Sick Heil

Croatian football chiefs are using a sick fascist hatemonger to whip up a vile racist frenzy among fans

A Sun investigation today reveals the Croatian FA is behind a cynical campaign encouraging thugs - who will be at Wembley for tomorrow's match against England - to worship the right-wing nut spreading hatred and Sieg Heil chants on the terraces.

Shocking songs by fascist rocker Marko Perkovic that glorify genocide and Hitler's death camps are played at Croatia's home matches. And his sick slogans are chanted by thousands of fans.

England striker Emile Heskey was subjected to sinister obscenities and disgusting monkey chants the last time the two sides met. The squad for the World Cup qualifier boasts a host of black stars including Heskey, goal ace Jermain Defoe and Ashley Cole.

Perkovic - nicknamed Thompson after the machinegun he used in the Balkans war - is loved by fans of the Croatia side. They are notorious for wearing the uniform of the Nazis' puppet Ustashe regime that ran Croatia during World War II. The songs are blasted out to crank up intimidation levels inside Zagreb's Maksimir Stadium. It instantly provokes a fascist fervour as fans - who once formed a human swastika on the terraces - launch into the Sieg Heil salutes popular at Thompson's concerts.

Fans repeatedly chant the notorious Ustashe war cry "Za dom - Spremni", which means "For the Homeland - ready" and is popularised in Thompson's songs.

Croatia's football chiefs have been repeatedly condemned by FIFA and punished over fans' racist thuggery. Yet stadium security chiefs make no attempt to curb the show of hate, which inevitably continues when fans follow the team abroad.

Team manager Slaven Bilic has even admitted playing Thompson's music in the dressing room to fire up his players, who include Arsenal striker Eduardo. The Sun witnessed the tactic being used to stir a 30,000-strong crowd into fascist chants and salutes at Croatia's home match against Belarus last Saturday. About 8,000 of those fans are expected at Wembley tomorrow.

Our investigators also attended a Thompson concert, where bare-chested fans openly gave the stiff-armed Sieg Heil salute while proudly waving Croatian flags. Some even took SWORDS to the show - where Thompson, 42, posed on stage with his own blade. Thompson, an avid footie fan who wears paramilitary costume at gigs, is a cult figure on white supremacist website Stormfront.

He has been barred from performing in countries including the Netherlands and Austria because of security fears. He glorifies the Ustashe regime which committed genocide in World War II and his chilling lyrics glamorise Nazi concentration camps where 90,000 innocent Jews, gipsies and Serbs were murdered. He also backs Croat generals who committed crimes against humanity during the bloody Balkans conflict in the 1990s.

His official video for one song, hailed as Croatia's footie anthem, honours warlord Mate Boban, who led a 1990s genocide campaign. Croatia's fans and players reacted angrily when the song was not played at a 2007 match against Israel for fear of causing offence.

Human rights campaigners demanded FIFA take action against Croatia for promoting Thompson. Nazi hunter Dr Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said: "It is unacceptable, irresponsible and dangerous. His lyrics support the Ustashe and encourage nostalgia for a regime that committed genocide."

Anti-Nazi magazine Searchlight said Croatia should be forced to play behind closed doors.

Croatian MP Damir Kajin said: "The activities of Marko Perkovic give the appearance that Croatia is not a civilised country."

There is no suggestion Croatia's football officials or players share Thompson's fascist views. Manager Bilic - an ex-West Ham and Everton player - has previously condemned the far right and Croatia's fascist past.

The Sun asked the Croatian Football Federation why it played Thompson's songs and why fans were allowed to give Nazi salutes. We also asked whether officials considered it acceptable to link the national team with a singer accused of glorifying genocide. The CFF declined to answer. A spokesman said only: "I hope we play a good game and we win it."

Thompson was unavailable for comment last night.

Sun

Is racism rife in European football, and what is being done to stop it?

Why are we asking this now?

Racism has long been an issue in football, that most tribal of sports; but in recent weeks, the game in Europe has faced a series of incidents that have reminded British supporters of the Continent's problems and may have brought matters to a head.

First, Croatia fans made monkey noises at Emile Heskey during England's World Cup qualifying fixture in Zagreb, and were fined £15,000 by Fifa, the game's global governing body. Next, England asked for their forthcoming friendly against Spain to be rearranged away from Madrid's Bernabeu stadium, where black England players suffered similar abuse in a fixture four years ago. And yesterday Uefa decided that Atlético Madrid would be forced to play their next two home matches at a neutral venue and fined €150,000 (£120,000) after supporters abused black Marseille players a fortnight ago.

Where does racism most affect the game in Europe?

Spain and Italy have long had reputations as being particularly poor at policing racist supporters, and in both leagues black players are abused for the colour of their skin as a matter of course. In Spain, leadership from politicians and senior figures in the game has been seriously lacking. After national team coach Luis Aragones called Thierry Henry a "black piece of shit", condemnation from politicians didn't exactly pour out, and it was no great surprise supporters unfurled a banner which read "Aragones 1 – Henry 0" at the same game against England in 2004 at which Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole were constantly barracked.

Italian fans are known for the same kind of behaviour. Some Italian clubs' supporters are also subject to a troubling neo-fascist influence, with Lazio, the club that Mussolini supported, particularly notorious in that regard. Meanwhile, away fixtures against Eastern European teams are often an endurance test for black players.

Why are fans so susceptible to racist influences?

In the aforementioned countries, it's partly to do with wider demography: countries with smaller ethnic minority populations are almost always more hostile towards them. But some believe that football's insular culture is especially prone to such problems.

"The [football] hard-man lives in a dangerous and unchanging world," wrote sociologist Dave Robins in 1994. "Permanently sensitised to 'trouble' in his environment, his paranoid fantasies about defending his 'patch' against outsiders make him ripe for manipulation by the politics of the extreme right."

Do the same problems apply in the UK?

To some extent, racism can still be found in British stadiums. Just a few weeks ago, Tottenham supporters chanted racist, homophobic abuse at their former captain Sol Campbell in a game against his current club, Portsmouth. Compared to much of Europe, though, such incidents are few and far between. "When you go to a football match in the UK, you don't expect to be abused for the colour of your skin," says Piara Powar, director of the anti-racism campaign Kick It Out. "In Spain, Italy, some parts of Eastern Europe, you would expect it."

Why are things better here?

Partly as part of a broader cultural difference. "There's a wide appreciation of multiculturalism here," Powar says, "even if there's been a backlash against it in the last few years." Black players became a fixture in British football much earlier than in Spain or Italy, and so British football went through its own racist phase earlier – in the 70s and 80s supporters thought nothing of throwing bananas at players like Cyrille Regis and John Barnes – but, as a result, they dealt with them earlier, too.

What do we do differently?

