Headline of the week...BNP Appoints David Hannam as National Treasurer

Naziboy Collett and his moronic sidekick, David Hannam

I almost choked on my cup of tea when I read that on the BNP website. Then I thought maybe I hadn't noticed the time passing and we'd hit April 1st already. But no, it's the truth. Squeaky Dave Hannam, serial-shagger, schoolie-fancier (along with naziboy Collett) and all-round incompetent twat, has been made National Treasurer, presumably because he was the only person moronic enough to take the job.

Although the only people to report this world-shattering news so far, the BNP always likes to give the impression that it is constantly being approached by the media for any tidbits it cares to throw for them. It isn't, but they do like to pretend. Thus, the report says;

Approached for comment, Mr Hannam said he wanted to “see central office accounts run as smoothly as the Regional Accounting Unit.”

Let's be clear about this. The Regional Accounting Unit is an unmitigated disaster. So much money has been stolen from the regions that they have now begun to conceal them from HQ in the hope that funds will be there to be used for whatever the regions want, rather than to support the Griffin/Dowson families in their never-ending striving to join the Sunday Times Rich List.

On behalf of all anti-fascists everywhere, I'd like to say how much we're going to be looking forward to the BNP's next financial disaster which, I have absolutely no doubt at all, will be caused entirely by Hannam. Even if it isn't, he'll get the blame.

BNP seeks to reactivate far-right alliance in European Parliament

Jobbik:Hungarian Master Race?

The seeds of a reactivated extreme right-wing alliance in Europe were being sown this week by British National Party leader Nick Griffin, who made visits to Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Mr Griffin was invited to the two East European countries by representatives of extremist parties who had made trips to Britain earlier in the year.

A fragile pan-European Parliament alliance last year collapsed in disarray after five Romanian nationalists walked out, claiming they had been insulted by their Italian colleagues. The effect of the walk-out was to put the group below the minimum number of seats required to allow it to participate in the parliament.

Now Mr Griffin is planning another attempt to bring together extremists - the BNP calls them "nationalists" - from Belgium, Austria and Italy, as well as the Czech Republic and Hungary. After a first stop in Budapest, he will be heading to Prague for Czech National Day on October 28. Earlier this year, a Czech right-winger spoke at the BNP's Red, White and Blue Festival.

Gerry Gable, the veteran anti-fascist and publisher of Searchlight magazine, said: "They are clearly hoping they will be able to pick up the extra seats they need. However, they may not be successful because the European Parliament has increased slightly the number of seats necessary.

"In the past year, Griffin has associated himself with a number of very hard-line extremists. In May, members of an extreme group from Hungary came here and a member of the Czech Republic was here several weeks ago to talk to the Greenwich and Bexley branches of the BNP. Only a few days ago, a number of people were sprayed with acid in an antisemitic attack in Hungary.

"I know Griffin has made overtures to the community in the past couple of years to try to shed the BNP's image of being antisemitic, and has been firmly rebuffed. But when he is consorting with these people in Europe, it rather gives the lie to what he says he trying to do."

Winston Pickett, director of the newly formed European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, said: "Griffin's tour has come against a backdrop of renewed and increased political activities by the Hungarian far-right.

"In particular, the Jobbik party [Movement For a Better Hungary] wants to forge alliances with other right-wing groups in order to create a united front ahead of the European elections next June."

Simon Darby, the party's deputy leader, confirming the invitations, said the BNP was following only what other groups had done in Europe in trying to form a "nationalist bloc".

The Jewish Chronicle

The Lying Lorry's true message to the people

Telling it like it is

No article to read this time. We're just looking for appropriate slogans for the side of the BNP's second-hand Lying Lorry.

As we know, the BNP's Lying Lorry is going to be whizzing around the country at great and unnecessary expense to the membership, spreading the party's lies and propaganda - and we thought it would be nice if, just for a change, it showed the truth. So, let's have a few suitable slogans for the side that will enable everyone to see the reality about the BNP.

Go for it...

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

S1031751

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year everyone. :-)

BNP still insolvent

The BNP finally published its 2006 accounts days before the fine for their late submission to the Electoral Commission would have doubled to £2,000. They make interesting reading, not only for the figures, and the failure to solve the mystery of the printing equipment, but also for the names of party activists listed in their various roles.

For a start the BNP's nominating officer and campaigns officer throughout the year was none other than Tony "Mad Bomber" Lecomber, despite his claim to have left the BNP 18 months ago after he was found out trying to hire a hit man to murder a leading politician and was sacked as the party's group development officer.

A full list of the party's Advisory Council will prove useful to those BNP members trying to establish the identity of the Searchlight mole that the BNP claims is present in that select group. It is also interesting to compare the list with the names of those who have signed up to Sadie Graham's and Kenny Smith's dissident group.

History is rewritten too. According to the chairman's introduction to the accounts Simon Darby "gave a very good account of himself in difficult circumstances" in a Channel Five studio discussion. In fact Darby was verbally slaughtered by Lord Lester QC. The account of the trial on race hate charges of Nick Griffin, the party leader, and Mark Collett, the BNP's former director of publicity, recently demoted to graphic designer, is also heavily embellished.

Seven "key permanent members of staff" are shown: Nick Griffin, Sadie Graham, John Walker, Dave Hannam, Martin Wingfield, Tina Wingfield and Steve Blake. Some have proved a good deal less than permanent and Hannam's position as assistant treasurer has recently been abolished, although it is unclear whether he has been made redundant.

Membership is stated as 6,281, down from the 6,502 shown in the 2005 accounts and a far cry from the 10,000 figure currently being bandied around by the BNP leadership. At the time of the BNP leadership election the voting figures indicated that the party had 8,604 members but this was widely thought to be an exaggeration.

The treasurer's and audit reports reveal that the party had not yet completed the task of setting up proper internal controls, which it started early in 2005, and so the auditors, Silver & Co of Cannock, had "to rely upon assurances and explanations given us by officers of the party". This is not an unusual let out for small organisations and gives the lie to the claim that the auditors would not sign the accounts until Kenny Smith was sacked for failing to provide receipts for administration expenditure. When asked about this allegation Frank Hogarth, a partner in Silver & Co, refused to comment.

Announcing the accounts on its website the BNP highlighted the increase in income and the surplus for the year. Income from donations and membership fees has indeed gone up, although income from commercial activities is down, something that will no doubt be blamed on the dissidents.

Campaign expenditure is a mere £19,016, almost all on leaflets. Even this tiny figure for a national organisation is an improvement on 2005 when nothing was spent on campaigning leaflets. Presumably party branches have to pay for everything themselves.

