Andrew Brons - Non-Attached Member

On Monday afternoon I received a message from one of oldest and dearest mates saying that there is a BNP billboard at Heeley Bridge/Bottom a few minutes walk from where I live.
Now my mate is an old political hand and pretty sharp and somebody who I trust implicitly. Somebody who knows the difference between a poster and a big fuck off advertising billboard. I decided to have a wander down and take some pics. I might also have decided to have a few pints in the Sheaf View and Shakespeare on the way home.

The pics are not the best due to the location and my ineptitude with a camera but you should get the general gist.




Now there are several things that are puzzling about the above images and their content.

1 - Brons says he is a Non-Attatched MEP which suggests he has resigned the whip which I've not noticed before.
2 - The incredibly small BNP logo. It may be in the upper centre of the image but it's hardly noticeable (which may be the point)
3 - Ex NF leader with some utterly revolting views using what can only be considered concentration camp imagery.

Anyway, on the way back from a pub in Woodseats I got off the bus and saw this :-

Less pocket money for Griffin?

Griffin: Will be getting less cake next time

Membership renewal time approaches for what is left of the dwindling BNP's membership. Most members are well aware of this already. They've been reminded by constant begging letters, phone calls and reminders from the party from almost the first day they joined.

Money and numbers remain the key to control of the party and if you cannot (yet) get the numbers to take full control, then the next best way to hurt your rival is to dent their finances.

BNP finances have never been too great so in a manoeuvre designed to both humiliate and decapitate the head of the party Nick Griffin, his leadership rival Andrew Brons has asked his supporters to not renew their memberships for next year.

In an article on the website of the Brons team, they describe Nick Griffin as slipping "Further Into Paranoid Delusion". This comes in response to allegations made by Griffin that the Brons camp are "police spies" and the removal of a link to the Brons website by the main BNP website.

Surprisingly, the Brons camp writes further that they cannot "afford to spend all the time navel gazing", which is exactly what they have been doing for months and months as the party slipped further into the wilderness and near oblivion.

In a move that could further cripple BNP finances, the Brons camp have now decided that members should stop "pouring their money down a black hole of incompetence", and instead should pay monies into an account "into which voluntary subs in lieu of party membership" will be held in trust until the "Griffin administration is removed".

Given that almost half of the BNP's voting membership is with the Brons camp, this represents another in a series growing potential disasters for Griffin. Previously Brons and his supporters were encouraging people to stay inside of the BNP.

It looks like things are finally picking up.

Hope not hate

New party, same old politics? - Investigation

HOPE not hate has recently criticised the English Democrats (ED) for allowing dozens of former BNP members to get involved in the party without any public denunciation of their former political allegiances. ED leader Robin Tilbrook has insisted that all those coming over have left their former racist views behind. He even told a recent English Democrat conference: “They [the former BNP members] will help us become an electorally credible party. We need to be sure they ascribe to civic or cultural nationalism and that they will be an asset to our party, but we do not need to be too defensive”.

The most prominent of the former BNP members in the English Democrats is Chris Beverley. Here, HOPE not hate researchers cast an eye on the validity of Beverley's political conversation.

Chris Beverley, the former Yorkshire BNP organiser and councillor has detached himself from all things BNP and extremist, or at least that is what he would like you to believe. In a speech made to the English Democrats conference held last month, Beverley stated “I endorse the EDP’s opposition to extremism. I oppose all forms of extremism.”

Referring to his former membership of the BNP he continued “We all make mistakes in our lives and we all have ideas that we hold that we change over time but I believe and have come to the realisation that the English Democrats' approach to politics is the only hope that our people have."

Some people will welcome Beverley’s rejection of the BNP and extremism in general, however when the surface is scratched we reveal that the mask of respectability is paper thin.

Beverley recently wrote on his blog about a Leeds English Democrat meeting being held in his home town of Morley. He appealed for people to join the party and as the Leeds branch had recently opened a bank account, suggested prospective members send their membership fees and donations there, circumventing the party’s national office in Norwich.

The Leeds address for membership fees and donations is a familiar one. It’s the same PO Box that Beverley has operated for years. For much of the time it was the contact address for Leeds BNP. It appears to have shifted over to the English Democrats with Beverley too.

Further inspection however, shows that this is still the same PO Box that the BNP’s erstwhile MEP Andrew Brons also uses for his European work. If Beverley is so appalled by the politics of the BNP then why does he still work for one of its MEPs? If Beverley’s politics had changed so much then why has a BNP MEP allowed him to continue to work for him? If there is such a wide difference in political attitudes then why do both the English Democrats and the BNP share a PO Box?

To say the least, it is rather unusual to have two supposed rival political parties sharing the same address. But it does not end there. Along with his wife Joanna who is also an ex BNP councillor, Chris Beverley is listed with Joanna to the very same PO Box for something else, this time called “The Morley Community Trust.” The trust is an organisation set up with the intention of enabling local schools to switch to trust status. Both Chris and Joanna Beverley are listed as directors of the trust.

On his blog, Beverley sells a well known right wing book on English nationalism, instructing potential buyers to send their payments made out to “The Morley Community Trust.”

What sort of trust status the Beverley’s envisage for schools in Morley and Leeds remains a mystery. But as part of his conference speech to the English Democrats, Beverley discussed the notion of large numbers of BNP members jumping ship from the BNP to join both he and his wife in the English Democrats. He told the conference “Only a fraction of those people leaving the BNP will be interested in the English Democrats - only a fraction. The good news for us is that it is only the best people in that party that will have any interest in us. The most intelligent, rational, enlightened decent people - that's the good news for us.”

