Far right leader gets suspended prison sentence for race hate speech

Kevin Quinn, the leader of a right wing party convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence after a racist speech in South Oxhey, has received a six-month suspended prison sentence.

Quinn launched a tirade of abuse at a British First Party rally after setting up a stall with Union flags in the shopping precinct on Saturday, December 1, 2007. The 44-year-old was arrested after he was heard to shout all Muslims are b******s, while referring to the plight of British school teacher Gillian Gibbons, accused of blasphemy in Sudan after allowing children to name a Teddy Bear Muhammad.

Quinn was found guilty after a second trial at St Albans Crown Court in March and sentence was adjourned for reports until Monday. The jury in the first trial was discharged when they could not reach a verdict. A two-year suspended sentence imposed on the unemployed father of four, for disseminating racist literature had only just expired when he took to the stand in South Oxhey.

In mitigation Mark Kimsey, said although Quinn - who sat in the dock with his bag dressed in a blue tracksuit - held “extreme views” the court case had had a profound effect on the party leader and its 1000 members.

Mr Kimsey said: “The words uttered on that day weren’t to cause offence but the emotion was some what high. Earlier he had been handed an article in the Daily Mail about the woman in Sudan and the naming of a Teddy Bear Muhammad. The words were said in the heat of the moment and he apologises for the upset.”

He added: “One shopkeeper took exception to the words uttered, but there was no public unrest.”

One of Quinn’s children had been bullied as a result of the media attention to the case, which had caused the defendant to think about his place in the party. Mr Kimsey said: “He is reconsidering his role in the party. He has learnt a hard lesson by the impact the court case has had on him and those closest to him. He will now concentrate on his family rather than the political views he holds.”

Before sentencing, Judge Stephen Warner said: “The jury found you used abusive or insulting words directed towards those of the Muslim faith. There is a right of freedom of speech in this country, which extends to those such as yourself who seek to express in public views such as yours however offensive many may find them to be. That right, however, does not include the right to insult or abuse such members of the public that are exposed to that behaviour.

“A member of the public felt sufficiently strongly to contact police because you had abused that freedom of expression. You have a long history of involvement in extreme organisations and clearly hold deeply entrenched views consistent with that ideology.”

The judge noted the party operated on a small scale and was a “marginal less than sophisticated fringe organisation”. He concluded: “The option I face is to send you to prison today, which many would regard you thoroughly deserve, or an alternative course to mark the seriousness of the offence but allow you to stay in the community.”

Judge Warner suspended the six-month sentence for 18 months. Quinn was also ordered to carry out 250 hours unpaid work, and subjected to a four-month curfew from 7pm to 6am. He will be supervised by probation for six months.

Watford Observer

BNP pulls out of elections in Stafford

The British National Party has decided not to field a candidate in the borough council elections in Stafford this year amid fears they will lose their jobs.

The extreme nationalists had announced plans earlier this year to contest seats in the Highfields ward in Stafford and St Michael’s, Stone, for the first time on May 3. But party spokesman Simon Darby told the Newsletter the potential candidates were concerned they could lose their jobs as there had been similar cases in other areas.

And he also admitted the party had failed to drum up enough interest from the public.

He added: "There have been incidents in other parts of the country where people have lost their jobs. We had no-one prepared to stand in Stafford so we’ve had to abandon our plans for now but we’ll be back at the next election."

But former Liberal Democrat borough councillors Frank James and Nicholas Brundrit will stand again as Labour councillors. Mr James, who was ousted at the 1998 election just as he was due to be made mayor of the town, will contest the Tillington ward after defecting from his former party.

Mr James, whose father Doug was a Tory councillor and borough mayor, said: "One of the reasons I have changed is because I was so upset with the county council decision over the closure of the care homes. I thought: 'If you can’t beat them join them.' I felt I needed a change of direction. I have always represented people as a trade unionist and said I would not stand again as a Liberal Democrat councillor. I just felt I could go no further with them.

"I was approached by all parties, including the BNP and independent groups but I decided to join Labour. I discussed it with my father before he died and he was happy about it. People know me in the Tillington ward. I live within it and I want to make things happen."

Meanwhile, Tory councillor Mike Heenan said the Conservative party was fielding a candidate in every ward for the first time and one of them was his own son Mark.

