August 03, 2008

The Accounts (2): "We wuz robbed"

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Iliacus. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

His "Review of political activities" within the 2007 Statement of Accounts gives Griffin the opportunity to spin to a positively New Labour degree (odd in a party which claims to stand aside from such behaviour).

"2007 was a hard year," he admits, "although we continued to make progress...in May we lost eight seats but gained nine, just taking us to a new record total"

Now Mr Chairman, this is a review of 2007 - not of May 1st and 2nd! So what were your fortunes at 1 January 2007, and where did you stand at 31st December? My sources give a slightly different version of events!

Yes, you made a net gain of one seat in the elections of May 1st - cancelled out almost immediately by the resignation/ expulsion of a Stoke councillor. Then there's the matter of by-elections during the year, in which you made...no gains. You mention your success in holding Loughton & Alderton in the summer, but surely you haven't forgotten the Princes End by-election (Sandwell) in December? You remember; where your councillor was thrown out for not turning up...and where you went from first to third in the by-election, with a 14% swing to Labour? And, of course, some of that "clique" you purged in December were councillors - Sadie Graham certainly was.

So, to explain it simply Mr Griffin:
May +1, but cancelled out in Stoke.
Then Princes End -1, and Sadie Graham, so that's -2.

So, unless I've got something wrong, the "continued...progress" reported by Griffin is represented by fewer councillors at the year end than in January. Has the meaning of "progress" changed since I was at school?

Of course, the inventive Mr Griffin has a plausible explanation for the limited progress made by the BNP. In fact, he has two!

"massive postal fraud by Labour and LibDem activists, which we estimate cost us several dozen seats"

One of those claims that it's very difficult to absolutely disprove (in the same way that it's damned tricky to prove that the world isn't run by shape-shifting lizards!), but the claim would be a little more credible if it had some supporting evidence. Postal fraud is difficult to prove, but there have been successful prosecutions. Interestingly most cases have arisen not in areas of BNP strength but in close contests between the major parties, including the Conservatives, who escape Griffin's ire. Griffin's failure to provide evidence of such fraud, or even to report specific allegations to the relevant authorities, is itself suspicious and the claim of it costing them "several dozen seats", on a day when they won fewer than a dozen seats in the entire country, is frankly ludicrous.

Incidentally, the use of postal voting is still pretty limited across much of the country. In one constituency I know well only 10% of voters have signed up for postal voting - and uptake is highest in affluent Conservative areas, and lowest in Labour/Liberal Democrat areas (which are also the areas of highest ethnic minority/immigrant presence).

"the sight of uninterrupted block votes for Labour at the very top of some ballot boxes...convinces experienced observers that some unscrupulous council officials manning polling booths are abusing their position by voting on behalf of electors who have not voted at the close of polls"

This is a very serious allegation, and one which becomes increasingly improbable as one reviews the implications. I have visited election counts of all kinds for some thirty years; the following remarks are based on my own experiences, and slightly different procedures may be found in other parts of the country.

1. Ballot papers are folded before being placed in the ballot box. They mix within the box. They are bounced around in the boot of a car/back of a van en route to the counting location. They are emptied onto a table, and spread around for the counters to start work. To suggest that - after all that - observers can tell which were placed in the ballot box late in the day is far-fetched to say the least!

2. A sequence of votes for a particular candidate/party is not unusual at a count. Even in a 50:50 vote split ballot papers will not alternate between candidates! A sequence of ballots for Labour (or any other party) is an effect of random chance, not conspiracy!

3. Let's think this through from the point of view of the election officers (and since there are normally two or three at each polling station they would have to enter into an agreement to act illegally). The accusation is that as they close to the public at 10pm they then sit down and:

a) tear off an extra number of ballot papers (not knowing, of course, how many are needed to alter the result) and record a vote on each;

b) identify a corresponding number of voters yet to vote, and cross them off the register;

c) transfer the voter numbers to the stubs of the ballot papers.

All this to seek to influence the political balance of the council, despite the fact that most council officers aren't directly affected and rarely have individual dealings with councillors. And for this they will happily enter into a conspiracy, and risk their careers and their pensions? I think not.

4. And finally, as election frauds go, this would be very easy to detect. The ballot stubs will identify (say) the last 30 papers to be issued (or used by those nasty council officials) and the electors in whose name they were used. The police could simply pop round to see those thirty people and ask whether they had actually voted.

So if this has really been an issue, when did Griffin (or his "experienced observers") report their concerns to the relevant authorities? I suspect never, since that might well reveal these accusations to be false.

No, these increasingly paranoid - and ridiculous - "we wuz robbed" claims are simply a smokescreen to conceal the failure of Griffin and his pathetic little party to progress in the electoral context of 2007.

P.S. And, yes, I do promise to turn to the accounts themselves in Part (3)!

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

"massive postal fraud by Labour and LibDem activists..."

He should be done for that. It's a massive libel against thousands of good, honest activists.

"...which we estimate cost us several dozen seats"

Bullshit, pure and simple.

Anonymous said...

"So, unless I've got something wrong, the "continued...progress" reported by Griffin is represented by fewer councillors at the year end than in January. Has the meaning of "progress" changed since I was at school?"

It has if your Nick Griffin.

Anonymous said...

It's pretty clear from this and dozens of other articles both here and elsewhere that Griffin's BNP is, in reality, going nowehere fast.

Anonymous said...