One of Beverley’s ex-BNP companions at the conference was Andrew Kershaw, an ex BNP official from Kirklees. Kershaw, the ex-secretary and treasurer of Yorkshire BNP has a conviction for racially abusing a police officer during a drunken night out several years ago.

Also photographed with Beverley, this time at a recent English Democrat meeting in Bridlington is the ex BNP organiser for the town Gary Pudsey.

Pudsey who has also previously been a National Front, Blood and Honour and Combat 18 activist was arrested along with 15 others in 1994 for their part in an attack on a bookshop in Nottingham which caused £10,000 worth of damage.

Pudsey displays a number of far right tattoos on his forearms. Pudsey has also previously been photographed with Magnus “Max” Wagegg, an unapologetic ex- Luftwaffe pilot and Nazi, who lived in the West Midlands after the war and became a beacon to far right groups including Combat 18, Blood and Honour and the tiny Aryan Resistance Movement who were active in the area.

Perhaps Kershaw and Pudsey are some of the “intelligent, rational, enlightened decent people” that Chris Beverley refers to?

We certainly wouldn’t use the term “enlightened” when we look at some of the European far right links Chris Beverley has.

Fluent in German, Beverley was a regular guest of the German far right political party the NPD. So close was Beverley to the NPD that he wrote a bi monthly column in the NPD’s newspaper “Deutsche Stimme”.

Beverley also has had ties with the European National Front, an umbrella organisation for some of Europe’s most extreme and openly fascist organisations. They include groups that deny the Holocaust, worship Adolf Hitler and other wartime fascist leaders, and have been linked to terrorism.

Beverley spoke at a European National Front meeting in Feb 2007 hosted by the NPD. The meeting, held in Reisa, Germany was organised by the German skinhead leader Jens Puhse, who ran one of Europe’s largest nazi music mail order businesses.

The ENF brings together some of the most hard line anti-Semitic organisations from Europe. They include La Falange (Spain), Noua Dreapta (Romania), Forza Nuova (Italy), Nationale Alliantie (Holland) along with the Nordiska Förbundet (Sweden).

One of Beverley’s closest German friends is Andreas Heine. Heine is a hard-core Neo Nazi originating from Hamburg and was one of leaders of the Hamburger Sturm group, a group linked to the notorious German Neo Nazi Christian Worch and his Aktionsbüro Norddeutschland.

Hamburger Sturm was banned after police suspected the group of issuing death threats against a German trade union leader in April 2000.

Beverley is also a huge admirer of the Hungarian Neo Fascist party Jobbik and has met with various dignitaries from the party including Jobbik MEP Krisztina Morvai. Jobbik has gained notoriety when it formed its own uniformed militia the “Magyar Garda” often compared to the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the National Socialist party that led Hungary for part of World War Two.

His admiration for Jobbik is to such an extent that he gives away free copies of the parties manifesto to anyone prepared to ask for one, via his personal blog. All Beverley asks is that you cover the postage, by sending in stamps to the same Leeds PO Box Beverley uses for the English Democrats.


Thanks to Nick Lowles at Hope not Hate

No waking the dead in Preston

Fifty seven hard line racists gathered in Preston last weekend to commemorate the life of John Tyndall, the Nazi uniform wearing founder of the British National Party.

It was the sixth time that a collection of Nazis and Anti-Semites no longer welcomed or favoured in Nick Griffin’s new version of the party, have gathered to remember their mentor.

Tyndall was the eloquent writer of such immortal lines as “the Jew is like a maggot feeding off the corpse of the write race”. He died in 2005 while facing charges of behaviour likely to incite racial hatred, surprisingly.

In the dock with Tyndall back then was Nick Griffin (who Tyndall was also fighting a legal case against and who had become his sworn enemy) and Mark Collett, Griffin’s dynamic sure-to-be life long friend who only last week went onto the BBC’s Panorama programme to besmirch the very memory of their love-in.

The only thing that truly held all of those present in the same room was their burning hatred of Nick Griffin, and not any long term admiration of the fallen “Führer".

The meeting was organised by Mark Cotterill who has no real history of ever being much of a fan of Tyndall when he was actually alive. During the eighties and early 90’s Cotterill was instead a senior member of the Flag faction of the NF. They were anti-Tyndall’s BNP and vehemently and often violently, anti-Nick Griffin’s “Political Soldier” National Front. Confused? You should be.

Cotterill later moved to America to front-up the American Friends of the BNP a source of funding for the BNP once Nick Griffin took it over. That new found friendship didn’t last long and Cotterill soon found himself back in England and deciding to support the then displaced Tyndall.

Paul Ballard, a veteran Croydon based fascist made his way to Preston for this knees up. Ballard’s been in and out of the BNP over the years when he’s not been teaching English as a second language to “Johnny Foreigner”. In a rather non-illustrious career on the far-right, Ballard’s been everything from a hard line Nazi to a moderate and even occasionally, a Griffinite “radical”. He was even (another) co-defendant of Griffin’s during another race hate trial during the 90’s over editing something that Griffin had written. [Not well enough?-Ed)

Ballard was last seen in public sulking at a BNP meeting in Dagenham where the BNP had to vote to allow non-white members into the party back in February 2010.

