Ex BNP councillor condemned for campaign to free woman accused of racist tram rant

Paul Golding, who represented the St Mary's ward in Swanley, is campaigning to free Emma West

A former BNP councillor has been condemned for his calls to free a woman accused of a racist rant on a tram. Paul Golding, who represented the St Mary's ward in Swanley, quit the BNP in March to become chairman of a new group called Britain First.

The far-right movement, which operates from an address in Swanley, has launched an online campaign called Free Emma West. Emma West, aged 34, from New Addington, is charged with a racially aggravated public order offence and has been remanded in custody. Her arrest came after a video appeared on YouTube of a woman making racists comments to passengers on a tram. The alleged rant subsequently hit the headlines in the national media.

In the online campaign, Mr Golding, who is chairman of Britain First, said: "We call upon the Home Secretary, Teresa May, and the prison governors, Helga Swidenbank and Alan Thurlby, to be held personally accountable for any harm Miss West may suffer as a result of her incarceration in an ethnically-dominated prison."

The group emailed more than 70,000 British nationalists and have organised a rally for today (December 2) in support of West outside HMP Bronzefield in Ashford.

Gerry Gable, the publisher of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said: "If they are trying to catch headlines they are going for the wrong ones. It just shows there's nothing new about them. They are the same old haters. If they think they can defend somebody like that it says it all."

Speaking about the YouTube video, Mr Gable said: "It says something very very good for this country that nobody actually laid a hand on her."

Labour councillor Mark Fittock, who represents Mr Golding's former ward, said: "I'm outraged that this should be going on. The Labour group would never support such action. We fully support the law as it stands in this country on the issue."

Mr Golding refused to comment.

This is Local London

'I wish Cumbrian murderer shot illegal immigrants' says BNP election candidate Charlotte Lewis

A BNP election candidate advocated the murder of illegal immigrants in the wake of the recent Cumbrian massacre.

Right-wing activist Charlotte Lewis, from Thornton Heath, wrote on her Facebook page that mass-murderer Derrick Bird should have come to London and slaughtered illegal immigrants rather than his "fellow British people".

Her tirade is the latest in a string of hate-filled rants and calls for violence against "pakis" through her Facebook page. The latest post reads: "Ok, so I may well get in to trouble for saying this - but I've got to get it off my chest. I wish that Derrick Bird could have come down to London & shot dead some illegal immigrants, rather than killing his fellow British people. If that offends you then tough; it's my opinion and I'm entitled to it."

Her comments refer to taxi driver Derrick Bird, who went on a killing spree in west Cumbria on June 2, shooting dead 12 people and injuring 11 others.

Her latest Facebook rant was highlighted by website Hope Not Hate, Searchlight's campaign to counter racism and fascism in elections and beyond. Gerry Gable from Searchlight said: "I think anybody advocating the murder of illegal immigrants should be prosecuted. People may view Charlotte Lewis as being a bit potty, but the overwhelming interest in firearms of the BNP tells a much more serious story."

When contacted by the Croydon Guardian Miss Lewis, 37, questioned why her "innocuous" comments were being treated so seriously. In a bizarre rant she flip-flopped repeatedly over whether illegal immigrants should be murdered or not, before asking why her love of Chandi the dancing dog in Britain's Got Talent was not being treated as a story.

She said: "It would be preferable to kill illegal immigrants than fellow British people, because they shouldn’t be in this country."

Miss Lewis' true face was revealed in April after pictures were discovered of her swigging from a bottle of alcopops while clad in a burqa during a Halloween party. The Carshalton and Wallington parliamentary candidate, who also ran for Croydon Council’s Shirley ward in the May elections, was snapped revealing her contempt for Muslims by hitching up her costume to reveal her underwear.

Your Local Guardian

Poll: BNP leader Nick Griffin 'lied' over Holocaust

More than two in three Britons believe Nick Griffin is a Holocaust denier despite the BNP leader’s claim to the contrary during his controversial Question Time appearance.

