Logan quits BNP in 'racist' row

A councillor has vowed to stand independently at the next election after walking away from the British National Party for being "a bunch of racists"

Cllr Mark Logan, who has represented Gooshays ward since winning a by-election in March 2008, said he would be "severing all links with the party and the political group of misfits" because he didn't agree with "the calibre of some people" being put forward as candidates for the forthcoming election.

He said: "There's been some really nasty rhetoric directed at coloured people. When I first of all moved in with the party I didn't see a racist element to start off with. But people change. I thought they were a group of patriots not racists."

Jason Douglas, BNP Havering organiser, rejected the racist claims and said: "There are certain people in the branch who didn't see eye-to-eye. Mark comes from a Conservative background and a lot of his influences run contrary to what the party believes in."

He said Cllr Logan had done "some sterling work for Gooshays" but his "presence is causing friction among other members in the branch".

In May, Cllr Logan had been due to stand in the local election for Gooshays again and as a Parliamentary candidate for Upminster in the general election. He announced he was cutting all ties with the BNP last Thursday following a series of disagreements. The BNP argued they had pushed Cllr Logan out by deselecting him as a candidate at both levels prior to his exit from the party due to "continuous squabbles" and concern for his health, but were unable to substantiate their argument.

The last straw for Cllr Logan was with Heaton ward candidate Mick Braun who Cllr Logan branded "an out-and-out complete and utter racist" and a "loose cannon". Cllr Logan, who has been receiving dialysis daily while waiting for a kidney transplant, highlighted a particular incident when he claimed Mr Braun made a foul personal verbal attack on him after a party meeting.

Cllr Logan said: "I am not willing to stay in a party whereupon I'm being threatened and his last tirade of verbal abuse was appalling."

When questioned about it Mr Braun said: "I can't remember what I said. I might remember saying Joe Hunt. It's another term; a bit of rhyming slang."

He called Cllr Logan "arrogant" and "hard to work with" and said: "My son goes out with a Turkish girl. I rent my home from a lovely woman who is a Hindu. I'm not racist at all."

Cllr Logan was also angry at the secret political handshake Mr Douglas made with Graham Williamson of the National Liberal Party to agree to remove BNP candidates from South Hornchurch to give the The National Liberal Party a better chance of election. Cllr Logan has promised to support his constituents till the end of term before continuing his political career as an independent.

A BNP spokesman added: "Mark Logan has issued a number of highly libellous lies about the party. If any of Mr Logan's new allegations were true he would not have tried to rejoin the party so recently. It's sad Mark Logan sees fit to reveal his personal problems in such a manner but the BNP is greater than any one individual and better off without such a disruptive and unstable hanger on."

Fellow BNP member Micky Joyce announced this week he would also no longer stand for election, as he had planned to in the Heaton ward, because he didn't want to get involved with all the rows.

Romford Recorder

Give us a lift, Jace

After last weekend’s fiasco in Havering the BNP have turned their attention to Redbridge once again. Yes that’s the borough whose solitary BNP councillor Julian Leppert fled to Loughton soon after he was elected.

The weekend’s effort towards the party’s London Assembly election campaign is being organised by Councillor Robert Bailey, deputy to the BNP’s Mayoral candidate Richard Barnbrook on Barking and Dagenham Council. Bailey seems to have trouble finding his way around Redbridge. He has told his minions to assemble outside Snaresbrook tube station in High Street, Redbridge, at 11am on the Saturday and Sunday of the Easter weekend. This is odd as there is no such place as High Street, Redbridge. Well it’s a long way from Algiers, which Bailey knows much better than Redbridge or even Barking and Dagenham.

He personally should not have trouble finding the BNP’s rendezvous point as he can avail himself of the services of Jason Douglas, football thug and cab driver, who has done “the knowledge” so should know his way around. That’s if he still has his cab driver’s licence after last weekend when he used his taxi to stalk two young women. Actually we wonder how he got his licence in the first place, with at least two convictions under his belt for violence connected to football.

Still, the BNP should feel at home in the shadow of Snaresbrook Crown Court, where Tony “the mad bomber” Lecomber received his second three-year prison sentence. That one was not for bombs but for beating up, together with five of his mates, a young Jewish school teacher at another local tube station, Gants Hill.

We expect we’ll be paying more on our council tax bills for the cost of the council washing down the streets after the BNP leaves.

Stop the BNP

Giving the BNP the runaround – part 2

When the BNP turned up at Harold Hill railway station on a rainy Sunday morning they were hoping to intimidate campaigners from the anti-fascist community group Redbridge and Epping Forest Together, who included Searchlight’s publisher Gerry Gable.

London taxi driver Jason Douglas, who is general factotum to the BNP candidate in next Thursday’s by election in Gooshays ward, Havering, drove up in his red hackney cab. Unfortunately no one managed to check whether it was displaying the full road fund licence that permits use other than for hire.

The candidate, Mark Logan, was there in the company of some real knuckle-dragging specimens, a couple of dowdy women and the man with the biggest gob in London, Barking and Dagenham BNP councillor Lawrence Rustem.

Two trade unionists from SERTUC joined us. We sent them off to link up with two minibuses of Hope Not Hate campaigners who had been working in the ward since 9am.

We waited expecting that Douglas, who has two convictions under his belt, would unleash his thuggish chums on us. We knew that the station was covered by several CCTV cameras.

