The beating of the BNP in Belfast

Marion Thomas has won her employment tribunal against the BNP. Surprisingly, after three days of public embarrassment and allegations the tribunal did not take the initially quoted six weeks to reach its decision. The tribunal concluded that Mrs Thomas was "automatically unfairly dismissed for non-compliance with the statutory dismissal procedure".

This tribunal was held earlier this month. It had two missing ingredients: the real protagonists. This case was always about Nick Griffin, the increasingly desperate and unpopular leader of the far-right BNP, and his one time financial crutch, guru and indeed ‘consigliere’, Jim Dowson. Both Griffin and his daughter Jennifer Matthys were criticised by the panel for failing to attend.

Instead, the employment tribunal at Killymead House, conveniently sandwiched between Belfast’s Republican Short Strand and Loyalist Donegal Pass, had to make do with second best. It’s a shame really, as this was the perfect geographical location for a no holds barred, all encompassing exploration of how the BNP crushed ideologies, shattered political ambitions and in no small way, descended into acrimonious tribal conflict and civil war.

Both the meteoric rise and the final devastating fall of the BNP were orchestrated here in Belfast in that fateful tie up between Griffin’s BNP and Jim Dowson. The basis of the unfair dismissal claim was as much a case of who is to blame for the failures, and who was to blame for the mountain of debt that has crippled the party. Taking on the BNP was Marion Thomas, Jim Dowson’s softly spoken sister in law. The nervous Scot was as good as on her own at the tribunal, once her nephew in law was quietly paid off before the hearing began on the first day.

Of course, Belfast can be a challenging place. It has an often intimidating geography for outsiders, even to those who purport undying love for the extreme fringes of Irish society. The tribunal panel commented on as much in its ruling but it was also quick to point out “this was, in truth, a banal and ordinary employment tribunal claim alleging unfair dismissal and non-payment of holiday pay, overtime, expenses and notice pay."

For those of us who squeezed into room ten, it was anything other than “banal”.

When having a call centre in Belfast worked for the BNP, it worked exceptionally well. Taking advantage of a low wage economy on an industrial estate in Dundonald, few people felt the desire to trawl across suburban east Belfast to poke around there. Prime and paramount for the BNP was secrecy. We did poke around however, and from almost the very moment we made it our business, we had almost two years of excellent non-stop exclusives detailing almost every squalid and shameful shenanigan going on inside the BNP’s call centre. Some of what we found out was too sensitive to print, some of it was just breathtakingly degenerate.

From the village of Comber where the BNP set themselves up in flats and homes and joined “Kick The Pope” bands and even toyed with the idea of moving the whole party machinery there, we reported how a lonely and insecure Jennifer Matthys (nee Griffin) plotted and schemed against her rivals, namely the Dowson family. We forensically investigated Jim Dowson’s financial dealings, his shady past and dubious political friends. We predicted an acrimonious parting and worked as hard as we could to facilitate one.

And so it came to pass that the very geography that the BNP courted became their undoing. They burnt their bridges in an unforgiving environment either by sheer arrogance, or just stupidity. The cost is not just £2500 for Marion Thomas but also whatever it cost for Nick Griffin to send seven BNP officials to Belfast on his behalf now his business arrangements have turned so sour.

Marion Thomas’s primary complaint was that she was unfairly dismissed and owed eight days holiday pay plus out of pocket expenses. The BNP argued that Thomas was only actually employed by the BNP for six months, excluding her from entitlement to both redundancy payments and any compensation. For good measure, the BNP admitted they would have dismissed her anyway. But just to confuse matters further they claimed that they also offered Thomas the opportunity to discuss a transfer to the “mainland” after the relationship between Griffin and Dowson broke down, which led to the inevitable closure of the Dundonald office. But Thomas had refused to travel to Britain to discuss any prospective move. She claimed she had not believed that the BNP would honour their pledge to pay reasonable expenses as she was already owed money by the party.

Neither side denied there was an absence of formal employment contracts and so, on this issue, it becomes apparent that with the disappointing absence of both Nick Griffin and Jim Dowson from the hearing, Thomas could only claim that Griffin, his daughter Jennifer Matthys and Jim Dowson all gave verbal employment assurances. The BNP’s legal representative could only claim that either Nick Griffin did not make such offers, or that Jim Dowson was not in the position to make such offers. The ins and outs of what date it was that Thomas actually began getting paid by the BNP and not by Dowson’s front company are, of course, not as interesting as what the BBC describes as the “secretive world” of the BNP.

It’s fair to say that no matter what extremism still exists in Northern Ireland, that the BNP was viewed locally as a most unwelcome addition. The case received uncomplimentary cross community coverage, including a front page on the Belfast Telegraph for two consecutive days. The revelations were sensational. “I was sacked by BNP after dispute with Griffin’s daughter”, led the Belfast Telegraph. Thomas, nicknamed the “matron” for her role in overseeing up to thirty employees at the Dundonald office during the 2009 European elections, admitted with some chagrin that she regarded herself as a junior to Jennifer Matthys once the leader’s daughter had moved to Northern Ireland. Thomas, who was never a member of the party also alleged that she was promoted to the BNP’s treasury team with a focus on ringing around creditors to try and make arrangements for the clearing of some initial £275,000 of debt. It was in this capacity that she says she felt obliged to report to Jim Dowson that Jennifer Matthys had “borrowed” some £900 from a BNP account after a mistake by her husband Angus Mathys who worked in the post room. Thomas claims that this money was set aside to pay creditors.

Thomas also repeated the claim that she made to the BBC’s Panorama programme that party treasurer Clive Jefferson demanded that invoices that were unpaid be stamped as “paid”. Jefferson who was in the tribunal room hurriedly approached the BNP’s legal advisor with a written note soon after. The Belfast Telegraph described the atmosphere in the tribunal as “charged” with the “imposing presence of several heavyweights of the BNP lining the back row”. The BNP did not appreciate having somebody from Searchlight recording the proceedings either.

For most of the three days there was a heavy focus on the bizarre and almost comical circumstances surrounding the alleged holding of Thomas against her will. As the split between Dowson and Griffin grew more and more acrimonious last year, Thomas alleged that she was asked to “mediate” between the two sides. In November of last year she met three BNP officials in the car park of Tescos in Comber twice on the same day. On both occasions large amounts of cash exchanged hands, £2500 in the first instance and then, later in the day, a further £5000. It would appear that the BNP was buying back its own membership details and computer server and while waiting for the equipment to arrive Thomas got into a van driven by former Yorkshire Regional Organiser Ian Kitchen with Clive Jefferson and Adam Walker. Thomas alleged that she was told she was not allowed to leave the van and that Jefferson in particular was “agitated”. Upon the arrival of the equipment, Thomas further alleged that Jefferson, the BNP’s treasurer, removed £200 from the £5000 as compensation for his “inconvenience”.

Of further inconvenience to the BNP would appear to be Dowson’s new political venture which Thomas described as a “Nationalist campaigning group”. Interestingly, the group was described by the BNP as a “commercial rival” and not a political rival. The intimation by the BNP appeared to be that Dowson still had access to the BNP’s membership files and was running his organisation with the BNP’s data. Thomas denied this and claimed that Dowson is in fact using the BNP membership list that was leaked on line in 2007. The BNP’s legal advisor said that the BNP has since made a series of “test calls” to the BNP’s old offices in Dundonald and alleged that Thomas was now answering the phones for their bitter “commercial rivals”. Thomas denied this. The Scottish accent she claims the BNP heard was in fact the voice of her sister Anne, Dowson’s wife.

The BNP were represented in Belfast by the mildly competent Patrick Harrington. The faux trade union leader is a former close comrade of Griffin from when they ran the NF together back in the 1980’s. Harrington struggled with some areas of the tribunal’s processes and had to be guided by the Vice president of the panel, Mr Noel Kelly. Harrington has something of a love-hate relationship with Belfast himself. He has been the constant focus for one newspaper there that has printed the allegations, rife in far-right circles, that Harrington holds Republican sympathies. While the rest of the BNP party had to be admonished for their constant whispering and disruptions on the first day, Harrington conducted his defence for the respondent (the BNP) with a modicum of professionalism even if it was slow, monotone and often judged irrelevant by Thomas’s solicitor. If anything, Harrington was revelling in some kind of role as the sadistic schoolmaster, trying to trip up the housewife who has taken to answering every question and counter accusation with “rubbish”. In the week leading up to the hearing the BNP had alleged that Thomas and Dowson were in fact lovers and not just brother and sister in law. When questioned abut her living arrangements, Thomas appeared ready to explode violently to a loaded question. Marion Thomas was being goaded.

On the second day, Harrington woke up to find his features prominent in the Belfast Telegraph. Arriving at the tribunal with his wife “Mish”, (Some of you may know her better by her stage name "Mish Bondage" or if it suits, “Frightening Fanny”!)

