The British National Party owes companies in Northern Ireland hundreds of thousands of pounds in unpaid bills, it is claimed.
The Belfast Telegraph can reveal that a number of firms here could take the party to court for monies outstanding.
One former supporter of the party has warned that small family-run firms could go bankrupt because of the shortfall, thought to total over £500,000, UK-wide.
A case has already been heard in the High Court in March involving the non-payment of election expenses relating to the Barking constituency in London, where party leader Nick Griffin was the candidate.
A company called Newton Press has taken legal action over an outstanding bill of more than £10,000 for printing services.
Last week the BNP pledged to pay off all the money it owed by the end of the year, adding that the debts were a result of spending during the last European and general election campaigns.
A former BNP supporter in Northern Ireland, who is also owed money, said he is not confident of being repaid soon.
Jim Dowson is a fundraiser who helped set up BNP offices all over the UK, including in Northern Ireland.
His firm Adlorries, which provides promotional and marketing services, claims he is owed around £160,000.
He said he has already had to dip into his own cash to pay off smaller companies related to his firm who were left out of pocket.
“The BNP claim to be the saviours of British industry and British workers, but I am afraid that around half a dozen small, family-run businesses, including some in Northern Ireland, could go to the wall because the BNP have not paid them,” he said.
“We are in a recession and times are hard enough as it is. People have been treated disgracefully.”
Mr Dowson also expressed anger that party boss Mr Griffin was spotted walking around east Belfast last week, just yards from a firm the BNP allegedly owes more than £40,000.
David Sloan from small family firm, Romac Press in east Belfast, says his company is owed £44,000.
He has defended his firm taking business from the right wing group, saying that the UK is deep in a recession.
“We were not in a position to turn people away but the BNP has basically wiped out a year’s profits,” he said.
”I have contacted police, the electoral commission and I'll take it to the High Court if I have to.”
A spokesperson for the BNP refused to confirm or deny the accusations and said that whether or not the party owes money to creditors is “irrelevant”.
Thanks to Clare Weir at The Belfast Telegraph
Showing posts with label Adlorries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adlorries. Show all posts
May 04, 2011
October 24, 2010
Departures leave BNP future in doubt
The British National Party’s communications officer has left the party, following the abrupt departure of its fundraising and management guru Jim Dowson.
Paul Golding was the BNP’s sole district councillor in southeast England. His exit leaves the racist party with only 23 councillors compared with the 28 it had after the May elections.
The two walked out following a major fallout between them and senior party staff, in particular its moronic national organiser Clive Jefferson and Patrick Harrington, leader of the rival Third Way party, who has wormed himself into a position of growing influence in the party, upsetting several employees and members in the process.
Golding’s BNP membership had briefly been suspended in summer for writing a nasty blog attacking Eddy Butler, who unsuccessfully challenged Nick Griffin for the party leadership. The move was widely seen as an attempt by Griffin to appear “fair” between his own supporters and those of Butler. But later, when many of Butler’s suspended supporters were expelled, Golding was reinstated.
The departure of Dowson and Golding leaves the BNP with no one capable of writing the begging letters that have brought in large sums in donations during Dowson’s three years at Griffin’s side. The party will also be unable to exploit its “Bring Our Boys Home” recruitment campaign by turning the 25,000 names on petition forms into voters and members. People signed anti-war petitions at the BNP’s stalls in shopping centres around the country, not realising that they were sponsored by the BNP, but despite the party’s claims to use cutting-edge technology, Jefferson is incapable of transferring the information into a usable electronic format.
Butler reports that Dowson rang to tell him that his departure was complete and immediate. Dowson is known to have texted and phoned numerous other people.
Quite where this leaves the BNP’s Belfast call centre and administration centre is unclear. The office is run by Dowson and Griffin’s daughter Jennifer Matthys, who is also a director of Dowson’s main front company, Adlorries.com. Dowson is believed to have alternative Belfast premises for any new venture he undertakes.
Dowson was in charge of obtaining the secret four-star venue for the party’s annual conference to be held somewhere in Derbyshire over the weekend of 10-12 December. Stories are circulating that as he was about to dump the party Griffin offered him £10,000 to complete the arrangements, which he rejected. There must now be doubt over whether it will go ahead. If it is cancelled, members who have already paid the up to £299 cost of attending are likely to lose their money.
