Hypocrisy, lies and Lee 'Bonkers' Barnes

Two extremely bad poets, neither of which is a qualified lawyer

If there's ever been a better anti-fascist asset within the British National Party who consistently does more good for our side by his sheer stupidity and apparent insanity than the party's legal beagle Lee Barnes, I've yet to hear of it. There are very few days that go by without Barnes' lunacy running wild, his hypocrisy reaching ever-dizzier heights or his furious arrogance leaving him foaming at the mouth because the world doesn't quite see him as the undoubted genius that he is. Even on the days when his medication is stopping the raving, he still manages to irritate fascists and anti-fascists alike by talking crap about psychology or writing extremely bad poetry. Anyone remember Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz? Barnes' poetry is worse.

Despite the fact that, like Mark Collett, Barnes is almost universally despised inside the BNP, he seems to have a curious hold over Nick Griffin. Barnes' insane rantings over the Rachel Whitear disaster had complaints coming in from all directions, even from hardened BNP supporters and nazis, who found his violent verbal attacks on the tragic Rachel far beyond the pale. His email attack on the Auty leadership campaign also earned him a good deal of angry and well-deserved criticism, though he deflected some of that anger by claiming (as they all do when in a corner) that the email was a forgery.

However, redemption has come in the form of the release of the BNP membership list (don't bother asking - everyone knows it's on WikiLeaks) and Bonkers Barnes is suddenly seen by the myopic Nick Griffin as the source of all legal wisdom, despite the fact that he has never actually got around to acquiring any kind of legal qualification. Still, lack of competence has never stopped anyone in the BNP reaching the top - look at Dave Hannam.

Barnes has (allegedly) been slinging legal-looking letters around the universe at large since the list hit the public domain, each of them containing numerous threatening-sounding phrases that appear to put the leak on a equivalent footing with terrorism, clearly invoking the Terrorism Act in one of his emails to Indymedia. He claims that bandying member's addresses and other details around the internet puts them at risk of attack - though nearly three weeks after the leak there are yet to be any verified attacks at all.

Barnes really seems to have a blind spot when it comes to hypocrisy. This from Indymedia:

'Most incredibly Mr Barnes then explains, “I will also be issuing a request to our internal investigations team to initiate actions to collect your home addresses, contact details and financial details relating to you personally as persons running or hosting the Indymedia website”. Internal Investigations? Once the BNP has this information, it “will be used to initiate legal actions upon yourselves, to initiate financial sanctions against your company and also will be publicised on various websites so that people may contact you and address any legal issues they may have”. Pot, kettle, black?'

Yes, while threatening people for showing sections of the list with personal details, Barnes threatens to publish their personal details. Clearly, the man is an idiot - though Indymedia seems to have him pretty well tagged:

'Mr Barnes’s threat to post personal information about Indymedia participants may in itself be illegal – it certainly would cause a registered legal practitioner to lose his credentials. Perhaps then, it comes as no surprise that the Law Society confirms that Barnes is NOT a qualified lawyer at all. In fact, Mr Lee John Barnes LLB (hons) is an incoherent, buffoonish windbag who could well be charged with incitement himself.'

But anti-fascists are not the only target of Barnes' list-making lunacy. Last night, he rounded on his chums at the Stormfront nazi forum and the anti-Griffin North West Nationalist blog. Why is he complaining about Stormfront? Because;

'...rather than having a rule that the activists and posters on the site have to use a real name and a real identity, so we can all see who they are, what organisations they represent and find out what their real pasts are - the site allowed anyone to post on the site using a fake name. This has allowed Reds, agent provocateurs and the State to take advantage of the internet and use it against the interests of nationalism itself. It has allowed the flamers, the malcontents and the red scum to hide behind fake names and denigrate not just those that they have some sort of issue with, but to attack and undermine the entire cause of nationalism itself. This ability to hide behind a fake name and post rubbish online has allowed nationalist internet sites to be taken advantage of by the most loathsome creatures to ever infect and infest the Nationalist movement - the Key Board Warriors...The Key Board warrior that hides behind a fake name is a coward. They do nothing but talk rubbish'

Funny he should mention keyboard warriors - because he's largely regarded as one of the worst. Frequently in tandem with the creepiest young nazi ever, who lavishes praise on Barnes at every opportunity (using the fake name Jacob Cobain though he's generally assumed to be Barnes' partner), he wanders the rapidly-emptying corridors of the Stormfront forum attacking people at random like some demented drink-addled tramp. Anyone who dares to criticise the BNP or Nick Griffin is fair game and will be 'outed' by Lee Barnes. And he somehow sees this as different from BNP members being outed? How exactly?

