The guns of the EDL

When right wing extremist Anders Breivik went on his murder spree in Oslo last month, attention predictably turned to England and the far-right extremist English Defence League (EDL), the organisation that inspired the killer.

Despite claiming that his organisation had no official contacts with Breivik and that he condemned the actions of the mass murderer, EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon claimed in a number of interviews with journalists that in his opinion, the UK was only five years away from the same sort of right wing outrage happening here.

Up and down the country for the last two years we have witnessed dozens of attacks on Muslim and progressive communities as Lennon's private army of racists grew further and further out of control even encouraged fleetingly, by sections of the national media.

News broke last week that finally, the EDL was to be monitored by the same counter terror unit set up after the 7/7 terror attacks. Hope Not Hate has long called for the EDL to be monitored in the same way that Islamic terror groups are.

We are now publishing these photographs of senior EDL members and activists to prove once and for all for any doubters, that the EDL are not just a pressure group with legitimate concerns about radical Islam. They are the flip side of the same coin.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon says we are five years away from a Breivik styled massacre here. We believe they are already a terror group in the making.












Thanks to Searchlight / HOPE not Hate

BNP Kirklees candidate poses with gun at Yorkshire campsite

A COUNCIL candidate has been pictured brandishing a gun.

Rachel Firth, who is standing for the British National Party (BNP) in Thursday’s Kirklees Council elections, was photographed holding a handgun.

The Skelmanthorpe mother-of-two was pictured along with other senior party activists at a campsite.

Mrs Firth, who is the BNP’s Kirklees organiser, was snapped standing next to a Renault aiming a black handgun.

The weapon is believed to be a replica.

Mrs Firth’s boyfriend Danny Cooke, BNP organiser in Barnsley, is also pictured brandishing a gun.

Salford candidates Gary Tumulty and Keith Fairhurst were snapped posing with replica automatic weapons.

The photos were taken at a BNP St George’s Day celebration at Hooton Lodge Country Inn campsite near Rotherham.

The manager of the campsite is believed to have been unaware of the fact the get-together was organised by the BNP and that replica guns would be used.

Mrs Firth, who is standing for the BNP in Denby Dale in Thursday’s Kirklees election, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The pictures are believed to have appeared on Facebook last weekend before being reproduced on the Hope Not Hate website run by anti-fascist group Searchlight.

The pictures include a snap of three men mooning to the camera.

Earlier this month the Examiner revealed that many BNP activists in Kirklees had left the party in protest at the leadership of Nick Griffin.

The defectors, who have joined the English Democrats, complained of the BNP’s “terrible image”.

David Exley, a former BNP councillor for Heckmondwike, is among those who have quit the party.

He said yesterday that the pictures of party members brandishing guns vindicated his decision to leave.
Mr Exley said: “When I joined the BNP, I joined what I thought was a serious political party with serious aims and people who wanted to achieve those aims by democratic means.

“But all the people who have tried to do that have been got rid of by Nick Griffin.

“All the quality people have now gone and, as you can see in these pictures, we’re left with a bunch of idiots.

“I’m glad I’m out of the BNP.”

Clr Andrew Cooper, who leads the four-strong Green group on Kirklees Council, also condemned the pictures yesterday. The Newsome man said: “If this is how the BNP celebrate St George’s Day, then they are out-of-touch with what it means to be English.

“We’re not the sort of country like the US where lots of people have guns.

“We’re a civilised country which doesn’t use guns as common currency.

“I think this is part of the culture of the BNP, it’s a party which believes in allowing large-scale gun ownership.

“I’m very suspicious of any politician who uses guns as an acceptable photo opportunity.”

Huddersfield Daily Examiner

BNP not welcome here!

A campsite owner has told the British National Party they are no longer welcome on his property following a violent disturbance that took place there on St George’s Day.

The owner of the Hooton Lodge Country Pub & Campsite located near Rotherham, South Yorkshire told Searchlight Magazine that he was totally unaware the event was organised by the British National Party having been led to believe that it was to be a non-political celebration.

The owner said that although was aware that the group had a large collection of replica firearms on the site and were initially firing them at paper targets, this wasn’t agreed with the owners beforehand. He said “The first I was aware of them was when a large 4x4 vehicle pulled up and opened its boot to reveal a mini armoury.”

Searchlight was passed a large collection of photographs in which leading BNP officials and candidates can be clearly seen posing with the realistic looking firearms even when small children were in close proximity.

The owner who wishes to remain anonymous, told us that had he known that the group were mishandling firearms he would have called the local police firearms unit and have had them removed from his campsite.

He also revealed that following a day and evening of excessive drinking, a violent scuffle broke out around 1:30 am in the BNP group, forcing one member of the party to be thrown off the campsite.

BNP candidates and officials from Wakefield, Leeds, Barnsley, Sheffield, Kirklees and Salford were all photographed misusing the firearms or suffering the effects of excessive drinking on the day.

The owner said he was horrified by the group’s politics and their drunken behaviour and under no circumstances would they be allowed back onto his campsite.

Thanks to Searchlight/HOPE not Hate

From race riots to civil war: What is the BNP preparing for?

“Welcome to Oldham, the front line of the race war,” a BNP officer told a party rally a few weeks before rioting broke out in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in summer 2001. After the riots the cover of BNP’s magazine Identity sported a map of Britain with flames indicating towns where BNP-instigated race riots had already taken place and those where the BNP was still working on it.

Since those days there has been a growing belief that the BNP was working to a secret agenda as well as its public one. Even party members are concerned at the build-up of the BNP’s private army of security guards and the large sums of money spent on their training.

After the European elections in 2004 when the BNP got 800,000 votes but no MEPs, Nick Griffin said that the party might have to consider alternatives to the ballot box. At the time this attracted no more than a ripple of interest. Clearly the BNP leader was harking back to his days running the National Front Political Soldiers faction, when he was happy to rub shoulders with extremists including terrorists of many political hues.

More recent developments add to the evidence about where the BNP might be heading if it fails to make any real breakthrough at the ballot box.

Last autumn the BNP organised its first clay pigeon shoot in Yorkshire, attended by Griffin and BNP councillor Richard Barnbrook as a fundraising and social event but also to build up a core of party members who know how to handle guns.

Then Matthew Single, a regular BNP election candidate in Essex, boasted to the local press that he had been promoted to third in Griffin’s personal security detail and claimed that he had undergone “intensive training”. He has also started training BNP activists in “anti-hijack evasive driving”. Single has twice escaped justice in the courts and was in hot water over a false entry on his election papers last May.

And last month Griffin made an interesting remark as an aside in his blog about his speaking tour of East Anglia, writing: “During the English Civil War (in due course, it will of course have to be called the First English Civil War, in order to differentiate it from the one to come) …”. Was it Griffin who inspired Robert Cottage to stockpile explosives for what he told Manchester Crown Court in February were preparation for the coming race war?

Finally, why has the BNP stated that it is especially keen to recruit serving and recently retired police and army officers?

Searchlight