The Accounts (3): Figure Skating

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And so we turn to the financial dealings of the BNP, as set out in the 2007 Accounts. Your author is not an accountant, nor an auditor - but I do have experience in drawing up (and auditing) accounts on a small scale, and of 'signing off' annual accounts on a much larger scale. So this is not a professional verdict, but comments from an informed onlooker.

The starting point of the Accounts is the report of Silver & Co, the BNP's Independent Auditor, with its startling conclusions that:

'In our opinion the financial statements do not:

1. Give a true and fair view of the state of the party's affairs at 31st December 2007;
2. Give a true and fair view of the results for the year then ended.'

Or to offer a 'plain English' version: "we have seen the books, but they are incomplete - and so we don't believe they are accurate". A pretty damning verdict, and one which would shame a typical fishing club or village hall committee!

Of course, Griffin gets his excuses in first by saying that "accounting...is problematic owing to the point-blank refusal of the former Head of Administration to account for large amounts of expenditure". (Translation - "It's all Kenny Smith's fault".) However, there are flaws in this excuse particularly given that "the party leader...has sole control of, and responsibility for...administration [and] finances". And that quote comes from Griffin's own introduction to those very Accounts.

So, if there are and/or were failings in the party's financial controls they were the responsibility of the leader - Griffin. Let's turn to the detailed Accounts (pages 14 on) and see what we discover.

Income

Donation income is recorded as falling from £289,000 to £198,000 (down 32%). No explanation is offered, but it seems an odd development in a party which is supposedly growing.

On the other hand membership income is recorded as increasing from £145,000 to £201,354 (up 38%). This accompanies a claimed membership of 9,784 - against a 2006 figure of 6,281. There are a number of unconvincing elements to all this - a membership increase of 56% in a single year strains credulity, and the average subscription per member falls from £23.16 to £20.58. In previous years a (basic) breakdown of the membership was given; that is absent this year. The possibility of £5 'ghost' members to inflate the claimed membership springs to mind.

In 2006 fundraising and commercial activities grossed £285,000 - in 2007 this fell to £199,000 (down 30%). Worse still, since the costs incurred did not fall correspondingly, the net income fell by 70%! (This is an area where Griffin's spat with the "rebels" may have had an impact. Think of all that spending on Excalibur tat which switched to funding the Family Defence Fund!)

Overall, income fell by over £100,000 - from £726,455 to just £611,274; distinctly odd in a party clebrating a 56% membership increase...

Expenditure

As already mentioned, spending on commercial activities fell (but not as heavily as income). "Promotional expenditure" increased - whatever that was (there is no explanatory note).

Staff costs, management and administration costs (a past area of criticism from some of Griffin's internal rivals) fell slightly. Staff wages fell by around £18,000, presumably when Herr Griffin decided to dismiss various key members of staff! There were significant increases in bank service charges (from £800 to £5,800); bouncing cheques cost money! There is one interesting new expenditure line of £18,271 for "missing information". This is presumably the information supposedly withheld (according to Griffin) by Smith. But whilst the details of this expenditure may not be traceable, the fact of it having been spent is clearly established.

Previous complaints from Griffin's critics that the party centrally spent too little on campaigning has been partly addressed with "leaflet costs" expenditure rising from £19,000 to £45,000. But it's a little sneaky to hide party registration costs, rising from £25 to £1,276, under "campaign expenditure". The increase, of course, is largely down to the fine for late submission of accounts!

Total expenditure fell, from £708,000 to £662,000 - and my astute readers will have noted that 2006's surplus of £19,000 has been converted to a deficit of £50,582.

Balance Sheet

And so we turn to the page so loved by accountants and auditors - the Balance Sheet. Last year this (sort of!) showed the BNP making progress, with the accumulated deficit being reduced by that year's £19,000 surplus. This year the news is bleaker - so what is the BNP's current position?

Well, it has its fixed assets - valued at £48,728. Unfortunately, we are not talking land or property (traditionally the soundest form of fixed assets - after all, they generally appreciate in value!) No, the BNP's fixed assets are vehicles - try selling those for full value! - and "equipment" - mostly clapped-out printing equipment one assumes. Perhaps it is genuinely worth £48,000, but I wouldn't fancy trying to realise that value!

Then there are the current assets, or as the BNP charmingly puts it "current savings". At December 2006 these were spread across 12 different accounts, including no fewer than three for the lottery [listed as "British National Lottery", "British National Lottery" and "British National Lottery 2" - you couldn't make it up!]. Two of these were in deficit: "Halifax 1" by £99, and "Treasurer's Account" by £636. By December 2007 these deficits had increased to £621 and no less than £6,705. A further account, "Project Funding Account" had moved from a £139 balance to a £271 deficit. Five accounts simply vanished from the current assets, perhaps as part of the fall-out from the purge.

The overall effect of all this chaos was to reduce current assets to just £31,385. So, £31,000 in the bank (or several banks!), and up to £48,000 in fixed assets. What about liabilities?

