No waking the dead in Preston

Fifty seven hard line racists gathered in Preston last weekend to commemorate the life of John Tyndall, the Nazi uniform wearing founder of the British National Party.

It was the sixth time that a collection of Nazis and Anti-Semites no longer welcomed or favoured in Nick Griffin’s new version of the party, have gathered to remember their mentor.

Tyndall was the eloquent writer of such immortal lines as “the Jew is like a maggot feeding off the corpse of the write race”. He died in 2005 while facing charges of behaviour likely to incite racial hatred, surprisingly.

In the dock with Tyndall back then was Nick Griffin (who Tyndall was also fighting a legal case against and who had become his sworn enemy) and Mark Collett, Griffin’s dynamic sure-to-be life long friend who only last week went onto the BBC’s Panorama programme to besmirch the very memory of their love-in.

The only thing that truly held all of those present in the same room was their burning hatred of Nick Griffin, and not any long term admiration of the fallen “Führer".

The meeting was organised by Mark Cotterill who has no real history of ever being much of a fan of Tyndall when he was actually alive. During the eighties and early 90’s Cotterill was instead a senior member of the Flag faction of the NF. They were anti-Tyndall’s BNP and vehemently and often violently, anti-Nick Griffin’s “Political Soldier” National Front. Confused? You should be.

Cotterill later moved to America to front-up the American Friends of the BNP a source of funding for the BNP once Nick Griffin took it over. That new found friendship didn’t last long and Cotterill soon found himself back in England and deciding to support the then displaced Tyndall.

Paul Ballard, a veteran Croydon based fascist made his way to Preston for this knees up. Ballard’s been in and out of the BNP over the years when he’s not been teaching English as a second language to “Johnny Foreigner”. In a rather non-illustrious career on the far-right, Ballard’s been everything from a hard line Nazi to a moderate and even occasionally, a Griffinite “radical”. He was even (another) co-defendant of Griffin’s during another race hate trial during the 90’s over editing something that Griffin had written. [Not well enough?-Ed)

Ballard was last seen in public sulking at a BNP meeting in Dagenham where the BNP had to vote to allow non-white members into the party back in February 2010.

Chastising Ballard on that fateful day in 2010 was none other than Richard Edmonds. Out of all of those present in Preston, Edmonds is probably the true heir to Tyndall’s legacy. He followed Tyndall in and out of the old NF, the New National Front and even into and then out of the BNP. And then back again.

Edmonds even ran the BNP and edited Tyndall’s long-running record of boredom, Spearhead during one occasion when Tyndall found himself again in prison in the 1980's and the BNP had a membership of some 400.

Back in February 2010, Edmonds upset a few old-timers when he used his lofty position as Tyndall's spokeperson on earth and gave Tyndall’s beyond-the-grave blessing to allow non-white members into the BNP. It seemed to have been mostly out of pragmatism or expediency because he was later filmed denigrating white people he assumed were “race mixers” because they did not like BNP literature being posted through their doors. Such obedience to Griffin back then not only helped Edmonds onto the BNP’s Advisory Council but also earned him the soubriquet “veteran Nationalist” from the party, which in their vernacular means “Old Nazi”.

Edmonds was back to being an “old Nazi” when he announced he was standing against Griffin to be party leader earlier this year and positively labelled a “crank” by Herr Griffin when he finally left the BNP earlier this month to rejoin the National Front. One can only assume that Ballard (bizarrely nicknamed Trotsky by his admirers), and Edmonds sorted out their little squabble in time for the long journey to Preston. As ever, Edmonds made a vicious and racist speech that mentioned all the usual favourites, Jews, blacks, Asians, Nick Griffin..

But they were not alone. If the BNP and NF are not cranky enough for you, the British People's Party sent a speaker along. This meant that a dog somewhere was without it's master. This tiny Yorkshire based sect are perhaps better known for administering the Redwatch website and producing homicidal paedophiles that keep bombs under their child’s bed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7469180.stm

The BPP’s Dave Jones, who enjoys nothing more than dressing up in historical costume himself, spoke of the wonderful work he has done in the village of Todmorden where he comes last in almost every election. Jones distributes a local leaflet with stunning regularity warning mostly, of the dangers of the local school/church/pub/bus stop/phone box being turned into a Mosque. Jones managed to waffle on long enough to earn the ire of most people, but did earn himself a small ripple of applause when he announced that he has been working very closely with the NF of late. This must have given Edmonds a bit of a migraine!

