Say hello to the BNP Crusaders!

Ever since I signed up on the British National Party website to harangue someone linking to the blog, I've had the pleasure of irregularly having all the latest missives from the Fuhrer himself, Nick Griffin, arrive in my inbox. The vast majority of these are increasingly desperate pleas for funds as they presumably start to dwindle in the bank account, while the rest generally fulminate against the current political situation in typically hyperbolic, incendiary, borderline racist rhetoric, where only the BNP can save Britain from its current path. Here's the opening paragraphs of the most recent example:

As predicted, the only outcome of the election is that one set of self-serving crooks has replaced another, and our country continues its decline and disintegration. It is time we reflected on the terrible future that awaits our country, our children and grand-children.

If the politicians and the media have their way, our country will be totally overrun by the masses of the Third-World, we will be ruled from Brussels, we will be a despised, second-class minority in our own homeland.

Is that the future you want for your children? Will you regret it when it is too late and you wished you would have joined the British Resistance when you had the chance?

Granted, Griffin would never refer to "the masses of the Third-World" in interviews or to anyone other than party members, as that might just suggest that despite all his protests to the contrary, he and his party really are still racist. Still, given the BNP's showing at both the general and local elections in May, losing every single one of the seats they were defending on the council in Barking, a performance so awful Griffin had to promise to step down as leader by 2013, even though the number of votes the BNP received vastly increased on the 2005 election, you would expect them to be in desperate mode.

No wonder then they've decided at this inauspicious moment to relaunch the Young BNP, not to be confused obviously with a group with a somewhat similar name which was fairly massive in the 30s and 40s in a certain foreign nation. Perhaps because of the connotations with that other youth organisation, as well as journalists infiltrating the grouping and finding them being taught how to make Dutch arrows as well as partaking in lessons in shooting, the group has been renamed and is now aimed at the slightly older 18 to 30 market. For those imagining this might be an exercise in encouraging the master race to procreate in a Club 18-30 style, you'll probably be disappointed. No, it seems the most exciting antics the BNP Crusaders, as they will be known from now on, involve themselves in is that old hardy perennial, fancy dress, of naturally, the war-time variety.

Aren't they gorgeous?

The entire ethos of the group seems to be based around having good, wholesome, clean fun. Griffin introduces them as such:

The BNP Crusaders is a group of 18-30 year old BNP activists. We prove that there is more to the British National Party than just politics, with social gatherings arranged all year round. From trips to theme parks to just simple get togethers and nights out, the Crusaders do it all.

From trips to theme parks to simple get togethers and nights out! The whole spectrum of youth interaction covered! There is of course more to the BNP than just politics; it isn't just a party, it's a way of life.

It doesn't help that Griffin comes across as the slightly creepy uncle in his introduction to the Crusaders, nor that his description of the Crusaders' leader, Joey Smith, is cringe-inducing:

The leader of the BNP Crusaders is BNP activist and super-star Joey Smith (pictured right). "The BNP Crusaders is a great idea and I look forward to working with my new team, and meeting lots of new members and activists. We have already had a few outings and I look forward to seeing you all on future ones."

Thankfully, super-star Joey is quite the dish, not too dissimilar to heart-throb Robert Pattinson. In fact, they both share another similarity, Pattinson portraying the oppressed minority of vampires in the wider community in the Twilight films, while Smith is from the heavily discriminated against and ignored young white male demographic.

As if you couldn't have guessed, the choice of Crusaders is meant as a "homage to our ancestors from the middle ages who saved Christian Europe from the onslaught of Islam", which shows the BNP's usual level of historical literacy. Quite what they're crusading against in our modern times however is unclear, and the group's Facebook page doesn't give many further details, except for some more lovely pictures of the group on past jaunts, including this especially delightful one of Griffin with two young supporters, clearly ecstatic to meet their idol (and isn't that a glass of bubbly in his paunchy hand, Griffin the champagne national socialist?). One of the messages left on their wall does however give something of an insight:

Barrie Neale what a grand idea to allow the youth of todday be aware of the truth about what used to be england!!-proud of producing quality goods(not cheap asian rubbish)-and not infected by the cancer of the MOSLEM -evil!!-and i am not even a christian-but a tolerant man -i had to leave this country becauase of this-to FRANCE THE...Y WOULD JUST DEPORT THEM HERE !!-it has just gone to far!!-

Presumably Barrie is happy in France, untouched as it is by the cancer of MOSLEM evil.