He became entangled in an exchange with two Irish trade unionists, one of whom was holding the flag of the International Brigades. Whether he has some kind of post traumatic disorder relating to his controversial days at the Polytechnic of North London or not, I do not know, but Harrington reacted very badly to being called a fascist and so began a lot of pushing and shoving before his wife Mish decided to physically launch herself at people wildly, apparently upset at her husband’s picture having been in the paper that morning.

Sackings and expulsions from the BNP are never straightforward and normally have a heavy hint of intimidation, humiliation or violence. Who can forget one former employee from the Belfast office who claimed that she was threatened with a shot gun, or how the leakers’ of the 2007 membership list had their house ransacked by the BNP’s security team?

In Belfast, the BNP had sent some of their “finest”. They sent men who were not immune to violence and who were in fact, quite adept at it. They also sent Angus Matthys, Nick Griffin’s son in law. How did Angus get to marry the prized daughter of the Fuhrer. Were other suitors too politically ambitious? Angus carried all of the boxes into the tribunal - and out again. When he worked at the offices of the BNP in Northern Ireland his main task appeared to be donning rubber gloves and poking through thousands of letters that contained, among other things, excrement and razor blades in the search for cash. He swept up, made tea and also went to the post office and the supermarket for teabags. He was not known as the “dynamo”. One source we had in the office at the time told us that Angus was called “Trigger”, but only when he was well out of ear shot, because anything he did hear went straight to Jenny and nobody wanted a forty minute ticking off from her!

Giving evidence on the second day, it was clear that Angus achieved a major victory in just getting dressed that day. He reminded me of Frank Spencer. Angus claimed that he and his wife had been “run off the road” in Cumbria (where they had fled to once they decided to leave Northern Ireland), and that, sadly, his wife felt too intimidated to come to Northern Ireland and that there was a court case pending. Of course, being the BNP and this being Northern Ireland, there would have to be an alleged paramilitary angle to it. Across town was also about to begin one of the largest trials of paramilitaries Northern Ireland had ever witnessed, the place is still awash with them. Angus could not remember much else about his time in Northern Ireland, not surprisingly, seems that he spent most of it cooped up in the BNP’s post room or a tiny flat above a service station in Comber.

Throughout the tribunal the BNP gave the impression that Nick Griffin was “out of the country” (I presume they meant England). While Angus was having some quite severe memory loss, Nick Griffin was on the way to Blackpool lamenting on twitter that he was stuck on the M6. Dowson was in Swansea himself, not fancying the glare of publicity in his adopted home town. It was more than apparent too that Griffin did not fancy hot-footing it to Belfast either. He’d tried all kinds of things to avoid coming back. The BNP’s legal advisor Harrington had warned, not two weeks before, that I would be “punished” should I dare mention that Nick Griffin was too scared. Oh well, poor Angus..

On the third and final day, sixty Trade Union activists picketed the tribunal. BNP treasurer Clive Jefferson claimed that the party operated in circumstances of “extreme stress and intimidation”. He denied allegations that he held Thomas against her will and that he also demanded she stamp invoices “paid” when they were not. Bizarrely, he claimed also that an “incendiary device” had been fired at the BNP as they entered Killymead House. Nick Griffin, on twitter, claimed it was a firework.

The media had come however, not to hear Clive “Rodney” Jefferson, not even Adam Walker. They wanted Mark Walker, Adam’s baby brother. The BNP’s European Researcher had sat through two days of the tribunal without a word. There had been some excitement in media land after the second day as news was reaching us that Walker had been banned from the classroom after a hearing in England that day. The Professional Conduct Committee heard that he had used school computers to send a vulnerable 16-year-old former pupil a sexually explicit message. He had used language understood to mean that he wanted to have sex with the girl.

Sadly, Mark did not turn up. He’d apparently had a “bereavement” overnight. The case fizzled out slightly. Ian Kitchen gave some light relief when asked about the alleged holding of Marion Thomas against her will. He became outraged. Kitchen had spent the previous two days chatting away at the back of the tribunal not just to the annoyance of the panel but it would seem also to his racial comrades there with him too. “I’m a family man” he protested and even the BNP members guffawed at that one. Four days later a local paper was to give some prominence to Kitchen’s links to “Granny Porn”.

For the BNP, its Northern Ireland experiment is over. I’d like to think we helped crush it. I know we did. We began by exposing the use of employment agencies by the party to recruit strangers to work on their sensitive documents, to the internal arguments between rivals, even to female escorts working out of their offices.

Marion Thomas, now a 49 year old housewife, described the “utter shame” at having the BNP on her CV. She was never a member. She worked for an advertising company that also did anti-abortion work that then took the BNP on for a client. Her claims for overtime, holiday pay and mobile phone expenses were dismissed.

In its decision the panel referred to some of the colourful testimony during the hearing.

"The tribunal heard allegations of blackmail, threats, cars being forced off the road, information being sought about political rivals, electoral malpractice, paramilitary involvement and that staple of Irish political life, the passing of money-filled envelopes in strange locations and in even stranger circumstances”.

The settlement Thomas will receive is made up of four week's pay, one week's notice pay, postage expenses incurred taking the case and £760 for the failure of Mr Griffin to provide a witness statement to the panel.

For the last two days, the BNP’s Simon Darby has been fighting off another Irish embarrassment which he is desperately trying to pass off as a joke to the journalists going to press with it. Steve Parkes, a BNP candidate at the recent elections wrote on his facebook page last week about going out to harass gypsies and as well as posting a “White Power” symbol on his profile and making disgusting references to black women.

I’m proud to say, we found and passed that on to the media here too.

Matthew Collins at Hope not Hate

'Blackmail case led to no-show by BNP leader's daughter'

The daughter of British National Party (BNP) leader, Nick Griffin, did not attend an employment tribunal taken in Belfast because she is involved in a court case about blackmail involving Northern Ireland paramilitaries.

BNP representative Patrick Harrington made the claim in his final submissions yesterday to the tribunal taken by a former employee who ran the fundraising centre in Dundonald, east Belfast.

Members of the right-wing party attending the hearing were attacked with a firecracker on their way in to the tribunal at Killymeal House in Belfast by demonstrators.

Mr Harrington told the tribunal that he had “tried everything in my power to persuade” Mr Griffin’s daughter, Jennifer Matthys to attend the tribunal.

“But she is intimidated and involved in a court case of blackmail and an attempt to drive her off the road. A court case involving paramilitary connections,” Mr Harrington said.

The tribunal heard how the BNP fundraising centre in Dundonald — described as “a cash cow” — was closed at the end of last year after a major fallout between fundraiser, Jim Dowson and Nick Griffin. The centre’s former administrator, Marion Thomas (49) from Comber, Co Down, claims unfair dismissal and denied the party’s claims that she was offered relocation to England.

During the tribunal, Mrs Thomas made a number of dramatic allegations against her former employers, including that she was “held against her will” in a van in Comber on 26 November 2010. She described how she returned computer equipment that contained the BNP database and received £7,500 in cash for Mr Dowson outside Tesco in the town.

Mrs Thomas also accused the current party treasurer, Clive Jefferson, of falsifying invoices last year to show suppliers had been paid within the specified time for the Electoral Commission. Giving evidence, Mr Jefferson said Mrs Thomas and Mr Dowson had “fabricated” the allegations.

A tribunal decision is expected in four weeks.

Story so far

The BNP was taken to an employment tribunal by former administrator, Marion Thomas, who claims unfair dismissal. The right-wing party opened a fundraising centre in Dundonald in 2009. The centre raised nearly £2m in one year. The offices were leased to the BNP by Belfast-based businessman, Jim Dowson — Mrs Thomas’ brother-in-law.

Belfast Telegraph

Day 2: A summary.

As day two at the employment tribunal draws to an end, I'll try and give a very brief summary of today's proceedings before something a little longer later..

As earlier reported, Mrs and Mrs Patrick Harrington turned up at the hearing in what can only be described as a foul mood. I can only guess that they were a little perturbed to see the front page of the Belfast Telegraph this morning.

First up to give evidence was Angus Matthys, son in law of Nick Griffin and married to Griffin's eldest daughter Jennifer.

Angus sounds like he struggled to get dressed on his own, never mind give evidence in a complicated employment tribunal. To say he struggled would perhaps be an understatement. How he keeps his job must be a mystery to even himself.

Matthys claimed his wife refused to attend the tribunal as she felt intimidated due to the fact the couple had been run off the road in Cumbria and blackmailed. The intimation is of course that this is the work of alleged Northern Irish "Loyalists".

Next up was the rather odd Ian Kitchen. The former Yorkshire organiser who had to stand down after we revealed his wife Linda was a "Granny Porn" star cut an angry witness before the tribunal panel, reacting rather badly under cross examination when he was labelled a liar.

Adam Walker was next to give evidence. Walker seemed to struggle with filling in the gaping holes in the BNP's story.

One question everyone seems to be asking is where is James Dowson?

Dowson, the one time consigliere to Nick Griffin would lend weight to his sister in law Marion Thomas's case against the BNP.

Has Dowson and Griffin agreed before the tribunal not to have a "face off" ?

The case should conclude tomorrow.