He is prepared to make the rare exception though, as he states here:

'To his credit Jack Black [who Barnes outed on his blog a few months back] has gone from being just a presence on the internet and on stormfront to becoming an nationalist activist for the BPP [British People's Party]. That means I can now respect the real man himself as a true nationalist who is working for the nationalist movement and standing up for what he believes in, and not just see him as another key board warrior.'

Fine, so a keyboard warrior who has now joined a party led by a well-known police informer who runs the Redwatch site - which specifically exists to encourage attacks on anti-fascists - is okay now because he's an activist? He belongs to a party well known for its flirtations with hardcore nazis and Holocaust-deniers and that is famed for its terrorist links, but that's okay because he's now an activist? And this is the BNP's so-called legal director saying this? Do we assume that, because these statements were made in the public arena, they are acceptable to the BNP and Nick Griffin? If not, then isn't the BNP being hypocritical allowing Barnes to come out with this rubbish in public - particularly his threats to print personal details on the net while the party screams about breaches of its member's human rights?

Barnes generally gets an easy ride from the moderators at Stormfront, particularly from Jock Oldham (John 'Jock' Shearer, one of Griffin's former heavies and BNP-loyalist) who is frequently described as 'an illiterate drug dealing arsehole' on the North West Nationalist blog. It's interesting that Barnes should be cosy with Shearer but at the same moment so distant from another Stormfront moderator who closed down all the Barnes-related threads last night with this terse statement:

'I have closed down all threads on the subjects of NWN, Covert or any blog in which Lee Barnes posts his deranged ramblings.'

Oh, that one could shut him up so easily.

BNP supporters stage Burnley police station protest following arrests

BNP supporters were demonstrating outside a police station today after its members were arrested for stirring up racial hatred in a town riven by race riots. Four men were held this morning after a police investigation over the distribution of leaflets in Burnley, Lancashire, branding Muslims responsible for the heroin trade. Police would not say if the four were BNP members - the party said two were members in the local area.

Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right party, is visiting the town today, to protest outside Burnley Police station at the "persecution" of its members arrested after "Gestapo-like dawn raids" by police.

Today's arrests come after the publication of a list of more than 12,000 BNP supporters was leaked on the internet - which allegedly includes a serving police officer, a vicar and a prison officer.

Each of the leaflets features a harrowing photo of Rachel Whitear, 21, who was found dead at her flat in Exmouth, Devon, in May 2000, holding a syringe. The photo of Rachel made national headlines after her parents agreed for it to be released to warn other youngsters of the dangers of drugs.

Rachel's mother, Pauline Holcroft, 58, of Ledbury, Herefordshire, later said the leaflets were "insulting and offensive".

The leaflet was distributed to homes in Burnley - which suffered race riots in 2001 - and is also reportedly circulating in other parts of Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire. It says people should "heap condemnation" on Muslims and that it is time for them to "apologise" as it claims they are responsible for 95% of the world's heroin trade. The leaflets, which first appeared around March, were first distributed by a former BNP candidate, according to the party's website.

Burnley has a high proportion of Asian residents. It also has four British National Party councillors sitting on the borough council.

A spokesman for Lancashire Police said: "A 41-year-old man from Burnley, a 43-year-old man from Blackburn, a 53-year-old man from Preston and a 57-year-old man from Nelson were all arrested today on suspicion of the publication and distribution of written material intended to stir up racial hatred and the possession of racially inflammatory material. They will be questioned by detectives at Burnley Police Station during the course of the day."

In a separate development, police called in independent investigators today to look into claims that a serving officer is on the list of leaked members of the BNP. The list was removed from the original blog where it was published but remains available on other websites.

According to the BNP, the published list is based on its 2007 membership list although a number of names of people who were not, or are not party members had allegedly been added. Earlier this year, the party obtained an injunction at the High Court in Manchester banning any publication of the list.

