BNP loses three after less than a week

Following last week's elections the BNP bragged as loudly as it could at the fact that it had 'won' a further six new councillors in North Wales, putting the total up to nine (all of whom are, incidentally, town councillors, the equivalent of parish, and all of whom walked into office completely unopposed).

According to Bill Murray, the BNP's Welsh Regional Secretary:

'After the hard work of all our activists we will be taking a week break then it will be back to business as usual.'

Indeed it is because three of the new intake have resigned from the BNP.

Colwyn Bay town councillors Paul Harley, Sue Harley and John Oddy formally resigned as BNP councillors yesterday at their very first council meeting, where all three were represented by Oddy who stated in a post on the icWales forum;

'I attended the meeting to inform the Council that yesterday afternoon all three Councillors had resigned from the BNP and that we were prepared to remain on the Council as Independents, if the Council required it all three of us were prepared to also resign from the Council and allow our seats to be put forward to a by-election that we would not contest.'

When asked why they'd left the BNP, he responded thus;

'My reason for leaving the BNP was my own personal choice, the other two Councillors choose to leave with me. I have always been regarded as a moderate within the party and, as I’ve always maintained, I have never been a racist...'

Quite apart from the question of why the Harleys left when Oddy had resigned for 'personal' reasons, there is a question mark over the latter's statement that he has never been a racist. According to Pat Pattison, who resigned from the party after discovering its 'intolerable' racism, Oddy verbally attacked him for having the temerity to help an Asian family as part of his own duties as a town councillor, stating that the party wasn't happy with him because he'd been 'helping fucking Pakis' and that 'they're Muslim scum anyway'. Oddy might not think those remarks are racist but they definitely look like they are from where I'm sitting.

Just a few days ago, I wrote;

'Given the usual disasters the BNP is prone to, we should lose half of the new input of BNP councillors within a year or so.'

At this rate, they won't last the month.