In a poll conducted exclusively for the JC by YouGov this week, 1,409 adults were asked if they were convinced by Griffin’s belated acceptance of the Holocaust. Sixty-nine per cent responded that “Griffin is still at heart a Holocaust denier and only pretends to have changed his views to make the BNP appear more moderate”.

Just 14 per cent agreed that Griffin now genuinely acknowledged that the Shoah did take place. Among Labour and Lib-Dem voters, four out of five said Griffin still denied the Holocaust. YouGov also asked whether British Jews had “reason to be fearful if the BNP gained significantly in strength”. Fifty-four per cent responded that Jews would have cause for fear — with the figure rising to 64 per cent among Londoners polled. Seventy-two per cent said Muslims should fear a more powerful BNP.

The responses demonstrate that the BNP has failed to achieve the hoped-for bounce from Griffin’s slot on Question Time, which attracted a record eight million viewers.

YouGov president Peter Kellner was surprised that “such a big majority thought Griffin was still a Holocaust denier”. It showed that attempts to convince voters that he believed in the Holocaust, and was a friend of Israel, had failed. “However, a lot of people still support what the BNP stands for.” If its support reached 10 per cent, it could become a serious and divisive political force.

In an earlier poll for the Daily Telegraph, YouGov found that 66 per cent of Britons would not under any circumstances consider voting BNP in a local, general or European election. Only four per cent would “definitely consider voting BNP”. Asked for their views on a variety of fringe parties, 71 per cent expressed negative opinions about the BNP, as opposed to two per cent who were “very positive” and seven per cent who were “fairly positive”.

Community and anti-racist leaders were split over the impact made by Griffin on Question Time. Veteran anti-fascist Gerry Gable said it had served to wake up the many who might have been persuaded that the BNP had reformed.

Holocaust Educational Trust chairman Lord Janner felt Griffin had come across badly, “but the fact of his appearance has given status to the BNP, which in the long run could do great harm to the Jewish and other minority communities”.

Jewish Council for Racial Equality director Dr Edie Friedman said “Griffin’s comment about the BNP supporting Israeli actions in Gaza was a sinister attempt to demonstrate pro-Jewish and anti-Muslim credentials.”

JC Online

BNP leader ‘paid for UKIP member list’

Nick Griffin is to be investigated by the privacy watchdog after the BNP leader was accused of paying for a database containing the names and addresses of thousands of members of a rival party.

The database, which belonged to the UK Independence party and contained the details of about 3,500 of its members from London and the southeast, was passed to the British National party by a disaffected member in return for about £500, sources say. The BNP then canvassed many of the people on the UKIP list asking for funds to help fight its campaign in the run-up to June’s European elections. The BNP went on to claim two seats, including one for Griffin.

Last night the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which oversees data protection, said it would investigate. Under the terms of the Data Protection Act, anyone who sells data without authorisation from the designated “data controller” is guilty of an offence, as is the person who obtains it. If prosecuted and found guilty, transgressors are liable to a fine of up to £5,000. The Ministry of Justice is consulting about whether to impose custodial sentences for future breaches.

Griffin said yesterday that he had never personally paid for a UKIP membership list, although he conceded that some UKIP details had been passed to his party by former members. He added: “To the best of my knowledge, no one in the party has paid for such a list. Some UKIP members do join us and provide names and addresses of people who might be interested to hear from us. We have never had an entire UKIP membership list.”

Last week Griffin said the anonymous leaking on a website of his own party’s membership — the second time it has happened in the past 12 months — was part of a “concerted anti-BNP campaign”.

One of the names on the leaked UKIP database was Gerard Batten, an MEP for the party, who has previously complained to the ICO about the apparent data breach. Last night he said he was preparing a fresh complaint based on The Sunday Times’s evidence that the database had been bought and sold.

“We have long suspected the BNP had a [UKIP] membership list. Our members don’t want this stuff. The BNP do this based on the false belief they can take away some of our members,” he said.

Batten and others received unsolicited requests for donations from the BNP from 2008 until earlier this year. One sent in January appealed for funds for the BNP’s European election battle. It said: “If we can win one seat, the floodgates will open. One seat, just one, would put us on the world stage and would lead to an avalanche of popular support throughout this country.”

