Griffin loses latest court case

I've just heard that a court in London has just found against Nick Griffin and the BNP. We believe that he now has to find another £90,000 to pay off the 'Decembrists' - a group of former members and party employees who challenged his leadership and were subsequently sacked and expelled. They were sacked in February 2008 and the case came to court in December 2010.

This could turn out to be a very expensive day for Nick Griffin. The party is also appearing in a Bristol court for the latest saga in the on-going Employment Tribunal hearing relating to Michaela MacKenzie, another former party employee who was sacked after falling out with the party leadership. She successfully won an Employment Tribunal in June 2010 but Griffin has refused to pay the £25,000 she is believed to have been awarded in the settlement.

Update

Further details are now reaching us regarding the outcome of the "Decembrist" case against Nick Griffin and the BNP.

This morning in the Royal Courts of Justice,Lord Justice Ward dismissed Nick Griffin and Simon Darby's application for leave to appeal in the Decembrist case.

The £45,000 that had previously been paid into the Court Funds Office is today being paid out to the solicitors for the "Decembrists". Costs totalled around £111,000 when they were calculated back in December 2010. In addition to any further costs incurred this year, Griffin and Darby will have to pay 8% interest.

Lord Justice Ward told Griffin & Darby's barrister "You've done very well. I'm unimpressed, I'm afraid. It's not your fault. None of the arguments are substantial enough to give a realistic prospect of success. I see no realistic prospect of success and I dismiss the application."

Nick Lowles at Hope not hate

Griffin and Darby appeal lost

Click on image for full-size

Griffin stuffed

Enough to put ANYONE off their Christmas dinner...

Nick Griffin has today taken a right old stuffing after a judge ruled against him for the unfair dismissal of four former BNP employees. The BNP leader has been ordered to pay £45,000 in court costs within 28 days and pay another £40,000 in compensation to Steve Blake, Kenny Smith, Ian Dawson, and Nichola Smith. Some commentators believe his own legal fees could reach as much as £30,000.

It is also worth remembering that the BNP has still not paid the compensation for unfair dismissal to Michaela McKenzie, despite being ordered to do so last June. The compensation and legal fees is believed to have run into the tens of thousands.

All in all, it's turning out to be a pretty awful Christmas for Griffin.

Hope not hate

Note: The full judgement is here for those who wish to read it. Thanks to all who sent in the link.

The death of it?

For some time the apologists and political rent-boys close to the BNP's leadership have been "putting it about", as they say, that the party's income has stabilised at around £1000 per day - a preposterous and currently uncheckable figure, conjured up as being the minimum necessary to sooth the worries entertained by large parts of the remaining membership that the BNP is flirting with insolvency, if it is not insolvent in fact.

Now a membership of 14,000 - as claimed before the General Election - is, via donations, membership fees, sales etc., certainly capable of producing an income well in excess of £1000 per day, but not in any sustained manner. Members might be persuaded to dig deep and often for an election push, but that effort and enthusiasm never lasts past election day.

The trouble for the BNP is, however, that most of its claimed 14,000 members did little beyond pay an annual sub. The majority never attended meetings or made a monetary contribution. The bulk of the party's financial efforts fall on the shoulders of a far smaller number of members.

Even then, since the general election the BNP has lost thousands of (admittedly) paper or low activity members, but with them have gone substantial numbers of stalwart activists and donators, to the point that in large parts of the country the party has ceased to exist or exists in name only.

Estimating the current size of the membership, and further estimating from that the probable size and number of income streams available to the party is problematical, but we are fairly safe in assuming that the BNP's current income bears little comparison with its pre-election income, and that the foggy £1000 per day figure is a gross exaggeration.

The BNP is approaching its old annual membership renewal cycle, and would normally be looking for a substantial replenishment of its coffers, but the omens aren't good. The majority of those renewals are due from paper and fair-weather members all too well aware of the electoral catastrophe that overwhelmed the BNP in May, and perhaps dimly aware of the internal strife that has beset the party ever since. These were the first to desert the National Front in similar circumstances in 1979, while the majority of activists - I am informed by sources who were involved at the time - clung together, if in ever increasing acrimony.

While we can and frequently do compare the BNP's debacle in 2010 with that of the NF in 1979, there are important differences.

There is the lack of a hardline hardcore element loyal to an alternative potential leader, such as that which coalesced around John Tyndall. Without that determined element to support and sustain him, Tyndall's career may well have ended in 1979. And, of course, without Tyndall, that element could never have survived and gone on to found the BNP.

Much of the "moderate" element of the National Front was drawn into Andrew Fountaine's NF Constitutional Movement, which, unhappily for them, quickly went the way of all "moderate" British nationalist parties.

The situation within the BNP does not compare with that of the old National Front. The BNP has a leader who it cannot remove, and is supported by a strange and sycophantic array of hardliners, "moderates", political illiterates (Paul Morris and friends), hangers-on, dependants and chancers whose only real point of agreement is that - unfathomably - Nick Griffin must remain as the BNP's leader.

And, of course, unlike the BNP, the National Front had tangible assets, and so far as anybody is aware, never came close to going broke.

Eddy Butler, in fairness, has never portrayed himself as an alternative BNP leader, and played what might be considered a good game until that moment he accepted the rejection of his leadership nomination bid on Griffin's terms, when the ball was unnecessarily dropped and discontent set in. Though he has sat tight ever since, the same cannot be said of his supporters, who quickly began to drift away. There was no Eddy Butler "situation" in 1979.

The formation of the tiny British Freedom Party might be said to have parallels in 1979, but only as the faintest of echoes. Regionally based, led by unfamiliar names and purporting to have abandoned racism, the BFP is of only the mildest interest to anti-fascists. If we can torture a comparison with anything then it would be Anthony Reed Herbert's Leicester-based British Democratic Party - but Reed Herbert's was a well-known and respected name and his party highly active. Of course, Reed Herbert and the BDP were brought down by rogue elements, roles currently adopted in the BFP by Lee Barnes and Simon Bennett. Few seriously expect the BFP to be a long term venture.

