Matthew Single, 37, formerly of Church Lane, Brinsley, Notts, was fined by Nottingham magistrates after admitting disclosing data without consent. The names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of some party supporters were leaked in November.
Judge John Stobart said the fine was "low" because Single was on benefits. District Judge John Stobart also ordered Single to pay £100 towards the cost of the prosecution.
The judge told Single: "Anything that is posted on the internet has the effect of opening a Pandora's box. What you put on the internet can never be taken from it and while there may be some members in this organisation who do not deserve to be protected by the law, they should be able to expect that officers within the organisation will not abuse the information provided to them. The law exists to save people from such revenge attacks."
Judge Stobart added: "It came as a surprise to me, as it will to many members of the party, that to do something as foolish and as criminally dangerous as you did will only incur a financial penalty. It comes as no surprise to me that somebody to do with an organisation that prides itself on Britishness is in fact living off the British people on Job Seeker's Allowance and that is why the fine is so low as to be ridiculous."
The charges were dropped against Single's wife, Sadie Graham-Single. The 30-year-old was not at the court.
A councillor arrested last year in connection with a leaked BNP membership list has lost her seat, it emerged today.
Sadie Graham-Single is no longer councillor for Brinsley after Broxtowe Borough Council announced it is to hold a by-election for her seat. The council has called the election following Mrs Graham-Single's failure to attend the requisite number of meetings during a six-month period.
In a statement, the council said her right to be a councillor ceased at midnight on May 12th - six months after last attending a meeting of the council's Sustainable Communities committee on November 12, 2008.
Mrs Graham-Single has been informed of the council's decision and the date of the by-election will be announced following a full council meeting on June 17.
Mrs Graham-Single was one of two people arrest last December in connection with the unauthorised publication of a BNP membership list on the internet. She was arrested by Notts Police on behalf of Dyfed Powys Police, but was bailed pending further inquiries.
Even the meanest of the BNP's councillors conform to the party's petty racisms, as was shown in early July when Simon Deacon, a Markyate Parish Councillor and former leading National Front activist, voted against the council's Equal Opportunities Policy, describing it as a waste of time. No great surprise there.
Another non-surprise, was the complete collapse of Colin Auty's leadership challenge: Auty didn't even manage to get the required number of nominating signatures for the challenge to go ahead.
Griffin, clearly nervous of Auty's popularity (not something that the pig farmer has ever experienced), enlisted the help of the big battalions in the dubious forms of fruitcake Lee Barnes and 'election guru' Eddie Butler, both of whom wrote possibly illegal letters to the entire membership warning it to avoid Auty like the plague, Butler referring to Auty as a 'joke candidate' while Barnes stated that anyone who supported the challenge would be 'tried for conspiracy and treason'. Such power.
Meanwhile, Dicky Barnbrook, who takes his politics very seriously indeed, learns to ride a bike with fruit on it...
Dukinfield Labour councillor John Taylor apparently earned the ire of the BNP's Andrew Gatward, the party's West Lindsey organiser, and promptly found himself on Redwatch complete with death threat.
'Congratulations, you're on Redwatch. I am going to take you out. Six .22 rounds in the back of your head should do the trick. I would bring my .38 special but it makes one hell of a mess. I'll be seeing you.'
Whether it was Gatward who put Taylor on Redwatch is impossible to know but the fact that the former writes the occasional hate mail to the latter should give us a clue. As should Hexapla's article about the bizarre and violent fantasy world that Andrew Gatward seems to inhabit.
July saw us asking questions about how closely Nick Griffin and the BNP were working with Patrick Harrington and his micro-party, the National Liberal Party. Certainly there's a strongly incestuous relationship between them which becomes even more intimately entangled when the BNP's fake union Solidarity, its fake PR company Accentuate and Third Way are factored in. More investigation needed, if anyone wants to take it on board.
To no-one's surprise at all, Dewsbury East's BNP councillor Colin Auty quit the party (and eventually his seat) after his failure to get a leadership challenge going, moaning about the lack of democracy in the BNP. Odd how it hadn't bothered him up to this point. His campaign manager Roger Robertson also bit the dust, though in his case he was expelled for bringing the party into disrepute by setting up the challenge to the leadership and having the audacity to talk to the press. Bringing the BNP into disrepute? You couldn't make this stuff up, could you.
Racists and anti-semites Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle are convicted of publishing racially inflammatory material on a website. Both face further charges though mid-July saw them in the news again, this time for not turning up in court. It emerged that the pair had run off to the US, seeking political asylum across the pond.
An old friend reappears in court (albeit briefly), to answer a charge of attacking a pub landlord. Football hooligan, violent thug and former Burnley BNP councillor Luke Smith, hits the news again by doing what he does best - creating havoc. A couple of days later, Smith is found dead, having hanged himself.
Clive Jefferson, who desperately wants to run the BNP's security because he's a tough guy, brought some of his more idiotic pals down from Cumbria to Lancaster just to irritate shoppers by illegally setting up a stall in Market Square and getting in everyone's way. After a kicked-over table, numerous leaflets covered in spilled fizzy and a very noisy spontaneous demo, Jefferson and his morons buggered off - though not before the police nicked him for driving around in a car with an illegal numberplate (for which he was done the statutory £80).
Drifting towards the end of July and we see Nick Griffin writing to the December rebels trying to get them to back off from the forthcoming court case. In his letter, Griffin appears to libel the rebel's barrister Adrian Davies in a number of ways - though Mr Davies doesn't seem too keen to take the pig farmer to court on his own behalf. What Griffin is trying to avoid, of course, is showing the world that he can no longer afford to pay for decent legal representation and may have instead to rely on his own quick wits and those of the party's legal lunatic Lee Barnes. Gawd, I almost feel sorry for him. But not quite.
Too late to make any difference and presumably in angry response to Griffin's letter, Sadie Graham suddenly pops her head over the parapet to declare that
'I truly believe that there has never been a political leader in this country so hated by his own people.'
Her statement, posted on the Voice of Challenge blog, rips into Griffin, calling him a liar and a coward, but the overall effect is that it is too little, too late. Had she issued such a statement six months before, she would have got a massive and positive response. In fact, it comes across as the death knell of the rebellion - which in fact it turns out to be.
Yet another financial scandal within the BNP is uncovered by Searchlight - this one centering on the much-vaunted 'Truth Truck' or Lie Lorry. BNP members were asked to donate towards the purchase of a brand new advertising vehicle, effectively a mobile hoarding, which would help spread the BNP's lies even further. Members were asked to donate a staggering £40,000 to this appeal and many responded though BNP members on its own forum sounded a note of caution, wondering what had happened to the battle bus, a similar idea that was used to obtain donations a few years back.
Eventually, it was discovered that the BNP had conned its membership - again - and that the truck was actually being shared between the UK LifeLeague, an anti-abortion outfit based in Belfast, and the party.
We'll let the late Luke Smith round off July. His funeral seems to have followed the pattern of his life, being marred by vandalism and violence. Around forty drunken so-called 'mourners' were dispersed by police after they were found hurling bricks off a bridge on to a road below, presumably in tribute to Smith being a well-known thug and hooligan throughout his life.
Steve Smith, uncle of Luke, former member of the BNP and now leader of the utterly insignificant England First Party, said of his nephew;
'He was a lovely, lovely lad who, like a lot of people, was just too sensitive to exist in what is effectively an extremely cruel world...'
Not being endowed with the greatest of political imaginations (as opposed to fevered fantasy), the BNP thought it would be a wizard prang to produce a racist leaflet entitled "The Londoner", which it hoped to confuse with the Greater London Authority's own publication of the same name.
Naturally, the political geniuses of the BNP had neglected to check on the status of the name "The Londoner", which, as they should have known, was a trademark registered to the GLA. The GLA promptly fired off a legal missive accusing the BNP of "intentionally trading on the goodwill of the GLA in the trademark of ‘The Londoner’ by using a trademark which is confusingly similar to ‘The Londoner’ and that the use of the trademark, does, or is intended to, confuse or mislead members of the public". The same missive demanded that the BNP cease and desist and remove from circulation any publication using "The Londoner" as its title.
This wasn't to be the last time in 2008 that the BNP sought to sow the seeds of confusion by conflating other, perfectly respectable causes with its own racist campaigns.