Last year Batten wrote to the ICO: “I suspect that my address and those of our UKIP London members were illegally accessed from a UKIP database.”

Now other sources, including from within the BNP, have confirmed that the database was obtained and exploited by the party. “Nick Griffin bought the database for surprisingly little, just a few hundred pounds,” said a source.

It is understood that the privacy watchdog wrote to the BNP warning it not to send Batten any more communications. But the source said the watchdog did not know the party also had the names and addresses of 3,500 other UKIP members.

An ICO spokesman said: “We are very concerned to hear that some UKIP members’ personal details have apparently been traded with the BNP. We will investigate this incident to establish the full facts. Buying or selling personal data is against the law, unless there is a public interest defence.”

Gerry Gable, publisher of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said: “The BNP jump up and down when their own membership lists are leaked, but it now emerges they are procuring the details of members of another party in an underhand way.”

Sunday Times

Protest forces village to pull plug on BNP

Oh dear. Another venue bites the dust.

A visit by British National Party leader Nick Griffin to a village hall has been cancelled at short notice after pressure was put on the venue's booking secretary by anti-BNP campaigners.

Mr Griffin, whose party has been accused of racism because of its right-wing immigration policies, was due to address a black tie fundraising event at Broadclyst's Victory Hall this evening. But the group Hope not Hate, which campaigns against the BNP, used its website to publish the home telephone number of Roy Elkins, the hall's chairman and booking secretary, and urged people to contact him. It also sent out a number of emails containing the information.

Yesterday the BNP confirmed that its booking had been cancelled. Despite the setback, the party said it had found an alternative venue for the Battle of Britain-themed night, which is part of a national tour which organisers hope will enable them to raise £500,000 to allow the BNP to field candidates for every seat in June's European elections.

BNP spokesman Simon Danby said a campaign of intimidation and harassment had followed the party's roadshow around the country. "It is common practice for these groups to target village hall committee members," he said. "Some have had threats to their property and their homes. We are a legitimate political party and it is disgraceful that these people, many of whom have nothing to do with the BNP, have been targeted. It's very sinister."

He said he still expected between 100 and 200 BNP supporters from around Devon and Cornwall to attend the event, which would be held at a location due to be announced later today.

Gerry Gable, of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight and the Hope not Hate website, defended his actions in publishing Mr Elkin's telephone number.

"This is a tactic we have used around the country and it is proving effective," he said. "We always ask people to be polite to the person who answers the telephone when they make their point. We are perfectly within our rights to be doing this. With the BNP it's not just a few rotten apples, it's the whole barrel that's rotten."

The BNP outraged Broadclyst villagers last year when it held a public meeting in the Victory Hall.

Liberal Democrat councillor for Broadclyst and Whimple Derek Button said he was glad the village would not be hosting the party once again.

"Some people might say that we're a village hall committee and we're obliged to let the village hall without let or hindrance to anyone who applies," he said. "I might have been tempted to tell the BNP the hall was booked up for the next 49 years."

He said he was sorry Mr Elkins had been involved in the matter without his consent.

"Roy is a man who has given much of his life to the service of Broadclyst and it's a great shame that he's been dragged into this," he added.

Mr Elkins, of Beech Close, Broadclyst, chose not to comment.

Express and Echo

400 and not out - Searchlight celebrates its 400th edition (part one)

The fighting 400 - Gerry Gable looks back at the early days of Searchlight

When Searchlight first appeared as a magazine in February 1975 it already had a strong track record. Between 1965 and 1968 Searchlight was published as an occasional broadsheet which campaigned against racism and fascism from a somewhat liberal perspective but, unlike the magazine today, made little use of the intelligence being gathered about the far right and its activities.

After two excellent editors, the Labour MPs Reg Freeson and Joan Lester MP, who left to take up Cabinet posts in the Wilson Government as Housing Minister and Minister for Overseas Aid respectively, it fell to me, Searchlight’s research editor, to take up the baton.

Issue 1: February 1975

Like some other anti-fascists and anti-racists at the time, I felt that the paper was not having the right impact. So I closed it down, replacing it by a press bureau that produced occasional bulletins and booklets and rapidly built national and international links with likeminded people.