24dash

BNP's fraudulent 'Preston Pals' lie machine steps up production in North-West

The Bamber leaflet - a clear incitement to religious hatred

Parts of the North-West of England, primarily around Lancashire, are being treated to a BNP-produced leaflet that seems to have been penned by the ever-despicable Tony Bamber, the former fundholder for the now defunct Lancaster and Preston branch of the far-right party and a former candidate for the Tulketh ward in Preston in 2006. The leaflet campaign appears to be part of an attempt to get the branch up and running again in time for the Euro-elections.

Bamber, in keeping with the BNP's long-established tradition of jumping on any available bandwagon, formed a fictitious group a couple of years back, which he called the 'Preston Pals', a reference to the company of volunteers from Preston who were eventually formed into 'D' company, 7th Battalion, the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, to fight in World War I.

In the Battle of Bazentin-le-Petit on the Somme in 1916, 200 out of the 250 in the battalion were killed in action and the surviving Pals were then further reduced in number through redistribution to other battalions. A short and bloody history but one of which Preston is rightly proud.

Sadly, while appropriating the Preston Pals name and claiming on his latest leaflet that the current bunch (which is actually the remains of Preston BNP) have taken the name 'in honour' of the Pals, he then goes on to state inaccurately that they became the 5th Battalion, a mistake that shows precisely how much respect he actually has for the Pals.

The Royal British Legion (RBL) has roundly condemned this misappropriation of the name by the BNP, with its spokesman Patrick Leavey saying; '[The Preston Pals] sacrifice should not be besmirched by people engaged in political campaigning for such an ugly cause. We condemn this leaflet, its contents, and those who are disseminating it'.

This is not the only reason for condemning this filth. The leaflet is headed 'the heroin trade - a crime against humanity' and goes on at great length about how Muslims are responsible for the 'heroin trade' in Britain, stating;

'Before the Islamic invasion, it was almost impossible to find heroin in our land.'

Invasion? Isn't that a slightly loaded word and one that seems to encourage religious hatred?

So was it possible to find heroin in Britain before say, the 1960s? Yes, and a little bit of research would show Bamber and the BNP that they are misleading their readers. But before we go on to that, let's get things into perspective.

The very first chart I came across on the internet on doing a search, tells me that deaths from heroin and morphine in England and Wales for 2005 hit a shocking 842 - although that's possibly not quite so shocking when compared to the deaths caused by alcohol and tobacco for the same year, which added up to a staggering 93,127 - none of which, amazingly, the BNP has yet claimed as the responsibility of Muslims, though doubtless they will if we give them enough time.

That the BNP doesn't really care about these tragic deaths is clear from an appalling article written by the party's legal advisor and obvious lunatic Lee Barnes back in March of this year, following criticism from the parents of Rachel Whitear, an addict who died in her bedroom and whose image was used in an acclaimed campaign against drug use. Rachel's parents had objected to the use of her picture to bolster the BNP's warped racist ideas of who holds responsibility for the drug trade. Barnes' response was unequivocal;

'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.'

A despicable statement and one that would have had him thrown out of any real political party on the same day that it was made.

However, back to the leaflet and its ridiculous assertion that 'before the Islamic invasion, it was almost impossible to find heroin in our land'.

Strange then, that, at the end of the nineteenth century, the underworld of London - Limehouse, Whitechapel and all the area around its docks which were then riddled with opium dens - was searched during the hunt for the murderer who became known as Jack the Ripper. In fact, around that time and long before, opium dens were found in the dock areas of all major cities, though heroin use around the world has been going on for centuries.

The art of the sweeping statement is not lost on Tony Bamber. His current leaflet states;

'For all intents and purposes, Muslims are exclusively responsible for the heroin trade.'

This will not sit well with those who have, through the course of their work, taken a quick look at the history of the heroin trade only to find that the most enthusuatic traders in opium in the late eighteenth century were the British, who were aggressively exporting it from India and importing it into China, creating, by the mid-1830s, some twelve million addicts.

The Opium Wars were sanctioned by the then British Government purely to achieve their economic and territorial ambitions, which included smuggling huge quantities of opium into China estimated to be 15 tons in 1730, 75 tons in 1773. By the 1820s, 900 tons of opium per year was then exported into China and 1,400 tons per year by March of 1839. The trade from China itself is decreasingly rapidly nowadays thanks largely to the Communist government and its violent suppression of opium growers, which should please the BNP but strangely, doesn't.