In the best piece of national press publicity to come the way of racism for many a year, the Daily Mail developed a soft spot for what it called "the BNP's blonde bombshell", and devoted a two-page spread to Upper Beeding's best known paragon of virtue, community activist, all-round good egg (and BNP member), Donna Bailey.
Donna has the kind of looks that drive normally woman-free BNP members to stock up on tissue papers, and was the perfect antidote to the recently aired derangement of Lynne Mozar. Nobody ever commented on the BNP website to the effect that "We need more like Lynne Mozar in the BNP", but the party's article showcasing the Daily Mail's Donna tribute quickly filled with comments that might have come from schoolboys drooling over a Penthouse centre-spread.
As we noted: "Donna is, as they say, a class act. It's almost as if the BNP has recruited its very own Julie Andrews who comes skipping and singing over the Sussex Downs spreading sweetness and light wherever she goes."
This Julie Andrews had selective vision, however.
Donna told the Daily Mail: "I thought probably exactly the same of the BNP as you do. I thought, if this [the BNP website] is all racist, offensive stuff then I am switching right off. But it wasn't. It was all perfectly sensible. I found myself agreeing with everything - especially the immigration stuff."
Just in case Donna missed it, we pointed out that "the immigration stuff" was very difficult to avoid on the BNP website, as was the barely disguised racism behind it, and that if you took away "the immigration stuff" you could fit the BNP's policies on the back of a postage stamp. Even more difficult to avoid was the overt racism of the BNP's keyboard army of bloggers and forum posters, but Donna must, by some mysterious means, never have come across these dubious delights.
We said:
"...we'll presume that Donna refrained from visiting the numerous websites of the BNP's Blog Battalion, where open racism and complete contempt for other peoples and cultures is all too obvious ('Turnips', 'Muzzies', 'Mudslimes' ''Groids', Donna?). Or that she has never visited a BNP-infested Internet forum where the tone is somewhere between the toilet and the sewer, and the mental ability to step back a couple of rungs on the evolutionary ladder is a prerequisite to talking on anything like equal terms with them"
and added:
We'll also assume that Donna suffers from some unspecified but mercifully unique condition that blinds her to any awareness of the after-hours activties of so many of her fellow BNP members - you know the kind of thing, trivialities like murder, solicitation to murder, bomb-making, wife-beating, GBH, fraud, attacking Eddy Butler... not to mention the latest additions to the list, such entering members' homes by deception to make off with their property, bugging their private conversations and then pasting them on the Internet.
Donna told the Daily Mail that, just like her, BNP were "quite normal" and that the party suffered from a "bad press".
Hey ho.
Back in the reality of the BNP, the Decembrist rebellion limped on. An increasingly confident Nick Griffin made the rebels a tricksy offer they could all too easily refuse, as Searchlight reported:
In exchange for giving up their ‘strike’ and taking down their insurgent website and blogs the rebel leaders were given the chance of getting their party cards back.
The only condition laid out by the ever-so-generous party leadership was that they would only return as probationary members. This would mean that their immediate future in the party would be dependent on good behaviour and, just as importantly for Nick Griffin, they would not be entitled to stand for the party leadership at least the next three years.
The move was typical of Griffin. Everybody beyond the gullible BNP membership saw a trap being loaded, especially the rebels, who knew they would be lucky to last three months, good behaviour or not, as Griffin picked them off at leisure. This was a double trap, though, since in refusing Griffin's offer the rebels gave the BNP leader the opportunity to portray himself as a man of compromise and reason, spurned by disruptive splitters. And so, as always, it was win-win for Griffin.
At the same time Griffin-inspired rumours began to surface portending yet more changes to the BNP constitution, aimed at curtailing challenges to Nick's leadership - and the BNP's ever obliging mug battalion nodded sagely that this was the right and proper thing to do.
The saga of Donna Bailey finally came to a head with the Upper Beeding Parish Council by-election in which the flaxen-haired goddess rather less than honestly stood as an independent. This stance was contradicted, rather, by the BNP, which claimed her for its own, and sat back confident in expectations of a famous victory that would propel Donna into Upper Beeding's corridors of power.
Alas, Donna badly misfired. Having failed to secure co-option by invading an Upper Beeding Parish Council meeting, she also failed to secure election, losing out to a woman "who likes poodles", as a later film, based on these events, reported.
Four Burnley BNP supporters found themselves on the thick end of a High Court ruling that landed them with £30,000 in costs after they challenged an election result in the town's Rosegrove with Lowerhouse ward. Not mincing his words, Burnley Council Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow said that the four had failed to obtain proper legal advice (we wouldn't care to guess where they did obtain it) and had been "cajoled into going on a fishing trip".
He added: "Four citizens of Burnley have been put in a position where they face substantial costs, which could have been avoided. The fact that it's four individuals means the British National Party isn't liable for any of the costs despite the fact they've been using this for party political means."
You really would have thought that Burnley BNP might have smelled a rat when advised to object to the Rosegrove with Lowerhouse result on an individual basis. Obviously somebody in the party hierarchy knew they hadn't got a hope and wasn't prepared to sacrifice party money in a lost cause - but was more than happy to encourage the unfortunate four into financial penury.
The bewildering melange of fact and fiction that are the BNP's finances came under the scrutiny of Radio 4's "File on Four" in a programme Simon Darby predictably pre-warned was an "attack" on the party.
With considerations of impartiality and legal responsibility to address, "File on Four" put itself at a disadvantage in its dealings with a party never knowingly observant of either, and the resulting programme, while still damaging, was not the killer blow it should have been.
Still, enough evidence of BNP shady dealings was presented that would in any other party have led to an internal inquiry at the very least, and should have been of deep interest to the Electoral Commission. As Nick Griffin, chief suspect in many of the allegations made, was the only person within the BNP who could order an inquiry, that was always a non-starter - not that anybody would have trusted a Griffin-instigated inquiry, - and the Electoral Commission... well, our experience of that particular "watchdog" is such that we wonder if there is any point to it at all.
Lancaster Unity listed five points of interest raised by "File on Four":
* Possible donation fraud * Potential PAYE fraud * Dodgy unreceipted transactions * Lies from the BNP's treasurer * Shredded documents
and concluded
All in all, an intriguing programme that was only able to touch the surface of the corruption that is endemic within and around the British National Party. The feeling I got from it is that there is a lot more information to be dug out - but that's the feeling we all get when the words 'corruption' and 'BNP' are mentioned in the same sentence.
News that the BNP had moved its Excalibur tat outlet to Deeside in North Wales was greeted with digust on the part of local Labour MP Mark Tami. “This is a very unwelcome development,” he told the North Wales Daily Post. “Clearly their views are abhorrent to the vast majority of the British public. Nobody would want to see this in the area and I hope that people steer clear of buying any merchandising from the BNP.”
Naturally Excalibur failed to inform landlords Evans Easyspace of its connection to the BNP, and moved heaven and earth to keep the location of its premises secret. It was so secret, apparently, that Nick Griffin told the Daily Post that even he didn't know where it was - and if you believe that...
So began the quest to discover the whereabouts of the BNP's repository of fake Victoria Crosses and cheap t-shirts, which we'll return to in a later post.
Meanwhile, local opposition gathered as the BNP announced plans to stage its annual Red White and Blue money-spinner in Denby, Derbyshire, for the second year running. Party member Alan Warner, on whose land the August event would be staged, had initially sided with the Decembrist rebels until leaned on by panicked local officials, and later resigned his Denby parish council seat claiming that other councillors didn't talk to him and that parish councils "have no power".
Denby residents objected to the BNP's presence after witnessing their loutish behaviour the previous year. Denby man John Lumsden told his local newspaper: "The people who caused the main problems were the organisers who stayed up all night having large karaoke parties." 76 year-old Brian Bentley said: "We had a lot of noise last year and a lot of people from the festival left the site and were just walking around the village drinking."
All political parties are prone to pulling some low tricks, but few do so with the resolve and tenacity of the BNP. Treating the Hastings Voluntary Association for the Blind with utter contempt, the party of truth and honesty booked the Association's premises under the name "British Heritage" so as to hold a meeting addressed by Nick Griffin.
An appalled HVAB spokesperson said: "To say we are shocked about this is an understatement. We are horrified. We would not have allowed the booking if we had known it was for this purpose."
Lancaster Unity remarked:
The BNP's current infestation of South African ex-Security Service personnel seems to be increasing the BNP's love of cloak and dagger operations. Supporters were told to meet outside a nearby Methodist Church before being directed to the venue, a five minute walk away. The password, apparently, was "buffoons".
