. Officers said five shots were fired during the attack, but the victim's injuries were not believed to be life threatening. It is understood the shooting was a so-called punishment attack, carried out by one of the organisations opposed to the political settlement in Northern Ireland.

Over the last year, the Real IRA and other hardline republican groups have increased the number of punishment shootings in nationalist areas across the north of Ireland.

Guardian

My Asian in-law.

A BNP Assembly candidate who rants about Asians taking over the UK hides a fascinating secret - his father-in-law is Asian.
The Sunday World can reveal Steven Moore, who refers to Asians as "ragheads", not only has an Indian father-in-law but had his wedding paid for by the well-off Indian.
Last night we spoke to Neil Singh Sandhu who confirmed he was Moore's father-in-law.
When asked about his son-in-law's far right party views on subjects like repatriation Mr Sandhu said: "He's entitled to his views."
And when we asked how he felt about paying for the wedding of a man who in now the BNP organiser for Ulster he said: "I don't want to talk about it - it's not the issue."
He did confirm he maintains a positive relationship with the BNP candidate.
Mr Sandhu used to run a newsagents shop in Dunluce Street, Larne but he sold up some years ago and he now works for the ASDA distribution centre in Larne Harbour.
Mr Sandhu - described by people who know his as a workaholic - married Moore's wife Margaret's mum over 30 years ago although Mr Sandhu is not Margaret's father.

Respect

After moving to England for several years they returned 15 years ago and live just outside Larne.
Last night Moore, in a desperate attempt to try and minimise the damage of the revelation he knew would appear in the Sunday World, announced on his BNP blog that his father-in-law is from India.
After confirming his father-in-law is an Indian Sikh he adds: "I have always had the greatest of respect for my 'Father-in-Law', he's been in the UK for some 47 years and has worked and contributed to our country all his life.
"He has been a Grandfather to my children and a good friend.
"He and people like him the British National Party do not have a problem with, in fact the party has members who are Sikh.
"However people coming into our country freeloading and bringing hatred and anti British and anti Christian extremism with them we do!"
Last night Matthew Collins, from anti-facist magazine Searchlight said: " Like most school bullies, Moore was bound to have a secret."

Seat

Moore, a former French Foreign Legionnaire, is standing in this Thursday's election and is hoping to win seats at the Assembly, representing east Antrim and also hopes to get elected to Larne Council.
The Sunday World has exposed Moore before for being a walking right cliche.
He has led a charm offensive this week telling reporters that the BNP is not racist or sectarian.
But like like most BNP members, Moore calls Muslims "ragheads" and Catholics "taigs".
Moore's close family links with an Indian man will bemuse prospective BNP supporters.
And it is particularly strange that having such a family link Moore still represents a party with such a controversial policy such as repatriation.
The BNP does not regard non-white people as being British, including those born in the UK or who are naturalised British citizens.
And leader Nick Griffin has previously stated that "non-Europeans who stay", while protected by British law "will be regarded as permanent guests".
And MEP Griffin has that the BNP is opposed to mixed-race relationships because "when whites take partners from other ethnic groups, a white family line that stretches back into deep pre-history is destroyed."

Thanks to Steven Moore at The Sunday World

Far-Right party offers only return to a hate-filled past

Northern Ireland must reject the BNP's politics of division, says Matthew Collins

The British National Party (BNP) has announced that it is going to put forward candidates in the May 5 elections in Northern Ireland. As a registered political party, it is entitled to take part in the democratic process like any other party.
After 10 days of stark reminders for the people of Northern Ireland of the return of dark histories, the BNP is itself another unwelcome throwback to conflict and hatred.

From the very top of the party right down to the shallow bowels of its diminishing membership, the BNP represents ideals of hatred, division and conflict.

Sadly, for Northern Ireland, the hate party has taken it upon itself to offer its own brand of poison to the electorate at a time when it is being driven out of its home in England by mounting debts, internal division and allegations of corruption.

The BNP ran its fundraising in Belfast for three years, while making an element of political headway in England. Now the party is on the brink of extinction in England, decimated by infighting and financial scandal, while its Belfast operation has ended in acrimony.

The BNP wants to put itself forward to voters in spite of owing people here thousands of pounds in unpaid bills and salaries, having taken advantage of local people's goodwill and Northern Ireland's low-wage economy.

When the BNP did a vanishing act from its premises in Dundonald just before Christmas, it left behind its local workforce facing the festive season without money.

One exasperated printer from Belfast, owed money by the BNP, is reported to have travelled to Wales last month in the desperate hope that they could receive payment for the work carried out in good faith for the BNP.

In spite of this, the BNP now wants to cash in again on the local economic climate. This time the party is hoping it can gain from the misdemeanours of the global banking industry and lay the blame for cuts in services and jobs on the heads of Northern Ireland's migrant community.

The BNP is likely to try to position itself in the unionist community and play on difficulties and competition over the allocation of services, like housing and schools, while further dividing and splitting the unionist vote.

Can we really trust a party that does not even pay the local printer who produced its previous divisive and hateful promises?

We've seen the likes of the BNP before in Northern Ireland. When its leader, Nick Griffin, was the leader of the National Front in the 1980s, his Ulster organiser was imprisoned for his part in firebombing the homes of RUC officers and was lauded as a 'prisoner of war' by Griffin's party.

Later, Griffin turned up in Libya and was photographed posing under a portrait of his then political hero, Colonel Gaddafi, again in a search for money.

He and his party were shown the revulsion they deserved by the community here which they believed held their electoral hopes.

Of course, that was all a long time ago. Yet two months ago, the BNP's civil rights group, Civil Liberty, praised the views of Gerard Mc Geough, the former IRA man who had just been convicted for the attempted murder of an off-duty UDR man in 1981.

It seems that, wherever there is hatred and wherever there is darkness, people like the BNP will try and make gains from it.

On May 5, they'll be trying to do it at the expense of people who have come to Northern Ireland for new lives to work in hospitals, drive taxis, work the land and live as our friends and neighbours.

They come in search of a new start and - like the overwhelming majority of people in Northern Ireland - they want to live in peace.

No amount of flag-waving, expediency and IOUs from the BNP can disguise the fact that they are a step back into the darkness and have only come here to hate.

Belfast Telegraph

Dirty rotten racist

A BNP Assembly candidate is exposed as a racist who calls Muslims ‘Ragheads’ and refers to Catholics as ‘Taigs’.

And Steven Moore, who will contest both the East Antrim Assembly and council elections, also has a fascination with Hitler

The party’s Ulster Organiser is one of the first BNP candidates to finally put themselves at the mercy of the electorate.

On Wednesday the far-right party announced they would be contesting three Assembly seats and would also be targeting four council seats.

Another of the candidates is former Traditional Unionist Voice candidate Ann Cooper who caused controversy when she gave support to seven customs workers who were sacked for deliberately underpaying ethnic minorities.

She said the sacked workers deserved a medal!

Hooligans

The BNP have cranked up their efforts in Northern Ireland in the run-up to the election on May 5.

Last week before the Northern Ireland soccer match at Windsor Park, BNP activists connected to football hooligans from Leeds handed out sick anti-Muslim leaflets to fans.

The shocking leaflet carried the headline, “Our Children are not Halal Meat” and warned how Muslim paedophile gangs are “preying on vulnerable white girls”.

But we can reveal Moore is a real walking rightwing cliché!