Campaigns like Kick It Out started earlier here than they did in many other European countries, and clubs founded their own anti-racist initiatives which have become part of the furniture of the game in this country. This week, for instance, Kick it Out starts a "One game, one community" campaign aimed at encouraging inclusivity in the game at all levels.

Anecdotally, most supporters say that such efforts have coincided with a major reduction in racism in the game. As early as 1994, a survey found that 84 per cent of football fanzine editors felt that racism had diminished significantly in the previous five years; and, while homophobia is still rife, serious racist incidents are now very rarely a feature of the clashes between Premier League teams. Most British players and supporters are much more likely to encounter trouble in international fixtures or club games in European competitions.

What is Fifa doing about it?

Football's authorities have long talked a good game on anti-racism. Before the 2006 World Cup, Fifa president Sepp Blatter declared that "more than the sword of Damocles" was hanging over national associations that failed to take adequate steps to prevent racism. "This," he went on, "is the end of non-compliance with what our society is asking football to do." Since then, though, the organisation's actions have been far from the firm deterrents that such a speech would suggest. The decision to fine Croatia a mere £15,000 in the light of the clear evidence of abuse against Emile Heskey has drawn particular derision.

"Croatia were fined a few thousand quid," Rio Ferdinand said afterwards. "What's that going to do? That is not going to stop people shouting racist or homophobic abuse. Sepp Blatter likes to speak up about things that are good for Fifa's image but I would love to see them stand up and dish out the right punishments for these incidents."

What would the right punishment be?

It's widely agreed that a points deduction would be a far more powerful disincentive for abusive supporters, who might then see their teams lose out in competition. But many say that it has no chance of getting off the ground because of the minefield of potential legal challenges to such a decision. If that fear – and the inertia of member nations where racism is not high on the agenda – stops Fifa taking stronger action, it's hard to see how the organisation's actions can have much impact on racist behaviour.

Is anyone else doing more?

Uefa, which has responsibility for the club game in Europe, has taken a more convincing anti-racism stance. Its decision to hit Atlético Madrid with a much heftier fine and to deny them home advantage for two fixtures is seen as much more likely to hurt supporters and club revenue – and therefore to motivate real change. There is a caveat to this: while the fine was levied because of racism, the home ban also took into account an attack on the opposition bus after the game, and no such punishment has been levied on purely anti-racist grounds. Still, says Piara Powar, "this is a momentous step. It shows Uefa's prepared to show leadership on the issue. And football is a very familial industry. If the daddy shows a lead, the national associations will follow."

Should clubs with racist supporters get points deducted?

Yes...

• Supporters don't regret a financial penalty in the way they do if their team suffers in competition If a victim's play is affected, it makes sense to deny the other team any advantage it might have gained
• A points deduction makes headlines and send a wider message that such behaviour will not be tolerated

No...

• Docking points is much more likely to produce an expensive, time-consuming legal challenge
• You could end up encouraging away fans to sneak into the home end and behave in a racist fashion on purpose
• It's wrong to punish the club, players and law-abiding supporters so severely for the actions of a few

Independent

Israeli ambassador condemns funeral of Nazi camp leader

Israel's ambassador to Croatia yesterday condemned the funeral given to a second World War concentration camp commander, saying it insulted the memory of those killed in the camp run by Croatia's collaborationist wartime Ustasha regime.

Dinko Sakic, who was in charge of the Jasenovac camp in northeastern Croatia during the second World War, died last week in Zagreb at the age of 87 while serving a jail sentence for war crimes.

"I'm convinced that the majority of the Croatian people are shocked by the way the funeral of the Jasenovac commander and murderer, dressed in an Ustasha uniform, was conducted," Israeli ambassador, Shmuel Meirom, said in a statement to the state news agency, Hina. "At the same time, I strongly condemn the inappropriate words of the priest who served at the funeral and said that Sakic was a model for all Croats. I'm convinced it is not an official attitude of the Catholic Church in Croatia."

According to Croatia's Vecernji List daily, Sakic was buried in the Ustasha uniform and described by the priest at the funeral as "a person Croats must be proud of". Mr Meirom said the event did not contribute to a positive image of Croatia, which had "made commendable efforts in recent years to condemn the years of the Ustasha regime".

The pro-Nazi puppet state of Croatia from 1941 to 1945 carried out persecutions and mass killings. Tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats (partisans) perished in Jasenovac, the worst of its concentration camps. The greatest number of victims at Jasenovac were Serbs. Most Jews murdered there were killed before 1942, after which Jewish inmates were transported to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Silesia.

Sakic was sentenced in 1999 to the then maximum 20-year jail term for war crimes after his extradition from Argentina, where he had lived since leaving Croatia at the end of the war. His trial was significant for Croatia as the late president Franjo Tudjman, who died in 1999, was often criticised for nationalistic policies and accused by Jewish groups of trying to whitewash Ustasha atrocities.

Irish Times

The BNP makes its play for young blood

Take a look at the shiny new Young BNP page and the first thing that strikes you is the sub-heading, 'the British Nationalist Youth Movement', a bunch of young people (mostly, it has to be said, female), an ad for daily news updates at £1 a minute (which appears twice on each page) and the image of the 'odel' rune, that the BNP intends to use as its logo for the British Nationalist Youth Movement, the YBNP and the Student BNP.

This rune seems to be a recurring motif in the BNP and one has to say that it seems a most peculiar symbol to use in an organisation that purports a) to espouse Christian values (to the extent of having its own sub-group, the Christian Council of Britain, run by well-known loon and fake vicar Robert West) and b) to not be, in any way, shape or form, racist. Why is that peculiar? Because the rune is acknowledged as Odinist and is used by white supremacists as representative of Aryan heritage and cultural pride. As an interesting aside, the Odal rune (the same thing) was the emblem of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) of the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen operating during World War II in the National Socialist Germany-sponsored Independent State of Croatia. Yes, Croatia.

Bearing in mind that the site is targeted at 13-18 year-olds, it seems odd that clicking on the Membership link takes one to a page that includes a poll on capital punishment, though in mitigation it has to be said that the jokes page is probably at about the right level for a low-teen and low-IQ BNP supporter.

Given the history of certain officers of the BNP and their penchant for sexual shenanigans, we took a look at the Organisation Structure, just to see who was running the BNP for young people, only to discover a large empty space under the heading 'Contact details of adults involved in the organisation...' But while there may be no named personnel responsible for the youth section of the party, there is a Child Protection Policy (CPP). God only knows who it's aimed at but here it is:

As an adult involved in the YBNP you have a responsibility to ensure that young people are protected from harm. It is the responsibility of each adult in the YBNP to ensure that:

• their behaviour is appropriate at all times
• they observe the rules established for the safety and security of young people
• they follow the procedures following suspicion, disclosure or allegation of child abuse
• they recognise the position of trust in which they have been placed; and
• in every respect, the relationships they form with young people on their care are appropriate

All Adults in the YBNP must agree to put the party’s policy on child protection into practice.