Chastising Ballard on that fateful day in 2010 was none other than Richard Edmonds. Out of all of those present in Preston, Edmonds is probably the true heir to Tyndall’s legacy. He followed Tyndall in and out of the old NF, the New National Front and even into and then out of the BNP. And then back again.

Edmonds even ran the BNP and edited Tyndall’s long-running record of boredom, Spearhead during one occasion when Tyndall found himself again in prison in the 1980's and the BNP had a membership of some 400.

Back in February 2010, Edmonds upset a few old-timers when he used his lofty position as Tyndall's spokeperson on earth and gave Tyndall’s beyond-the-grave blessing to allow non-white members into the BNP. It seemed to have been mostly out of pragmatism or expediency because he was later filmed denigrating white people he assumed were “race mixers” because they did not like BNP literature being posted through their doors. Such obedience to Griffin back then not only helped Edmonds onto the BNP’s Advisory Council but also earned him the soubriquet “veteran Nationalist” from the party, which in their vernacular means “Old Nazi”.

Edmonds was back to being an “old Nazi” when he announced he was standing against Griffin to be party leader earlier this year and positively labelled a “crank” by Herr Griffin when he finally left the BNP earlier this month to rejoin the National Front. One can only assume that Ballard (bizarrely nicknamed Trotsky by his admirers), and Edmonds sorted out their little squabble in time for the long journey to Preston. As ever, Edmonds made a vicious and racist speech that mentioned all the usual favourites, Jews, blacks, Asians, Nick Griffin..

But they were not alone. If the BNP and NF are not cranky enough for you, the British People's Party sent a speaker along. This meant that a dog somewhere was without it's master. This tiny Yorkshire based sect are perhaps better known for administering the Redwatch website and producing homicidal paedophiles that keep bombs under their child’s bed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7469180.stm

The BPP’s Dave Jones, who enjoys nothing more than dressing up in historical costume himself, spoke of the wonderful work he has done in the village of Todmorden where he comes last in almost every election. Jones distributes a local leaflet with stunning regularity warning mostly, of the dangers of the local school/church/pub/bus stop/phone box being turned into a Mosque. Jones managed to waffle on long enough to earn the ire of most people, but did earn himself a small ripple of applause when he announced that he has been working very closely with the NF of late. This must have given Edmonds a bit of a migraine!

Most people were there however not to dig up old stories about “JT”, but to hear the BNP’s other MEP Andrew Brons, announce the launch of a new party. Brons, as he has consistently on this subject of late, disappointed. He didn’t even turn up. I was not surprised.

Brons and Tyndall go far back, further back than even Edmonds goes. In the mid 1960’s Brons was a member of the National Socialist Movement, a bitter rival to Tyndall’s Greater Britain Movement. To mention that there were two tiny Nazi sects around at the time would mean dragging up the history of the two group's competing leaders (Tyndall and Colin Jordon). So, here goes; having competed for the hand in marriage and become engaged to perfume heiress and all round naughty Nazi Françoise Dior in the sixties, poor old Tyndall got sent to prison and while in there and no doubt enjoying the pleasures of reading Mein kampf, his friend and mentor Jordan ran off with and eventually married Dior!

Later, Brons was to take over the leadership of the National Front in 1980 when Tyndall jumped before being pushed out of that party for being too public with his Nazism. So there was actually, no love lost between those two, ever.

Of course, Brons later had a fall out with Nick Griffin when they were in the National Front and Griffin wanted Brons removed from his job!

So, Brons and Griffin may have become friends again for a while and have now fallen out (again), but going to a memorial for Tyndall was obviously just too much, even for Brons. So instead of turning up, Brons sent along a letter in which the former politics lecturer pointed out that Tyndall had never been to university and also that they had often had differences of opinion!

There was no new party announced by Brons, and it still does not look likely there will be. He’s preparing himself for his own faction’s BNP conference this weekend which will be pretty much the same crowd that were at John Tyndall sixth annual wake.

In their game, friends become enemies and then friends again, even when you’re dead.



Thanks to Matthew Collins at HOPE not Hate

Man or a mouse?

BNP MEP Andrew Brons is coming under intense pressure to leave the party and form an alternative. Brons has been considering his options for the past nine months but so far he has failed to make a move. He first toyed with splitting from the BNP back in the spring in the aftermath of poor election results but he hesitated too long and missed his chance. He then challenged Griffin for the party leadership, half expecting to be thrown out of the party or to be given the excuse of obvious electoral fraud to walk away. Again he bottled it.

As Brons has dithered others have walked away. Jim Dowson and Paul Golding went off to form Britain First and then Eddy Butler and Chris Beverley joined the English Democrats. More recently Richard Edmonds and the bulk of Croydon BNP have gone over to the National Front.

Now, in the aftermath of the Panorama programme, he is once again under pressure to leave and form an alternative.

Our guess is that he will continue to pontificate and the opportunity will pass him by. And in the meantime the BNP, under Griffin's leadership, will continue its slow death.

Hope not Hate

Edmonds heads out the front door

One of the last remaining founder members of the BNP has quit the party to rejoin the miniscule and almost moribund National Front. Richard Edmonds returns to the NF after leaving them in acrimonious circumstances to help form the British National Party over thirty years ago.

Seventy year old Edmonds, a former school teacher, is one of Britain’s most notorious and hard line Holocaust deniers and one of a number of people now deserting the Andrew Brons faction in the BNP after Brons was narrowly defeated by Nick Griffin in the recent leadership elections. Edmonds had stood aside to allow Brons to challenge to Griffin, and is believed to have grown impatient as the Brons camp dithered over forming a new party.

