BNP leader interferes in independent’s work

The leader of the British National Party is trying to interfere in the work of an independent member of the London Assembly.

Nick Griffin, who recently appointed himself acting London regional organiser for the racist party, visited Chris Roberts at his City Hall office on Friday to discuss “GLA work” according to a report on the BNP’s London Patriot website. Roberts is employed by the Greater London Authority as an assistant to Richard Barnbrook, who earlier this month resigned the BNP whip until “allegations of serious wrong doing concerning senior British National Party officials” are investigated.

Griffin’s attempt to influence Roberts to work in the interests of the BNP rather than for the member he is paid to assist is highly irregular. The previous night Griffin told a party meeting in Barking and Dagenham, from which many dissident longstanding activists had been excluded, that he himself would be taking charge of the party’s campaign for the London Assembly and mayoral elections in 2012.

“To be successful, the BNP need a high profile candidate who can generate the publicity needed to mobilise the capital’s remaining demoralised traditional British population to come out and vote,” wrote Martin Wingfield, Griffin’s communications officer following the meeting. But that’s not all, once elected the BNP representative must be influential within the Assembly chamber and make sure that the patriotic voice of British Nationalism is heard at every opportunity,” an implied criticism of Barnbrook’s failure to do so.

London Patriot also reports that Griffin had a long meeting on Friday with solicitors to prepare for the next round of the Equality and Human Rights Commission court case over the party’s racist constitution.

“Mr Griffin will be representing himself in court against a renewed attack from the EHRC which has included a request to have the BNP leader imprisoned,” according to London Patriot. Whether this is because the impecunious BNP cannot afford a barrister or because no barrister is prepared to act for the dictatorial BNP leader is not stated.

The Barking and Dagenham meeting was treated to more of Griffin’s lies in response to questions about serious irregularities in the party that have emerged during the course of Eddy Butler’s unsuccessful leadership challenge.

The raising of the nominations threshold for a leadership challenge – to 20% of members of at least two years’ standing – was, he claimed, not his decision but that of the members at a party general meeting on 14 February this year, which adopted the new party constitution.

In fact members were only shown those parts of the constitution that had been amended in response to the Equality Commission legal action. Griffin slipped in the new rules on leadership challenges without even showing those clauses to members expected to vote for them and the amended constitution could only be accepted or rejected as a whole.

He said he would now ask for changes to the constitution to give the party leader a longer term of office, in other words abolishing the right to challenge him each year.

Griffin was cagey in response to questions about the party’s contract with Jim Dowson, the fundraising consultant with a string of criminal convictions whom Griffin brought in at great expense at the start of 2008. One questioner pointed out that the contract Dowson produced at an employment tribunal hearing over the sacked BNP employee Michaela Mackenzie had ended at December 2009. Griffin said that was not true. He claimed that Dowson’s help had been “invaluable” and said he would extend the contract with him if he felt it was in the party’s interests to do so.

Many in the BNP believe that Griffin will extend Dowson’s contract if it is in Griffin’s and Dowson’s personal financial interests to do so, but those who might say that openly had been kept out of the meeting.

Griffin also blamed the BNP’s current dire financial state on those who had called for members to stop giving money to the party until there was greater financial transparency, claiming this had cost the party around £300,000, an unlikely figure, and an attempt to divert attention from the fact that it is Griffin’s reckless pursuit of hopeless legal actions and Dowson’s huge salary and commission that are the largest contributing factors to the BNP’s debt mountain, now believed to be around £600,000.

Hope not hate

Breakfast of the Long Knives

“Someone must have been spreading lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning.”

Oh dear. Things continue to look bad for the Band of Brothers. This morning, the latest round of suspensions began, with Clive “Beria” Jefferson's latest legally dubious letter landing on the doormats of various BNP Members.

Names mentioned so far include Chris Roberts (London Organiser), Rowena Savage (Bromley Organiser), Bob Gertner (London elections officer), John Savage (South West fundholder), Julian Leppert and the fragrant Charlotte “I wish that Derrick Bird could have come down to London & shot dead some illegal immigrants” Lewis, along with “at least 20 others”.

Interestingly, all of those suspended are well-known activists and organisers, rather than Rank-and-File Members (or “plebs” as they're allegedly referred to by the Party Leadership).

Oh, and they share one other thing in common: It's the strangest coincidence, but they're all supporting Eddy Butler in the Leadership Contest!

Given that the letter and the resulting suspensions seem not only to run counter to natural law, but even the BNP's own ramshackle Constitution, it can surely only be a matter of time before someone decides to challenge the Kafkaesque goings-on at Head Office.

Although, the way things are going, the Party will have shut up shop and gone out of business long before it ever gets to court.

The Story is Developing...

A most uncivil war.

The last three months since the General Election have been a fascinating insight into how the BNP functions and it seems like each day since then there has been a major cock up, calamity or act committed under the BNPs and Griffins "interesting" idea of internal democracy.

Todays latest news is that Julian Leppert (former councillor), John Savage (S.W. Fundholder) and Chris Roberts (London Organiser) are amongst about 20 BNP activists at the latest count suspended today. They are being investigated for "serious breaches of the BNP code of conduct" after supporting Eddy Butlers leadership nomination.

With the nominations for leadership closing tomorrow one has to ask if Griffin is so worried about Butler getting close to the amount that he needs, is he purging the people who are Butlers most vocal supporters that can be identified from the various websites and fora?

The timing of the letters is a bit of a surprise with it being the day before the nominations close unless of course this is a total cock up by Griffin & Dowson enterprises and they should have arrived tomorrow.