With almost unabashed racism back in fashion on the front pages of the Daily Star and Daily Express, it could be a good time for those on the far-right to try and create youth groups with some real influence, highly organised and dedicated to the cause. Thankfully, the BNP Crusaders isn't it, and frankly the likes of the Bullingdon are almost certainly more dangerous. They'd also be more likely to be the ones goose-stepping down the high street, sieg heiling their hearts out. To suggest that the Crusaders are just ever so slightly lame would be probably paying them a compliment; any wetter and they'd be drowning. Compared to the English Defence League, a genuinely dangerous organisation with the potential to incite riots, with links to hooligan firms and which is far more attractive to those with actual radical views, giving the opportunity to potentially fight with those they so actively loathe, the choice between the two couldn't be any plainer. Got to laugh though, haven't you?

Obsolete (but well worth a visit)

Complete nobody reforms unknown band

Joey Smith (right) and another nonentity reform unknown band

Okay, hands-up all those who have heard of Joey Smith outside the stuff we've written about him here at Lancaster Unity? No-one? What about the newly-reformed band 2be? Nobody at all? I thought not.

To be honest, we've never had much reason to write about this nobody, though we thought he might rise to become a somebody when he referred to Dewsbury (where he was standing for the BNP in a by-election) as a slum and then appeared on Radio 1 to be racist and talk bollocks with his great pal, naziboy Mark Collett.

If you want to discover anything about anybody, the place to go is, naturally, Google, so I searched for Joey Smith there. Oddly, apart from a couple of items from us, a few from the BNP and a bunch via the BNP's rubbishy Great White Records site, nobody appears to have the foggiest idea who Joey Smith is. Poor old Joey doesn't even seem to have a page on Facebook or MySpace - not an essential in life but I'd have thought it would be useful to a megastar of his talent. But then he isn't a megastar and he doesn't have any talent. Which makes one wonder why the BNP is lauding the reformation of 2be (Joey and one of his mates) as the best thing since, er, Wham.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Smith has just taken over the running of the dire Great White Records, the failed attempt at making Nick Griffin rich through flogging so-called 'nationalist' music to the gullible. Most of the tracks available via GWR seem to have been penned by Griffin himself, which is far from being a recommendation.

GWR and its sister organisation, the BNP's tat-flogging arm Excalibur, are peculiar business models. Both were set up by the BNP at great - indeed, extortionate - expense. GWR, for example, was said to have cost the membership around £50,000 and costs around £2,000 per month to run - an extraordinary amount for a business that sells less, we're told, than ten items each week. Formerly run by the miniature moron who is now the party's treasurer, Dave Hannam, it's obvious to anyone who has ever seen a set of accounts that GWR is a disaster and one wonders why a party that can't even run a small business can think itself capable of running the hugely complex UK economy.

Anyway, back to the staggeringly awful Joey Smith. Smith was briefly famous last year for producing a musical rebuttal to Lily Allen's anti-BNP song 'Fuck you'. I haven't got a lot of time for Lily Allen but anyone who is prepared to state publicly that they loathe the BNP and all it stands for gets my vote and the song itself is pretty jolly. Enjoy...


Smith's response was one of the worst pieces of music I've ever heard accompanied by one of the shittiest bits of film (starring the revolting Mark Collett) I've ever had the misfortune to come across. Why the hell anyone regards Smith as a singer is beyond me - he sounds like a dog in a blender. You can cringe your way through it below...


Smith's biography on the GWR site isn't all that enlightening, nor is it entirely coherent. Take this sample:

'After leaving school he joined various bands before establishing "2BE" with his best friend, a mildly sucessful cabaret duo in his home county of West Yorkshire.'