"Buffoons", we can safely assume, tells us all we need to know about the BNP's attitude towards Hastings Voluntary Association for the Blind.
Cloak and dagger was also the order of the day in Birmingham, where a tiny band of fascists skulked around the back streets a-purposed on holding a "trade union" AGM. This wasn't just any old trade union, however, this was the "one big union", the "fighting union", the "[insert windy hyperbole here] union", Solidarity - general secretary Patrick Harrington.
In Birmingham on February 23rd the BNP's bogus micro "trade union", Solidarity, held its annual conference at the Apollo Hotel, Birmingham. The booking was made in the name of "Accentuate", a vaporous one man "PR company" which seems to exist to issue press releases nobody takes any notice of.
Solidarity, taken from its founders Clive Potter and Tim Hawke in dubious circumstances in a Griffin-inspired coup and handed to failure and nonentity Patrick Harrington, is so useless that the only advice it could give Mark Walker, at the centre of its feeble cause celebre case, was to "hire a lawyer specialising in employment law".
Some union!
The reason for booking the Apollo Hotel in the name "Accentuate" was purely to con the owners and to disguise the fact that this was a BNP event in all but name.
True to paranoid form, Solidarity insisted its members meet outside a McDonalds from where they would be redirected. I understand they were also told to keep schtumm so that the Apollo's owners didn't tumble to the fact that it was playing host to a gathering of hardcore racists.
The paranoia extended even to its own small band of deluded devotees, who were subjected to bag searches and "other security measures". Photography was out, so were mobile phones and "recording equipment", and only three hours were allowed from start to finish.
After the AGM, Harrington and Solidarity began issuing grandiloquent statements on the business conducted and debates held, neglecting to mention that only 27 members of the "one big union" could be bothered to turn up out of the 211 Harrington claimed were members - itself a lie, as Solidarity's accounts were later to prove.
As February closed the Guardian broke an interesting story on the West London-based CL English Language college, which teaches hundreds of foreign language students, charging fees of up to an eyewatering £30 per hour.
What caught the Guardian's eye was that the college was controlled by old Nick Griffin friend, Roberto Fiore, leader of the neo-fascist Italian Forza Nuova, who had in the past held international fascist gatherings on the premises.
The college was a "substantial business", according to one of its accountants - and with 100 students claimed to be there at any one time paying £30 per hour we imagine that it is. Odd then, as the Guardian clearly felt, that it should produce so little apparent profit: "Despite its size ... its latest accounts show that it recorded a profit of just £2,214 during 2006, and £1,821 the year before."
Or perhaps not so surprising.
CL English Language's accountants refused to be drawn on why the profits of the "substantial business" were so small, claiming client confidentiality - but we're sure you won't fall off your chairs in astonishment to learn that the reluctant currency counters were none other than sweet old Edgar and Jean Griffin, Ma and Pa to the BNP's own Nick.
Never very far from some self-imposed crisis, the BNP saw in New Year 2008 as only it knows how, in division and acrimony. Still reeling in the swirl created by the Decembrist revolt it was far from certain at the time that the BNP would survive into the Spring as a unified party. Badly shaken, the Griffinites predictably resorted to the underhanded tactics of which they are grubby past masters, raining down a venomous fire on the heads of leading members who, only weeks before, were lauded as paragons of BNP virtue. For good measure, the party even invented the "engagement" of Richard "Mine's a double" Barnbrook and Simone "Formerly had prospects" Clarke.
The trouble for the Decembrists from the beginning was that not only did they underestimate their real enemy, Nick Griffin, but they completely failed to land any telling blows against him, preferring to attack Griffin by proxy, venting themselves against the unpopular Mark Collett and David Hannam in the hope of damaging Griffin.
It was never going to work.
Lurid stories of Collett (left) and Hannam being caught in what we might discreetly call "inappropriate circumstances" with two underage girls during a BNP conference had been doing the rounds for some time, but for the Decembrists not only to resurrect them but also to admit to an intimate knowledge of what had happened not unnaturally led many to the observation that those renewing the allegations were as complicit in covering up the incident as the hierarchy of the BNP, as they had firmly sat on the allegations for more than a year.
We quoted a BNP insider, posting on an anti-Griffin website, thus:
We all could tell they were underage as soon as they walked through led by Collett and many of us said as much to each other including the barman.
When the girls came back down complaining about the demands for sex it was even more obvious they were children and it was Kenny Smith who persuaded them not to go to the press with the mobile phone footage and promised them that Collett and Hannam would be disciplined by the party.
One of the girls bluetoothed the footage to Kenny and I believe he gave it to security (pos. Martin Reynolds) the next morning.
If Kenny hadn't persuaded them and their mother - who arrived later with a security guy - out of going to the press Collett and Hannam would have had to be expelled, but such a media furore would also have been very damaging for the party.'
In response we asked:
* Why didn't Kenny Smith and the other witnesses report this alleged crime when it happened?
* If Smith and co 'could tell they were underage as soon as they walked through led by Collett', why weren't they stopped immediately?
* If the barman at Blackpool's New Kimberley Hotel could tell that the two girls were underage, why didn't he report these activities to the police?
* Matt Single, formerly one of the BNP's security team, has admitted that he knew about this incident when it happened. Why didn't he report it?
* Why did Kenny Smith persuade the girls and a parent of one of them not to go to the police with the mobile phone footage of the alleged incident?
* If Kenny Smith sent the mobile phone footage to Martin Reynolds, the BNP's pervert Head of Security, who was it who then sent it both to us and the Blackpool Gazette?
* What kind of political party would rather hide alleged child abuse than cause any harm to itself?
The fuss eventually died down, but continues to smoulder barely noticed in the background and may yet return to haunt Britain's most voluble anti-paedophile party.
Underestimating and failing to attack Nick Griffin from the outset was the biggest error made by the Decembrists. Second to that came their failure to seek alliances with the surviving Tyndallite/hardline groupings within the BNP - though admittedly, it is difficult to see how softening moderates of Sadie Graham's stamp were ever going to work with Tyndallite purists. But, if the common enemy was Griffin some form of strategic alliance was vital, yet little effort was made to bring it about, and though the Tyndallites may have cheered from the sidelines they were careful to keep their distance.
Not that it did them any good, since Griffin took the opportunity to oust the elected Tyndallite Chris Jackson from his post as North West Regional Organiser and installed himself as head man in the Tyndallites' most visible area of strength.
Despite the deep damage inflicted on the BNP in the few weeks of the rebellion, as January progressed it was evident to some observers that, through a combination of lying, ruthlessness and the rebels' own incoherent strategy, Nick Griffin had already gained the upper hand. Searchlight noted: "If they [the rebels] continue to oppose the party leadership whilst falling over themselves to appear loyal to the party then they will wither away in the not too distant future."
Only when it became obvious that the rebellion had reached its point of maximum impact did the rebels finally fix their sights on Nick Griffin, but by then it was far too late. We said:
[The rebels now] implicitly acknowledge what was stark-staringly obvious from day one - that whatever the accusations against Collett and Hannam, the real problem in the BNP is Nick Griffin himself. Belatedly, the rebels have shifted the focus to Griffin, but the weeks spent in half-heartedly professing loyalty to the BNP leader have cost them dear. Griffin is a ruthless operator, as the rebels knew full well before beginning their adventure, and nothing was more certain than that he would act aggressively, decisively and without scruple. Nothing less on the part of the rebels was ever going to bring them anywhere near success.
By now operating under the name "Voice of Change", the rebels began, as we put it, to "grind into action". Long on promise and short on delivery, the rebels said: "Every single individual expelled in recent weeks is determined to have their own membership reinstated through formal grievance procedures, acknowledging that this may involve costly legal action."
Alas, this did not happen - nor did a promise to stand "independent nationalist" candidates against BNP candidates materialise. This promise was made when it became clear that "Voice of Change" could not (and would not be allowed to) operate as a dissident group within the BNP.
Providing light relief from the rigours of the BNP's internal travails at exactly the right time was the Sky TV documentary, "BNP Wives", which introduced the world to terrifying racist Lynne Mozar (above) and the dippy, deluded (not to mention deserted) Marlene Guest. While Mozar maniacally declaimed that the BNP was hers, all hers, and (while being no Kate Moss herself) called a woman objecting to a BNP anti-mosque campaign a "fat slag", Marlene found herself on the wrong end of a question about Nazi medical experiments: "Well apparently didn't they get a lot of dentistry and plastic surgery?" she sort of explained in one of many convoluted Marlene-isms.
