BNP leader Griffin in Brum pub meeting

BNP leader Nick Griffin has been rallying the party faithful at a Birmingham pub, following a series of recent setbacks. Stirrer editor Adrian Goldberg who was allowed in to the meeting but then thrown out, gives his first hand account of a bizarre evening.

Bradley couldn’t get his head around it.

“You what?” he asked. “They’re having a racist meeting in there? Why can’t you just call the Police and ask them to break it up?”

Poor lad. At 19, he was struggling to come to terms with our democratic system. He was, he told me, one quarter Scottish, one quarter Indian, and half Pakistani and was curious to see the people who would – purely on account of his skin colour – regard him as a second class citizen.

His mate Dwayne (three-quarters Jamaican, one quarter Indian) was equally puzzled but less interested than Bradley in heading upstairs to check out the BNP meeting in the Function Room. Canoodling with his (white) girlfriend Georgina was more his thing.

So there we stood, an unlikely quartet, in the car park of the Black Horse in Northfield.

Me? I was hanging around because I’d been thrown out of Nick Griffin’s first West Midlands meeting since his far-right party went into meltdown.

The first I knew about the event was when one of his former members, Birmingham’s ex-BNP councillor Sharon Ebanks posted a comment about it on our Message Board yesterday afternoon. Proper journalistic curiosity meant I had to be there. The BNP has been in turmoil over recent weeks, and although the West Midlands has remained loyal to the leadership, as reported yesterday, the first cracks are starting to show in the local organisation.

Would those splits in the ranks be evident? Would there be awkward questions about the controversial state of the BNP’s finances? Would members take Griffin to task over allegations that his Development Officer Sadie Smith had a laptop stolen by party security officers who broke into her house? There was only one way to find out.

The entrance to the pub’s Function Room was blocked by two burly security guards, who asked if I had a membership card. I said I didn’t and explained openly who I was, and what I was there for. They brought down local organiser Mike Bell, and when I said I wanted to be there as an observer, he seemed happy enough – “as long as you’re not recording anything” he said.

Leading me up the stairs, he commented drily, “You’re no supporter of our organisation”, but that didn’t stop him politely showing me into the bar where Griffin’s arrival was expected anytime soon.

And there I was, in my first BNP meeting – let’s face it, not many Goldbergs can say that.

There were no more than 25 people in the room at the time, including half a dozen women – one with a child, about 18 months old in her arms. To the right was a trestle table laid out with newspapers, magazines, T-shirts and posters – nothing offensive that I could see, mostly adorned with the St George’s flag. Behind was a bar with a small queue, and up ahead a table draped with the union flag – presumably where Griffin would sit.

Mostly it was blokes in their 30s and 40s. A few fitted the shaven-headed bulldog stereotype, but another chap had his purple v-necked “Harry Shaw Travel” jumper over his spreading midriff while an older man was wearing a suit. In other words, a typical pub gathering from this neck of the woods – except that, of course, everyone was white.

As I waited in the queue, one man explained that he hadn’t been able to go to the “London meeting” because he’d been entertaining Koreans. Another was surprised that there’d been no reception committee of “Reds” after “Sharon had mentioned it on The Stirrer.”

I sat down, and just as I clocked a “South Birmingham BNP” banner at the far end of the room, a voice behind me demanded to know, “What are you doing here?”

It was Obergruppenfuhrer Simon Darby, the party’s West Midlands Regional Organiser. I explained that I’d been invited in, but he insisted that we discuss the matter outside. Darby then told me I wasn’t welcome, even though Griffin was apparently aware of my presence and happy to let me in. I could see the leader, now in the room, pressing the flesh of the faithful whose numbers were now closer to 40. It was clear there’d be no protests here.

Meanwhile Darby was verbally letting fly.

“You are a persistent critic of the party. You and your Labour friends are trying to ruin us,” he said.

I explained that I wasn’t a member of any political party, but mere facts didn’t trouble him. He accused me of “putting the lives of our party members in danger” although when challenged to explain this, he headed off of another tack.

“The Birmingham Post and Mail, you’re all in league with each other” he ranted.

The fact that I was there on my own initiative, writing for the website didn’t seem to register. I wasn’t going in and that was that.

“Right, now we’ve sorted that out” Darby said, “are you going to watch Albion at Peterborough on Saturday?”

Here was one of the most senior figures in Britain’s leading racist party banning me from a meeting attended by his leader – then trying to engage me in a conversation about football. Surreal. I headed downstairs to the public bar where a rough-looking middle-aged bloke wandered in from the direction of the meeting, and eyeballed me.

“What are you doing here?” he bellowed. This time it wasn’t Simon Darby, but presumably one of his fellow members who’d got wind of my presence.

“I’m buying a drink,” I told him.

“You’re an evil bastard,” he menaced, before eventually turning on his heels and heading back towards the Function Room.

Chatting with the regulars who were gathering for the televised Liverpool/Villa game it was clear that they had no idea the meeting was taking place – and were disgusted it was happening. Although the clientele were mostly white, there was a smattering of black faces, including Dwayne and Bradley, aged 18 and 19 respectively.

When they took their cigarette (and canoodling) break outside, I chatted and laughed with them, and discouraged loose canon Bradley from breaking into the meeting, “just to see what happens.” Thankfully, he eventually understood why it might not be a good idea.

Although as I walked away, this quarter Scottish, quarter Indian, half Pakistani was still trying to work out why racists were being allowed to hold a meeting in his local.

The Stirrer