BNP Scotland Fundraiser tomorrow 19/3/2011

Apparently Scottish BNP are holding a fund raiser and conference tomorrow at a family owned hotel in Falkirk. The BNP chairman Nick Griffin will be attending.

The details for the BNP Scotland fundraiser tomorrow are:

Macdonald Inchyra hotel,
Polmont,
Falkirk.
Tel 0844 879 9044.

Ring and politely lodge your complaints.

Singer Edwyn Collins takes on the British National Party and wins

Pop star's fury as BNP website uses hit song

City rocker Edwyn Collins demanded that the BNP remove his song from a "bizarre" party website that is being investigated by police.

The Edinburgh-born star's hit A Girl Like You featured on a Lothians British National Party website behind images of Asian men burning a union flag and veiled women waving banners saying "God Bless Hitler". The "Lothians BNP Video" site has now been taken off-line and its creator, BNP Central Scotland organiser Mike Coyle, has resigned from the party.

Police are investigating whether any action can be taken against the site. Edwyn Collins' wife and manager, Grace Maxwell, warned the BNP against using copyrighted material on their websites.

Ms Maxwell said: "There are many iffy videos on YouTube using A Girl Like You without permission and we are normally very relaxed about it. Whilst we don't believe that viewers would imagine for a moment that Edwyn has sanctioned the use of his track in this bizarre setting, for the removal of any doubt, we will require it to be deleted and will take the necessary steps to ensure that this happens."

The site, which was accessed via a link on the BNP Scotland website, also featured Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World with a montage calling the founder of Islam a "murderer" and "a paedophile", and several original songs by a Whitburn-based heavy metal band called Mott & Bailey.

The tracks railed against "invaders marching through our land, coming in like the night" and "darkness bringing down the walls". Videos accompanying the tracks featured images of 9/11, the London bombings and processions of coffins being carried through Wootton Bassett intermixed with images of British mosques and protesting Muslims.

Mr Coyle initially defended the site, stating that he saw nothing criminal in its content and claiming that "the BNP are not in the business of upsetting people". However, within hours of being contacted by the News, copyrighted content had been removed and the site had been re-branded "The Unofficial BNP Video Site". Mr Coyle then resigned.

The father-of-four said: "My last act as a BNP member was to dismantle this site. I put my head above the parapet and ended up being lied to. I set up this website with the full approval of the Scottish party, but now that my name stands to be dragged through the newspapers they have failed to show me any support. When I stood as a candidate in the last election my children were subjected to death threats, but I stood firm. They have lied to me for the last time."

The BNP Scotland website carries contact details for party members, party news and a page of material written by BNP Scotland leader Gary Raikes.

Edinburgh Evening News

Scotland: fear and loathing grips McBNP

On the day that Nick Griffin made the fantastical claim that the BNP had gained 1000 members since last Friday (not all of them Sikhs, apparently) a very large fly dropped into the ointment jar when three Scottish officials were outed as “traitors” in a hysterical post on the BNP Scotland website.

The post is illustrated with a tiny version of the poster below, issued in Wisconsin as a warning to Confederate sympathisers that if caught they would be “summarily dealth with”, meaning hung – an end the BNP has previously promised awaits everybody from the Archbishop of Canterbury to British Army generals and its own dissident former members. No wonder they reproduced it at illegible postage-stamp size.

It seems that emails between the three "traitors", who allegedly call themselves the "Scottish Volunteers", had somehow fallen into the hands of "a loyal member", and are now in the possession of Scottish BNP officials ("emails in our procession" [sic] is how the excitable author of the BNP Scotland post puts it) and are to be forwarded on to national BNP officials.

We shall have to assume that these emails were obtained by legal means, because, of course, if they weren't...

The post alleges that the three, in "their words", intended “to cause the greatest destructive effect on their (BNP Scotland) morale” and also “To destroy the party in Scotland”. It further claims that the three had refused to stand for the BNP in Scotland "but have tried to get seats to stand in in England", but happily:

This action as they know means we have nine candidates standing now missing the required twelve to qualify for a TV election broadcast. This will cost us thousands of votes..

Alongside an unexplained accusation that the renegades had "spread poison in England" is another that "this trio of fools are being manipulated behind the scenes by ex-Tory ex-ukip rejects with their own agenda".

It's all very strange, but there's not much about the BNP that isn't.

The Comments section of the post is as revealing as the post itself:

...The word traitors is too good a word to use - they are scum...

...BNP Scotland has it's own "axis of evil", aided and abetted by their UKIP master. Once again, you have been foiled. Why do you continue with your attempt to de-stabilise the BNP in Scotland...

...The only thing they are fighting for is the demise of the current scottish bnp their reason is they want to run Scotland their way i think they should be named and shamed...

