No-holds-barred racism as Griffin gets desperate

“A Third World slum colonised by millions of African and Asian immigrants, facing the growing certainty of eventual civil war between an ever-growing Muslim community and everybody else”.

This is how Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, which claims to be not racist, described Britain in an email to supporters on 23 June appealing for money to help him fight the continuing action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over the BNP’s racist constitution.

In the email, which also described Trevor Phillips, the chair of the EHRC, as an “immigrant Marxist” and a “black Marxist”, Griffin said he was “ready to go to prison” for his beliefs. Outrageously he invoked Winston Churchill, the “heroes of D-Day” and “Spitfire pilots” in a blatant attempt to win sympathy and persuade supporters to open their wallets yet again for him.

Griffin has often referred to an impending civil war in Britain, especially after electoral failure such as in last month’s elections. After the BNP failed to win any MEPs in the 2004 European election despite gaining 800,000 votes, Griffin said the party might have to consider alternatives to the ballot box. The following year the BNP’s general election manifesto called for adults who have completed a period of military service to be “required to keep in a safe locker in their homes a standard-issue military assault rifle and ammunition”, a policy the party has never renounced.

A number of BNP members have tried to turn Griffin’s talk about civil war into action. They include David Copeland, the London bomber, and Robert Cottage, who was convicted for possession of explosives.

In raising the prospect of imprisonment Griffin no doubt also has his eye on Eddy Butler’s challenge to his leadership of the BNP, announced on 18 June. Griffin may hope that party members would hardly desert a man who was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for them.

However most BNP members are likely to see through this ploy. Growing numbers want a new party leader because of Griffin’s incompetence in producing electoral results, dubious financial dealings and his insistence on handing over administrative and financial control of the party to the “consultant” Jim Dowson, a militant anti-abortion campaigner with criminal convictions for violence.

Butler, the BNP’s national elections officer until he was peremptorily sacked at the end of March, is now trying to collect the signatures of 20% of BNP members with at least two years’ membership, which he needs to force a leadership election. Several party branch organisers are calling local meetings so that members can sign the forms.

BNP activists all over the country are beginning to support Butler’s challenge. One of them is Danny Lake, former leader of the Young BNP. Echoing the views of many party members, he describes Griffin as “a man who has brought the party far but remains stunted by a damaged reputation”. Griffin is standing “with a set of disastrous election results behind him”, Lake points out, before expressing the view that Griffin will not allow a clean fight.

For more detailed analysis of the challenge to Griffin’s leadership, see the July issue of Searchlight.

Hope not hate

Fascist firebomber out on parole

On Friday I was visited by Julian Corbett, from the Public Protection Department of Wiltshire Police.

He came to ask me what my relationship was with wannabe Nazi terrorist, Mark Bullman (pictured, left), and to warn me that Bullman is now out of prison, and is looking for me - I have moved address since he went to prison. Bullman had been sentenced to 5 years for racially aggravated arson, but has now been released after two and a half years. (Bullman also goes by the name Mark Bullock)

As I have reported before, in August 2006, BNP supporter, Bullman attempted to burn down the Broad Street mosque in Swindon using a petrol bomb. Mark was the registered fund holder for Wiltshire BNP, and actively campaigned for the party in the 2006 local council elections, just four months before the arson attack. Strangely Mark used to write to me while he was on remand, and even telephoned me from prison - not in a threatening way, but for a friendly chat.

He had left the BNP shortly before the fire bomb attack to form what he called the “1290 sect”, named after the year the Jews were expelled from England, and he wrote to me: “I only attacked the mosque because there is no synagogue in Swindon, and it was close enough for public consumption”. The fuse used for the fire bomb was a rolled up BNP leaflet.

It since transpires that Danny Lake, (former leader of the YBNP and also from Swindon, and who has since been expelled from the BNP), had raised concerns about Bullman with Nick Griffin, but the BNP did not consider Mark Bulman’s mental instablity, propensity to violence and gross anti-Semitism to be a problem. Bullman was supported by Wiltshire organiser, Mike Howson, and Danny Lake claims that Howson encouraged Bullmans’ extremism. Ironically, the main plank of Mike Howson’s campaigning in his native Corsham is “law and order”.

