Deadline 1934

Nick Griffin will never be a Mosley, the man he once claimed to be in line of descent from.

The style, erudition and misguided intellectual rigour of the late fascist leader are entirely absent in the anti-intellectual Griffin. While Mosley engaged himself in writing long and deceptively well argued polemics which remain of interest to the political historian, the best remembered works to have come from the pen of Nick Griffin are the insane "Attempted Murder", which remains of interest only to amateur psychiatrists, and "Who are the Mindbenders", with its badly glued-together "facts" purporting to demonstrate Jewish control of the media, written in a sub-Martin Webster style.

With hindsight, "Mindbenders" can now be seen to be nothing more than Griffin pitching himself at the right audience at the right time as the intent to supplant John Tyndall evolved in his mind, and was therefore nothing more than a weapon in the factional manoeuvring in which Griffin had indulged since first coming to notice on the extremist fringe in the early 1980s.

Griffin is certainly clever in a devious, self-serving and wholly pragmatic way, but a deep and original thinker he is not. One is struck when reading his more political offerings by the second-hand, recycled nature of "his" ideas, stitched together with a thin thread of cod-intellectualism designed to impress the least intellectual minds to be found in any modern political party.

Even Oswald Mosley thought better of his members than that, and seems to have at least expected a modicum of critical intelligence on their part. Griffin neither expects it, nor tolerates it when he finds it.

What Griffin does have in common with the Blackshirt leader is an unfailing capacity to predict power-bringing calamities which never materialise - an unfortunate trait, when you have based your political strategy on exactly that.

Appearing on the BNP website is a lengthy piece titled "Deadline 2014: The Convergence of Catastrophes and What the BNP Needs to Do, by Nick Griffin". As I have no intention of repeating lengthy swathes of it here, you shall have to put on your proxy shoes and go along to read it, and when you have I'm fairly certain you will agree with me that it is little more than a confection of snatched ideas, standard fascist assumptions and regurgitated predictions served up as the reasoned thought of a master political strategist.

"Deadline 2014" has the feel of something hastily cobbled together by a congenital hysteric. It begins strangely enough:

You must have seen it, you must have felt it - everywhere you turn you can see the symptoms of a System in terminal crisis. We are entering an epoch-changing, history-making, period of drastic - almost unthinkable - change. A time our Viking ancestors would have called Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods in which an old world goes down in fire and ice, and which the great French political analyst Guillaume Faye describes as the Convergence of Catastrophes.

And it continues in a stream of formulaic buzz-words and phrases and hysterical hyperbole that have been characteristic of fascist writing ever since the word "fascist" first entered the lexicon. Sir Oswald Mosley would recognise them all, along with the necessary assumption that financial and social collapse will clear a path to fascist power - though we incline to the view that he would have written such an article in calmer, more measured tones, such as would avoid the impression of its having been smuggled out of a padded cell.

With catastrophic upheaval confidently predicted to beset the world some time very soon, Griffin is decidedly vague on the all-important subject of how the BNP will achieve power.

The problems faced will be "beyond the capacity even of a genuine nationalist party if it was to fall for the illusion that electoral power on its own is the Holy Grail," he says, adding, "That naive theory is based on the comforting but preposterous idea that, after decades of underhand bullying, goalpost shifting, persecution and subversive infiltration, the Establishment would allow us to contest unhindered a General Election we looked set to win..."

The main moving force behind that "naive theory" to date has, of course, been one Nicholas Griffin, who then egotistically takes credit for his "record of leading the BNP to unparalleled and previous[ly] undreamt of electoral successes" while side-swiping Eddy Butler for "complacency".

Broadly speaking, in the matter of gaining power, Griffin falls back on the vague (and classically fascist) premise of electoral success combined with mass protest:

That would certainly fit in with the British political tradition, and remains a possibility, but it is absurd to believe that anything less would compel the Establishment to respect the wishes of the British people to undo the slow motion PC revolution of recent decades.