Staff costs are down £20,000 to £227,732 of which £145,447 is for employees and £104,764 on "professional fees" – payments outside the compulsory PAYE system of accounting for tax and national insurance contributions on employees' wages. One of the allegations Searchlight made based on the 2005 accounts is that the wages figure was impossibly low for the number of employees declared, suggesting that some employees were paid outside PAYE. The position has hardly improved. The accounts state that the total number of staff has increased from nine in 2005 to 13, which means that the average wage per staff member is still only around £11,000. Remember Ian Dawson, the former group support officer, recently stated that he worked for the party earning £14,400 and this was "probably the lowest full-time wage in the party".

Collett is not listed as a key staff member, although he clearly spends a considerable amount of his time working for the party. Either he is one of those still paid as a self employed person or his remuneration comes in another way. Perhaps some of the BNP's £30,000 of expenditure on commercial printing and reproduction goes his way, or the similar sums spent on producing The Voice of Freedom and Identity. Quite what Collett did as director of publicity is unclear seeing as the party spends so little on leaflets and only £1,410 on "promotional expenditure".

Income from tickets to the BNP's Red White Blue summer festival fell from £15,808 in 2005 to £9,242 but the cost of putting the event on also fell by £4,000. Perhaps BNP members have started getting bored with it. Trafalgar Club income and expenditure is not separately itemised, an example of the lack of transparency about which the dissidents have complained. What does the party have to hide here?

Although the BNP made a surplus of nearly £19,000 compared to a deficit of nearly £95,000 in 2005, it was not enough to take the party out of insolvency. A £35,000 surplus of liabilities over assets was financed partly by running up a debt of nearly £22,000 to the regional accounting unit (party branches and groups), although this was paid off in January 2007 out of the £46,000 cash it had in the bank at 31 December 2006. The amount owed to HM Revenue and Customs for PAYE and value added tax was half the sum at the start of the year, suggesting that HMRC became less tolerant of the BNP's attempts to borrow from the taxpayer.

The largest liability is "subscriptions in advance". This would normally cover the proportion after 31 December 2006 of annual subscriptions to publications paid in the course of the year. In this case it is probably membership subscriptions because it is way too large for subscriptions to Freedom and Identity. That this sum has doubled to £67,548 may be because the BNP made a big effort to get people to pay their 2007 membership fees at the end of 2006 rather than at the beginning of 2007. This would be consistent with the large cash balance at the end of the year, much of which was spent in January 2007 on paying off the party's debt to the branches. In other words, much of 2007's membership income has been spent in 2006.

A note to the accounts takes a swipe at Kenny Smith, though not by name, for failing to provide receipts for £14,000 of funds "transferred to the B N Publications account so as to allow the printing department to funding [sic]". The party first accused him of failing to account for "up to £17,000" and rapidly dropped the "up to". The fact that it is now £14,000 will undoubtedly get overlooked by the Griffin loyalists. And why the B N Publications account should be off balance sheet is unclear, as it would appear to be part of the party's administration.

Another note explains that the Excalibur stock held at the year end has not been included in the accounts. Its omission would depress the commercial (and therefore taxable) profit (though as in 2005 there is no sign that any corporation tax is paid). It is the reason for the omission that is interesting, namely that "the very nature of the stock raises questions as to it's [sic] realisable value". Well we certainly wouldn't buy it.

"Certain party officials are involved and hold positions with 'Great White Records'", the accounts state, revealing that the party buys CDs at commercial rates from the company, owned by Hannam, and resells them. Great White Records also supplied "sound assistance at venues" amounting to £9,618, another means of transferring money to Hannam. As we expected, the accounts do not show the rumoured investment by the party of £50,000 in Great White Records, which is therefore either a myth or another "off balance sheet" transaction.

And finally, there is no solution to the mystery of the BNP's printing equipment. In 2005 the party claimed to have spent variously £75,000 or £70,000 on printing equipment, but the 2005 accounts only showed acquisitions of equipment (of any sort) of £51,671. In June 2007 when Chris Jackson challenged Griffin for the party leadership, some people asked questions about why Collett was always late in producing leaflets for the BNP after the party had spent "£70,000" on printing equipment. The BNP's reply was that the party had bought four high quality digital duplicators, three folding machines and power guillotine for £70,000 but that after the 2005 general election they were "given to the regions" and no longer kept for head office jobs.

Yet neither the 2005 accounts nor the 2006 accounts show any disposal of equipment, which if by means of a gift would have turned the small 2006 surplus into a loss. Was the equipment ever in the accounts? Who owns it now? Was the BNP lying in 2005, in 2007 or both? We think party members have a right to know.

BNP in crisis

Griffin in propaganda-overdrive to stop BNP resignations and funding drought

In a desperate attempt to stop the speedy flow of members away from the BNP and into the Graham/Smith camp, taking their money with them, Nick Griffin has stepped up the anti-dissident propaganda to the point where most members - even those loyal to him - are scratching their heads and wondering if he's lost his marbles.

Just the title of the most recent lunatic new post on the BNP's site (Splinter Group Effort Grinds to a Halt) has led to a number of people writing to us here at LUAF wondering whether, in one correspondent's colourful phrase, 'he actually believes the shit he's spouting?' Not altogether surprising really, as it's clear from the supportive posts over at the dissident Enough is Enough (EiE) site that support is not only rising but is growing angrier by the day.

We're assured, by people in the party, that the post is by Griffin himself - not that we doubted that for a minute after reading his ramblings - his total lack of interest in the fact that he is publicly and willingly breaking the law and what's more, announcing it to everyone who visits the site, makes it pretty clear that Griffin himself is the author. He's never been noted for observing laws, which is probably why he only got a third-rate law degree and has brushed up against the legal system on a number of occasions.

Not only does he claim that the dissidents were conspiring against Mark Collett and Dave Hannam, the party's jesters, but he has now extended his attack to claim that they were;

• illegally hacking into the email accounts of BNP members
• illegally hacking into the email account of Nick Griffin himself (who clearly regards himself as above the members in some way), and
• illegally hacking into the email accounts of the party's outside auditors (presumably J. Silver and co)

all of which are illegal and the last of which is not only a new revelation but, if true, could net them a year or two in the slammer.

These allegations would be pretty exciting if Griffin hadn't tried to over-egg the pudding by trying to cover up his own illegal actions - or those of his South African Intelligence Dept or his bully-boy snatch squad - by claiming that the outlaws were found out by 'a Skype conversation, stupidly broadcast over the Internet (presumably either by a Skype setting error on their part, or even sitting on a mobile phone) made its way into the public domain'. I don't know that much about Skype, though I've set it up a few times, but I don't quite see how one could broadcast a conversation to the internet at large (or how it just happened to be picked up by the 'Intelligence' Dept) nor do I understand how one could broadcast a conversation one was having if one's fat arse was on top of the phone. The man's an idiot.

Griffin then meanders off into a curious little diversion about the state of the party, claiming that the rumours of a mass revolt within the party are untrue and produces a barrage of lies to prove it, claiming that there have been virtually no resignations anywhere in the country, all but the odd one or two and they are making their ways back to the fold.