Meeting your responsibilities:

• the welfare of the young people for whom you have a duty of care is safeguarded
• you avoid compromising situations or opportunities for misunderstandings or allegations

Interesting that the BNP should use that phrase 'you avoid compromising situations or opportunities for misunderstandings or allegations'. Possibly it refers indirectly to last year's BNP conference in Blackpool where the nazi Mark Collett and Dave Hannam, a married man, allegedly picked up two underage girls and brought them back to the conference hotel, the dire New Kimberley. Though it seems very odd that the CPP also includes the line '[that] they follow the procedures following suspicion, disclosure or allegation of child abuse'. Which procedures would they be, exactly? And were they adhered to at last year's conference?

There clearly isn't much to laugh at on the BNP website for youngsters, particularly on the jokes page, but there was one thing that made me chuckle. On the page in the student's section dealing with its policies, there is a question; 'What are the SBNP Policies?' The answer?

'The Student BNP is run for students. Therefore we need policies...'

No change there, then.

BNP's Nick Griffin ignores dissident activity in favour of making money

S1031751

As the British National Party rebellion rumbles on - albeit with a pause for Christmas and an occasional birth - we wonder if Nick Griffin is reading the signs and starting to appreciate that the foundations on which his authority within the BNP rests are beginning to crumble.

Rather than keeping on the fight against the dissidents in the ranks, Griffin has chosen to ignore them for the moment, instead concentrating on sending out yet another begging letter to the membership. Perhaps worried by the undisputable fact that the rebel camp just keeps on quietly growing and how that might affect his pension plans, he has bombarded members with an amateurish appeal to get his sticky mitts on their Christmas money, prompting one annoyed recipient to state, 'the tacky style reminds me of some Nigerian scam and is just as shady'.

The tattiness and unprofessionalism of these begging letters has provided much merriment for those who generally oppose Griffin (us included), so we've put images of them, pinched from the North West Nationalist site, below for you to have a laugh at. The film (above) shows how the membership should deal with this rubbish prior to recycling it. For the moment, we'll leave you with a relevant comment from the same site.

'Them who defend Griffin and his side-kicks Collette and co say that he's made the BNP proffesional and electable - but this begging letter is not proffesional at all...on the BNP site he (Griffin) says its the most professional mailing they have ever done...the others must have been shite then.'

Happy New Year everyone. :-)

One of Griffin's 'vermin' begins the fightback against BNP corruption

According to a comment over at the North-West Nationalist blog, this was sent in to the Sandwell Express Star. Our thanks to Kirklees Unity for the heads-up.

Dear Sir

In response to Simon Darby's comments about me resigning from British National Party. I would like to thank him for acknowledging the hard work done myself in the party. With the exception of a particular Judas, most of the Black Country BNP are first class folk.

There has been a rumour I resigned because of the party's failure to allow me to promote the idea that 911 was an inside job. This isn't actually the case.

My resignation followed the disclosure of a private email to a supposed friend and colleague Ken Griffiths. The substance of the email was that based on events surrounding an article about Nick Griffin's wheeler dealing in Croatia, his meddling in the affairs of the independent trade union Solidarity and such items as £63,000 being spent on "travel and entertainment" (see 2005 BNP accounts at the electoral commission), it was about time we started educating the membership about what I believed we mutually recognised as serious financial mismanagement of the party. In fact it was Ken Griffiths along with a few others two years ago that encouraged me to examine Nick Griffin's history and therefore his leadership of the party.

I've worked for the party as a volunteer for over five years. Three years as the Black Country organiser. This work was unpaid. I may have claimed £60 at most in petrol in that time and of course have suffered in my employment. Famously being sacked as a teacher in 2004. The party's support was pathetic. The so called party legal eagle failed to advise me that I had three months to appeal to an industrial tribunal. I am currently investigating a sickening allegation that a substantial donation from a member of the public was made to myself following my sacking but didn't quite find its way to me.

At national level huge amounts are raised. The "Trafalgar Club " rakes in £72,000 a year according to other ex BNP figures that were close to Griffin [we've been told at least £90,000 but there you go]. Financial transparency , other than what has to be provided for the electoral commission is non existent. There are other large donations that are rumoured to have been made but not declared. This is the tip of the iceberg in my opinion.

So how is the British National Party being run ? There is a genuine need for a Nationalist Party in Britain. In my opinion Nick Griffin who is a fantastic (self) publicist and orator, runs the party as a private family business - in doing so it is also necessary to appoint dubiously moral lieutenants to keep it like that . It is a money based not ideologically based operation . As such it is necessary to periodically purge the party of thinkers and those who are capable of critical thought to keep it like that.

Cllr Simon Smith

For more information, see Purged! British National Party councillor Simon Smith forced out and Nick Griffin's most recent Chairman's Blog post deconstructed...

Nick Griffin's most recent Chairman's Blog post deconstructed...

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.

The truth about Spence and the RWB punch-up - McLean resigns

It's a good job there are some people in the British National Party with integrity or we would never get to hear the truth about anything. Let's hope they've let someone who can look at them honestly to take a look at the accounts before they're submitted to the Electoral Commission. The membership might actually get a true picture of the state of the party then. But this article isn't about the accounts - it's about Andrew Spence, the BNP's ex-poster boy, who, to trumpets from on high, joined the party just six months ago only to resign in a huff last Saturday night.

The gist of the incident has already been reported here but until now we've been stuck for the detail - until, that is, a couple of angry BNP members got in touch to put this situation right. These kind people both pointed out that discussion on this subject has been censored dramatically on the BNP's own forum, with threads being closed as soon as they were started. We have also observed severe censorship over at the Stormfront nazi forum - the BNP member's favourite alternative to its own despite it having been proscribed by the control-freaks at BNP HQ. When will the BNP learn that the membership at least, deserve honesty and openness?

Anyway, back to Saturday night. This is the story as we have it...

Allegedly, after a bad row on the Friday night of the Red White and Blue, BNP Head of Publicity and chief dork Mark Collett spent twenty minutes on Saturday night goading and picking at Andrew Spence about money that was promised to him by the party over some damage that occurred to his car during the recent by-election campaign. Party Treasurer John Walker refused point blank to hand over the cash (shades of the Sharon Ebanks' fiasco there) and even refused to accept that the party was in any way liable, telling Spence to go see his insurance company about it. Eventually, we're told, tempers got frayed and Spence pushed (rather than punched) Walker. Collett, ever the coward, slapped Spence around the back of the head then did a runner pushing people aside, including the Norfolk Organiser and her young daughter.

This all took place after the row on Friday where, during a meeting to rehash the Sedgefield by-election, Collett made some stupid remarks about the campaign and Spence stormed out of the meeting in a huff, cursing Collett as he did so and promising that he would get even with him. This anger has been inspired, we're told, by Collett's inability to get the Sedgefield leaflets out on time on three separate occasions during that single campaign. Collett (naturally) blamed Spence for being picky while Spence blamed Collett for being a lazy useless bastard.