He’s seen here posing in braces, jeans and a Fred Perry t-shirt sporting a pair of dark shades and the obligatory skinhead and tattoo.

Despite attempts from the far-right party, led by convicted racist Nick Griffin, to re-brand themselves as a friendly non-racist party they continue to be run by people like Moore.

Ulster organiser Moore is exposed here as a racist who loves Hitler videos, slagging off ethnic minorities and listening to twisted skinhead bands.

Moore may claim to have all the Protestant credentials needed to run the BNP in Northern Ireland, but he also comes with the usual embarrassment of sectarian hatreds and relaxed attitude towards rape and violence.

Moore has joked online how he had been arrested after raping a female work colleague for an April Fool’s joke and made unsavoury comments about the blind.

And Moore’s grasp of Northern Ireland isues is disturbing.

He described the pogrom against Roma families in south Belfast three years ago as an act against people who are “inherently criminal” and “Stinking Gypsy bastards”.

When Moore isn’t posting videos by white power bands such as Skrewdriver on Facebook, he reveals his fancy for all things “Third Reich” by sharing videos of Adolf Hitler with his online friends.

One apparent favourite is entitled: “Why the world cannot forget Adolf Hitler”.

He also has a penchant for songs and videos of the German Wehrmacht.

Mosque

Elsewhere, Moore has thrown his energies into trying to stop a mosque allegedly being built in Ballymena and more recently launched a campaign to terrify the people of Larne that a proposed detention centre for failed asylum seekers will turn their town into some sort of Asian ghetto.

Like most BNP members, Moore calls Muslims “ragheads” and Catholics “taigs”.

Other pointers to Moore’s opinions are revealed in some of his Facebook entries.

One starts: “Why the f**k do parents allow their daughters to run about at all hours of the night with Asians when these outrages are common knowledge? Bring back the rope.”

And another highlights his loyalist roots: “F**k the Bloody Sunday enquiry.We have always been the victims of republican genocide.”

Last night anti-Fascist campaigner Matthew Collins told the Sunday World that the people of Northern Ireland do not need the BNP.

“The BNP represent a dark age where bigotry is seen as a simple solution to complex issues,” he said while on a visit to Belfast.

“To move forward Northern Ireland has to reject racism as well as sectarianism. The BNP offers nothing on both.

“Their appointment of Steven Moore is a step into the past judging by his warped views and opinions and I don’t think the people of Ulster will be in a rush to get behind this right wing dinosaur.”

Thanks to The Sunday World and Hope not Hate

BNP registers in Northern Ireland for first time

The BNP has for the first time registered as a political party in Northern Ireland. This means it can now field candidates in the Assembly or council elections. The move was confirmed on Wednesday by the Electoral Commission.

The right-wing party has in the past expressed an interest in contesting elections in Northern Ireland but has so far failed to do so.

BBC

Former Legionnaire leads BNP in Northern Ireland

When the BNP quietly announced it had appointed a new regional organiser for Northern Ireland it was clearly looking forward to an upsurge in its embarrassingly low membership in the province.

The previous organiser, Kieran Devlin, who used the alias Kieran Dinsmore, was a painfully camera-shy club doorman who organised party meetings in such secrecy that few of the region’s 50-odd members were told of them. Terrified of being caught up in the continuing media exposure of the BNP’s activities in the province, Devlin earned the nickname “Twitcher” from staff at the party’s Belfast call centre after the panicked telephone calls he made to them from behind the curtains of his Clandeboye Road, Bangor home, complaining that journalists were stalking him at his front gate.

One of the main reasons for the BNP’s recruitment problems is its lack of understanding of the political and religious geography of Northern Ireland. One of Devlin’s biggest stumbling blocks was his apparently Irish Catholic name, despite his English parents and military background.

Devlin is said to have complained about the lack of support for the local party from call centre staff. Very few of the people entrusted with running the party office in the six counties are local and those who are refuse to be associated with the party publicly. The staff who moved to Northern Ireland to work behind the now notorious steel shutters in Dundonald seem unwilling to leave the seclusion of the villages of Ballygowan or Comber, let alone venture into downtown Belfast, for fear of bumping into Republicans.

Devlin’s replacement is Steven Moore (pictured), an all-things-military-obsessed former French Legionnaire with a penchant for red wine and Liverpool football club. Moore was appointed after the party held an internal enquiry into how, in an area so wracked with racist violence and paramilitary history and tensions, it has failed to convert complimentary support into membership. Moore put himself forward for the job as some kind of “super-Prod”, claiming he could reach into loyalist communities and organisations and even stop the constant Searchlight exposés of the BNP in Northern Ireland by speaking to a “number of community groups”. This is common vernacular for paramilitaries.

Devlin’s departure was welcomed by local BNP members, not least because of his Catholic-sounding name. When the Sunday World with the help of Searchlight exposed Moore as the new leader of “Ulster BNP” and wrote a rather derisory epitaph for Devlin/Dinsmore in June, even the local BNP’s own blog joined in. “His [the Sunday World’s journalist] attack centred on the outgoing Organiser and to a certain extent i [sic] agreed with him,” wrote the blogger responsible for promoting the BNP in Northern Ireland.

Moore may claim to have all the Protestant credentials needed to run the BNP in Northern Ireland, but he also comes with the usual embarrassment of sectarian hatreds and relaxed attitude towards rape and violence.

In April, Moore joked how he had been arrested after raping a female work colleague for an April Fool’s joke and made unsavoury comments about the blind.

Moore gets a nod of approval from Devlin for his description of the pogrom against Roma families in south Belfast two years ago as an act against people who are “inherently criminal” and “Stinking Gypsy bastards”.

When Moore isn’t posting videos by white power bands such as Skrewdriver on Facebook, he reveals his fancy for all things “Third Reich” by sharing videos of Adolf Hitler with his online friends. One apparent favourite is entitled: “Why the world cannot forget Adolf Hitler”. He also has a penchant for songs and videos of the German Wehrmacht.

Elsewhere, Moore has thrown his energies into trying to stop a mosque allegedly being built in Ballymena, the heartland of Paisleyism. Like most BNP members, Moore calls Muslims “ragheads” and Catholics “taigs”.

What with BNP leader Nick Griffin’s daughter Jenny now beating the drum for hardline Protestants, perhaps “super-Prod” Moore will win the sort of support that eluded Devlin.

Searchlight

BNP pamphlets 'not welcomed' at Oval

Glentoran Football Club says it is saddened that BNP members handed out pamphlets at the Oval before their home game with Glenavon on Saturday.

Supporters of the party were seen carrying placards and handing out pamphlets as part of a protest campaign against the war in Afghanistan. The east Belfast club said it did not welcome "these types of groups" outside the Oval.

"Glentoran Football Club has a strong tradition of being an inclusive football club that appeals to a broad range of supporters and players from across all communities in Northern Ireland", the club said in a statement.

"Our strong cross community ethos does not align itself with any political party and we are saddened that such an incident has happened. We do not welcome these types of groups outside of our football club as we continue to provide an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere at the Oval for local football supporters."

DUP East Belfast MLA Robin Newton said he received calls from members of the public complaining about the presence of BNP members outside the football ground last weekend. Mr Newton described their presence at the match as "uninvited and unwelcome".

"A number of constituents have contacted me to express their disgust at the presence of the BNP outside their local club," he said. "They go to the Oval to support the Glens and enjoy a game of football; they don't want to be faced with BNP messages of hate. I presume this BNP presence is some sort of campaign to raise their nauseous profile, and I appeal for everyone to stand as one to reject their message.