As anyone who has followed this mini-saga will know, this statement is a lie. The resignations, as Griffin knows full well, are from positions in the party, not from the BNP itself - though those who resigned and have been drawn back by cajolery, threat of promise can expect very short shrift in the future (Chris Hill, take note). Griffin's past record shows that he doesn't reward those he considers returning 'traitors', he eventually kicks them out at a time that most suits him.

One look at the EiE blog is enough to show the casual reader that nearly sixty are announced as having resigned, including three borough/city councillors (a massive blow to the party), a whole bunch of organisers and some extremely prominent names who did important jobs and who have long-term friends in the party who will follow them. This is to say nothing of the many hundreds of people who have left comments on the blog - ordinary members, for want of a better phrase - who have had enough of Griffin, Collett and Hannam and are choosing not to renew their membership in the party or donate anything - even if they were in the habit of donating before.

Griffin's arrogant assumption that because he says so, the revolution is over, is typical of a man desperate to convince himself as well as his party but, unless Graham and Smith agree to come back on his terms and work alongside a couple of guys they hate and despise, and unless the party as a whole is prepared to ignore the activities of the Griffin/Collett/Hannam triumverate and their multiple failings even after all this, our guess would be that there is a lot more of this drama to be played out yet.

Brawl after BNP meeting

Two Carlisle men have been given suspended prison sentences at the city’s crown court after violence flared in a pub following a meeting of the British National Party.

They were among a group of drunken local men caught in a confrontation with members of the BNP from the north east, who met in the city’s Griffin pub on the afternoon of Saturday June 9 this year.

Desmond Young, 36, of Balfour Road, was given a six-month sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 150 hours unpaid community work. Alan Crilley, 27, of Shadygrove Road, who also pleaded guilty to two charges of criminal damage, got a nine month sentence, suspended for two years, with 200 hours of work. Both men had more than 50 previous convictions, including several for violence. A warrant was issued for the arrest of 34-year-old Jason Foster, of Flower Street, who was also scheduled to be sentenced for affray but did not turn up in court.

None of the people from the north-east was arrested.

Prosecuting counsel Paul Murphy told the court there were about 100 people in the pub when the “large fight” broke out, with both sides throwing chairs and glasses in what one witness described as five minutes of “absolute chaos”. At least one woman customer took refuge in a disabled toilet as the drunken men set about each other, he said.

In mitigation defence barrister Greg Hoare said that despite his bad record Crilley was “heading in the right direction”.

He said the trouble involved a group of people from Newcastle who had been using the pub for a BNP meeting.

Barrister Rod Halligan, for Young, said he had managed to stay out of trouble for six years and had only got involved in this fight after someone threw a chair at him.

Sentencing the pair, Judge Peter Hughes QC described them as “hardly the best ambassadors for this city”. He told them: “To be involved in affray right in the heart of the city centre, in broad daylight, in front of anybody passing by or coming out of the railway station, is deeply unattractive behaviour and it is the sort of behaviour residents of this city don’t feel they should tolerate.”

Carlisle News and Star

All the King’s men

Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has surrounded himself with a group of trusted lieutenants, of whom all but one appear not to be party members. At the same time he has reduced the powers of the party’s Advisory Council, which now meets infrequently. BNP members should be concerned at how Griffin, fresh from seeing off the challenge to his leadership in summer, is trying to consolidate his power and change the party.

Arthur Kemp

Nick Griffin has always believed in forming a political elite. In the 1980s he called them his “political soldiers”. Now they are the BNP’s “voting members”, the only people allowed to attend the party’s annual general meeting and vote on resolutions. Activists have to meet several conditions to qualify as voting members. One is to attend ideological training to ensure members support the right policies, and it is Arthur Kemp whom Griffin charged with its delivery.

Born in what was then white-ruled Southern Rhodesia, Kemp studied and worked in South Africa, where he became a state intelligence agent and played a role in the run-up to the murder of the prominent ANC leader Chris Hani in April 1993.

Kemp regards himself as something of an expert on race and is famed in white supremacist circles internationally as the author of March of the Titans, a monumental tome which contends that civilisation collapses when “swamped” by “racial aliens”. His sources for the book, which is also vehemently antisemitic and questions the veracity of the Holocaust, include hardline nazis. He attends Holocaust denial and hardline racist conferences in the US and contributes to journals in that field.

Lee Barnes

The BNP’s “legal eagle”, though not a party member, Lee Barnes’s unpopularity in the BNP grew after Griffin put him in charge of moderating the BNP’s internal forum, to which only party members are allowed access. The row led to the forum’s temporary closure just when Griffin’s second trial on race hate charges opened in November last year. Although Barnes’s name is no longer on the BNP’s list of national officers and his column has disappeared from the party website, Griffin recently commended Barnes’s blog describing it as “an intensely argued, intellectually inventive thing”.

Inventive is right. As for intellectual, recently he described a well known musician as “Junkie scumbag piece of shit worshipped by scumbag UAF fuckwits and NME wankers”. And writing about BBC reports on education he said: “They find some ugly geeza bird with hairy legs called Miranda who then bangs on about …” and claimed schools were run by “boring left wing assholes”. When Barnes does try to be intellectual he rapidly becomes incoherent, drawing implausible conclusions from dubious evidence using ever lengthening words and sentences. Several people have described Barnes as very eccentric.

Emmanuel Brun d’Aubignosc

One of the least known of Griffin’s new clique, Emmanuel Brun d’Aubignosc runs the Altermedia “white nationalist” news network and provides web services to the BNP as well as managing several leading European hate websites, according to his own postings on the international nazi Stormfront forum. A wealthy Belgian in his thirties, he claims Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the French National Front, personally tasked him with creating a pan-European white nationalist web presence.

He also acts as webmaster to David Duke, the former US Ku Klux Klan leader who now plays a leading role in the international extreme right. Duke, d’Aubignosc and Griffin met in Germany in summer 2002. D’Aubignosc designs, manages and updates Duke’s official website and also does business with Chris Evans, a former unit commander of the US nazi organisation the National Alliance and marketing director for its hate-music company Resistance Records.

D’Aubignosc holds hardline antisemitic views. In May 2004 he wrote on Altermedia: “Our enemies are the vicious people who hate black people so much they have been using them to destroy us by miscegenation or ‘racial mixing’ which is a form of genocide for us. They are the people who lie, lie, lie to drive America into wars of Israeli conquest. They are the people who deny every nation the right to its own secure living space, while, at the same time, they demand that same space for their own people. They are the ones who plunder American and European taxpayers to subsidise their own terrorist state. They are the ones who poison our children’s minds with MTV. They are the people who sell our women on the meat markets of forced prostitution and pornography on the streets of Jerusalem.”

Patrick Harrington

Not only is Patrick Harrington not a BNP member, he is one of the leaders of a rival political party, Third Way, which also cavorts under the name National Liberal Party.