Thanks to Matthew Collins at Hope not Hate

BNP ratpack hold secret Scots summit as they plan new far-right party

Far-right fanatic Jim Dowson and other BNP ratbags slunk into Scotland yesterday to launch a new party full of hatred.

The former BNP treasurer pitched up in Perth at a secret Scots summit to launch Britain First, clutching a cardboard box crammed with far-right propaganda.

Britain First claim to offer a “new moderate approach for British nationalism”, free from the “toxic brand” of the BNP. But the small band of activists who turned up for the lunchtime talks at Perth’s Grampian Hotel all had key roles in peddling the BNP’s racist message.

Dowson, from Cumbernauld, near Glasgow, was BNP leader Nick Griffin’s right-hand man and chief fundraiser before he quit the party last year after being accused of groping a blonde activist. Previously, Dowson was the public face of the Life League, who published online details of people they believed encouraged abortions. He has convictions including breach of the peace, possession of a weapon and criminal damage.

Britain First campaign manager Paul Golding, who joined Dowson in Perth, is a former communications officer for the BNP. He won a council seat in Sevenoaks, Kent, in 2009 but quit this year after putting in just three appearances in a year. Golding had returned to the party after being expelled in 2004 – for allegedly attacking their only ethnic minority councillor.

Dowson and Golding arrived in Perth first – with Dowson unloading boxes of pamphlets and banners as well as a full Highland dress outfit from the boot of his car.

They were followed by Richard Payne, who fought the Banff and Buchan Westminster seat for the BNP at the last general election – and by black-shirted Gary Raikes, who heads Britain First’s Scottish arm. Raikes was an army cadet officer who trained teenagers. But he was drummed out in 2007 after being exposed as the leader of the BNP in Scotland. He was accused of abusing his position to peddle the BNP’s vile views.

Raikes claims Britain First is the “start of a new moderate approach for British nationalism in Scotland”. And he says party chiefs “carefully vet” all their members – “to ensure that no cranks and unsavoury types encountered in the BNP are allowed to join.”

But Gerry Gable, editor of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said: “There is nothing in Jim Dowson or Paul Golding’s history that shows them as being moderate. They can dress themselves up in new clothes, but in the end it comes down to the same ideology of hate. They will always find someone fresh to hate.”

Dowson quit working for the BNP last year, and claimed in a BBC Panorama documentary this month that BNP treasurer Clive Jefferson asked him to help get fabricated documents to be used against a political opponent. He also claimed Griffin raked in thousands of pounds through fund-raising drives based on lies. Jefferson denied the claim and said Dowson had no credibility within the BNP.

Daily Record

Thanks to Zaahid and others for the heads-up

Bankrupt Nasty People

There's no money to pay the bills but Porky Griffin has a nice new suit

The British National Party is set to face allegations this week that it is a dangerous, bankrupt and fraudulent organisation.

An unfair dismissal case brought by a disgruntled ex-employee­ could put the final nail in the coffin of the crumbling party.

The far-right organisation’s head Nick Griffin is expected to give evidence at the hearing in Belfast this week which has allegations of theft and kidnapping hanging over it. Griffin is expected to be surrounded by strong security when he makes his Belfast trip.

It comes as furious creditors claim they are owed up to £700,000 by the party. A claim denied by the BNP. Former administrator Marian Thomas says she was sacked after she raised concerns over allegedly fraudulent claims made by the BNP. She alleges that she was instructed by the party’s treasurer to alter invoices and stamp an outstanding invoice as “paid”. This is denied by the treasurer.

She says the invoices were submitted to the Electoral Commission and had been altered in order for it to appear that the BNP had complied with the law on election spending. Thomas claimed on BBC’s Panorama ­earlier this month that she was held against her will by BNP “heavies” ­demanding she hand over incriminating documents.

The hearing comes as the BNP, which has been rocked by savage infighting, holds its annual ­conference in a secret venue ­believed to be in Liverpool this weekend. The party is under investigation by the European Union and the Met Police for alleged fraud and breaches of electoral law.

Simon Cressy, from the anti- fascist group Hope Not Hate, says time is ­running out for the BNP. He said: “We’ve been saying for ages the BNP is as financially ­bankrupt as it is morally.”

Last month Griffin’s Skoda was repossessed by bailiffs acting on a court order. Weeks earlier BNP manager Adam Walker was ordered to pay £25,000 to a former employee after a judge ruled senior officials could be held responsible for the party debt.

A number of small businesses in Northern Ireland, where the BNP had offices until last Christmas, say they are owed large sums of money. Belfast-based businessman and anti-abortion campaigner Jim Dowson, the BNP’s former ­financial guru, claims he is owed more than £160,000 by the party, which he has left. It has also been alleged that families of senior BNP members were visited by “Ulster heavies” looking for cash.

Nine people in Belfast and two in England were arrested on suspicion of ­blackmail but charges were later dropped.

Cressy said: “The BNP is in a desperate mess. After a disaster at the 2010 General and council elections it has turned in on itself. Membership has shrunk to below 7,000 and not even the party’s two MEPs talk to each other, preferring to fight a bitter war of words over the internet and Twitter. It is tearing the party apart.”

Griffin has refuted the kidnap allegations. He said: “Ms Thomas was made redundant by the party and has made a claim to an employment tribunal. Curiously, she has made no mention of this in her ET1 form. Nor am I aware of any complaint ever having been made to the police. She has never complained to me. If such a complaint was made, it seems bizarre that no one was ever approached about it.”

Sunday Star

Trouble in store for BNP bosses

Dowson: Left of pic (with glasses) at funeral

BNP leader Nick Griffin is trying to wriggle out of a Belfast employment tribunal because he fears for his safety.

Griffin and other leaders from the far-right group are due to attend a hearing later this month after an employee from their now defunct Belfast call centre took a case. The BNP is being represented by extreme right union Solidarity - run by his best pal and former National Front buddy - Patrick Harrington. Harrington has written to the Tribunal asking for both reporting restrictions and even for the Tribunal to be heard outside Northern Ireland - but both requests were turned down.

Meanwhile the Sunday World has learned that Griffin visited Belfast in May to support his election candidates - just days after he failed to turn up for an earlier Tribunal hearing - citing fears for his safety as the reason.

Amongst the people the BNP leaders are concerned about bumping into are irate business owners who the race hate party have refused to pay. The flailing party, which is currently in the middle of factional struggle, has been besieged by financial woes and acrimony for the last two years which led to it closing its controversial call centre in Dundonald last year, leaving its former employees penniless in the run up to Christmas.

Four call centre staff are owed monies by the party including the wife of a serving PSNI police sergeant, but all but one have shied away from pursuing their monies owed. The rest fear intimidation from both the BNP and angry businesses here.

Last month we reported how Belfast printers ROMAC went to the wall after being owed over £40,000 by the BNP.

The pursuit of monies owed by some businesses here took a sinister turn when the families of senior BNP members were allegedly visited by “Ulster heavies” in a desperate search for cash. Nine people in Belfast and two in England were arrested on suspicion of blackmail but charges were later dropped.

Local cops are now believed to be investigating an allegation of false imprisonment against some BNP members after they allegedly sent their heavies to hold one former employee against her will in a desperate bid to retrieve evidence of their spiralling out of control accounts. English police are currently also investigating claims that the BNP submitted fraudulent accounts last year after their electoral demise.

So acute and humiliating are the BNP's financial difficulties, that an English judge recently gave leave to one individual to recoup monies owed against BNP officials directly after a ruling that individual representatives' of the party could be held liable for the BNP's unpaid debts. Bailiffs even turned up at the farmhouse of BNP leader Nick Griffin to recoup one debt, taking away his beloved Skoda motor car to the delight of antiracist and antifascist campaigners.

“As a rule we do not have much time or sympathy with businesses that trade with fascists,” said Simon Cressy from the antifascist organisation Hope Not Hate. “However, in this case we would urge all local businesses that are owed monies by the BNP to try and recoup the money they are owed from local BNP officials.

“When they stood in the elections here earlier this year, the BNP claimed to be representing the interests of local people like they really cared. Perhaps they should cough up by way of an apology.”

Tomorrow night the BBC's current affairs show Panorama will air a programme that is expected to throw more light on the BNP's dodgy dealings and financial mismanagement.

Last week the party's thirty year old former treasurer died in suspicious circumstances, which the BNP tried to portray as a suicide linked to the BNP's investigation of the BNP's financial affairs. It is believed that David Hannam who used to work in the party's Belfast office, succumbed to a heart attack brought on by excessive use of anti-depressants.

Hannam's death caused a number of BNP officers to quit the party in disgust at the BNP's reaction to his passing. Describing the BNP's reaction as an “abuse”, one former official accused the BNP leadership of preparing to use the dead man as a scapegoat for their alleged corruption.

Another former treasurer is expected to shed light on up to £300,000 of missing party funds in the programme.

The party's former financial guru, Belfast based businessman Jim Dowson is expected to claim that the party owes him in excess of £160,000 for servicing the party's call centre.