Spence, as you already know, has resigned from the party while Collett - who appears to have played a key role in provoking the incident - faces no action, as usual, despite having himself assaulted another party member.

This incident has caused fury in the ranks, so much so that 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. So much for loyalty then.

Griffin has been anxious to gain more control over the party for a while now and has already indicated that he personally will take over the role of party disciplinarian, stepping into McLean's shoes while his feet are still in them. One would have expected the party leader to have enough on his plate already but that's not, as we know, how dictatorships work.

One wonders precisely what hold Collett has over Nick Griffin. Clearly a liability, he has managed to act the buffoon on numerous occasions, causing numerous problems for the BNP's doomed attempts to appear to present itself as a 'normal' political party, praising the Nazis, verbally attacking gays and generally talking crap whenever a camera is stuck in his face. The fact that everyone knows him to be an outstanding idiot who is also lousy at his job, makes our correspondents believe that whatever he has on Griffin must be of enormous interest both to the membership of the party and, of course, us. If anyone has any information that might help us to discover what his secret hold over Griffin might be, please email us and give us a laugh.

In the meantime, we look forward to reading that Scott McLean is to be expelled because he's a) a Searchlight mole, b) an MI5 mole, c) a secret Red or d) he's moving to Croatia.

Talking of Croatia, Sadie and Matt left for Croatia on Sunday right after the RWB. Just a holiday or a look at the Nick Griffin Holiday Camp from Hell?

Yet another front-group joins the BNP's fast-growing collection

The BNP's apparent mania for creating new organisations between which it can spread its diminishing resources in a vain attempt to screw money out of as many people as possible continues with the official launch a few days ago of ABEX, the Association of British Ex-Services Personnel.

ABEX comes complete with a mission statement:

'The aim of ABEX is to promote and support the welfare of ex forces personnel and their dependants, and those organizations whose agents have risked life and limb in the service of this country, through democratic representation to ensure fair and equitable treatment within our society.'

In common with every other organisation the BNP has set up in the past ten years, the BNP states that ABEX 'is not a BNP group' and that it is an 'independent and non-party political association'. Strange then, that it has been a BNP-run 'circle' for the past three years - at least according to the last three sets of accounts submitted to the Electoral Commission (2003-5) - under the care of BNP-terrorist Tony Lecomber and subsequently Sadie Graham, following Lecomber's sacking as Group Development Officer last year.

Even more strange is the statement that ABEX is 'a non profit organisation and [is] applying for Charity status at this time'. Obviously it hasn't got it. If it had, the Charity Registration number should be shown on its website and it isn't. Not that ABEX has a hope in hell of gaining charitable status (as the BNP well knows) because groups run by political parties are not allowed to be charities.

This group that is not a BNP front-group is so independent that it intends to have a stand at the party's annual Red, White and Blue booze-fest this weekend, presumably alongside that other well-known not a BNP front-group Solidarity 2, its fake union.

As expected, particularly after noting that ABEX is seeking charity status, the BNP has been careful to hide its connection to it from the unwary visitor. The website tracks back to an independent domain handler as opposed to either of the two BNP webmeisters Steve Blake or school-bomber Lambertus Nieuwhof, thus keeping its origin unclear to visitors who would balk at any hint of the BNP. Nowhere on the site does it mention that the ABEX is in any way connected to the BNP and it carefully avoids stating who its organisers are, though its forum has a number of names that might be familiar to those who delve into the murky world of the Stormfront nazi forum - Lord Kitchener and Boudicca for example. There is more of a giveaway though in some of the language used:

'...its organisers clearly see that we share a good deal of common ground...and, furthermore, they believe passionately in the freedom of speech and association for which so many past generations of British servicemen have fought and died.'

Those who know anything at all about the BNP will know that it is the least democratic political group in the country and that it has absolutely no interest in freedom of speech and association for its own party members, let alone the rest of us. ABEX is yet another peurile attempt - doomed to failure, to suck in more money to be thrown away on the next lunatic scheme of Nick Griffins - a couple of chalets for the Holiday Camp from Hell in Croatia perhaps, or yet another disaster like Solidarity.

Property investment for fascists - the Croatia story continues

An article in a national newspaper last Sunday (22 July), and reproduced all over the internet, claimed to reveal how BNP leaders were setting up a self-sufficient rural bolthole in Croatia in preparation for when the oil runs out.

In fact the story, which was full of errors, was the result of an attempt by the BNP to build a smokescreen around some plain old-fashioned property speculation.

Last October Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, was a guest speaker at a well attended meeting of the party's Leeds branch. He normally turns up in a suit, but on this occasion he made his excuses for wearing jeans, saying that he had just returned from a visit to Croatia. He then regaled his audience about the ethnic problems following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

What Griffin did not mention was that much of the "ethnic cleansing" in Croatia at the start of the 1990s, consisting of torture, rape, murder and mutilation of bodies, was carried out by the reborn Ustasha movement. Some 50 years earlier the Ustashi had carried out their first attempt at genocide, in conjunction with the Nazis, against Serbs, Jews and Roma. More than a million Serbs of all ages were butchered in their homes, in forests and in concentration camps. Another 250,000 were forcibly converted to Catholicism, and around a further 300,000 were driven out of Croatia into the remote mountain areas of Serbia.

Hero worship of the wartime butchers of the Ustashi remains widespread in Croatia and it is one of the areas of eastern Europe in which Roberto Fiore, the Italian third-positionist fascist and long-term friend of Griffin, has taken an interest in recent years.

Griffin's visit to Croatia inevitably gave rise to speculation in the BNP, especially when news started to leak out about at least one other senior BNP officer visiting the country, about a property purchase there and even offshore bank accounts to shift BNP funds into the new project.

Older BNP members recalled with dismay two earlier overseas property ventures involving Fiore. The first was a ruined hamlet in northern France in the days when Griffin led the National Front Political Soldiers. A member of Fiore's family had their name on the title deeds and volunteers were shipped out to try to turn it into a political commune. The project was eventually abandoned, money raised from British supporters poured down the drain.

A decade later Fiore bought an abandoned village in Spain. Again work on making it habitable was carried out by volunteers, now from the successor group to the Political Soldiers, the International Third Position.

Yet again it flopped and Fiore had to rush in a lawyer to bail out a leading member of the ITP who had been thrown into jail for attacking the local mayor's property. Back in England the man was given a job in Fiore's extensive UK property empire. The project vanished.

And one must not forget how Griffin got Young NF members to work free of charge to convert a barn at his parents' property in Suffolk in the mid 1980s and later got the BNP to pay for renovation of a barn on his farm in Wales.