Mark’s letters to me, which I passed on to Searchlight, were filled with a virulent hatred of Jews, mixing up three themes. i) racialised anti-semitism; ii) Christian anti-judaic traditions; and iii) opposition to Israel’s War in the Lebanon, and the occupation of Palestine.

Bullman started [to] ring me regularly late at night sometime during 2005. I decided when Bullman contacted me that it was simply safer to talk to him than snub him, and establish a human relationship, and impress upon him that I was a real person with young children, not just an objectified “enemy”.

I knew that it was him who had fire bombed the mosque as soon as I saw the pictures, because the Swastika daubed on the outside wall was identical to the rather idiosyncratic style that Bullman had used in letters to me. But before I could go to the police I heard that Bullman had already been arrested, indeed he had turned himself in and confessed.

The police decided to contact me after Bullman told his probation officer last week that he had visited my old address, in Avenue Road, where in Bullman’s own words “a communist lived” and Bullman told the probation officer he wanted to apologise to me.

Fair enough, I actually take that at face value. For all his weaknesses Bullman is a troubled and actually quite likable lad. He seems to have always been a bit of a misfit, and found a group of friends who accepted him through football hooliganism and far right politics. It was quite spooky having the police do an audit of the security of my house, and checking out the approaches to it in case they decided I was in serious danger and they had to put me on a rapid response list.

I was actually quite encouraged that they were also assessing the risk to Bullman himself. The bewildered lad has been playing games in his head with his Nazi fantasies, irresponsibly encouraged by BNP activists who exploited him. And his attempts to contact me suggest that he is drawn back to revisiting the same haunts and habits that he was in before his arrest.

Bullman fire bombed a mosque and daubed it with Swastikas. I am prepared to be understanding to Bullman only because I have had personal contact with him, and I have some partial insight into what a troubled and unhappy young man he is; who really needs help and not to be further ostracised and isolated from society. But other people might be less understanding and charitable about what he did than I am.

What really is scandalous is the way the BNP used this young man. They had no problem with exploiting his obvious mental distress, they had no problem with his open support for genocide against the Jews, instead they encouraged him, they used him up and spat him out.

Socialist Unity

BNP in meltdown as Graham and Smith expulsions infuriate membership

• Sadie Graham (Group Development) sacked
• Kenny Smith (Head of Admin) sacked
• Ian Dawson (Yorkshire) resigns
  
• Danny Lake (YBNP leader) sacked
• Nicholla Smith (Excalibur) sacked
• Councillors, fundholders and organisers quitting

Reports are pouring in from all over the place following the expulsions of Sadie Graham and Kenny Smith yesterday. We now have confirmation that Danny Lake, the idiotic leader of the YBNP has been kicked out for supporting Graham and Smith, and many organisers and fundholders are resigning in disgust at the way they've been treated. Others are speaking out in support of the sacked duo including, curiously, the Griffin-loyalist Chris Hill, Lancaster's very own lonely BNP member, who usually concentrates far more on what we have to say than having any opinions himself.

Rather more importantly, news is coming in that a handful of BNP councillors have resigned or are planning to resign the whip and more are expected to follow suit.

Between the Stormfront nazi forum and a number of blogs, including the Enough is Enough blog that got Graham and Smith into so much trouble, we've been able to cobble together something that looks like the correct sequence of events. We're open to correction though, so if anyone has any further information that they would like to share, please let us know either by using the comment facility or by emailing us on lancaster.uaf@zen.co.uk

Officers of the BNP were recently issued with laptops so that they could conduct their business wherever they happened to be (alright for some, isn't it). One of the facilities the officers have been encouraged to use is Skype, which enables those with an internet connection to converse with each other over broadband for free, either one to one or via a conference call - thus avoiding the usual telephone system and any possibility of individual phones being bugged. What the BNP didn't tell its officers was that Skype comes with a 'record all calls' option, and this seems to have been switched on.

The Enough is Enough blog started on December 2nd, a mere week before the instigators were caught and fired, though one would assume the planning for the anti-Collett/Hannam blog to have dated from the pathetic exhibitions of Mark Collett and Dave Hannam at the BNP conference at Blackpool on November 17th.