"The BNP should pack up their messages of hate and disappear. They have been rejected time and time again, they represent no-one, and we don't want them in our midst."

Alliance councillor Mervyn Jones says the group "has no place" at the sports ground.

"I am disgusted that the BNP would try to take advantage of a football match to try and canvass support for their sickening views," Mr Jones said. "I am glad that Glentoran fans have given this group the red card as this type of activity has no place anywhere near our sports grounds. As a Glentoran supporter, I strongly resent any attempt to link Glentoran Football Club to the BNP.

"Inside the ground I spoke to a number of people and everyone I spoke to was opposed the presence of the BNP, which might be considered the only positive thing to come from this disgusting episode."

In a statement, the BNP said it was seeking "an end to the illegal and immoral war in Afghanistan."

The party said it took to "the streets of Belfast in a peaceful and democratic manner to collect signatures for a petition to be handed in to the government calling for the immediate withdrawal of all British troops from that conflict."

"For the DUP, and Robin Newton in particular, to attack the BNP for this pro-peace message is an example of the most extreme hypocrisy yet seen in Northern Ireland", the statement added.

UTV News

Inside the BNP bunker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shattered

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

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

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

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

Party members were turning against the call centre.

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

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


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

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

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

Threatened

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Matthew Collins at Hope not Hate

You can subscribe to Searchlight magazine by clicking here

Listen again: Belfast and the BNP

Why has the British National Party chosen Northern Ireland as its new fundraising hub? Andy Martin investigates.

Listen now: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00rlcmt
Next on: Tomorrow, 19:30 on BBC Radio Ulster

BNP links to Troubles charity

Money, money, money...

A fundraising expert for the far-right BNP helped head a charity for Troubles’ victims that has raked in taxpayers’ cash

Fanatical anti-abortionist James Dowson was trustee of Solas NI — which has received more than £130,000 from Government and European Union peace grants. There is no suggestion that the money intended to help victims was misused.

Dowson confirmed his links to Solas NI after we started to investigate the secretive charity, which was set up to counsel those bereaved, maimed or traumatized by terrorist attacks. The support group has now mysteriously shut its Belfast headquarters amid revelations it has links to the far-right BNP.

Dowson was revealed in June as the man who runs the British National Party’s national call centre in Dundonald. The Dundonald BNP “bunker” is tucked away at Unit 5, Carrowreagh Business Centre.

Scottish businessman Dowson is a hardline anti-abortion campaigner who has a number of criminal convictions. He also featured in a flute band which produced tapes glorifying UFF killer Michael Stone’s infamous Milltown cemetery massacre in 1988. Dowson, 44, has a string of convictions including breach of the peace in 1986, weapon possession and breach of peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992.

When we first contacted him to ask about his links to Solas NI, he referred us to his solicitor. They released a statement to us through Dowson’s company Adlorries. In the statement, Dowson refers to Solas NI as ‘Solaris NI’. It said Dowson ceased to be a trustee of the group in February last year.

The statement added: “Jim Dowson is pleased to have been involved in a charity that set itself the agenda of making Northern Ireland safe for all by building bridges between persons of different faiths, different political persuasions and of different ethnic origins.”

Solas declares on its website that it embraces diversity and aims to ensure that victims of Troubles atrocities can turn to a “nonpolitical and non-sectarian organisation” for help. The group received £111,479 of European Union peace funding between 1998 and 2007. And from 2003-2007, Solas received £18,627 in Northern Ireland peace grants.

Dowson’s statement said that it was his “understanding” that Solas had been “dormant” since October last year. It added: “As far as Jim Dowson is aware, Solaris NI complied with all its legal, regulatory, funding and public disclosure obligations and requirements in full during the time he was a trustee and he has no reason to believe that this exemplary record was not continued by Solaris NI after he ceased to be a trustee.”

When we called at the Solas registered address in east Belfast last week, its doors were shuttered over and there was no sign. The deserted building on the Upper Newtownards Road is the same address which is still listed on the organisation’s website. A local businessman, who did not want to be named, said he had seen the BNP ‘truth truck’ – which is emblazoned with anti-abortion propaganda – regularly parked outside the Solas office.

Solas still has an operational website, but it is not clear if it is still accepting donations from the public. And when we rang the telephone number on its website, they refused to say if they had closed, how their cash was used or where they were now based.

Records show that Solas NI has the same address and telephone number as the Christian Youth Fellowship, set up by Jim Dowson. Online records show that the last registered chairman for Solas NI is Alex Thomas. Thomas’s wife, Marion, answered the phone when we rang the organisation using the number on its website. It has been claimed that Marion is in “overall charge” of directing calls to Dowson’s charity and business empire.

She refused to tell us where Solas was based when we asked about its closed headquarters. She also referred us to the same solicitor Dowson uses if we wanted further comment.

Unlike England and Wales, there is no charity register in Northern Ireland to give the public access to their details. It means there are no official documents we could view which show how Solas NI works.

Sunday Life via Hope not Hate

Dissecting the Dowsons

The leak of the BNP membership list last month has turned the spotlight on the party's Belfast call centre, the tensions it has caused in the party, and the links between the man who runs it and a charity that has received a six-figure sum in EU funding. Matthew Collins and Simon Cressy investigate.

The posting on the internet of a British National Party membership list two days before the BNP leader's prized appearance on Question Time was a huge embarrassment to the fascist party. After the BNP lost an earlier list of members and contacts last year, the party promised to put security measures in place to ensure such a thing could never happen again. It was only because of this promise that the BNP managed to stem a walkout of members concerned about losing their jobs and friends because of the revelation of their racist adherence.

Searchlight can now reveal that the "security measures" consisted of handing over the files to Jim Dowson, a hardline anti-abortion activist with a string of criminal convictions, who runs the party's "secret" administrative lair in Northern Ireland.

In what has become known as the BNP's Belfast bunker, an office on an industrial estate in Dundonald, Dowson's private company, Adlorries.com, employs staff recruited through employment agencies, to handle BNP members' personal information. Staff are not security vetted, though East Europeans and Asians applying for work at the call centre are automatically rejected, in contravention of employment legislation.

Staff, one of whom is the wife of a police officer working at Castlereagh police station, do not even have to sign a confidentiality clause. Yet one of their roles was to persuade up to 3,000 lapsed members that their personal information and membership details would now be kept securely and encrypted in the secretive call centre.

Dowson has told the police that a former staff member leaked the membership data after leaving her job taking a laptop computer in lieu of £2,000 that she claimed she was owed in unpaid wages.

Who's who in the Belfast bunker

Jennifer Matthys (née Griffin):Newly married, Jennifer and her husband Angus moved to the village of Comber, where a number of the BNP's key Northern Ireland personnel already live. Until recently a checkout assistant at her local Co-op, the BNP leader's daughter (pictured with father) is supposedly entrusted with keeping a close eye on the activities of the Dowsons. A new car was thrown into the bargain to sweeten the move away from her long-time love interest Mark Collett, the controversial designer of BNP leaflets and newly appointed editor of the party's newspaper Voice of Freedom. It is Jennifer who has stopped James Dowson Jr getting his hands on the Young BNP after a battle of wills between them.