A latecomer for the BNP was Ian Newport. A former NF activist and close friend of the BNP’s mad bomber Tony Lecomber, he tried to ingratiate himself to his fellow fascists by snarling “f***ing race traitor” at one of us.

Then we set off to Gooshays. It was now 11am and around 30 Labour and SERTUC supporters were out delivering a huge number of leaflets and papers. The Conservatives had already completed four full sweeps of the ward before Sunday.

There some young supporters of Hope Not Hate turned up to help, including two young women who had never been out on any activity like this. We left them with the Labour and trade union activists, while three of us, all seasoned anti-fascist activists, in two cars put part two of our plan into action.

All the BNP supporters had formed up in convoy at the station to follow us to the Labour and trade union assembly point on the Harold Hill estate. There was a white van transporting Rustem, Logan’s car and some other vehicles, carrying 16-18 BNP activists.

When our two cars left the assembly point, the BNP convoy followed and it was like an Ealing Studios comedy. Our first stop was a Catholic church where we left some literature. Rustem, Logan and one scruff rushed out of their cars after us, but clearly a church was no place for the BNP and they stood around looking bemused.

At this point Rustem started flashing around an election leaflet attacking Gerry Gable as a criminal, liar and editor of Searchlight. It’s a pity they are so out of date – Gerry relinquished the editorial role many years ago. It is also strange that this leaflet was published at all after so many London BNP officers thought Logan would be daft to do it. Voters in the ward, 99% of whom will have never heard of Gerry, might conclude that anybody who is so hated by the BNP might just have something going for them, that’s if they can understand the BNP’s illiterate and incoherent leaflet at all. Do we hear someone crying ouch after shooting themselves in the foot?

Next we headed for the Tesco hypermarket. At this point Douglas in his cab started chasing a third car containing the two young women, coincidentally going to Tesco’s to fill up. Douglas ended up following that car all the way to Dagenham. A formal complaint is being made to the Public Carriage Office about the convicted thug’s misuse of his taxi.

Our two cars then started a game of follow the leader around the huge Tesco’s car park, pulling up only when we reckoned the BNP activists in the back of the van are feeling car sick.

Rustem in his usual stupid way shouted out “Gable you are a convicted burglar, are you going to rob me”. Shoppers looked bemused and Gerry countered “no way, you’ve got nothing worth nicking at the flea pit you live in”.

We then started handing out Hope Not Hate leaflets. Many shoppers being offered the BNP leaflets told the fascists they would certainly not vote for them.

True to form as the grass he is, Rustem rushed into the store hiding his own illegal leaflets under his coat. Pointing at us he shouted, “they are giving out illegal material, get security”. But he was all mouth. Even with Gerry’s face right up against his, the little nazi runt did not have the bottle to take a swing at someone twice his age.

When Logan approached, Gerry mentioned his surprise over the publication of the leaflet. Logan was clearly not happy about it, but claimed that some of the nicest people he had ever met were in the BNP. So Gerry went through some names and Logan admitted he did not like Rustem and Douglas, nor did he like David Durrant, who is standing for another fascist party in the Gooshays by-election thereby splitting his vote. Logan at first looked puzzled when Gerry mentioned he had heard that Logan also did not like the BNP’s London organiser Nick Eriksen, who is number two on the BNP’s slate for the London Assembly election, but concurred when Gerry pointed out that him calling Eriksen a “prat” would not exactly endear him to the party hierarchy. Gerry concluded with the suggestion that Logan should take a step back and rejoin the real world.

Then for the next 40 minutes we drove around the roads and byways of Gooshays followed by the diminishing BNP convoy, as some of the BNP supporters broke off to go and look for our campaigners on the ground. They failed to find them.

In the end it was just one of our cars followed by the white van with Rustem and a bunch of knuckle-draggers. Now we entered the third and final phase of our game.

Working on the basis that white van man did not know the local area as well as us, Gerry drove onto the A12 and a minute later was going up the slip road onto the M25. White van man clearly left it too late to turn back and ended up trapped on the motorway heading away from Havering.

Gerry was doing a steady 70mph when the van, with Rustem pointing two fingers up at us, hurtled past exceeding the speed limit, adding to two earlier offences of going through red lights.

A couple of miles before the junction between the M25 and the M11 they ran into a huge traffic jam. Perhaps at that point Rustem, who appeared to be navigating, had a small light turn on in his pea-sized brain and realised that in every sense of the word they had been taken for a ride. As Hannibal used to say in the A-Team, “I just love it when a plan comes together”.

Stop the BNP

I was in the back of Jason Douglas’s cab the other day and I heard...

It’s nice to see the BNP offering some hospitality instead of hostility for a change. If you are passing the Valentine pub just off Gants Hill roundabout in Redbridge on Sunday 9 March at 6.45pm, you might pop in to claim the free pint that we hear the BNP are offering as inducement to get people to attend their by-election meeting later that night in Gooshays ward in Havering. This is where Mark Logan is campaigning to hang onto the seat from which BNP councillor Alan Bailey resigned in February.

The drinks will be handed out by the well known football yob, black-cab driver and Logan’s political errand boy Jason Douglas.

As an extra incentive Logan’s ever decreasing band of supporters will be treated to a talk from the sinister South African spook and nazi-admirer Arthur Kemp at a venue in Gooshays Drive.

Stop the BNP