Griffin then leaps to the question: "What Is Needed to Run the Country?" having failed to join up the bits that begin with the forthcoming Ragnarok and end by putting the BNP into a position of presumptive power. When detail is wanted, Griffin does not provide it, instead jumping into wild "radical" prescriptions which reek strongly of the Poltical Soldier ideals which so poisoned, divided and eventually destroyed the National Front under his leadership.

The mess of all too familiar paranoia and unreality that is "Deadline 2014" is intended to impress the impressionable Griffinite faithful (as it appears - unsurprisingly - to have done) with Griffin's intellectual credentials and stategic genius.

Along the way Griffin again justifies the parasitic relationship Jim Dowson's companies have with the BNP, and there is another plug for the "data-handling technologies" that will turn around the BNP's pitiful electoral fortunes, for reasons not readily apparent to those outside Griffin's charmed circle.

Helping "to put the management and motivation of our staff on a professional footing" will be Adam Walker, "backed by Solidarity trade union's employment law specialist" and long term benefits claimant Patrick Harrington.

I think that we can be fairly certain that in any dispute between BNP management and staff the oily Harrington, reliant on Nick Griffin's support to keep his pointless "union" afloat, won't be going out of his way to stand up for the rights of the shop floor.

It is fairly obvious that "Deadline 2014" is intended to take the intellectual (or should that be pseudo-intellectual?) high ground from Eddy Butler, who - mercifully - does not entertain the same pretensions.

It should be read in the context of the heavy-handed warnings falling from the party's paid staff on to the heads of the volunteer element that retribution will swiftly follow any expressions or acts made in support of a challenge to Nick Griffin's leadership; it should be read in the context of the growing number of suspensions and exclusions already made, and of the smears and tricks deployed against the putative challenger from the outset.

In that much "Deadline 2014" is as self-serving as "Attempted Murder" ever was.

Its sudden appearance underlines Nick Griffin's growing fear that his own self-preservation strategy is unravelling, and that if Eddy Butler achieves his 20% nomination qualification then, win or lose, Nick Griffin is effectively holed beneath the waterline.

What is most apparent from the vague "strategy" outlined in "Deadline 2014" is that Griffin does not have one. Falling back to the classic Mosleyite position of the 1930s is as good an illustration (if any were needed) that for all his political somersaults over the past three decades, Nick Griffin has learned nothing and forgotten everything.

Except how to scheme, con and take responsibility for his own failures.

Brown leaves Leicester following BNP row

Preston North End have signed Wayne Brown following the defender's departure from Leicester City by mutual consent.

Brown was left out of Leicester's squad for their play-off semi-final matches against Cardiff after he angered teammates, including PFA chairman Chris Powell, by revealing he had voted BNP in the recent general election.

At the time, PFA Deputy Chief Executive Bobby Barnes expressed his disappointment at Brown's decision.

The PFA has worked for many years with a number of anti-racism bodies to try and eradicate racism from the sport, at all levels, and Barnes felt Brown’s actions had ‘set the movement back’.

“Football has worked hard over the years to really be a beacon in the fight against racism and it is very discouraging to hear these comments when you think of the tireless work so many people, and so many organisations, have put in to get to where we are today.

“In my day as a player you had to contend with racist comments coming from the terraces, so for this to come from within a dressing room is very, very disappointing and our members are angry that Wayne Brown was not prepared to abide by our mission statement.”

Kick It Out

Running Short, Running Scared?

The BNP has spent the past few days bussing in their big guns from all over the country in an attempt to get Richard Barnbrook elected back on to Barking and Dagenham Council in this Thursday's Goresbrook Ward By-election.

Recently elevated "Returns Officer" Clive Jefferson, has travelled all the way down from Cumbria to stay with Barnbrook and oversee the campaign, this is despite the fact that the renegade Eddy Butler is supposed to be Barnbrook's election agent.