Dowson believes the party will not last beyond the end of the year, leaving those who have forked out £395 for life membership in its current special offer receiving very poor value for their money.
Searchlight / HOPE not Hate by Sonia Gable
Paul Golding was the BNP’s sole district councillor in southeast England. His exit leaves the racist party with only 23 councillors compared with the 28 it had after the May elections.
The two walked out following a major fallout between them and senior party staff, in particular its moronic national organiser Clive Jefferson and Patrick Harrington, leader of the rival Third Way party, who has wormed himself into a position of growing influence in the party, upsetting several employees and members in the process.
Golding’s BNP membership had briefly been suspended in summer for writing a nasty blog attacking Eddy Butler, who unsuccessfully challenged Nick Griffin for the party leadership. The move was widely seen as an attempt by Griffin to appear “fair” between his own supporters and those of Butler. But later, when many of Butler’s suspended supporters were expelled, Golding was reinstated.
The departure of Dowson and Golding leaves the BNP with no one capable of writing the begging letters that have brought in large sums in donations during Dowson’s three years at Griffin’s side. The party will also be unable to exploit its “Bring Our Boys Home” recruitment campaign by turning the 25,000 names on petition forms into voters and members. People signed anti-war petitions at the BNP’s stalls in shopping centres around the country, not realising that they were sponsored by the BNP, but despite the party’s claims to use cutting-edge technology, Jefferson is incapable of transferring the information into a usable electronic format.
Butler reports that Dowson rang to tell him that his departure was complete and immediate. Dowson is known to have texted and phoned numerous other people.
Quite where this leaves the BNP’s Belfast call centre and administration centre is unclear. The office is run by Dowson and Griffin’s daughter Jennifer Matthys, who is also a director of Dowson’s main front company, Adlorries.com. Dowson is believed to have alternative Belfast premises for any new venture he undertakes.
Dowson was in charge of obtaining the secret four-star venue for the party’s annual conference to be held somewhere in Derbyshire over the weekend of 10-12 December. Stories are circulating that as he was about to dump the party Griffin offered him £10,000 to complete the arrangements, which he rejected. There must now be doubt over whether it will go ahead. If it is cancelled, members who have already paid the up to £299 cost of attending are likely to lose their money.
Dowson believes the party will not last beyond the end of the year, leaving those who have forked out £395 for life membership in its current special offer receiving very poor value for their money.
Searchlight / HOPE not Hate by Sonia Gable
July 01, 2010
BNP operations centre in office leased by Dowson
Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, is hoping to seize back the initiative and regain his members’ confidence by setting up a new campaigns executive.
Headed by Clive Jefferson, the man who replaced Eddy Butler as the party’s national elections officer, it is intended to “coordinate and marshal the entire Party for the purpose of winning elections”.
The new structures are also intended to consolidate the hold of Griffin and his “consultant” Jim Dowson on the party. Paul Golding, another diehard Griffin loyalist, has been put in charge of a new “communications and publicity department” encompassing media and communications, the BNP website, publicity and design. The new department has been “designed and researched by Midas Consultants and Mr Golding”, the party website announ-ced in an attempt to counter the attacks on Jim Dowson, one of whose many businesses is Midas Consultants.
During election campaigns the campaigns executive will “converge on” the BNP’s “operations centre”. A BNP email requesting donations to equip it did not disclose where it was, but Searchlight can reveal its location in Unit 13, Salmon Springs Trading Estate in Stroud.
Three rooms in the unit were leased by Adlorries.com Ltd, one of Dowson’s companies, for three years from spring 2009 at a rent of £5,000 a year. They were to be used as a training centre for the BNP run by Michaela Mackenzie, but have remained empty after the party sacked her from her posts as administration officer and national nominating officer. Like many in the BNP it appears she clashed with Dowson. She has appealed to the employment tribunal, another case that could leave the BNP with a large legal bill.
Mike Howson, a former military trainer and Griffin’s bully boy in the South West, will now run the BNP’s training department there. Howson, the BNP’s ageing national youth officer, took over from Peter Mullins as the BNP’s South West regional organiser and promptly instigated his suspension from the party.
Simon Bennett, the BNP’s former webmaster, claims that Howson was one of those who tried to confront the party leadership over Dowson’s “dodgy dealings and history”, but after they were all “frog-marched to a court style hearing”, Howson folded “like a pack of cards” and is now “a poodle to Jim Dowson”.