Searchlight became the first port of call for print, TV and radio journalists writing about the National Front in the 1970s, which grew to 17,500 members ranging from hardline nazis to Tory diehards united in their racism and antisemitism.

In late 1974 we published a booklet surveying Britain’s far right partly to test the market for this type of information. A well oiled nazi machine sold like hot cakes and three months later the magazine was launched.

A bit tatty and often ungrammatical, it was produced by a small team based in Birmingham and Essex and prepared often as not on my kitchen table. From the first issue it was led by the mounting intelligence coming in from inside the far right here and abroad.

Essentially the magazine had four aims. The first was to investigate and expose, by analysing and using the intelligence we gathered from the highest echelons of the NF and even more extreme groups. Information from our own trained intelligence operatives, whom we infiltrated into the far right, was complemented by a stream of defectors who had lost their faith in fascism and racism or sought some personal or political gain.

Our second aim was to publish news stories about far-right activities which attracted media interest and caught the imagination of the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement.

The third was to educate. Maurice Ludmer, a trade unionist who became president of Birmingham Trades Council, then the biggest body of its kind in Western Europe, worked with me from the 1960s and edited the magazine until he died in 1981. Maurice saw the vital need for education and from his experience in the earliest postwar anti-racist campaigns coined the phrase, still so important today, “We must teach anti-racists to be anti-fascist and anti-fascists to be anti-racist”.

Issue 43: January 1979

Our final aim was to use our knowledge to help the broadest body of anti-fascists to build a non-sectarian movement.

The magazine very quickly gained a reputation as the primary source for anyone who wanted to know about the extreme right and over the years published hundreds of groundbreaking investigations and news stories, as well as more analytical articles staking out the ground for resistance to racism and fascism.

The early years saw some spectacular successes through the work of some very brave individuals who worked under great pressure and risk to expose the truth about the enemies of democracy. Many cannot be named here, some are still active, but one of the most high profile was Ray Hill.

A onetime violent follower of Britain’s nazi leader Colin Jordan, he experienced a slow but complete change of heart while living in South Africa. He contacted us after he returned to Britain and for the next few years worked for us deep among the nazi terrorists both here and in Europe.

While still under cover he made a World in Action television documentary about British nazis armed with guns and explosives. Almost single-handedly he destroyed the extreme nazi British Movement, setting it back for years. He completely destroyed the British Democratic Party and its leader, the Leicester solicitor Anthony Reed Herbert, and was on the top table when John Tyndall set up the British National Party.

Ray went on to make a series of TV documentaries and wrote a book with Andrew Bell, the producer of the programmes.

Maurice built up a great deal of goodwill in the trade union movement though nothing on the scale of our trade union support today. He assembled a formidable team of writers, many serious, some humorous – yes we have always seen humour as a vital weapon against bigots.

The playwright David Edgar thanked us for our help with his first major play, Destiny, and rewarded us with many excellent columns in the magazine. Professor Michael Billig, a leading social psychologist, wrote regularly for the magazine as did many others who have gone on to become leading journalists.

After Maurice’s untimely death in 1981, various people took charge until my return as editor in 1983. I stood down in 1999 handing over to Steve Silver and Nick Lowles as joint editors, but remained as publisher. In 2005 Nick became the sole editor.

Searchlight

Part 2 tomorrow...

BNP makes rare foray into the shires to oppose black Tory candidate

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones is no stranger to struggle. He battled his way out of inner-city Birmingham, served in the Army, carved out a career in television, set up a successful marketing agency, then became famous as Britain's only black farmer. But now he faces the fight of his life: against the British National Party.

Selected to contest the Wiltshire constituency of Chippenham for the Conservatives, Mr Emmanuel-Jones appears a model candidate. He has charisma, an astonishing story of personal triumph and strong links to the local community. That community, though, is almost exclusively white. And the candidate was born in Jamaica. That fact, it seems, has not been lost on the far-right BNP.

