After an astonishing five-month hiatus that illustrated pretty much everything that he thought of communication with the membership, Nick Griffin has finally updated his Chairman's Blog, earning himself the 2007 Pinnochio Award for most lies told in a single blog post. The first lie, although maybe it's a pig-farmer's idea of a joke which I just didn't get, is where he explains the reasons for not posting on his blog since Methusaleh was at kindergarten, where he states that 'I enjoy writing the blog too much...I am very wary of making it too regular'. You can stop worrying, Nick. One post after a five-month gap is
not too regular, no matter how you try to spin it.
Griffin immediately goes on the attack against those around the recent leadership challenge. Obviously furious that anyone would dare to stand against him, you can almost hear the spluttering and see his face redden as the blood pressure rises.
'The challenge was not a genuinely legitimate one from a candidate with the genuine ability to run this party as it is, let alone take it further forward. It was a pathetic, pitiful, desperate attempt to cause trouble for the most modernised and most successful nationalist party in British history by a handful of cranks left over from the BNP’s most sterile past, aided and abetted by a gaggle of Hollywood Nazis, congenital losers and thieves.'As the
latest copy of Searchlight points out, five founder-members, two advisory council members, three councillors, eight branch organisers and 20 election candidates came out openly in support of the challenger Chris Jackson. Presumably, Griffin means them. But he isn't finished yet...
'...he should have known better than to allow himself to be wound up and manipulated by such vermin. I’m certainly not going to kick him out for standing against me (for one thing, by giving the membership the chance to give me a 91% mandate to continue with our current direction...)'Interesting use of the word 'vermin' there. More important though is this frequently quoted '91% mandate' that
Griffin received in the leadership vote. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Griffin and other BNP contributors crowed when Labour were voted in on a minority vote, claiming that the 'silent majority' had spoken by not voting at all. Curious how he seems unable to transfer this to his own situation where, because of the pitiful 43% turnout for the leadership election in the tiny BNP, it turns out that Nick Griffin's mandate is a mere 39%.
Not a mandate at all, in fact.
Strangely, Griffin chooses discussion of the leadership challenge to discuss democracy within this least democratic of all political parties, dismissing as 'Tory nationalists' all those who call for a one-member one-vote (OMOV) system to replace the current 'Voting Membership' system within the BNP, which gives the vote on issues of importance only to those who can afford to pay more money for their membership; clearly votes for cash - exactly the phrase the BNP shouts at anyone who is accused of corruption at the ballot box. The attack on those calling for internal democracy within the party, and the inevitable result of such calls, is stated unequivocally:
'This group must now accept that their scheme to put the destiny of the BNP in the hands of anyone who deigns to pay their membership has been comprehensively and permanently rejected, in favour of a system that gives power only to those who have earned it, and who continue to earn it. The argument is over, and anyone trying to raise it again against the repeatedly expressed will of the vast majority of the party will mark themselves out as a would-be saboteur and a candidate for expulsion.'So no OMOV and no discussion of OMOV allowed either. How very democratic.
Griffin's post then goes off into a curiously disturbing diversion about a young BNP member suspected of being a mole for Searchlight. In this section, he speaks of the young man corresponding with Gerry Gable 'from an email account set up for him by a BNP loyalist, so we were able to see precisely what he was doing...' Er, what? You read the guy's emails? Isn't that illegal? And does the BNP regularly read through the emails of members that have been set up for them by 'BNP loyalists'?
Whether that's the case or not we don't know but Griffin's BNP is certainly trying to control many aspects of the member's lives that aren't entirely to do with the BNP itself. Referring to those he calls 'conspiracy-mongers', Griffin states clearly that;
'They are perfectly entitled to believe whatever they want to believe, and to discuss their beliefs privately with others already of like mind. But they are not to go posting their fancies online...they are not to spout their theories at meetings, either as officials or from the floor. They are not to write to local newspapers...and they are not to pour their personal opinions into the ears of new or young activists.'Did the phrase 'thought-police' just pop into your head? Because it did in mine.