Sonia Gable in Searchlight
Headed by Clive Jefferson, the man who replaced Eddy Butler as the party’s national elections officer, it is intended to “coordinate and marshal the entire Party for the purpose of winning elections”.
The new structures are also intended to consolidate the hold of Griffin and his “consultant” Jim Dowson on the party. Paul Golding, another diehard Griffin loyalist, has been put in charge of a new “communications and publicity department” encompassing media and communications, the BNP website, publicity and design. The new department has been “designed and researched by Midas Consultants and Mr Golding”, the party website announ-ced in an attempt to counter the attacks on Jim Dowson, one of whose many businesses is Midas Consultants.
During election campaigns the campaigns executive will “converge on” the BNP’s “operations centre”. A BNP email requesting donations to equip it did not disclose where it was, but Searchlight can reveal its location in Unit 13, Salmon Springs Trading Estate in Stroud.
Three rooms in the unit were leased by Adlorries.com Ltd, one of Dowson’s companies, for three years from spring 2009 at a rent of £5,000 a year. They were to be used as a training centre for the BNP run by Michaela Mackenzie, but have remained empty after the party sacked her from her posts as administration officer and national nominating officer. Like many in the BNP it appears she clashed with Dowson. She has appealed to the employment tribunal, another case that could leave the BNP with a large legal bill.
Mike Howson, a former military trainer and Griffin’s bully boy in the South West, will now run the BNP’s training department there. Howson, the BNP’s ageing national youth officer, took over from Peter Mullins as the BNP’s South West regional organiser and promptly instigated his suspension from the party.
Simon Bennett, the BNP’s former webmaster, claims that Howson was one of those who tried to confront the party leadership over Dowson’s “dodgy dealings and history”, but after they were all “frog-marched to a court style hearing”, Howson folded “like a pack of cards” and is now “a poodle to Jim Dowson”.
Sonia Gable in Searchlight
February 06, 2010
New leak confirms BNP not in control of its own fate
A leaked spreadsheet listing transactions on the British National Party’s bank account has proved what Searchlight has said all along: that a militant anti-abortion campaigner in Northern Ireland virtually owns the BNP
Searchlight has analysed the spreadsheet, which was posted on the internet anonymously last month, and considers it almost certainly genuine. It covers a period from April 2007 to 26 November 2009 and shows payments to a large number of BNP officers, employees and suppliers. The first year’s transactions match those on an earlier leaked document.
During the first 11 months of 2009, the spreadsheet shows payments totalling £334,261.51 from the BNP’s Bank of Scotland account to Jim Dowson’s company Adlorries.com Ltd. Details of the services provided are not given, but the company runs the Belfast call centre, which is the BNP’s main base for fundraising and membership administration.
The BNP’s total income in 2008, the latest year for which accounts are available, was just under £1 million, so even allowing for some increase during a European election campaign year, the sums going to Adlorries.com still represent a sizable proportion of the party’s budget. The BNP also paid £2,000 to Albion Logistical Solutions Ltd, £19,199 to UKPT Trust and £7,439 to the Pro Life Society. That adds up to £362,900 paid to Dowson’s companies in the first 11 months of 2009.
Dowson, who has several convictions and links to the loyalist murderer Michael Stone, first got involved with the BNP at the end of 2007 and transformed its fundraising capability. He also provided management training courses for BNP officers in spring 2008 at a villa he owns near Valencia in Spain. During 2008 his Midas Consultancy business received £15,712 from the party and £40,365 was paid to UKPT Trust for his fundraising services.
Adlorries.com hires the staff for the BNP’s Belfast bunker through employment agencies. After the leak of the BNP’s membership list last year, it emerged that no security measures were in place, despite the party’s promises after an earlier membership list leak in 2008, that all personal data would be held safely.
The company also owns the advertising lorry that the BNP calls its “truth truck”, contrary to statements in several fundraising appeals that the lorry was “bought and paid for”. Further evidence of this emerged from the BNP’s return of expenditure on its European election campaign, lodged at the Electoral Commission last month, which shows £15,000 paid to Adlorries.com for “advertising and publicity material”, presumably hire of what anti-fascists call the lie lorry.
