BNP makes Sellafield legal threat

The BNP has said it is considering "legal avenues" after its leader was refused permission to visit the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant.

Nick Griffin had wanted a fact-finding tour of the site, which is in his North West European Parliament constituency. But Sellafield Limited, the facility's operator, said it was concerned about security and possible demonstrations. Party officials have rejected an offer by the company to hold a meeting away from the Cumbria plant. Mr Griffin had wanted to visit Sellafield in his capacity as a member of the European Parliament's environment committee.

BNP spokesman Simon Darby said: "It is outrageous that a democratically-elected member of parliament for the North West cannot see something in his own constituency and directly in relation to his position. In 2003 Sellafield let in a delegation from Sinn Fein. If they can let them in why not us? They are undermining the democratic process."

He said the party was now looking at "legal avenues" to see if an on-site meeting could still go ahead. He added: "There is no point in arranging an off-site meeting. If Nick wanted that he could have invited them to Brussels. You have to be there to understand the scale and complexities of the operation."

A Sellafield Ltd spokesman said: "We have offered to meet Mr Griffin and his team off site to discuss this in full, in accordance with our policy of being open and transparent with all stakeholders. Safety is our number one value at Sellafield and we were concerned that an on-site visit by Mr Griffin and his team could cause an unnecessary distraction, with the potential for this to have a detrimental effect on safety."

BBC

BNP caught reporting rubbish (as usual)

A report currently topping the main page of the BNP website claims that police in Brussels smashed up a birthday party that was 'to celebrate a Flemish patriot’s birthday'. The 'Flemish patriot' is Filip Dewinter, a leader of Vlaams Belang, a Belgium-based Islamophobic far-right group that was formed from the ashes of Vlaams Blok, which disbanded in 2004 after it was convicted of 'repeated incitement to discrimination'. Vlaams Belang is the almost identical successor to Vlaams Blok though it has, in the exact same way that the BNP has, cleaned up its act, cosmetically at least.

Some of its views may sound familiar to those who follow the varied machinations of the British National Party. It calls for a return to 'traditional values', the woman to be returned to the home, the end of the multicultural society, opposition to the law enabling same-sex marriage, and opposition to the proposal enabling adoption by same-sex couples, the removal of the right to abortion except in the case of rape or for medical reasons, the repeal of anti-racism and anti-discrimination legislation on the dubious grounds of free speech and (in something of a giveaway that the BNP has managed to avoid) full and unconditional amnesty for people convicted for collaboration with Nazi Germany in World War II.

The birthday party wasn't a birthday party at all, of course. A few weeks ago an anti-Islam demonstration was proposed which was to take place in Luxembourg Place in the centre of Brussels. The Mayor, Freddy Thielemans, banned the demo on the grounds that the organisers, a coalition of far-right groups (including Vlaams Belang) calling itself Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE), was deliberately inflammatory and that the demonstration was a threat to public order. The demo was planned for, surprise-surprise, the eleventh of the month - the sixth anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks.

The demonstration, which SIOE claimed would pull in up to 20,000 protestors, only managed 200 - but even these couldn't stay out of trouble for the mere thirty minutes that the illegal demo took place. The birthday champagne was hardly open before the police piled in to close the whole event down, arresting Filip Dewinter and Vlaams Belang Party Secretary Luk Van Nieuwenhuysen after scuffles began.

Rather than attack Vlaams Belang for going ahead with an illegal demonstration (which it certainly would if it had been organised by Muslims, liberals, gays or 'reds'), the BNP simply expresses its forlorn hope that 'Europe looks set for more of these kinds of protests as decent European patriots become more and more frustrated and angered...'.

If you'd like to read a report of the demo without the BNP's bizarre bias, there's one here.