Most people were there however not to dig up old stories about “JT”, but to hear the BNP’s other MEP Andrew Brons, announce the launch of a new party. Brons, as he has consistently on this subject of late, disappointed. He didn’t even turn up. I was not surprised.

Brons and Tyndall go far back, further back than even Edmonds goes. In the mid 1960’s Brons was a member of the National Socialist Movement, a bitter rival to Tyndall’s Greater Britain Movement. To mention that there were two tiny Nazi sects around at the time would mean dragging up the history of the two group's competing leaders (Tyndall and Colin Jordon). So, here goes; having competed for the hand in marriage and become engaged to perfume heiress and all round naughty Nazi Françoise Dior in the sixties, poor old Tyndall got sent to prison and while in there and no doubt enjoying the pleasures of reading Mein kampf, his friend and mentor Jordan ran off with and eventually married Dior!

Later, Brons was to take over the leadership of the National Front in 1980 when Tyndall jumped before being pushed out of that party for being too public with his Nazism. So there was actually, no love lost between those two, ever.

Of course, Brons later had a fall out with Nick Griffin when they were in the National Front and Griffin wanted Brons removed from his job!

So, Brons and Griffin may have become friends again for a while and have now fallen out (again), but going to a memorial for Tyndall was obviously just too much, even for Brons. So instead of turning up, Brons sent along a letter in which the former politics lecturer pointed out that Tyndall had never been to university and also that they had often had differences of opinion!

There was no new party announced by Brons, and it still does not look likely there will be. He’s preparing himself for his own faction’s BNP conference this weekend which will be pretty much the same crowd that were at John Tyndall sixth annual wake.

In their game, friends become enemies and then friends again, even when you’re dead.



Thanks to Matthew Collins at HOPE not Hate

Edmonds heads out the front door

One of the last remaining founder members of the BNP has quit the party to rejoin the miniscule and almost moribund National Front. Richard Edmonds returns to the NF after leaving them in acrimonious circumstances to help form the British National Party over thirty years ago.

Seventy year old Edmonds, a former school teacher, is one of Britain’s most notorious and hard line Holocaust deniers and one of a number of people now deserting the Andrew Brons faction in the BNP after Brons was narrowly defeated by Nick Griffin in the recent leadership elections. Edmonds had stood aside to allow Brons to challenge to Griffin, and is believed to have grown impatient as the Brons camp dithered over forming a new party.

Edmonds made his reputation as a notorious and controversial orator during the 1980’s when as the right hand man of then BNP leader John Tyndall, the BNP fermented racial hatred and an openly Nazi party saw a number of people including Tyndall, imprisoned under the race relations act. Edmonds also financed the opening of the BNP’s controversial head office in Welling south London and the distribution of the hate sheet Holocaust News that poured scorn on not just the Holocaust, but also the memory and testimonies of victims of the Nazi regime.

In 1993 Edmonds was jailed for a racist attack in Tower Hamlets, east London, when a black man walking with a white woman had the audacity to walk past Edmonds and a group of BNP supporters who had been attending a violent BNP mobilization in the area.

A long time opponent of Nick Griffin, Edmonds had initially been suspended from the party not long after Nick Griffin assumed the leadership of the BNP in 1999. After Tyndall’s death in 2005 Edmonds found his way back into the BNP and even found himself on the party’s advisory committee, described as a “veteran nationalist” which would appear to be BNP vernacular for ‘unreconstructed neo-Nazi on his best behaviour’. Despite his history, Edmonds was one of the “veteran nationalists” who conceded that legally there was little point in the party resisting the legal obligation to allow party membership to non-whites.

In a difficult week for the BNP’s leader, the departure of Edmonds may prove to be one bright spot. Edmonds had over the last year slipped comfortably back into the anti-Griffin camp as a self appointed spokesperson for keeping alive the memory of his mentor and former master John Tyndall. Tyndall died while facing the courts alongside Griffin on charges of inciting racial hatred while at the same time, fighting a battle to be readmitted back into the party he had founded.

With Edmonds goes the bulk of the Croydon branch of the BNP. Once one of the largest and most active BNP branches in the country, it was through Croydon BNP that Nick Griffin made his entry into the BNP. The Croydon branch of the BNP is a potent mix of former NF hardliners who moved into the BNP in the early nineties, former NF “political soldiers” who followed Griffin into the BNP and other long term racists and fascists. The Croydon far-right scene has long been susceptible to the charms of far-right radicals and extremists, from as far back to before even the NF was formed. A large chunk of those moving into the NF appear to be either suspended or ex-BNP members. The branch had been acting independently of the BNP for some time.