James Dowson Jr: Until Jennifer Griffin's arrival, James Jr, Dowson's eldest son, was cock of the north around the village of Comber and in the BNP call centre from where he ran his plumbing firm, Ultraplumb.com Ltd, set up with his father's financial help. Dowson Jr, 21, is a senior member of the Goldsprings flute band, a favourite of Protestants who want to "kick" the Pope. His planned rise in the BNP has been curbed since Ms Griffin came on the scene. His father is alleged to have bought him a Russian bride who upped and left not long after arriving in the Dowson home.

Marion Thomas: Unknown until now, Marion Thomas has emerged as the key link person to the Dowson empire. Thomas, Dowson's sister-in-law, is the administrator of Dowson's various business and campaign interests and signs various documents on Dowson's behalf. Her husband, Alex Thomas, is a business partner of Dowson and chair of Solas NI, the victim support group linked to Dowson. Allegedly no great fan of Dowson, Marion allegedly keeps a record of all the business transactions that go on in Dowson's offices.

John Thompson: Dowson's long-time accountant, Thompson was taken on last April to sort out the BNP's books and records after a succession of changes in the BNP's treasury department, which had been widely accused of incompetence at the time of the winter 2007-08 rebellion in the BNP. Although the BNP described him as a "professional chartered accountant" he appears to have been unequal to the task and the BNP's 2008 accountants, due with the Electoral Commission by 7 July 2009, are still missing. Since the election of the BNP's two MEPs, Thompson has taken on the role of "paying agent" for the MEPs' staff on the European Parliament payroll.

One of the employment agencies that supplied staff to Adlorries was Office Angels. The firm would only speak to Searchlight through a PR company but confirmed that it had supplied staff to the call centre. A statement from Office Angels said it had terminated the contractual arrangement once it learned that Adlorries was a "third party supplier to the BNP". It added: "We do not discriminate against a person's race, age or sex. It is totally against Office Angels' values to do this, not to mention against the law."

The BNP claimed that Northern Ireland was a "safe haven" away from the strong opposition the party faces on mainland Britain. Since spring this year the BNP has carried out almost all its telephone fundraising and recruitment activities from the Dundonald office and another in nearby Ballyhackamore. Staff solicit donations and send out information packs all over the UK for a wage of £6 an hour plus commission based on the amount they raise.

Since the move to Northern Ireland the party has been trying desperately to plug a succession of embarrassing leaks to the Irish press identifying key personnel in the Irish operation and exposing the gradual and almost forced takeover of the BNP by a man who claimed publicly to have "stepped down" from fundraising for the party, but who still has his hand very firmly on the BNP's purse strings.

Gradually, since Dowson first became involved with the BNP in late 2007, he has taken over more and more of the party's operations and drawn the BNP further into his web of business, campaigning and charity interests.

Until the membership list leak, BNP members were receiving an average of three telephone calls a month from the call centre, soliciting donations and encouraging people to renew their membership early or upgrade to the life or gold membership schemes.

Legal action by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has forced the BNP to suspend recruiting members while it makes changes to its constitution. Instead, Dowson is now desperately trying to revive the near moribund Trafalgar Club, members of which contribute at least £15 a month in exchange for an annual dinner with speech by Nick Griffin, the party leader, usually in a smart country hotel, on the Saturday nearest to Trafalgar Day, 21 October.

Dowson has also put his staff onto increasing subscriptions to the party periodical Voice of Freedom as well as making begging phone calls for donations to fight the EHRC's case against the BNP. In reality the funds are being raised to pay the EHRC's costs, which are likely to be awarded against the BNP, after Griffin gave up the hopeless battle.

All these calls are made from the same telephone lines that the Dowson family use for their charity, anti-abortion work and the plumbing business run by James Dowson Jr. In overall charge of answering and dispatching calls to the correct part of the set-up is Marion Thomas, Dowson's sister-in-law.

Marion Thomas is married to Alex Thomas, who acts as chair of Solas, a Northern Ireland charity, which he runs together with Dowson. Solas NI is a victim support group set up in 2003 to help bereaved and injured victims of the Northern Ireland Troubles. It says its aim is "to ensure that those most affected by the Troubles have recourse to a non-political and non-sectarian organisation which caters specifically for their needs".

Solas operates from the same address and uses the same telephone number as another Dowson organisation, the Christian Youth Fellowship.

When Searchlight telephoned the number it was answered by a woman with a Scottish accent who gave her name as Marion. We then asked to speak to Jim [Dowson] and she proceeded to connect us.

Searchlight has discovered that up to March 2007 Solas received £111,479 of funding under a European Union programme for peace and reconciliation. The money, part of a £6.8 million allocation for projects in Northern Ireland in 2006-07, came via Proteus, an intermediate funding body.

Announcing the grants, Pat Donnelly, chief executive of Proteus, said: "There is real evidence that projects funded by PEACE II [the EU programme] have contributed to a significant change in mindset and created the necessary preconditions for genuine cooperation and improvements to take place".

Dowson's past record and current involvement with the racist BNP, which only seeks to divide communities, shows that cooperation is the last thing on his mind.

As well as controlling income coming in through the call centre, Dowson has placed his own accountant John Thompson to look after the BNP's books. Thompson, who is based in Comber, also looks after the accounts for Alex Thomas and Dowson's anti-abortion campaign, the UK LifeLeague.

Last April, Griffin announced that the "current and anticipated growth" of the BNP had necessitated the formation of a "full Treasury Department" headed by a professional chartered accountant", whom he did not name. Thompson's main achievement in that role appears to be the failure to produce the party's 2008 accounts on time, incurring a fine of at least £1,000 under electoral legislation.

Thompson was supposed to work under the oversight of the BNP's treasurer. At the time of his appointment this was one of the many party positions held by Simon Darby, the deputy leader. Thompson is believed to have clashed a number of times with Darby over the payment of bills, in particular to Romac Press Ltd in east Belfast, which now does the party's printing, including the endless begging letters the party sends out to an esoteric mailing list.

It appears that Romac Press, which also prints for Dowson's other operations, is being lined up to print Voice of Freedom. Senior party members on the mainland are said to be resisting the move, but Dowson hopes this may placate the owners who still have a large bill to be settled.

Senior BNP officers on the mainland have also voiced concern over the apparent independence of the Irish operation. They include Simon Bennett, the BNP's webmaster, Eddy Butler, the national organiser, Martin Wingfield, the Communications and Campaigns Officer for the two BNP MEPs, and even Darby. Bennett is especially aggrieved because Dowson is earning commission on the money he raises for the party. Bennett was offered commission on donations raised through the BNP website but the party appears to have reneged on the promise.

Searchlight can reveal that it was Griffin's sole decision to give Dowson free rein to run major BNP administrative functions. Perhaps it was to pacify them that the BNP announced in June the appointment of Emma Colgate as the party's administration officer in place of "consultant Jim Dowson", though in fact Dowson's role has not changed.

Dowson's remit is not limited to Northern Ireland, however. During the European election campaign the BNP announced proudly that it had acquired a number of office premises to house its growing operations, but kept the locations secret.

Searchlight has discovered that early this year the party leased three rooms in a smart building on the Salmon Springs Trading Estate in Stroud Gloucestershire for "training" at a cost of £5,000 per year. However it was not the BNP's name on the tenancy but that of Adlorries.com. The three-year lease was a waste of the BNP's money. Except for one meeting, at which the party sacked Michaela Mackenzie from her positions as administration officer and national nominating officer, the offices have remained unused and unfurnished.