Hailed as "fine ambassadors for the BNP" by, er, the BNP, The London Paper saw Mozar and Guest in a different light: "Marlene Guest, busy giving idiocy a bad name in Rotherham; and Lynne Mozar, the BNP's Southeast regional secretary, proving you can be a Southeast regional idiot as well as a village one – are out on their own. Just BNP Women, then."
Badly in need of a morale boost - and to prove that the membership was backing Nick Griffin - the BNP called a national mobilisation of activists for a weekend of leafleting in London, allegedly to get the party's May GLA and mayoral campaigns off the ground (in January?). Most of the BNP's big-wigs, Griffin included, turned up, but apparently the membership (even that based in London) found better things to do, and - not for the first (or last) time - the BNP lied through its teeth about how many members had actually turned out. The figure, and the number of leaflets delivered, varied depending on which BNP blog you read - anything up to 250. Even 250 is a derisory figure for a party of the alleged size of the BNP, but ever-vigilant Searchlight disputed even that.
Finally, BNP elections "guru" Eddy Butler gave a figure of around 100. Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate and Searchlight noted: "Given that this was a national turnout then a figure of only 100 is not too impressive. I was in Sandwell earlier this year when we had 221 people (yes, that is the number who signed in), virtually all from the Black Country and Birmingham area. On that particular day we managed to deliver 45,000 newspapers. Now that was impressive."
If the BNP's flop of a "national mobilisation" had the hidden agenda of underscoring BNP members' alleged support for Nick Griffin, then part of that same agenda may have been Griffinite Richard Barnbrook's insertion of himself into a Police Federation march calling for better police pay. Of course, Barnbrook's overweening ego played its part, but the circumstance was calculated to generate BNP publicity on the back of quite another (and better) cause.
Brian Paddick told the London Evening Standard, "I felt very uncomfortable that there was someone from the BNP. I was aware of him being there and I pointed it out to federation officials but there was nothing more that I could do. I was very uncomfortable that he was anywhere near me." Searchlight's Gerry Gable said: "The police federation leaders should have told him to get lost." And so say all of us.
The name of the BNP's highly presentable answer to Julie Andrews, Donna Bailey of soon to be infamous Upper Beeding, came to greater prominence in late January when she and her supporters stormed into a meeting of Upper Beeding Parish Council, and, amid scenes described as "quite threatening" by one councillor, demanded Bailey's co-option.
Not getting her pushy way, Bailey then forced a by-election for a vacant parish council seat.
The Observer reported:
"In Upper Beeding, Donna Bailey's candidature is being opposed by Joyce Shaw, a former stalwart of the parish council, who's come out of retirement, and Becki Davoudi, who has an Iranian father, and, like the Asian family who have revived the village shop, has good reason to oppose the far right. What they're fighting is nothing as concrete as a political programme or the certainty of violence, but something vaguer: a chilling of the atmosphere, a potential for disgrace."
More in hope than expectation the Voice of Change rebels came together in Brinsley Parish Hall to discuss their next moves. As there hadn't been too many previous moves, and since Nick Griffin had had the best of them, what might just - if called earlier and under decisive leadership - have sounded Griffin's death knell instead underlined the differences between the rebels themselves and highlighted their lack of direction. The meeting served only to sound the rebel's death knell.
Searchlight's own Scarlet Pimpernel Nick Lowles, who attended the meeting, reported:
Griffin would not have been too concerned with the outcome of this meeting. It finished with the rebels being in the worst possible position. They are no longer in the party (or at least in positions of influence) in any real sense yet they have backed away from launching an alternative party at a time when they still have a degree of support around the country. Launching a new party is of course not easy and would alienate some of their key supporters who wanted to remain in the BNP but when is there ever a good time to split. The answer surely has to be when you can achieve your maximum influence and that is certainly now and not after a possible BNP London or European victory.
One day the rebels will surely look back at the meeting as being an opportunity wasted. Massed in the room were many of the BNP’s super activists and surely a nucleus of a new party and if ever they had the momentum to launch an alternative the time is now. Throughout Griffin’s career he has shown himself to be a master of factionalism and spitefulness and as night follows day it is clear that over the next few months he will drive his opponents out of the party one way or another.
The last act of January was an obscure parish-pump by-election for Calne Town Council's Lickhill ward. Ever optimistic BNP candidate Robert Baggs spoke as if the election was in the bag (sorry!), with tales of "thumbs up and toots from passing motorists" intertwined with an unlikely story concerning the arrival of "4 black gentlemen" in a J-registered car "who had obviously arrived to intimidate and harass our team".
Sadly (or not) Baggs bagged 84 votes out of 791 cast and reached for the sick-bag.
A councillor has called on Sadie Graham to clarify her position on Broxtowe Borough Council following her arrest in connection with the unauthorised leak of the BNP party membership list.
Richard Jackson, leader of the Conservative opposition on the council, said no-one there had heard from the independent nationalist councillor since her arrest at her home in Church Lane, Brinsley, on December 4. Coun Graham and a second person, arrested by Notts police officers on behalf of Dyfed Powys Police, have since been bailed pending further inquiries.
Coun Jackson said: "I've heard that she has bought a house down south but it's said that she's not planning to resign as a Broxtowe borough councillor. Brinsley is a one-member council ward and I would argue that someone living hundreds of miles away cannot properly represent its people. They deserve to know where they stand, and so do we."
The Post spoke to a close friend of Coun Graham's last week who revealed how the councillor had received threats prior to her arrest and had been preparing to move with her family to the south of England, where she is believed to be after her release from police custody.
A spokeswoman for Brinsley Parish Council who told the Post they were "unsure" about Coun Graham's membership status said: "She attended our December 3 meeting but we are unsure of what's happening."
Simon Smith, head of legal services and monitoring officer at Broxtowe Borough, said Coun Graham last attended a council meeting in mid-November. He said: "I am not aware of her being anything else than a member of this local authority."
He said that any member who did not attend a committee or full council meeting for six months would be automatically disqualified from being a councillor.
The leaked BNP list was published on an internet blog last month but removed after complaints from the party. The BNP has since obtained a High Court injunction banning publication.
Coun Graham left the BNP in 2007. She was unavailable for comment last night.
You may remember the curious story of John Oddy, member of Bay of Colwyn Town Council (the equivalent of a parish council) and the former North Wales Organiser for the British National Party.
It was he who, back in May of this year, caused some embarrassment to the BNP when he and his two newly-elected colleagues Paul and Sue Harley, resigned at their very first council meeting less than a week after being co-opted (not elected) to their local council.
Nobody was quite sure why the Harleys had resigned but Oddy seemed to have stood down to avoid being kicked out, as we discovered the day after his resignation when this appeared in his local paper:
'A BNP town councillor was yesterday fined for using his mobile phone while at the wheel of his car.
Last October a police officer spotted John Oddy, 51, driving along the promenade at Colwyn Bay while using his phone, a court heard. Oddy, of West Promenade, Colwyn Bay, did not appear for the hearing before Llandudno magistrates but was found guilty and fined £100 with three penalty points and must pay £75 costs.
Oddy – driving a Jaguar – was “speaking about a media matter to a friend or colleague,” the court heard.'
Jaguars and BNP members are never a good combination - look at Clive Jefferson.
Now Oddy has joined the growing band of former BNP councillors who have chosen to speak out against the leader Nick Griffin. Sadie Graham, you may recall, described Griffin as a 'liar and coward', while Colin Auty referred to him as a ruthless 'crook and liar'. Former BNP town councillor in Oddy's neck of the woods, Pat Pattison, described the BNP as intolerably racist.
Oddy, writing on his blog, has a fair amount to say about the BNP, its not so glorious leader and its policies.
The party has policies that are not only unworkable but foolish and dangerous.
Do not forget the roots of the BNP lay in the National Front and so there are causes for concern there
The present leadership of the party have cut their teeth on scandal and controversy, Nick Griffin, being a prime example.
Nick Griffin...can no longer lead the party effectively
[Griffin] carries too much baggage
[He] has become too greedy
[He] has scant regard for the real members.