Former Deputy Leader Simon Darby has also arrived, blogging separate desperate interviews with both the candidate and Jefferson making appeals for more members to come to B&D and help get the BNP vote out. They're trying to be upbeat and talking up their chances, but it's quite clear that the BNP in Barking and Dagenham has been decimated by not only the internal split but also their total wipe out in May's elections, Barnbrook would appear to be the only former Councillor shameless enough to show his face in the borough again.

Despite leadership candidate Butler cancelling a meeting on the weekend supposedly to campaign instead for Barnbrook, he was nowhere to be seen on Saturday when the BNP leader Nick Griffin, his arch enemy, made a brief appearance in the borough. The BNP may have been able to deliver more leaflets for the hapless Barnbrook if no less than seven security staff dressed in black suits and sun glasses were not watching Griffin's back and actually delivered some leaflets instead.

The Party continues to obsess about Searchlight's campaigning and while Griffin and his private army of minders played cat and mouse over whether they would actually have to come face to face with Butler and his followers, twenty Hope Not Hate activists leafleted the ward with a reminder of Barnbrook's previous record on the council.

We also managed to dig up the picture above taken of Barnbrook's house the last time he had the stress of an election campaign. They may be stressed about Thursday's election, but history dictates that at least they'll be well refreshed.

Matt Collins at HOPE not hate

What is wrong with Clive Jefferson?

A throwaway piece to keep you happy while we set to on weightier matters...


Have you ever watched one of those crime documentaries which pad out the time by including contributions from "criminal psychologists", who, when asked a question, suck in their breath, set a frown into their foreheads, make a slight sniff and snitch of the nose, and thus posed as if expending great quantities of deductive brain power upon a particularly intractable problem then proceed to state what is blindingly obvious to 99.9% of the viewers and their cats?

Listening to new BNP elections supremo Clive Jefferson, one has the impression that he may have once read a Sun cut-out-and-keep guide to the psychology of running a good election campaign, but has forgotten all the big words.

Watching him is akin to watching a tall pile of not-quite-set jelly gently swaying in a high wind. The man is congenitally motive, even when stationary. The eyes swivel this way and that, followed by the head, as though he were anxiously following the flight path of a wasp that had taken up permanent residence before his nose, and he shuffles and wobbles as if he had swallowed a couple of bottles of strong laxative a few hours before and was just now about to suffer the consequences.

What is wrong with the man?

With a cameraphone for a change pointing at him, Jefferson yesterday pained and bobbled his way through a two minute interview at the hands of Simon Darby, the matter under discussion being the BNP's prospects in Barking and Dagenham's Goresbrook ward.

Jefferson's most profound insight into those prospects came when he told Darby that "it's just gonna be who turns the most out on the day, to be honest".

Older visitors may recall the Monty Python general election sketch in which a reporter concludes that he thinks a candidate may have won due to the number of votes cast - an observation doubtless noted and tucked away for future reference by canny Clive, since, as we all know, great minds think alike.

(Thanks to Atreus of Norfolk Unity for the montage)

Liverpool Anti-fascists counter-demonstration - 12th July 2010

The Liverpool branch of the British National Party will be holding a demonstration outside Liverpool Crown Court on Monday 12th July. Liverpool Antifascists are asking people to turn out in opposition to their presence.


The fascist demonstration is in support of Peter Tierney (above), who faces sentencing that day for actual bodily harm.

The BNP claim that Tierney was wrongly convicted, despite clear CCTV evidence showing him running up behind an antifascist activist and hitting them across the head with a camera tripod. The antifascist needed to have the wound glued together in hospital after the incident.

A spokesperson for Liverpool Antifascists said: “Liverpool is a working class city with long-standing immigrant communities, and the BNP’s politics have no relevance here. We showed them that on 6th May when their every candidate they stood was decisively rejected.

“But the Tierney incident and the party’s continued support for that violent lunatic shows that they are a threat far beyond the ballot box. The BNP’s politics are the politics of violent nationalism, and we need to show them that they aren’t welcome in our city or anywhere else.”

Assemble at the Victoria Monument, Derby Square, from 8.30 am on Monday 12th July.