In fact it seems that Smith dossed around on the dole (except for a brief stint in this unknown band comprising of himself and one other person - or possibly two) until he heard about former BNP-supporter Colin Auty, whose only claim to fame is that he stood against Nick Griffin in a half-hearted leadership challenge. Auty produced another 'nationalist' song in which he bemoaned the fact that England wasn't actually the country thick with village cricket matches, tea on the lawn and country houses that Nick Griffin would have us believe it should be, but a diverse and rich country that embraces multiculturalism. Smith contacted Auty and was immediately grabbed for GWR as an emerging 'talent' of the nationalist music scene (if such a scene could be said to exist).

Since then, Smith's career - never anything to write home about - has taken a nosedive. Weekly sales of his album have dropped to zero and nothing else on the GWR label appears to be selling either. Thus the huge fuss that is being made by the BNP about 2be. And what about 2be? Are we about to discover that 2be are the best band to enter the musical fray since Florence and the Machine? I doubt it. Given that they were still around in their original incarnation in 2006, this 'headline' band doesn't seem to have even a single mention on the internet, beyond the BNP and GWR's own pages and those that pick up those pages as news items.

The BNP has put its leaflet design and printing almost entirely into the hands of Mark Collett, an idiot noted for his constant stream of disasters, from printing leaflets without imprints that the law demands, to chatting up schoolgirls at the BNP conference a couple of years ago. Then it hands over its tat-flogging Excalibur arm to Arthur Kemp, an incompetent though prolific author of white supremacist crap and disastrous husband/father, who has no idea how to run a business that has already collapsed. And finally, it hands over another failed business to a failed singer and attempts to regenerate that business by reforming a failed band. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.

We'll let Joey Smith have the last word (more or less):

'I promise you this is just the begining [sic], there's loads more to come.'

Well, there'd better be. There's been very little so far.

BBC storm as two of BNP's most notorious activists are invited on Radio 1 to insult Ashley Cole

The BBC is facing demands for an investigation after allowing two leading BNP activists to make unchallenged 'racist' statements on a flagship news broadcast.

Radio 1's Newsbeat programme introduced the interviewees as 'two young guys who are members of the BNP' - but a Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered that they were, in fact, key members of the far-Right party's leadership.

The activists claimed black England footballer Ashley Cole [pictured, left] was not 'ethnically British' and spoke of him 'coming to this country' - even though he was born in East London. More than 100 people have complained that the extremists were given an easy ride on the BBC's most listened-to news broadcast, and now leading politicians are calling for an investigation into whether it breached broadcasting rules.

But the programme's editor defended the item, claiming he had been inundated by messages from supportive listeners, some of whom said the BNP 'says what most of us are thinking'.

The row comes after the BBC's controversial decision to allow BNP leader Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time for the first time. One listener described the Newsbeat interview as so 'staggeringly soft, woefully weak and uncritically unchallenging that I feel sick to my stomach', while another said they were 'shocked and disappointed' to see the BBC giving 'substantial and uncritical publicity' to the BNP.

The Mail on Sunday has discovered the full background of the two 'young BNP supporters' identified by the BBC only as Joey, 24, and 28-year-old Mark. Both men are senior officials in the BNP party hierarchy, and one has a notorious history of racist, homophobic and anti-semitic views and is a self-confessed admirer of Adolf Hitler.

Joey is Joseph Barber, also known as Joey Smith, who runs the BNP's record label Great White Records and is one of its leading artists, recording tracks including Pondlife and Christmas Is A British Thing.

The other guest was Mark Collett, the former leader of the Youth BNP and now the party's head of publicity. He was exposed in a Channel 4 documentary Young, Nazi And Proud in 2002, when he was filmed saying 'Hitler will live forever' and said of British black people: 'Just because a dog is brought up in a stable, doesn't make it a horse.' He also said: 'AIDS is a friendly disease because blacks, drug users and gays have it.'

Collett was tried on race-hate charges after another documentary, BBC1's The Secret Agent, broadcast secret footage of alleged racist activities - but was cleared after two trials .

Radio 1, which has 11million listeners a week, featured the two-minute interview with the pair ten days ago, as well as another with party leader Nick Griffin. A transcript is on the BBC website, with a direct link to the BNP website. Radio 1's young audience, including many from working-class backgrounds, is also the key target for the BNP. Their campaigning helped them poll more than six per cent of the vote in June's European elections, winning two seats. That success has forced the BBC to give more airtime to the party, including Griffin's controversial invitation to appear on BBC1's Question Time on October 22.