If the party wishes to loose the “Racist” stigma then they must also loose Nick and a few of his cronies...
I would like to see a change of Party Leadership...'
Sadly, despite all this, Oddy announces that 'given the opportunity, yes I would vote for them'. Given his comments, we have to ask. Why?
A man who has been arrested on suspicion of leaking details of thousands of British National Party members comes from south Essex.
Matthew Single, 36, who has twice stood for Basildon Council on behalf of the British National Party, was one of two people arrested in connection with the release last month of a confidential list containing details of more than 10,000 party members. The list contained names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of members, and in some instances even their ages, hobbies and professions. Police were forced to warn vigilantes not to take the law into their hands and attack known members following its publication.
Single, who previously lived in Tallow Gate, South Woodham Ferrers, and his girlfriend, Sadie Graham, have since been released on bail without charge by Dyfed Powys Police, in West Wales, pending further investigation.
Police spokeswoman Sian George said: “Dyfed Powys Police can confirm that two people have been interviewed, in conjunction with alleged criminal offences under the Data Protection Act, relating to the complaint from the BNP about the release of their party membership list. The two people were arrested in the Nottinghamshire area on Thursday evening.”
The Echo revealed a year ago that Single, now of Brinsley, Nottinghamshire, had been recruited as one of BNP boss Nick Griffin’s top security men. However, he has since been sacked from the party alongside girlfriend Miss Graham, a councillor in Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire, with whom he has been living.
Len Heather, BNP organisor for Basildon, Billericay, and Wickford, said: “We believe the Labour Party was ultimately behind all of this, along with the left wing unions, who are dedicated to undermining us.”
Single was arrested earlier this year following an armed police search at the home of his Miss Graham, in Brinsley. Officers, who were searching for firearms following a tip-off, seized a canister thought to contain a noxious substance, plus radios, body armour vests, scanners and other equipment. Single was sentenced, at Nottingham Crown Court in May this year, to 12 months community service for possession of a weapon for the discharge of noxious liquid.
People living near a Notts councillor and former BNP member who was arrested on Thursday have told of their fear when police descended.
The Post understands independent Broxtowe Borough councillor Sadie Graham – who was kicked out of the BNP last year – is one of two people arrested in connection with the unauthorised publication of the BNP membership list on the internet last month.
Neighbours said police vans, squad cars and officers were outside Coun Graham's home in Church Lane, Brinsley, all day before she was arrested. One resident, who did not want to be named, said they were scared when a bomb disposal unit turned up. "That scared us", he said, "as we have four children and we did not know what was going on."
Another resident added: "When you see something with 'police' and 'bomb' on you do get a bit worried. No one was giving any explanation."
Residents said Coun Graham was well known. One said: "She is a very nice person and seems to care quite a lot about the local community. Her connections to the BNP, although I don't necessarily agree with the politics, don't affect me."
An elderly resident said: "As a woman living on her own you just think what's going off with them [police] being there all the while. You get a bit frightened. You don't say anything because you don't want your windows smashed in."
Dyfed Powys Police said two people had been arrested in connection with alleged criminal offences under the Data Protection Act.
Police investigating the leaking of a BNP membership list are sifting through boxes of evidence seized from the Nottinghamshire home of a former party member.
The boxes were taken from Sadie Graham's home in Brinsley. She is understood to have been arrested on Thursday, along with another person, also in Nottinghamshire. Police packed the boxes from Graham's terraced house into unmarked cars before leaving with a woman.
The leaking of the membership list last month provoked outrage after members of the far right group were revealed to be current and former servicemen, a police officer, teachers and doctors. The list, released on an internet blog, gave details including the names, professions and addresses of thousands of BNP supporters.
A spokeswoman for Dyfed-Powys Police said: "We can confirm that Nottinghamshire Police arrested two people as part of a joint investigation with Dyfed Powys Police and the Information Commissioner's Office in conjunction with alleged criminal offences under the Data Protection Act. The arrests followed an investigation into a complaint received about the unauthorised release of the BNP party membership list."
Graham was expelled from the party late last year after falling out with its leadership.
In April, the BNP obtained an injunction at Manchester's High Court banning publication of a list of its members.
A councillor who was kicked out of the BNP last year has been arrested in connection with the unauthorised release of the party's membership list. The Post understands Sadie Graham was one of two people arrested by Notts police officers last night.
Several police cars and a number of officers remain outside a property in Church Lane, Brinsley. Coun Graham, now an independent nationalist at Broxtowe Borough Council, was dropped from the BNP in December last year.
A spokeswoman for Dyfed Powys Police said: "We can confirm that Nottinghamshire Police arrested two people as part of a joint investigation with Dyfed Powys Police and the Information Commissioner's Office in conjunction with alleged criminal offences under the Data Protection Act. The arrests followed an investigation into a complaint received about the unauthorised release of the BNP party membership list."
The spokeswoman said that an army bomb disposal team was called to the address in Brinsley after a suspicious item was found during a police search of the same property. She added: "This was purely a precautionary measure and the item was declared safe, with no further reaction required."
The BNP membership list was published on an internet blog last month and was removed after complaints from the party. It featured more than 12,000 names including addresses, jobs and contact details. The BNP says the list was 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.
The party said it obtained an injunction at the High Court in Manchester earlier this year, banning the publication of the list. Speaking last night, a BNP party spokesman said: "Police have confirmed they have arrested two people in the Nottinghamshire area."
Coun Graham left the BNP last year for allegedly being involved in the writing of an internet blog which the BNP claimed had aimed to "attack and smear fellow party officials".
Her expulsion was not heard before a panel and she appealed. At the time, she said: "I am absolutely disgusted by the way they have treated me when I have done nothing but work hard for the party and have been responsible for bringing them forward in the East Midlands. I am now an independent councillor for Broxtowe. I would like to assure people that I am still nationalist and still believe in the principles of the BNP, but just disagree with the bad management of the party. I work very hard as a councillor and will continue to do so."
Here we are again, on the run-up to another Red, White and Blue disaster, with the BNP in disarray and Nick Griffin's leadership looking at its rockiest since the heady days of December 2007, when Sadie Graham and co were booted unceremoniously out of the party amid allegations of email-tampering and back-stabbing that led (eventually) to Manchester Civil Court, though not to any kind of resolution.
Following the December rebellion, when dozens of party activists stood down in support of the Graham clique, there were plans to get rid of Griffin flying about all over the place - talks of a new party, leadership challenges, legal challenges etc - all of which came to naught as the rebels failed to provide the leadership that the rebels and their supporters so desperately needed. Instead, Colin Auty, little known inside the party except for his 'music', pushed incessantly by the failing Great White Records, was persuaded to stand in a pointless leadership campaign, doomed to failure even if it had managed to get off the ground - which it didn't.
This utterly pointless challenge by Auty has inevitably brought Griffin's paranoia to a head and has led directly to his much-publicised attempt to twist the rules of the party to stop leadership challenges being annual and make them quadrennial or at the very least, biennial, thus cutting down on his chances of losing his lucrative post with its almost endless potential for money-making scams at the expense of a gullible membership. The RWB will see an Extraordinary General Meeting take place which will change the face of the BNP and consolidate Griffin's position until he can (as he fully expects to) join the gravy-train of the European Parliament next year without having to worry about distractions like Colin Auty popping up out of nowhere.
This EGM is a direct result of the failure of the Challenge for Leadership rebel team to provide proper leadership when it was most needed, whether inside the party or out. Sadie Graham was extremely well-placed to form a new party immediately following her sacking, to stand against the corruption and financial mismanagement that is endemic in Griffin's BNP but she and her team chose, for some incomprehensible reason that eluded most of her supporters, to continue to give her direct support to the existing BNP - though a BNP without the likes of Griffin, the notoriously-arrogant Mark Collett and bumbling idiot Dave Hannam, both of the latter being much-loathed even within the party itself.
Graham's partner Matt Single, former member of the BNP's security team and an unwitting stooge in another of Griffin's scams (this time to teach people evasive and defensive driving just in case someone attempts to kidnap them - for a fee, naturally), who writes as 'Integrity' on the rebel's Challenge for Leadership blog, has taken centre-stage in the fight against Griffin, banging on incessantly and impotently about how bad he is at running the BNP and how corrupt he is - but this appears to be anger that's still simmering away at the treatment he and Graham received from his former comrades in the security team, who raided the Single/Graham home with the willing help, it has emerged, of Nina Brown - a former friend who had been angling to step into Graham's job, or something similar, for some time. With friends like that, who the hell needs enemies.