Complicating everything is the BNP's mountain of debts and the unnecessary and ruinously expensive court cases in which it has become embroiled. Unlike the National Front, the BNP really could disappear overnight. One successful creditor demanding a substantial sum would be enough (Eddy Butler claims that two are presently "well advanced in the process of taking insolvency proceedings against the party and against Nick Griffin").

Whispers have also been reaching anti-fascist ears for some time now that the Griffinite neutrality displayed towards clam-like MEP Andrew Brons is not quite what it seems, and is of the belligerent variety. At its simplest, the BNP leadership believes that Brons should have sacked Eddy Butler (who is employed on Brons's European staff) and publicly declared his support for Griffin. Brons has not sacked Butler, and his public utterances of support for Griffin have been at best lukewarm and evasive. There is clearly more to be told here, since Brons could solve Griffin's Butler problem very quickly (if at the probable but worthwhile cost of an employment tribunal) but chooses not to do so.

On the 29th of this month the final part of the case Nick Griffin and Simon Darby brought against the December Rebels is due to be heard at Newcastle High Court. Griffin and Darby lost the first two parts of the case, and according to the remaining rebels have "tried every trick in the book" to postpone the very proceedings they instigated, which they are expected to lose, and lose at great expense to the BNP.

At the weekend rumours that Griffin would not contest the final part of the case began to surface. We cannot confirm these rumours, and in any event past form tells us to be cautious of any rumour originating with the BNP leadership, but whatever the truth, on November the 29th the BNP is very likely to pile another £50,000+ on to its frighteningly high debt mountain. We doubt that the shabbily treated Kenny and Nichola Smith, Steve Blake and Ian Dawson will be prepared to wait long to recover their costs.

The situation of the BNP makes that of the 1979 NF appear hideously uncomplicated by comparison, the great irony of it all being that the BNP's dictatorial leadership system was conceived in the fallout of the 1979 debacle and was intended to ensure that such an implosion could never happen again - yet it has proved to be the fount of so many BNP ills over the past eleven years, and at the last may prove the death of it.

Woe is Nick - accounts late, Collett charges dropped, Decembrists return from the grave

Despite promise after promise that this year it would be different, the BNP has yet again failed to submit an annual statement of accounts to the Electoral Commission, incurring an automatic minimum £500 fine. The party's Regional Accounting Unit has also failed to submit accounts and will be fined a minimum of £100.

In a statement made earlier today (Thursday) by the Electoral Commission, Chief Executive Peter Wardle said:

Most parties and accounting units submitted their accounts on time; one [the SDLP] made what we hope will prove to be a one-off mistake and will face a fine for late submission. But two parties have repeatedly failed to put information about their income and expenditure into the public domain on time.

That is not acceptable, and as well as fining these two parties for late submission, we will be monitoring them closely to try to ensure they meet the same standards of reporting as the others. The sanctions we currently have available to deal with this sort of non-compliance are limited, but we look forward to Parliament giving final approval to a wider range of sanctions, before the end of this year.

Joining the BNP in the doghouse is the tiny Christian Party.

Should the BNP fail to submit its accounts within the next three months the fines levied on the party will double, as they did last year when the party played fast and loose with the EC's patience (and its own members' subscriptions and donations).

Ever since the spotlight fell firmly on the BNP's finances post-general election, Nick Griffin has been going out of his way to give an impression that all is well and that this year the accounts, now - allegedly - under the management of a professional accountant, would be submitted as required. Griffin must have been aware for some time that this would not be the case.

Cynics dissecting the series of self-serving treatises put out by Griffin post-election, forecast that the BNP accounts would again be late, since Griffin continually harped on about the complexity of the party's financial operations and the difficulties inherent in keeping them in order, and seemed to be laying down an advance trail of plausible excuses.

This may also explain why a clearly uncomfortable David Hannam, the party's national treasurer, has been pushed to the fore in the past week, being chivvied, we strongly suspect, into making a video for the BNP website and issuing a statement on behalf of his treasury department which promises much but clarifies little. The emailed version is "From Chairman Nick Griffin", and while we don't suppose he did more than outline what he expected the statement to contain, it's also difficult to believe that Hannam's is the only hand involved.

Nick Griffin having conveniently departed the country for a holiday, explanations for the lateness of the BNP's accounts will be sought from Hannam, who may be wondering if he hasn't been set up for a fall.

(For a fuller examination of this matter, see Sonia Gable's HNH/Searchlight article, republished here.)

In the meantime...


Humberside Police have dropped charges against sacked BNP publicity director Mark Collett (above, with Griffin), according to a post on leadership challenger Eddy Butler's blog. Collett was arrested on April 1st after Griffin had contacted the police claiming to have received death threats. A police statement made after Collett was bailed said: "This investigation was initiated as a result of a complaint by a member of the British National Party and inquiries are ongoing."

Clearly, no, or insufficient, evidence existed upon which a charge could be sustained.

At the time Nick Griffin sent out a hysterical email linking Collett not only with the utterance of alleged death threats but with financial impropriety and of being part of a "palace coup" about to be staged against his leadership. Despite claiming that he was unable to discuss the matter due to rules of "sub judice" (which was untrue), Griffin (ignoring sub judice as it suited him) instigated a widely ridiculed "inquiry" that was held on Easter Monday (April 5th), in which twelve dupes were sent off to "authenticate" a highly edited recording of the "death threats". Naturally, they gave the required answer.

Along with Collett, Eddy Butler and Emma Colgate were dismissed from their posts, and it is now apparent that the entire saga relates not to "death threats", the misappropriation of BNP monies on Collet's part or to "palace coups" but to allegations of serious financial wrong-doing at the top of the BNP, of which the trio had become aware.

News of Collett's arrest was deliberately leaked to the media from within the BNP just as the party's general and local election campaign was set to launch. How much damage was done to the BNP's vote as a result, and how much it was responsible for the loss of so many BNP councillors is difficult to tell, since we believe the BNP was always on course for a hiding at the ballot box.

It is self-evident to all but the most blind and sycophantic of Griffinites that the dodgy "death threat" episode, played out in the press and on television, was an enormous own goal on the part of the leadership, far more damaging than the fleeting loss of the party's website just before polling day. People may go to political websites in their hundreds, but they read newspapers and watch television in their millions.