BBC guidelines, which govern all the Corporation's output, set strict criteria on the use of anonymous sources.

Unmasked: Mark Collett, a senior BNP activist, seen in a Channel 4 documentary

The rules say: 'With an anonymous source... we must give the audience as much information about them as is compatible with protecting their identity, and in a way that does not mislead the audience about their status. We should normally identify on-air and online sources of information and significant contributors, as well as providing their credentials, so that our audiences can judge their status.'

The interview was also an apparent breach of National Union of Journalists guidelines which say that when interviewing representatives of racist organisations, 'journalists should carefully check all reports for accuracy and seek rebutting or opposing comments. The antisocial nature of such views should be exposed'. But Newsbeat did not disclose any details about its BNP interviewees' backgrounds other than their first names and ages - and now refuses to discuss the reason behind the decision.

Reporter Debbie Randle, who interviewed the men, did not question them about their roles in the party or ask them about any previous controversy. Unprompted by either of the activists, she invited them to give their views on Chelsea football star Cole. Born in Stepney, East London, he has now gained his 72nd England cap in the World Cup qualifier against Ukraine, which England lost 1-0.

'So when you see someone like Ashley Cole play for England, are you happy to watch him?' she asked.

'Joey' replied: 'If he wants to come to this country and he wants to live by our laws, pay into society, that's fine.'

'But,' Ms Randle asked, 'if he wanted to call himself British that would be a problem?'

Joey replied: 'He cannot say that he's ethnically British.'

Asked whether it was 'OK for people who are not white to call themselves British', he said: 'You cannot say they are ethnically British. It's denying our heritage. It's taking that away from us.'

Newsbeat did not reveal anything about Collett's background - including the TV exposés and subsequent court cases - but featured his views on whether 'the idea of races mixing was a bad thing'.

Collett said: 'I would be upset if there were no more giant pandas, I'd be upset if there were no more lions, if there were no more tigers, so equally I'd be upset if white people weren't here any more.'

Asked why the views of people who had lived here for a generation should not count, Collett added: 'Are you trying to compare somebody, or a group of people, who've lived here for maybe 30 years, to people who've lived here for 40,000 years? There's a vast, vast difference in timescale there, my dear.'

Party officials Joey Barber and Mark Collett pose as 'BNP supporters' for Radio 1 Newsbeat

The BBC said the editors of Newsbeat would make no comment on the decision not to reveal who Collett and Barber were.

But Newsbeat editor Rod McKenzie had previously published a blog on the BBC website responding to criticism. He wrote: 'We're impartial - that means we should examine all political parties and put their representatives on the spot with fair and firm questioning. Impartial journalism and censorship do not sit happily together. We believe in getting the facts and the arguments out there for people to decide - not in judging what is "right" or "wrong" in a political context - that's for you to do. The BNP are not an illegal party. They enjoy electoral support and have elected representatives.

'It is the BBC's job to properly examine all legitimate political parties that operate within the law and for which people clearly vote. A great many texts we received [after the broadcast] were broadly supportive of the BNP. Over time, it's evident from following our listeners that the party touches a nerve of support or interest.

'The large pile of texts on my desk raise issues around immigration, political correctness and an apparent frustration with mainstream politics that means the BNP, or at least some of their policies, appeals to some people. It's also clear that not much is known about the party's policies beyond immigration and race which is something we were keen to explore - and did. By the way, we also received messages of support from those who believed we had exposed the weakness of the BNP on a range of issues.'

Mr McKenzie appeared to be unaware that it is common BNP practice to mobilise members to post supportive messages on websites whenever their party is in the news. The broadcaster has also responded to the 100-plus complaints it received about the interviews from listeners.

The BBC's complaints unit said: 'Newsbeat interviewed Nick Griffin and two young BNP activists in the light of huge audience response to recent stories about BNP electoral success and what they stand for. Both interviews were rigorous and the bulk of the tough questions asked were inspired by, or directly quoted, listeners. Our audience have diverse views on these subjects and many believe we should examine the BNP's policies more closely. This was a way to shine a light on the views of the BNP, allowing people to make up their own minds.'

But Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt called on the BBC to launch an investigation as to whether the interview breached its guidelines. He said: 'The point of interviewing the BNP is to make sure that they are held to account for their totally noxious views. It would appear that did not happen here and that is a matter of great concern.'

Under fire: Radio 1 Newsbeat editor Rod McKenzie, left, with BBC radio presenters Simon Mayo and Chris Moyles, himself no stranger to controversy

MP John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture and Media Committee, said: 'If the person being interviewed has a track record in the public eye and holds a position in a political party, then to pass him off as a young person just expressing his own view is not an accurate portrayal and I would expect the BBC to make clear who they are. This should be looked at by the BBC management and possibly the BBC Trust [the Corporation's governing body]. Potentially there may have been a breach of the BBC guidelines. This needs to be properly looked at.'

A BNP spokesman said the BBC had merely asked the party to provide two young supporters from Northern England. He said: 'They just said they wanted young members. We were surprised not to have faced more difficult questioning but Radio 1 is not a heavy-duty political organ like Radio 4. It is an informative thing for young people. It is not too serious. It set out to find out what we think. The platform of Radio 1 is very informal, it is all first names, that is how younger people are. People's surnames are not as important as they are to another generation.'

The controversy comes after Radio 1 breakfast-show host Chris Moyles sparked outrage over 'misjudged' comments about filming for the family history show Who Do You Think You Are? Moyles said: 'I went off to Ireland and other places to film and, unlike a lot of the Who Do You Think You Are? shows, I didn't go to Auschwitz. Pretty much everyone goes there whether or not they're Jewish.'

In full...the Newsbeat interview that caused a storm

This is the BBC's own full transcript of the Newsbeat interview:

Randle: Do you think it's OK for people who aren't white in this country to call themselves British?

Joey: Civicly British they are. You cannot say they are ethnically British. It's denying our heritage. It's taking that away from us.

Randle: At what point do they become ethnically British? How long do they have to be here?

Asking the questions: Debbie Randle in the BBC studios

Joey: Well, I think it would be an awfully long time before someone would become ethnically British.

Randle: So when you see someone like Ashley Cole play for England, are you happy to watch him?

Joey: If he wants to come to this country and he wants to live by our laws, pay into society, that's fine.

Randle: But if he wanted to call himself British that would be a problem?

Joey: He cannot say that he's ethnically British.

Randle: Why is the idea of races mixing such a bad thing?

Joey: If everybody integrated it would take away everybody's identity.

Mark: I would be upset if there were no more giant pandas, I'd be upset if there were no more lions, if there were no more tigers, so equally I'd be upset if white people weren't here any more.

Randle: But we're the same species, which makes it a bit different, doesn't it?

Mark: You could say that but if all of a sudden there weren't any sparrows and there were only crows, I'd still be sad there weren't any sparrows.

Randle: Can you understand that some people are happy to mix?

Mark: No, I think people have been brainwashed. I think the media, the Government, have forced it down people's throats and they've indoctrinated people.

Randle: You don't think people are bright enough to decide themselves?

Mark: I think when people are bombarded 24 hours a day to force multiculturalism upon them, people are going to succumb to that. We shouldn't have to bend our ways to people who've been here five minutes.

Randle: You're talking like people here are on holiday. They've lived here, some of them, for a generation, some of them for longer. Doesn't that count?

Mark: Are you trying to compare somebody, or a group of people, who've lived here for maybe 30 years, to people who've lived here for 40,000 years? There's a vast, vast difference in timescale there, my dear.

Randle: My point isn't the difference in times between one group of people and another, it's saying they're not visitors, they are not holidaymakers, they are people living here.

Mark: If I went to live and work in another country then I would still adhere by their culture and they should adhere by ours.

Mail Online

Dicky Barnbrook struts his funky stuff

Having been disdainfully dumped by the dancing diva, distinguished Discovery-director Dicky deigns to dance (!) with bottle-blond, bloody bad BNP balladeer Joey Barber/Smith.