On hearing that Edmonds had finally jumped ship, Nick Griffin tweeted "Good that old hardcore cranks leaving with baggage. Shocking they time it to help the BBC though.” It must have been a really bad week of “timing” as far as Griffin is concerned. The party has been rocked by among other things, the death of its former treasurer only a few days from the potential nuclear meltdown for the party that is the Panorama programme on the BBC.

How the NF will accommodate the rabid actions and demands of über-activists like Edmonds and co remains to be seen. They do not even produce a regular mass circulation newspaper or leaflets.

Edmonds and Brons will no doubt have plenty to talk about at the John Tyndall memorial meeting later this month.

Thanks to Matthew Collins at HOPE not Hate

The fundamentally decent Nicholas Griffin

As the ever-shrinking BNP heads towards its rigged General Members' Meeting on Sunday, we thought it timely to republish a Lancaster Unity article from May 2008, unamended and still referring to the "Activist Declaration" form idea that was quickly, quietly and very wisely dropped when it theatened further dissension in what had been yet another period of violent turbulence as Nick Griffin's paranoiac leadership entered its ninth year.

Now led by the (for anti-fascists) dream team of Griffin and Patrick Harrington, the BNP has become little more than a fascinating case study in derangement, phsychopathy, corruption, greed, deceit and delusion. It seems more suited to psychiatric than political analysis - but wasn't that always true?

Without apology then, from May 2008...

Nine years of vision and vermin


It's been nine long years since Nick Griffin unseated John Tyndall as BNP leader in what can fairly be described as the only relatively honest leadership election (in purely mechanical terms) the BNP ever held. And it's only ever held two.

Naturally, neither man was entirely honest in how they conducted their campaigns, and still less honest with their respective supporters as to their future intentions - but of the two only Nicholas Griffin was presented with the opportunity to demonstrate the fact, and upon winning lost very little time in giving the BNP a hefty dose of the control freakery and paranoia he had once administered to the National Front, the same which sent that organisation into terminal decline.

What is striking at this remove is John Tyndall's magnaminity in allowing the then recently arrived Griffin's 1999 challenge, to the point of permitting Griffin the full use of BNP structures and mechanisms even as the six-month campaign quickly descended into a long series of visceral dog-fights. It is, after all, John Tyndall who we see pictured in Nazi uniform, not the alleged "moderniser" Nick Griffin.

In 1999 Griffin claimed to be running an "open and honest" leadership challenge based on "positive ideas for the future", calling himself the candidate with "flair and vision". This certainly struck a chord with the BNP's newer members, and even appealed to some hardline BNP veterans all too aware of Tyndall's advancing years and of the tiredness of his leadership.

It did, however, obscure Griffin's woeful record in the National Front, where he spent much of his time engaged in factional activities, seemed to view political positions as expendable commodities, and was even then the subject of much disquiet in the matter of finance.

Griffin passed himself off as the BNP's "unity candidate", threatening that a Tyndall win would "lead inevitably to a most disastrous split" (presumably Griffin would be the leader of this putative split) - words that would earn anybody in today's Griffinite BNP instant expulsion. There were also dire warnings of purges ahead at the hands of Tyndall, while, "in happy contrast", Nick's "mature, level-headed and fundamentally decent approach" would restore unity and stability to the BNP. There would be "not one single expulsion" if Nick were to assume the leadership - "No cronysim, no favouritism, no grudges" he promised.

History tells a very different story.

One of Nick's first "positive ideas" as leader was to ensure that no challenger would ever again have the scope or freedom to campaign as he had done, and there began the first of a series of changes to the BNP constitution that should have rung loud alarm bells among those who had taken Griffin at his word

People like convinced Griffin supporters Steve and Sharron Edwards, who, within a year of Griffin's assumption of the leadership found themselves asking some searching questions about the new man's financial probity and as a result became victims of paranoic accusations that were the pretext for expelling them from the party.

They were among the first, and many legally dubious expulsions have passed under the BNP bridge since then.

That first proof that Griffin the BNP leader preserved exactly the same frame of mind as Griffin the National Front chairman (and author of the insane and infamous "Attempted Murder" pamphlet), gave wider currency to Tyndallite grumbling and opened the eyes of many early Griffin loyalists, few of whom have remained in place, due either to being cast aside as their usefulness to Griffin came to an end, were purged, or grew disillusioned.

The problem was that the only person capable of mounting a credible challenge against Griffin was John Tyndall, at the time subject to a campaign of vilification for that very reason - but Tyndall, with his Nazi past and barely reconstructed views, was anathema even to those Griffinites who had come to loath their leader.