With the charges dropped and any loyalties he might have held for Nick Griffin shattered, Mark Collett may well end his prolonged silence on the affair, an eventuality that on the surface can only benefit Eddy Butler. Butler is closer to Collett than he cares to admit, and thus far the Nazi Boy has been a peripheral, almost invisible figure, with very good reason. Collett is so widely reviled within the BNP that any open association between him and Butler would seriously damage Butler's leadership campaign. His open involvement in the campaign would almost certainly kill it. Collett, then, is of limited use to Butler, no matter how innocent he may be of the charges levelled against him by Griffin - though he may yet damage Griffin to the favour of Butler in an apparently independent "off stage" role.

The weight on Griffin's mind has been added to by news that the final part of the case he instigated (and has so far roundly lost) against the December Rebels will be heard at the High Court in Newcastle on November 29th.

Kenny Smith, one of the leading Decembrists, has reactivated the derelict Enough Is Enough website to announce that "Judgement Day is coming!"

Remarking that Griffin and Simon Darby "have tried every trick in the book, and indeed continue to invent new ways of delaying proceedings, to prevent the case they instigated at the Party's expense coming to trial", Smith gleefully adds:

Sadly for them, but happily for those who want to see justice done and the truth finally revealed in full, the trial has been fixed to start on Monday the 29th November 2010 at Newcastle High Court.

Kenny, Nicholla, Steve and Ian are all looking forward to their days in court and finally being able to expose Griffin and his cabal for what they are!

The Decembrists, somewhat pre-empted as Griffinite bugging of their private conversations led to the exposure of their intentions, launched the last serious attempt at unseating Nick Griffin, but the campaign soon floundered through indecision and the want of firm leadership. Then as now, Griffin began expelling or suspending individual Decembrists on eminently challengable grounds. At the time we observed that just one challenge to Griffin's worthless writs of expulsion would stop him in his tracks and galvanise support for the rebels as hesitant individual members lost their fear of the Leader's edicts. It is a lesson Eddy Butler's supporters have failed to learn, as they allow themselves to be picked off one by one.

Griffin's smothering tactics worked at the time but disguised the extent of latent discontent within the party. Seemingly united for the Euro election campaign, the cracks soon began to show as the false foundations on which the Euro success had been built were exposed by ever worsening votes which reflected the BNP's true electoral position, and by Griffin's inept approach to the EHRC case. The awful Question Time appearance, the dislodging of PPCs in favour of party "names", the wild allegations against Collett, thuggish behaviour towards journalists and others, the needless courting of Unilever litigation, the general and local election rout have all done for Griffin what the Decembrists never could.

He did it all himself. And if he really were a leader of vision, the genius of strategy he is so frequently claimed to be, then he would have known that cutting off the Decembrist head while smothering Decembrist sentiment would leave hundreds within the BNP to brood and bide their time.

That they have done, for what else is Eddy Butler's campaign but the second coming of the Decembrists, with new leadership, bigger and badder than ever?

Council ousts 'BNP leak' councillor

A councillor arrested last year in connection with a leaked BNP membership list has lost her seat, it emerged today.

Sadie Graham-Single is no longer councillor for Brinsley after Broxtowe Borough Council announced it is to hold a by-election for her seat. The council has called the election following Mrs Graham-Single's failure to attend the requisite number of meetings during a six-month period.

In a statement, the council said her right to be a councillor ceased at midnight on May 12th - six months after last attending a meeting of the council's Sustainable Communities committee on November 12, 2008.

Mrs Graham-Single has been informed of the council's decision and the date of the by-election will be announced following a full council meeting on June 17.

Mrs Graham-Single was one of two people arrest last December in connection with the unauthorised publication of a BNP membership list on the internet. She was arrested by Notts Police on behalf of Dyfed Powys Police, but was bailed pending further inquiries.

This is Nottingham

One Flew Over The Pig Farm: the BNP and us in 2008 - February

Not being endowed with the greatest of political imaginations (as opposed to fevered fantasy), the BNP thought it would be a wizard prang to produce a racist leaflet entitled "The Londoner", which it hoped to confuse with the Greater London Authority's own publication of the same name.

Naturally, the political geniuses of the BNP had neglected to check on the status of the name "The Londoner", which, as they should have known, was a trademark registered to the GLA. The GLA promptly fired off a legal missive accusing the BNP of "intentionally trading on the goodwill of the GLA in the trademark of ‘The Londoner’ by using a trademark which is confusingly similar to ‘The Londoner’ and that the use of the trademark, does, or is intended to, confuse or mislead members of the public". The same missive demanded that the BNP cease and desist and remove from circulation any publication using "The Londoner" as its title.

This wasn't to be the last time in 2008 that the BNP sought to sow the seeds of confusion by conflating other, perfectly respectable causes with its own racist campaigns.

In the best piece of national press publicity to come the way of racism for many a year, the Daily Mail developed a soft spot for what it called "the BNP's blonde bombshell", and devoted a two-page spread to Upper Beeding's best known paragon of virtue, community activist, all-round good egg (and BNP member), Donna Bailey.

Donna has the kind of looks that drive normally woman-free BNP members to stock up on tissue papers, and was the perfect antidote to the recently aired derangement of Lynne Mozar. Nobody ever commented on the BNP website to the effect that "We need more like Lynne Mozar in the BNP", but the party's article showcasing the Daily Mail's Donna tribute quickly filled with comments that might have come from schoolboys drooling over a Penthouse centre-spread.

As we noted: "Donna is, as they say, a class act. It's almost as if the BNP has recruited its very own Julie Andrews who comes skipping and singing over the Sussex Downs spreading sweetness and light wherever she goes."

This Julie Andrews had selective vision, however.

Donna told the Daily Mail: "I thought probably exactly the same of the BNP as you do. I thought, if this [the BNP website] is all racist, offensive stuff then I am switching right off. But it wasn't. It was all perfectly sensible. I found myself agreeing with everything - especially the immigration stuff."

