Richard Barnbrook warned not to bully staff

Richard Barnbrook has been warned not to bully members of staff at City Hall after a former employee accused him of "continual bullying" which reduced one member of staff to tears.

Neo Nazi activist Tess Culnane who worked for Barnbrook for nine months, alleged that he:

• Failed to respond to requests from members of the public "on the few occasions he attended City Hall" and threatened the complainant with dismissal when she brought such requests to him
• Had a "continual bullying manner" and constantly threatened to sack his staff and replace them with his own people.
• Forced the Complainant’s colleague, X, to resign because of his perpetual hectoring manner. The Complainant alleges that, on one occasion, Mr Barnbrook reduced X to tears, followed her into the ladies’ toilet to continue to bully her, and then followed her into the City Hall café to continue to verbally abuse X and threaten her with the sack.

Culnane also submitted a recorded telephone conversation with Barnbrook and statements from three other witnesses.

The Standards Committee decided that there was not enough firm evidence to refer the complaint for further investigation. However they noted that they were still "extremely concerned about the nature of the allegations" and referred Mr Barnbrook for official guidance from the Monitoring Officer "as a precautionary measure, sought to safeguard existing and future staff."

Last year Barnbrook was suspended by Barking and Dagenham Council for making false claims about murders in the borough. He then went on to lose his seat on the council this May alongside every other BNP councillor in London. He has since been expelled from the British National Party and has indicated his intention to stand as an independent member of the London Assembly in 2012.

Tory Troll

Richard Barnbrook reported for 'bullying'

A former staff member for Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s former London leader and London Assembly member, says she has reported him to the GLA’s standards watchdog for his “unreasonable” and “bullying” behaviour towards her.

Tess Culnane, the “Nazi Granny” who was the BNP candidate for mayor of Lewisham this year, tells me she has made an official complaint to the City Hall standards officer, Ed Williams, calling for Mr Barnbrook’s suspension.

She says: “Richard Barnbrook failed to respond to requests for help from members of the public. When I did tell him about people who had come forward, he very often adopted a resentful manner towards me and threatened me with dismissal.
“His continual bullying manner and threats to sack me became intolerable. He would fall into a strop. He would make faces behind our backs when we were talking. He was a total embarrassment to those of us in his office.”

Mrs Culnane also says that Mr Barnbrook took out his anger on other members of his office, including another staffer, Emma Colgate. “She was forced to resign due to Richard’s perpetual hectoring manner,” she said. “At one point he followed her into the ladies’ toilet hectoring her.” Mrs Culnane says her complaint also alleges that Mr Barnbrook has been drunk during Mayor’s Questions.

Mr Barnbrook didn’t return repeated calls and text messages today to answer these allegations. They should be seen, of course, in the context of the fact that he has been in dispute with the BNP for some time. There may be an element of revenge here.
He resigned the BNP whip on the Assembly last month after the re-election of Nick Griffin as leader. Yesterday, he was thrown out of the party. He was also sacked as the BNP’s Barking and Dagenham organiser after the racists lost all their seats – his included – on the local council in the May elections.

A spokesman for the London Assembly said the procedure with complaints was for a sub-committee to decide whether they had enough merit to be considered by the full standards committee. Until then, he said, he could not confirm or deny whether any complaint had been received.

The Telegraph

New BNP? Same old nazis and thugs

The BNP claims it has changed. A quick review of its election candidates shows that they are the same old nazis, thugs and racists that they always were

Tom Gower
Coventry North East

Gower works full-time as the BNP enquiries officer. He is also the Coventry contact for the racist and pagan Woden’s Folk and was involved in the English Heathen Front (EHF), ‘a racist group espousing “blood and soil” ideology. The EHF was the English “chapter” of the Allgermanische Heidnische Front (AHF), an international network of “tribes” that evolved out of the Norsk Hedensk Front, a group founded in 1993 by Varg Vikernes, the Norwegian black metal musician and murderer whose own brand of heathenism included a heavy dose of national socialism, antisemitism, eugenics and racism.