Yes, folks, there is NO loyalty to one's friends in the BNP. All this rubbish about the party being one big happy family or like a community is, as you suspected, bullshit pumped out by the ton via the speeches and publications with which the BNP relentlessly showers its membership.
You may recall that the story that did the rounds following the raid was that Griffin's henchmen (Martin Reynolds, who we hear is for the chop next, and his fellow Kray brothers, sorry, security team members) were outside the Graham home, having gone there to reclaim items that were actually owned by the BNP (or so they claimed). Much to their surprise, ho-ho, neither Graham nor Single were at home. While pondering what to do, who should appear but Nina Brown, a then friend of the couple and handy keyholder for when they were away and the cat needed to be fed, who let the security gorillas in to take the goodies.
The truth has now begun to emerge and it turns out to be quite different. In fact, the whole event was stage-managed by Nick Griffin with the collusion of Nina Brown and Reynolds' security team. It was known that Graham and Single were off to attend the South East Christmas social (along with Griffin himself) that weekend - they all knew that - so Reynolds and a team made up of heavies from Leeds and Birmingham met up on the motorway, travelled to Brinsley and arranged to meet with Nina Brown who opened the front door for them and watched as they took the PC (which didn't belong to the BNP), the laptop, a mass of paperwork, printers and so on, piled it into the vehicle and shoved off. And why the need to do all this surreptitiously? Because Single is a thug and if he'd been on the premises, particularly with a pregnant Sadie Graham getting all hot and bothered over what was happening, he'd have caused something of a ruckus which might have done the party even more damage in the long run.
Nick Griffin has no sense of loyalty, even to those who devote themselves to him and/or the party. For years, Graham and Single helped Griffin to hold his position at the top of the BNP and did nothing except remain loyal to him while others were purged, expelled or forced to resign. Then it was their turn and they went the same way. Martin Reynolds has followed Griffin around for years, waddling beside him like an overweight but faithful dog, ready to plod into action should one of his many enemies take a baseball bat to Griffin. And now we hear that Reynolds is on his way out. Nina Brown, who has already earned herself a reputation as an utterly useless parish councillor, is also rumoured to be out of favour and on her way out of the party. And thus is loyalty rewarded in Nick Griffin's BNP.
Even worse is to come. We hear from reliable sources that the EGM is rigged to produce the result that Griffin wants (no great surprise there), postal voting is now allowed, despite (or perhaps because of) the BNP's repeated claim that postal vote fraud is both easy and common, and that those who vote against Griffin's proposals will soon find themselves out on their communal ear.
'I truly believe that there has never been a political leader in this country so hated by his own people.' Sadie Graham
Just when you think the BNP's December Rebel faction has disappeared into the obscurity it deserves, it suddenly pops up again like a demented Jack-in-the-box to bite Nick Griffin on the arse.
Sadie Graham has been temporarily resurrected from the politically dead specifically, it seems, to attack Nick 'Fingers' Griffin for his lying and cowardice, the lack of proper leadership in the party and the complete lack of structure within the BNP. Regarding this latter point, she says;
'One day the world will know that Nick Griffin is a liar and a coward...[the] party is without doubt in turmoil and decline. The votes are decreasing and the rate of councillors is not moving forward...too many councillors don’t get re-elected into their seats, so something is seriously going wrong. The problem is the leadership or lack of it, there is no party structure, no shadow cabinet, regional, national organisation and accountability are extremely poor, basically the Party is not moving and growing as it should be now. It should be every true nationalist’s role, both within and outside of the Party, to do all that they can to remove Griffin from the position as Chairman. This is the only way to secure the Party’s future, so that a pro-democratic and anti-corrupt structure can be formed in his place...I truly believe that there has never been a political leader in this country so hated by his own people...
In these past seven months I have been amazed, amused, angered and left in disbelief at the way Griffin has handled this whole affair. If he hasn’t been lying about us then he has been skirting the issue or refusing to discuss it. Has the ‘Mighty Chairman’ told you he still has my computer and all the data on it? No, I haven’t had it returned, despite me returning every remaining Party item I had in my possession. Several of the items that he returned to me that were ‘mistakenly’ taken from my home in that illegal entry by BNP Security were also returned to me not in working order. Quite petty really but then nothing would surprise me now when dealing with this man – and I use that term quite loosely.
Plainly folks, the BNP will not make any serious inroads whilst he remains at the helm, it saddens me deeply but this is the reality and every day more and more people are realising this. It was a real shame that Colin’s campaign didn’t take flight, but it was always going to be virtually impossible when you have a Chairman that uses expulsion and proscription as a way of keeping himself in power. As if little version of Robert Mugabe, Griffin would have us topped if he thought he could get away with it. Colin was a brave man to stand and good on him for doing so, I just hope that more people find the courage to sign the nomination papers next time Griffin is challenged; and yes there will be a next time!
So where do we go from here?'
But that turns out to be a rhetorical question for Graham's only response to it is to say for the umpteenth time that the party needs to remove Griffin. That's it.
And this is where Sadie Graham and the rest of those in the rebellion of last December have failed dismally. As was clear from the support that the rebels garnered and the support gained by Colin Auty, a relative unknown in the party as a whole, there is a whole section of the membership that feels that it has been let down by the leadership of the BNP: not just Griffin but all the hangers-on too, and Graham clearly thinks that this should be enough to carry her supporters until they get rid of Griffin or, as seems more likely, he leaves of his own accord.
One of the responses to the Graham post on the Voice of Challenge blog begins, 'Excellent post Sadie, your silence these past few months speaks volumes for your own integrity...'
The writer of this comment is wrong. Silence says nothing of integrity - rather the opposite, in fact. The truth is that Graham (and the rest of the rebels) have lost their nerve and have no idea where to go from here. They are faced with a leader who is damaged goods, with accounts that are commonly known to be well, dodgy, to say the least, and with a party that appears to have become stagnant with its own ineptitude - scoring political points only because the climate is perfect for it and gaining councillors more by accident than design. Certainly, it's clear that councillors get no real support from the party, simply because there is no real support structure in place, despite the fact that the BNP has been getting councillors elected for some years now.
There are a million things that Sadie Graham could have said - after all, she was once a senior officer in the party and as such would have been privy to a lot of information that could doubtless have knocked Griffin off his perch in no time at all. She chose not to and the only reason for doing that must have been that she hoped at some point to inherit the BNP by proxy, simply because the membership knew her name and she seemed, on the face of it, suitably clear of the financial problems that plague Griffin and thus a likely successor by popular acclaim.
It's too late now though, and by leaving it this long to attack Griffin, and by doing it so half-heartedly, the rebels have shown themselves to lack the spirit to take over even if they were to be offered the opportunity. A call to arms from Graham immediately following the December purge could and probably would have destroyed Griffin quickly but this anti-Griffin puff of air does nothing except repeat what has already been repeated ad nauseum - Griffin must go. We keep hearing this but there he still is, still ripping off the membership (feel free to sue us for that, Mr G - we'd really enjoy the court case and the publicity) and still manipulating the party like it's his own big expensive toy.
If this is Graham's tentative opening salvo against the enemy, fine - we look forward to the next. But we suspect not and if we're right and this is all she has to fight with, this attack is Sadie Graham's swansong.
Regular readers will know that ten days ago we reported that the December rebels (Sadie Graham, Kenny Smith and co) had received a letter from Nick Griffin suggesting that the ongoing case in the High Court should be dropped. Here's what we said:
'The December rebels who Griffin was taking through the High Court have received letters this week from the pig farmer himself, asking that the case be dropped because 'it's your homes at risk' and 'it's in the best interests of' party unity and so on, apparently forgetting that it was he himself who brought the case.'
This was immediately questioned by the near-dead Lancaster and Morecambe BNP group's idiotic former organiser Chris Hill who, via the recent leadership-challenger Colin Auty's support blog, Challenge for Leadership, said,
'I may in fact be wrong about the Grifin/Collett gang having officially dropped the case against Sadie & Co. I read a report about a retraction letter being received they the defendants elsewhere on the web (the Lancaster UAF blog), but I've not seen any reports from reliable sources as yet. UAF may well be jumping the gun in reporting the inevitable, but that's UAF for you as about as reliable as Griffin on a bad day.'