Liverpool Antifascists

Griffin accused of subverting BNP constitution

The national organiser of the British National Party is trying to stop any leadership election from taking place by rewriting the party’s constitution, according to Eddy Butler, the leadership challenger.

In the latest BNP “e-organisers’ bulletin”, Clive Jefferson, who acts as the BNP leader’s tame poodle, states that signatures in support of a leadership contender must be submitted on an “official form”, which he will not make available until 13 July. Challengers have until 10 August to gather the support of 20% of the 4,200 party members with two years’ continuous membership and 20% of the elite “voting members”, of whom there are only 278 nationally.

Butler says (correctly) there is no provision in the constitution for an “official” form or for a nomination period in which signatures have to be collected, only a set period (20 July to 10 August) in which they can be delivered. He believes Jefferson’s “totally unconstitutional move” is intended to prevent any potential candidate from having time to obtain all the required signatures.

Jefferson has also ordered people to send their nominations individually to the party. “The collection of these nomination papers by a third party acting on behalf of a potential nominee is not allowed and will invalidate that nomination paper,” he declares.

Butler says he will ignore Jefferson’s instructions. He and his supporters are already gathering signatures on a form that he has devised himself and intend to hand the nominations in together.

Jefferson goes on to “caution any member from making unsubstantiated defamatory allegations, just because a member attempts to gain the nominations to start a leadership challenge”. Butler asks: “Is he having attacks of remorse for the fake brothel film [a film that Jefferson shot that purports to show Butler in a Belgian brothel]? Is he going to expel himself?”

Butler has no doubt who is responsible for all the dirty tricks, the so-called attack blogs and “the little acts of petty spite, snide digs or other acts of outright political gangsterism”. Nick Griffin gave himself dictatorial power in the constitution he foisted on the party, so “when ‘things’ happen in support of his failing regime the buck stops with him, Butler asserts.

Griffin is also responsible for the letter distributed to neighbours of Simon Bennett, the BNP’s former webmaster, accusing him of theft, drug abuse, forgery, blackmail, etc, says Butler, describing it as “an indescribably filthy and scummy act”.

The attempts by Griffin and Jefferson to do whatever it takes to stop Butler are likely to end up in court, with the beneficial result that party members’ donations will be wasted on yet more huge legal bills.

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate

Bilious Nasty Pathetic

Axed BNP webmaster Simon Bennett claims that supporters of leader Nick Griffin are behind a "hate mail" campaign that targetted every residential and business address in his home town of Camelford.

"Make no mistake about it," said Bennett on his website. "This sick hate campaign will have been approved by Nick Griffin."

Bennett claims that he was made aware of the campaign this morning (Friday) when Devon and Cornwall Police called him. Bennett says:

"They were alerting me to a hate mail campaign that had been conducted against me that had targeted every single residential and business address in my home town of Camelford and the surrounding areas. The police informed me that they had been inundated with complaints from local residents that know myself and my family very well, and that these people were absolutely horrified that someone could do such a wicked and evil thing to us."

The hate mail, which appears to have been posted in East London, consists of a two-sided flyer purporting to be the work of an unknown group calling itself the "Southwest Awareness Group", and makes "allegations" against Bennett of theft, drug use, forgery, blackmail and extortion - allegations made against Bennett on a smear blog set up by supporters of beleaguered BNP leader Nick Griffin. The flyer (below - click for larger) also includes Bennett's full address, where he lives with his partner and young children, aged eight and ten



Interestingly, the BNP claims to be in possession of exactly the same kind of software package that would be necessary to mass-mailshot residents and businesses in a particular area, and - unsurprisingly - Bennett's friends have not been slow to make the connection.

If Bennett's claims are true, and if this hate mail campaign is the responsibility of Nick Griffin's supporters, then the consequences for the racist party will be dire. The use the Royal Mail in this way is a serious criminal offence in the simple matter of one individual sending such mail to another individual, but there is no precedent that we know of in which a political party has hate-mailed an entire town in pursuit of an almost gangster-style vendetta against an individual.