The story goes that Martin Reynolds (the BNP's chief security goon) and four others gained access to Graham's home by deception (neither Graham nor her partner, Matt Single, being at home at the time), then ransacked the place searching for thumb drives and disks, finally leaving with her laptop and a number of other items. At the same time, it has been said, Clive Jefferson and two males attempted to gain entry to Smith's home but were refused entry.

There are a number of disturbing features about these raids, not the least of which is that they actually happened at all. What precisely does Nick Griffin believe he's running here - the Stasi or the NKVD? The whole thing smacks of fascism at its worst and most frightening. But just as worrying is the suspicion that Griffin had information that led directly to these two as the prime suspects. Okay, it's true that somebody may have talked and if so, that somebody may well have been Matt Single - at least as far as the far-right blogs are concerned, though rumours are starting to emerge that he's been booted too. But there is a simpler and more sinister explanation available - that the party is monitoring the communications of its officers.

It has long been suspected that those members who have foolishly taken on a bnp.org.uk email address (that is, one issued by the party) are having their emails monitored. This was borne out in Griffin's insane Identity article three months ago, in which he more or less admitted that an 'internal intelligence review' mostly amounted to illegally checking through a member's BNP email account for signs that he was an informer or 'agent'. Mad or what?

The report that appears on the BNP website mentions the 'BNP Intelligence Department' that was set up a few months back and that is headed up by Lance Stewart, a long-standing British nationalist and a former high-ranking officer in the South African Police - though he is suspected of being rather more than a simple plod in the past, as are Arthur Kemp and Lambertus Nieuwhof, also South African and also former spooks and colleagues in the Intelligence Department.

This trio of dodgy characters, with the able assistance of the BNP's security mob, appear to have carte blanche when it comes to intelligence-gathering and our suspicion is that each of the laptops provided by the party to its officers is infected with a trojan. For those who don't know, a trojan is a piece of software that feeds information back to its source after being planted on a computer - credit card details, identities and so on. Most trojans are simple key-loggers, meaning all they do is record everything that is typed on the keyboard of the infected computer and pass along the information to a third-party. If the trojan's activity had been allowed through the laptop's firewall before handing it over, chances are that the new owner of the computer would know nothing about it - particularly if, like most people, they have no idea of how vulnerable computers are.

If this is indeed the case, it would go a long way to explaining how the party was able to co-ordinate the raids and how they knew what to look for when they gained entry. No great surprise then, that the BNP was able to provide transcripts of the incriminating phone calls on the party's website.

We discount entirely, the claim that Smith may have been responsible for 'serious breaches of accountancy procedures leaving up to £17,000 unaccounted for in the 2006 Central Audit, and of a wilful neglect of the Excalibur merchandising operation constituting attempted financial sabotage in order to create an artificial ‘crisis’ to which their proposals would be presented as the solution'. This smacks to us of Griffin a) bumping up the evidence against Smith, and b) using this situation to attempt to hide the fact that the party is in financial meltdown. We're not the only ones who don't believe the claim:

'The financial accusation thrown at Smith is a usual Griffin ploy when something like this occurs. He used the same ploy against Warren Bennett (£5000) but later backtracked. He has used the same tactic in the past when involved in factionalism eg against the Solidarity guys and against Wingfield and Brons in the Flag NF days...If the £17000 accusation was true Smith should have been suspended for that, much more serious than having a dig at Collett I would have thought.'

Us too.

The repercussions of all this have been fierce and relentless. Danny Lake was sacked via text message by John Walker. When asked under whose authority Walker had sacked him, the response was apparently; 'Me. You stupid cunt. Fuck off into oblivion'. Lake's mobile is now, not surpisingly, dead.

Claims are being made that Nick Cass is considering resigning, several members have written in to various forums to state that they've had enough and are not renewing their membership, party organisers and fundholders are resigning en masse (Falkirk and Aberdeen are two examples), at least one councillor, Nina Brown, is resigning the whip and it has been suggested that Chris Beverley has either resigned or been expelled along with Steve Blake. We've just received word (15:20) that Ian Dawson has resigned too.

The chaos continues...

How many lies can you tell in a week? The BNP aims for the world record...