BNP members are not keen to see the party's hard-earned funds squandered on yet another potentially disastrous property venture. The BNP is not a party where people can freely ask awkward questions of their leader and get honest answers, so instead disgruntled members started leaking bits of interesting information about the Croatian plans to the anti-fascist Lancaster UAF blogsite.

This could not have come at a worse time for Griffin, who is currently facing a leadership election in the BNP. A huge amount of dirty linen has been paraded before the public in the past six weeks, including talk about property in Croatia.

Knowing that the story was likely to break beyond the anti-fascist movement, Griffin engaged in a classic manoeuvre to control the situation by orchestrating the delivery of a "scoop" to a national newspaper. Anti-fascist blogs and others immediately reproduced it, though Kirklees Unity soon removed it after realising that the story was riddled with errors and half truths and was just an attempt to divert attention from Griffin's property venture.

The story claimed that Andrew McKillop, an expert on "peak oil" – the theory that the world's oil reserves are about to run out – briefed the BNP leadership last September at a secret weekend meeting at a hotel in Hampshire. Those present were so concerned about this that they decided to buy 1,100 hectares of land in Croatia as a bolthole for when civilisation breaks down, the story continued.

But there were many errors.

The story quotes McKillop saying that he had only been contacted via the internet to give the presentation in the New Forest, giving the impression he has had little to do with the BNP. In fact Griffin has reproduced and promoted McKillop's articles on the BNP website and they have been published in the BNP's monthly magazine, Identity.

McKillop was also invited to join the BNP's shadowy think tank, which Searchlight exposed in March. The story says McKillop lives in the USA. When we spoke to him earlier this year he was living in Paris.

Another man named in the story is the BNP's economics expert Alan Goodacre. The writer seemed to think he uses the name Ian Fletcher when visiting the USA. In fact Ian Fletcher is a well known US rightwinger who lobbies against migrant workers. They are not the same person. For one thing an expert analysis of their articles show that Goodacre writes in British English whereas Fletcher is very definitely a North American.

One of the story's most obvious errors is the description of Lee Barnes as the BNP's second-in-command. Far from it: although Barnes acts as the director of the BNP's legal department, he is not actually a party member. This enables him to front up various money raising schemes for the BNP from which the party prefers to distance itself.

Griffin's deputy is Simon Darby and the party's vice-chair is Scott McLean.

The story claims the land is owned by a BNP sympathiser whose late father "is understood to have made a fortune in the pizza business". No name is given and the story sounds a bit like it is based on the pizza billionaire who funds a community in the USA.

The article ends with an obvious bit of padding, with a rapid trawl through the bombers Tim McVeigh and David Copeland and William Pierce's The Turner Diaries.

It is interesting that the BNP chose to dump this story on a journalist who does not have a track record of writing about the far right but works for a newspaper that is very keen on ecology.

The very worthwhile team at Lancaster UAF are to be congratulated on opening up a can of worms which the BNP leader will have great difficulty closing.

Stop the BNP

BNP plans to seek safety in Croatian idyll

When the fossil fuels run out, leaders of Britain's far right hope to survive on a farm in the Balkans

A few miles from the historic southern Croatian town of Knin lie 1,100 hectares of farmland and a couple of abandoned buildings. A tributary from the river Krka runs through the lush countryside nestled close to the sun-drenched Adriatic coast.

It is a tranquil place, one that would make an ideal spot for a campsite or a clutch of holiday homes. But instead the land is destined for a rather more bizarre sort of retreat. It is here that a small cabal, comprising senior members of the British National Party, plans to hole up once, as they expect, the world's supply of oil runs out, triggering anarchy.

The land is owned by an anonymous BNP sympathiser from south-east England whose late father is understood to have made a fortune in the pizza business. At the moment it lies unused, but the BNP chairman, Nick Griffin, has visited the site several times. One day some in the party hope it will become a sustainable community, one that is not reliant on fossil fuels or outside power of any kind but instead is capable of harnessing solar energy and tapping into local streams for fresh water.

A spokesman for the BNP said this scenario was 'totally without foundation'. But The Observer has established the plans were discussed extensively during a three-day secret BNP meeting last September at a Hampshire hotel. Griffin and several senior members of the BNP, including Lee Barnes, the party's ponytailed second-in-command, had invited an energy expert, Andrew McKillop, to speak about his pet theory, the end of oil and gas supply, a subject about which he lectures widely on the conference circuit.

Also at the meeting was the BNP's economics adviser, a man called Alan Goodacre when residing in Britain but who, when in the US on business, apparently uses the name Ian Fletcher, according to party sources. Throughout the meeting Fletcher carried a large briefcase stuffed with thousands of pounds in cash which he used to pay the hotel and restaurant bills.

'It was like something out of a film,' a member of the hotel staff said. 'He just kept dipping into the briefcase and doling out the money.'

For McKillop, who lives in the US, the meeting was equally surreal. He had been told he would be picked up from Heathrow airport by two BNP stalwarts, only to be instructed at the last minute to make his own way to Portsmouth. From there a car took him to a hotel. 'It was all a bit Monty Python,' McKillop recalled. 'They seemed extremely paranoid.'

As soon as he arrived, Griffin ushered McKillop, who previously had links to the French far right and the late billionaire James Goldsmith, into a room to address eight of his colleagues. Over the next two days McKillop, who says he was not paid for his presentation and had been contacted by the BNP via the internet, talked widely about his belief that global oil and gas supplies are peaking and that this would have profound repercussions for mankind. As he talked his audience became more excited.

'They didn't want to know what I was talking about,' said McKillop. 'They just wanted to know how to use it to their advantage. They grabbed it as a ball to play with. They developed a completely exaggerated idea of when the world's oil supply will be turned off. They were asking, "How can we exploit this, how can we use it to build an election platform?"'

McKillop was told a BNP supporter owned a large amount of land in Croatia that the party's senior figures had high hopes for. Initially he thought the BNP intended to use it simply for eco-tourism. But as the conversation developed there was talk of turning the land into a community for the BNP and its supporters.

'In the end I formed the impression they saw it as a bolthole for when the world blows up,' McKillop said. Claims that the BNP senior hierarchy have discussed developing the Croatian site have been corroborated by several disgruntled party members who have supplied detailed information to Lancaster Unite Against Fascism (UAF), a body that campaigns against the BNP.

The revelation that the BNP senior hierarchy anticipate a doomsday scenario has parallels with millenarianism - the view that the world is on the brink of an apocalypse. The links between such views and the far right are well known. The Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh, harboured suspicions that the UN was trying to take over the world and that a global war was an inevitability.

McVeigh and the London nail bomber David Copeland, jailed for an explosion at a gay pub in Soho, London, which killed three people and left 70 injured, were heavily influenced by William Pierce, the founder of the white supremacist National Alliance in the US. Pierce was also the author of The Turner Diaries which predict a series of racial wars that develop into global genocide. Several BNP members have attended National Alliance meetings.