Strangely, that £15,000, which the return says was paid on 30 April 2009, does not appear on the spreadsheet. Nor does the £148,500 supposedly paid to Albion Logistical Solutions Ltd on 23 April for arranging the printing of the BNP’s main European election leaflets.
It may be that these payments came out of a different BNP bank account. The party runs several accounts for specific purposes, such as for the fundraising Trafalgar Club, its Excalibur merchandising operation and “Freedom Promotions”. The party also holds one or more accounts in the name of British Heritage, into which many donations are paid, in particular those from supporters whom the party has persuaded to make regular donations by standing order, and donations made by credit or debit card.
Although the spreadsheet shows many transfers into the Bank of Scotland account from British Heritage and Freedom Promotions, it is possible that some payments to suppliers were made directly from those accounts.
Another possibility is that Adlorries.com paid for much of the BNP’s election literature and other costs, and the large sums paid to Dowson’s company include repayments of that “loan”. All bills during an election campaign have to be paid within 42 days of polling day, and in any case the commercial printers would undoubtedly have wanted payment before delivering the leaflets. If the BNP, which appears to have no overdraft facility or commercial loans, had not raised enough money to pay its bills, perhaps Dowson’s company helped out. Certainly £334,262, all paid between mid April and mid September 2009, would be a lot for running a call centre and the occasional hire of an A-frame lorry.
Many BNP members, including some on the party’s national advisory council, are unhappy at the extent of Dowson’s hold over the party. Perhaps to allay their concerns, or even some of his own, Nick Griffin, the party leader, sent his daughter Jennifer Matthys to Belfast to help run operations there.
Matthys, 23, joined Dowson as a director of Adlorries.com on 17 July 2009, although Dowson retains ownership of the company. On appointment Matthys stated her occupation to be “data processor”. Dowson’s sister-in-law Marion Thomas, wife of Dowson’s business partner Alex Thomas, became a director on the same day but left the company on 16 September. She is described as a “bookeeper” [sic].
Another way in which Dowson was able to strengthen his influence on the BNP was through the appointment of John Thompson to run the party’s “treasury department”. Thompson, described as a “professional chartered accountant” has long looked after the finances for Dowson’s various business and campaigning interests.
The leak of the spreadsheet may have cast suspicion on Thompson. Only a handful of trusted people apart from Thompson and any staff he employs could have had access to the document, probably Griffin himself, the party’s deputy leader Simon Darby and Philip Reddall, its treasurer.
The Excel spreadsheet appears originally to have been created by Kenny Smith, a former BNP administration officer who was one of the leaders of the rebellion in the winter of 2007/08. He was expelled from the party in December 2007 but his spreadsheet must have remained in use by other officers.
If the leak came out of Thompson’s office, that might explain why Darby is once again involved in running the party’s finances. Darby took over from Jenny Noble as BNP’s treasurer in spring 2009 but stepped down in October in favour of Reddall. Yet on 13 January 2010 he wrote, decrying the loss of communications at his home near Welshpool, “So here I find myself trying to run an election campaign, help manage the finances and be the press officer of a major political party without either a telephone line, broadband or even a dial-up connection”.
Why would Darby, who has no accounting qualification, be helping to manage the finances when the party has a “professional chartered accountant” to do the job?
The embarrassment over the leaked list comes at a time when the BNP is still under the spotlight of the Electoral Commission after it submitted accounts for 2008 which Griffin admitted were “inadequate”. The party’s inability to supply adequate records to its auditors meant that the accounts did not comply with the requirements of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA).
A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission told Searchlight that the BNP’s auditors had provided the further information that the Commission had requested and the initial assessment is that there are “reasonable grounds to believe a breach of the PPERA may have occurred”. The Commission is now reviewing the information and this may lead to an “official investigation”.
Meanwhile Griffin continues frantically to try to persuade his members to upgrade to gold or life membership of the party. In his latest electronic newsletter, Griffin claims that the legal process undertaken by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure the BNP complies with anti-discrimination legislation is in fact “criminal actions … designed to scupper our General Election plan” by starving the party of membership fees. The party agreed in court to put recruitment on hold pending adoption of a new constitution, which Griffin appears confident his members will agree at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 14 February.