We're a good deal more reliable than Nick Griffin - even on a good day when all he does is stay at home and admire his new sauna and jacuzzi while counting his pigs - and to nobody's surprise at all, it turns out that we were telling the truth and those who denied this were telling, forgive me, porkies. Oh, and Chris, in case you hadn't noticed, we changed our name to Lancaster Unity nearly six months ago.
The letter from Griffin to the rebels is reprinted below.
'Dated 8th July 2008
Dear XXXXXXXXXX
Further to our earlier correspondence in connection with proposed disciplinary proceedings, I am writing to you and your colleagues in this matter in an attempt to bring it to an early - and as far as is possible - relatively painless conclusion for all concerned.
In response to my letter of 8th April, several of your group requested that the BNP's internal disciplinary proceedings and connected unfair dismissal hearings. should be stayed pending the outcome of the court case Griffin v Smith & Others. I accepted this as a sensible proposal for all concerned for the time being.
The delay does not, however, alter the fact that our present course will see us back in court, with both sides incurring further very considerable expense. My informed opinion is that you and your colleagues will lose the case, but that Mr. Davies does not mind this in the slightest because his avowed aim is to try and bleed the BNP financially. He knows that the looming problem of negative equity for many home-owners is sufficiently large that, while the end result is likely to be your collective bankruptcy and loss of several homes, we will be unable to recover any significant part of our costs.
I trust that you will already have learnt from the failure of the desperate "Scottish gambit" in which he encouraged you to set so much store that Mr. Davies gungo-ho tendencies do not always work out in the best interests of his clients (as Steve Edwards, Jay Lee, the Roberts Brothers and Tess Culnane have already discovered to their cost).
Especially now that time has elapsed to allow water to flow under various bridges, I ask you individually and collectively, to give very careful consideration to an agreement to end the action on the basis of each side bearing their own costs and going their separate ways. The sums involved at present are, as we all know only too well, steep without being ruinous. It is surely sensible to bring matters to an end while this is the case?
As you know, the BNP has already through the action secured its assets and the privacy of its members (although my solicitor informs me that he is still waiting for the affidavit on these matters from you in accordance with the Judge's directions). While it would have been far better had it been possible to have done so without the expense incurred so far, we have at last achieved what we needed to do, so we have little other than an expensive moral victory to gain by pursuing the matter further if you and your colleagues will agree to end this and any other possible actions. Please note that there can be no question of leaving an opening through which Mr. Davies can continue to use you people as pawns in his own longstanding personal campaign to bring down those who have achieved political success way beyond anything he has been able to manage in his various forays into either "extreme" or "moderate" nationalism.
All concerned have lives to lead and better things to do than enrich lawyers or waste court time. I hope to hear that we can agree on that at least, in which a settlement along the lines outlined above would surely be the only sensible option.'
That the BNP is in dire financial straits is indisputable. Griffin is desperately trying to raise funds to pay for the usual staggeringly-high legal costs that he has already incurred by this pointless action (suggestions of £30,000 have been made by various people who should know) before he and the other officers of the party become personally liable. The fact that he is panicking and floundering around like a landed fish is obvious from this letter.
As usual with Griffin, his preferred mode of defence is attack, though more by implication than clear statement. His criticism of the rebel's barrister Adrian Davies' 'gung-ho tendencies' is a classic ploy, hopefully undermining the rebel's relationship with their counsel, as is the appalling suggestion that Davies is more interested in destroying the BNP than he is in protecting his client's interests - a suggestion that sounds awfully like libel to me but Nick Griffin probably knows more about the law than I do, having a third-rate degree in jurisprudence, the theory and philosophy of law, [yawn, sorry] and having access to one of the sharpest legal brains in the country, Lee Barnes [sarcasm].
The phrase 'the BNP has already through the action secured its assets and the privacy of its members' is an odd one when you consider that the assets (presumably laptops and so on) were grabbed by BNP security long before the court case after illegally gaining access to Graham and co's homes, but we can safely assume that the 'privacy of its members' refers to the court ordering the rebels to stop using the out of date membership lists in their possession. Thirty thousand quid seems an awful lot of money to throw away on getting something virtually worthless from a bunch of people who have done next to nothing to harm the party and who are generally acknowledged to be politically impotent.
Even though asking for, and clearly desperate for, a truce, Griffin still feels the need to ensure that Davies is out of the battle.
'Please note that there can be no question of leaving an opening through which Mr. Davies can continue to use you people as pawns in his own longstanding personal campaign to bring down those who have achieved political success way beyond anything he has been able to manage in his various forays into either "extreme" or "moderate" nationalism.'
Do I detect some nervousness from Griffin? Just a single letter and a number of attacks on Adrian Davies intended to damage client confidence. One wonders if Griffin's legal advisors are aware of this letter and its content. I showed it to a friend of mine who is in the final stages of training to be a barrister and his response was that if one of his clients had written to the opposition in the same terms, he would have no hesitation in dumping the client and immediately beginning what he described as a 'vigorous' process to get paid before the client committed another such faux pas that led straight into the High Court for a libel action.
Of course, there is another possibility. That the rumours are true and that Griffin's legal advisors have told him he gets nothing more out of them until they are paid for the work they have already carried out. As the party is near-bankrupt, paying counsel is impossible at this stage and the thought of having to face the rebels in court with only the help of Lee Barnes must be giving Griffin nightmares. But now Nick Griffin has put himself in a position where he not only has to extract £30,000 from a party that hardly has two pennies to rub together, he has also left himself open to an attack from Adrian Davies which he will find next to impossible to defend himself against.
The former problem might be solved if the cash from the BNP's Red, White and Blue piss-up in August makes enough and is immediately diverted to pay the debt, which might explain the recent statement from the party that the RWB is to be a cash-only event with no advance ticket sales. This could well not work as we hear from a number of trusted sources that there is very little interest in the RWB this year and, naturally, a lot of people are put off from going because of the national demo that's planned, the inevitably heavy police presence and the ban on selling booze.
Adrian Davies though, might well turn out to be the most serious of Griffin's problems. Despite his disparaging comments, Davies is an able barrister with a good deal of experience. Griffin could well find him the Nemesis that he has repeatedly been avoiding for the past few years. In the past, Griffin has always chosen to attack those who cannot fight back - this time he may well have attacked someone who is not only willing, but able to fight back, and who has teeth that are a good deal sharper than his own. We look forward to it.
BNP leader Nick Griffin swearing outside Leeds Crown Court
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To mark his non-guilty verdict at the end of his November 2006 trial at Leeds Crown Court, BNP leader Nick Griffin celebrated, as you can see from the above picture, with a very public one-finger salute (good thing he wasn’t making a nazi salute like the one BNP Nottingham councillor Sadie Graham claims Nick Griffin made at a neo-nazi Blood and Honour concert in Scotland!).
We just thought we’d remind King Nick that he may have committed an offence under section 5(1)(b) of the Public Order Act1986 Act, which we reproduce below for his benefit (highlighted in bold italics):
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he-
(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.
The interesting thing about section 5 of the Public Order Act1986 Act is that it need not be shown that the disorderly behaviour in question is in itself threatening, abusive or insulting, nor that it brought about any feelings of apprehension in the person(s) to whom it was directed (Chambers v DPP [1995] Crim LR 896). All that is required is for the behaviour to be generally abusive and it need not be directed at anyone in particular.
We’d also like to remind Nicky that a section 5 offence comes with a statutory power of arrest and is punishable via a fine. Nick Griffin is no stranger to the Public Order Act 1986. In fact, we’d be quite disappointed if it transpires that Nick Griffin doesn’t have the intimate familiarity of the Public Order Act’s provisions as we’d expect him to have. We remind readers that Nick Griffin was convicted back in 1998 under section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986 for inciting racial hatred against Jews for his editorship of issue 12 of The Rune magazine.
Now, do I report Nick Griffin to Welshpool or Leeds police ......... hope you understand Nick. After all, a crime is a crime.
The following is taken directly from Voice of Change, the website supporting the anti-Griffin rebel BNP faction. Apart from the excision of a financial appeal, the text is posted verbatim.
Manchester Civil Justice Court is certainly an impressive building, the mixture of steel and glass many stories high; it made an imposing backdrop to the legal horn-locking between Griffin's legal men and our defence.