West Midlands organiser Alwyn Deacon: runs a secondary BNP call centre in Nuneaton

It is different in Nuneaton, where the former pub landlord Alwyn Deacon is fronting the BNP's merchandising operation, Excalibur, complete with a mini call centre with 20 phone lines, in a property leased in his own name from the local Conservative council in Slingsby Close on the Attleborough Fields Industrial Estate. Deacon and his wife follow a series of fundraising guidelines set down by Dowson, under which former customers of Excalibur as well as all other party members and even members of the UK Independence Party are bombarded with phone calls and special offers.

How the BNP will afford these new premises is unclear. Any attempt to hide the costs in the party's expenses claims for the new MEPs would of course be fraudulent.

Partly to meet the concerns of members of the Party's national advisory council about Dowson's power in the party, Griffin's daughter Jennifer and her new husband Angus Matthys moved into a flat in Comber last month to begin work at the Dundonald call centre. Ms Griffin, a former leader of the Young BNP, once manned the tills at the same Co-op store where her father was briefly employed. Now she is allegedly forging her father's signature on the photograph of the revered leader that gold party members receive as thanks for their generosity.

Since moving to Northern Ireland, Jennifer is believed to have concurred with Arthur Kemp, the South African former apartheid intelligence agent who now edits the BNP website, that despite his father's wishes, Dowson's eldest son, James, could not be publicly anointed as the head of the BNP's youth wing. The decision has apparently caused resentment in the Dowson family as the Griffin and Dowson heirs vie for supremacy in the call centre.

However, this has not stopped Mr and Mrs Matthys joining Dowson Jr as members of the Goldsprings "kick the Pope" marching and flute band, a clear sign that despite the BNP's protestations to Anglo-Irish members on the mainland, a strict evangelical, racist and sectarian policy still runs through the very core of the BNP.

Another of Dowson's religious cohorts unpopular with senior members on the mainland is Zak McAdam. An IT specialist who has clashed with the BNP's webmaster Simon Bennett on a number of occasions, McAdam recently made a name for himself with a one-man campaign against lesbians and computer games. A number of holders of party laptops were furious to discover that they could not access pornography after McAdam blocked access to some of the party employees' favourite porn sites.

Although the latest BNP membership list leak has been overshadowed by Griffin's Question Time appearance, limiting the damage in terms of bad publicity, advisory council members are angry and are blaming Dowson for the embarrassing loss of data that were supposedly kept encrypted.

Wingfield, whose wife Tina used to be the party's membership secretary, was the first to comment shortly before midnight on the eve of the anticipated leak. Wingfield blogged: "I know the leak certainly didn't come from our end here."

Days after Griffin's disastrous performance on Question Time and the membership list loss, Jennifer and Angus Matthys attended this year's Trafalgar Club dinner alongside Dowson at a smart country house hotel near Ross-on-Wye. The tension between senior BNP officers and Dowson, and the animosity between Griffin's daughter and Dowson Jr, cannot have made for a congenial evening.

Searchlight thanks all the people in Northern Ireland and England who have helped in this investigation.

Irish TUC calls for enquiry

Searchlight’s investigation into the business activities of the BNP front man Jim Dowson has led to a call for an enquiry into whether the employment practices at the BNP call centre are in breach of Northern Ireland’s Race Relations Order of 1997, which prohibits racist employment practices.

The Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities (NICEM) issued a joint call last month for an investigation by the Department of Employment and Learning, after Searchlight passed them evidence that employment agencies had been duped into providing staff for the BNP.

In response to Searchlight’s investigation, the employment agency Office Angels issued a statement through its London PR company admitting it had supplied a “small number of staff to a call centre called Adlorries” but withdrew them and terminated the agreement once it became apparent who the customer really was.

The statement went on to say that Office Angels “would not support any client who appeared to discriminate and would review our contract with them forthwith. Our philosophy is to not only uphold the word of the law but also our company morals, standards and policies.”

While there is no suggestion that Office Angels has contravened the law or in any way behaved improperly, Searchlight does have evidence that at least one other high profile employment agency is not only still supplying staff to Adlorries to work for the BNP but is also allegedly “cherry picking” prospective employees based on race, religion and sexuality.

Launching the joint call for an investigation, Peter Bunting, ICTU Assistant General Secretary, said: “The BNP are fascists. They misrepresent facts about public housing going to immigrants, about foreigners taking our‚ jobs, about Muslims and crime and about the Holocaust. They even deny what Britain fought during World War II. The truth is that Britain fought against fascism, and this clearly is a fight that is not over yet.

“These are tainted jobs from an evil employer, and no employment agency should have any truck with them.”

Searchlight is also calling for an inquiry and we will be handing our dossier to ICTU and NICEM to present to the authorities leading the investigation.

You may also be interested to read
• Dissecting the Dowsons Part 3 of a three part investigation Searchlight Magazine November 2009
• Dowson's empire Part 2 of a three part investigation Searchlight Magazine November 2009
• From rags to riches Part 1 of a three part investigation Searchlight Magazine November 2009
• BNP Bosses Uncovered A former employee lifts the lid on life working for 44-year-old Jim Dowson and the BNP in Belfast by Steven Moore Sunday World October 2009
• 'Cash strapped' BNP fails to deliver accounts Sonia Gable on the BNP’s current financial problems Searchlight Magazine September 2009
• The man who bought the BNP Sonia Gable untangles a BNP financial web Searchlight Magazine July 2009
• Truth truck or lie lorry? Sonia Gable uncovers another BNP financial scandal Searchlight Magazine August 2008
• BNP accounts don't add up Sonia Gable analyses the BNP’s latest figures Searchlight Magazine September 2008

Hope not Hate

Dowson's empire

Sonia Gable shines a light on Jim Dowson's string of business and campaigning interests

Solas NI

Solas NI, a charity with the registration number XR86269, describes itself on its website as a victim support group set up to help bereaved and injured victims of the Northern Ireland Troubles. It says its aim is "to ensure that those most affected by the Troubles have recourse to a non-political and non-sectarian organisation which caters specifically for their needs". It was formed in 2003 and up to 2007 had received £111,479 of funding under a European Union programme for peace and reconciliation.

Jim Dowson is not known to hold any position in Solas, but its chair is Alex Thomas, a business partner of Dowson and husband of his sister-in-law, who is also involved in Solas. The charity also uses the same address and telephone number as another Dowson organisation, the Christian Youth Fellowship.

Adlorries.com Ltd

Jim Dowson is the sole director of Adlorries.com Ltd, the company that hired the Belfast staff. Incorporated in October 2004 it describes itself as "an independent company providing professional services without prejudice to NGOs, charities and political organisations … We are the complete business solution," its scanty website claims.

The BNP's "truth truck", better known outside the party as the lie lorry

The company owns little of substance. Its latest accounts show fixed assets plus cash of nearly £27,000 against £25,000 owed in debts and long-term loans.

One of its assets is the BNP's "truth truck", better known outside the party as the lie lorry. Last year the BNP claimed to have bought the truck after a successful appeal to supporters to raise the £26,550 needed. However when bailiffs tried to enforce a county court judgement against the BNP, the party's solicitors responded that the vehicle was "registered in the name of another person who … has no connection with the judgement debtors".