However Griffin has now decided there is more to the supposed conspiracy against the BNP. “Recent developments have revealed a far more sinister long-term plan”, he writes. According to Griffin, the “old-gang Lib-Lab-Con” parties want to introduce proportional representation and state funding of political parties but to exclude the BNP. The recruitment freeze is designed to damage the BNP’s general election effort, limit the number of constitu-encies the party can contest and thereby ensure it receives a low percentage of the national vote. Then PR and state funding of parties would be introduced, but the BNP would receive nothing because of its low vote.
Seriously, that is the imaginative scenario Griffin describes, before referring to “low-life vermin [one of Griffin’s favourite words] that are trying to sabotage our party”, invoking “the heroes of the Somme, D-Day and the Falklands” and urging: “If we cannot welcome new members, then existing members MUST upgrade to fill the gap, otherwise their evil plan might succeed!”
The fact is that the membership freeze cannot have much effect on the BNP’s income. In 2008 the party took in membership fees amounting to £166,006. Much of this would be renewals, which are still allowed. New membership fees during the three to four month membership freeze would hardly top £30,000 and may be much less. The party could easily save that sum by shedding one or two of its large number of staff.
But when has the BNP ever allowed the truth to get in the way of a good fundraising pitch?. As Darby said when confronted with the evidence that the party had only spent £282,843 on its European election campaign rather than the over £500,000 it had claimed, the party needs to exaggerate “there’s a bit of hyperbole with politics”.
Searchlight
Searchlight has analysed the spreadsheet, which was posted on the internet anonymously last month, and considers it almost certainly genuine. It covers a period from April 2007 to 26 November 2009 and shows payments to a large number of BNP officers, employees and suppliers. The first year’s transactions match those on an earlier leaked document.
During the first 11 months of 2009, the spreadsheet shows payments totalling £334,261.51 from the BNP’s Bank of Scotland account to Jim Dowson’s company Adlorries.com Ltd. Details of the services provided are not given, but the company runs the Belfast call centre, which is the BNP’s main base for fundraising and membership administration.
The BNP’s total income in 2008, the latest year for which accounts are available, was just under £1 million, so even allowing for some increase during a European election campaign year, the sums going to Adlorries.com still represent a sizable proportion of the party’s budget. The BNP also paid £2,000 to Albion Logistical Solutions Ltd, £19,199 to UKPT Trust and £7,439 to the Pro Life Society. That adds up to £362,900 paid to Dowson’s companies in the first 11 months of 2009.
Dowson, who has several convictions and links to the loyalist murderer Michael Stone, first got involved with the BNP at the end of 2007 and transformed its fundraising capability. He also provided management training courses for BNP officers in spring 2008 at a villa he owns near Valencia in Spain. During 2008 his Midas Consultancy business received £15,712 from the party and £40,365 was paid to UKPT Trust for his fundraising services.
Adlorries.com hires the staff for the BNP’s Belfast bunker through employment agencies. After the leak of the BNP’s membership list last year, it emerged that no security measures were in place, despite the party’s promises after an earlier membership list leak in 2008, that all personal data would be held safely.
The company also owns the advertising lorry that the BNP calls its “truth truck”, contrary to statements in several fundraising appeals that the lorry was “bought and paid for”. Further evidence of this emerged from the BNP’s return of expenditure on its European election campaign, lodged at the Electoral Commission last month, which shows £15,000 paid to Adlorries.com for “advertising and publicity material”, presumably hire of what anti-fascists call the lie lorry.
Strangely, that £15,000, which the return says was paid on 30 April 2009, does not appear on the spreadsheet. Nor does the £148,500 supposedly paid to Albion Logistical Solutions Ltd on 23 April for arranging the printing of the BNP’s main European election leaflets.
It may be that these payments came out of a different BNP bank account. The party runs several accounts for specific purposes, such as for the fundraising Trafalgar Club, its Excalibur merchandising operation and “Freedom Promotions”. The party also holds one or more accounts in the name of British Heritage, into which many donations are paid, in particular those from supporters whom the party has persuaded to make regular donations by standing order, and donations made by credit or debit card.
Although the spreadsheet shows many transfers into the Bank of Scotland account from British Heritage and Freedom Promotions, it is possible that some payments to suppliers were made directly from those accounts.