And the very next poster does exactly that - allegedly:

I WILL NAME THE SUPER KEY PLAYERS (thats what they call themselves) CHARLIE BAILLEE, JOHN ROBERTSON, MAX DUNBAR. AND THE VERY HAPPY IAN WILSON i have the proof here so the above please try to sue me

Hang on - we seem to have acquired an extra traitor, but no matter. It appears, from a close reading of all this, that the three (or four) renegade officials are not too happy with the leadership of Englishman Gary Raikes, who is very much a Nick Griffin groupie.

Some time ago a commenter at Lancaster Unity (click) reposted the following from a BNP blog:

Not to worry as I will continue the Nationalist fight, just not under the banner of Corrupt Griffin and his lying backstabbing toad in Scotland, Gary (Please can I have my picture published) Raikes. The good members north of the border will very quickly see the difference between, the very efficient, open, loyal, and honest Kenny Smith, and the self publicising, lying, lazy, backstabbing, tight arse that Raikes has already shown himself to be”.

Oh dear, trouble in the glens for the BNP's Caledonian clots, and just as you thought it was safe to predict a BNP Scottish MSP in 2011...

[The post - "Anti-BNP Scotland group exposed" - was removed some time this morning (Thursday)]

Nazi salutes and burning crosses ... now the BNP sets up Scottish youth camps

It's a nightmare political vision: burning crosses, Nazi salutes and extremist indoctrination. This is the dark heart of the British National Party - an organisation now setting up "youth camps" in Scotland.

The controversial far-right training regime was launched last month in Wiltshire and immediately drew comparisons with the Hitler Youth and Islamic jihad boot camps Now, campaign groups fear a return of the fascist and white-supremacist symbolism seen at previous Scottish events. An outdoor event held in Scotland several years ago saw BNP activists joking about concentration camps and burning a wooden cross in an undisclosed Highland location.

Scott McLean - one of the most senior BNP figures in Scotland - was filmed giving a Nazi salute, and other BNP members were recorded shouting "one-two-three-Auschwitz" before grinning activists gave Hitler salutes to the camera. At one point a man was cheered as he threw petrol on to a burning cross towering over a group of initiates.

At the new brand of camps unveiled last month, children as young as 12 are trained in shooting air rifles and in self-defence, and they learn an alternative version of history as sanctioned by party leader Nick Griffin, who has repeatedly claimed that the Holocaust never happened.

In between shooting lessons, children are instructed in the art of making dangerous weapons from everyday objects. "Dutch Arrows" are manufactured from string and sharpened garden canes, and the BNP website reports that one 13-year-old boy was able to launch an arrow more than 150 metres. Police have confirmed that the darts, if used outside the supervised campsite setting, could constitute offensive weapons.

The BNP told the Sunday Herald that it will roll out camps across Scotland within the next year, and adult activists are using social networking sites such as Bebo to recruit youngsters to the BNP's hardline nationalist cause.

BNP youth leader Mike Howson, a former soldier, said: "We eventually plan to have camps in all the regions. We've achieved our targets for youth recruitment in Scotland. We'll be doing camps there within the next 12 months."

The BNP has applied for government funding to pay for the camps, he added, but has so far been unsuccessful in its bid for state cash. Applications are now being made to charities.

Despite its claims to be a mainstream party, the BNP has faced censure in the past for its alignment with European fascist groups and the Nazi overtones of some of its actions.

Publicity material for the camps is designed to appeal to youths by offering a sense of inclusion and strength. An advert on the BNP's Bebo site promotes the organisation as a "big brother" to its young target audience. It boasts: "Only the YBNP and its big brother the BNP can secure a future for the indigenous children of this land."

Though party leaders say the youth camps are about "moral training" and education, they also aim to lure children with the promise of powerful roles within the adult wing of the party. "The youth wing can only get bigger and better, with older members already being fast-tracked into positions within the party," a BNP statement said.

Campaign groups responded furiously to news of the party's planned expansion among Scottish children. A spokesman for anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: "Their attempts to politically indoctrinate Scottish youth with their messages of prejudice and division are sickening. There is no place in Scotland for these camp sites of hate."

The recent surge in BNP youth activity has been driven by a conference of European nationalists earlier this year, which brought extremist groups together to "preserve our shared white European heritage". Skinhead delegates from hard-right Czech and German youth groups joined their hosts from the Swedish National Democratic Youth movement.

Revelations over the training and political schooling of children will come as a blow to the BNP, which is struggling to assert itself as a legitimate political force in Thursday's European elections.

Party leader Griffin was convicted in 1998 of inciting racial hatred. He has also referred to the Holocaust as the Holohoax'. Griffin has long sought to emulate the mainstream success of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the right-wing leader of France's National Front. Despite his ambitions, the BNP has been thwarted in recent years by a string of high-profile scandals and exposés.

Senior officials have been caught on camera making bigoted remarks against non-Christians, non-whites and homosexuals, and the party has failed to find any success outside of a few English heartlands.

A message left on Griffin's mobile phone asking to discuss this article elicited the one-word text message response: "Priceless!"

