The BNP's little hidey-hole

Watch it full-screen - it's better

A few weeks ago, one of our readers asked if anyone had ever actually seen the BNP's Wigton office - the centre of its activities. My reply was that yes, we had taken a very brief look a few months ago, and were not overly impressed. Much to our surprise, a number of readers wanted to see the (very) short piece of film we took at the time.

Fair enough. The film though, doesn't er, show the whole picture, so to speak. The industrial estate which houses both the BNP's storage unit/office and Nick Griffin's official NW office as MEP, is tucked away at the edge of Wigton, a tiny and attractive little market town deep in the heart of Cumbria. It is believed that Griffin only managed to get the two units on the estate because one of the people who works in management happens to be one of his entourage - or at least used to be. In common with most of Griffin's chums, she seems to have fallen out with him recently.

We made two visits to the industrial estate; one at about 10.30am, when both units were closed, and the other sometime after lunch, when almost everyone in the BNP seemed to have woken up or sobered up and arrived to do something. As we drove into the gated estate, we were very aware that we were closely watched by at least four people: two outside Griffin's office, one directly ahead of us and another opposite the office. The latter two are not shown on the film.

We drove around the corner into a stretch of empty units. To be honest, more units were empty than were occupied and frankly the industrial estate looked like it was on its last legs (which is probably why it allowed Griffin and his ever-dwindling party to establish a base there).

As you can see from the film, we were treated to a glimpse of Clive Jefferson's crappy old Jaguar (still using the illegal number plate, are you, Clive?) and even spotted Porky himself getting something out of his car. As you watch the film, the BNP's centre of operations is on the left, and Griffin's NW MEP base is on the right - the building with the two bodyguards outside. Quite why Porky needs bodyguards, we've never fathomed. Apart from a pint of beer and an egg being thrown at him (separately), he's never been at risk of attack, despite his constant claims of violent anti-fascists always being on the lookout for him.

Because his mob ARE a bunch of violent freaks and psycho's, we didn't hang around, particularly when we realised that the camera had obviously been spotted.

So there you have it. The centre of the BNP's operations happens to be a couple of small industrial units on a run-down industrial estate in the middle of, well, not nowhere, because Wigton's actually a pretty nice place, but certainly nowhere significant. The main question I'd like to ask is why doesn't the MEP for the North West have an office in a place where he can be easily visited by the public whom he was elected to serve? Is he afraid to meet the voters? I think you know the answer to that one.