Well over a week after the non-aligned Independent councillor for Longton North (Stoke) Mark Leat decided he no longer wanted to represent the British National Party, the party issued a statement to The Sentinel, his local paper, to the effect that Leat had been thrown out for being idle.

As much as we hate to defend anyone with any connection to the BNP, this is simply not true. Not even BNP supporters believe the statement - the usually supportive Stormfront nazi forum has several wry comments about this poor attempt to save face, including this one; 'Ah, the usual botched "cover story" from the Griffinites. They can't even get that out in good time, Leat has been listed as "non-aligned" on the council website for the best part of two weeks already!'

The BNP's idiotic Young BNP leader Danny Lake then tried to bullshit the world with a bizarre report on Nick Griffin's visit to Bath.

You may recall that Lake tried to get Griffin in as an official speaker at the university but the Holocaust-denying leader of the party was denied permission to speak following protests from numerous anti-fascist individuals and organisations. Lake, in desperation, booked him into a local pub - misleading the landlord as to who the meeting was for and what it was about. Searchlight rang and told the landlord and he promptly cancelled the meeting, saying; 'A young man visited me the night before and asked if he could book a room. It was a very casual arrangement. The moment Searchlight rang to tell me who was behind it, I opted to stop it. I feel that I have been hoodwinked into holding this talk.'

Lake's version is different. He claimed in his report on the BNP's web page; 'They then, true to form, proceeded to scare the proprietor into cancelling the event' though confusingly he then went on to say; 'I was promptly told by the proprietor that the event would not be going ahead as he has a largely student and multi-ethnic clientele and was not prepared for his business to suffer as a result of allowing us to continue.'

Lake fits right into the BNP mould - a liar through and through. He should do well in the party. Griffin was eventually reduced to talking to four students for ten minutes while twenty protestors made themselves heard nearby.

In one last blast of confusion, Lake drones on about free speech and democracy in his piece on the BNP's page, ending with; 'At the start of the next academic year...I will be hoping to force the university into allowing Nick to speak to a proper audience on the Bath University campus itself. So much for democracy then.

The latest little lie-fest from the BNP appears as a result of a neat little expose by the Bath Chronicle, which revealed that Mike Howson, the BNP's regional organiser for the mid-west and former council candidate for the party, who is one of the people responsible for the BNP's ludicrous vigilante group (sorry, 'community patrol') in Corsham and who is also an apparently highly-regarded air cadet youth leader, has a web site littered with 'white pride' and 'white nationalist' videos, some of which have swastikas prominently placed on them.

One of the films added by Howson included text promoting white nationalists as 'ordinary white people who want to protect themselves from being mugged by multi-culturalism and raped by multi-racialism'. Another depicted a police officer being attacked on a public highway, images of the Israeli flag pierced by a dagger, American President George Bush taking a bite out of the neck of the Statue of Liberty and messages saying 'wake up, white people'. Howson's site is also linked to information about a group known as Unite Against Anti-White Racism.

Howson, remaining pretty casual about the whole thing, told the Chronicle that his Bebo [similar to MySpace] site was an information portal and if internet users did not like the content they did not have to watch it. 'My Bebo site is a private site and people on that site are friends and it is their choice to be so.'

The BNP though, obviously seeing yet another public relations disaster looming, quickly made up a story about how Howson hadn't known these items were on his site and how he zoomed into action to delete them. Then the party propaganda machine went into overdrive.

Suddenly and for no discernible reason taking it as fact that Howson's site was hacked and the information placed there completely unnoticed by him, the BNP attempts to give the story its own nasty little spin by implication, saying; 'We should say that we don’t believe that anyone on the Bath Chronicle was actually party to the hacking...' and 'This hacking follows on from a similar case from last year when a northern England BNP councillor [the King of the Standards Board, Paul Cromie] had his email account hacked into and 'adult images' emailed from it to the 'World and his Dog'.' Not content with claiming this little piece of over-exposure on a random hacker, the BNP decides to point the finger more clearly but still without any evidence at all, at a 'Left hacking scam'. Yes, of course.