Just in case Donna missed it, we pointed out that "the immigration stuff" was very difficult to avoid on the BNP website, as was the barely disguised racism behind it, and that if you took away "the immigration stuff" you could fit the BNP's policies on the back of a postage stamp. Even more difficult to avoid was the overt racism of the BNP's keyboard army of bloggers and forum posters, but Donna must, by some mysterious means, never have come across these dubious delights.

We said:

"...we'll presume that Donna refrained from visiting the numerous websites of the BNP's Blog Battalion, where open racism and complete contempt for other peoples and cultures is all too obvious ('Turnips', 'Muzzies', 'Mudslimes' ''Groids', Donna?). Or that she has never visited a BNP-infested Internet forum where the tone is somewhere between the toilet and the sewer, and the mental ability to step back a couple of rungs on the evolutionary ladder is a prerequisite to talking on anything like equal terms with them"

and added:

We'll also assume that Donna suffers from some unspecified but mercifully unique condition that blinds her to any awareness of the after-hours activties of so many of her fellow BNP members - you know the kind of thing, trivialities like murder, solicitation to murder, bomb-making, wife-beating, GBH, fraud, attacking Eddy Butler... not to mention the latest additions to the list, such entering members' homes by deception to make off with their property, bugging their private conversations and then pasting them on the Internet.

Donna told the Daily Mail that, just like her, BNP were "quite normal" and that the party suffered from a "bad press".

Hey ho.

Back in the reality of the BNP, the Decembrist rebellion limped on. An increasingly confident Nick Griffin made the rebels a tricksy offer they could all too easily refuse, as Searchlight reported:

In exchange for giving up their ‘strike’ and taking down their insurgent website and blogs the rebel leaders were given the chance of getting their party cards back.

The only condition laid out by the ever-so-generous party leadership was that they would only return as probationary members. This would mean that their immediate future in the party would be dependent on good behaviour and, just as importantly for Nick Griffin, they would not be entitled to stand for the party leadership at least the next three years.

The move was typical of Griffin. Everybody beyond the gullible BNP membership saw a trap being loaded, especially the rebels, who knew they would be lucky to last three months, good behaviour or not, as Griffin picked them off at leisure. This was a double trap, though, since in refusing Griffin's offer the rebels gave the BNP leader the opportunity to portray himself as a man of compromise and reason, spurned by disruptive splitters. And so, as always, it was win-win for Griffin.

At the same time Griffin-inspired rumours began to surface portending yet more changes to the BNP constitution, aimed at curtailing challenges to Nick's leadership - and the BNP's ever obliging mug battalion nodded sagely that this was the right and proper thing to do.

The saga of Donna Bailey finally came to a head with the Upper Beeding Parish Council by-election in which the flaxen-haired goddess rather less than honestly stood as an independent. This stance was contradicted, rather, by the BNP, which claimed her for its own, and sat back confident in expectations of a famous victory that would propel Donna into Upper Beeding's corridors of power.

Alas, Donna badly misfired. Having failed to secure co-option by invading an Upper Beeding Parish Council meeting, she also failed to secure election, losing out to a woman "who likes poodles", as a later film, based on these events, reported.



Four Burnley BNP supporters found themselves on the thick end of a High Court ruling that landed them with £30,000 in costs after they challenged an election result in the town's Rosegrove with Lowerhouse ward. Not mincing his words, Burnley Council Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow said that the four had failed to obtain proper legal advice (we wouldn't care to guess where they did obtain it) and had been "cajoled into going on a fishing trip".

He added: "Four citizens of Burnley have been put in a position where they face substantial costs, which could have been avoided. The fact that it's four individuals means the British National Party isn't liable for any of the costs despite the fact they've been using this for party political means."

You really would have thought that Burnley BNP might have smelled a rat when advised to object to the Rosegrove with Lowerhouse result on an individual basis. Obviously somebody in the party hierarchy knew they hadn't got a hope and wasn't prepared to sacrifice party money in a lost cause - but was more than happy to encourage the unfortunate four into financial penury.

The bewildering melange of fact and fiction that are the BNP's finances came under the scrutiny of Radio 4's "File on Four" in a programme Simon Darby predictably pre-warned was an "attack" on the party.

With considerations of impartiality and legal responsibility to address, "File on Four" put itself at a disadvantage in its dealings with a party never knowingly observant of either, and the resulting programme, while still damaging, was not the killer blow it should have been.

Still, enough evidence of BNP shady dealings was presented that would in any other party have led to an internal inquiry at the very least, and should have been of deep interest to the Electoral Commission. As Nick Griffin, chief suspect in many of the allegations made, was the only person within the BNP who could order an inquiry, that was always a non-starter - not that anybody would have trusted a Griffin-instigated inquiry, - and the Electoral Commission... well, our experience of that particular "watchdog" is such that we wonder if there is any point to it at all.

Lancaster Unity listed five points of interest raised by "File on Four":

* Possible donation fraud
* Potential PAYE fraud
* Dodgy unreceipted transactions
* Lies from the BNP's treasurer
* Shredded documents

and concluded

All in all, an intriguing programme that was only able to touch the surface of the corruption that is endemic within and around the British National Party. The feeling I got from it is that there is a lot more information to be dug out - but that's the feeling we all get when the words 'corruption' and 'BNP' are mentioned in the same sentence.

News that the BNP had moved its Excalibur tat outlet to Deeside in North Wales was greeted with digust on the part of local Labour MP Mark Tami. “This is a very unwelcome development,” he told the North Wales Daily Post. “Clearly their views are abhorrent to the vast majority of the British public. Nobody would want to see this in the area and I hope that people steer clear of buying any merchandising from the BNP.”

Naturally Excalibur failed to inform landlords Evans Easyspace of its connection to the BNP, and moved heaven and earth to keep the location of its premises secret. It was so secret, apparently, that Nick Griffin told the Daily Post that even he didn't know where it was - and if you believe that...

So began the quest to discover the whereabouts of the BNP's repository of fake Victoria Crosses and cheap t-shirts, which we'll return to in a later post.

Meanwhile, local opposition gathered as the BNP announced plans to stage its annual Red White and Blue money-spinner in Denby, Derbyshire, for the second year running. Party member Alan Warner, on whose land the August event would be staged, had initially sided with the Decembrist rebels until leaned on by panicked local officials, and later resigned his Denby parish council seat claiming that other councillors didn't talk to him and that parish councils "have no power".