Apart from the BNP leadership, Bennett has earned the visceral hatred of internet joke and Griffin sycophant Paul Morris (aka Green Arrow) and West Wales deputy BNP organiser Roger Phillips, who made death threats against Bristol anti-fascist Mark Watson in December of last year.

The green, Green Grass of Nantyglo

Morris, who is not a BNP member, suffers a disorder which causes him to believe that BNP leader Nick Griffin keeps a special place in his heart for Wales' best known sycophant. In fact, Griffin's opinion of the windy keyboard warrior veers between contempt and utter contempt.

"Warsash", as he likes to be known in his increasingly empty Paltalk chat room, blew an online fuse shortly after Simon Darby announced "his" decision to stand down from the post of BNP deputy leader. Hearing that a number of people had signed leadership challenger Eddy Butler's nomination papers at a meeting of Crawley BNP on Wednesday evening, "Warsash" Morris promised to publish the name of every BNP member signing the papers. In the past, of course, Morris supported and encouraged Lee Barnes, who threatened to publish the names and addresses of BNP members less than 100% loyal to Nick Griffin - which in part prompted us to publish Morris's address and led to a prolonged bout of self-pitying whining on the part of the lager-boiling hero.

Morris has made no secret that he believes any BNP member signing Butler's nomination forms should be purged from the party, and is supported by Vernon Atkinson (aka Vernon SE), who encouraged pro-Griffin members to email details of what was said at BNP branch meetings, together with the names of pro-Butler members, for non-member Morris's use.

Atkinson attended the Crawley meeting but walked out when the anti-Griffin sentiments expressed proved too much for him to bear.

Second only to Morris in his sycophancy, Atkinson is a former member of UKIP and stood as a BNP south eastern regional candidate in the 2004 Euro elections. In May, standing in Crawley's Furnace Green ward, Atkinson - who for some reason is noted for putting BNP logos on kites (go figure) - achieved a dreadful 228 votes (7.4%), yet managed not to connect his awful vote with Griffin's awful leadership.

We feel certain that Atkinson's open endorsement of the leaking of internal BNP matters and members' names to an outside agency (Morris) will result in Atkinson's swift suspension.

It will, won't it?

Having penned a fawning tribute to Simon Darby, Morris sat back while his little army of Griffin cultists weighed in with their tributes. Atkinson was soon off the mark (BNP spelling and grammar preserved): "Simon is also an iconic nationalist who will be written as a legend in the nationalist books of history of the savours of the British peoples."

And so was East Goscote (Charnwood) BNP Councillor and apostrophe enthusiast Cathy Duffy: "I cried my eye's out when I read of Simon's resignation, and can't stop now even, but I pray to God that Nick gets re-elected and Simon will come back as his deputy. If anyone is to take over this party, as might just happen, I so prayed that it was Simon. I so despair at what Eddy Butler and his crew have done to split this party, and as an elected Councillor representing the party, I don't know what the hell to do now if he should win when I do not/ can not support him and his lot! What on earth does he think he can do in ONE year and who has HE got lined up as the next leader as he say's that he will only take the position for one year only?????????? This whole thing has really upset me to say the least, and that these so called 'Nationalist's' could do this to our party is totally beyond my comprehension."

"Warsash" Morris's band of sycophants then charged over to Simon Darby's blog for a thoroughly enjoyable mass prostration at the feet of the ex-deputy leader.

Nick Griffin could, of course, rein in the out of control Morris. We have often wondered why, since Morris's activities have always diverted highly desirable funds away from the BNP proper, he has never done so to date. That Morris is openly collecting data on BNP members gives him every reason he could ever need to proscribe the ridiculous Warsash before Morris can do any more to harm the good name and reputation of the BNP.

He will, won't he?

Croydon BNP member Charlotte Lewis investigated for race crime

Detectives are investigating BNP member, Charlotte Lewis, for racist comments she made on her Facebook page. The former animal rights campaigner and BNP election candidate for Carshalton and Wallington, advocated the murder of illegal immigrants in the wake of the recent Cumbrian massacre.