Chippenham is safe Tory territory – and likely to remain so. Yet the BNP's decision to make a foray into the shires threatens to bring racial politics to the English countryside. Opponents warned yesterday there was little doubt that the BNP would be making a subliminal appeal to voters' prejudices over their prospective MP's ethnicity.

Mr Emmanuel-Jones is exactly just the kind of candidate that David Cameron has championed to try to demonstrate that the Tories now reflect contemporary Britain. He came to the UK from Jamaica as a three-year-old and grew up in the Small Heath area of Birmingham as one of nine children. He left school without qualifications and joined the Army for a year.

From there he found success in television – with the BBC's Food And Drink – and through a food marketing company he then set up. Subsequently, as a farmer, he set up a scheme for inner-city children to learn about rural life.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Emmanuel-Jones was brought on to Mr Cameron's "A-list" of favoured candidates. Until a few days ago it seemed a straightforward election. But the arrival of a BNP candidate, Mick Simpkins, has added a toxic note to the contest. "Because I'm a black candidate in a high-profile seat, they have thought they ... will try and stir it up," said Mr Emmanuel-Jones. He insisted he had not picked up any "vibes" that race would be an issue. "It took a massive amount of courage for the people of Chippenham to select someone like me because Wiltshire is, in a sense, the soul of traditional rural England, a true blue area."

He also said he was not concerned by the occasional threatening email he received. "If you are black and going into public life, there are oddballs who are going to try and frighten you."

Mr Simpkins, a taxi driver, became the BNP's only councillor in the South-west last year after he was elected unopposed to the town council in Corsham, which is part of the constituency. He said: "I've met Mr Emmanuel-Jones and he's a very nice guy. The fact he is black has nothing to do with why I'm standing. I'm standing because that's my constituency and it's where I live."

Gerry Gable, of the anti-racist group Searchlight, said: "We're concerned wherever the BNP field candidates. They are a cancer within British society but ... [Mr Emmanuel-Jones] will give them a bloody good run for their money."

Independent

See you in court

Yesterday the BNP posted an article on its website that contained several libellous and false statements about Gerry Gable, publisher of Searchlight. Searchlight sent a polite email to the BNP pointing this out and requesting that the article be removed.

Today the BNP responded with a further article headed: “Hardcore Communist Gable and Searchlight Panic at Public Exposé on BNP Website”, which contained several even more serious libels.

The BNP refused to remove the original article and compounded the offence by allowing Jason Douglas, a leading London BNP organiser, to add another very serious libel in a “comment”.

Well we certainly are not panicking. Our response to this ongoing abuse is: see you in court.

Poor old David Irving: a response to the lies

Just a few days we printed a Searchlight article written by Gerry Gable about David Irving, entitled 'Poor Old Soul: The return of David Irving'. Irving, who seems convinced for some reason that I am Gerry Gable, has responded to some of the comments in the article.

Just for the hell of it, and because it's always interesting to keep tabs on the lies and misleading statements of the far-right and its apologists, we thought we'd invite Gerry to respond to Irving's counter-claims.

The original article (with additions) is below:

Poor Old Soul: The return of David Irving

Posted by "Antifascist" (Gerry Gable, according to Irving)

The late comedian Frankie Howerd was well known for saying, "it's wicked to mock the afflicted".

It has long been tempting not only to call the rightwing quasi-historian David Irving a liar, in the words of the judgment in his failed libel action against Dr Deborah Lipstadt, but also to question his grasp on reality, particularly about his past and present political associations.

I admit I have a personal axe to grind. In 1964 I pleaded guilty with a colleague [arsonist and burglar Manny Carpel] at Middlesex Sessions of entering Irving's north London flat "by artifice" (not burglary as the far right insist). I also admitted stealing by finding a GPO telephone engineer's pass. Charges against a third defendant, David Freedman, were dismissed, but for the past 44 years Irving has insisted that Freedman was also guilty. Well let's not let the facts get in the way of Irving's warped thinking.

Around ten years ago Irving said [Irving: No he didn't] I had made his life a Holocaust for the previous 30 years, an accusation I happily accept. Now in his dotage Irving appears to be making a late bid to gain fame in place of his infamy -- which brings to mind another Frankie Howerd phrase, from Up Pompeii!: "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me". Too right.