In the court room sat the full complement of all those involved in this case, but due to the scale of the room with its high ceiling it still looked almost empty. I and my five co-defendants and our council sat on the right with Griffin, Simon Darby and their legal representatives on the left.
What proved most interesting was the behaviour that Griffin displayed as if part of an act to try and prove to us upstart 'malcontents' that he is still in control. Each time the court came to session, Griffin and Darby strolled in five minutes late as if to make some sort of grandiose entrance, but it was clearly contrived. I can't imagine that the judge, who was certainly not a man to suffer fools, would have seen this is in a good light at all. This type of performance typifies a person that is entirely uncomfortable and anxious as to the unfolding and utterly avoidable situation that he alone has brought down upon our British National Party.
It is also interesting that at the very end of the court day which was long, wearing and intense, in which the day's results clearly unsettled and damaged Griffin and Co.; Griffin announced loudly, so that we could all hear "Well, we got what we wanted!" when it was however, abundantly clear that he had not.
Once again this indicates to us all as to just how far into his own little world of denial he has actually descended. By making loud crass comments openly he was trying to prove to the court of just how wonderful and intact the 'emperors [chairman's] new clothes' still are. This was however of course, utterly transparent to all of us.
Unwavering self-belief, arrogance and sheer disregard to the point of ruination has been seen throughout history and resulted in unbelievable destruction. One notable political figure stands out amongst a great many. It almost makes one shudder to imagine what our Party could have become under such leadership had it not remained so tiny in its present state. We only need to look at Mugabe to see the reality of such tyrannical figures in modern politics. Such a nightmare would be no alternative to the Lib-Lab-Con regime we currently find ourselves suffering under and undoubtedly prove to be the greatest insult to those that have sacrificed so much for the promise of a morally wholesome nationalist government, freedom of speech and expression and future for our children.
Hired muscle
It is also interesting that Griffin's usual personal security was not present in court, but instead a large man I have not seen before or recognise remained glued to his side throughout the day's proceedings. Is this because the very fabric, loyalty and honour that once ran deep within the Security Department, that Griffin has destroyed completely, can no longer be trusted by him for his own personal security and protection? Needing to hire muscle for a day in court while dragging the Party membership and finances through the mire, again serves as an indicator as to his true paranoid state of mind. It is my opinion, that as well as trying to crystallise his fantasy that he can walk on water and should be revered as a nationalist demigod by us lesser mortals that actually have to work for a living, that it is retribution he now seeks.
Vengeance
Griffin wants revenge on those that have dared to stand up to him and his corruption that is costing the Party so dearly.
The climate for nationalism in the UK has never been so positive and so full of potential. Griffin has taken us as far as he can; he is limited and constrained by his self-obsession with his power and rule. This can clearly been seen if we look at the fact that as a Party we simply have not made anywhere near the breakthroughs that a great many of us expected we would make over the last three years. Griffin has blamed a plethora of enemies for his failures, Gerry Gable/Searchlight, the Labour Party, the UAF, the BBC, secret media moles in the Party and even imaginary 'state-plants!'
As I have written in the past, megalomaniacs are often not programmed to be able to comprehend reality when that truth conflicts with their inner need to satisfy their delusions. That truth is simply that he himself in the disastrous man-management decisions for the Party that he alone has made, and the characters that he has placed into positions around himself have left the Party with a collection of incompetent, corrupt and morally questionable people in positions of authority under him and answerable only to him. They all of course have other similarities. They have either displayed sufficient sycophantic characteristics and are no future threat to him in any way, or are in desperate need of a job and a home but no other organisation in its right mind would take them on, but still could be useful to him in some way. Having such a cabal of jesters in tow has not, and will not create a political opposition cabinet capable of becoming a truly viable alternative to the established government; regardless of how much spin and manipulation the Party web-site and publications can churn out each month.
Regardless of the enemies that operate against nationalism within the UK, real or imaginary, the damage that Griffin's egotism and greed have done could not have been made greater by any of them. Some people are of the belief that this is why he walked away from Leeds Crown Court twice, and why he has not been arrested for instigating the robbery and illegal bugging of a serving borough councillor.
We must ask ourselves this. Is the promise of a stagnating nationalist party so bereft of potential due to his corrupt leadership, inviting to the powers that be, to turn a blind eye to the illegal activists of its leader? Is a popularist pressure valve so needed now that Griffinism could serve the establishment with the vote-vent it is now so in need of; especially when the UKIP single use weapon has now dried up? These questions fall outside of the sphere of this report, so I'll leave that to the reader to draw their own conclusions and ponder their own theories; but certainly the final outcome of these legal proceedings will be of great interest to many of us.
Griffin's European gravy express - next stop Brussels
Another theory that many people have commented on and I myself support, is the belief that Griffin has now got his eye on a nice little position in Europe on the gravy-train for five years before an early retirement and a second home in the sun somewhere. Why else has he, without the vote, support or consent of the members, activists and supporters of the North-West Region, parachuted himself in as the number one candidate? Based upon the regional performance of our candidates in past elections, it should come as no surprise to find out that the North-West Region is one of the best if not the best chance we will have in getting a representative voted into Europe and unlocking the huge benefits and funding that come with it.
I expect that closer to the time of the elections Griffin will present to the Party in our publications, a few hand selected members that will be so 'honoured' to have the wonderful Party chairman himself as their candidate. Another indicator that this is his scheme, is the question that how could he possibly hope to lead a political party in the UK whilst running around in Europe? I believe that if he were to be voted in, he would quickly resign the chairmanship due to his 'European commitments' because he would no longer need it as it would have already served its purpose for him. What with this and his other little nest-eggs, it would afford him a very comfortable standard of living that would have the added bonus for him of having his ego massaged and manipulated by the media as the only BNP voice in Europe from which he could ultimately hold the Party to ransom for ever more.
Full trial in the civil courts?
It is looking quite likely that us six defendants, at Griffin's insistence, will be facing a full trial in the civil courts. It could last several days and will undoubtedly cost a vast sum of money. Griffin is prepared to continue dragging the Party through this ugly and unnecessary action that could well ultimately deal the Party coffers a massive blow as well as the irreparable political damage that could follow in its wake. Griffin is gambling with other people's hard earned and donated Party funds which is despicable within itself. The situation becomes even darker when we consider that those he is trying to sue include two young families, one of which has a baby and the other expecting very soon. His intention is to financially destroy us completely and leave us with huge bills that we could not possibly pay. He is suing us as straw-men, but as he has proven in the past, he is a coward and lacks the courage to take on those with the fanatical clout, for example The Guardian newspaper and the BBC, to be able to beat him back, even when it would seem as though the Party should easily win. Griffin knows only two well that the six of us that are all proven loyal nationalists that have worked ceaselessly for the benefit of the Party for many years. In Griffin's illegal and unconstitutional sacking of Sadie, Steve, Nicola and Kenny, he has deprived them of their meagre wage that had largely helped to keep heads above water during their professional full-time work for the Party.
Griffin's warning to you all!
It is his intention to bully us into a position where we are unable to cover the growing costs of our defence solicitors that must be paid in advance regardless to the final outcome, leaving us at the mercy of his legal hatchet-men intent in finishing us off for good. He also has designs in this course of action serving as an example to all Party members of what he will do to anyone in the future that ever dares to question his authoritarianism.
It was clear by the shallow smirk on Griffin's face as he glanced at us at the end of the court day, that this is what he seeks to have in store for us. However, we are continuing to receive support from a large number of Party supporters and activists that are still working within the Party itself, but have firmly rejected Griffin's rhetoric and Stasi style politicking. They, just like those he is persecuting in court, are now waiting for their opportunity to vote out his corruption and incompetence and replace it with a leadership sound of mind and judgement able to take our vehicle forward once again in a Party were the joys of freedom can be once again be at the forefront of our constitution and design.
[Financial appeal removed]
Griffin's true nature has now been exposed to a large number of people and how for many years he has walked over, lied about, slandered and assassinated the characters of a great many nationalists in his hunger for power and greed. However, this time the six of us and our support base have consolidated a friendship and camaraderie between us all that will last for a very long time indeed. As the old saying goes, what does not kill you makes you stronger, and our combined voice is getting stronger and louder each day. That voice is the Voice of Change and this time it will not be silenced and we will not shy away from this fight until Griffin and his corrupt cult of yes-men are removed from our Party for good.