Griffin then goes on to attempt to deflect two of the most recent accusations against him and the party, concerning Croatia and the Trafalgar Club money. Regarding Croatia, he attempts to dismiss all discussion with, curiously because up until now there has only been denial, an attempt at an explanation.
'We were offered a share in the profits for the party if we could provide the contacts needed to develop land there inherited by a long-term party supporter, and on that basis myself and several others made a brief exploratory visit. As it happens, for various reasons we concluded that the project was probably a non-starter, so that’s the end of that.'Not so fast, boyo. As we mentioned
here and Stop the BNP reported
here, there is rather more to this story than is at first apparent. The fact that Roberto Fiore is lurking around in the background in all of this, gives the whole idea a lot more credibility, if only because Fiore has been involved in at least two previous attempts to start 'white nationalist' communities in the past (both of them with Griffin, oddly enough), one in France and one in Spain. The further facts that the land has been bought and paid for and is regularly and increasingly visited by BNP bigwigs and that there has been much talk of offshore accounts and so on, lead one to assume that Griffin is trying to deflect too much interest in the project at this early stage in its development. Hard luck - we're interested and we're staying interested.
Regarding the Trafalgar Club accounts, which Griffin certainly doesn't want anyone prying into, he refers to 'the allegation that the income and expenditure of the Trafalgar Club does not appear in the BNP’s accounts. Of course it does, every single penny...'
Er, where? Early last month, we
printed an article that questioned the Trafalgar Club income. We received no answers then and we really don't expect any this time either but in a spirit of optimism, we'll try again.
'One of the emails [we had recently received] pointed out that the Trafalgar Club (the Trafalgar Club is the group for the wealthier BNP member - allegedly the 'elite') members pay £180 per year for the privilege of belonging to it which apparently entitles them to a TC tie and an annual blow-out with Griffin. Wow - that must be worth £180 of anyone's money! The email then went on to point out that there are about 200 Trafalgar Club members which, to my reckoning, comes to around £36,000 per year. Added to this are the emails we received which pointed out that the annual Trafalgar Club dinner saw a collection which came out at £10-15,000. Yet the only mention of the Trafalgar Club in the BNP's accounts for 2004/5 are of the £4000 it apparently cost to set it up in 2004, and income of £1155 in 2005. Clearly there is a major problem in the accounts there which we expect either the auditors or the Electoral Commission to watch for in a couple of weeks when the next accounts are due to appear.'
And now we get to the little matter of the resignation from the Deputy Chairmanship and the Advisory Council (though not the party itself) of Scott McLean, following the appalling
Collet/Spence/Walker incident at last week's Red White and Blue annual piss-up. As we reported, having received a few emails from irate BNP members, 'Scott McLean, Griffin's Deputy Chairman and the person responsible for maintaining discipline in the party, has clearly stated that he is resigning, having told all his long-time pals in the party that his position has been undermined again and again by Griffin's constant refusal to take action against Collett. We're informed that McLean gave Griffin an ultimatum a few days ago - him or Collett - and Griffin is sticking to Collett.'
Nick Griffin has always rewritten history to suit himself and his blog post carries a fine example.
'By one of those strange coincidences that is probably nothing of the sort, Scott McLean, who has held the Deputy Chairmanship responsibility as a steady rock for seven years now, called me a week before the RWB and told me that he is stepping down from the position, and from the Advisory Council. He explained that he needs to concentrate on with a very hectic business and family life without the BNP Sword of Damocles poised to fall on his head at a moment’s notice without any warning.'What a load of rubbish. If anyone in the BNP believes that, they're an bigger idiot than even we would believe. You'll remember that the BNP has tried this on on a number of occasions when things have been going pear-shaped for the party. One of the most notable was when Robert Cottage was arrested in October of last year for stockpiling chemicals that could be used to make explosives. The BNP announced that Cottage was no longer a member, though omitted to mention that membership then ran from January to December and that Cottage had stood for a council seat for the party in May 2006 and thus would have had to be a fully paid-up member at that time. A stupid lie that the party has tended to repeat
ad nauseum despite the fact that everyone
knows it's a lie.