Shelley Rose
Luton North

A rising star in the BNP, Rose is part of a social group of BNP activists in the East Midlands and an antisemite who wrote on her Facebook page, “I would rather put myself out and pay a bit more at a smaller local shop, than line the pockets of the kikes that run Tesco”. She attended the National Front Remembrance Day parade in 2009 with Chris Hurst, the BNP PPC ‘for Twickenham.

Robin Evans
Blackburn

Evans was once a Blackburn BNP councillor but found the council budget too much to cope with. “It’s all mumbo jumbo, I don’t understand a word of it,” he stated. He resigned from the BNP in 2003 after an internal dispute and joined the openly fascist British National Socialist Party, returning to the BNP.

Ken Booth
Newcastle upon Tyne Central

Booth is the former North East National Front organiser who caused widespread disgust in 2007 when he compared the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz to Disneyland. He refused to believe the “official figures” of those who died in the Holocaust and did not recognise the “authenticity” of the buildings at Auschwitz.

Lynne Mozar
Buckingham

Mozar, who runs the BNP’s Trafalgar Club fundraising group, is notorious for her appearance on the Sky TV documentary BNP Wives in which “in private sometimes” she admitted calling black people “niggers”. ‘She also claimed that “Pakis” was the ‘“legal term for them [Asians]”. While manning a stall opposite a mosque in Fareham, Mozar shouted “fat slag” at a passerby who questioned her views.

Mathew Tait
Milton Keynes South

Tait, the Buckinghamshire BNP organiser, travelled to the cancelled 2010 American Renaissance conference, where he moaned to those who turned up that the Equality and Human Rights Commission court case had forced the BNP to accept “people who we would wish to not have in our country really to be members of our party”.

Mike Shore
Broxtowe

Until 2003 Shore was the National Front’s East Midlands organiser and treasurer. He was also Midlands convener of a British incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. His conversion to the BNP came as a surprise to former colleagues.

Richard Hamilton
Milton Keynes North

A former soldier, Hamilton took part in the mock trial and execution of a gollywog at the 2009 BNP Red, White and Blue festival. The News of the World noted that before the trial, “Hamilton’s ghettoblaster blared out songs supporting Hitler and attacking ‘niggers’”. The BNP claimed his membership had been “suspended” as a result of the affair, though evidently not for very long.

Chris Beverley
Morley and Outwood

Beverley is a leading figure in Yorkshire BNP and a key link with the National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany whose leader believes that Hitler was a “great statesman”. Beverley works as PA and constituency office manager for Andrew Brons, the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, and recently refused to condemn Hitler in a radio broadcast saying that he did not hate him.

Ian Meller
Leicestershire North West

Meller, a BNP councillor in North West Leicestershire, is a former National Front activist who took part in a demonstration against a Gay Pride march in Leicester in August 2000. Meller, then 35, was fined £400 and £55 costs for carrying an offensive weapon, believed to have been a chair leg.

Charlotte Lewis
Carshalton and Wallington

Lewis was jailed for six months in 2001 for sending a series of “chilling” death threats to employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) animal research laboratory in Cambridgeshire. She posts racist comments on social networking sites but claims she is ‘not a racist but a “racial survivalist”. ‘In 2009 Croydon Council considered taking action against her after she boasted of participating in a racist hate campaign against her neighbours.

Barry Bennett
Gosport

Bennett was, until recently, a regular user of the American-based nazi Stormfront website, despite being half Jewish, “from ancestry not religion” he is keen to stress. “I believe in National Socialism, WW2 style, it was best, no other power had anything like it,” ‘he wrote. “The ideology was fantastic. The culture, nothing like it. If it was here now, I’d defect to Germany.”