Denby residents objected to the BNP's presence after witnessing their loutish behaviour the previous year. Denby man John Lumsden told his local newspaper: "The people who caused the main problems were the organisers who stayed up all night having large karaoke parties." 76 year-old Brian Bentley said: "We had a lot of noise last year and a lot of people from the festival left the site and were just walking around the village drinking."

All political parties are prone to pulling some low tricks, but few do so with the resolve and tenacity of the BNP. Treating the Hastings Voluntary Association for the Blind with utter contempt, the party of truth and honesty booked the Association's premises under the name "British Heritage" so as to hold a meeting addressed by Nick Griffin.

An appalled HVAB spokesperson said: "To say we are shocked about this is an understatement. We are horrified. We would not have allowed the booking if we had known it was for this purpose."

Lancaster Unity remarked:

The BNP's current infestation of South African ex-Security Service personnel seems to be increasing the BNP's love of cloak and dagger operations. Supporters were told to meet outside a nearby Methodist Church before being directed to the venue, a five minute walk away. The password, apparently, was "buffoons".

"Buffoons", we can safely assume, tells us all we need to know about the BNP's attitude towards Hastings Voluntary Association for the Blind.

Cloak and dagger was also the order of the day in Birmingham, where a tiny band of fascists skulked around the back streets a-purposed on holding a "trade union" AGM. This wasn't just any old trade union, however, this was the "one big union", the "fighting union", the "[insert windy hyperbole here] union", Solidarity - general secretary Patrick Harrington.

Our friends at Norfolk Unity take up the story:

In Birmingham on February 23rd the BNP's bogus micro "trade union", Solidarity, held its annual conference at the Apollo Hotel, Birmingham. The booking was made in the name of "Accentuate", a vaporous one man "PR company" which seems to exist to issue press releases nobody takes any notice of.

Solidarity, taken from its founders Clive Potter and Tim Hawke in dubious circumstances in a Griffin-inspired coup and handed to failure and nonentity Patrick Harrington, is so useless that the only advice it could give Mark Walker, at the centre of its feeble cause celebre case, was to "hire a lawyer specialising in employment law".

Some union!

The reason for booking the Apollo Hotel in the name "Accentuate" was purely to con the owners and to disguise the fact that this was a BNP event in all but name.

True to paranoid form, Solidarity insisted its members meet outside a McDonalds from where they would be redirected. I understand they were also told to keep schtumm so that the Apollo's owners didn't tumble to the fact that it was playing host to a gathering of hardcore racists.

The paranoia extended even to its own small band of deluded devotees, who were subjected to bag searches and "other security measures". Photography was out, so were mobile phones and "recording equipment", and only three hours were allowed from start to finish.

After the AGM, Harrington and Solidarity began issuing grandiloquent statements on the business conducted and debates held, neglecting to mention that only 27 members of the "one big union" could be bothered to turn up out of the 211 Harrington claimed were members - itself a lie, as Solidarity's accounts were later to prove.

As February closed the Guardian broke an interesting story on the West London-based CL English Language college, which teaches hundreds of foreign language students, charging fees of up to an eyewatering £30 per hour.

What caught the Guardian's eye was that the college was controlled by old Nick Griffin friend, Roberto Fiore, leader of the neo-fascist Italian Forza Nuova, who had in the past held international fascist gatherings on the premises.

The college was a "substantial business", according to one of its accountants - and with 100 students claimed to be there at any one time paying £30 per hour we imagine that it is. Odd then, as the Guardian clearly felt, that it should produce so little apparent profit: "Despite its size ... its latest accounts show that it recorded a profit of just £2,214 during 2006, and £1,821 the year before."

Or perhaps not so surprising.

CL English Language's accountants refused to be drawn on why the profits of the "substantial business" were so small, claiming client confidentiality - but we're sure you won't fall off your chairs in astonishment to learn that the reluctant currency counters were none other than sweet old Edgar and Jean Griffin, Ma and Pa to the BNP's own Nick.

To be continued...

One Flew Over The Pig Farm: the BNP and us in 2008 - January

Never very far from some self-imposed crisis, the BNP saw in New Year 2008 as only it knows how, in division and acrimony. Still reeling in the swirl created by the Decembrist revolt it was far from certain at the time that the BNP would survive into the Spring as a unified party. Badly shaken, the Griffinites predictably resorted to the underhanded tactics of which they are grubby past masters, raining down a venomous fire on the heads of leading members who, only weeks before, were lauded as paragons of BNP virtue. For good measure, the party even invented the "engagement" of Richard "Mine's a double" Barnbrook and Simone "Formerly had prospects" Clarke.

The trouble for the Decembrists from the beginning was that not only did they underestimate their real enemy, Nick Griffin, but they completely failed to land any telling blows against him, preferring to attack Griffin by proxy, venting themselves against the unpopular Mark Collett and David Hannam in the hope of damaging Griffin.

It was never going to work.

Lurid stories of Collett (left) and Hannam being caught in what we might discreetly call "inappropriate circumstances" with two underage girls during a BNP conference had been doing the rounds for some time, but for the Decembrists not only to resurrect them but also to admit to an intimate knowledge of what had happened not unnaturally led many to the observation that those renewing the allegations were as complicit in covering up the incident as the hierarchy of the BNP, as they had firmly sat on the allegations for more than a year.

We quoted a BNP insider, posting on an anti-Griffin website, thus:

We all could tell they were underage as soon as they walked through led by Collett and many of us said as much to each other including the barman.

When the girls came back down complaining about the demands for sex it was even more obvious they were children and it was Kenny Smith who persuaded them not to go to the press with the mobile phone footage and promised them that Collett and Hannam would be disciplined by the party.

One of the girls bluetoothed the footage to Kenny and I believe he gave it to security (pos. Martin Reynolds) the next morning.

If Kenny hadn't persuaded them and their mother - who arrived later with a security guy - out of going to the press Collett and Hannam would have had to be expelled, but such a media furore would also have been very damaging for the party.'

In response we asked:

* Why didn't Kenny Smith and the other witnesses report this alleged crime when it happened?