Observer

Butlitz in Croatia. Is the BNP going on holiday? Well, possibly...

As we've stated before, we receive countless emails from enormous numbers of people both pro and anti-fascist. These emails give us much of the material we use on the blog especially, surprisingly, the emails from fascists who tend to go into intricate and fascinating detail.

Since the announcement of Chris Jackson's leadership challenge, those emails have stepped up dramatically, with those who oppose Nick Griffin and his pathological lust for money providing us with a pile of information on dodgy-dealings, mismanagement and sexual shenanigans that we could never hope to prove and that would find us in court for libel within minutes. But if we move the money stuff to one side for a moment (though not entirely because wherever there is Griffin, there is always money) there is another theme that emerges and is emerging more each day, presumably as rumour and conjecture spreads itself rapidly through the BNP's ranks - Croatia.

Croatia-related rumours have been buzzing around the BNP like recalcitrant flies for quite a while now, each one providing us and our anti-fascist colleagues with a little more information and a yearning for a lot more. In fact, recent emails have given so much information (thank you to the senders) that we're able to extrapolate a good deal more for ourselves. So here's the Croatia stuff. Bear in mind that much of this is rumour, hint, suggestion and conjecture - though many of our readers, particularly those who are in the British National Party itself, will recognise the truth contained in the article and we would hope that they would have the good sense to demand some answers from the party's clearly corrupt leadership.

From what we can gather, there are four investment partners involved in the Croatia deal - Griffin himself, Simon Darby, Andrew McKillop and a fourth who hasn't yet been identified but certainly will be soon. All we know about him at the moment is that he's young and had (past tense) a substantial amount of money (from a death in his family) that Griffin got to hear about.

Griffin we already know but for the benefit of those who have never heard of the other two, Darby is an ex-member of the National Democrats/National Front who attended an American Friends of the BNP meeting in the States wearing a National Alliance T-shirt (the anti-semitic and white supremacist National Alliance is America's most hardline nazi group: founded by William Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, the book that inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and London nail bomber David Copeland). Darby continues to be one of the leading figures within the BNP, to the extent that Griffin designated him as stand-in leader were he to be imprisoned during his 2005/6 trials.

Andrew McKillop is a writer and consultant on oil and energy economics and is the co-editor of The Fuel Energy Crisis (Pluto Press, 2006), which explores the crisis in fossil fuels. He has also written about the 'Peak Oil' crisis and lives in France. McKillop, we are reliably informed by Searchlight is a member of the BNP's 'inner-circle' and is Griffin's 'Peak Oil' inspiration.

And here's the crunch. Griffin and Co are said have purchased a chunk of land over in Croatia, down South and close to the border, roughly thirty kilometres from Knin. The area of the land is approximately 26 hectares (around 65 acres) and at the moment has a couple of derelict buildings on it, probably old barns or other farm buildings. The cost of the land was about £30,000. There are plans afoot apparently though, if that is indeed the case, Griffin and his little consortium don't seem in any mad dash to get on with it - as far as we can ascertain no-one has been back to the site since March.

Whether they are acted upon or not, the plans seem to be to move a few of the BNP's operations over to Croatia - ones we've heard repeatedly include a CD/DVD-pressing facility, recording studio and Freedom newspaper - plus the long-awaited BNP radio station seems to be on the cards again if the investment cash becomes available. There is a further and much more elaborate plan to create a bizarre eco-friendly holiday camp (our information indicates that McKillop is to design eco-friendly cabins) powered by solar panels and wind turbines, and to grow organic veg, keep goats and cattle for the milk, free-range chickens for their eggs and so on. A tributary to the River Krka runs through the land so fresh water is abundant. Pretty much what most of us would like to do really, except for the BNP being involved.

The idea - at least as presented to the outside world - seems innocent enough. It's a plan for a nationalist holiday camp - all spot-on as far as energy consumption goes but like a giant perpetual Red, White and Blue Festival only made available to nationalists from all over Europe. In fact our understanding is that the Front National was going to fund the whole project but with Le Pen facing a leadership challenge and the modernisers, who have no high regard for Griffin or the BNP, moving in to change the party, this idea fell flat along with the attempts to get funding from other groups like Belgium's fascist Vlaams Bok.

Generalising outrageously, the BNP would seem to have picked a good location for Butlitz. Following the conflict in the nineties, Croatia was left largely Catholic and in the words of one writer 'fiercely nationalistic, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim', all of which, if true, would be perfect for Griffin.

We would regard all this as simply another of Griffin's more elaborate get rich quick schemes if it were not for a few comments that have been made in some of our emails that seem to tie in neatly with an article that appeared in Searchlight in April of this year. In this article, the writer speculated on what precisely the BNP was planning for the future:

'Since those days [the Oldham, Burnley and Bradford riots of 2001] there has been a growing belief that the BNP was working to a secret agenda as well as its public one. Even party members are concerned at the build-up of the BNP’s private army of security guards and the large sums of money spent on their training.

After the European elections in 2004 when the BNP got 800,000 votes but no MEPs, Nick Griffin said that the party might have to consider alternatives to the ballot box. At the time this attracted no more than a ripple of interest. Clearly the BNP leader was harking back to his days running the National Front Political Soldiers faction, when he was happy to rub shoulders with extremists including terrorists of many political hues.

More recent developments add to the evidence about where the BNP might be heading if it fails to make any real breakthrough at the ballot box.

Last autumn the BNP organised its first clay pigeon shoot in Yorkshire, attended by Griffin and BNP councillor Richard Barnbrook as a fundraising and social event but also to build up a core of party members who know how to handle guns.

Then Matthew Single, a regular BNP election candidate in Essex, boasted to the local press that he had been promoted to third in Griffin’s personal security detail and claimed that he had undergone “intensive training”. He has also started training BNP activists in “anti-hijack evasive driving”. Single has twice escaped justice in the courts and was in hot water over a false entry on his election papers last May.

And last month Griffin made an interesting remark as an aside in his blog about his speaking tour of East Anglia, writing: “During the English Civil War (in due course, it will of course have to be called the First English Civil War, in order to differentiate it from the one to come)…”. Was it Griffin who inspired Robert Cottage to stockpile explosives for what he told Manchester Crown Court in February were preparation for the coming race war?

Finally, why has the BNP stated that it is especially keen to recruit serving and recently retired police and army officers?'

One of our correspondents from within the BNP added to this speculation when he referred to Butlitz, stating that it 'is planned to be a bolt hole for key BNP leaders and publicity people when [as they believe may well happen] the BNP is driven underground'.

We really should state that here at Lancaster UAF we don't believe the party is going to have to go underground at any point in the foreseeable future unless, of course, it is planning some radical changes to how it is perceived by the public. If it was going to be proscribed, it would have happened when Tony Lecomber was toting for killers to assassinate key politicians and public figures or when the BNP reprinted the prophet pictures to deliberately provoke conflict with the Muslim community or when one of the many attacks provoked and encouraged by the party was committed but at the moment, no chance.