Dowson claims to have severed links with the party when he became aware that they were not paying their bills. He is believed to supporting the claim by a former employee that they were unfairly dismissed without due process.

Harrington refused to comment as to whether the BNP would be attending any hearing at first telling us that the case had gone to arbitration which it had not. He then told us that any further comment would be in contempt of court.

Sunday World via Hope not hate

BNP faces court over bills

The British National Party owes companies in Northern Ireland hundreds of thousands of pounds in unpaid bills, it is claimed.

The Belfast Telegraph can reveal that a number of firms here could take the party to court for monies outstanding.

One former supporter of the party has warned that small family-run firms could go bankrupt because of the shortfall, thought to total over £500,000, UK-wide.

A case has already been heard in the High Court in March involving the non-payment of election expenses relating to the Barking constituency in London, where party leader Nick Griffin was the candidate.

A company called Newton Press has taken legal action over an outstanding bill of more than £10,000 for printing services.

Last week the BNP pledged to pay off all the money it owed by the end of the year, adding that the debts were a result of spending during the last European and general election campaigns.

A former BNP supporter in Northern Ireland, who is also owed money, said he is not confident of being repaid soon.

Jim Dowson is a fundraiser who helped set up BNP offices all over the UK, including in Northern Ireland.

His firm Adlorries, which provides promotional and marketing services, claims he is owed around £160,000.

He said he has already had to dip into his own cash to pay off smaller companies related to his firm who were left out of pocket.

“The BNP claim to be the saviours of British industry and British workers, but I am afraid that around half a dozen small, family-run businesses, including some in Northern Ireland, could go to the wall because the BNP have not paid them,” he said.

“We are in a recession and times are hard enough as it is. People have been treated disgracefully.”

Mr Dowson also expressed anger that party boss Mr Griffin was spotted walking around east Belfast last week, just yards from a firm the BNP allegedly owes more than £40,000.

David Sloan from small family firm, Romac Press in east Belfast, says his company is owed £44,000.

He has defended his firm taking business from the right wing group, saying that the UK is deep in a recession.

“We were not in a position to turn people away but the BNP has basically wiped out a year’s profits,” he said.

”I have contacted police, the electoral commission and I'll take it to the High Court if I have to.”

A spokesperson for the BNP refused to confirm or deny the accusations and said that whether or not the party owes money to creditors is “irrelevant”.

Thanks to Clare Weir at The Belfast Telegraph

The BNP's Irish problem

When Patrick Harrington and Nick Griffin ran the 1980s National Front there were quite a few immediate and striking anomalies. The old “Butcher’s Apron”, the Union Jack, was one of the first things to go as their revolutionary zeal took an uncontrollable hold over the shrinking organisation. The national flag was left to the “reactionaries” who broke away from them – the likes of Martin Wingfield, who now works for the Griffin’s BNP, and Andrew Brons, who represents the party as an MEP. Griffin and Harrington referred to their brand of the NF as the “radicals”.

What replaced the Union Jack on the front of their monthly bore sheet, National Front News, was pictures of black folk they liked, Muslims even. They even began quoting from and selling copies of Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book, not long after the Libyans had fired shots from the window of their People’s Bureau and killed a British police woman.

And the more people complained, the more extreme the NF seemed to become. This was their new party: the mysticism of Catholic fascism, the adulation of bizarre ranting eastern European fascists, and a Pol Pot like obsession with taking the party back to year zero.

Ireland, however, was their main problem. While the NF’s Ulster organiser was jailed for his part in the firebombing of the homes of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers in protests over the Anglo Irish agreement, the inner circle of the party was toying with Catholicism at the same time as vying for the affections of the major benefactor of the IRA, Colonel Gaddafi.

Harrington was always Griffin’s younger, more “radical” offsider. Despite being part of a “collective leadership” it was Griffin and Harrington who took the reins and led the party into ideological wilderness and oblivion. It was Harrington who obligingly photographed Griffin standing adoringly under a huge portrait of Colonel Gaddafi on their visit to Tripoli. It was Harrington, who often made much of his Irish roots, who shocked the traditionally loyalist NF by refusing to condemn the IRA in a television exposé of the NF’s activities in 1988. Not only did it anger the NF’s already fractured membership, it led the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Ireland’s largest paramilitary group, to demand that the party leave Northern Ireland and later to write in its monthly publication Ulster, “The NF are wankers”.

Harrington and Griffin parted company in early 1990. Their NF “Political Soldiers” group gave up marching on an empty stomach. It had been bled dry of members and cash for some time.

After taking control of the BNP in 1999, Griffin never mentioned Ireland. The party was growing; it and its membership were firmly, if not violently, loyalist. Evidence of this was apparent when its Liverpool branch put an Irish tricolour on its banner in 2007 and a near riot ensued. By 2008 Griffin was the leader of a rapidly expanding party capable of sending shockwaves through the political establishment. He even engaged a hardline Protestant to set up and run a party call centre in Northern Ireland staffed only by Protestants.

The party has occasionally made noises at election times about inviting the Republic of Ireland to step back into union with Britain if the BNP came to power, but that is not a very likely or realistic scenario, given that Griffin’s daughter was in a loyalist “Kick the Pope” band until she fled Northern Ireland last year when her father fell out with the “super-Prod” fan of loyalist paramilitaries, Jim Dowson.

As the BNP entered a steep decline following last year’s general election, out of the shadows stepped Harrington again, not quite as fresh-faced as when he last took centre stage in the 1980s, but still not as bloated as Griffin has become since taking over the BNP. Harrington had been running his own minor organisation, Third Way, and a political party, the National Liberal Party, which is supposedly a rival party to the BNP.

One of Harrington’s first acts was to stage a bitter fallout with the officers of the BNP’s fake trade union Solidarity, where with Griffin’s approval Harrington ousted its founder and installed himself as General Secretary.

His next major falling out was with – you guessed it – Dowson. It seems that Harrington has been representing the Belfast call centre staff against Dowson while simultaneously representing the party in negotiations with the same staff, some of whom have still not been paid monies owed since before Christmas.

Harrington’s other area of interest is the BNP’s faux civil rights organisation, “Civil Liberty”. It sounds like a legitimate civil rights organisation – and preposterously describes the well known human rights organisation Liberty as its sister group – but it tends to crawl out from under its stone only when there is a white person (usually a racist) in trouble with the law. So we hardly fell off our seats when last week “Civil Liberty” offered its support to the former IRA man Gerry McGeough who was jailed for the attempted murder of a part-time Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier and full-time postman in 1981.

While on the run from British and Irish authorities (which included a daring escape from custody), McGeough went to America where he arranged for arms, missiles and ammunition to be sent to the IRA in Northern Ireland. He also attempted to claim political asylum in Sweden and served eight years in Germany awaiting trial for an attack on a British Army barracks there.

McGeough sat on the executive of the IRA’s political wing until 2003 when he attempted a takeover of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the largely moribund marching organisation (seen as the Catholic equivalent of the Orange Order), airing his extreme anti-gay and right wing views.

With the advent of peace talks and cease-fires, McGeough decided he would rather “save Ireland from sodomy” and launched a monthly magazine called The Hibernian, dedicated to “Faith, Family and Country”. Traditionally, the AOH was seen as a rival cultural organisation to Sinn Fein.

In an interview published in Searchlight in 2006, McGeough said: “Sinn Fein has been heavily infiltrated by homosexual activists and British double agents in recent years. A lot of republicans can’t fathom the liberal values of the leadership. They do not understand why they are pursuing a liberal British agenda. Immigration is a massive concern and there are a lot of people who are not happy with the level of immigration.”

Having fallen foul of Sinn Fein, McGeough was considered persona non grata by the Republican movement, even being labelled as a “fascist” on a web forum used by supporters of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), the political wing of the rival Irish National Liberation Army. But as the British far right has often found, there remain rather extreme pits of “traditional” Catholicism in the republic, where people with like-minded fears and hatreds can come together on mutual issues. Even the hardline loyalist Dowson, who as good as owned the BNP for a couple of relatively lucrative years, has found tapping into the Republic’s Catholic conservatism financially beneficial.

McGeough might have been an outcast, but he was by no means alone in his religious extremism.

In March 2007 McGeough stood for election against a Sinn Fein candidate as an Independent Republican in Fermanagh. He was arrested for the attempted murder, some 30 years after event, while leaving the polling station and had since then been living under various forms of incarceration and house arrest.

Last month McGeough was convicted for that attempted murder. For loyalists and Unionists, the community in Northern Ireland in which the BNP puts so much faith, the now-disbanded UDR was a much revered local almost totally Protestant regiment. To Irish nationalists and republicans, it was an imperialist and sectarian force that colluded with loyalist murder squads.