Harrington is also a longstanding political comrade of Griffin from their days in the National Front in the 1980s and notably accompanied Griffin to Libya in 1988 in a failed attempt to obtain financial support from Colonel Gaddafi. A year later their NF political soldiers group had split, with Griffin forming the International Third Position and Harrington setting up Third Way a few months afterwards.

Harrington reappeared at Griffin’s side in 2006 when he was brought in as general secretary of Solidarity, the BNP’s trade union front. At first it seemed he was there to maintain the fiction that Solidarity was independent of the BNP. But when a row broke out between Harrington and the two BNP members on the Solidarity executive, which quickly led to a split in the union, it quickly became clear that Harrington was the only man Griffin could trust.

Since then Harrington has brought in two more Third Way activists, Graham Williamson and David Kerr, to help run Solidarity. Third Way’s political philosophy would appear to differ considerably from that of the BNP. Its website features an equal opportunities statement and it claims to welcome “guest workers … to fill gaps in the country’s infrastructure”. It seems that Griffin’s desire to build a political elite along the lines of the political soldiers overrides any superficial ideological differences.

Alan Goodacre

The BNP’s economics guru, Alan Goodacre has come from nowhere to command a key role in the formation of BNP policy as a member of the party’s Policy Forum. His influence can readily be detected in the economics section of the party’s 2005 manifesto and several articles by him appear on the BNP’s website.

According to John Bean, editor of the BNP’s magazine Identity, Goodacre is also the editor of Jihad Watch, a BNP subscription email bulletin. Griffin has become increasingly Islamophobic and Goodacre helps fuel this obsession. In a letter to the Jewish Chronicle he claimed that the BNP had genuinely repudiated antisemitism and no longer denied the Holocaust, while appealing to British Jews to understand that the BNP “are the only party in Britain that is truly serious about fighting the Islamofascist threat”. His views received short shrift from the Jewish community.

Goodacre has also been at the forefront of a prudish demand for a return to Victorian sexual values as the only way to attain an imagined morale high ground over Islam.

Simon Darby

The only BNP member among Griffin’s new cabal, Simon Darby was recently appointed the BNP’s press officer after the abrupt departure of Stuart Russell who, rumour has it, was told to go away by Arthur Kemp. Darby was already, and remains, the BNP’s deputy leader, a fact that emerged during Griffin’s first trial on race hate charges early in 2006, when everyone assumed it would be Scott McLean, the BNP’s deputy chairman, who would take over had Griffin been convicted and imprisoned.

Darby, who has also been the BNP’s West Midlands organiser and director of information technology, demonstrated his ability at dealing with difficult questions when he took part in a studio discussion after the screening of a documentary on nazi hate music early in 2006. He was totally demolished by Lord Lester, QC and after evasion, lies and an eruption into antisemitism, he seized the opportunity of a commercial break to disappear.

Like many BNP members these days, Darby is a keen blogger. Coincidentally his blog started two days before the sudden resignation of his predecessor as BNP press officer, Stuart Russell. It is an eclectic mixture of twitcher notes, political musings and attempts at developing his technical skills with video, sound recordings and camera. One clip of a recording of a telephone conversation last month attracted several complaints from readers who were unable to play it. He has now expressed a desire to upload a recording of the deep grunt of a fallow deer at the start of the rutting season.

Tony Lecomber

Although Tony Lecomber was removed from BNP membership in summer after he assaulted Eddy Butler, the BNP elections officer, he still acts as a behind-the-scenes adviser to BNP officers and rumours continue to circulate that he remains close to Griffin.

Formerly Griffin’s number two, Lecomber was convicted and jailed on five charges under the Explosives Act after he tried to bomb the headquarters of a political organisation in the 1980s. He received another three-year prison sentence when he assaulted a Jewish teacher. Lecomber ran Griffin’s campaign for the party leadership in 1999 and has acted as his enforcer, much to the resentment of many party members.

More recently, in 2006, Lecomber tried to encourage Joe Owens, repeatedly named by Searchlight as a gangland hitman, to carry out a “hit” on a Cabinet minister. Nevertheless Griffin was reluctant to ditch him. Griffin even kept Lecomber on the party payroll while telling party members that links had been cut.

When Lecomber attacked Butler outside Loughton tube station, Griffin was only able to prevent Butler from going to the police by promising to expel Lecomber. But unlike other people removed from the BNP, Lecomber was not “proscribed”, which meant party members were allowed to associate with him socially. A very mild notice to members described Lecomber as “a long-term, devoted and very valuable key official in the BNP and a genuine nationalist” and recognised his “sterling work for the cause in the past and his selflessness in stepping away in order to avoid compromising the future”.

If Lecomber is part of Griffin’s new cabal that would leave Butler, architect of the BNP’s elections strategy, in an invidious position.

Searchlight

The NNP collapses: Sharon Ebanks announces her retirement from politics

One of the contributors to Vanguard, one of the more overtly nazi forums out there, posted the following in the early hours of this morning:

'Announcement by the New Nationalist Party

The leader of the NNP makes the following statement:

On the 11th December 2006 after much discussion with close friends, we decided to form the ‘New Nationalist Party’. It was ostensibly to be an umbrella for decent British patriots to be able to stand in local elections and in May 2007 we did just that.

Nearly 12 months on we have decided to shut down the party to pursue what we feel has been neglected for far too long, our own lives.The NNP was run openly and democratically and I hope that the NNP members and onlookers were pleased with our approach to financial transparency and honesty.

I’d like to wish Keith Axon well in his retirement and I thank him for standing by me in what turned out to be some pretty grim moments, David Williams who has kept up the site and has always been on hand to help and offer support and to those who stood for the NNP last year, you were brave and I sincerely thank you.

For my own part I am physically and emotionally exhausted and bitterly regret that I ever joined the BNP, I have made mistakes in my life like all people but the British National Party was my biggest. I and many others fearful of the dark forces at work in this country risked life, name and reputation only to have it confirmed by the very party we supported that it was all for nothing.

The BNP does contain some decent people and of those I am proud to call them my friends and to the person I will always refer to as ‘Sir’ I shall always cherish your generosity and kindness, were it not for you the Kingstanding court fees would never have been settled.

The monies left in the NNP bank account will be fairly shared out to those members who donated it. I now consider myself retired and a full time mother and grandmother.

Kind Regards
Sharon Ebanks'

It was claimed that this had been posted on the New Nationalist Party (NNP) website, then swiftly removed. Now however, the notice is back and in a prominent position.

Ebanks, who was for a (short) while, the BNP's national fundraiser, came to prominence when she seemed to have won a seat for the BNP in Birmingham's Kingstanding ward. After a High Court ruling, the seat was eventually handed to Labour and that would have been the end of the story but for the BNP's extraordinary behaviour over the next couple of weeks.

Following the BNP's advice, Ebanks chose to defend the case, clearly believing that the party would cover her costs in the event of a loss. In fact, the party made an internal appeal for the money, claiming that £5000 was needed The appeal was successful but, for some bizarre reason of its own, the party chose not to hand it over to Ebanks. This produced an outcry on the hugely supportive nazi forum Stormfront and another collection which was eventually used to pay the bill for her but all this came at the cost of her acrimonious sacking from the BNP.