Mark Heenan, 25, said: "I have been quite involved with the party for a while and with my dad being a councillor I’ve been involved for most of my life so I decided to stand myself."

And Liberal Democrat councillor Brendan McKeown is standing in the Haywood and Hixon ward rather than Chartley, as he lives in Hixon.

The candidate lists were handed in to Stafford Borough Council yesterday before the deadline at noon. Potential candidates now have four days to withdraw.

Staffordshire Newsletter

N9S rebrands itself - though it's still nazi

Oh dear. The very smart though utterly hopeless leader of N9S, Kevin Quinn, must be getting desperate. Following countless months of stagnation and a complete lack of ideas, he's fallen back on the mainstay that sees most far-right parties through extended periods of inactivity - he's changed the party's name.

The chubby Quinn obviously sees some advantage in naming his party after the fast-failing England First Party, recently two councillors lighter after the defections of the party leader and one of his drinking buddies, so has renamed N9S the British First Party.

The old name, N9S, was a direct reference to Kristallnacht, which referred to the events that took place in Germany and Austria on the night of November 9–10, 1938, when Jewish homes were ransacked in numerous German cities along with 8,000 Jewish shops, towns and villages, as ordinary citizens and stormtroopers destroyed buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in smashed windows — the origin of the name 'Night of Broken Glass'. Jews were beaten to death; 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps; and 1,668 synagogues ransacked with 267 set on fire.

Which shows pretty clearly where Quinn and his micro-party stand on the subject of Jews.

It's not too difficult to guess then where Quinn and co stand on the subject of blacks, Asians and gays either. And your guess would be correct. Back in February 2006, N9S was infiltrated by a Sunday Mirror reporter, Stewart Maclean, who reported;

During my time with the hate-filled skinheads, there were organised street fights, random violent attacks and paramilitary training camps. Evil leader Kevin Quinn, a father-of-four from Bedford, is serving a nine-month suspended prison sentence after admitting possessing violent Nazi literature.

But the threat of prison didn't stop him from a verbal attack on a Jew in the street last week, which I witnessed after joining the gang for an afternoon rally in Central London.

As I secretly filmed, the bully, 40, picked out a young passer-by in broad daylight and yelled: "Juden Raus!", a Nazi slogan meaning "Jew out". Another party member - dad-of-two Jason Okane, 36, from Hastings, East Sussex - yelled: "A Jew! What shall we do, get the noose?"

The shocked victim crossed the street to avoid a fight. Later unmarried Quinn made it clear he preferred to use violence to enforce his evil message.

He told me: "We need to fight any way we can. I'm all Nazi, a total Nazi. We've got to look after ourselves and we need to get people trained up. Now we've got the Muslims and the blacks here we need to stop it. Let's fucking do it. I'll fight for Britain forever."

Maclean's report goes on;

The highlight of their social calendar is a celebration of Hitler's life - held in a secret location every April. They wear Nazi uniforms, swear allegiance to National Socialism and read passages from Hitler's Mein Kampf. Eaton told me: "What he done was right, he just done so much right, didn't he?"

The Electoral Commission, with whom the N9S/British First Party (BFP) are registered, holds the party's latest submitted accounts, which only go as far as December 2004. This peculiar document showed that in the twelve months to that date, the party delivered or handed out 100,000 leaflets. At the end of the year, it had achieved the grand total of 32 members (if the accounts are to be believed, £320 was received in membership subscriptions at £10 a go) though another part of the accounts states that;

In 2004, the membership rose from 350 people to 980 when we introduced a free membership period, this hopefully will generate income when members pay their yearly subs.

Apparently not.

Quinn's ridiculous little nazi party also seems to encourage youngsters into it. According to Maclean, some members of the forum were as young as twelve - certainly too young to vote, too young to belong to a political party and way too young to be hanging around with a bunch of nazi thugs.

The name change is only part of what the BFP is up to. As far as we could see there are no longer any mentions of national socialism, no swastikas and all the verbal attacks have been toned down and will soon, no doubt, disappear altogether from the website.

All this is very reminiscent of the way Nick Griffin has rebranded the BNP. The old hatred, violence and criminality are all still there but, like Griffin, Quinn has swept them under the carpet in an attempt to fool the public into believing that their respective parties are respectable. They're not. They are both, the leaders and the parties they represent, the BNP and the BFP, Holocaust-denying fascist criminals.