Although McGeough attracted some sympathy from the Republican movement for his actions at the height of the IRA’s campaign in Britain, Northern Ireland and mainland Europe, few have much time for his views on Ireland today or his extreme (“traditionalist”) Catholicism. He is likely to serve only two years under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Last week “Civil Liberty” broke its recent silence to pay homage to McGeough. Lauding McGeough and The Hibernian for covering issues and themes “long abandoned by Sinn Fein and other leftist Irish Republican organisations such as opposition to abortion and homosexuality, scepticism about multiculturalism and mass immigration into Ireland”, it went on to praise McGeough for “criticism of the international banking system” (this normally refers to Jews) and articles about “English Catholic writers, GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, who helped develop and make popular distributist ideas in the first half of the twentieth century across the British Isles”.

Yes, it seems as if McGeough had a reading list in later years not too dissimilar to the one the Griffin-Harrington NF recommended to supporters, and indeed that Harrington himself recommends to this day. According to “Civil Liberty”, McGeough’s case has been “followed by radical nationalists across the British Isles with varying degrees of sympathy”.

This sort of language has set the BNP ablaze with innuendo and accusation. Just who are these “radical nationalists” who have such varying degrees of sympathy with McGeough? Many point the finger at Harrington, who has launched a myriad of legal letters and challenges in recent months to stop publication of a “private” photograph of himself proudly posing in front of a commemoration to the fallen members of “D Company, 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA”.

BNP members and supporters are furious and the BNP section of the “British Democracy Forum” is alight with accusations, recriminations and the airing of old suspicions and hatreds directed at Harrington and the IRA in general. It seems that the memories and the hatreds of the NF’s past leader remain as current and virile as ever. Some are even threatening to picket any meeting that he addresses or attends.

Following a newspaper report in Ireland about the BNP’s sympathy for McGeough, the BNP’s Ulster organiser has gone to hysterical lengths to laugh it off. Describing the story as “desperation”, Steven Moore realises that the BNP could be treading on some very sensitive toes if Griffin and Harrington decide to take the revolutionary garden path once more. Having helped organise a BNP “cultural event” in the loyalist heartland of East Belfast for Griffin last week, the last thing Moore wants is for what is left of the disillusioned paramilitaries in the area to turn their benign interest into a burning dislike for the party.

It is understood that the rival NF’s current leaders in Northern Ireland have photocopies of the article in the Irish press and are avidly distributing it to shocked BNP members there as they prepare to step up their activities.

To date neither the BNP nor Harrington has responded publicly, though we understand certain old enemies of Harrington high up in the BNP have been taking very long and deep breaths. Last night Harrington was asking for details of the moderator of the British Democracy Forum, no doubt so he could send him a legal letter to stop the appearance of further pictures of Harrington’s escapades in Belfast.

Civil liberty ended its article on McGeough by expressing its support for the “ethnic identity of the respective nations of the British Isles submerged for far too long under the dead hand of the British state”.

And one senior BNP official even turned up to a meeting of Irish Republicans in London last month to commemorate the Hunger Strikers.

No wonder the “loyalist” BNP is wriggling in silence.

Thanks to Matthew Collins at HOPE not hate / Searchlight

Those Accounts Again: Someone Smells Something Fishy...

Among the Far-Right, some things are just painfully predictable: Paul “Green Arrow” Morris loses yet more of his coterie of writers until he's reduced to publishing the addled rantings of religious fundamentalists who seem to have taken time out from the 16th Century to knock up a quick post for him (in Latin, too-for all the sense they make). Over on the BDF we can enjoy the regular spectacle of Simon Bennett suffering a succession of vein-popping meltdowns as the mighty political juggernaut that is the British Freedom Party (33 members and counting...) disintegrates like a canoe made of Rizlas. We can also, as ever, thank the Heavens for the Gift of Laughter that is Nick Griffin's idea of a finely-honed political machine as he appoints a new Yorkshire and Humber Organiser in the crumpled shape of Ian Kitchen, a man best known for dressing (in what looked like a survival blanket and a colander) as “Saint George” (and who's less-than-pedestrian favoured pastime is said to be producing unusual “home movies” with the assistance of his elderly - but enthusiastic and supple, I'm assured - Missus).

Oh, and the Truth Truck still hasn't been spotted... (Apparently, it needs tax, MoT and a service. To suggest it also needs buying back from Adlorries.com Ltd is, frankly, potentially libellous and quite beneath me.)

And just as predictably, as soon as Mr Griffin thought the travails of the past year were over and he could begin to relax, enjoy a bacon roll, breathe freely, enjoy another bacon roll, put his feet up (and enjoy another bacon roll because the other two were so moreish...), he's in the mire again.

But this time it's serious.

The Electoral Commission, having waited longer for a look at the BNP Accounts than some us have had to wait for a new series of Nurse Jackie, have decided the document merits a “formal review”, in light of the fact that even the Nazi's own auditors weren't entirely convinced by them, and (in a separate issue to the Accounts) the revelation that one of Griffin's favoured (although not favoured enough to have escaped Jim Dowson's insulting “20p in the Pound” offer to call it quits) printers is still owed £15k for election printing.

A bill that should have been settled – by law – within a month of the 2010 General Election.

Unsurprisingly, the E.C's Investigators have also noticed (and are less than impressed by) a few “gaps” in the “Accounts”. They'd quite like to know where the money went.

So give yourselves a slap on the back: If it weren't for people like yourselves contacting the E.C with tip-offs, information and suggestions, the “Accounts” might have been quietly filed away and forgotten about.

Just as Griffin and Co were hoping...

BNP’s delayed accounts reveal financial disaster zone

The British National Party’s treasury department appears to have “lost” nearly £90,000 of funds belonging to its local groups, according to the party’s 2009 accounts, released today.

The BNP’s national and regional accounts were submitted to the Electoral Commission on 6 January, two days before the fines for their late submission would have doubled to £2,500. They reveal the full horror of the disaster area that is the BNP’s treasury department.

Even Griffin could not deny it. “The patchiness of our professionalisation programme inevitably produced internal stresses and gaps, including in due course the late submission of accounts,” he wrote in his introduction.

Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s fifth national treasurer since the start of 2009 – four are listed in the accounts, Jenny Noble being omitted – spoke more plainly. “From what I have been able to determine, the root of the problem was the inability of central treasury and accounting unit staff to implement new system adequate to cope with the massive increase in income and expenditure in 2009, compounded with the failure of professional accountants brought in to address the weaknesses they were expected to rectify. Both I and the party Chairman are frankly at a loss to understand why this was the case”.

It was not of course the moronic Jefferson’s fault. “I was appointed the Party’s Treasurer on 28th October 2010, which was subsequent to the records for 2009 being made available to the auditor. I can provide no information of any value regarding the accounts.”

The “professional accountants” were those supplied by Jim Dowson in Belfast, until late last year the much hyped fundraising and management consultant, until he fell out with Griffin and Patrick Harrington, Griffin’s old comrade from his National Front political soldier days, who now helps Griffin run the BNP.

The regional accounts, which bring together the income and expenditure of all the party’s local groups, similarly include an “I know nothing” claim by the new regional treasurer James Mole, who took over from David Hannam in mid September 2010. No doubt he is hoping not to be blamed for the dire consequences of the party’ inability to maintain bank reconciliations and account properly for its income and outgoings. A reconciliation of branches’ and groups’ balances on the very last page of the regional accounts shows that only £4,496 is available to meet the £93,579 the party supposedly owes its branches, which means that local units are only “entitled to 4.8p in the pound”.

No explanation is given for how this happened. But on 16 January, Eddy Butler, who last summer failed in his challenge to Nick Griffin for the party leadership, wrote: “I recommend that all local units open their own bank accounts … If you want to be able to hold on to your locally raised money it is vital, no it is essential, that you do this. …

“If you pay into the BNP bank account your hard earned money will be drawn out and wasted by Nick Griffin to pay for the court cases he has negligently embroiled the BNP in.”

That wastage is not yet apparent in the 2009 accounts, which show only £52,122 spent on “legal costs”. Far more can be expected in 2010, which includes the damages paid over the stupid Marmite copyright breach, and 2011. However, in his introduction to the national accounts Griffin gave full vent to his hate for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which took legal action to force the party to end racial discrimination in its constitution. “Parallel to the officially sanctioned mob violence against us [a reference to the demonstrations against Griffin’s appearance on Question Time in October 2009], a campaign of ‘legal’ persecution was also launched,” wrote Griffin, an action “motivated not by genuine concerns about alleged ‘discrimination’ but by political malice”.

Griffin also reveals his continuing anger at having to admit ethnic minority members, who were “hitherto excluded primarily in order to provide at least one forum in which members of the indigenous community could discuss the problems inflicted upon them by the ruling elite’s policies of enforced multiculturalism”.

Griffin judges that 2009 was the party’s “best year ever” because of its European election success, but that victory held within it the seeds of the party’s subsequent decline. Admitting that the party’s activity had fallen off in the second half of 2009, Griffin ascribes it largely to the “energy that had to be expended at the top of the party getting to grips with the mechanics and responsibilities of representing British interests in the European Parliament”. In other words he accepts the criticism Butler has voiced recently that being an MEP means he cannot lead the party properly.