Since then she has been a constant thorn in the BNP's corporate side, launching a constant series accusations of financial incompetence, corruption and impropriety at the party leadership.

That she has chosen to retire now illustrates, we believe, that she has run out of supportable accusations to make. Though asked numerous times to provide evidence for her claims that the BNP leadership is corrupt, she has chosen to keep her own counsel, leading many to claim that she really has nothing to offer.

No doubt we'll come back to Ebanks at some point but for the moment we'll leave you with the report that appeared on the Covert site. Covert is, you'll recall, run by one Tommy Williams, hardcore racist and known drug-dealer who is widely perceived to be Nick Griffin's attack dog. If nothing else, he's certainly close to the modern, 'we're-not-racist' BNP leadership. You might like to bear that in mind while reading the following.

'Monkey Business: Sharon Ebanks Gives Up The NNP

Sambo is shamed into submission

Half Jamaican mental case Sharon Ebanks has finally sussed out that being half Jamaican and trying to pass herself of as white doesn't work. After a recent confession in her own words that her father was non-other than negro immigrunt Radwell Ebanks the fat ape realised that even she couldn't lie her way out of this one thus decided to call it a day as her whole world collapsed around her. There is more news that she was even collaborating with the police as well as with Gerry Gable. Now what will happen to those members and supporters of the NNP? Lets wait and see as more things come to light. Stooooopid coon.'

The latest Ebanks tirade against the BNP - revelations or rubbish?

As we all know (to our cost) Sharon Ebanks, former BNP activist and Griffin-favourite until a major fall-out last October has been posting on our comments sections in increasingly strident tones for the past week or two, claiming to have revelations that will be guaranteed to bring down her Nemesis, Nick Griffin.

Despite offers of space to air her accusations against him, Ebanks refused to pass on the information about Griffin, choosing instead to keep her information to herself until she decides the moment is right. She now seems to have made that decision, having posted a series of badly-written and completely unreferenced statements and accusations against Griffin, the BNP and other BNP-linked operations in the comments section of a 'nationalist' blog. Assuming these to be the revelations, we'll take a quick look at them.

'Griffin certainly has become untouchable since Darby became Deputy Leader and Griffin spoke with Barbara Amiel.'

Strangely, Scott McLean is still listed on the BNP's website as the Deputy-Chairman of the party, despite the fact that everyone knows he's gone and precisely why he's gone. As far as we know, Darby has never been Deputy Leader, though Griffin did designate him as de facto leader should he have been jailed during the trials in 2005/6.

The reference to Barbara Amiel, former director at The Spectator and wife of Conrad Black is presumably a nod towards a Martin Webster allegation of April 2006 that Griffin had been in telephone contact with the Jewish Amiel, this conversation rapidly being followed by a major shift in the public stance of the BNP indicated by a much-criticised article ostensibly written by the party's legal head Lee Barnes (August 2006) in which he stated, 'As a Nationalist I can say that I support Israel 100% in their dispute with Hezbollah. In fact, I hope they wipe Hezbollah off the Lebanese map and bomb them until they leave large greasy craters in the cities where their Islamic extremist cantons of terror once stood.'

Whether the conversation between Amiel and Griffin happened or not is, as far as we're concerned, irrelevant. The shift away from anti-semitism (at least publicly) to anti-Islam has been going on over a number of years and is simply one of Griffin's weak attempts to make his party more appealing to the general public, who he clearly regards as being more likely to fall for his line on Muslims than they are that on Jews. Griffin is a populist, prepared to change his public image in a moment if he feels a change will gain him some power.

The fact that he has apparently shifted his viewpoint has not made him untouchable, or at least more or less untouchable than before. He was done for inciting racial hatred nearly a decade ago and the government tried (twice) to have him done again last year. The fact that he wasn't convicted was due to the jury in the case, not to the allegation that he is 'untouchable'. Presumably, Ebanks is trying to suggest that Griffin's new pro-Israel stance allows him to say or do anything without fear of retaliation but the evidence, such as it is, doesn't really support that statement.

'Why indeed did the press not print Simon Smiths resignation when under any other circumstances they would have leapt at the opportunity for blasting across their front page "BNP COUNCILLOR ACCUSES BNP OF FINANCIAL IMPROPRIETY". Why did the press remain silent on Websters accusations and why has the press, the police and the Electoral Commission and Silvers and Co not done anything about my complaints regarding BNP money?'

There are a lot of questions in that small paragraph but we'll take a look at them one at a time. Regarding Simon Smith's purging from the party, which was turned into yet another resignation, the Birmingham Post reported the party line on the resignation with a report including quotes from Simon Darby but obviously didn't want to drag the story on with Smith's own version of events that appeared in his letter which we reprinted here. Nevertheless, we do agree that the press missed out on an opportunity to generate discussion of Croatia, Solidarity and the BNP's lucrative Trafalgar Club, which were all mentioned in Smith's letter and could have reaped large rewards. Being charitable, we can assume that the potential was either missed by a busy sub-editor or that the general embargo on BNP-related rubbish forced it to hit the bin. In either case, it was an excellent opportunity for good copy that was missed.

The answer to the complex question 'Why did the press remain silent on Websters accusations and why has the press, the police and the Electoral Commission and Silvers and Co not done anything about my complaints regarding BNP money?' is that while many people suspect and there is mounting evidence to support the ever-growing claims of financial impropriety, there is little hard evidence - patently not enough to generate a police enquiry or an enquiry by the Electoral Commission, for the moment at least. Once the BNP's accounts have been submitted, we may find the evidence we already have suddenly becoming far more valuable.

If Ebanks felt she had enough evidence to take to the EC, the BNP's auditors and the police, there must have been something relatively substantial to present to them. If so, Ebanks needs to put this information where it can do some good. At the moment, her only options appear to be to place the evidence before the public via her own New Nationalist Party, which one suspects doesn't want to get involved, to post on a forum like Stormfront, where the BNP-allied moderators will probably delete it instantly or to take us up on our offer to publish it - though that offer has a limited life-span and it's rapidly running out.

'Why does Griffin allow idiots at the top when he claims from a platform on a daily basis that he wants some semblance of Britain back? Why are thieves and cranks promoted through the ranks and decent honest people ignored? These are not the actions of a political party and certainly not the actions of those wishing a winning one.'

We couldn't agree more and we suspect, like Ebanks and many others, that we know why the scum rises to the top in the BNP - simply because they will assist Nick Griffin to achieve what he aims to achieve (the personal enrichment of Nick Griffin) and/or they have something on him. The more we and other observers look into the BNP and the more that is exposed about the internal workings of it, the more we tend to regard it as less a bona fide political party and more of an undernourished Mafia - a low-grade criminal organisation with pretensions of grandeur and less murders (though probably not if Tony Lecomber had his way).