Edmonds made his reputation as a notorious and controversial orator during the 1980’s when as the right hand man of then BNP leader John Tyndall, the BNP fermented racial hatred and an openly Nazi party saw a number of people including Tyndall, imprisoned under the race relations act. Edmonds also financed the opening of the BNP’s controversial head office in Welling south London and the distribution of the hate sheet Holocaust News that poured scorn on not just the Holocaust, but also the memory and testimonies of victims of the Nazi regime.

In 1993 Edmonds was jailed for a racist attack in Tower Hamlets, east London, when a black man walking with a white woman had the audacity to walk past Edmonds and a group of BNP supporters who had been attending a violent BNP mobilization in the area.

A long time opponent of Nick Griffin, Edmonds had initially been suspended from the party not long after Nick Griffin assumed the leadership of the BNP in 1999. After Tyndall’s death in 2005 Edmonds found his way back into the BNP and even found himself on the party’s advisory committee, described as a “veteran nationalist” which would appear to be BNP vernacular for ‘unreconstructed neo-Nazi on his best behaviour’. Despite his history, Edmonds was one of the “veteran nationalists” who conceded that legally there was little point in the party resisting the legal obligation to allow party membership to non-whites.

In a difficult week for the BNP’s leader, the departure of Edmonds may prove to be one bright spot. Edmonds had over the last year slipped comfortably back into the anti-Griffin camp as a self appointed spokesperson for keeping alive the memory of his mentor and former master John Tyndall. Tyndall died while facing the courts alongside Griffin on charges of inciting racial hatred while at the same time, fighting a battle to be readmitted back into the party he had founded.

With Edmonds goes the bulk of the Croydon branch of the BNP. Once one of the largest and most active BNP branches in the country, it was through Croydon BNP that Nick Griffin made his entry into the BNP. The Croydon branch of the BNP is a potent mix of former NF hardliners who moved into the BNP in the early nineties, former NF “political soldiers” who followed Griffin into the BNP and other long term racists and fascists. The Croydon far-right scene has long been susceptible to the charms of far-right radicals and extremists, from as far back to before even the NF was formed. A large chunk of those moving into the NF appear to be either suspended or ex-BNP members. The branch had been acting independently of the BNP for some time.

On hearing that Edmonds had finally jumped ship, Nick Griffin tweeted "Good that old hardcore cranks leaving with baggage. Shocking they time it to help the BBC though.” It must have been a really bad week of “timing” as far as Griffin is concerned. The party has been rocked by among other things, the death of its former treasurer only a few days from the potential nuclear meltdown for the party that is the Panorama programme on the BBC.

How the NF will accommodate the rabid actions and demands of über-activists like Edmonds and co remains to be seen. They do not even produce a regular mass circulation newspaper or leaflets.

Edmonds and Brons will no doubt have plenty to talk about at the John Tyndall memorial meeting later this month.

Thanks to Matthew Collins at HOPE not Hate

The party is almost over

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

BNP facing a winding up order

We are hearing that the BNP are facing an urgent winding up order in 14 days, should they fail to pay the courts £45,000.

Andrew Brons on his website “BNP Ideas” claims that an application was heard this week in the Court of Appeal brought by Nick Griffin and Simon Darby against the order of execution which led to the seizure Nick Griffin’s prized Skoda.

If the money is not forthcoming within the 14 days an immediate application to wind up the party will be made, which will place the BNP into administration.

This must leave party manager Adam Walker with a bigger headache than the one he already had, following the order to pay Mark Collett £21,000, a sum Adam Walker was deemed personally responsible for by the courts.

With money already desperately short in the BNP it looks highly unlikely that the party will help Walker in his hour of need, this news will only add to his worries.

With debts mounting on a daily basis, this has to be seen as just the tip of an incredibly large iceberg.

Hope not hate

BNP - the disastrous war of the roses

A ferocious "war of the roses" over the leadership of the far-right British National Party has left it badly split and potentially mortally wounded.

Nick Griffin squeaked home by just nine votes in this week's national ballot of party members to retain the chairmanship he has held since 1999.

Griffin, who sits as Member of the European Parliament for the North West region, faced a strong challenge from the other side of the Pennines.

His only rival in the contest was the party's other MEP - Yorkshire and the Humber's Andrew Brons.

"Probably, this was the worst mandate the Chairman could win," Brons wrote to his supporters on his BNP Ideas website shortly after the result was announced.

"In effect, the party is split from head to toe and there remain grave questions of doubt over the fitness of many existing officers of the party to exercise control over its operations."

It is a far cry from the high point of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections when Griffin and Brons shocked the political establishment by mustering enough popular support to take the party's first seats in a UK national election.

Their European seats were both won by the narrowest of margins, but it raised expectations that the self-proclaimed defenders of the "British indigenous population" could be on the verge of further breakthroughs.

Griffin defiant

Instead, Griffin's disastrous appearance on the BBC's Question Time a few months later and an embarrassing result in the 2010 general election has led to vicious infighting which could yet see the BNP implode.

In his own statement issued shortly after the election Nick Griffin said: "The time for division and disruption is over; now is the time to heal. Now is the time to move on. Now is the time to get back to work.

"We have a party to build and a nation to save. Let us go forward together!"

Griffin's rallying call might be too late.

In an online video election webcast recorded at the start of the campaign, Andrew Brons said members and activists had been voting with their feet for at least and year and leaving the party.