Eddy Butler
Harlow

Butler has been involved with the far right since the early 1980s when he was the Tower Hamlets organiser for the National Front. After he joined the BNP he and a team of thugs laid into a group of anti-fascists with hammers and other weapons in east London in 1992. In 1993 he organised the “Rights for whites” campaign that won the BNP its first councillor, Derek Beackon, in a Tower Hamlets by-election, though he only held the seat for seven months. Until his sudden demotion Butler was the BNP’s national organiser and elections officer. He is also standing for Barking and Dagenham council, despite still living in Loughton.

Chris Forster
Hayes and Harlington

A National Front supporter in the 1970s and a former treasurer of the Conservative Monday Club, Forster, who is also standing for Barking and Dagenham council, works as a psychic but failed to foresee Searchlight’s exposé of him in the Evening Standard in 2009. Forster helped compile the BNP’s 2009/10 Barking and Dagenham council budget, which attracted great opprobrium. Hypocritically, he is married to a Chinese woman with whom he has a child.

Tess Culnane
Orpington

Tess Culnane was a BNP member until a row with the party after which she stormed off to join the National Front for which she stood in the 2008 London Assembly election. She also addressed meetings of the openly Nazi British People’s Party. The BNP denounced the NF as “neo-fascist” but this has not proved an impediment to Culnane rejoining the BNP and working for Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s London Assembly member.

Edward Sheppard
Coventry North West

Sheppard stood for the BNP in the 2001 general election in Coventry North East, but could not stand in 2005 as he was jailed for three years in 2002 for shooting a man at point blank range. Mold Crown Court heard how Christopher Willans had mistakenly knocked on Sheppard’s window, believing it to be part of a property owned by a close friend. ‘On discovering his mistake, Willans apologised to Sheppard and left the area. While walking home Willans was confronted by Sheppard who shot him at close range with a .22 calibre pistol through his car window.

Marlene Guest
Rotherham

Guest is the Rotherham BNP organiser. Like Mozar she appeared on the Sky TV BNP Wives documentary in which she claimed that the number of deaths in the Holocaust had been exaggerated and that the Jews were putting Germany on a guilt trip. ‘Asked if any good had come out of ‘the Holocaust, she replied: “Well, apparently, didn’t they get a lot of dentistry and plastic surgery”, referring to the Nazis’ barbaric “medical experiments”.

Jeffrey Marshall
Eastbury ward, Barking and Dagenham Council

Marshall, the central London BNP organiser, displayed the poisonous side of the BNP in February 2009 following the death of the six-year-old son of David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader. In a cruel and warped outburst against those who had expressed their condolences at the death of Ivan, who suffered from cerebral palsy and epilepsy, Marshall wrote in an internet politics group: “We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it.”

Marshall continued his sick tirade, stating that although it would be “a kindness” to kill children with disabilities, this was not the same as advocating such a measure as compulsory state policy. “But so what if it is,” he declared. “At least we would all know where we stand. There is actually not a great deal of point in keeping these sort of people alive, after all.”

Sharif Abdel Gawad
Bolton and Undercliffe ward, Bradford Council

Abdel Gawad of Bowling, Bradford, was convicted for possession of heroin by Bradford magistrates in December 2007. He first stood for the BNP in Bradford in May 2006, when his candidacy caused uproar in the party because of his less than Aryan credentials. The party insisted that he was of Armenian descent and most certainly “Christian” not a Muslim. Interviewed by The Independent he said he was “concerned about law and order, particularly the drugs epidemic in Bradford”.

Hope not hate

BNP Mayoral candidate has given speeches at meetings of pro-Hitler group

BNP candidate Culnane at Nazi meeting

Tess Culnane is the BNP candidate for Lewisham borough’s 2010 mayoral election and has been working an as aide at City Hall with the BNP’s London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook. Culnane recently spoke at the Bexley BNP Election Launch meeting, held on March 6, 2010. The BNP website reports:

‘The meeting also heard from veteran activist Tess Culnane who provided some details of her work with Cllr Barnbrook’.