In fact the truth truck turned out to be the same vehicle that Dowson had bought two years earlier for the anti-abortion UK LifeLeague, after appealing for donations from supporters. It even had the same name. A press release issued in April 2006 claimed Operation Truth Truck would "enable the pro-life message to reach the unreached across the towns and cities of Britain". The UK LifeLeague and the BNP had milked their gullible supporters twice over for the same "truth truck" which never left the ownership of Adlorries.com.

Albion Logistical Solutions Ltd

Incorporated in February 2009, Albion Logistical Solutions Ltd has an address in Loughborough and one director, Jim Dowson. It was this company that organised the printing of over 28 million glossy BNP European election leaflets earlier this year.

Midas Consultancy

Early in 2008 BNP senior officers and activists were invited to attend "high level management training" arranged by "a professional management consultancy and training company", which "uses a property in Spain as its main training base". Searchlight quickly established that the organiser was a Belfast-based business called the Midas Consultancy, the name under which Jim Dowson marketed his management and fundraising skills, and that the training base was in Valencia on the Costa Blanca.

Christian Youth Fellowship

The Christian Youth Fellowship shares premises with Solas NI and its contact person is listed as J Dowson. Its activities centre around anti-abortion and anti-gay campaigning, though in May it took part in the launch of TIDY Northern Ireland's Clean Coast Programme on Portrush, Whiterocks beach.

UK LifeLeague

Jim Dowson is the main public face of the hardline anti-abortion UK LifeLeague, which 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.

Formed in 1999, the LifeLeague claims to be committed to peaceful campaigning "to end the violence of abortion". Although its website states that "campaigning is an important part of what we do", the organisation appears to have done nothing since early 2008 apart from raising money.

Ultraplumb.com Ltd

Jim Dowson helped his eldest son, James Dowson Jr, to set up Ultraplumb.com Ltd, a company registered at Dowson's address in Cumbernauld, Scotland, in 2007. Dowson Jr, 21, (pictured) is the sole director and Marion Thomas, Dowson Sr's sister-in-law, is the Company Secretary. Ultraplumb styles itself as "Northern Ireland's premier plumbing company" but of the three testimonials on its website, dated 2007, one is from Thomas herself. Its accounts are several months overdue for filing at Companies House.

After the exposé of the BNP's Belfast bunker operation in the Irish press, Dowson Jr painted out the signs on his company's vans, fearing reprisals from the local population.

BNP offices in Stroud and Nuneaton

Stroud: The large grey stone house on a Stroud industrial estate is not the sort of place one might expect the BNP to occupy. Jim Dowson's company Adlorries.com Ltd leased three rooms at Unit 13, Salmon Springs Trading Estate, Painswick Road, Stroud for three years, paying £5,000 a year in rent to the owner, D J Melsome Ltd. They were to be used as a training centre for the BNP run by Michaela Mackenzie, but have remained empty after the party sacked her from her posts as administration officer and national nominating officer. Like many in the BNP it appears she clashed with Dowson, but came off second best. Unfortunately for Dowson, the lease has no cancellation clause.

Nuneaton: Alwyn Deacon, the BNP's West Midlands regional organiser, leases Unit 3 Slingsby Close, Attleborough Fields Industrial Estate, Nuneaton from Nuneaton and Bedworth council, where the BNP has one councillor following the resignation of a second last month. Deacon is also the BNP's enquiries secretary and national dispatch manager, a job he carries out at the unit.

Like the unit the BNP secretly occupied on a Deeside industrial estate last year, until the landlords evicted the party following a Searchlight exposé, the Nuneaton premises also houses Excalibur, the BNP's merchandising operation. Since May Excalibur has been run privately by Arthur Kemp, the BNP's foreign affairs spokesman, under an annually renewable licence from the party. Excalibur's range of tatty cringe-making and overpriced goods include golliwogs, Replica Victoria Crosses, condemned by the Ministry of Defence as an insult to British troops' heroism, Enoch Powell t-shirts and copies of Kemp's own dismal books.

The Nuneaton unit also houses a call centre with 20 phone lines, where BNP staff try to solicit as much money as possible in donations and merchandise sales from past Excalibur customers, party members, and anyone else unfortunate enough to be on their phone number list.

Friday: Dissecting the Dowsons The leak of the BNP membership list last month has turned the spotlight on the party’s Belfast call centre, the tensions it has caused in the party, and the links between the man who runs it and a charity that has received a six-figure sum in EU funding. Matthew Collins and Simon Cressy investigate.

Hope not Hate

Jim Dowson: How a militant anti-abortionist took over the BNP

Today we start a serialisation from the current issue of Searchlight Magazine which features a special investigation into the heart of the BNP. We highlight the organisational set-up, the secret locations and the people running the fascist party. We expose how the running of the party has been outsourced to a rabid Loyalist anti-abortionist in Belfast and we reveal that this man is receiving European Union money for peace and reconciliation.

We have also been busy working with the media. Many of the revelations and exposés we have read in the newspapers over the past few weeks have originated from Searchlight. Forty-seven years after Searchlight was first formed we are proving that we are still ahead of the game.

From rags to riches : Part I of a three part investigation - Gerry Gable

Ten years ago Jim Dowson (pictured left) was a down-at-heel anti-abortion campaigner and hardline Protestant, who had marched with a loyalist band that played songs in praise of the convicted loyalist murderer Michael Stone

His luck changed when he formed an alliance with Justin Barrett, a far-right Catholic lawyer and leader of the notorious Irish anti-abortion group Youth Defence, which had previously stormed buildings in Dublin in their crusade against a woman's right to choose.

In 2000 Barrett had attended a rally of the German nazi National Democratic Party, where he met Roberto Fiore, the Italian fascist friend and mentor of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader. The trip was arranged by Derek Holland, one of Griffin's old colleagues from the days of the National Front Political Soldiers. Barrett attracted attention as the lead spokesperson of the successful Irish campaign against the Nice Treaty in 2001 and money started to flow from far-right anti-abortionists in the United States.

In 1999 Dowson had formed Precious Life Scotland and it was through cooperation between his group and Youth Defence that he met Barrett. The link proved beneficial when Barrett pitched £50,000 into Dowson's organisation to pay for the production of anti-abortion CDs and video tapes to be distributed to schools and churches in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Dowson was a "rent-a-cause" extremist who had been kicked out of the Orange Order. He has a list of criminal convictions including breach of the peace in 1986, possession of a weapon and breach of the peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992. Although a Protestant, he was happy to sell thousands of photographs of the Pope at inflated prices to Catholics in the Irish Republic.

Barrett faded from the public arena after the Nice Treaty vote was rerun and went the other way. His political demise was hastened after the publication of his book The National Way Forward, in which he described immigration as "genocidal". He also became increasingly antisemitic, influenced by the nazi leaders he had met in Germany.

In contrast, Dowson's campaigning activities grew. He turned his sights on gay people and encouraged his followers to abuse and threaten people who attended or worked in abortion clinics. This resulted in Dowson parting company with some of his Precious Life fellow activists, but he was now in a financial position to go it alone, turning his faction into the UK LifeLeague. He never looked back.

Dowson, 45, started working with the British National Party late in 2007, and he quickly revolutionised its fundraising. His first appeal, launched at the time the BNP was tearing itself apart in an internal rebellion, was carried out as a free sample to show the party what he could do, but since then he has worked on a percentage commission.