A-Z of the BNP: Great White Records

Great White Records (GWR) is the BNP's in-house record label, which Griffin once saw as both a lucrative cash cow and a stepping-stone to creating the sort of fascist "counter power" movement he had been harping on about since the 1980s.

Its founding statement was explicit that "the chief benefactors/recipients of money raised by GWR will be the British National Party". The party boasted it would release upwards of 13 albums, which would raise around £100,000 for the party.

It is highly doubtful that GWR has even paid back the initial outlay lavished upon it, however. GWR, which was incorporated in December 2005, has hardly released any records of its own and those it has have been underwhelming to say the least. To put it politely they are unlikely to chart any time soon. The company has only produced one set of accounts, which showed its total net assets at £8, and is currently on notice that it will be struck off. In 2008 its business was merged with the BNP's Excalibur merchandising operation.

It is not only about the money though. As one senior BNP figure observed in an interview about GWR: "People will listen to a song over and over again and take all the words in, in a way that you would be very lucky to get one in 100 of them to listen to a speech. Music is a very effective way of getting our views across." Ian Stuart Donaldson, lead singer of the infamous "white power" band Skrewdriver, said exactly the same thing. The music might have changed but the tune has not.

Despite the initial hopes placed upon it, not least by Griffin himself, GWR has stalled. Its lacklustre performance is largely down to the man placed in charge, Dave Hannam (pictured), the BNP deputy treasurer who was jailed for three months in 2000 for handing out antisemitic leaflets in Hull. Hannam was temporarily demoted in early 2008 to appease irate BNP organisers and activists after a former colleague accused him of being "crassly incompetent". GWR's other director, Nick Cass, who in 2007 was sacked as party manager, appears to be a silent partner.

Ironically Griffin's decision to back Hannam (and Mark Collett) during a damaging split in the BNP precipitated a minor disaster for GWR. Those who sided with the "rebels" included its two leading artists, one of whom was Colin Auty. Despite ridiculing Auty the BNP continues to sell his album Truth Hurts, presumably because GWR has so little else to justify its existence. GWR's next release was by Joey Barber, a BNP activist who records under the name Joey Smith. His "pop" album Not Just About the Music was truly execrable. Griffin loved it. BNP members did not.

GWR once tried to take the rise out of anti-fascists by altering the lyrics of a socialist anthem by the late great Woody Guthrie to reflect the BNP's racist prejudices. It would appear that the joke was on them. Guthrie once penned a song entitled "All You Fascists (Bound To Lose)".

If the performance of GWR is anything to go by they already have.

Hope not hate

BNP candidate dubs Dewsbury 'slum'

Joe Barber (Joey Smith) sneering at Dewsbury

The BNP candidate for next month's Dewsbury East by-election has branded Dewsbury an 'enriched slum'.

Singer-songwriter Joe Barber made the comment on social networking website MySpace on September 8 after a visit to Melton in Leicestershire. Writing under his stage name of Joey Smith, Mr Barber said: "I was so taken aback by the warm hospitality that I am strongly considering moving here away from the 'enriched' slum of Dewsbury."

He added that the town used to be as pleasant as Melton but had declined over several decades.

Carl Morphett, spokesman for anti-fascist group Kirklees Unity, said: "It's what you expect from the BNP. They try to concoct this false impression that they love the town. People genuinely love Dewsbury and Joe Barber who doesn't come from the town obviously doesn't care for it. If he thinks Dewsbury is a slum, what hope have people got with a BNP councillor who has no regard for the town whatsoever?

"Dewsbury East has had a BNP councillor and it's obviously made no difference whatsoever if that's what Joe Barber is saying. I'd like to see a councillor who genuinely loves the town and cares for Dewsbury, not one who spends their time slagging it off."

Mr Barber, who lives in Soothill, Batley, said: "I stand by my comments. Dewsbury is a slum. There's empty buildings, big businesses leaving and I wouldn't walk through there at night but that's even more reason to stand and to do something about it. There's a lot of people considering moving away because of it but I think the answer is to stay and try to do something about it. Dewsbury has a great history and a proud heritage and it's a pity to see it go down the drain."

He added that if elected he would work to address the problems in Dewsbury, particularly in the town centre.

Dewsbury Reporter