For some reason, the BNP hierarchy can't get it into its thick communal head that to hand a website to a member of the BNP is almost certain to end in disaster. Despite numerous examples of BNP-related stupidity, such as Martin Reynold's Facebook lustings for a threesome with a couple of large women and Karl Newman's weird penchant for dressing up in nazi uniforms, the BNP still asserts 'that no-one...would be daft enough to post such obviously unacceptable material on such a public website'. Well apparently they do and all the BNP's lies, misleading hints and snidey comments are unlikely to stop that.

Even if they continue to churn them out at the rate they have over the last week.

BNP audience outnumbered by protestors

The appalling Danny Lake

BNP leader Nick Griffin has finally addressed an audience in Bath, despite protesters' attempts to stop the talk going ahead.

The controversial politician was forced to rearrange the venue three times after anti-fascist campaigners trailed organiser and Young BNP leader Danny Lake around the city. Mr Griffin had been due to speak at the University of Bath on Monday night but the invitation was withdrawn last Thursday after protests from academic staff and students. Eventually he addressed just four students in a talk lasting less than ten minutes.

The event, on a grassy area below the Royal Crescent, saw the audience outnumbered by protesters. The politician was flanked by several security guards and watched by 14 protesters and 13 police officers.

He said he would now be making greater use of the internet after his proposed meeting at the university's Claverton campus became the latest in a long line to be banned after student and staff protests.

The university authorities withdrew their permission for the meeting because of fears of disruption at a time when many students are taking exams.

"I was going to talk to politics students at the university, not about how they should join the BNP but why we are getting more support," he said. "Instead of going to universities, I am now going to make a series of films for students which I will put on the internet and produce leaflets to give out, so if students want to find out about the BNP, they can read it online, without being chased down by neo-Stalinists."

As Mr Griffin was repeatedly heckled by protesters, he answered students' questions about allegations he is a holocaust denier, believes Islam is a barbaric religion and supports capital punishment.

First year politics student Richard said: "Most people were too intimidated to come as soon as he was banned as they were worried others would label them a BNP supporter, which I'm definitely not. I don't really know what his motivation was and don't like his policies but it's important for a politics student to emphasise the importance of free speech and I was curious."

Another student, Anthony, said: "I wanted to speak to him more about his racial policies which make me feel very uncomfortable. It's those who banned him from speaking who are the fascists."

Mr Lake said he hoped to invoke the Education Act to secure Mr Griffin a platform on campus at the university.

The talk was originally scheduled for 150 politics students at the university, but sparked a furore among academic staff, students, trade union representatives and members of Unite Against Fascism. The invitation was withdrawn after the students' union voted against it and university administrators raised concerns about security. Vice-chancellor Prof Glynis Breakwell was also presented with a petition.

Mr Lake had rescheduled Mr Griffin's visit for a smaller audience at the Assembly Inn in Alfred Street but that was cancelled once the landlord, Ian Collins, was tipped off by anti-fascist organisation Searchlight.

Mr Collins said he decided to cancel the moment he knew who was involved. He alerted police who sent two riot vans to a second meeting place in George Street.

"A young man visited me the night before and asked if he could book a room," said Mr Collins. "It was a very casual arrangement. The moment Searchlight rang to tell me who was behind it, I opted to stop it. I feel that I have been hoodwinked into holding this talk."

Sgt Dave Kay, of Avon and Somerset Police, said: "We knew the BNP were planning to have some sort of event and there was the possibility of group or groups opposing it. We explained to both parties that we are here to keep the peace, are not taking sides and did not want to be in a position where we had to intervene."

One protester, Simon Fitzmaurice, 19, a student from Bath Spa University, said he found out about the event on the internet.

"I'm from near Harrogate in Yorkshire where the BNP actually hold a seat so I felt I had to be here."

Bath Chronicle

Secret Bath BNP meeting stopped by anti-fascists

After having his talk at Bath University cancelled, it looked like Griffin would be giving the city a miss. However, a report on BBC 'points west' stated that he would be holding a secret meeting arranged by nazi Bath student Danny Lake.

Upon hearing that the meeting was still taking place at a secret location, we rang BNP national office who obligingly provided us with BNP youth organiser Danny Lake's mobile number.

We rang him, posing as a student who was pissed-off that the uni talk had been cancelled, and he was happy enough to tell us the pub the BNP were meeting in before the speech. We rang the pub, who seemed worried at the prospect of having Nazis in their bar.