'Civil war'

At one stage he claimed a third of the membership and two thirds of its activists had left because of what he called Griffin's "unnecessary civil war" to stifle opposition.

The BNP has always been cagey about its total membership but this election for its national leader reveals just how small it has become. The number of ballot papers returned was just 2,316.

In fact, across every council in Yorkshire, the party could muster just 50 candidates at the 2011 elections earlier this year. Not a single one mustered enough votes to become a councillor.

The nightmare is not over for Nick Griffin or the BNP.

In his latest blog "Reply to Dissatisfied Supporters" Andrew Brons issues a clear warning: "If the leadership wants peace, he can have peace and we can get on with work that will contribute towards our substantive aims.

"If on the other hand if he were to choose war, he would meet an equal and opposite force."

BBC News

BNP Leadership Election Result

It's gone to a recount.

This from their Facebook page

A re-count of votes is currently underway in the Party leadership election. More news as it happens!

From what I can gather there is less than 10 votes in it.

EDIT -

Nick Griffin, received 1157 votes, whilst Andrew Brons, the loser, received 1148 votes

Now that is what I call a split.

My maths is pretty crap but I get the result percentages as:-

(1157 / 2316) * 100 = 49.9568221% for Griffin

(1148 / 2316) * 100 = 49.5682211% for Brons

(11 / 2316) * 100 = 0.474956822 spoilt votes.

Apologies for crap maths, I only got a CSE.

Grab it while it's warmish...

No more News of the World? Read this instead!

As expected, the leadership challenge in the BNP has thrown all sides into something akin to chaos. The British Democracy Forum is awash with pro-Griffin sock puppets, most of them sounding remarkably similar to dumbass Patsy Harrington, the liar who runs Solidarity, the BNP's fake union that was created solely to keep Harrington off the dole.

In response to the many smears coming from the Griffin camp, the challenger Andrew Brons has complained to the leadership election officer Geoff Dickens, a Griffin loyalist. Quite why Brons expects Dickens to play fair is beyond me, but that's bizarre BNP-style democracy for you.

Now a new player has entered the field, who has allegedly sent a printed magazine out to all the current BNP members who are eligible to vote in the leadership election. The magazine is entitled 'A Report on the Mismanagement of the BNP' and can be read online here or is available in PDF form, should you care to download it and have a peruse, here. Brons and his minions deny that it is anything to do with them.

The magazine is a mish-mash of facts and hearsay, with a couple of obvious mistakes thrown in to confuse anyone who is attempting to track down the creator(s). Its interest for us is that it repeats many of the accusations that every anti-fascist has been making for years - that Griffin is a lying crook, that he surrounds himself with deviants, thugs and other lying crooks and that the BNP is near-bankrupt to a degree that, if it were a company, its directors would be jailed for trading while insolvent. There is, unsurprisingly, much talk of missing money.

You've read most of it before, but it's a bit of a laugh to look through and as you read it, reflect that Porky Griffin will be apoplectic with fury at the content while serial liar Patsy Harrington will be threatening to sue everyone in the universe - his usual behaviour when cornered.

Whodunnit? Possibly Paul Golding and James Dowson, former Griffin allies. That's only a guess though and if you have a better one, feel free to post it in the comments section. :-)

BNP may face court action over unpaid printing bill

Calls have been made for the leader of the British National Party to step down in a row over a £16,000 debt to a North-East printing firm.

The BNP owes the money to the Newton Press, a community newspaper based in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, for the printing of posters and leaflets during the run-up to last year’s General Election and publication of the party’s Voice of Freedom newspaper.

The company’s owners are now so fed up of waiting for the debt to be paid, they have released emails exchanged between the company and party leader Nick Griffin.

On January 1, last year, Stuart Howarth, print sales manager of the Newton Press, sent an email to several members of the BNP which said: “Still nothing from any of you, unbelievable.”

Six months later, he received a reply from Mr Griffin, which said his party officials were working on the matter. Mr Griffin, MEP for North- West England, wrote in his email: “In the meantime, please accept my most sincere apologies, both personally and organisationally, and assuance (sic) that you will get all your money as soon as possible.”

In August, payment had still not been received and the Newton Press instructed its solicitors to take legal action. The last email from Mr Howarth, on June 30, this year, said: “Anybody paying this bill or do I have to take even more action than I already have?”

Andrew Brons, BNP MEP for North Yorkshire and Humberside, who is challenging Mr Griffin for the leadership, said: “It is wholly unacceptable that honest businessmen, who supplied their services in good faith, are treated in such an appaling manner. This reflects badly not just on the current chairman, under whose watch these abuses of trust have taken place, but on all of us. We are all smeared by association.”

Ken Booth, a BNP member in the North-East, said the debt was the national party’s and was nothing to do with the local members. He said the situation was a disgrace and Mr Griffin should resign. “One of our main passions is local jobs for local people, yet the party can’t even pay a local printer. It makes a farce of our values.”

Clive Jefferson, BNP party treasurer, said: “We will be paying all our outstanding debts. I have a timeline for repayment worked out.”

Northern Echo

Der Untergang

British National Party declares war...on itself

Just over a year ago, the Brits woke up to discover that Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons from the far right had been elected as MEPs. Party leader Griffin declared that this was the beginning of a brave new world and got pelted with eggs on his way out of the count. Today, if there is any egg on their faces it is because they put it there themselves.