Moving nearer to now, there are many people who remember the opium/heroin trade being centered on the so-called Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand and Laos, and also Vietnam, during the mid-nineties, when rumours abounded of immense slave farms which produced astonishing amounts of opium which was then refined into heroin and transported back to the US with the collusion, it was frequently alleged at the time, of the US military.

Even now, the Golden Crescent of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan is far from the sole producer of heroin. Mexico and Columbia contribute vast amounts as do a number of other South American countries, though the traffic from those tends to be primarily for the US market.

One of the things Bamber forgot to point out on his leaflet was that, up until 2004, Pakistan was considered one of the biggest opium-growing countries. However, the efforts of Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force have since reduced the opium growing area by 59%.

Then of course, there is the cutting or dilution of the heroin that reaches these shores. Very little pure heroin gets as far as the consumer and what does, generally kills them - most is diluted with all kinds of crap in the never-ending fight for vaster profits. Ninety percent of that industry takes place here, by home-grown criminals or criminal organisations like the decidedly non-Muslim Mafia. Where heroin is concerned, crime is international and certainly cannot be laid at the feet of any one race or religion, no matter how much the BNP might try to distort reality.

In its desperation to have a go at Muslims, the BNP - as it always has - ignores the facts or only produces half-facts to support its racism, its hatred of Islam, its lies and its fraudulent claims to being a real political party. It is not. It is nothing more than a rabid band of racist buffoons led by a con-man. The likes of Tony Bamber fit right in.

Our advice to anyone who receives one of these leaflets is to report it to the police as incitement to religious hatred. I've already done so - if we all do it, we can eventually get the vermin who deliver this rubbish off our streets.

Lee Barnes and his contempt for the law

One of the things that always interested us here at Lancaster Unity about Lee Barnes, BNP's legal beagle, is his utter contempt for the law and those who represent it.

For a man who has only actually been in the party for a few months, Barnes certainly seems to have a lot of influence - at least on Nick Griffin, with whom he shares a little legal education. Perhaps he shares something more for it's clear that while Nick Griffin adores him, those in the membership of the party who have actually heard of Barnes or had any dealings with him, think he's an incompetent lunatic with views that defy logic, sense and indeed, reality. In fact, get him on the right subject and his views are pure venom. And that subject? The law, of course.

Back in October of last year, Barnes was rattled about a judicial decision with which he disagreed. Rather than discussing his views in a measured and calm manner, he exploded all over the place.

'Yet again the dumb fucking Leftist and Liberal judges that infest the legal system like lice on a dying dogs back ...This judge is the same cunt...' and so on.

Yes, those are his very words, quoted from his ghastly blog, which Nick Griffin described as 'an intensely argued, intellectually inventive thing'. A thing, certainly.

Barnes showed his true and appalling colours back in March of this year when he went off on one about the late Rachel Whitear, a heroin addict whose body was found slumped on her bedroom floor after she overdosed and whose pictures were used as part of a nationwide anti-drugs campaign.

Rather than applaud the courage of Rachel's parents, Barnes attacked them for complaining when the BNP used the picture not to support the anti-drugs initiative but to kick off an anti-mosque campaign and they dared to complain.

'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.'

More recently, we had the classic 'puupet' letter, sent out from Lee Barnes to all members, ordering them not to even think of signing Colin Auty's nomination papers for the now-defunct leadership challenge, in which he made the threat that those who considered signing would be 'tried for conspiracy and treason'.

Just a couple of days ago, one of our contributors, Hexapla, pointed out both Barnes' habit of plagiarism and his anti-semitism in an article that referred to the BNP's connections with the neo-nazi National Alliance and Lee Barnes' addiction to Jew Watch, a site run by a member of the National Alliance that has been condemned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as one of the worst examples of how the internet has been exploited for purposes of incitement to racial hatred.

Barnes' obsessive nature seems to find its greatest focus (at the moment) when he is discussing either the judiciary or us - in fact, he will frequently throw us together so he can have a go at both in a single article, thus saving time and venom for his next piece of hate speech.

Last Saturday, he attacked both of us in relation to a case that he had written up with the intention of it being taken to the European Court of Human Rights. The case was struck out but Barnes, ever knowledgable far beyond his capabilities and furious at losing, stated that the judges had misapplied the law, that they had deliberately and in collusion with the government rigged the system, and described the judgement, which concerned harassment, as 'farsical' and 'a joke'.