We only had a short time to organise the demo, but got 20 anti-fascists outside the pub within 2 hours notice. The nazis turned up, looked confused and tried to reorganise a meeting place. Our spotters followed the ringleader into a nearby pub, which we entered, chanting and confronting the facists. Despite big talk, they seemed to be unwilling to enter into confrontation.

After being ejected from the pub by the cops, we had a demo outside. When the BNP left the pub (in much smaller numbers than they entered!), we were prevented from following, although a team of spotters managed to get around the police and follow them. They ended up having a tiny gathering in a park, well outnumbered by anti-fascists, who drowned out their speeches with chanting and anti-nazi punks played down a megaphone!

We heard later that Griffin was intending to record his speech and use it as propaganda, but could not do so because of the background noise!

All in all, a good day for anti-fascism - we managed to crash a secret meeting, doubling fash numbers, push them out of three venues, then reduced them to 10 skinheads standing in a park!

Nazis are not welcome in Bath - wherever they go, we will stop them!

NO PASARAN!
(A) Sab x

Indymedia

University of Bath cancels BNP lecture after student outcry

The University of Bath has this afternoon cancelled a meeting on Monday at which the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, had been invited to speak, for reasons of public safety.

The announcement comes just two days after the university insisted that the meeting should go ahead on the grounds of freedom of speech, following assurances that the event would not threaten public order.

But this afternoon, after a meeting of the university's student union which condemned the BNP and called on the university to cancel the event, the university's vice-chancellor, Professor Glynis Breakwell, and secretary, Mark Humphriss, announced the meeting would not now go ahead.

In a statement they said they had taken into account the views of staff and students about the meeting and the university's belief in freedom of speech.

They said: "In addition, some staff and students have registered with us their serious concerns for their safety if this event proceeds, as well as fears of disruption to examinations given the likely scale of protests on the day.

"These considerations do need to be balanced against the need to hear and challenge a variety of opinions in an institution committed to high quality learning and research. Freedom of speech is a principle to be highly cherished by academic institutions.

"The university has, however, now learned that a very large number of protesters intend to arrive on campus. This creates the likelihood of substantial public order problems and real possibility of disruption of the essential activities of the university community, making it impractical for the university to allow the event to go ahead."

Nick Griffin had been invited to the university to speak next Monday by first-year politics with economics student Danny Lake, 22, the national youth leader of the BNP and a student at Bath.

The event was not planned to boost student recruitment to the BNP, according to Mr Lake, but was an opportunity for students to quiz the party about its policies.

At today's meeting, the student's union said that if the meeting went ahead it would tarnish the "good reputation of the university" and that the presence of Nick Griffin on the campus would "invade the safe space of some of its members". There was also concern that the event, which the union complained had been organised at short notice, was being used as an excuse to recruit BNP student members.

Students were also worried that the evening meeting scheduled to start at 7pm and the planned protest organised by lecturers' union the University and College Union at 5pm would disrupt exams taking place on campus at the time.

The university's student union president, Paul Jaggers, said after the student meeting: "This has been a real victory for student cohesion."

Mr Lake, who spoke at the student meeting, argued that the event should go ahead on the grounds of free speech. He said: "To a certain extent I expected this outcome from the student union meeting because it was very much that the people who were there were those who were opposed to the meeting taking place, and when somebody is against something they are more likely to turn up."

Opposition to the planned BNP meeting had grown over recent days from both the UCU and the national office of the National Union of Students.

The UCU had warned it would hold a protest demonstration if the event went ahead.

Joint general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: "It was the correct decision. Allowing the BNP to speak would have compromised the safety of students and staff and sent out a very worrying message about Bath University's commitment to diversity.

"Nothing is more important than university campuses remaining environment where staff and students are free from intimidation and the threat of violence and where they can work and study safely."

Earlier in the week the UCU had warned that allowing the meting to go ahead would cause "substantial damage" to the university's international reputation.

Even though staff and students "cherish" academic free speech they would "deplore the presence in an institution of learning of Nick Griffin and his hate-filled messages."

Guardian

Fascist BNP leader stopped from speaking at Bath University

Protest cancelled

Today the University of Bath refused permission for Nick Griffin, leader of the fascist BNP to give a lecture, which was due to take place on Monday 14th May 2007.