Another possibility is that Adlorries.com paid for much of the BNP’s election literature and other costs, and the large sums paid to Dowson’s company include repayments of that “loan”. All bills during an election campaign have to be paid within 42 days of polling day, and in any case the commercial printers would undoubtedly have wanted payment before delivering the leaflets. If the BNP, which appears to have no overdraft facility or commercial loans, had not raised enough money to pay its bills, perhaps Dowson’s company helped out. Certainly £334,262, all paid between mid April and mid September 2009, would be a lot for running a call centre and the occasional hire of an A-frame lorry.
Many BNP members, including some on the party’s national advisory council, are unhappy at the extent of Dowson’s hold over the party. Perhaps to allay their concerns, or even some of his own, Nick Griffin, the party leader, sent his daughter Jennifer Matthys to Belfast to help run operations there.
Matthys, 23, joined Dowson as a director of Adlorries.com on 17 July 2009, although Dowson retains ownership of the company. On appointment Matthys stated her occupation to be “data processor”. Dowson’s sister-in-law Marion Thomas, wife of Dowson’s business partner Alex Thomas, became a director on the same day but left the company on 16 September. She is described as a “bookeeper” [sic].
Another way in which Dowson was able to strengthen his influence on the BNP was through the appointment of John Thompson to run the party’s “treasury department”. Thompson, described as a “professional chartered accountant” has long looked after the finances for Dowson’s various business and campaigning interests.
The leak of the spreadsheet may have cast suspicion on Thompson. Only a handful of trusted people apart from Thompson and any staff he employs could have had access to the document, probably Griffin himself, the party’s deputy leader Simon Darby and Philip Reddall, its treasurer.
The Excel spreadsheet appears originally to have been created by Kenny Smith, a former BNP administration officer who was one of the leaders of the rebellion in the winter of 2007/08. He was expelled from the party in December 2007 but his spreadsheet must have remained in use by other officers.
If the leak came out of Thompson’s office, that might explain why Darby is once again involved in running the party’s finances. Darby took over from Jenny Noble as BNP’s treasurer in spring 2009 but stepped down in October in favour of Reddall. Yet on 13 January 2010 he wrote, decrying the loss of communications at his home near Welshpool, “So here I find myself trying to run an election campaign, help manage the finances and be the press officer of a major political party without either a telephone line, broadband or even a dial-up connection”.
Why would Darby, who has no accounting qualification, be helping to manage the finances when the party has a “professional chartered accountant” to do the job?
The embarrassment over the leaked list comes at a time when the BNP is still under the spotlight of the Electoral Commission after it submitted accounts for 2008 which Griffin admitted were “inadequate”. The party’s inability to supply adequate records to its auditors meant that the accounts did not comply with the requirements of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA).
A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission told Searchlight that the BNP’s auditors had provided the further information that the Commission had requested and the initial assessment is that there are “reasonable grounds to believe a breach of the PPERA may have occurred”. The Commission is now reviewing the information and this may lead to an “official investigation”.
Meanwhile Griffin continues frantically to try to persuade his members to upgrade to gold or life membership of the party. In his latest electronic newsletter, Griffin claims that the legal process undertaken by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure the BNP complies with anti-discrimination legislation is in fact “criminal actions … designed to scupper our General Election plan” by starving the party of membership fees. The party agreed in court to put recruitment on hold pending adoption of a new constitution, which Griffin appears confident his members will agree at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 14 February.
However Griffin has now decided there is more to the supposed conspiracy against the BNP. “Recent developments have revealed a far more sinister long-term plan”, he writes. According to Griffin, the “old-gang Lib-Lab-Con” parties want to introduce proportional representation and state funding of political parties but to exclude the BNP. The recruitment freeze is designed to damage the BNP’s general election effort, limit the number of constitu-encies the party can contest and thereby ensure it receives a low percentage of the national vote. Then PR and state funding of parties would be introduced, but the BNP would receive nothing because of its low vote.
Seriously, that is the imaginative scenario Griffin describes, before referring to “low-life vermin [one of Griffin’s favourite words] that are trying to sabotage our party”, invoking “the heroes of the Somme, D-Day and the Falklands” and urging: “If we cannot welcome new members, then existing members MUST upgrade to fill the gap, otherwise their evil plan might succeed!”
The fact is that the membership freeze cannot have much effect on the BNP’s income. In 2008 the party took in membership fees amounting to £166,006. Much of this would be renewals, which are still allowed. New membership fees during the three to four month membership freeze would hardly top £30,000 and may be much less. The party could easily save that sum by shedding one or two of its large number of staff.