Nevertheless, it seems that the BNP hierarchy believes that might be the case (one wonders why) and this, tied in with the information in the Searchlight article quoted above and some of the comments made by Griffin in our article 'The BNP's secret agenda: just making money or civil/race war?' leads one to speculate on whether, instead of an eco-friendly Butlitz, we're going to see a BNP-organised paramilitary training camp set up.

Wherever there is talk about the BNP and Croatia, there is speculation (often widely differing) about its objective. The simple answer is that it's yet another way to fleece BNP members out of their hard-earned cash, effectively being an investment for Nick Griffin's retirement fund. The complicated answer is the move towards the paramilitary which, as Searchlight suggests, may not be quite as bizarre as it appeared to be when the idea first gained some traction.

Either way, the membership should know what the leadership is up to, where its money is being invested and what the plans are for the future. Typically, the membership are the last to hear of anything happening in the BNP. If Griffin truly believes that he and his cronies may need a bolt hole in the near future, it's safe to assume that there is some plan afoot which will alienate the BNP completely from the public and, rather more dramatically, the government. Griffin and co will then tootle off to their safe house in Croatia leaving the membership to take the flak. Does this sound likely? Well, from all we've read of Griffin and the bunch of wasters at the top of the BNP, yes it does.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we reported on the BNP's most recent idea for money-making - the mortgage brokers. We pointed out that Avocado the mortgage broker appeared to be a spin-off from a page that hinted at the existence of yet another BNP potential earner, Avocado Finance, presumably another brokerage where loans could be obtained via the BNP from a third-party. Although we know the BNP is virtually bankrupt all these appendages to the party simply seem to have the effect of draining off cash - someone has to design the web page, someone has to pay for the server space and the domain name and so on, and no income - or virtually none - derives from any of these ventures, no matter how elaborate they are. In fact, the profligate company start-up habit that the BNP seems to have developed only seems to point in one direction - desperation.

It's true that the BNP is desperate for cash - we all know that. But now Griffin is flailing around for finance for his potential Croatian bolt-hole. As we mentioned earlier, there are just a couple of derelict buildings on the site in Croatia, meaning that development has to be funded, and the figure we've heard (from a couple of different sources, which doesn't make it correct but gives it some validity) is £40,000. Yes, you read that right. Forty thousand smackers or Nick Griffin doesn't get his bolt-hole, his refuge in the event of everything, as he clearly believes it will, going pear-shaped.

And where will he get the money? Where else but the gullible, manipulable and ever-exploitable BNP membership?

All this speculation ties in rather neatly with a post that has just appeared (yesterday) at the Britain Forward website (reprinted at Voice of Reason) which poses the following questions:

'Perhaps the problem is that Nick Griffin and those close to him have taken their eyes off the ball and have their minds on a speculative property purchase in Croatia and setting up offshore bank accounts. Where is all the money coming from? Is it part of Nick Griffin’s personal fortune or is it the members’ money? And is Nick Griffin using senior members as a conduit to ship money abroad?'

That last question is particularly interesting - and should be gripping BNP members like a vice - especially when we consider a throwaway sentence in one of our correspondent's emails;

'An investment company registered by one of the BNP's wealthy accountants in the Isle of Man is the end of the trail...'

There might well be a Butlitz, a paramilitary training camp or a bolt-hole for Griffin and his gang over in Croatia but it's pretty clear that there's still a hell of a lot more of this story yet to come out.

Griffin and Co: Asset-strippers and Dictators

A pro-BNP blog that started up recently as a response to attacks on the financial probity of the party from the NNP and various others (including us) has printed an article that begins 'Why do stories about alleged 'corruption' within the BNP surface with such monotonous regularity on the Internet?' Well, there's a very simple answer to that - but let's take a look at what the article says.

The point of the article is to establish that the BNP is not corrupt and it attempts to do this by making a number of statements which need examining.

Nick Griffin has a Cambridge Law degree, has run rings around the best barristers that the Crown Prosecution Service have thrown at him in three free speech trials, and has demolished every Establishment 'big gun' radio and TV interviewer he has ever faced. If the man was in it for the money, he certainly wouldn't be in the BNP!

Nick Griffin actually has a 2.2, which is okay but hardly earth-shattering - in Jurisprudence, which is nowhere near as exciting as some weird people might think. As far as the trials go, the writer seems to have forgotten that in 1998 Griffin was given a two-year suspended sentence for distributing material likely to incite racial hatred. The more recent so-called 'free speech' trials of last year were both inadvisable and unnecessary, and there can't be an anti-fascist commentator anywhere who thought Griffin would actually be convicted though we would all have liked to have seen it. In any case, he hardly ran rings around the prosecution, nor has he ever demolished any radio or TV interviewer he has faced. Far from it in fact - he tends to come across as inept and stumbling to anyone with even rudimentary critical ability.

Land Registry records confirm that Nick's wife brought their home in Wales on a mortgage for £25,000 in the early 1990s. Obviously prices have gone up since then, but it's hardly the price of a palace.

Who cares, though wasn't Griffin declared bankrupt with debts of £70,000 on June 16th 1994 at Welshpool and Newtown County Court? Wonder where he got the money to buy the farm? And where he got the money to do the barn conversion which would have added considerably to the value of the place? Oh yes, that was paid for by the membership wasn't it. Presumably, Griffin is paying the money back at some point?

Interesting to note that it was Griffin's wife who bought the farm. Presumably that's something to do with either his bankruptcy or it's a tax dodge.

When travelling on speaking tours, Mr. Griffin invariably stays at the homes of BNP members. All other political leaders use plush hotels...

Bullshit. Where does he stay when he's over in America, France, Sweden or Croatia (where it's rumoured he has bought another property - no doubt for the planned BNP Holiday Hotel from Hell)?

The finances and financial records of the BNP, which the Electoral Commission classifies as a 'major party', are therefore by law closely monitored not only by internal staff but also by an independent auditor who is bound by his professional code to ensure that everything is handled properly...

We have never heard the BNP described as a 'major' party simply because it isn't. Roughly the same amount of members as the Monster Raving Loony Party does not make it a major party by anyone's standards.

...His complete audit is in turn gone through with a fine toothed comb by officials from the Electoral Commission...

And it was pointed out by the auditor that because no bank wanted to handle the accounts of the fascist BNP, most transactions were carried out in cash, making it extremely difficult to keep tabs on expenditure.

...The chances of money being illictly raised, spent or stolen under such a system are effectively zero. The finances of the modern BNP are the most open and transparent of any party in the history of British nationalism.

The second statement of that sentence might well be true but we're still wondering where the real accounts are, where the accounts of the Trafalgar Club are, where the income from the numerous business ventures appears in the accounts, how much everyone who is employed by the BNP actually gets paid, where the real foreign donations are listed and so on ad nauseum...