Culnane certainly is a ‘veteran activist’, having been active in the BNP, the National Front (NF), and the British People’s Party. Culnane contested the 2004 Greater London Assembly election and European election for the BNP, and ran as an NF candidate in 2007 and 2008.

In addition to this, Culnane has also spent time supporting the British People’s Party (BPP) and speaking at their meetings. The BPP is openly pro-Nazi and sells busts of Hitler (‘A faithful statue of the Fuhrer’) via its website.

In 2007, Culnane spoke at the BPP’s St George’s Day meeting in Hove. Other speakers at the meeting included Michelle Renouf, a notorious promoter of Holocaust denial who used the occasion to praise the ‘bravery’ of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, for his devotion to denying the Nazis exterminated millions of Jews.

In September 2008, Culnane spoke at the BPP’s ‘Nationalist Unity Rally‘. Prizes in a raffle held at the event included ‘an original authenticated photograph of Hitler’.

Culnane has now returned to the BNP and in January 2010 the BNP website carried a post entitled ‘Welcome Back!’ which described her as a ’strong individual’.

BNP Facts

Richard Barnbrook: a nasty object of ridicule

The record of the BNP’s London Assembly member is a truly rotten one

It is now almost two years since the British National Party scraped over the 5 per cent hurdle and won a seat on the London Assembly, so this is an appropriate point to examine the BNP’s political record at City Hall.

Over that period, the role of the party’s London Assembly member, Richard Barnbrook, has been exactly what you would expect from a representative of the BNP. One of his first contributions to Mayor’s Question Time was to demand a ban on the Notting Hill Carnival. On whatever subject he has intervened at MQT, Barnbrook has invariably reduced the issue to the BNP’s obsession with race and immigration.

By way of variety, at last month’s MQT, he treated us to an exposition of his party’s line that human activity is not the primary cause of global warming – despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. But then the BNP spent many years rejecting the equally incontrovertible evidence concerning the Nazi genocide against the Jews. From Holocaust denial, it has now moved on to climate change denial.

Eighteen months ago, I wrote that Barnbrook’s rambling and incoherent interventions at MQT had reduced him to an object of ridicule, which led to the first of three complaints by Barnbrook against me to the GLA Standards Committee. It was rejected, along with another complaint against my colleague John Biggs, who had referred to Barnbrook’s Nazi politics. The decision was reported by Searchlight under the heading “Rambling, incoherent and Nazi to boot”.

A central feature of Nick Griffin’s re-branding of the BNP has been an attempt to publicly dissociate the BNP from its Nazi-sympathising past. This has been seriously undermined by the discovery that veteran far-right activist Tess Culnane is working in Barnbrook’s office. Culnane was forced out of the BNP for several years because of her insistence on speaking at meetings of the British People’s Party, which advertises busts of Hitler on its website at £15 a pop.

As for Barnbrook, it would appear that Griffin has finally lost patience with him and he may well step down from the Assembly next month, to be replaced by Bob Bailey, currently BNP leader on Barking and Dagenham council. Unlike Barnbrook, Bailey does possess the ability to string two meaningful sentences together. But he suffers from a severe anger management problem and an inclination to shoot his mouth off – for example in his recent disgusting outburst against Nigerian churches at a council planning committee meeting.

Some people argue that it is a mistake to give publicity to the BNP. However, in my opinion, the more widely the party’s role on the London Assembly and borough councils is publicised, the better. Now we have to make sure that we throw the BNP out of its local government base in Barking and Dagenham on May 6 by showing voters what you really get when its members attain public office.

Murad Qureshi for Tribune

Joint statement condemns BNP 'race hate'

Councillors, religious leaders and union representatives have joined together to condemn the British National Party

A joint statement by 44 people accuses the party, which is contesting Lewisham’s mayoral election, of stirring up race hate. Along with other mayoral candidates, signatories also include the Bishop of Woolwich the Rt Rev Christopher Chessun and Archdeacon of Lewisham and Greenwich the Venerable Christine Hardman. Representatives from Unison, the National Union of Teachers and students’ unions have also signed.