Well, we can start by chalking off around £78,000 in advance payments - membership and other income relating to 2008 but received in 2007. That alone wipes out the assets of the party (and is the only way the party can actually hold any cash resources at December 2007). Add to this £21,000 in "accounts payable" - in other words, bills we should have paid but haven't paid. Then there's a mysterious £41,831 liability in respect of "British Heritage T Acxcount (sic). This didn't make any sense to me initially, until I discovered that it's money "borrowed" from the BNP's own Regional Accounting Unit! So the BNP even owes itself money!

And finally, there's a £20,492 liability for PAYE and VAT - yes, money that should have been paid to the government for those pesky schools and hospitals and so on.

Total liabilities - £161,103. Total assets - (an iffy) £80,990. Add in some hire purchase commitments and we have a BNP which owes at least £85,000 more than it possesses.

Looks like the siphoning off of Barnbrook's GLA money is going to have to be rapid and enthusiastic to head off a financial crisis. But will Barnbrook agree, merely to bail out the incompetence of his party leader who - in his own words - should take "sole control and responsibility for administration [and] finances".

In my final comment on the 2007 Party Accounts I shall clear up a few odds and ends, such as the strange on/off relationship between the party and some of its satellites, and why you shouldn't put all your eggs in one treasurer's basket!

Sadie Graham launches bitter attack on hated 'liar and coward' Griffin

'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.

Implied threats and fear of failure - Nick Griffin loses his nerve over High Court action

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’s York MP hopeful 'quits'

A British National Party member who tried to fight an election in York and in Scotland at the same time has now "quit" after his own party took an injunction out against him.

The BNP has taken legal action against six former officials including a man from York for alleged misuse of party data.

Chairman of the BNP, Nick Griffin, has secured an injunction from Manchester High Court, preventing the group from using party property including a list of all its members. Among the six who have contested the injunction is Ian Dawson, the party's former Group Support Officer. He stood in the City of York Council election for Acomb in April last year as one of nine BNP candidates while also hoping to win a seat in Scotland, through the regional party list system. He failed to win in either city.

The former Yorkshire Secretary and former York Organiser announced his "resignation" from the BNP on the internet in December, while challenging the internal management of the party. His decision to stand down, and the latest court action, follows months of internal wrangling within the party.

The other five former party officials involved in the court proceedings are Steve Blake, Sadie Graham, Matt Single, Kenny Smith and Nicholla Smith.

Simon Darby, a BNP spokesman, said: "We, as a party, sought an injunction against the use of party equipment by the six people. The injunction was granted."

He said the equipment concerned included the party membership list as well as mobile phones, digital duplicators and computers. Another hearing is expected to take place in April.

"We were bound under the terms of the Data Protection Act to take this action," he said. "There are thousands of names on the list. They have been using it since December. It upset a lot of people."

He said the group was contesting the injunction and another hearing is expected to take place in April.

"The technicalities of our injunction were that they can't use anything that we have asked them not to use. They can currently publish things, but they can't use our membership list. They can't use the duplicator."

He was unsure how long the process would take.

Mr Dawson, who is in his mid-20s, attended York College before working as a self-employed administration systems manager. When contacted by The Press, he said: "I don't want to make any comment on it, not for the time being. I don't want to get involved in saying things out of turn."

The Press (York)

Rebels reject BNP compromise

News has reached Searchlight that the rebels have rejected a ‘compromise’ offer from the BNP leadership. 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.

Unsurprisingly, this generous offer was rejected by the rebels. However, this has not stopped the Griffin loyalists feigning outrage. “This proves that the rebels have no interest in getting back involved in the party,” one regional organiser recently a meeting.

Griffin, of course, has no intention of compromising. In fact, quite the opposite. Following on from his abusive letter to Bradford BNP he has finally answered a similar letter criticising recent events within the party by neighbouring Kirklees BNP. Signed by all 17 officers within the local authority area, including all three Kirklees councillors and former regional organiser Nick Cass, the letter appealed to Griffin to reverse his disruptive decisions.

The BNP leader’s reply was much more diplomatic than that to Bradford but the end result was the same. He stressed that he did not want to lose the branch officials but if they continued their course of action then he would rather they leave as soon as possible.

More significantly, Griffin is consolidating power as any good dictator would. It appears that he is looking to change the party constitution to prevent any party member from challenging him as leader more than once. With this outrageous abuse of power, Griffin hopes that young pretenders would be scared off from making a challenge in case they blow their one opportunity whilst also deterring other potential candidates from building a national profile over several years. (However, this would already be difficult as Griffin, as party leader, decides the election rules and in last year’s leadership election that meant that all campaigning was banned!)

Another rebel facing the chop is Steve Haddon, who was until recently the Party’s Wolverhampton organiser. He has been sacked after attending the rebel conference in Nottingham.

Given that this is now a sacking offence, Searchlight is prepared to hand over the names of the 112 other people who were present at the rebel conference for Griffin to dismiss. But only if he asks very very nicely!

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