Ex-BNP boss behind anti-abortion group

Ex-BNP mouthpiece Jim Dowson is putting his weight back behind his anti-abortion fundraising.

He’s turned the old BNP Belfast bunker into a fundraising office for a controversial anti-abortion pressure group who like to hand-out shocking pictures of aborted foetuses to make their point.

Dowson denies being at the helm of the UK Life League which raises thousands of pounds a year. But when we called the secretive ‘not-for-profit’ organisation on Wednesday it was Dowson who answered the phone.

Meanwhile his daughter, who until last month was working for the BNP, is the only named employee on their website. Alice Kernaghan – who got married earlier this year – is named at the end of an anti-abortion campaign letter as the UK Life League’s ‘National Coordinator’. Dowson is also pictured on the website protesting on the steps of Stormont holding a picture of an aborted foetus.

Convicted criminal Dowson walked away from the BNP after a fall-out about funding. He had enjoyed a rocky road with the English-based race hate party which is led by his pal Nick Griffin. This week he told us he was “glad to be shot” of the BNP. And he continued to claim he was never a member of the party – adding that he dislikes what they stand for.

“No I’m not running it – I’m just doing a bit of design work for them [the UK Life League],” said Dowson on Wednesday. I’m glad to be shot of the BNP. It was a very difficult three years. I’m turning my attention to a private marketing project in Spain. But I’m very much a big supporter of the UK Life League.”

The rabid self-proclaimed reverend, originally from Cumbernauld in Scotland, first hit the headlines eleven years ago when he quit his post at the head of anti-abortion group Precious Life over his involvement with loyalists. The Catholic Church, which had previously supported Dowson’s antiabortion stance, distanced themselves from him after he was revealed as the organiser of a flute band which recorded a tape in honour of UFF Milltown Cemetery killer Michael Stone.

For the last three years Dowson has been effectively running the fundraising and membership wings of the BNP. He set up the Belfast office on the outskirts of Belfast where he hoped he could operate without attracting any attention. But in the summer of 2009 the Sunday World infiltrated the office and we later revealed how BNP leader Nick Griffin had sent over his own daughter Jenny to help run things.

The Sunday World understands that the UK Life League has attracted tens of thousands of pounds in funds throughout the last three years – despite being virtually inactive.

Sunday World

Michaela Mackenzie sticks the boot in once more.

I'm getting the feeling that Griffin & Dowson Enterprises might have made a monumental cock up when they unlawfully sacked Michaela Mackenzie.

A couple of weeks after she released her Employment Tribunal Statement which can be found here she went a step further yesterday in her utter condemnation of Dowson and his business practices within the BNP.

In a speech lasting over 20 minutes at an Eddy Butler leadership campaign meeting she outlined her sacking and the incompetence of Griffin and Dowson and the three videos are worth watching.

Racist BNP sets sights on Ireland

The racist British National Party have their sights set on Ireland, Sunday World can reveal. The controversial party have been building links with right-wing extremists across the island and even offered money and training to supporters living here.

A group of Irish BNP activists from the UK have been looking to make contact with the recently formed Irish National Party. One BNP member even spent a frantic three-day trip to Dublin desperately trying to find the INP leadership this week. However, we can reveal that since Sunday World exposed INP leaders David Barrett and Ollie Allen as Nazis, the pair have abandoned their planned anti-immigration party.

BNP activist, Paul Ryan, revealed that his party are desperate to get a foothold in Ireland and already have a network of contacts across the country. While trying to make contact with the INP, Ryan inadvertently revealed his plans to our undercover reporter.

He explained that party Deputy Chairman, Simon Darby, spends much of his time traveling to the North, where former orange man, Jim Dowson, runs the party’s call centre.

“Darby is very interested in getting a group going in Ireland that we can work together with,” Ryan declared. “I can get loads of people to join you from Irish community as well as our people living in Dublin. In the past the BNP had a problem with Irish people but there is a group of us now who support the party and they are very open to the idea of a similar party in Ireland.”

Ryan offered the party money and advice on security as well as issuing an invitation to attend the BNP’s annual red, white and blue festival, which draws in far right groups from across Europe. He ranted about the threats posed to Ireland and the UK by Muslims and mass immigration.

“I promise you that I can help you out as a party, financially with fundraising and to give you advice,” he added. “We are as determined as yourselves. Frank O’Brien (BNP election candidate) from the BNP is good friend of mine and he is of Irish descent, I want to put him in touch with the INP. We are in touch with Swedish groups and want to get a network across Europe of nationalist parties.”

BNP leading member Darby recently commented that he would be “overjoyed if an Irish National Party was set up and we would do all we could to help it.” His comment came just weeks before the Irish National Party publicly announced their existence.

A leaked email from BNP Solihull Councillor, George Morgan, to the INP pledged support for the group.

“As a fellow nationalist I believe that, regardless of whether we are of Celtic, or Anglo Saxon stock, we face the same basic threats to our heritage, culture, identity and ultimately our future,” the Cllr declared. “I further believe that as nationalists we must fight these threats on a united front, albeit different peoples but with a common ancestry. I would suggest that in the first instance you contact the regional organiser for the West Midlands.”

Following a recent Sunday World exposé the emergent Irish National Party were exposed as an anti-Semitic far-right thugs. The group’s website was taken down within days and anti-Semitic party leader, paediatric nurse, David Barrett, has been keeping a low profile.

The party was unable to meet with the BNP to get vital funding and training as the BNP’s contact was intercepted by this paper. However, a new website was hastily launched this week to replace the INP’s failed project – the London registered Irishnationalparty.com site is believed to be linked to British attempts to gain a foothold in Irish politics.

The BNP say their plan for Ireland is to “end the conflict” by making the North and South part of the United Kingdom. BNP have links to Irish pro-life group, Youth Defence through their main fundraiser, Jim Dowson. Dowson runs the BNP’s Belfast call centre and is believed to be bankrolling the BNP, providing hundreds of thousands in funding, according to recently leaked accounts for the party. The former Orange Man has links to the loyalist murderer Michael Stone and has been described as a “rent-a-cause extremist”.

He formed Precious Life Scotland, later the UK Life League in 1999, and has been in regular contact with Youth Defence since.

Brian Whelan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide and, under Hitler, was used to represent a project that encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with “Aryan” mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans.

A lying picture for a lying appeal. How appropriate.

This article is from the August edition of Searchlight magazine