The details are irrelevant but Barnes' attitude to the law isn't - after all, he represents the views of the British National Party on the law. And what is the view of the BNP on the law of the land? Well, here are copies of two emails that were sent to a former member of the party which very concisely state everything you need to know about the BNP's curious relationship with law and order. Information that would identify the recipient has been concealed.

This one is from Lee Barnes. Note the phrase 'courts and judges are as bent as a nine bob note'.

And this is from Nick Griffin. The phrase 'all these types piss in the same pot' springs from the page.

Utter contempt from the leader of the BNP and its legal advisor. It's no wonder the party is riddled with criminals from top to bottom.

The BNP's Lee Barnes: just an arrogant idiot or seriously disturbed?

I used to work with ex-cons a few years back, a good percentage of them having been in jail for drug-related offences normally involving theft, sometimes with violence attached, to get money to buy heroin or some other highly-addictive and lethal hard drug. Everyone who came to my place of work had a story behind their addiction and after a while it became relatively simple to separate the truth from the lies and thus to begin dealing properly with the problems behind the crimes. The origin of the addiction could be due to a number of reasons but far and away the most common seemed to be simple peer-pressure, usually from a close friend or partner.

Addiction is difficult to understand for most of us who are addicted to nothing worse than the odd cup of coffee or occasional pack of cigarettes, but those living with or who are emotionally close to addicts know the all-pervading grip that, for example, heroin, has on its victim. Nothing - absolutely nothing at all - takes precedence over the habit, and the consequences of the addiction affect everyone around the addict themselves. Imagine then, that your daughter, thanks to an addict boyfriend, herself becomes an addict. Having met a lot of addicts, and having daughters of my own, just the thought of this makes me shudder.

Rachel Whitear, 21, died of a heroin overdose. She was discovered on the floor of her flat in May 2000 and photographs of her body were used as part of an anti-drugs campaign. Her mother, Pauline Holcroft, along with Rachel's stepfather, Mick Holcroft, took the brave and extraordinary decision to publish photographs of her daughter, slumped and lifeless, in the hope that it would discourage other youngsters from taking drugs.

At around the same time, and in conjunction with Herefordshire County Council they released a video called 'Rachel's Story'. The 22 minute video follows Rachel's decline from happy student to heroin addiction. In May 2002, then Education Secretary, Estelle Morris, announced that a copy of the video would be made available to every secondary school in the UK. It was Ms Holcroft's hope that publishing the photographs and making the video meant that the tragedy of their daughter's death stopped other people dying from the same cause.

The astonishing courage shown by Mr and Mrs Holcroft in allowing the image to be used in this way would be applauded by any decent person, and the terrible tragedy of a young life lost to heroin could be turned into something useful, something that might avert future, similar, tragedies. Nobody in their right mind could express anything but hope that good might come from bad. Except for the British National Party.

An organisation calling itself the Preston Pals (actually the Preston branch of the BNP) has issued a leaflet which has been delivered to a large area of Preston in Lancashire. The leaflet rants about the heroin trade, blames it entirely on Muslims and is headed; 'The heroin trade, a crime against humanity - time for Muslims to apologise.' It continues with the usual rant against a proposal to demolish an existing mosque which would be replaced by a new one. It also has a prominent picture on it - the image of Rachel Whitear, dead on her bedroom floor. Tony Bamber, who stood as the BNP candidate in last year's council elections, is given as the Pals' contact on the leaflet.

The 'Preston Pals' was the name given to the 7th Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, which fought and was almost annihilated on the Somme in July 1916, during the First World War. The Royal British Legion (RBL) has condemned this misappropriation of the name by the BNP, with its spokesman Patrick Leavey saying; '[The Preston Pals] sacrifice should not be besmirched by people engaged in political campaigning for such an ugly cause. We condemn this leaflet, its contents, and those who are disseminating it'.

Lee Barnes, the BNP’s legal advisor, feels differently, and in an article entitled 'The Definition Of Pathetic' he makes his views, and given his position within the organisation we can safely consider his views to be those of the BNP, very clear indeed. Using the premise that 'the main funding of the Islamic Jihad comes from heroin', he rips into Rachel Whitear without mercy or compassion.

'She 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.'

He continues: 'I bet Rachels parents either funded her addiction directly through giving her money for smack 9to 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.'