* If Smith and co 'could tell they were underage as soon as they walked through led by Collett', why weren't they stopped immediately?

* If the barman at Blackpool's New Kimberley Hotel could tell that the two girls were underage, why didn't he report these activities to the police?

* Matt Single, formerly one of the BNP's security team, has admitted that he knew about this incident when it happened. Why didn't he report it?

* Why did Kenny Smith persuade the girls and a parent of one of them not to go to the police with the mobile phone footage of the alleged incident?

* If Kenny Smith sent the mobile phone footage to Martin Reynolds, the BNP's pervert Head of Security, who was it who then sent it both to us and the Blackpool Gazette?

* What kind of political party would rather hide alleged child abuse than cause any harm to itself?

The fuss eventually died down, but continues to smoulder barely noticed in the background and may yet return to haunt Britain's most voluble anti-paedophile party.

Underestimating and failing to attack Nick Griffin from the outset was the biggest error made by the Decembrists. Second to that came their failure to seek alliances with the surviving Tyndallite/hardline groupings within the BNP - though admittedly, it is difficult to see how softening moderates of Sadie Graham's stamp were ever going to work with Tyndallite purists. But, if the common enemy was Griffin some form of strategic alliance was vital, yet little effort was made to bring it about, and though the Tyndallites may have cheered from the sidelines they were careful to keep their distance.

Not that it did them any good, since Griffin took the opportunity to oust the elected Tyndallite Chris Jackson from his post as North West Regional Organiser and installed himself as head man in the Tyndallites' most visible area of strength.

Despite the deep damage inflicted on the BNP in the few weeks of the rebellion, as January progressed it was evident to some observers that, through a combination of lying, ruthlessness and the rebels' own incoherent strategy, Nick Griffin had already gained the upper hand. Searchlight noted: "If they [the rebels] continue to oppose the party leadership whilst falling over themselves to appear loyal to the party then they will wither away in the not too distant future."

Only when it became obvious that the rebellion had reached its point of maximum impact did the rebels finally fix their sights on Nick Griffin, but by then it was far too late. We said:

[The rebels now] implicitly acknowledge what was stark-staringly obvious from day one - that whatever the accusations against Collett and Hannam, the real problem in the BNP is Nick Griffin himself. Belatedly, the rebels have shifted the focus to Griffin, but the weeks spent in half-heartedly professing loyalty to the BNP leader have cost them dear. Griffin is a ruthless operator, as the rebels knew full well before beginning their adventure, and nothing was more certain than that he would act aggressively, decisively and without scruple. Nothing less on the part of the rebels was ever going to bring them anywhere near success.

By now operating under the name "Voice of Change", the rebels began, as we put it, to "grind into action". Long on promise and short on delivery, the rebels said: "Every single individual expelled in recent weeks is determined to have their own membership reinstated through formal grievance procedures, acknowledging that this may involve costly legal action."

Alas, this did not happen - nor did a promise to stand "independent nationalist" candidates against BNP candidates materialise. This promise was made when it became clear that "Voice of Change" could not (and would not be allowed to) operate as a dissident group within the BNP.

Providing light relief from the rigours of the BNP's internal travails at exactly the right time was the Sky TV documentary, "BNP Wives", which introduced the world to terrifying racist Lynne Mozar (above) and the dippy, deluded (not to mention deserted) Marlene Guest. While Mozar maniacally declaimed that the BNP was hers, all hers, and (while being no Kate Moss herself) called a woman objecting to a BNP anti-mosque campaign a "fat slag", Marlene found herself on the wrong end of a question about Nazi medical experiments: "Well apparently didn't they get a lot of dentistry and plastic surgery?" she sort of explained in one of many convoluted Marlene-isms.

Hailed as "fine ambassadors for the BNP" by, er, the BNP, The London Paper saw Mozar and Guest in a different light: "Marlene Guest, busy giving idiocy a bad name in Rotherham; and Lynne Mozar, the BNP's Southeast regional secretary, proving you can be a Southeast regional idiot as well as a village one – are out on their own. Just BNP Women, then."

Badly in need of a morale boost - and to prove that the membership was backing Nick Griffin - the BNP called a national mobilisation of activists for a weekend of leafleting in London, allegedly to get the party's May GLA and mayoral campaigns off the ground (in January?). Most of the BNP's big-wigs, Griffin included, turned up, but apparently the membership (even that based in London) found better things to do, and - not for the first (or last) time - the BNP lied through its teeth about how many members had actually turned out. The figure, and the number of leaflets delivered, varied depending on which BNP blog you read - anything up to 250. Even 250 is a derisory figure for a party of the alleged size of the BNP, but ever-vigilant Searchlight disputed even that.

Finally, BNP elections "guru" Eddy Butler gave a figure of around 100. Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate and Searchlight noted: "Given that this was a national turnout then a figure of only 100 is not too impressive. I was in Sandwell earlier this year when we had 221 people (yes, that is the number who signed in), virtually all from the Black Country and Birmingham area. On that particular day we managed to deliver 45,000 newspapers. Now that was impressive."

If the BNP's flop of a "national mobilisation" had the hidden agenda of underscoring BNP members' alleged support for Nick Griffin, then part of that same agenda may have been Griffinite Richard Barnbrook's insertion of himself into a Police Federation march calling for better police pay. Of course, Barnbrook's overweening ego played its part, but the circumstance was calculated to generate BNP publicity on the back of quite another (and better) cause.

Brian Paddick told the London Evening Standard, "I felt very uncomfortable that there was someone from the BNP. I was aware of him being there and I pointed it out to federation officials but there was nothing more that I could do. I was very uncomfortable that he was anywhere near me." Searchlight's Gerry Gable said: "The police federation leaders should have told him to get lost." And so say all of us.

The name of the BNP's highly presentable answer to Julie Andrews, Donna Bailey of soon to be infamous Upper Beeding, came to greater prominence in late January when she and her supporters stormed into a meeting of Upper Beeding Parish Council, and, amid scenes described as "quite threatening" by one councillor, demanded Bailey's co-option.

Not getting her pushy way, Bailey then forced a by-election for a vacant parish council seat.