'Why is Griffin ditching local politics in favour of Europe, a place where nothing can be achieved for British people at grassroots level?'

Because Griffin and his pals at the top of the BNP have absolutely no interest in doing anything for anybody except themselves. The European elections are where Griffin sees his opportunity to sneak a seat and rake in the money, incidentally making lots of connections all over Europe via the group of far-right MEPs, which should be handy for Griffin when we wants to buy more land abroad with his ill-gotten gains.

'Where are the BNP accounts? Why is GWR trading without filing accounts for 2yrs when it has made thousands of pounds?'

We've no more idea than Ebanks why the BNP's accounts are so late in being submitted to the Electoral Commission though we suspect it has a lot to do with cooking the books and concealing the drop in membership in some way that it won't cost Griffin and co any money. Regarding Great White Records, the BNP's musical wing - we're told that the idiotic Dave Hannam has less than six months to get it making a profit or he's out on his ear. The lack of accounts simply indicates that financial disaster is pending but being concealed - for now. Griffin is juggling all the BNP's financial cock-ups in the air at the moment but he's rapidly losing control and we firmly expect the whole lot to collapse in the very near future.

'Why does the BNP PayPal line empty into several different numbered accounts instead of remaining static and traceable?'

We have to wonder how Ebanks could possibly know that this is the case? We'd welcome some evidence...

'Why has Griffin hijacked the money and members of Solidarity?'

Presumably because he sees it as yet another potential scam, where he can rip off members of his own party ad nauseum. It's always worth remembering Griffin's own quote from way back in Spring 1999's edition of Patriot magazine; 'In increasingly hard economic times, a group of people the size of the BNP and its support base can provide a significant assured market for a variety of small businesses.' Oh boy, has he taken that to heart.

'Why is Civil Liberty allowed to commit fraud and nothing is done?'

We reported that the Electoral Commission had launched an investigation into Civil Liberty after the Guardian had provided information to Scotland Yard last April. Since then, no-one has heard anything about either the possible investigation or indeed, Civil Liberty itself.

'Why are decent people resigning only to be rubbished by morons after their personal sacrifices?'

One assumes Ebanks is referring to herself here though one would expect her to be aware that it's an old trick of the far-right to attack those who have left acrimoniously, just to discredit anything they might say about the party before they say it.

'Why is the BNP swiping money from peoples credit cards without them knowing? Once again this is fraud perpetrated against those who have joined online and entrusted them with their details and trusted them full stop.'

If this is the case and if Ebanks has any evidence to support this statement, she should see it as her duty to go straight to the police. Credit card fraud is criminal and if the BNP can be shown to have committed it, heads will roll. This is probably the one line that really means anything in her post. If she has the proof, she has the party by the throat.

'A party cannot exist without intellect and activism but the heads of the BNP do everything in their power to repel such people.'

This is probably a reference to Jonathan Bowden, who seems to be much admired by Ebanks. We don't really care but we'd assume that the last thing Griffin wants around him is someone with intelligence who might see through him and tell the rest of the BNP what a fraud he actually is.

'And last but not least, why was one of Britains most dangerous criminals contacting me 2 weeks ago with the police claiming to know nothing and do nothing but Simon Darby knew everything even the bogus name that the man was using? If the police couldn't figure it out how the hell could he?'

Unless she's referring to Tony Lecomber, Nick Griffin's favourite terrorist, we have absolutely no idea what Ebanks is going on about here. We'd like to know more though so if anyone has more information, feel free to provide.

So there you have it. Sharon Ebanks' most recent attack on the BNP - revelations that could damage the party beyond repair or rubbish that can be shrugged off as the ravings of an embittered former favourite?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This incident has caused fury in the ranks, so much so that Scott McLean, Griffin's Deputy Chairman and the person responsible for maintaining discipline in the party, has clearly stated that he is resigning, having told all his long-time pals in the party that his position has been undermined again and again by Griffin's constant refusal to take action against Collett. We're informed that McLean gave Griffin an ultimatum a few days ago - him or Collett - and Griffin is sticking to Collett. So much for loyalty then.

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

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

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

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

Updated: BNP leadership election result - no surprises

The British National Party leadership election results are in at last and, according to a post on the nazi Stormfront forum (and eventually the BNP web site), the results are as follows:

Griffin: 3363 (91%)
Jackson: 337 (9%)
Turnout: 43%

No great surprise there except that a large number of people chose to deliberately abstain.

The numbers are all important in this contest. The BNP has (it claims) a total voting membership of 8604, which means 4904 chose not to vote, leaving 3700 who did. 337 BNP members voted for Chris Jackson - substantially more than the 100 signatures he had to gather simply to be allowed to stand in this patently rigged contest.

For a virtual unknown - or at least unknown outside the North-West of England - Jackson did remarkably well, particularly when one considers the short period between announcement and election and the many limitations placed on him regarding anything to do with having direct access to the membership. Had it been a fair fight, we would have expected Jackson to easily double his votes. In fact, in our opinion he could have done a lot better had he actively campaiged. We wonder why he didn't.

Griffin is now in the peculiar and uncomfortable position that has affected every real party leader for decades - he's a minority leader, chosen to lead the BNP by a minority of the available votes in his party. In fact, working on the percentages alone, he only has a mandate from 39% of the party - hardly 'a resounding mandate', as one idiotic Stormfronter put it.

It's pretty clear from the immediate reactions to the result that we can expect something of an old-fashioned purge in the BNP in the near future - a clear-out of those undesirables who don't seem to appreciate either Nick Griffin's dictatorial style of leadership, the numerous dodgy deals he has on the go at any given time or the energetic expansion of the BNP into an apparently limitless number of bizarre and disparate business ventures. The Night of the Long Knives beckons and the supporters of Chris Jackson had better watch the shadows for a few months. Despite having absolutely no loyalty to the BNP membership himself, Griffin demands absolute loyalty from his subordinates and the leadership challenge has already been labelled an act of treachery a number of times.

Griffin staggers into a new year as leader with none of the spring in his step that he should be feeling after a failed leadership challenge. The result - or rather, the turnout - was lacklustre, reflecting the party's performance at the council elections back in May. The troops are demoralised, the income, we are assured by people who certainly know, is drying up and the membership is stagnating as it waits for triumphs that never arrive and holiday camps that will never materialise.

In fact this leadership challenge seems only to have left bitterness and recrimination behind it. Possibly the next one will be better - it's rumoured that pornmeister Dickie Barnbrook has his eye on Griffin's seat (so to speak), which might explain why he's recently been pushed out to challenge the unbeatable Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London. A challenge from Barnbrook might just be a challenge worth watching.

