A quick peek under the apron, beagle attack and the 'return' of two old favourites

What an exciting week it's been for the massed lunatics of the far-right. This last week has seen Lee Barnes, the BNP's legal beagle, have a go at us because according to him we at Lancaster Unity are all racists, and the North West Nationalist blog getting into a frenzy at the news (?) that Nick Eriksen and Tony Lecomber had returned to the BNP fold. Oh yes, and that Nick Griffin's father Edgar has been a Freemason for the past sixty-odd years.

Taking these in reverse order for no particular reason, we read that Edgar Griffin (pictured, centre) has been awarded something or the other (we don't care) for being a Freemason for more than six decades. Edgar, as our regular readers will know, is an accountant who has been repeatedly linked to Roberto Fiore, an old friend of his son. As recently as February of this year, Edgar was found to have been doing the accounts for CL English Language, a college in west London that teaches hundreds of foreign students each year, run by neo-fascist Fiore, leader of Forza Nuova, an extreme right-wing party.

Fiore arrived in Britain in October 1980 as a 21-year-old fugitive from the Italian police, who wanted to question him about the Bologna train station bombing two months earlier in which 85 people were killed and more than 200 injured. He was reputed to be a member of the extreme right-wing organisation the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei, several of whose members were subsequently convicted of mass murder. After being arrested by Scotland Yard officers the following year, Fiore was brought before Bow Street court, but the authorities in Rome failed to secure his extradition. Fiore settled in London and became friendly with Nick Griffin; the two are reported to have shared a flat and are also said to have run a travel agency together.

Edgar, who introduced his son to the National Front by taking him along to a meeting when the younger Griffin was just fifteen, has been a life-long Freemason, as was his father Edwin before him. Edwin, according to Martin Webster, a former colleague and claimed ex-lover of Nick Griffin, left his grandson, the current leader of the BNP, £300,000 in his will in the late eighties, which 'he quickly lost in stupid property deals'.

An article on the web page of the Mark Master Masons of North Wales details the celebrations at the Lodge:

'In 1992 he received further promotion to the rank of Active Grand Junior Deacon. W. Bro. Edgar Griffin was Elevated in the Degree of the Ancient and Honourable Fraternity of Royal Ark Mariner on 31st August 1955 (52 years ago) in the Barnet Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners No. 947. He was Installed as Worshipful Commander in 1964. He was elected Holder of Provincial Royal Ark Mariner Grand Rank in 1985 and received Royal Ark Mariner Grand Rank in 1990. After a period of years spent in Suffolk, and having been granted Honorary Membership of his Mark and RAM Lodges, he moved to Welchpool where he has continued his Masonic careers in our Degrees by becoming Worshipful Master in 2002 and Worshipful Commander in 2005.'

Whoopee.

Back in the real world, we hear that two of Nick Griffin's old friends have returned to his side - or at least that's what the North West Nationalist blog seems to think. Describing them as 'two vile and totally disreputable creatures', the article reports the returns of Nick Eriksen and Tony Lecomber.

There isn't much to say about these two scumbags except to remind our readers why they are so universally loathed (except, apparently, by Nick Griffin). Eriksen, you may recall, claimed that women were more troubled by bag theft than rape and also advocated violence against women on his 'Sir John Bull' blog, as reported by the Evening Standard just prior to the last elections. The subsequent furore cost him his position as the BNP's London organiser and as the second-highest candidate on its list for the Assembly.

Tony Lecomber, former Group Development Officer for the British National Party, is much more complicated and has quite a history with the far-right. In 1986, he was convicted on five counts for offences under the Explosives Act, including possession of homemade hand-grenades and electronic timing devices, and earned himself a derisory three year sentence. In 1991 he was sentenced to a further three years for unlawful wounding for his part in an attack on a Jewish teacher who he caught trying to peel off a BNP sticker at an underground station. He has a total of 12 convictions.

His most recent claim to fame is that he was expelled from the BNP after attempting to solicit a well-known alleged hitman to assassinate establishment figures 'who are aiding and abetting the coloured invasion of this country', an act of terrorism prompted by racism. The full story is here. Following this lunacy, he was thrown out of the party (January 16th 2006) and was proscribed to the membership - meaning nobody in the party was allowed to talk to him or in any way to associate with him.

Obviously, the proscription didn't apply to Nick Griffin because we received reports that Lecomber was helping out all over the place, planning and working side by side with Griffin himself.

In fact, contrary to the North West Nationalist report, neither Eriksen or Lecomber have ever really left the party at all. Lecomber, who is long known as being a confidente of Griffins, knows where the bodies are buried and cannot be allowed to be cast aside for fear that he might spill the beans. Eriksen's views are abhorent but not, we are told, that much different from those of the great leader himself, who has simply been waiting for what he considers to be a suitable amount of time to elapse since his remarks were made public to bring the arch-misogynist back.

These are just Griffin's old pals, creeping back into the party via the back door. Whether they are welcomed home by a membership that is rapidly losing confidence in its leadership is another matter entirely.

And we're back to Lee Barnes, the BNP's legal beagle and surely one of the most tedious and insane writers ever.

Barnes' problem this week is apparently that he has identified Lancaster Unity as 'the most racist organisation in the country'. Oo-er. And on what does he base this bizarre statement? Largely because we have 'remained silent on the ongoing racism of Hollywood against the English and anyone with blonde hair and blue eyes'.

To support this stupidity, Barnes refers to a film he has obviously seen recently.

'My present favourite negaive [sic] image of the English as propagandised by the racists in Hollywood is that of Tim Roth in the new The Hulk movie.'

As I've never seen The Hulk, and am unlikely to, I can't possibly comment on it except to suggest to Barnes that he tries to watch some more intelligent films - perhaps something that's designed to appeal more to adults with brains than adolescents with pimples.

Toodle-pip.