Right-wing activist Charlotte Lewis, from Thornton Heath, wrote on her Facebook page that mass-murderer Derrick Bird should have come to London and slaughtered illegal immigrants rather than his "fellow British people".

Miss Lewis was reported to the police after someone reading the comments decided she had gone too far in her racist rhetoric.

Detectives have logged the complaint as a crime and are now deciding whether or not they can prosecute her for inciting racial hatred. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “We can confirm the MPS are investigating a complaint that has been made to them regarding alleged comments made. Detectives from Croydon CID are dealing but no arrests have been made.

Her tirade is the latest in a string of hate-filled rants and calls for violence against "pakis" through her Facebook page. The latest post reads: "Ok, so I may well get in to trouble for saying this - but I've got to get it off my chest. I wish that Derrick Bird could have come down to London & shot dead some illegal immigrants, rather than killing his fellow British people.

"If that offends you then tough; it's my opinion and I'm entitled to it."

Her comments refer to taxi driver Derrick Bird, who went on a killing spree in west Cumbria on June 2, shooting dead 12 people and injuring 11 others.

Her latest Facebook rant was highlighted by website Hope Not Hate, Searchlight's campaign to counter racism and fascism in elections and beyond. Gerry Gable from Searchlight said: "I think anybody advocating the murder of illegal immigrants should be prosecuted. People may view Charlotte Lewis as being a bit potty, but the overwhelming interest in firearms of the BNP tells a much more serious story."

Croydon Guardian

BNP member Paul Thompson served six month sentence for violent disorder

One of the candidates standing in a council by-election next week is a convicted football hooligan, The Northern Echo has learned.

British National Party member Paul Thompson was convicted and jailed for six months for violent disorder between two sets of thugs. He also has a previous conviction for criminal damage after hurling stones through the shop window of a left-wing book store.

Mr Thompson is one of four candidates who is standing for the Darlington Borough Council by-election in the Cockerton West ward. The by-election was triggered by the resignation of Jenny Chapman, following her selection at the town’s new MP.

Mr Thompson stood in the 2003 and 2007 council elections, both times in Darlington’s Northgate ward. In 2003 he was last with 151 votes and again in 2007 with 126 votes. A Darlington Borough Council spokeswoman confirmed that Mr Thompson was allowed to stand.

People are barred from standing as a candidate in council elections if they have been sentenced to more than three months imprisonment within the previous five years. Mr Thompson was jailed for violent disorder in 1998. He was one of nine men involved in trouble between Darlington and Cardiff City supporters in May 1997.

His earlier conviction happened in 1994, when he was given a 12-month conditional discharge.

Ken Booth, regional organiser for British National Party, said the charges were irrelevant and Mr Thompson was entitled to stand for public office. He added: “It is a long time ago. You get over it and move on. He is not breaking any law by standing, but obviously someone wants to drag up the past. Is this a topical issue? I don’t think so. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

Mr Thompson has also previously been criticised by the family of a man murdered in a street attack in 2001 after he produced leaflets attacking the three-year sentence given to his killer. People intervened when he handed out the leaflets because they were of a racist nature.

Mr Booth called the accusations “fictitious and bogus”.

Also standing in the by-election are Jan Cossins, for the Labour Party, David Davies, for the Conservatives, and Brian Jefferson, for the Liberal Democrats.

Mrs Cossins is chairman of Cockerton East Community Partnership and a governor at Branksome School. Mr Davies is a former UKIP candidate and husband of Conservative councillor Kate Davies. Mr Jefferson is chairman of Growing Older Living in Darlington.

The election takes place on Thursday. Labour will maintain its overall control of the council whatever the result of the election. It now has 28 councillors, the Conservative party 18 and Liberal Democrats six.

Northern Echo

BNP deputy leader resigns

Simon Darby has resigned as deputy leader of the British National Party. However unlike many others in the fascist party, he has not fallen out with Nick Griffin. In fact his resignation is a convoluted gesture of support for the beleaguered BNP leader.