Property investment for fascists - the Croatia story continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But there were many errors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop the BNP

Solidarity update - BNP's Nick Griffin heavily criticised for interference

Much information has been received by Lancaster UAF over the past week, the bulk of it concerning the Solidarity disaster, its unconstitutional and possibly illegal Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) and the bizarre and very probably fraudulent election that led to putting Patrick Harrington and the BNP firmly in control of the breakaway Solidarity - the one we'll refer to as Solidarity B.

First things first. If you've not been following the Solidarity fiasco, you're going to be easily confused, in which case you should check out some of our previous posts from June 22nd, June 25th, June 26th, July 5th, July 11th and July 17th.

It has been announced (and repeated ad nauseum) that the support for an EGM was overwhelming, with an excess of the two-thirds membership requirement voting in favour. We've now received five emails from members who have all reported that they never received a ballot paper at all, clearly indicating that there are one or two porkies being told. Based on past experience, we would suggest that the Griffin/Harrington camp are the liars.

The postal ballot itself was described as a 'nonsense', a 'farce' and a 'sham ballot' by a poster on the Stormfront nazi forum who said;

'The "voting paper" that i received was a nonsense. there was no number to the slip and no way of proving who was sending in the slip, and who would count them and how. It was a farce reminiscent of a Zimbabwean election...'

Indeed it was. There was no independent officer to oversee the process, nobody except Griffin and Harrington to send out the ballots, no tellers to count the votes, no indication of how many voted for, against or abstained, nor was there any proof that any ballot papers had been sent out at all.

All the information we have received indicates that the EGM was attended by just fifteen to twenty members - at least we assume they were all members - and a number of heavies, presumably to keep out the riff-raff like the rightful President and Vice-President of Solidarity, Clive Potter and Tim Hawke.

From this fifteen to twenty in attendance, seven were chosen to represent the Executive Committee and one, Graham Williamson, was clearly put in post as the union's public relations guru - despite the fact that he has no experience of public relations at all. More on Williamson here. Near as dammit half of those who attended then, went along in the sure and certain knowledge that they would be voted into a position of some authority - assuming we concede that the Solidarity B union has any authority at all, which we don't.

Whether you like them or loathe them, unions are rightly famed for one single thing - their strict adherence to the rules of the union, or the Constitution. The Constitution of any union is sacrosanct and no member or officer would consider breaking any part of it or bypassing it. A change in a union's Constitution will only be carried out (generally) at the Annual General Meeting.

Part of the problem with Solidarity B is that there is already a Solidarity union (Solidarity A) in place complete with a properly drawn-up and agreed Constitution. Harrington deciding, for whatever reason, that Solidarity A is not for him, and running off and forming Solidarity B, is, whatever way you care to look at it, entirely unconstitutional.

Disregarding all the convoluted facts and outright lies that have been told about the Solidarity split, the simple fact is that it was reported that Tim Hawke and Clive Potter had problems with Patrick Harrington's version of the accounts. It's worth remembering that that is what started the whole Solidarity fiasco off. Harrington then promptly denied the bona-fide President and Vice-President of Solidarity access to the Paypal account which holds the union's funds (in other words, the member's fees that were paid to the properly constituted Solidarity), and denied them access to the membership list and the union website.

With Nick Griffin's collaboration, he hastily presented his version of events and the wheels were put in motion for an entirely unconstitutional EGM. He also announced (again with the BNP's help) the establishment of three new Solidarity (B) websites, announcing repeatedly that they were the proper sites to visit. You'll note that Griffin and the BNP is prominent in this mess but only on Harrington's side. So much for the BNP's belief in fair play and (excuse my laughter) democratic values.

Just my opinion but all this has a distinct taste of cover-up and, rather more importantly, fraud.

Since Harrington's rapid departure from Solidarity A, the internet has been awash with lies and misinformation about Hawke and Potter. They did nothing to present the union as professional, they did nothing at all, they didn't want to see a membership campaign, they didn't want a stall at the BNP's Red, White and Blue event, that they were 'State-controlled', that they were part of a 'far-left' plot etc etc. Anything, in fact, to discredit them in the eyes of the membership - repeated by Harrington and the BNP in the clear hope that if it's repeated often enough, it'll be believed.

Though we're reluctant as a rule to credit anyone on the far-right with any decency at all, Potter and Hawke have generally maintained a dignified silence throughout this disaster, quietly working in the background maintaining their union and sticking to the Constitution rigorously. Having said that, we believe that Solidarity - both versions - should be barred from becoming a bona-fide trade union when they are patently not a trade union, simply a support group for so-called nationalists run by a combination of the NF, the ITP and the BNP - all of them arguably fascist groups.

Following, as far as we can see, the proper procedure, Potter and Hawke eventually expelled Harrington. The letter of expulson is enlightening and well worth a read;

'With reference to an Extraordinary Executive Meeting held on the 8th July 2007 I inform you that you have been instantly expelled from the Union due to gross, unacceptable behaviour in your refusal to accept your suspension dated 3rd of June 2007.

Your refusal to accept an investigation of your irregular behaviour regarding union funds, and still refusing to comply with the Official Union Executive in these concerns is no longer sustainable.

Also the other main reasons for expulsion from the union are as followed:

1. Hijacking the unions website and claiming you were illegally suspended from your office – which is false. In this matter you can refer to the Union Constitution on the following
Section 1 (b), Section 7 (a), Section 8 (a) (b), Section 12 (c) – specifically.
Section 12 (e) – specifically.
Section 14 (a) – specifically unless you appeal – no executive member is subject to the same rules as its members.
Section 15 (a) – your refusal to accept an investigation by the Executive through their nomination of a Special Auditor on this matter.
Section 19 (d) – your long-term refusal to submit the books to the Unions Head Office.

2. Bringing the Unions Governing Body and the Union into Gross Disrepute by working with the BNP leadership to undermine their independence and hijacking the unions website by their abuse of relationship of this union in this matter.

3. Manipulation of Account with regards to your apparent transfer of £700 from the main HSBC Solidarity Account to a Business account, many days after you were notified of your suspension.

4. Stating on Union Accounts that their was a loan to a member of £150 which is not true as the loan was given to the union, not the other way round.

You have gone to extreme lengths to circumscribe being investigated by this union, to such a degree that you issue publicly gross malicious and false lies, concerning the actions of this governing body in your suspension. You falsely claim that we are duped, by several Marxists, and we look forward to you naming such ghosts. These malicious and false lies will be in due course answered at an appropriate time.

This union’s Executive in the position of President and Vice-President take great umbrage to the false use of our Names in your illegal use of the unions website and request you stop this at once. In any serious professional union the processes of its governing body and its relationship with members, is clearly defined, in its constitution, which ours also reflects in this matter. You have totally disrupted and attempted to destroy this good order and discipline of the union in such matters and brought it into Gross Disrepute. On these grounds alone let alone other serious charges, no serious professional union could allow such a destructive personality, which you are, to exist within its body in any capacity. On this ground alone you are immediately expelled from this union on these charges.

Please note that you have SEVEN days from the date of receipt of this letter to appeal and present any claims that you believe is illegal in your expulsion on these grounds.'