Since their arrival in Brussels the party has met with several challenges, not least a series of court cases, often from disgruntled former employees and the party is believed to be heavily in debt. One of the creditors is said to be a printing firm in Northern Ireland, who are rumoured to have sent some heavies round to Griffin’s home, demanding repayment.

With growing concern about the management of the party among members, Eddy Butler, one of Brons EP staff, challenged Griffin for the leadership, alleging financial irregularities and, amusingly for a party with a background in neo-fascism, accusations of a lack of internal democracy and alleging that Griffin was acting like a dictator. This led to a purge of anyone suspected of supporting Butler.

After the failure of the Butler campaign a new challenger arose, Richard Edmonds, formerly the editor of Holocaust News, which denied the genocide had occurred. He also has convictions for racial violence and told a journalist that the BNP was “100% racist”.

The battle in Brussels

Now, Brons has said he will challenge Griffin for the leadership of the sinking ship and has alleged that the leader has repeatedly tried to misuse EU funds. “In 2009, I was asked by our Chairman to share the expenses, from my European Parliamentary funding, of an office in Edinburgh for the use of Solidarity Chief and leading member of the National Liberal Party, Patrick Harrington,” Brons said.

“Furthermore, in December 2010, at the Annual Conference, a table was provided for the display of my first annual report and my MEP newsletters. I was not asked whether or not I wanted to have this facility; I was simply provided with it. Three weeks later I received an invoice for the sum of £500 from the Chairman’s wife.

“I was told that I should pay this amount from my General Expenditure Allowance – my office account. I refused to do, although I did seek advice on the matter from the financial authorities of the European Parliament. I have recently been informed by Clive Jefferson that I might be taken to the County Court for refusing to misuse European Parliamentary funding!

“In December 2010, I was asked by our Chairman and Clive Jefferson to employ, with European Parliamentary funding, Christopher Barnet, who was in charge of the Party’s Alfred programme to put canvassing returns onto a data base for future elections.

“I was told that he would ‘look after’ my website. I said that I wanted to know, from him, what precisely he would be doing for his salary. He never contacted me. Very recently, I received an invoice from Clive Jefferson for £2000 that was supposed to represent five months of ‘services.’ I told him that I had not entered into any contract with Mr. Barnet and to pay for unspecified services from European Parliamentary funds would be fraudulent.

Brons also revealed that OLAF are investigating Griffin.

In retaliation, Brons was asked to remove the BNP logo from his website, which may be a prelude to adding him to the long list of those ejected from the party.

The last throw of the dice

Griffin has announced a new campaign that will resurrect the party - a petition for a referendum on EU membership. He’s been a bit slow, UKIP, Nikki Sinclaire, Dan Hannan have already set up rival petitions on exactly the same call.

But there is something different about Griffin’s. He is boasting that he is using EP funding for it, but the website and all literature carry the same wording:

“We, the undersigned, demand a referendum on British membership of the European Union.

By signing this petition, I authorise Nick Griffin to send me further information on this and future campaigns”

It is impossible to opt out of this authorisation. It is likely that the real aim is to find potential new supporters and donors to the party. At the EU taxpayers expense. Those considering signing may wish to reflect on the party’s inability to keep its databases secret, there being several instances of supporters details being put online.

In the meantime, the membership is shrinking, the voters are ignoring them and the creditors are knocking on the door.

New Europe

Breaking news: BNP loses two more councillors

Paul and Linda Cromie

I've just got news that Paul and Linda Cromie, the two BNP councillors in Bradford, have left the BNP.

I'll write more when I get further information but this is another hammer blow for Griffin as he fights off a leadership challenge from fellow MEP Andrew Brons.

Nick Lowles at Hope not hate

BNP gets ready to rumble

The gloves are well and truly off in the BNP’s leadership election battle.

The two heavyweights of British fascism, the MEPs’ Nick Griffin in the right corner and Andrew Brons also from the ultra right corner, have come out punching at each other and their corners are pretty feisty too.

On their mirrored BNP website, challenger Brons’s team has described the proposed amendments to the British National Party’s constitution as proposed by the Griffin corner as “a shocking and gross perversion”. For the first time in his charmed life as a BNP leader, Griffin knows he is well and truly up against a heavyweight challenger with the pedigree to deliver some quite cutting blows against his rocky leadership.

Having been involved in Nazi politics since the 1960’s, unlike Griffin’s predecessor John Tyndall who founded the BNP, Brons has managed to not be photographed wearing Nazi uniforms, so this time old Nick is up against a suited and presentable former politics lecturer who managed to put Griffin on his backside more than once when they last went head to head in the 1980’s when they were in the NF, and Brons grew tired of Griffin’s antics then too.

This contest appears to have finally brought the BNP to life. After a good couple of years of diminishing resources and returns for all of the begging letters and smears that Griffin and his team have invested in, Brons is somewhat of an ogre of considerable intellect in comparison to Griffin. With Brons is one Arthur Kemp, a south African who once worked for the South African security services there and another former trusted ally of Griffin.

Kemp points out that “the amendments which have now been distributed to members are NOT the proposals which were submitted online”.

The challengers to Griffin’s twelve years of rule have been calling for a totally new constitution, while Griffin is accused of trying to amend the constitution to ensure him five more years in power, which would take him up to a respectable early retirement age. Elections are currently fought and won by Griffin by virtue of an almost impossible list of hurdles set for challengers and their supporters to be able to even vote. Members at first agreed to these bizarre terms when it was suggested as a good way to stop black and ethnic minority members launching a coup against the party. Having suggested an entirely new constitution, Kemp has due reason to be bitter; the former web editor and ideological guru drafted the new constitution that was approved at a previous conference but never implemented. Now Griffin has called an EGM to make amendments to the old constitution further ensuring his tenure until such a time it seems likely, that his daughter can take over the role as party leader.