“Several new members of staff were brought in with the intention of avoiding this new focus leaving a management gap back at home, but by November it was becoming clear that this measure had failed and that clearing the problem up was likely to involve tough decisions and key personnel problems early in 2010,” Griffin continues. The results, in terms of legal expenses and settlements with former employees, will no doubt be revealed in the 2010 and 2011 accounts.

The audit report, by Silver & Co, who have audited the party’s accounts for many years, is surprisingly less devastating than the previous year, considering the admitted failures to keep adequate records, many of which are detailed in the accounts. Unlike in 2008, they consider that the financial statements “give a true and fair view of the state of the Party’s affairs as at 31st December 2009 … in so far as a full disclosure of the facts has been made in these accounts. But they cannot be classed as ‘true and fair’ under the usual definition of that term.”

Quite what that means is anyone’s guess, especially as the audit report goes on to state: “we have to accept that we cannot form an opinion as to the completeness of the financial statements, as we have had to base them on the information submitted, and controls were not in place to ensure the information on which these financial statements are based is complete”.

One suspects that the fudge of a report was the product of long and hard negotiations between Jefferson and the auditors to avoid a second wholly negative judgement and another investigation by the Electoral Commission of the party’s failure to comply with the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

As for the accounts themselves, they confirm that the party did indeed increase its income to nearly £2 million although only £1.3 million is shown donations, the result of the controversial appointment of Dowson’s Midas Consultancy. The figures may be way out, however, as “whilst details of donations made were entered into the membership data base that information was not reconcilied [sic] to the bankings”.

Membership income rose from £166,006 in 2008 to £626,180, although membership numbers only went up from 9,801 to 12,632. Noting the inconsistency, the accounts add: “The figure shown seems high and may include an element of donation income”.

Income from commercial activities is well down – from £130,000 to under £30,000. Partly that is due to the party apparently not being able to sell a single copy of its two publications, Voice of Freedom and Identity. Income from “merchandise” – books, mugs, t-shirts, etc under the Excalibur operation – is down because it was franchised out to Arthur Kemp, the party’s South African website editor, during the year.

Costs of commercial activities grew to £450,000, resulting in a huge loss. However a note admits that this is the result of the party not having systems in place to split the huge costs of printing, postage and delivery between commercial activities and election material. If that split could not be made, it must surely follow that the party’s return of expenditure for the European election, which showed £283,000, cannot be correct. The accounts themselves declare £271,000 spent on the European election.

The list of admitted accounting failures goes on. “A considerable amount of the ‘Trafalgar Club’ costs could be considered to be more to do with printing costs. The total cost covered is £23,900,” another note states, adding: “In the nominal ledger the ‘description shown’ is either ‘inv Held by D Hannam’ or simply ‘D Hannam’, indicating that the invoice is not available within the Party’s records.

Hannam was widely derided as incompetent at the time of the internal rebellion in winter 2007/08 when he was regional treasurer, but was promoted to national treasurer in February 2010 and in July boasted that everything was in place to ensure all financial statements were submitted on time. By October he was out of the job.

Simon Darby, the BNP’s former deputy chairman, also failed to account for expenditure, with “no documentation” available to cover a payment of £3,000 for “security costs” during the period while he was treasurer.

And in the first four months of 2009 a total of £37,450 was “entered in the Purchase Ledger as J A Walker payments” for which “No documentary evidence was put through the records to show what these payments covered”. John Walker has held various jobs in the party, including national treasurer, and is currently on the staff of the BNP’s MEPs, paid out of European Parliament funds. The unexplained payments to him occurred while Noble was treasurer, but the accounts for some reason avoid mentioning her name.

The accounts also show the party spent £168,000 on additions to its vehicles, equipment, fixtures and fittings, much of it the result of appeals during the year. Such an investment might be expected to stand the party in good stead for the future, except that “The Treasurer is in the process of reviewing the schedules which back-up the schedule above, which the auditor has provided, both in terms of what assets were in existence at 31 December 2009, and after the current re-organisation of the Party and the closing of certain offices”. In other words the BNP has no idea whether its assets still exist or ever existed, and many have been scrapped because the party has closed most of its offices, including the Belfast call centre, which was under the control of Dowson.

Writing off the doubtful assets in the 2009 accounts would of course have increased its loss of £57,202 for the year, a far cry from the profit the party has at various times claimed it achieved in the year. The loss increased the party’s net insolvency to £361,000, as a result of which it owed over £355,000 to suppliers and £37,000 to HM Revenue and Customs in PAYE tax and national insurance on staff wages and VAT.

Among those owed money was “Ad Lorries Ltd”, actually Adlorries.com Ltd. The accounts confirm what Searchlight revealed many months ago, namely that “a considerable amount of transactions were paid through and processed through” this company, which is owned by Dowson. The full amount the party was invoiced by Dowson’s company in 2009 was £741,290, which included £58,680 of management fees for running the Belfast call centre, part of the £162,000 a year Dowson was paid by the party. However even Dowson had to wait for his money. At 31 December 2009 the BNP owed his company £71,967, the accounts reveal.

The amount going through Adlorries represents a huge proportion of the party’s total expenditure of just over £2 million, justifying Searchlight’s accusation that Dowson virtually owned the BNP. Another accusation that the accounts prove correct is that the party massively inflated its payroll, providing jobs for those in Griffin’s favour. Expenditure on staff costs more than doubled to £660,000 in 2009, though this includes around £100,000 of consultancy fees paid to Dowson.

One person who always gets whatever he wants from the party is its chairman. During 2009 the party spent the huge sum of £33,519 on installing a security system for him. Andrew Brons, the party’s Yorkshire MEP, only merited £9,136, as did a person by the name of “Ms E Uttley”.

Jefferson states that a programme has been agreed with the auditor to ensure that the 2010 accounts are submitted on time and that “we are able to repair to a large extent any possible deficiencies in the operation of the Treasury department in 2010”. Deficiencies in the party’s finances will be harder to repair. The party ended 2010 unable to pay its printers, with staff waiting for their wages and mounting legal expenses from failed court actions and employment tribunal cases.

On 18 January 2011 Griffin was required to pay £45,000 into court as a result of having to withdraw a court case against four former employees. The total cost is expected to be £115,000. He failed to make the payment. And with donations drying up and demoralised members deserting the failing party, the BNP is unlikely to dig itself out of its deep financial hole.

Thanks to Searchlight / HOPE not hate by Sonia Gable

Edit The BNP's Statement of Accounts can be found here

Ex-BNP boss behind anti-abortion group

Ex-BNP mouthpiece Jim Dowson is putting his weight back behind his anti-abortion fundraising.

He’s turned the old BNP Belfast bunker into a fundraising office for a controversial anti-abortion pressure group who like to hand-out shocking pictures of aborted foetuses to make their point.

Dowson denies being at the helm of the UK Life League which raises thousands of pounds a year. But when we called the secretive ‘not-for-profit’ organisation on Wednesday it was Dowson who answered the phone.

Meanwhile his daughter, who until last month was working for the BNP, is the only named employee on their website. Alice Kernaghan – who got married earlier this year – is named at the end of an anti-abortion campaign letter as the UK Life League’s ‘National Coordinator’. Dowson is also pictured on the website protesting on the steps of Stormont holding a picture of an aborted foetus.

Convicted criminal Dowson walked away from the BNP after a fall-out about funding. He had enjoyed a rocky road with the English-based race hate party which is led by his pal Nick Griffin. This week he told us he was “glad to be shot” of the BNP. And he continued to claim he was never a member of the party – adding that he dislikes what they stand for.

“No I’m not running it – I’m just doing a bit of design work for them [the UK Life League],” said Dowson on Wednesday. I’m glad to be shot of the BNP. It was a very difficult three years. I’m turning my attention to a private marketing project in Spain. But I’m very much a big supporter of the UK Life League.”

The rabid self-proclaimed reverend, originally from Cumbernauld in Scotland, first hit the headlines eleven years ago when he quit his post at the head of anti-abortion group Precious Life over his involvement with loyalists. The Catholic Church, which had previously supported Dowson’s antiabortion stance, distanced themselves from him after he was revealed as the organiser of a flute band which recorded a tape in honour of UFF Milltown Cemetery killer Michael Stone.

For the last three years Dowson has been effectively running the fundraising and membership wings of the BNP. He set up the Belfast office on the outskirts of Belfast where he hoped he could operate without attracting any attention. But in the summer of 2009 the Sunday World infiltrated the office and we later revealed how BNP leader Nick Griffin had sent over his own daughter Jenny to help run things.

The Sunday World understands that the UK Life League has attracted tens of thousands of pounds in funds throughout the last three years – despite being virtually inactive.

Sunday World

Fascist fund raiser quits broke party

Nasty right-wing thug Jim Dowson has quit the BNP forcing the party to pull its fundraising wing out of Ulster.

And last night he had the bare-faced cheek to tell the Sunday World he would have ended it sooner if we hadn’t written so much about him!

In a bizarre conference call involving party chief Nick Griffin, he confirmed he was finished with the BNP.