Griffin and Darby have been spooked by Nick Cass’s support for Eddy Butler’s challenge to Griffin’s leadership. Cass, the former Yorkshire regional organiser whose picture, with his wife and children, has appeared on many BNP election leaflets as the typical wholesome British family that votes BNP, is very popular in the party and is likely to attract further support for Butler’s challenge.

Cass is being promoted as Butler’s “running mate” for deputy chairman. In an attempt to take the wind out of the challengers’ sails, Darby, who has been deputy leader since 2005, claims the post has “absolutely no constitutional standing”.

Darby is being disingenuous to say the least. He claims the position of deputy leader was created as an “ad hoc measure” by Griffin when he was facing the possibility of imprisonment on charges of inciting racial hatred (on which he was eventually acquitted). That may be so, but he in fact supplanted Scott Maclean, who was then deputy chairman of the BNP, a position that does have a role in the party constitution. It is this role for which Cass is putting himself forward.

Darby’s resignation, with immediate effect, is presented as an attempt to take the “distraction” of the deputy leadership out of the leadership election, as if that would somehow make Cass go away.

Darby also cites his “self-imposed demotion” (so the deputy leadership position does have some meaning then) as giving him the “moral right to ask that others at least exercise responsibility and restraint”.

He rather spoils his attempt to occupy the moral high ground when he calls for an election that avoids “setting nationalist brothers and sisters against each other by repeating enemy lies and black propaganda about the current leader and his team”. Where is the plea for Griffin’s supporters, in particular his communications chief Paul Golding, to desist from spreading vicious smears and lies about Butler?

Griffin’s most sycophantic supporter, Paul Morris, who blogs under the name Green Arrow, was quick to reject any notion of a civilised and honourable contest. “I would also be interested now, in receiving the names of all those who sign Butlers nomination forms, in order that I may make public all information that I may gather on those people who are either deliberately trying to destroy the BNP or those stupid enough to support them,” he wrote less than three hours after Darby’s resignation.

For good measure, Darby concludes with his own snipe against Butler. “Don’t wake up one morning later this year to find that we’ve lost Nick Griffin and his team, and replaced them with a jostling, squabbling, unstable, untested and indecisive coalition.

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate

BNP operations centre in office leased by Dowson

Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, is hoping to seize back the initiative and regain his members’ confidence by setting up a new campaigns executive.

Headed by Clive Jefferson, the man who replaced Eddy Butler as the party’s national elections officer, it is intended to “coordinate and marshal the entire Party for the purpose of winning elections”.

The new structures are also intended to consolidate the hold of Griffin and his “consultant” Jim Dowson on the party. Paul Golding, another diehard Griffin loyalist, has been put in charge of a new “communications and publicity department” encompassing media and communications, the BNP website, publicity and design. The new department has been “designed and researched by Midas Consultants and Mr Golding”, the party website announ-ced in an attempt to counter the attacks on Jim Dowson, one of whose many businesses is Midas Consultants.

During election campaigns the campaigns executive will “converge on” the BNP’s “operations centre”. A BNP email requesting donations to equip it did not disclose where it was, but Searchlight can reveal its location in Unit 13, Salmon Springs Trading Estate in Stroud.

Three rooms in the unit were leased by Adlorries.com Ltd, one of Dowson’s companies, for three years from spring 2009 at a rent of £5,000 a year. They were to be used as a training centre for the BNP run by Michaela Mackenzie, but have remained empty after the party sacked her from her posts as administration officer and national nominating officer. Like many in the BNP it appears she clashed with Dowson. She has appealed to the employment tribunal, another case that could leave the BNP with a large legal bill.

Mike Howson, a former military trainer and Griffin’s bully boy in the South West, will now run the BNP’s training department there. Howson, the BNP’s ageing national youth officer, took over from Peter Mullins as the BNP’s South West regional organiser and promptly instigated his suspension from the party.