At the wedding of a Liverpool BNP sycophant recently, Griffin held court this very idea, convinced that it was what the vast majority of party members wanted.

But Brons is fighting back. In his corner are a weighty load of BNP members and former members, who have been expelled or suspended for not endorsing the idea that Griffin is God like and brilliant.

It looks like this going to rumble on for quite a while until the magical date of June 26th when I hope to be able to bring you an up to date blow by blow account of what is happening inside the BNP’s EGM when all of those still standing, will get to slug it out for the future of the BNP.

As I’m not an independent referee over this fight, I’m firmly in the Griffin corner. After a shaky start, his service to antifascism over the last two years have been commendable.

Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate / Searchlight

Breaking News-Game on!

Griffin and Brons: No longer singing from the same hymn sheet

News just in- BNP MEP Andrew Brons, another former chair of the NF like Griffin, has decided he will stand against Nick Griffin for the leadership of the party.

This could be a major setback for Griffin. Although Brons has little chance of winning (due to the way the party's electoral processes have been stitched up), the BNP's lie and smear machine that it unleashes against dissenters will struggle against the popular Yorks and Humberside MEP.

Brons's supporters have already clashed with Griffin after Griffin turned on Brons during a Q&A session held for BNP members at the European parliament.

Brons and Griffin fell out previously in the 80's for control of the National Front. It seems history has a habit of repeating itself.

Nick Lowles at Hope not hate

BNP Fight Club

BNP members (and the wider public ) finally got to see the much sought after footage of the BNP's fractured leadership rounding on each other angrily, after the footage was finally put on the net last night.

The bitter confrontation happened in Brussels a couple of weeks ago when a group of BNP members on a trip to the European Parliament at the tax payers expense, were being treated to a Q&A session by Yorks & Humberside MEP Andrew Brons, when in popped the uninvited Nick Griffin to launch a quite extraordinary attack on the people there.

Most of his vitriol was directed at Michael Barnbrook, the BNP's self seeking "sleaze buster" who never quite seemed capable of turning his attentions onto his own party leader, until recently. Described as a "show pony", Barnbrook was given the full "hairdryer" treatment by Griffin, while last year's beaten leadership challenger, Eddy Butler, was accused of being a liar. For his own efforts, Griffin even accused Brons of publishing a website "full of lies".

News of Griffin's decision to hold his EGM on June 26th (as exclusively revealed here), also came as somewhat as a shock to Brons, as he was initialy scheduled to speak to party rebels in the North East on that day, on the very subject of a need to call and EGM...

Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate / Searchlight

The videos - part one and part two

Time running out for BNP rebels?

Griffin: Leader of a small fascist party

BNP leader has Nick Griffin has tonight decided to call the party's EGM [Emergency General Meeting] for Sunday 26th June in the Liverpool area. Not many people know this, but our source has just confirmed it and this could be the end of the party rebels' attempt to oust their troubled leader.

What with the expulsions and suspensions Griffin and his cronies have handed out of late, the meeting would probably be better suited to the nearest available phone box, whilst any remaining dissenters will no doubt be firmly dealt with by the Griffin loyalists who run Liverpool BNP.

There's a slight chance at this late hour that the BNP's other MEP, Andrew Brons, may feel the time is right to throw his name into the leadership contest. Brons has already set up a rival BNP website mirroring when he helped set up a rival newspaper to Griffin's when the two of them fell out while in the old National Front back in the 80's.

If Griffin gets his way at the EGM, he'll be party leader for five more years. And judging on his performances of late, I'm not going to call that a bad thing!

Nick Lowles/Hope not hate

Spineless Brons lets Griffin off hook

BNP MEP Andrew Brons has refused to make public a video showing embattled party leader Nick Griffin gatecrashing and abusing BNP members at a meeting addressed by Brons in Brussels on Sunday.

Griffin, variously described by witnesses as "aggressive", "in a real temper" and "abusive", stormed into the meeting to confront Brons, Eddy Butler, leadership challenger Richard Edmonds and others, apparently as Brons addressed the gathering, which had been on a weekend jolly to the European parliament organised by Griffin's enemy-in-chief Butler.

According to Michael Barnbrook, Griffin was "deliberately confrontational", calling Andrew Brons a liar and ordering Richard Edmonds to shut up before attacking Eddy Butler as the meeting broke up prematurely and attendees booed and shouted at Griffin - of whom Butler remarked: "It seems likely that he is having some sort of breakdown."

The meeting was videoed and Griffin's angry outbursts were recorded for posterity. Supporters of Butler and Edmonds had expected it to be released as damning evidence against the BNP leader, but according to Barnbrook Brons is refusing to make the video public because of the "embarrassment that it would cause the British National Party".

The majority opinion of those who witnessed Griffin's extraordinary behaviour is that the video's release would have been a decisive blow in the campaign to oust Griffin and should have been used.

Brons's decision to sit on the video could prove an expensive one for Richard Edmond's leadership hopes, since it is a golden opportunity lost - and not for the first time by the ineffectual Brons, whose record of dither and vacillation is legion in far right circles.

However, let's not jump to hasty conclusions. The BNP is something of a hall of mirrors at the moment, with both sides in the politically deadly dispute generating large amounts of spin and bluff. While Brons may be spineless, neither he nor his allies are stupid.