Sunday Herald

Let’s give the BNP publicity ... so we can all see what they really are

Here's shameful confession. When the online list of BNP members was published illegally earlier this year I sneaked a look, then went further and performed the postal code search to see who lived near me. Unhappily several did, and there, on the screen, were their names, addresses, home and mobile phone numbers and email addresses. For a split second, only a second I promise, I was tempted to call them and ask them why they had joined. Then sanity returned to remind me that even looking at such a list, thereby breaching these people's privacy, was a low and uncivilised thing to do. Sorry.

But the curiosity has not left me. Why do these people, living in my area of the city, part of the same community and rubbing shoulders with the same people in the street, believe in such an extreme and repugnant set of policies? What horrors are they encountering that have so riled them into hatred? On going about my business, have I somehow failed to spot Hassidic Jews drinking babies' blood in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens, Eastern European plumbers pimping children in the supermarket, Jihadists beheading Alan from the ironmongers for selling un-Islamic curtain hooks, all whilst stepping over the drugged bodies of black youths and publicly copulating gay men? In which parallel universe do my local BNP supporters do their shopping, and what dystopia has so ruined their lives that would make them give their money to Nick Griffin?

A great deal of academic research has helped us trace the rise of the BNP in English regions of high deprivation and racial tension, highlighting the government's failure to address core issues that stoke a sense of grievance and imagined victimhood from the white working class. Such voters tell us, by supporting fascists, that they feel alienated and abandoned. Some of their anxieties may be justified but most of it is poppycock, since the "immigrants" they imagine are here to steal their livelihoods, culture and opportunities are fellow sufferers, feeling just as marginalised and abandoned as they do.

In these areas of tension, BNP voters are unsurprisingly poor, uneducated, frightened, and highly susceptible to coercion from Griffin's Cambridge-educated forked tongue. What, though, is the excuse for my fellow local souls turning to the hard right, including a few whose pleasant sandstone dwellings sit peacefully amongst mature lime trees, and whose worst social assault is a BMW car alarm going off in the night because a well-fed fox has jumped on it? What forms a racist when their lives are under neither economic nor social pressure? Perhaps we are about to find out.

A few weeks ago I wrote that I believed the British are not sufficiently stupid to return a BNP candidate in the forthcoming European elections. Subsequent polling in the last few days appears to be proving me wrong.

Even more worrying is that the party's sights have swivelled away from their tense, English heartlands of racial strife and are looking north.

The British National Party are currently campaigning hard in Scotland, openly declaring on their website and blogs that they hope to build on two things; the MPs' expenses scandal and the rise of Scottish nationalism. The former is an easy target, but the latter marks a sinister distortion.

Last Saturday in Clydebank, a BNP candidate handed out 2000 leaflets. Many people taking them would have of course instantly binned them. Some may have taken the leaflets home to read. Some definitely stopped to speak with the candidate. A few, allegedly, joined up. No-one, however, demonstrated, or set up a stall in opposition.

Reading the subsequent forums on and linked from the party's website makes the blood run cold, even taking into account (judging by The Scotsman's website) that a significant proportion of people who contribute to online forums seem to be fantasists. Several threads celebrated that Scotland was better at "keeping out immigrants" and that we should be proud of the rise again of our national pride.

This was tempered in other threads by equally disquieting posts declaring that the SNP are "after the Islamic vote", citing the contribution to the Scottish Islamic Foundation, and that former nationalists should now switch to the BNP to stop an independent Scotland ruled by sharia.

Despite being an abhorrent, hate-filled slug, Nick Griffin is a clever, highly educated man, and none of this insane warping of the independence debate is by chance. When given only short and rare opportunities to be questioned, such as during an interview on Sky news last week, Griffin comes across as a calm, professional politician. Griffin's views on interracial marriage, enforced repatriation and homosexuality are unlikely to play well to a public looking for fairness, justice and tolerance, hence that side of the BNP is kept markedly quiet, making sure the party's formal policy declarations remain as insubstantial as gossamer.

Hence it's a fair bet that most of the leaflet recipients in Clydebank know virtually nothing of the hidden wish list of the BNP that leaks out in error from time to time.

This is partly because Griffin and his political thugs are given so little chance to be tested, out from under their stone. Question Time last week, focusing on the European elections, included a UKIP member on its panel, but no BNP representative. Why not? Surely even one question from a black person in the audience about not being allowed to marry who they wished, or being exiled to a country they have never visited, would have been enough to rip the paper-thin mask of civility from the BNP's Janus face?

Griffin is sly enough to realise that our independence debate is already highly volatile and emotional, and as such has decided that we are prime targets for creating a new layer of scaremongering and anxiety-driven hate.

Watching BNP footage of Clydebank residents politely receiving leaflets has made me feel stupid for over-estimating our resistance to this vile manipulation. We are all free to vote for the party of our choice, but we must be absolutely sure we know what it stands for. They're not out to make the trains run on time.

Muriel Gray writing in the Scottish Sunday Herald