Let's face it: Far from being a passport to luxury, high living and privilege, running the BNP - in a country with Islamic terror cells, endemic violence among certain immigrant communities, left-wing thugs and a Politically Correct legal system operated by a totalitarian government - is a dangerous as well as a thankless task.

Strange, I thought Griffin's farm was set in its own land and came complete with a sauna and jacuzzi and so on. I could be wrong but that sounds pretty luxurious to me.

I've yet to see any evidence of a physical attack on Nick Griffin - ever - from anybody except Tony Lecomber, and he was actually attacking Eddie Butler and Griffin just got in the way. The only other mention of an attack was when the BNP tried to claim at attempt on Griffin's life over in Sweden on one of his many trips abroad. The bomb was unprimed and would never have gone off and it eventually emerged that the liar Griffin hadn't even been on the train that had been under threat.

The BNP is the only household name party in the UK which is 'in the black'. All the others are mired in massive debt, because running a political party's central machine is a very costly exercise.

That's odd because the BNP is the only party which the auditor pointed out was close to bankruptcy. The BNP could only survive by stealing branch money.

Any head of any organisation will at times have to discipline individuals within that organisation, and to defend the interests of the organisation against rivals. Both the punished guilty and jealous rivals have clear motives for lying about the man who has put them in their place, or the successful organisation that blocks their own personal or group ambitions.

Ah yes, the people Griffin has sacked. Like one of two former treasurers Griffin's sacked, Mike Newland, who protested at the plainly unacceptable blurring of the boundaries between the chairman's private business concerns as a secondhand car dealer (Affordable Cars) on the one hand, and party finances on the other, not to mention the making of wholly illegal payments (£1500 is mentioned at one point) to Tony Lecomber, who was claiming benefits at the time. In September 2000, Newland wrote;

'Griffin was elected on a clear pledge to have full financial accountability and fell at the first hurdle when reasonable questions were asked. He and Lecomber have shown themselves incapable of running the organisation as a legitimate affair. I thought that Griffin had matured sufficiently enough to behave sensibly and I was wrong...I misjudged him and that was my terrible mistake for which I eat humble pie.'

Griffin has sacked numerous people from the BNP mostly for questioning the accounts - the Edwards' are another example. But our favourite was the Sharon Ebanks scam that caused so much harm to the BNP.

Ebanks, you'll recall, was elected as the councillor for Kingstanding in Birmingham by a miscount of the votes. Though the mistake was noticed on the night of the count, the winner had already been announced and nothing could be done unless there was a High Court challenge from the party that should have taken the seat. Labour duly made the challenge and Ebanks, on advice from the BNP's legal wizards (Lee Barnes and Nick Griffin) fought it and lost.

Losing in the High Court is an expensive business and Ebanks' costs were, as far as we can gather, around £5000. The BNP promptly started asking for donations and raised, we're reliably informed, around £7000.

For some bizarre reason, everything then went pear-shaped for the BNP. They'd lost the seat but were sitting on top of a propaganda goldmine - small party having to raise big funds for cock-up that wasn't its fault, successful fundraising saves reputation of ousted councillor etc etc. Okay, no councillor but the loss could easily have been turned to a victory played the right way.

But the BNP decided not to do this. In fact, despite the membership forking out £7000 of its own money to pay Ebanks' High Court costs, the party decided to keep it. At one point (when she was threatened with bankruptcy) Ebanks was advised by the party to get a credit card to pay off the debt to the court.

The uproar from the far-right was predictably bad and the BNP came in, justifiably, for a hell of a lot of criticism from people it would consider supporters - the nazi forum Stormfront, for example. It got so bad that Stormfront members called a collection together and raised the money Ebanks needed and the debt was duly paid, no thanks at all to the BNP.

Ebanks was promptly sacked from the BNP and, in a fit of pique, formed her own party, the NNP, with a bunch of other BNP rejects.

The point of all this waffle - and there is a point, you'll be pleased to read - is that Griffin and his chums will use you up and spit you out. If you're stupid enough to question any disrepancy in the accounts, you're out. If you disagree with the leadership, you're out. If you don't do as you're told, you're out. And we've now seen this dictatorship spread to the external organisations of the BNP, with Solidarity being a fine case in point.

Clive Potter and Tim Hawke question the Solidarity accounts and suddenly they're untrustworthy, probably reds and certainly traitors. It's pretty clear from all we've been able to read that Potter and Hawke will be kicked out and Harrington reinstated as President, complete with full backing from Griffin and an unbeatable majority on the union's Executive - which will be the kiss of death to any hope of it providing any real alternative to any of the genuine unions and their shortcomings as perceived by the BNP. In short, Solidarity will become a cash cow for Griffin and co until it collapses completely.

Griffin and the BNP are asset-strippers and the only people they can strip assets from are those poor deluded sods who have joined the party/union.

There is a hell of a lot more to write about Griffin's BNP - the rip-offs and general thievery would fully occupy this blog for the next two years - but for the moment we'll leave this issue (though we'll return to it at greater length) with a quote from Nick Griffin himself;

'In increasingly hard economic times, a group of people the size of the BNP and its support base can provide a significant assured market for a variety of small businesses.'

Which says it all really.

Nazi hunter raps 'fascist' Croatian rock concert

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center on Monday voiced outrage over a Croatian rock concert by a popular ultra-nationalist singer that featured multiple "fascist" invocations.

The Sunday evening Zagreb concert, which was attended by 60,000 people including Croatian members of parliament and the Croatian ministers of science, education and sports, turned into a massive fascist demonstration, the organization's chief Nazi hunter and Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff said.

Thousands of people attending the rock concert by the singer "Thompson" shouted the infamous Ustasha regime's salute of "Za dom spremni," while numerous participants came wearing Ustasha uniforms and symbols, the center said in a press release.

"Under the current circumstances, I believe that the time has come to prohibit public concerts by those who write songs of nostalgia for [the] Jasenovac [concentration camp] and inspire the show of Ustasha symbols, which constitute open and blatant incitement against all the minorities in Croatia," Zuroff wrote in a Monday letter to Croatian President Stjepan Mesic. "I believe that only if someone of your stature and outstanding anti-fascist credentials will lead the efforts to combat this ugly wave of revived fascism, can this extremely dangerous new trend be stopped before it engulfs Croatia," he continued.

The Ustasha regime ran a puppet government after the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941. During their four years in power, the Ustasha carried out a Serb genocide, exterminating over 500,000 people, expelling 250,000 and forcing another 250,000 to convert to Catholicism. The Ustasha also killed most of Croatia's Jews, 20,000 gypsies and many thousands of their political enemies. After the war, most of the Ustasha leaders escaped to South America and Spain.

During the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, there was a certain resurgence of Ustasha symbols coinciding with the ethnic hatred that remained after the wars.

Jerusalem Post