Brons still has to work with Griffin, though we must assume their relationship is ice cold, and has attempted (or at least attempted to appear) to remain above the worst of the vicious faction fighting, despite coming out in favour of Richard Edmond's challenge. It isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that his allies have every intention of making the video public while allowing Brons the time to publicly distance himself from the decision.

As we and our friends have been repeating for years, Griffin will never be beaten by those who think that playing fair will win the day. Griffin does not operate like that. He will only be beaten by opponents as cunning as he is and as ready as he is to land low blows.

Have the anti-Griffin forces within the BNP finally learned that truth?

BNP leader Nick Griffin isolated after election disasters

Key figures threaten to form breakaway group as party chairman faces second leadership challenge in less than 12 months

The British National party's dominance of far-right politics in the UK is under threat for the first time in a decade after a string of poor election results and a growing rebellion against its leader, Nick Griffin.

The BNP chairman, who has led the party since 1999, is facing a second leadership challenge in less than 12 months, a mass defection of key organisers and the prospect of a new "popular front" made up of other far-right groups and former BNP activists.

Nick Lowles from the antifacist organisation Searchlight, said: "There is a serious split within the leadership of the BNP. After another humiliation at the polls and massive debts, Griffin is isolated and his position is weak. We are likely to see a rival party formed, a BNP mark two, and Griffin will be left with little more than a rump of a party."

This week Richard Barnbrook, who was the BNP's sole representative on the London assembly until he was expelled from the party last year, said it was time for a realignment in "nationalist politics" in the UK..

"The chairman, Nick Griffin, who has been a long-standing friend in the past, has to go," Barnbrook said. "There is no question about it. He is creating more harm than anything else."

Barnbrook, who now sits as an independent on the London assembly, has written to leaders of four other far-right or nationalist organisations – including the English Defence League and the English Democrats – calling for the creation of "one strong, united, cohesive force".

Griffin is also facing an increasingly emboldened rebellion inside the party. Richard Edmonds, seen as a "BNP hardliner", has launched a formal leadership challenge and although it is unlikely he will win, his defeat is expected to trigger another wave of defections.

Andrew Brons, the BNP's second MEP and an increasingly significant figure, has distanced himself from Griffin and this week appeared to back the leadership challenge, prompting speculation that he is preparing to lead a breakaway group.

Griffin has been under growing pressure since the BNP's poor showing in last year's general and council elections, when it lost all but two of the 28 councillors up for re-election and was wiped out in its east London stronghold of Barking and Dagenham. And the rebellion has gathered pace since this month's local elections, when it again performed poorly, losing all but two of the seats it was contesting.

The growing rebellion has seen a growing number of BNP organisers either leave the party or defect to join other rightwing groups. Searchlight says dozens of BNP members – including several key figures – have left and joined the English Democrats recently. Lowles said there appeared to be a "concerted and orchestrated attempt by many of the BNP's most effective and competent former organisers" to establish a foothold in the English Democrats.

Matthew Goodwin, from Nottingham University, who has written a book on the BNP, said: "There are two key questions here. First, can the rebels depose Griffin, which in my view is unlikely given the BNP constitution.

Second, can they then form a credible alliance with other groups which appeals to the large number of voters who are anxious over immigration, insecure about their economic position and dissatisfied with the main parties. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that Griffin's leadership is under sustained fire."

The Guardian

Nick Griffin Wins Yet Another Award!

Well Gobble Gobble! Breaking news just reaching Turkey HQ...

Nick Griffin has been voted the 'Hardest working MEP' by the Voice of Freedom Newspaper, The BNP's in house newsletter, the quality of which has been compared to that produced by a year five pupil doing a media project (but only one he rushed so he could get to play on Call of Duty before bedtime).

Andrew Brons, knowing that nobody wastes their money on the sheet of A4 propaganda, was proud to break the news on his own blog:

"We must congratulate our Chairman for having been chosen as ‘the hardest working MEP’ by the Editor of the Voice of Freedom. A crucial factor, in the Editor’s decision, seems to have been that our Chairman had not, on this occasion, used his constituency week for a family holiday. He had been working to support the Party’s candidates in the elections – something that the rest of us could do only poorly by comparison.

His award will provide his colleagues and his fellow MEPs from all parties and all countries with the inspiration to follow in his footsteps, in the hope that we might achieve even a pale shadow of his success. I am reluctant to mention my own puny efforts in the same paragraph."

Even Brons must be cringing at writing that one!

Whether or not the VoF actually considered the many other MEP's in the European Parliament, or just the two rather unproductive ones in the BNP, or even just Nick, is unknown, but we're fairly sure it came down to being between Andrew and Nick, and of course, with Nick being the boss of the gang, he got to win it!

He wins this regardless of the fact he's spent much of his time sunning himself in Cyprus (allegedly looking for a 'bolt hole' for when the paper dragon collapses), regardless of the fact the BNP is in turmoil and most importantly; regardless of the fact he hasn't achieved anything over there in Europe in over a year!

Another thing Griffo should consider, is given the BNP's poor showing in the election, maybe he should have taken that holiday after all and left them to it?

And yet, there is one more clanger hidden from the membership of the BNP: the editor of the Voice of Freedom, is one Nicholas John Griffin! Well, even we didn't see that one coming.Who does he think he is kidding?

The award up in the next issue is for 'Most hard working Chairman of the BNP who's name begins with N'.

Turkey Breath