He then added: “I would have ended it sooner if you hadn’t kept writing stories about me.

“What are you gonna write about now that I’ve gone?”

But we can confirm part of the reason Dowson has quit is that his nose was put out of joint by a former National Front leader called Pat Harrington – who was once forced out of Ulster by the UDA for backing the IRA.

Harrington has been interfering in the call centre and is a close pal of Griffin from the old days in the National Front.

Dowson did confirm that the Belfast BNP fundraising operation would be closing and all party fundraising would be carried out on the mainland.

MASSIVE

It’s a massive blow for the BNP and Dowson personally who fought to bring the fundraising wing to the quiet suburbs of Belfast but found it impossible to get local staff to work in the office.

“Most BNP members are glad to see the back of him,” said anti-fascist campaigner Matthew Collins last night.

“The party looks like it’s facing bankruptcy and members are just walking away in disgust.”

Last night Dowson complained that we had been unfair to him as all he ever was, was a contractor for a political party of which he remains adamant he was never a member.

However when we put it to him that his rousing speech at a BNP fundraiser in Blackburn, where he summons up an image of Britain facing destruction due to immigration, showed he was more than a mere contractor – he said he couldn’t remember what he had said!

Instead he did concede: “I am a very strong British patriot who’s sympathetic to the party.

“But I have left the party in a better state than when I joined – certainly administratively – where they now have all the tools at their disposal.”

When we asked Jim about the dire financial situation which had put the future of the BNP in jeopardy he added: “Financially the party is not in a fantastic state.” But controversial leader Nick Griffin chipped in: “At least we’re not in £20m debt like the Labour Party!”

The beleaguered British National Party has been rocked by Dowson’s walk-out amid a bitter split which has ripped the party in two.

Dowson walked away from the party on Friday and has blamed outside interference for his resignation.

SORROW

In a brief statement to a right wing internet blog Dowson announced: “It is with deep sorrow and regret I have to inform you that I’m off when my contract ends.

“This will cost me tens of thousands but my love for my people, this country and the party is worth far more to me.

“I did my level best and remain 100% loyal but I don’t tolerate outside fools. PERIOD!”

The “outside fool” he mentions here is Pat Harrington.

When we asked if this statement was accurate he said to take it “with a pinch of salt”.

But Dowson has form for making drunken phonecalls late at night and the Sunday World understands the statement, made to former BNP man Eddie Butler, is true.

The 45-year-old self-proclaimed ‘Reverend’ – who used to campaign against abortion and gay marriage – had the fundraising contract for the far right party until the end of this year.

He was regarded as a close personal ally of BNP leader Nick Griffin who thanked him personally and publicly for his efforts in getting two BNP members into the European Parliament.

On Monday staff at the BNP’s Belfast bunker – where fundraising and membership are coordinated for the whole of the UK – were left stunned when they couldn’t get into the office.

Locks had been changed at the inconspicuous Dundonald industrial unit which was rented, staffed and organised by Dowson.

The Sunday World understands that the BNP took over the rent of the unit after Dowson had made them aware he was quitting but they then failed to pay the bill to the landlord.

The situation was resolved and it was business as usual by the next day.

The news it will be closing will be music to the ears of BNP members in England who hated Dowson and were disillusioned with the Belfast office.

The Belfast office came under heavy criticism for a string of cock-ups in the run up to the General Election which saw the BNP fail miserably.

Dowson himself came under increasing pressure because of a number of blunders – not least the gaffe with Marmite.

Dowson came up with the idea to use the spread with the famous slogan ‘you either love us or you hate us’ to promote the party in election adverts.

But Unilever, who make Marmite, protested and when Dowson refused to remove the slogan they sued – leaving the BNP no choice but to settle out of court at great cost – although Dowson said last night that all they had paid to Unilever was a “token amount”.



RIGHT WING NUTTER

THIS is the right-wing nutter who forced right wing nutter Jim Dowson out of right wing nutter party, the BNP.

He’s former National Front leader, and IRA fan, Pat Harrington.

Posing in front of an IRA memorial on the Falls Road is not what is usually expected from a right-wing fascist.

The 46-year-old Londoner has been offering support to the staff at Dowson’s Belfast call centre amid rumours, now confirmed, that Dowson was quitting and the office here will soon shut.

There have also been claims that Dowson and Harrington have come to blows about the running of the office.

This week Dowson confirmed he was leaving and blamed “outside fools” for interfering in the call centre he set up last year in Dundonald.

On his Facebook page recently Harrington openly criticised plans to close Belfast saying: “Patrick Antony Harrington is concerned by reckless threats made by Eddy Butler to the jobs of members working for the BNP in Belfast. The rights of our members will be defended.”

But Harrington’s close, and long term, friendship with BNP leader Nick Griffin appears to have won out and on Wednesday night Dowson and Griffin met over a bottle of port to sort out the details of his leaving.

Harrington and Shankill fascist David Kerr are rumoured to want to run the BNP in Ulster.

Harrington’s story is a bizarre one.

Despite being a prominent NF leader 30 years ago he was one of three fascists who made a controversial trip to Libya to meet Colonel Gadaffi.

In a Channel Four documentary, Disciples of Chaos, Harrington refused to condemn the IRA as terrorists.

His support for Irish Republicanism didn’t sit too well with the loyalists of Ulster – especially at a time when the Provos were at their most active – and he was ordered out by the UDA.

In 1984 Harrington, who cuts an extremely camp figure, caused mayhem at the Polytechnic of North London where he was studying philosophy.

Students picketed his lectures to protest that he was allowed to study while being a prominent member of the National Front.

Harrington left the National Front during a bitter split at the end of the 1980s but continued his strange mix of right wing and prorepublican politics.

Several years ago Harrington had hot coffee thrown in his face when he was serving drinks on the London-Edinburgh train after he was identified by an anti-fascist.

Harrington and Shankill fascist David Kerr have been pals for years as they become prominent in the Third Way – although in 2004 the party only had 20 members according to the Electoral Commission.

Thanks to Hope not Hate and Steven Moore at Sunday World

I have edited the article slightly from the original
John P

BNP money man quits after model accuses him of groping her in hotel room

THE BNP's chief fundraiser has sensationally quit the party after being accused of groping a blonde activist.

Jim Dowson denies claims by one of the far-right party's Westminster hopefuls that he pawed her after luring her to a hotel room during a party roadshow.

Shelley Rose, who once modelled for lads' mags, posted a dramatic video online claiming she woke to find Dowson, the party's treasurer, on top of her.

The former BNP candidate for Bedfordshire put a video on YouTube in which she claims Dowson lured her to a hotel under false pretences before making unwanted advances.

She said: "I decided it was safer to stay with him, as it was too late to get home, because he was a religious and family man and didn't think there would be a problem.

"We both had on our nightclothes. I felt these clammy, sweaty hands crawling up my leg.

"He was kissing me. Then he got on top of me and I told him to stop.

"I said: 'Jim, please stop.' Eventually he got off but rather than apologise he started to verbally abuse me and told me I was frigid, had emotional issues and was a wreck."

Dowson, 45, who runs a call centre in Dundonald, East Belfast, which processes BNP memberships, yesterday confirmed he no longer worked with the party.

He claimed Shelley was "a daft wee lassie" who invented the story as part of a dirty tricks campaign.

The father of four said: "This woman is talking nonsense. Her pictures show she is far from being the Miss Jean Brodie type at all.

"There was a dirty tricks campaign in the party and this was all part of it. I ended up in the firing line.

"There is a real power struggle between hardliners and people like Nick Griffin who want to open the party to Asians and other groups.

"It has caused a lot of grief. I knew from the start Shelley could not be trusted and suspected her motives. I still have grave doubts about what she was trying to do.

"She was taking part in a stage show but had to be thrown out of that as there were doubts about her. She was very bitter about that."

Dowson, of Cumbernauld, who was Griffin's trusted right-hand man, has a string of convictions, including breach of the peace, possession of a weapon and criminal damage.

He has close links with loyalist groups in Belfast and has produced f lute band tapes which celebrate loyalist Michael Stone, who killed three Catholics at a Belfast funeral.

The BNP is in financial meltdown following a number of legal cases, including a £170,000 pay-out to the makers of Marmite.

Dowson said: "I have not renewed my contract with the party but there has been no acrimonious split. I just want to get away from politics.

"I was in Brussels this week with Nick to discuss arrangements about ending our relationship.

"I was never a member of the party but they have a mandate. One million people voted for them, probably more than voted for Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland or the SNP in Last year, Dowson by police for an employee a photo himsel f apparent armed with a shotgun. He said it was a toy.

A BNP spokesman said: "Mr Dowson's contract with the party expires at the end November. He decided not to seek renewal. Shelley Rose no longer a BNP member."

Daily Record

A right Nazi mess at the BNP

The BNP is on the brink of insolvency. But instead of its usual tactic of threatening blacks, Jews and Asians, it is threatening its creditors instead in a letter from its money man, Jim Dowson, to its “highly valued suppliers and creditors” with a record of “commitment to the British National Party.”