But when has the BNP ever allowed the truth to get in the way of a good fundraising pitch?. As Darby said when confronted with the evidence that the party had only spent £282,843 on its European election campaign rather than the over £500,000 it had claimed, the party needs to exaggerate “there’s a bit of hyperbole with politics”.
Searchlight
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June 14, 2009
BNP’s secret Belfast lair
Hardline ex-criminal boasts that he makes £500k each year for reviled political party
The British National Party is peddling its vile fascist propaganda from a secret Belfast bunker. The BNP’s national call centre is tucked away in an industrial estate in Dundonald — right under the nose of First Minister Peter Robinson, who lives just minutes away. The man who runs it is Ballygowan-based Jim Dowson — a top BNP fundraiser and a militant anti-abortion campaigner who has a string of criminal convictions and has had links to mass-murderer Michael Stone.
In online BNPtv footage filmed at the Belfast HQ, Scotsman Dowson brags that the Belfast base is raking in £1,500 per day — more than £500,000 per year — and has 12 staff.
Visitors to Carrowreagh Business Centre are blissfully unaware that work is being carried out for the BNP at Unit 5 — there are no signs to advertise their existence. And even staff at the Dundonald base — who had innocently replied to call centre job ads — do not have their wages paid directly by the BNP. Staff wages come from Dowson’s company Adlorries.com Ltd, which has registered address in Leicestershire. Dowson is the only named director of the firm. Adlorries.com keeps a low profile — its website lists no phone numbers or address, you can only contact them by email.
A former worker at the centre told Sunday Life that one man at the centre enjoyed dishing out verbal abuse to anti-fascists when they call to complain about the BNP. The source said: “There is one bloke who will literally run across the room to take over a call if he knows it’s someone giving out about the BNP. I was shocked and decided there and then I wasn’t working in a place like that.”
The outraged ex-worker also said that the sackloads of mail to the Belfast HQ would often include hatemail — some with human excrement and vomit inside. The insider added: “I couldn’t believe that, it was disgusting but obviously it shows the extent to which people hate the BNP.”
Dowson is the man who has masterminded the set-up of the BNP’s nerve centre in Belfast. In a BNPtv News broadcast which can be found on YouTube, he brags: “I’m speaking to you from the reception of the British National Party’s latest plant to open. The British National Party is now mainstream and is growing so incredibly quickly that these plants are absolutely necessary to keep the party running and to cope with the growth.”
The footage then cuts to BNP leader Nick Griffin in the ‘distribution warehouse’ who boasts that they have 29million BNP leaflets there and states “it’s a huge operation here”. It then cuts back to Dowson at the ‘political headquarters’ —which is in fact the Belfast office, which Dowson says is the “adminsitrative hub for the party”. He says: “Here we’ve recruited staff of the highest calibre to take the party to the next level.”
Later in the video he says there are 12 staff at the call centre dealing with 35,000 calls over the election period.
Dowson says the operation cost £100,000 to set up — but boasts that the centre is taking in £1,500 per day. He adds: “It’s a very worthwhile and intense operation and certainly no other political party in the United Kingdom has anything like this, it’s going very well. There is no other political party in Britain or Europe that has anything like this, it’s very modern and very efficient.”
Workers are handed a ‘British heritage script’ which provides a template and information to promote the BNP and products to callers to boost the party’s coffers. Among the ‘pointers to mention’ in the script it says “mention the trouble with the Muslims and our troops”. Staff at the Belfast HQ handle incoming enquiries and mail, post out BNP propaganda, take donations and pester lapsed members to try and get them back in the BNP fold.
The office used to be occupied by Alphagraphics, a firm which has no association to the BNP. But outside Dowson’s home in Ballygowan is an advert for a plumbing business called ultraplumb.com and vehicles with the company logos were parked both at his home and at the BNP’s east Belfast hideaway. Dowson’s son James is listed as a director of ultraplumb.com and also works at the BNP office.
When Sunday Life called at Dowson’s home yesterday to ask him about his BNP work, he said: “This is private property, get off my land or I’ll call the police.”