The Observer reported:

"In Upper Beeding, Donna Bailey's candidature is being opposed by Joyce Shaw, a former stalwart of the parish council, who's come out of retirement, and Becki Davoudi, who has an Iranian father, and, like the Asian family who have revived the village shop, has good reason to oppose the far right. What they're fighting is nothing as concrete as a political programme or the certainty of violence, but something vaguer: a chilling of the atmosphere, a potential for disgrace."

More in hope than expectation the Voice of Change rebels came together in Brinsley Parish Hall to discuss their next moves. As there hadn't been too many previous moves, and since Nick Griffin had had the best of them, what might just - if called earlier and under decisive leadership - have sounded Griffin's death knell instead underlined the differences between the rebels themselves and highlighted their lack of direction. The meeting served only to sound the rebel's death knell.

Searchlight's own Scarlet Pimpernel Nick Lowles, who attended the meeting, reported:

Griffin would not have been too concerned with the outcome of this meeting. It finished with the rebels being in the worst possible position. They are no longer in the party (or at least in positions of influence) in any real sense yet they have backed away from launching an alternative party at a time when they still have a degree of support around the country. Launching a new party is of course not easy and would alienate some of their key supporters who wanted to remain in the BNP but when is there ever a good time to split. The answer surely has to be when you can achieve your maximum influence and that is certainly now and not after a possible BNP London or European victory.

One day the rebels will surely look back at the meeting as being an opportunity wasted. Massed in the room were many of the BNP’s super activists and surely a nucleus of a new party and if ever they had the momentum to launch an alternative the time is now. Throughout Griffin’s career he has shown himself to be a master of factionalism and spitefulness and as night follows day it is clear that over the next few months he will drive his opponents out of the party one way or another.

The last act of January was an obscure parish-pump by-election for Calne Town Council's Lickhill ward. Ever optimistic BNP candidate Robert Baggs spoke as if the election was in the bag (sorry!), with tales of "thumbs up and toots from passing motorists" intertwined with an unlikely story concerning the arrival of "4 black gentlemen" in a J-registered car "who had obviously arrived to intimidate and harass our team".

Sadly (or not) Baggs bagged 84 votes out of 791 cast and reached for the sick-bag.

To be continued...

Griffin in panic as membership demands answers over list debacle

Nick Griffin trying to look coy

It's rare to see Nick Griffin responding to the concerns of the members of the British National Party. As long as they pay their membership subscriptions to enable him to live in the style to which he is determined to remain accustomed, he can generally ignore them except for the odd visit to a meeting or the occasional impassioned plea for yet more money.

In fact, the only thing that has ever motivated Griffin is money - as those who have watched him closely over the past decade or two will verify. Hence the sudden panic.

Yesterday's news of the leak and widespread publication of the party's entire membership list - complete with names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, job details, hobbies and a few other little notes that seemed to be of interest to the BNP management - brought the sweat to Griffin's ample brow as he contemplated the membership rightly dumping a party that could lose such essential and sensitive information.

Blogs and forums all over the internet were buzzing with the news - our side with glee at such an appalling disaster for the far-right, their side with fury at the fear of being outed as members of the foremost racist party in the UK, particularly where they have a lot to lose, like a job. Far from supporting Nick Griffin on this worrisome day, the party membership was on the attack all day demanding to know how this crisis had come about.

As the day progressed, more news agencies picked it up - from those based solely on the internet like the Register, Bloggerheads, TechRadar, Harry's Place et al, to a swathe of newspapers and TV stations including the Guardian, Mirror and Telegraph, BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

Griffin's reaction to all this was, according to one of our sources inside the party, to sit in stunned silence for ages, seething. Eventually though, he decided that action was after all of more use than sulking and decided to do what he always does - to attack on multiple fronts.

His first claim - which doesn't really seem to have convinced anyone - is that the membership list is genuine but long out of date. It is, he claims, a membership and skills list from November 2007. Our response is to ask why in that case are there several entries dated 2008? The second claim is that it is the same list that was used by the December 2007 rebels to send out 'bogus' British Nationalist bulletins last December and January and that 'detailed analysis by our membership department proves conclusively that the core list dates from between 30th November and 2nd December 2007'. And we ask the same question again. Not that we expect an answer.

Griffin is desperate to reinforce the fiction that the list is out of date and thus mentions it on any available occasion. You can almost hear him chewing the pencil as he struggles to get the message across.

'We have already sent formal demands to the web hosts to remove the list, pointing out to them that the fact that the publication of this year-old list constitutes Contempt of Court because a court order preventing its release or use was made and consented to by the group of disgraced former employees who first misappropriated it.'

He then goes off at a tangent, reminding us that there is still another stage of his Manchester court case against the rebels to go through - carefully avoiding mentioning that it will never happen because both he and his party are close to skid row. Even so, he attempts to justify this year's expulsion of the December rebels by saying; 'There, see what they did. Wasn't I right to kick them out then take them to court?'

Naturally, he doesn't address the question of why the rebels would make use of a membership list that the court had expressly forbidden them to use, in the full and certain knowledge that, at the very least, it would lead to a charge of contempt? Because he knows full well what the answer is - this was nothing to do with the rebels; they just happen to be a useful scapegoat. Nevertheless, we look forward with some interest to seeing him back in court in the very near future, attempting to prove that the rebels had anything at all to do with the current release of the list. It would be a good laugh, except that it won't happen.

Griffin really gave the game away yesterday when he announced indignantly that the party had made a complaint to Dyfed-Powys Police and 'will be giving formal statements shortly to support our demand for a serious and thorough police investigation into a series of very serious potential crimes, including breaches of the Data Protection Act, theft and receipt of stolen goods, and breaches of the Human Rights Act [which, incidentally, the BNP intends to repeal on its triumphant march into Downing Street]. Unless those involved have been extremely careful to cover their tracks, they are liable to find themselves in very serious trouble - and in prison'.

All very pompous and British and stern and so on - except that when asked by the BBC about the complaint, the Dyfed-Powys police had no record of it. The complaint seems to been made since the Beeb asked and reported on it but this is yet another example of Griffin's empty pompous bluster.