His work for the BNP grew to encompass the provision of manage-ment training in Spain and revamping the party's administration. Early in 2009 he set up the Belfast call centre, piggybacking it on his successful fundraising for the LifeLeague, thereby cutting costs and perhaps giving doubtful BNP officers the impression of a larger operation than it actually is.

Over the past two years he has clearly raised huge sums for the party, although it remains financially strapped. Partly this is the result of scams, such as the truth truck, which Griffin claimed had been bought with thousands of pounds of supporters' donations. It turned out still to belong to Dowson's private company, Adlorries.com, and, like much of the other equipment the BNP claimed to have bought, it was only leased by the party.

Today Dowson practically owns the BNP, which he briefly joined to placate his critics but left as soon as the heat was off him. He remains at loggerheads with many senior party officers and employees. One, whom he sacked in spring, is heading for an employment tribunal.

Griffin's claim that the BNP is being flooded with donations via Dowson's call centre is a lie. Income is down to a trickle and membership is a mere 8,000 or so. People are not queuing up to join after the end of the three-month moratorium on membership, they are leaving in droves, especially since the latest membership list leak from Dowson's Belfast bunker.

All this comes on top of the party's forced climbdown over its racist constitution, the non-appearance of its 2008 accounts and concern over the number of senior party officers who have been put on the European Parliament payroll as staff of the two BNP MEPs.

Tomorrow: Dowson's empire by Sonia Gable
Friday: Dissecting the Dowsons The leak of the BNP membership list last month has turned the spotlight on the party’s Belfast call centre, the tensions it has caused in the party, and the links between the man who runs it and a charity that has received a six-figure sum in EU funding. Matthew Collins and Simon Cressy investigate.

Hope not Hate

BNP Bosses Uncovered

Office chief James Dowson sent this pic of
himself with a shotgun to ex-employee after a dispute

This is gun-toting BNP fundraiser Rev James Dowson calmly walking down the street with his toddler son and wife – and a shotgun!

The crazed anti-abortion nutter, who has a list of convictions including possessing a weapon, sent the phone photo to a former employee after they fell out over a computer which holds the entire BNP membership database. The Scottish ‘businessman’, who has loyalist links and lives in Ballygowan, runs the right wing BNP’s national nerve centre in east Belfast under the cover name Adlorries.

But the entire operation was thrown into chaos recently after his right-hand woman quit her job of running the office and took a computer which contained the BNP membership list. Today the former employee lifts the lid on life working for 44-year-old Jim Dowson and the BNP in Belfast. She reveals how:

• Dowson sent her the photo of himself with a shotgun and threatened other members of her family with the UVF.
• The rabid nutter flew into a rage after a Belfast recruitment sent two Asian men and two gay people to work in the Dundonald office.
• Dowson runs a string of charities from the Belfast base and collects donations for doing nothing.
• BNP members have been conned into buying a lifetime membership which comes with a £100 watch – which is actually only worth £19.99.

It comes in the week when a fresh leaked list of alleged BNP members appeared on the internet and convicted race-hate leader Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on the BBC’s Question Time.

Following a dispute with Dowson the former employee, who can’t be identified, says she kept a computer belonging to the BNP because he refused to pay her substantial wages she claims she was owed. Dowson then sent her this picture of himself, armed with a shotgun. “I took that as a threat – why else would he send someone he was in dispute with such a photo?” says the former BNP officer manager.

“I worked for them at their office in Dundonald for the last eight months because it was a job and I needed the work, plus it paid well. At the start it was just like organising any other office but recently he wanted me to get more involved in the political side of things and I ended up working more for the BNP directly. But it got too difficult because I hate what the BNP stand for, plus I live with my partner in a republican area. I’m not scared of Dowson though – he’s a wannabe hardman and I think he’s full of shit.”

Dowson, who once told the Sunday World he would never “get into bed” with the BNP, has a string of convictions including breach of the peace in 1986, possession of a weapon and breach of the peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992. He also has close links with loyalist groups here and has produced flute band tapes which glorify UFF mass killer Michael Stone.

Following our expose of his secret BNP office back in June, Dowson told UTV that he hated the BNP and only ran their call centre on pure business grounds. However we can reveal that Dowson is a fully paid up ‘life’ member.

The former employee says Dowson once flew off the handle after a Belfast recruitment agency sent gays and Asians to work in the BNP office.

“He went mental when these two Asian fellas arrived to work for us. I asked them did they realise who they would be working for and they said they didn’t care, so long as they got paid. Then they sent us a man and a woman who were quite obviously gay and he had them chucked out before they even got an interview. I left in the middle of September and he told me to keep the computer in exchange for the wages he owed. But things turned nasty when my sister, who also worked there, left but before she did she changed all the passwords on the computers. My sister only did it because they treated her like a dogsbody.

“Jim then demanded the computer back and started to get nasty. We argued for about two days over the phone about it and then on Saturday I got the picture of him with his wife and son and a shotgun. He then called the cops to my house and had me arrested for theft. The cops are raging because he told them a load of nonsense about there being cops’ and top judges’ personal details being on the computer just to get them to arrest me.”

She says Jim idolises leader Nick Griffin and loves the BNP.

“Jim went nuts after the Sunday World story in June and pulled us all in to a meeting. He banned mobile phones in the office and he installed cameras everywhere. But so many people have left he only had one call centre salesperson left. Jim is terrified that the place is going to fold because the business has dried up. During my time we brought in 4,000 new members but he can’t get past 13,000 members.

Nutter Nick’s girl is working undiecover in his Belfast office

Jenny Matthys, daughter of race hate nutter Nick GriffinTHIS the daughter of race hate nutter Nick Griffin – and she’s set up home in Ulster. Posing in her underwear she looks like a decent fun-loving girl – but behind the veneer she’s as bitter as her dad.

Jenny Matthys is a dyed-in-the wool BNP fanatic and has been sent by MEP dad Nick to Belfast to run the party’s membership office. Jenny, who’s 23 years old, is living in a tiny flat in Comber with her new Welsh husband who also works for the BNP in Belfast.

Her dad made a controversial appearance on the BBC’s Question Time programme on Thursday night and it’s believed Jenny was in London to bask in her father’s ‘glory’. The Sunday World can reveal that Jenny moved over here in July after a string of visits to Northern Ireland. Now she’s living here permanently and has become a fan of loyalist band culture.

“Jenny loves the whole loyalist thing,” says the former office manager of the Belfast BNP office. “She’s a big fan of the Goldsprings Flute Band who are a blood and thunder band from Comber. Jenny even joined them recently and goes to band practice every week. She doesn’t play anything – instead they let her carry the flag. She went up to Derry recently with Jim Dowson and his family to see the band parade.”

Jenny is also filled with contempt for ethnic minorities.

“Jenny is just like her dad. She loves the BNP and wants to follow in her dads footsteps. In fact she’s even worse than her dad because she says stuff that he even realises is too stupid to say. And she’s like him in other ways too – she’s extremely arrogant – in fact she’s a complete bitch.

As a 17-year-old Jenny planned to run for council as a BNP representative but the plan never got off the ground. But she has spent most of her life since she was a teenager working to promote the vile views of the BNP. Her husband Angus works in the mailroom of the Belfast office and came over from Wales to live here with Jenny.

Racist gets invite to Ulster

Hardline loyalists are to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin to address supporters in Ulster.

A fascist group based in Mid-Ulster have been in contact with the BNP’s head office in London. It followed his appearance on the BBC1 Question Time show on Thursday which was watched by a record 8 million viewers. The hardline loyalists want the MEP and one of his right wing councillors to come to the province in the New Year to host a question and answer session.