Curiously, there is a section on the new voting arrangements within the party that absolutely no-one internally appears to be questioning - the peculiar 'Voting Membership activist elite' that will be deciding how the party is run in future.
Griffin has mentioned something similar before but now he's being more explicit. Torn between the desire to keep control of the party in the hands of his closest allies, and increasingly strident calls for greater internal democracy, he has apparently compromised by creating the new membership tier (the Voting Membership, who pay more to have that voting power).
This 'elite' who, let's face it, are all likely to be Griffin's chums anyway (organisers and so on) are to get a number of extra rights over and above their extraordinary voting rights. It should be noted that an ex-colleague of Griffin's back in the old days when the late and unlamented John Tyndall was in charge of the BNP, recently pointed out that 'the only thing consistent between now and then has been [Griffin's] desire for a multi-tiered membership. Something that has always seemed like an attempt to solve a problem that does not actually exist.' Indeed.
These additional rights for the elite include (don't laugh) 'effective powers of scrutiny over all central party finances', 'key failsafe powers over the leader and leadership elections at present vested in the Advisory Council and Deputy Chairman' (the role of DC going along with Scott McLean into the dustbin of BNP history), and 'to step up the level of ideological training for VMs'. Quite what this last bit means, we have no idea, but the phrase 'ideological training' sounds deeply worrying and something one would expect to hear from an internment camp for political dissidents.
Interestingly, Griffin then segues into a piece on the need to find a role within the BNP for Arthur Kemp. Kemp was mentioned in
July's Searchlight as a former operative in South African Intelligence and, of course, the author of the monumental March of the Titans: The History of the White Race. A few chapter headings should give you a rough idea of which way Kemp's ideology leans.
'The rise and fall of civilizations explained in terms of their racial homogeneity; with the Near East civilizations as examples.''Roman conquest of mixed race Middle and Near East lands; Influx of mixed race peoples and slaves into Rome causes dissolution of original Roman population.''The White Race war against the non-White Muslims in Palestine; Egypt, North Africa and Portugal, under the guise of Christianity.''The non-White Moors invade Europe and are driven out by White armies; Jewish co-operation with the non-White Moors.''White civil wars caused by Christianity; One third of the White Race killed as a result.''Whites explore and start settling the world''The White Conquest of South and Central America and the creation of modern South American population; fall of Incas and Aztecs explained through racial mixing.''All significant inventions which shape the world originate with the White Race; comprehensive list of inventors, inventions, dates, places.''The Jewish role in the creation of Communism; Soviet anti-Zionism.''The dissolution of contemporary Western civilization through breakdown in racial homogeneity; racial discordance (race and crime); Current rates of non-White immigration will mean not one majority White country left on earth by 2090.'I'm pretty sure you've got the gist. Kemp is a hardcore racist and white supremacist. Unfortunately, though not perhaps unsurprisingly, the job of ideological training within the BNP is to pass directly into his hands. It looks like a return to more hardcore racism and continued/increased adoration for the 'White Race' at the BNP in the future.
This sudden inclusion of the despicable Kemp into the inner circle of the BNP - in fact to the very top of the party - could well indicate a coming significant change to its stance on race and how the BNP deals with it. If I were Pat Richardson (Jewish), Laurence Rustem (Anglo-Turkish), both BNP councillors, or Sharif Abdel Gawad (Greek-Armenian), a former BNP council candidate, I'd be extremely nervous. In fact, if I was a BNP member at all, I'd be nervous. There is a feeling of great shift in the air, partly generated, I believe, by the leadership challenge and all the recent controversy around Griffin, money and (among other things) Croatia. When a dictator gets nervous, he tends to lash out in all directions. Griffin's most recent blog post reads like the first crack of the whip. We believe there are a
lot more to come.