Yesterday was a double-disaster for Griffin for it was meant to be the official launch of his campaign to become a member of the European Parliament and thus one of the Euro fat-cats that he professes to despise. Our article, and the astonishing publicity that it generated, killed the launch stone-dead.

Attempting to claw back some gain from the day, he threw in an advert for the BNP's very own trade union - still, I gather, under investigation for financial irregularities by the Certification Officer - suggesting that those who are concerned about any possible repercussions that might result from the publication of the list should join Solidarity, run by his old mate, the similarly pompous Patrick Harrington.

Poor old Griffin, who has always believed his own insane stories about there being a million conspiracies against him , had one ready for yesterday's disaster.

'The timing and actual aim of this leak story is blatant: It was set running on Sunday evening, when the clique who co-ordinate virtually all anti-BNP campaigns would have been confident that the following day’s kangaroo court at the General Teaching Council would take away from Adam Walker his right to teach.'

Well, no actually. We were still debating whether to pick up the story at all after taking advice about the potential legal difficulties involved and didn't decide to go ahead until late-morning. Adam Walker, I'm afraid, never formed any part of that decision.

Back in fantasy-land or possibly just believing his own bullshit, Griffin has this to say;

'Thanks to the treachery of the now long-dissipated Searchlight-linked rebel faction, the entire list has not only already been bombarded with lie-filled anti-BNP propaganda, but it has also without doubt been available to the far-left for the best part of a year already.'

Searchlight-linked? Really? Available to the far-left for the best part of a year? Really? Assuming Lancaster Unity is part of Griffin's mythical far-left conspiracy, we certainly haven't had access to this list for a year. If we had, we would have made use of it before now, as he knows full well. And if the rebels are 'long-dissipated', how come this can all be laid at their feet?

He finishes with a final flourish;

'It was absolutely obvious that the sensational BNP by-election victory in Boston at the end of last week...this latest attack is not really directed against our own people, who are already tough-minded and know that nothing ever comes of this sort of bluster, so much as against the thousands of UKIPers who are thinking of joining us.'

The by-election victory in Boston was a surprise yes, but more because it was the first by-election victory the BNP had managed in years. It was so 'sensational' that we mentioned it a whole, er twice. Some sensation - but when you have to motivate a flagging membership I guess you have to hang on to any victory, no matter how small or rare. As for 'thousands of UKIPers who are thinking of joining' the BNP, this appears to be another complete fantasy that the BNP has been droning on about for years in the hope that if they say it enough times, it will become the truth. It won't. The truth is that as many people leave the BNP to join Ukip as vice versa and nothing Nick Griffin says will change that.

All in all, this letter smacks of a desperate, panicky attempt at damage limitation after an unexpected and overwhelming publicity onslaught. In the absence of any other target, Nick Griffin has attacked the rebels (who have in fact gone and got on with other things as far as we can see), tried to bolster up some lies and added a smidgeon of bullshit to try to turn things back his way. It hasn't worked.

In truth, Griffin is in a mad panic because he sees a lot of members - angry at the apparently casual way the BNP seems to view their confidential information - walking out and taking all their endless donations with them. With the European elections coming up in 2009, he's going to need a lot of money if he is to properly attempt to con the electorate into letting him join what he perceives as the Euro gravy train - his objective for a number of years now.

Yesterday's fiasco was disastrous for Griffin and the BNP - let's keep the pressure up.

Entire BNP membership list goes online

Before reading this, you should appreciate that there are very strict limitations on what we are allowed to print and we intend to stay strictly within the law in the comments that we allow.

Having said all that, this breach of data security is startlingly bad for the BNP, not simply for the fact that the party has lost data - almost everyone seems to have managed to do that recently - but for the nature of that information.

Not only does the data, now available online, include the entire membership list with full names (and former names where there have been changes for any reason), addresses, contact numbers and email addresses, but also in many cases the member's age, particularly where those members are under eighteen. Yes, that's right. This list includes members as young as fourteen, male and female. Where a family membership is bought and paid for, the whole family is listed.

As if this isn't bad enough, the notes that are attached to many of the entries leave a lot of the members open to difficulties in their jobs, some of them being in the armed forces or the police and the BNP too - an illegal combination, and where not illegal, frequently frowned upon. Other members are noted as construction managers, receptionists, district nurses, lay preachers, police officers, company directors and teachers among many others.

Like this wasn't enough, the BNP has also listed hobbies or interests where for some reason they are deemed relevant. Thus we have short-wave radio hams, amateur historians, pagans, line-dancers and even a witch (male).

The contributors to nazi sites, many of whom are also members of the BNP, are suddenly in a frenzy, expecting to be outed at any moment. Here's just one comment from the North-West Nationalist blog:

'I've just had a call, I'm on it to. I want my fucking member money back, like has been mentioned here, I could lose my fucking job. I'm bloody angry.'

Not surprising really. I'd be pretty pissed off too.

Curiously, there are quite a number of BNP members abroad, presumably ex-pats or those working abroad temporarily - Australia, the USA, United Arab Emirates, Sao Paulo, Spain and the Netherlands were some that I noticed. Isn't the BNP opposed to foreign workers? I'm sure it was last time I looked.

One final thing (for the moment, because I'm sure this one will run and run): the list appears to include the December rebels. At first, I took this to mean that the membership list was a year out of date but after a good look through, it's become clear that by keeping a running list (as opposed to a clean list each membership year) the party is able to claim a much larger membership than it in fact has. Some of the additions to the list are as recent as September of this year, indicating that some of the members listed - though how many is anyone's guess - are not in fact members at all.

The implication is pretty clear (to me, at least) - BNP members are being defrauded when they have been told that the membership is growing exponentially. Take off all the dead members, those who have resigned (many still listed along with their reasons for leaving) and the most recent batch of rebels and the size drops considerably.

It's been suggested that the party's former treasurer John Walker is responsible for posting the list up publicly. We wouldn't know but by doing so, the poster has stuck a stick of dynamite under Griffin's rear end. The consequences and (especially) the repercussions may be interesting to watch.

Just as a complete aside, I should point out that we do not have a copy of this list, nor do we want one. The information we had was obtained online and appears suddenly to have been removed, at least for the moment...