David, you were certainly quoted in the press as saying that.

Some years ago Irving threatened [Irving: No he didn't] to sue me and the publisher Pearson Longman over a chapter I had written in a book on the far right in Europe. I was able to provide documentary evidence of the truth of each of the points he claimed were defamatory of him, and demonstrate that he was associated with the extreme right in Britain. [Irving: Gable is confusing Mr Irving with somebody else]

You really have lost the plot, David. Have a look at your own web site archives, Don't forget lawyers never throw threatening letters away, unless they are empty threats.

What puzzled our libel lawyer was another reference to something Irving claimed I had written. It was at this point we wondered whether he was suffering from early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, as the passage complained of did not exist.

Irving is keen to distance himself from the BNP and claims on his website that he has "no point of contact whatever" with Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, or the BNP itself. Yet when he last tried to take the country by storm with a speaking tour in the early 1990s it was the BNP that made the arrangements for his meetings in London and Brighton. [Irving: No it wasn't]

Yes, you did David, unless somebody is writing up your web site for you. I have a copy of the Thames film made about you at the time of one of your German Tours and the failed Leuchter fiasco.

One of Irving's rallies was to be at Chelsea Old Town Hall. He had invited the US Holocaust denier and all-purpose fruitcake Fred Leuchter despite a ban on him entering the country. Leuchter claimed to have proved there were no gas chambers in the Nazi death camps in Poland. The meeting was packed with leading nazis from around the world, including John Tyndall, then the leader of the BNP. It broke up after a few minutes when Home Office officials and several police officers entered to remove Leuchter. He was deported a few days later.

Video evidence shows Griffin with Chris Marchant, a former Balkans War mercenary, telling Thames TV's This Week that Irving had hired their new security firm to protect the meeting. [Irving: No he didn't, this is totally untrue; security outside was provided by the Metropolitan Police, and inside by Mr Irving's colleagues]

Not what the Thames film shows, by the way the Police and Home Office officials stopped the meeting and removed the illegal entrant Leuchter and deported him a couple of days later. The police threatened to arrest Tyndall and other British and foreign nazis who were obstructing them in their lawful duty. This is also on film.

Irving's failed attempt to hold a meeting at the Royal Warwicks Club in Coventry on 21 September in the wake of a small meeting in Rugby shows that he still has dealings with far-right extremists. [Irving: The Coventry meeting went ahead at its proper location. The RWC was the decoy for which Gable's thugs fell] The Rugby meeting was organised by Steve Kerr, a long-time nazi, as was the Coventry meeting booked under the guise of the "Military History Book Club". [Irving: No he didn't]

Who did then; the local BNP organiser?

Irving's speaking tour was set to continue with a meeting in Birmingham on 26 October followed by a second attempt in Coventry on 14 November, Liverpool on 26 November and Halifax. His website does not advertise that he has been invited to take part in a "free speech forum" at the Oxford Union on 27 November, to which an invitation to Griffin has already been withdrawn. [Irving: No it hasn't]

We now understand that he and Griffin are likely to show up at Oxford on the 26th November despite Irving advertising a meeting in Liverpool on the same date.

Irving recently moved into a ten-bedroom house in large grounds in Windsor, where he has already held a meeting and garden party for the rich suckers who continue to support this liar.

Irving's position on the Holocaust has become a movable feast. He has threatened to sue The Jewish Chronicle if it calls him a Holocaust denier, though he reproduces on his website without comment a recent Guardian article that does just that. He now says he is not sure of the numbers killed. Our view is that to minimise the Holocaust by claiming that "only" two million died, or whatever number he plucks out of the air, is just another version of Holocaust revisionism. And two million in a planned genocide would still be two million too many.

Well David I think the Jewish Press and the rest of the media can't wait to see the colour of your writ.

I am sure all decent people will oppose this apologist for Hitler wherever he goes. Watch the Searchlight websites for news of his movements.

Keep it up David your so much funnier than most of your nazi chums.

Gerry Gable