Said a source: “Loyalists are fed up that their local unionist politicians who don’t speak up for them. We want Ulster to remain British. We don’t foreigners coming and taking our jobs and our homes. We want a councillor to stand in next year’s elections as mid Ulster has a large foreign national population. We will give him a warn welcome because we believe he speaks up for the loyalist people of Ulster.’’

Nick Griffin is no stranger to Ulster and has a long association with hardline loyalist groups over his opposition to Sinn Fein and the IRA. Five years ago, the Sunday World revealed how Griffin held a series of meetings with neo Nazis groups at a Belfast hotel. He also met a number of senior UVF figures who were Ulster cheerleaders for the BNP.

Sunday World

Midwives reject BNP births scare

A row has broken out between the BNP and members of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), who reject claims that pregnant immigrants are stretching maternity services to breaking point.

A BNP spokesman said this weekend: "The official figures cite an increase of 65% in foreign mothers giving birth to babies in the UK between 2001 and 2007." He claimed that this was putting a huge strain on maternity units.

The debate has spread to Northern Ireland, where a senior midwife, Breedagh Hughes, has accused the BNP of twisting statistics to meet its own ends. "There has been a rise in the birthrate across Northern Ireland and of course the BNP is choosing to blame it on economic migrants. However, this is totally unfounded. People have flooded back to Northern Ireland in recent years because there is peace and regeneration.

"During the bad days of the Troubles we would never have asked a pregnant woman which 'community' she belonged to and we don't ask women now where they are from."

BNP spokesman John Walker said: "We note that they are not disputing the statistics, they are merely saying that it is not a problem, which is hard to believe given the statistics for the increase, and the fact that maternity services are being stretched."

Observer

Northern Ireland BNP 'members' on list: Ex-cop 'proud' of membership

A pretty blonde mum from Bangor, a lonely heart ex-RUC officer and a former fire chief are among the Northern Ireland people whose names have appeared on a leaked list belonging to the far-right British National Party.

A total of 39 local people are named on the alleged membership list of around 13,000 people UK wide. The BNP leadership has confirmed the list that has been spread across the internet is largely accurate, but say some non-members names had been added to create mischief.

One Northern Ireland man who openly says he’s proud to be a member of the BNP is ex-RUC officer Sandy Alexander from Portstewart. The lonely heart divorcee may support the BNP’s tough anti-immigration policies, but he certainly seems to enjoy the company of foreigners having developed online friendships with a string of Thai beauties on a social network site.

Ex-cop Sandy describes himself as “fun-loving”, “romantic” and a “good listener” on his Friendster site where he has posted pictures of himself posing with a machine gun, his sports car and in his old RUC uniform. The divorced dad-of-three says he’s “still looking for his ideal lady” and the dating site reveals that most of his online contacts are with women who live in Bangkok.

Last week Sandy told the BBC how he was proud to be a member of the BNP after his name appeared on list of party members leaked on the Internet.

“I'm in a party I firmly believe in and why should I not hold my head high like anyone else,” he said.

The BNP supports a policy ending immigration and repatriation of immigrants already residing in the UK.

Former Dungannon fire chief Harry Martin — a one-time vice-president of the UK Retired Fire Fighters Association — said he had made a one-off payment to the BNP, but then charged his mind about joining the far right party a short time later. Mr Martin, who now works as a lollypop man, said: “I realised it was important that I was neutral. The fire brigade is neutral and I have always been neutral. There was just one particular thing they were doing at that time that I agreed with and I can’t remember what it was.”

A mum from Bangor and her husband are also among those revealed as members of the British National Party. Young professionals Andy and Lisa Giltrap say they were in the BNP for about a year and attended a number of party meetings, but are no longer members. Husband Andy told Sunday Life: “I would stress we are not racist in anyway.”

He added that the BNP had been unfairly branded as a Nazi group by the media.

“I do care about being British and I do believe we are being overrun by immigrants. I support the party’s policy of controlled immigration,” he said. “In the time we were in the BNP we attended meetings and we met a lot of good people. We never met anyone who was racist. There were old ladies and all kinds of people at those meetings. They were people who concerned about issues like immigration. People were seeing what has been happening in England, there are areas where people just can’t go into.”

Mr Giltrap said he joined the BNP via the internet because at the time he passionately agreed with many of the party’s policies — particularly those on immigration, capital punishment and education. He said he took out family membership as his wife broadly shared his views. He added that he still agreed with many of the BNP’s views, but had left about a year ago as his interest had waned.

On her Bebo website Lisa Giltrap says her favourite past-time is “going out with my friends on the booze and making an ass of myself”.

One message posted some time ago on Lisa’s website was from a woman friend from Carryduff who said: “BNP. We’re gonna be a MINORITY, in 25 years your kids are gonna get beaten up for being white. Sure thing Lisa.”

Another message from a man called Stevie and posted long before the BNP list was leaked, said: “Up the BNP. Happy Hannukah!!”

Mr Giltrap said his wife could not be responsible for messages posted on a Bebo site she rarely used, but added that he knew the man who sent the “Up the BNP” message and described him as an “idiot”.

Squaddie Gary Wilkinson from Ballycarry, Co Antrim was another named on the leaked BNP list. The serving soldier no longer lives at the address that was held on the BNP’s now-exposed membership list. Oddly, for someone who appears on the BNP’s membership list, Wilkinson complains on his Bebo website that he hates England.

“I know loads of nice English people, but in general they are ignorant,” he says.

After his name was one of dozens of Ulster names leaked last week by a former BNP activist, his website was being attacked by anti-BNP campaigners. When Sunday Life contacted his family home his mother confirmed that he had received mail from the BNP, but added “he wasn’t interested in it” and the mail was never forwarded on. She added: “He doesn’t have anything to do with it. There was paperwork came in at a time, but I haven’t been forwarding anything on to him.”

Another person on the list is north Belfast pensioner Margaret Weir who told Sunday Life she was horrified and mystified that her name and details appeared on the list. She says she has never been a member of the BNP.

“I’d never even heard of the BNP until Tuesday night and I don’t understand how my name got on this list. I don’t agree with what they stand for,” she said. “The first I knew anything about it was when I got a crank call on Tuesday night. I thought the man said BP and was trying to sell me oil. I’ve had about six crank calls since then. I’ve no idea how my name got on my list. It’s very worrying,” she said.

The fearful pensioner asked that we use her name so that she could publicly deny having anything to do with the BNP, but did not want us to publish her full address. The BNP is a perfectly legal party although serving police officers are banned from being members.

Merseyside police, which has ordered an investigation into one of its police officers whose name appeared on the BNP list, issued a statement saying: “We are very clear, membership of the BNP is totally incompatible with the duties and values of the police service. We will not accept a police officer or police staff being a member.”

The Association of Chief Police Officers said all 43 constabularies were examining the list to see whether any of their serving officers were on it.

BNP leader Nick Griffin did confirm the list was largely accurate, but he said said some non-members names had been added to create mischief.

The anti-racist group Searchlight believes the leaked list overstated membership by 2,000. Instead, it thought it was a target list for potential donors and recipients of propaganda material, among them past and present members. The full UK wide list includes 16 serving and more than 50 former soldiers, five civil servants, 15 teachers and several church ministers.

Belfast Telegraph