Edit
This is the full list of the various suspensions including the members suspended over the last few weeks:-
Bob Gertner (London)
Charlotte Lewis (London)
Rowena Savage (London)
John Savage (South West)
Charlie Baillie (Scotland)
Simon Bennett (South West)
Mark Collett - expelled (Yorkshire)
Max Dunbar – resigned (Scotland)
Andrew Emerson (South East)
James Fitton (South West)
Robert Lassen – expelled (West Midlands))
Peter Lucas (South West)
Peter Mullins (South West)
Frank O’Brian - expelled (West Midlands)
Peter Phillips (South East)
Peter Squire (North West)
Peter Stafford (North West)
Richard Trower (South East)
Anthony Ward (North West)
Jeffrey Marshall (London)
Christine Mitchell (Eastern)
Simon Deacon – resigned (Eastern)
Chris Roberts (London)
Bob Gertner (London)
John Savage (South West)
Carl Whelpdale (North East)
Roy Jones (Scotland)
Shelley Rose (Eastern)
Julian Leppert (Eastern)
Lawrence Rustem (London)
Tony Avery (London)
Dennis Boater

BNP officers ‘scared’ Griffin will purge them

A former deputy chairman of the British National Party says that many party officers and staff members are “scared to say what they feel” because of the way Nick Griffin takes “every bit of criticism as a personal attack”.

Scott McLean, a BNP member for 20 years, Scottish organiser from 1990 to 2007 and deputy chairman from 2002 to 2007, condemns Griffin mismanagement and “wrong actions [that] have purged this party … of the best that we had”.

Writing in support of Eddy Butler, who is challenging Griffin for the party leadership, he declares: “Every problem I’ve seen in this party is due to the wrong people being given jobs normally because of who they are, not of what they can do. We’ve seen masses of talent get thrown out or leave the party. Ask yourself how many management people or officers are now gone because of policy disagreements? Very little. They are all gone due to mismanagement.”

Echoing Butler’s accusations over the BNP’s finances, which are born out by Searchlight’s analysis, McLean continues: “Ask yourself why the party finances are a complete shambles? Lots of money going through over the years. Misspent and thrown away on stupid misguided actions.”

McLean’s criticism of Griffin is significant not only because of his party position but also because he was one of a small group of people who organised Griffin’s takeover as party leader in 1999. McLean, who claims dubiously that he built up Scotland as the largest region in the party in the early 1990s, had recognised that John Tyndall, the party’s prime founder and former leader, was holding the party back. “His outlook was more on the past than the future,” says McLean, stopping short of admitting that the past to which Tyndall looked was a pre-1945 German one rather than anything British.

McLean identified Griffin, then not even a BNP member, as “by far the most impressive” of a few potential new leaders for the party. Griffin “took a look at the party and saw it’s [sic] potential. A short time after that he became involved,” writes McLean.

The leadership challenge came in 1999. “Modernisers in the party myself included,” explains McLean, “felt that the party was being held back by not embracing new techniques that had proved successful for our elections guru Eddy Butler. He hadn’t got the proper backing with finance and manpower when he needed it most. Nick was put forward as the candidate for change.”

McLean advised Griffin and his campaign manager Tony Lecomber, who in the 1980s had served a three year prison sentence for explosives offences and later was jailed for another three years for assaulting a Jewish teacher, to “run a clean fight”, which, he says, they did.

However “Mr Tyndall’s camp ran a dirty campaign which I didn’t expect from him. … John Tyndall thought that the BNP was his and he found out the hard way that he was only a part of the machine.”

McLean’s implication is clear: that like the pigs in Animal Farm the former “candidate for change” has now become just like the old dictator he replaced.

Butler has also won the support of Chris Roberts, the BNP’s London regional organiser, who, like McLean, claims that the party’s branches and groups have not prospered because Griffin falls out with far too many people.

He also calls for an immediate stop to non-members of the party having “a bigger and more influential say on its affairs than the members”, a reference to Jim Dowson, the convicted criminal who acts as Griffin’s right-hand man and effectively owns the BNP.

“Furthermore,” continues Roberts, “it is disgraceful to employ non-members on the payroll … it’s our activists who got BNP representatives elected in the first place and they should be put above any outsider and especially outsiders from rival parties”. Although he does not name him, his remarks are directed at Patrick Harrington, a former comrade of Griffin from his National Front “political soldier” days in the 1980s, who is now one of the leaders of the rival, though much smaller, Third Way party.

Harrington is the general secretary of the BNP’s fake trade union, the speciously named Solidarity and was recently taken onto the BNP’s payroll in a human resources role.

Roberts also has some damaging comments on the BNP’s accounts, which have failed to meet the deadline for submission to the Electoral Commissioner “when the National Treasurer has assured us that everything is in order.

“Well I know for a fact that everything is not in order,” writes Roberts. “I have spoken to members of staff who have been paid very late and to activists who have not had their print bills settled for leaflets for the last election. Stop treating the members like idiots. Tell us what the real position is so there can be a proper consensus on what to do!

“The party needs a coherent management structure that all members can understand and follow. Our accounts need to be open to members to examine so they know exactly what amounts are being received and a detailed account of what it’s being spent on. We need to get our talented people running this party efficiently utilising the undoubted skills that exist throughout our ranks. People being employed in specific areas where they are skilled, not employing people in positions of authority because the chairman thinks they are a ‘good egg’.”

Butler has until 10 August to obtain the signatures on nomination forms of 20% of the party’s 4,200 members with at least 24 months’ continuous membership. Whether he succeeds or fails, with such prominent party activists in his camp, the rifts in the BNP are set to deepen.

Sonia Gable at Hope Not Hate