His letter tells them that it does not value them enough to pay them what it owes. A grave financial crisis was forcing the party to close offices and lay off staff, he says. It was unlikely to “pay its outstanding bills in anything like a normal timescale - if indeed at all.”

‘Good money after bad’

Dowson then tells creditors that “lawyers who have reviewed the underlying contracts to most of the outstanding invoices have advised that most are not enforceable. Many creditors who have supplied good [sic] and services and which were used in connection with the activities of the British National Party may never be paid.”

And it is no use suppliers hiring lawyers, Dowson warns. Legal action against the party would be throwing “good money after bad in the shape of futile lawyers’ costs”. Creditors must accept 20p in the pound or risk getting nothing.

Sex and Marmite: the secrets of their downfall

Dowson blames the deficit – estimated at £500,000 – on the recession and “hugely expensive politically motivated High Court actions by the Commission for Equalities [sic] and Human Rights” to force the party to change its racist constitution. He is too modest.

The party is paralysed by internal disputes. Naïve critics have been shocked to discover that its fuehrer Nick Griffin behaves like, well, a dictator. Meanwhile busty “glamour model” Shelley Rose, who stood as a candidate in Luton, has posted a video on YouTube claiming Dowson made unwanted Ugandan advances to her at a hotel near Euston. “I thought it was safe to stay with him because he was a religious and family man,” the innocent 22-year old says. Alas, this turned out not to be the case, and she says Dowson accused her of being “frigid” when she rejected him.

Dowson does not mention one preposterous reason for the BNP’s indebtedness. In the general election campaign, Griffin ripped off Marmite’s “Love it or Hate it” campaign by putting out a picture of a Marmite jar with the slogan “Love Britain, Vote BNP”. He scoffed when Unilever, Marmite’s owner, protested; but the firm’s lawyers then hit him with a breach of copyright action, which cost the party between £100,000 and £170,000.

Yeast and desist

The BNP operates behind various front companies to place orders without arousing suspicion – the most prominent being Dowson’s adlorries.com. As a limited company adlorries could be sued, which may be why Dowson is offering 20p in the pound on contracts he claims are unenforceable. As a political party, the BNP is an unincorporated association, which cannot technically be declared bankrupt. However, creditors could hold Griffin as its leader and party members who entered into the contracts personally liable for debts.

If senior BNP figures are taken to the cleaners, they will earn a unique place in the history of European fascism: the first neo-Nazi party to have been destroyed by the makers of a yeast-extract sandwich spread.

‘Ratbiter’ at Private Eye

BNP quits Belfast bunker – official

The British National Party is shutting down its Belfast office, Steven Moore, the Sunday World’s leading investigative journalist, will reveal on Sunday. Doubts over the future of the call centre had arisen after it emerged that Jim Dowson, the BNP’s fundraising and management consultant, had fallen out with the party.

The relationship between the BNP leader Nick Griffin and Dowson, a convicted criminal who had control of the bulk of the party’s assets and operations, suffered irretrievable breakdown because of Griffin’s employment of Patrick Harrington to help run the party’s administration.

Harrington, one of the leaders of the rival Third Way party and general secretary of the BNP’s fake trade union, Solidarity, has wormed himself into a position of growing influence in the party, upsetting several employees and members in the process. Many are suspicious, seeing Harrington as a cuckoo in the nest.

Serial liar Dowson, who once told the Sunday World that he never joined the BNP but says he remains “100% loyal”, claimed recently that before his departure he assaulted Harrington.

This is the second time that Griffin has had to pack up an office in Northern Ireland and skedaddle back to the mainland. Twenty years ago he and his comrades fled after loyalist paramilitaries indicated it would be unhealthy for them to stay after Harrington, then one of Griffin’s comrades in the National Front Political Soldiers, refused to condemn the Provisional IRA’s mainland bombing campaign.

In summer Griffin and Dowson jetted off to the south of France with their families for the wedding of one of Dowson’s daughters. Now Dowson is unlikely to be on the guest list for Harrington’s wedding this Friday.

Staff in the Belfast bunker, who had mostly been brought in from outside the province, had been promised job security as Griffin recognised that they would be left in a vulnerable situation if they moved back to the mainland. Like nearly everything else Griffin says, his word has proved worthless.

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate

Don't Panic! Everything's Fine On Planet Griffin!

The Welshpool Bunker. Earlier today (Artist's Impression)

The BNP is on her deathbed. A few Mourners sit around in the darkened bedroom weeping silently while others, downstairs in the kitchen, discuss the state of the Old Girl's finances and who's going to get what when the estate gets divvied up.

The Priest has delivered the last rites and she's asleep now: A Doctor checks the pulse from time to time to see if She's still with us.

But wait! Something's wrong!

She's still Tweeting! And all is well! She's FINE!!

Have a look:

October 18th.

News reaches us at L.U that the Party is, in effect, insolvent. Jim Dowson's astonishing letter offering Creditors 20p in the Pound to settle up is published.

This, in itself, would be enough to finally proclaim to the World that the Jig Is Up, and the BNP have now ceased to function in any meaningful capacity.

Over on Nick Griffin's Twitter Account, however...

“When I think back to the bewilderment when we started I see how far we've come in a year.”

He helpfully adds;

“All votes for tomorrow worked out in good time. The team is really effective now.”

Phew! That's alright, then: The mere fact that the Party has no money and is reduced to desperately touting an insulting last-ditch offer around its own Suppliers might, dare one say, worry a lesser man. Nick, however, is made of sterner stuff, and can obviously see The Big Picture denied to we lesser mortals.

Two days later the Party make the National News, with the not-entirely-mystifying revelation that the Derbyshire Police Service would quite like to know just where they're planning on holding their 2010 Conference in December (which, displaying a keen grasp of satire I'd long thought beyond the BNP is subtitled “Moving Forward Together”. Presumably in the same way as lemmings are said to “Move Forward Together” in times of famine).

Quite understandably, Superintendent Gary Parkin would like to have a bit of notice of the Event in order to tell several hundred of his Bobbies where to go and stand; his years of Exemplary Service having given him the insight that several hundred of us will be planning on turning out to yell at the Delegates.

Nick Griffin MEP takes the matter in hand and cuts right to the heart of the Vexed Issue:

“Walking round German vineyard on phone gone 1 a.m. Working out admin systems with Nat Organiser.” A couple of minutes later he adds “Actually rather surreal. A very strange life. Good night to all BNP late birds.”

There's Cool for you: This man's Upper Lip must be so rigid you could hammer nails into seasoned Oak with it.

Onto the 22nd. From out of nowhere (well, actually from out of The Guardian's Jobs website – with a few words changed) appears a job vacancy on the BNP's Site.

Specifically, it's Jim Dowson's job. Suddenly vacant.

The specification states that the successful Candidate will be charged with raising £4 Million over the next three years. Not an issue, apparently, as the current Incumbent has been (it says here) raising £1.5 Million a year anyway...

But what of Dowson? Pray tell, Nick, what of the Good Reverend?

Here, the mask slips. Unable to ignore so momentous a piece of news as his Great Industry Expert – the Clyde to his Bonnie, one might say – leaving the Party, Nick can barely keep his moby dry from the tears as he Tweets of Dowson's “sad” decision not to renew his contract;

“All in all a remarkable man to whom we owe a great deal and who remains a good friend and true patriot.”

Of course, this isn't all that's occurred over the past week: The BNP have also “lost” (or mislaid?) Communications Director Paul Golding, three more Councillors, and have handed several vital Party functions over to Patrick Harrington (a Leader of rival organisation the National Liberal Party) and dim-bulb Party Enforcer Clive Jefferson.

The BNP Leadership have also been lambasted by ex-stalwart Nick Cass, embarrassed (if such a thing is possible – such a thing could easily be an alien concept within the Party) by Jim “The Bruce” Dowson's bizarre rants and infantile, scatological taunts on various Far-Right Talkboards and, only this evening, we hear that the BNP have been locked out of their own Nerve Centre – the Belfast office owned by (surprise, surprise...) one J Dowson, esq. Who's changed the locks.

“All in all a remarkable man to whom we owe a great deal and who remains a good friend and true patriot.”

Griffin, on all these matters, has been silent since Friday.

Interestingly, Paul “Green Arrow” Morris has also remained quiet on his beloved BNP's Demise until now. Only tonight has he finally broken his silence - if only to attack one of the Councillors who has resigned. In the grubby, confused little mind of Morris it being, of course, a far greater crime to resign over the Party's woeful treatment of its Creditors than to continue to fleece Suppliers, Members and Anyone Else Who Happens To Be Passing At The Time And Looks Gullible Enough. Go on, Kinsman: Show 'em the Black Flag.

(One of Morris' Followers adds in the Comments - displaying a level of optimism sure to melt even the stoniest of hearts - "The BNP will continue to grow =)".)

I look forward to reading Griffin's next Tweet.

It'll probably tell me how great everything is for the BNP.

Or maybe how nice Croatia is at this time of year.