Assuming points 3 and 4 to be correct, these seem to me (as a person with no formal legal training but with a reasonable sense of right and wrong) to be criminal in nature and one wonders whether this has yet been passed on to the police. Rumour has us believe that it has but, if not, we have to ask ourselves why not?

There are now two unions claiming the name Solidarity. There are people who will join one simply because they loathe the people involved in the other. Griffin, in yet another attempt to deflect any well-deserved humiliation at his unwarranted interference, will try to persuade the BNP membership to switch to the Harrington/BNP coalition Solidarity, then will claim the takeover as a huge success leaving many members less than happy. One Stormfront poster expressed his disatisfaction with Nick Griffin's unwanted interference thus;

'...no leader should be free of criticism and I must say that criticism here is well-deserved. He has made a very flawed judgement and a crucial error in regards to assisting the hi-jacking of this Solidarity Union. By allying himself with an old National Front comrade over his own members and destroying any concept of decency, truth, right and constitution then he has sadly behaved dishonorably and unlawfully. He has given his enemies, both on the Right and on the Left, the ammunition that they need. He is now a damaged man who has shown his weakness and ineptude and his failure of leadership. This is very sad for someone like myself who truly believed and followed Nick Griffin, who still admires his achievements and his talents, but has seen his followers betrayed.'

The Solidarity fiasco started off as something of a joke which has descended rapidly into a farce. Considering the union has only existed for roughly a year and a half, its short life has been plagued with chaos (as is relatively normal for anything involving the BNP) and the only sensible thing to do is to put it out of its misery. Consequently, we would like people to write to the Certifications Officer, asking for an investigation of the union(s) and the appalling mess in which it seems to have got itself. A decent investigation by an outside body might uncover a lot more than just interference from Nick Griffin and co. It wouldn't hurt to send a copy or separate letter/email to the TUC, the Trade and Industry Secretary (now the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) and your local MP too. Addresses below. It's time to shut this rubbish down before ordinary people start getting sucked into it because someone tells them Solidarity is a great union. It isn't. It's crap and it needs to go.

David Taylor
Certification Office for Trade Unions and Employers' Associations
Brandon House, 180 Borough High Street, London SE1 1LW
Tel: 020 7210 3734
Fax: 020 7210 3612
CERT@certoffice.org

Trades Union Congress
Congress House
Great Russell Street
London
WC1B 3LS
Tel: 020 7636 4030
Fax: 020 7636 0632
No email? Shameful.

Rt Hon John Hutton MP
Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
22 Hartington Street, Barrow in Furness, Cumbria LA14 5SL
Telephone: 01229 431204
Fax: 01229 432016
huttonj@parliament.uk

You can find out who your local MP is and write to him/her here.

BNP plans to seek safety in Croatian idyll

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Observer

Great White bites off more than it can chew?

Yet another BNP business venture hits hard times - and far worse are coming.

The terrible Great White Records that the British National Party started up to exploit what Nick Griffin perceived as a largely untapped market for 'patriotic' music, appears to be floundering.

Nick Griffin, as you'll have read here before, has had an interest in the far-right music scene for years, formerly being involved in the Rock Against Communism (RAC) events back in the 80s. Indeed one RAC open air festival, starring the notorious nazi band Skrewdriver led by the even more notorious Ian Donaldson, took place at Griffin's father's farm.

Griffin always saw massive potential in so-called White Noise music, forming the White Noise Club, which back in those heady days was steered by, among others, the National Front's Patrick Harrington (now the BNP's fake union Solidarity's General Secretary - or possibly ex-General Secretary), Derek Holland and Nick Griffin, who can reliably be found wherever there is a personal profit to be made.

After a split in the amoeba-like National Front it emerged that the White Noise Club had not been paying royalties due to the bands, had been ripping off supporters of the bands ordering records through their mail order service and that Rock-o-Rama in Germany was owed around £3000 for merchandise obtained via the WNC. Totally disgusted with the way Harrington, Griffin and Holland had gone about things with their 'gross dishonesty', Donaldson handed in his letter of resignation to White Noise and the National Front, with most of the other White Noise bands following him. This heralded the end of the White Noise Club, with Donaldson going off to start and star in the extremely profitable Blood and Honour music scene.

There's a quote from Griffin that we use frequently, mainly to remind the members of his own party who are looking in that they are there simply to be exploited; 'In increasingly hard economic times, a group of people the size of the BNP and its support base can provide a significant assured market for a variety of small businesses.'

With that attitude, Griffin's eternal and never-satisfied greed and his past interest in the financial possibilities that arise out of the music scene, particularly where there is an enormous and largely unexploited user-base, it was inevitable that Griffin would eventually have another go and this he did with the formation of Great White Records back in February of 2006.

The whole point of GWR was to make money for the BNP and it tries to achive this via 'the cause of spreading positive patriotism', which we can assume means a load of racist tosh wrapped up in music and the Union Jack. This is confirmed by a statement from GWR itself; 'GWR is determined to create the musical revolution amongst our people, especially the young that will educate our people to the issues of concern, most namely the thinly-disguised genocide of the indigenous natives of the British Isles perpetrated by the policy of present government pushing mass immigration and multi-culturalism on the British native population.'

And so on.

What the membership of the party doesn't generally know is that the GWR studios in Leeds (shared with the BNP's Excalibur books scam) cost over £1000 a month to run - roughly £12000 per year which is equivalent to the annual membership fees of 400 members. And what precisely does the BNP get for that large investment? A few third-rate songs penned by the Leonard Cohen of the far-right Nick Griffin, BNP councillor Colin Auty singing a racist song about how many Asians there are in Dewsbury and Lee Haggan droning another Griffin song 'about the domination by foreign cultures of many of our cities and how one day we will reclaim them for the native people'. For God's sake.

All that rubbish aside, we'll repeat the question we asked - what does the membership get for the party's investment of £12000 (400 membership fees) in Great White Records per year? The answer is, very little.

Even those tone-deaf people who actually buy the crap GWR sells are rarely getting to listen to it. We hear rumours from all directions that credit card payments are being made and cheques are being cashed but the products ordered rarely arrive. This problem (for the customers) seems to be getting worse if all the reports we've heard are correct - and they're going to get even worse still in the very near future as Excalibur stops sharing the space (and the rent) with GWR and moves off to Wrexham, leaving GWR boss Dave Hannam to either cover the whole rent from fast-dwindling orders or move everything into his garden shed (if he has one) and run the whole thing from there.

Great White Records looks to be yet another one of the BNP's subsidiary businesses/organisations that's well on it's way out. The ridiculous Christian Council of Britain looks like it's dead or very close, Solidarity has hit bad account and organisational problems and now Great White seems to be rapidly sinking for the third time.

Strangely, whenever one thinks of former bankrupt Nick Griffin and his business abilities, the words 'organise', piss-up' and 'brewery' immediately come to mind.