As I understand it, it was a former boyfriend of hers that got her on to heroin in the first place - making him the creature Barnes describes as 'a pathetic heroin tourist...a facilitator of addicition' and Rachel his victim.

Barnes' lack of sympathy to the mother and stepfather and their objection the the image being used by the BNP to attack Muslims is startling.

'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 idea that Barnes should use the phrase 'your dead junkie daughter' as though speaking directly to the parents of Rachel Whitear is both shocking and disturbing. I don't know anybody who would treat the death of someone's child with such contempt and loathing, no matter what the circumstances, and I'm surprised that even the BNP, notoriously full of hatred for anyone who doesn't conform to its own distorted idea of perfection, would allow its legal advisor to come out with this venomous garbage.

What makes Barnes' article even more offensively bizarre, is that quite a number of fairly prominent BNP members have been drug dealers, encouraging the vulnerable like Rachel Whitear to become addicted and thus to line their own pockets. One of our readers kindly supplied a list just a couple of days ago:

'It’s a bit rich for the nazi BNP to accuse others of drug dealing. The BNP has been involved in drug-dealing for years. Here's a small selection...

• The BNP councillor in Blackburn, Robin Evans, resigned after he wrote a letter stating that the BNP in Blackburn was largely made up of drug dealers and football hooligans.
• The neo-terrorist group Combat 18 (founded by the BNP) undertakes large-scale illegal drug imports and deals to raise money for neo-nazi activities in the UK and abroad. Many BNP members are Combat 18 members. A number of Combat 18/BNP members are cocaine dealers.
• Charlie Sargent, a convicted murderer, BNP member (he used to guard BNP founder and former leader John Tyndall) and senior Combat 18 leader, has convictions for drug dealing and trafficking.
• The BNP candidate for Huddersfield, Karl Hanson, was fined in Crown Court for dealing in crack cocaine and heroin (in face he face five class A drugs offence charges)
• Richard Brown, a BNP candidate in Kirklees, admitted he was jailed as part of a £100,000 drug ring! He pleaded guilty to intent to supply drugs.
• John Shearer, leading member of Oldham BNP, is a convicted drug dealer.
• Colin Smith, BNP South East London organiser, has a conviction for possession of drugs (in addition to 16 other criminal convictions for burglary, theft, stealing cars and assaulting a police officer)

And so on. Barnes, being deeply involved with the BNP, will know all this - indeed, he probably knows and works with a few of the people on the list - yet he chooses to ignore the damage that people in his own party have caused just so he can take a swipe at whoever is his target of the day.

As is usual with the British National Party, the hypocrisy is profound, though in Lee Barnes case I'm more concerned with the state of his mental health.

Mother condemns BNP's heroin leaflet

The parents of a heroin overdose victim have condemned a British National Party-backed leaflet blaming Muslims for the drugs trade.

The publishers of a controversial flyer, claiming Muslims were responsible for fostering the heroin market in the UK, are being investigated by police on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. Hundreds of homes in Burnley, Pendle and Preston received the leaflets, which have been condemned by political leaders in Lancashire.

Now the parents of Rachel Whitear, who died in Devon from a heroin overdose in 2000, have condemned the BNP for using a picture of their dead daughter on the leaflet.

Her mother Pauline Holcroft approved the use of the image, which shows Rachel's corpse slumped with a syringe in her hand, as part of posters for hard-hitting anti-drugs initiatives. But she has confirmed that she was never asked for permission to use the picture in connection with the BNP leaflet, which was produced by Preston lecturer Tony Bamber, and backed by party members John Rowe and Brian Norton Parker.

Mrs Holcroft, from Ledbury, Hertfordshire, said: "I was truly horrified when I saw what they'd done with it. Even if one of the main political parties had asked us if they could use it in a campaign I think we would have to say no. For the BNP to use it without even seeking our permission is an insult to my daughter's memory."

Lancashire Police's hate crimes unit was called in to investigate the leaflet, after receiving a number of complaints, and a file has now been passed to the Crown Prosecution for consideration over possible charges.

Opposition councillors in Pendle have called for Coun Brian Norton Parker, who represents Marsden ward for the BNP, to quit. But Coun Parker, and Mr Rowe, of Cowper Street, Burnley, who unsuccessfully stood for the BNP in Rosegrove ward at the last borough elections, have defended their stance, saying they wanted to highlight the menace of the heroin trade locally.

Preston Citizen