Simon Bennett, the BNP’s former webmaster, claims that Howson was one of those who tried to confront the party leadership over Dowson’s “dodgy dealings and history”, but after they were all “frog-marched to a court style hearing”, Howson folded “like a pack of cards” and is now “a poodle to Jim Dowson”.

Sonia Gable in Searchlight

BNP heavyweight supports Eddy Butler leadership challenge

Eddy Butler, who is challenging Nick Griffin for the BNP leadership this summer, has announced that Nick Cass, the popular former Yorkshire BNP organiser, will be his running mate to become deputy chairman of the BNP in the event of a Butler victory.

In a “BNP TV” video posted on YouTube and some BNP-supporting websites, Cass explains that Griffin does not have the time to be BNP leader because since his election to the European Parliament he is focusing his attention “across the water”. Party members feel that the leadership has become detached from them, he adds.

Cass, 36, says that Butler is asking sensible questions to which members want to know the answers, but the party leadership is ridiculing them. He has been “shocked” by the campaign against Butler. He expected the party, in which he has been an activist for 20 years, to be “straight-talking and honest”, not to come out with smears against Butler.

Cass is helping Butler in the hard task of obtaining the signatures of 20% of BNP members of two years’ standing. He says every senior BNP officer in Yorkshire wants change in the leadership. The BNP’s Liverpool branch, a centre of activity in the region in which Griffin is an MEP, also supports Butler.

It did not take long before Griffin’s supporters went onto the attack on one of the most extreme nazi web forums with a thread –withdrawn after a few hours – titled “Nick Cass Scum Traitor”, in which commenters suggested that Cass might be a Searchlight agent, state asset or, worse from a nazi viewpoint, Jewish.

The insult was ironic. Cass with his wife and three children have appeared on many BNP election leaflets as the typical wholesome white family that votes BNP.

It was also highly unlikely. Cass sports a prominent “tree of life” tattoo on his right arm, between shoulder and elbow. This symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide, several of which have adopted it as their logo. Under Hitler it was the symbol of the SS Lebensborn project, which 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. To white supremacists today the tree of life signifies the future of the “white race”.

The tattoo was pictured in Sky TV’s BNP Wives documentary. The same programme revealed that Cass had instructed his wife, Suzy, to insist on a white European midwife when giving birth to their children, which reveals his attitude to women as well as his racism.

This is not the first time that Cass has fallen out with BNP colleagues. It was widely reported in 2007 that Cass was sacked from the job of BNP party manager two minutes before a meeting, after he had been given a role for which he was unsuited. Cass disputes this, saying that he resigned so that he could spend more time with his family.

The announcement of Cass’s support for Butler put paid to malicious rumours from the Griffin camp that Butler was putting forward Lawrence Rustem as deputy leader. Rustem, a former BNP councillor in Barking and Dagenham, suffers from the fatal flaw in the eyes of the BNP’s racist members that he is of part Turkish Cypriot descent.

Griffin supporters have also tried to link Butler with Sharon Ebanks, a former BNP activist who fell out with the party after Griffin reneged on a promise to meet her legal expenses for a challenge to a council election result in Birmingham that the party encouraged her to mount. She is widely derided in the BNP because of her West Indian father.

Meanwhile the anti-Butler blog run by Paul Golding, the BNP’s national communications officer, has listed reasons why Butler is unsuitable to lead the BNP. Butler is accused of being “bland and boring and grey and colourless”, “rude and arrogant”, having “no intellectual ability whatsoever”, “pure repellent”, “defeatist”, a “raging control freak” and, horror of horrors, “arranging the most disgusting food ever served at a BNP event”, a feat that takes some doing, judging by the reports we have received of typical BNP catering.

Griffin, in contrast, has “heaps of charisma”, is an “accomplished writer and intellectual”, “affable”, a “visionary” and “able to command respect and loyalty”. Unfortunately for Griffin, a growing number of BNP members are rejecting Golding’s sycophancy.

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate