BNP in crisis – one month on

A month has passed since the opening salvo of the internal feud within the BNP. On 8 December a BNP security team entered the home of the party’s Group Development Officer Sadie Graham and removed her computer. Several hundred miles away another BNP security team was trying to enter the home of the party’s Head of Admin Kenny Smith. The following day the BNP website reported that both had been sacked from their party jobs and were on their way to being expelled from the party itself.

Over the course of the next two weeks over 60 BNP organisers and local officials have gone on strike in support of Graham and Smith. Among them were five regional organisers and several councillors. Both factions have used the Internet and the national media to attack one another, with both sides accusing the other of harbouring ‘Nazis’ and Holocaust Deniers.

With a calendar month now having passed, Searchlight looks at where the dispute lies now and ponders the long term damage to the BNP.

The split inside the BNP has been deeply damaging. Despite the official BNP position that it is a ‘storm in a teacup’ it is clear that the rift within the party will be difficult to heal. Most of the rebels come from Yorkshire and the East Midlands, the two strongest BNP regions in recent years. With Scotland and much of Greater Manchester also joining the rebellion it is clear that many of the party’s most able organisers and activists have left the BNP for good. In Sadie Graham and Ian Dawson, the BNP is set to lose the two people who have done so much in recent years to build the party structure on the ground.

It is going to be hard for BNP leader Nick Griffin to quickly rebuild the party in these regions. The appointment of failed BNP councillor and convicted C18 thug Adrian Marsden as the party’s new Yorkshire Regional Organiser shows how depleted the ranks are for Griffin. Likewise the fact that Griffin has taken over the North West is also interesting given that it shows a complete lack of alternative talent on the ground and a signal that he is unwilling to provide a potential power base for the one man, Chris Jackson, who appears willing to do the job. Jackson, it must be remembered, unsuccessfully challenged Griffin for the party leadership last year.

However, the rebellion appears to have run its course in terms of personnel leaving as well as the regions effected. Virtually no-one from the North East, Wales, West Midlands, London, Eastern, South East or South West has joined the rebels and with Eddie Butler deciding to stick with the party leadership the all-important East London and Essex branches have been rebellion free. The rebels boast continued support but it does rather feel that the momentum is ebbing away from them. Perhaps by not actually making a physical split from the party (except for the handful of officials who were actually expelled) the rebel leaders have backed themselves into a corner. They won’t be able to change things internally and will gradually be isolated and edged out, or at least away from the levers of power within the party.

Griffin, meanwhile, has seen his authority severely undermined, though not terminally. The manner in which he obtained the evidence against the rebels, the vitriolic and almost immature public attacks that followed on the party website, and the clear distortion of facts, if not downright lying, has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many activists who have not publicly committed themselves to either camp. Three days before Christmas he issued an ultimatum to the 60 party officers to publicly withdraw their support for the rebellion or be disciplined. In a sign of his weakening authority he then obviously failed to sway any of the rebels and his ultimatum suddenly vanished.

On top of this there is also a police investigation into the entry of Sadie Graham’s home by deception and the theft of her personal computer.

Griffin obviously decided at an early stage that he was not going to compromise with the rebels, even if that meant losing key activists. He appears to be willing to write off Yorkshire as a functioning BNP region and this will have severe repercussions for BNP candidates, active and well-run branches and levels of activism at least in the short term.

He must have been heartened by fact that no organiser or councillor in London has broken ranks and with the London Assembly elections being contested under PR he surely thinks that a strong showing here will silence his doubters. The 2009 European Elections, again contested under PR, will be another centrally run election and so the affects of depleted branch structures, such as in Yorkshire, will be negligible.

However, this strategy will stand or fall on whether Griffin can get people elected to the London Assembly and the European Parliament. With the exception of the Barking and Dagenham breakthrough, Griffin hasn't really delivered a great deal since 2001-2003 and that was more down to external factors than his own fantastic leadership.

With few local elections being contested in the East Midlands this May, Griffin must hope that he has time to rebuild a party structure before 2009.

So, a month on from the split, it is the rebels who must be scratching their heads and pondering their next move. The current state of limbo, where both factions trade insults over the Internet, only benefits the leadership in the long term. Some party members who might currently sympathise with the rebels will grow tired of the feuding and return to party business as elections approach.

If the rebellion is to succeed then a change of tact is required. The rebels need to find a way to increase the pressure on Nick Griffin, to revitalise their ebbing momentum and give their supporters a real alternative and proper leadership. Sadie Graham has admitted to journalists that there exists a photograph of Nick Griffin giving a nazi salute. If this is true, then she needs to publish it. Only that way can she pin the nazi tag back on the BNP leader.

If they continue to oppose the party leadership whilst falling over themselves to appear loyal to the party then they will wither away in the not too distant future. Griffin appears to have weathered the worst of this crisis but other difficulties lies ahead. Mark Collett, who appears deeply unpopular even amongst party loyalists, is still in place and likely to upset other people in the future. The South Africans, who Searchlight has revealed include former Intelligence operatives, are clearly disliked and distrusted by much of the party. And, more significantly, Griffin’s own management style, which has repeatedly led him to fall out with everyone around him, is likely to cause conflict and splits in the future.

In the meantime, Searchlight and all anti-fascists will continue to enjoy the unfolding spectacle. The allegations being thrown around the Internet has given us a lot of additional information, much of it previously unknown, which we can use against both factions in the future. It is also clear that the two sides can never be reconciled and among the rebel leaders who are about to be formally expelled from the BNP are a number of competent organisers. This, and the loss of several other branch organisers who are set to drop out in sympathy, will leave the BNP in a much weaker position that they were one month ago.

Stop The BNP