BNP leader Nick Griffin made a secret trip to the Belfast base less than two weeks ago to film a propaganda video. Our exclusive picture shows Griffin pictured at the Belfast HQ flanked by two members of staff, whose identity we have protected. His victory at the polls has been met with outrage and the 50-year-old and colleague Andrew Brons were besieged by protesters and pelted with eggs at Westminster last week.
Belfast Telegraph
The British National Party is peddling its vile fascist propaganda from a secret Belfast bunker. The BNP’s national call centre is tucked away in an industrial estate in Dundonald — right under the nose of First Minister Peter Robinson, who lives just minutes away. The man who runs it is Ballygowan-based Jim Dowson — a top BNP fundraiser and a militant anti-abortion campaigner who has a string of criminal convictions and has had links to mass-murderer Michael Stone.In online BNPtv footage filmed at the Belfast HQ, Scotsman Dowson brags that the Belfast base is raking in £1,500 per day — more than £500,000 per year — and has 12 staff.
Visitors to Carrowreagh Business Centre are blissfully unaware that work is being carried out for the BNP at Unit 5 — there are no signs to advertise their existence. And even staff at the Dundonald base — who had innocently replied to call centre job ads — do not have their wages paid directly by the BNP. Staff wages come from Dowson’s company Adlorries.com Ltd, which has registered address in Leicestershire. Dowson is the only named director of the firm. Adlorries.com keeps a low profile — its website lists no phone numbers or address, you can only contact them by email.
A former worker at the centre told Sunday Life that one man at the centre enjoyed dishing out verbal abuse to anti-fascists when they call to complain about the BNP. The source said: “There is one bloke who will literally run across the room to take over a call if he knows it’s someone giving out about the BNP. I was shocked and decided there and then I wasn’t working in a place like that.”
The outraged ex-worker also said that the sackloads of mail to the Belfast HQ would often include hatemail — some with human excrement and vomit inside. The insider added: “I couldn’t believe that, it was disgusting but obviously it shows the extent to which people hate the BNP.”
Dowson is the man who has masterminded the set-up of the BNP’s nerve centre in Belfast. In a BNPtv News broadcast which can be found on YouTube, he brags: “I’m speaking to you from the reception of the British National Party’s latest plant to open. The British National Party is now mainstream and is growing so incredibly quickly that these plants are absolutely necessary to keep the party running and to cope with the growth.”
The footage then cuts to BNP leader Nick Griffin in the ‘distribution warehouse’ who boasts that they have 29million BNP leaflets there and states “it’s a huge operation here”. It then cuts back to Dowson at the ‘political headquarters’ —which is in fact the Belfast office, which Dowson says is the “adminsitrative hub for the party”. He says: “Here we’ve recruited staff of the highest calibre to take the party to the next level.”
Later in the video he says there are 12 staff at the call centre dealing with 35,000 calls over the election period.
Dowson says the operation cost £100,000 to set up — but boasts that the centre is taking in £1,500 per day. He adds: “It’s a very worthwhile and intense operation and certainly no other political party in the United Kingdom has anything like this, it’s going very well. There is no other political party in Britain or Europe that has anything like this, it’s very modern and very efficient.”
Workers are handed a ‘British heritage script’ which provides a template and information to promote the BNP and products to callers to boost the party’s coffers. Among the ‘pointers to mention’ in the script it says “mention the trouble with the Muslims and our troops”. Staff at the Belfast HQ handle incoming enquiries and mail, post out BNP propaganda, take donations and pester lapsed members to try and get them back in the BNP fold.
The office used to be occupied by Alphagraphics, a firm which has no association to the BNP. But outside Dowson’s home in Ballygowan is an advert for a plumbing business called ultraplumb.com and vehicles with the company logos were parked both at his home and at the BNP’s east Belfast hideaway. Dowson’s son James is listed as a director of ultraplumb.com and also works at the BNP office.
When Sunday Life called at Dowson’s home yesterday to ask him about his BNP work, he said: “This is private property, get off my land or I’ll call the police.”
BNP leader Nick Griffin made a secret trip to the Belfast base less than two weeks ago to film a propaganda video. Our exclusive picture shows Griffin pictured at the Belfast HQ flanked by two members of staff, whose identity we have protected. His victory at the polls has been met with outrage and the 50-year-old and colleague Andrew Brons were besieged by protesters and pelted with eggs at Westminster last week.
Belfast Telegraph
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