There's an interesting comment on that idiot Chris Hill's blog from one of his own

"Months ago the rebels warned that Griffin would bankrupt the party, due to his miss management and backing of incompetent fools, and guess what’s happening the party is in the red big time, the freedom, newspaper and identity are now making a loss when they used to make a profit. All it needs is for one of Griffins creditors’ i.e his solicitors to demand their money and the BNP are gone."

Anonymous said...

LOL - get this: there's a BNP troll poster called 'blueblood1920' on the right-wing British Democracy Forum boasting about the latest BNP accounts! Here's the post by 'blueblood1920':

"http://www.electoralcommission.org.u...ounts-2007.pdf

So what do those of you saying membership was at 4000 have to say now?"

(http://www.democracyforum.co.uk/british-politics-other-parties/51925-bnp-stateme nt-accounts-2007-membership-9784-a.html)

Didn't this BNP twat read the rest of the accounts???

Anonymous said...

Good article, thanks.

Anonymous said...

I just read that post on the democracy forum. Dies nobody trust Griffin or Collett or Kemp or...?

It seems not.

Anonymous said...

The membership things a joke to. 10,000 members my arse.

Anonymous said...

Gri££in = lies, lies and more lies.

When will his diminishing membership realise what a truly useless and vile little man he is?

Anonymous said...

I wonder if you could comment of the carried forward subs and membership which is about £28k.

The BNP operate an anniversary renewal system which with an income for membership and subs of £300k you would expect a carry forward of about £150k - a big difference from £28k.

BTW did they not until comparatively recently operate a 1st Jan to 31st Dec - even so given their alleged recuitment successes a carry forward much nearer to £100k would seem more appropriate.

I would allege that these accounts are pretty much a fabrication - Given Silver and Co's reservations I would have expected them to give a much clearer detail of their reservations.

Anonymous said...

Neither the taxman, the fraud squad, nor any other branch of the civil service will ever be allowed to intervene.

I wander why? LOL

Griffin is indeed the nark, along with 5imon Darby and Peedo Boy Mark Collette

Anonymous said...

2 points - having attended many a count in the past, and witnessed many a sealing of ballot boxes I concur with the authors point that it would be physically impossible for the presiding officials to 'stuff' any ballot box. As the practice is to show the empty box and put the first seal on to anybody in the vicinity at the open of poll, and asking anybody around to witnes the second seal, to close the slit, the Nutzies have a very simple way of assuring that the ballots are not tampared with by appointing a "polling agent" to inspect and check seals.

Secondly

"Neither the taxman, the fraud squad, nor any other branch of the civil service will ever be allowed to intervene.

I wander why? LOL"


Actually the correct body to investigate would be the electoral commission. I have no faith in this organisation for when matters are brought be fore them by agents and returning officers nothing seems to happen.

Old Sailor

Anonymous said...

The BNP Wiki article is heavily-worded in the favour of the BNP, and in terms of anti-semitism, the article shows undue bias to the false front given by the BNP a couple of years ago that pretended that the neo-nazi party were no longer anti-semitic: -

---------------------------
(contents of article): -

The BNP claims that it has now "cast off the leg-iron ... of anti-semitism"[dead link][46] and states that the party has Jewish members, and one of its councillors, Pat Richardson (Epping Forest), is herself Jewish.[47] Nick Griffin has also clarified his position on the Holocaust: "several of the leftists try to sidetrack the debate down the Holocaust road although that does at least allow me to set the record straight and deal with the combination of Wikipedia lies and out-of-context propaganda and to put on record the fact that – while I used to be very angry at (and rude about) the way the left-liberals use the Holocaust as a moral club to silence debate on the key issues of our time – I have never denied the fact that the Nazis murdered huge numbers of Jews in one of the great crimes of a century of terrible inhumanity."[48] However, Nick Griffin has never rescinded his view that the gas chambers are a fabrication."
------------------------------

Can someone please make reference to/ and add a link to Lee Barnes's anti-semitic rablings to kill this pro-bnp myth that the party isn't anti-semitic, once and for all?

Cheers!!!

Anonymous said...

The so-called rebels are just as hardline as the Griffinites, lest us not forget.

The Aberdeen refuseNick, has posted a pro-nazi video from YouTube that is entitled "We Fought The Wrong Side", referring to the last world war.

SO MUCH FOR PATRIOTISM!!!

http://realaberdeennationalist.blogspot.com/

SHAME ON HIM!!!

Anonymous said...

Attention Ketlan and Denise, Mark Collett has been editing his own Wikipedia page, removing the more incriminating pieces using only his IP address (no login).

Mark Collett's IP address happens to be: -

81.101.151.223

Which is the IP address logged in as he deleted important details from the Nazi Boy documentary.

How come Paedo Boy is allowed to doctor his own Wiki entry?

Doesn't Wikipedia get moderated any more?

Anonymous said...

Re Iandale's query -

The figure given for "advance subscriptions" is £64,898. It would be difficult to judge how reasonable this figure might be without:

a) some idea of the seasonal rates of recruitment (with election activity I would EXPECT a bias toward spring recruitment);
b) a clearer indication of the party's treatment of membership subscriptions;
c) some assurance that the BNP dpesn't just make it all up as they go along!

If the £68,000 is an understatement, and 2008 renewals are poor then all sorts of chickens could come home to roost!

I suspect the key issues are:

1. How much recruitment/ donation income did the GLA election produce?
2. How much was spent on the GLA election?
3. How much Barnbrook salary/ expenses can be diverted to party funds?