Local trade unions including UCU, UNISON and Amicus joined with the National Union of Students and Bath University Students Union and national anti-fascist campaign Unite Against Fascism to mount a campaign to prevent him from being allowed to speak at the university on the grounds that fascist politics pose a danger to the diversity of students and staff alike. In areas that the BNP target, such as Barking and Dagenham, racist attacks and other hate crimes increase.

The protest called by University of Bath branches of Amicus, UNISON, UCU and supported by UCU, NUS, & Unite Against Fascism against the BNP leader's presence on campus has therefore been cancelled.

Love Music Hate Racism will be holding an event, sponsored by UCU, at University of Bath to celebrate anti- racism and the diversity on campus. This event is on Monday 14th May, 7pm till 11pm at Elements, Bath University Students Union, Bath University, Bath BA2 7AY and will feature prominent DJ's and a film screening of the Love Music Hate Racism DVD ' Who shot the sheriff 'and speeches.

Sally Hunt, UCU joint general secretary said:
“We feel this is the correct decision. Allowing the BNP to speak would have compromised the safety of staff and students and sent out a very worrying message about Bath University’s commitment to diversity.

“The millions of staff and students who cherish academic freedom as a precious right still deplore the presence in an institution of learning of Nick Griffin and his hate-filled messages. Nothing is more important than university campuses remaining environments where staff and students are free from intimidation and the threat of violence, and where they can work and study safely.”

Gemma Tumelty NUS President said:
"The defeat of the BNP being allowed to spread its message of hatred from an academic institution represents a massive victory for all those who value democracy. This shows the importance of building a broad coalition between trade unionists, students, community groups and all those who oppose the BNP. The University was right to withdraw its invite to the BNP but NUS also believes it is necessary for the university to recognise the danger that fascism poses to the safety of students and all of those within the campus community. NUS will continue to campaign to ensure that fascism never gains a foothold on our campuses."

Weyman Bennett, Joint National Secretary of Unite Against Fascism said:
“The fascist BNP craves legitimacy but it is an organisation of violent thugs riddled with criminal convictions, which admires Hitler and the Nazis. Allowing its leader the legitimacy of speaking at an academic institution would only further its aims of making the politics of hatred more palatable. The racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic politics of the BNP pose a danger to many of the staff and students who make up the diversity of the university. This was the right decision by the university and the overwhelming and immediate opposition expressed to Griffin speaking is a reflection of how unacceptable he is to the majority of people.“

UAF

Unions plan demo welcome for BNP men

A demonstration is being planned by union leaders against the British National Party when its leader speaks at a top university.And at the same time 10 miles away, another demo is being planned outside a town council chamber when a BNP candidate takes his seat for the first time.

The major demonstration will be against Nick Griffin, who has been invited to speak at the University of Bath next Monday night.

University bosses gave the green light for the lecture, but warned organisers they would shut the meeting down if Mr Griffin or anyone else transgressed the boundaries of legal speech. The BNP leader was cleared last year of inciting racial hatred in a trial over a speech filmed by an undercover BBC documentary-maker.

The University and College Union are joining forces with the TUC to picket the meeting in Bath, and union members are also being called to picket the first full council meeting at Corsham Town Council, where BNP member Michael Simpkins will take his seat for the first time.

Mr Simpkins was elected unopposed in Corsham, a town where the BNP has had a high profile recently. It was criticised by police for starting civilian patrols in response to claims of anti-social behaviour by the town's youth. But civic leaders in Corsham have played down Mr Simpkins' impact, with the town clerk stating the town council was strictly non-party political.

The bigger protest is expected in Bath, after BNP leader Nick Griffin was invited by party members who are students at the university. University and College Union assistant general secretary John Perry said: "The campus trade unions are organising a protest outside the venue. Anti-fascist staff and students will attend and protest inside the venue. It is vital that academic freedom is not used by the BNP to stir up hate in our places of education."

But the BNP's youth leader Danny Lake, a student at the University of Bath, said he invited Mr Griffin to find out more about the party. "People are always reading about the BNP, but what people quite often don't have is the chance to sit there and listen to the BNP themselves putting their viewpoint across," he said.

Western Daily Press