The statement says: "As representatives of many political opinions and parties in Lewisham, we affirm the values of unity, tolerance and mutual respect, which have always helped people from different backgrounds to live together. We are deeply concerned at the activity of racist and fascist groups such as the British National Party, which use people’s fears to stir up race hate, which their candidacy in the Lewisham mayoral election will seek to do.

"We also reject their demonisation of Muslims, and their claim to speak for Christians, as an affront to all our religions and beliefs and a danger to the unity of the whole community. In the next few months the people of Lewisham will choose their mayor who will lead Lewisham Council in all its policies at the town hall. We believe that a high turnout of voters will minimise the impact of candidates on extremist platforms in our borough. So we urge the overwhelming majority to turn out and vote, and give a clear signal that messages of race hatred and division are not welcome here."

Chairman of the Lewisham Anti-Racist Action group Councillor Jarman Parmar, who organised the statement, said: "Fascists were stopped in Cable Street in 1936 and at Lewisham in 1977, by myself and many others. They must be stopped today."

Tess Culnane, who has previously run for the National Front and has spoken at a meeting of the far-right British People’s Party, is standing as the BNP candidate. News Shopper is awaiting a comment from Ms Culnane.

This is local London

‘Neo-Nazi gran’ hired as aide to BNP member on London Assembly

A grandmother working for the BNP at City Hall is feared to be behind plans to unite far-Right activists in advance of the general election. Tess Culnane, dubbed a “neo-Nazi granny” by her rivals after being a member of the BNP and National Front, has been recruited as an aide by London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook.

Opponents of the BNP believe this suggests that factional infighting has ended, allowing the party to focus on the general election and borough elections. BNP leader Nick Griffin is challenging Labour minister Margaret Hodge for the Barking seat, while the party aims to build on its councillors in boroughs such as Barking and Dagenham and Redbridge.

Mrs Culnane, a grandmother of 12 from Mottingham, who is believed to be in her seventies, is working part-time at City Hall as an agency worker.

She was a strong supporter of former BNP leader John Tyndall and has stood in London Assembly, European and council elections. She was the National Front candidate in the Haltemprice and Howden, Yorkshire, by-election in 2008 that was called after then shadow home secretary David Davis quit and then retained his seat.

In a pre-Euro election speech last year, she said she and her family had suffered vandalism and crime at the hands of black neighbours since 1969 and railed against “the tragedy that has hit my family through multiculturalism”. She added: “Many British families are suffering the scourge of multiculturalism. The British bulldog has had its nose rubbed in the dirt long enough.”

Speaking of Mrs Culnane's role, Labour assembly member Murad Qureshi said: “In this instance the BNP has revealed its fascist underbelly, and voters should not be fooled by the party's attempts to present a more moderate image.”

Former mayor Ken Livingstone, who headed an anti-BNP conference at the weekend, said: “It is a travesty that the BNP has a seat on the London Assembly to give platform to its toxic propaganda.”

Mrs Culnane declined to answer questions but said: “I'm certainly not a Nazi* — I'm a true blue patriot. If anybody called me a traitor I would be upset.”

This is London

*Our photograph shows Culnane addressing the openly Nazi British People's Party.

Brief review of last night’s election results for the BNP and National Front

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Hexapla. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Last night’s crop of four by-elections produced a set of rather lacklustre results for two of Britain’s leading fascist and racist parties, the BNP and National Front.

In the Cranbrook ward by-election, the BNP came last with just 37 votes or 1.4% of the overall vote:

Con 1,625 (60.0%)
Lab 729 (26.9%)
LD 318 (11.7%)
BNP 37 (1.4%)

The Cranbrook result is highly disappointing for the BNP (even more so as the Conservatives, who won, fielded an Asian candidate). The Cranbrook ward is situated in Redbridge, a key target area for the BNP, on the fringes of east London. Redbridge already has one sitting BNP councillor with neighbouring areas several more (the paucity of BNP votes in Cranbrook has echoes of the December 2007 Canons ward by-election result in Harrow, where the BNP also came last with only 56 votes).

Perhaps the most disappointing result for the BNP was its faltering regression in one of its electoral strongholds, Kirklees. In the Dalton ward by-election the BNP attained only 157 votes or 4.54% of the overall vote, dramatically down from the 460 votes or 10.77% of the vote it achieved earlier in May:

Labour 1397 (40.48%)
Lib Dem 1155 (33.46%)
Con 605 (17.53%)
BNP 157 (4.54%)
Green 103 (2.98%)
Ind 34 (0.98%)

Dalton result in May 2008

Lib Dem 1467 (34.33%)
Lab 1303 (30.50%)
Con 830 (19.43%)
BNP 460 (10.77%)
Green 212 (4.96%)

The Dalton by-election witnessed a lower voter turnout than in May. Traditionally, lower voter turnout favours the BNP, helping it to bolster its share of the vote. However, as the result shows, the BNP, for whatever reason, failed to capitalise on what is normally an inherent advantage for it. What will be a key test of the BNP’s electoral strength in Kirklees is the upcoming Dewsbury East ward by-election, inaugurated by the decision of BNP councillor, Colin Auty, to quit the BNP following his recent failed attempt to remove Nick Griffin as leader of the BNP.

Turning to the Wigan West ward by-election, the BNP came forth with 200 votes or 9.39% of the overall vote, down from the 264 votes or 13.78% of the vote it achieved last September:

Labour 817 (38.3%)
Conservative 528 (24.78%)
Liberal Democrat 344 (16.14%)
BNP 200 (9.39%)
UKIP 124 (5.82%)
Community Action 118 (5.54%)

Wigan West result in September 2007:

Lab 837 (43.68%)
LibDem 464 (24.22%)
BNP 264 (13.78%)
Com Act 219 (11.43%)
Ind 72 (3.76%)
Green 60 (3.13%)

The Haltemprice and Howden by-election, returning David Davis, saw the National Front just managing to beat the one-woman novelty party, Miss Great Britain Party, with 554 votes or 2.19% of the overall vote. Interestingly, the BNP did not field a candidate for this by-election:

David Davis (C) 17,113 (72.06%)
Shan Oakes (Green) 1,758 (7.40%)
Joanne Robinson (Eng Dem) 1,714 (7.22%)
Tess Culnane (NF) 544 (2.29%)
Gemma Garrett (Miss GB Party) 521 (2.19%)
Jill Saward (Ind) 492 (2.07%)
Mad Cow-Girl (Loony) 412 (1.73%)
Walter Sweeney (Ind) 238 (1.00%)
David Craig (Ind) 135 (0.57%)
David Pinder (New Party) 135 (0.57%)
David Icke (ND) 110 (0.46%)
Hamish Howitt (Freedom) 91 (0.38%)
Christopher Talbot (SEP) 84 (0.35%)
Grace Astley (Ind) 77 (0.32%)
George Hargreaves (Ch P) 76 (0.32%)
David Bishop (Elvis) 44 (0.19%)
John Upex (Ind) 38 (0.16%)
Greg Wood (Ind) 32 (0.13%)
Eamonn Fitzpatrick (Ind) 31 (0.13%)
Ronnie Carroll (History) 29 (0.12%)
Thomas Darwood (Ind) 25 (0.11%)
Christopher Foren (Ind) 23 (0.10%)
Herbert Crossman (Ind) 11 (0.05%)
Tony Farnon (Ind) 8 (0.03%)
Norman Scarth (Ind) 8 (0.03%)

For those interested readers, the National Front candidate, Tess Culnane, is a former failed BNP candidate (who recently stood in the London Assembly elections) who lost her libel action against a Liberal Democrat candidate and his agent.