Tyndall's death removed the biggest thorn in Griffin's side, and there has since been no other personality within the BNP who stands out even remotely as likely leadership material - not that a personality likely to present a future threat to Griffin will ever have the chance to stand out, as Jonathon Bowden discovered last summer (2007).

Had the BNP not begun to experience its first real electoral successes as disaffection with Griffin began to rise then it quite likely that the party would have descended into vicious faction-fighting, which might have been the end of the extreme-Right for a decade or more. But election success - albeit localised - did come, and Griffin was quick to take the credit.

BNP members - more like the "sheeple" they despise than they care to believe - were happy to go along with him, and in so doing were prepared to overlook their leader's less savoury character traits and blind themselves to the stark evidence that the BNP was increasingly beginning to look like what Martin Webster christened "the Griffin Family Business".

Of course there are many reasons for the BNP's initial spurt of electoral success, none of them much at all to do with Nicholas Griffin.

It might be argued that the best election agent the BNP ever had was Blairism and its apparent (if not intentional) attempts to disconnect itself from its core electorate - an electorate unlikely, especially in the northern towns where the first BNP gains came, to find any merit in voting for the then divided and demoralised Tories, or the Liberal Democrats. We must add in to that the 2001 Oldham riots, and the fact (much as it grieves us to say it) that in certain areas of strength the BNP did have capable organisers who ran intelligent, competent local campaigns with which Nick Griffin had no connection at all.

Further gains followed, of course, and Nick identified himself with every success, to the point where many BNP members really did (and still do) believe that without the guiding hand of Griffin the BNP would have achieved nothing at all.

This is utter nonsense. If there were any truth to it at all then the BNP would have achieved comparable results to those it obtained in places like Oldham and Burnley over the remainder of the country. Save for some small pockets where the circumstances outlined above pertained, it did nothing of the kind - but Nick was never eager to take the credit for that.

The probable truth is that finding himself the leader of the most electorally successful British racist party to date came as of much as a surprise to Griffin as it did to everybody else. Even so, Griffin seemed fixed on undermining "his" achievement by continuing the ludicrous (and legally expensive) hunt for John Tyndall's scalp, the unending litany of expulsions and proscriptions, and was quite prepared to wreck the BNP in its strongest electoral areas (Burnley being the textbook case) if he smelled the least whiff of personal disloyalty.

To many, even the BNP's enemies, these seemed like the actions of a demagogue more interested in preserving his hide than those of a man possessed of "flair and vision" with "positive ideas for the future".

Tyndall died, and the BNP's then electoral high point came and went, Griffin and his leadership team reduced to promising breathroughs to come.

Last year, as we all remember, along with the BNP itself we expected the party to add to its tally of 49 sitting councillors at the 2007 local elections. Everything seemed set fair for them to do so. We gritted our teeth, the racists prepared to crow - but early into the election night results it was clear who would be doing the crowing, and it wasn't the BNP.

The next morning we wrote:

The BNP's march to power turned into a cul-de-sac of indifference yesterday, with the racist party failing to make any impression in the English local elections.

Predicting at least a doubling of their 49 councillors, a devastated BNP finds its tally (at the time of writing) remains 49. Though the BNP did pick up seats it lost the same number, making no net gains. Of the nine BNP councillors up for re-election only one successfully defended his seat.

Claiming "mixed results" in an attempt to hide an electoral calamity from its shell-shocked members, there was no real disguising of the BNP's utter failure over large swathes of the country. The party's fortunes stalled and went into reverse in areas where its hopes were high, notably Sandwell and Birmingham, where thousands of votes were lost. Votes in cities such as Coventry were barely improved over those obtained thirty years ago by the National Front. In an effort to distract attention from the Birmingham debacle, the BNP is focussing attention on the fact that it gained more votes than the renegade Sharon Ebanks and her tiny number of New Nationalist Party candidates.

Griffin did not rush to identify himself with this particular set of results, nor did he attempt to explain why, when - by its own assessment - conditions had never been better for the BNP, all that could be reported was abject failure.

Of course, Griffin had other concerns by then, the lacklustre leadership challenge of Chris Jackson assuming a new and threatening importance in the light of the appalling election results, which challenge had to be hamstrung (as it was) before any damage to Griffin's position was done.

The paranoid sequel to Jackson's challenge was well enough reported here and is fresh enough in our minds not to bear a full re-telling, save to recall Griffin's infamously insane "vermin", "thieves" and "liars" blog diatribe, backed up by an equally hysterical and inventive four page spread in the BNP's "Identity" magazine - and, naturally, the purging and proscribing quickly followed.

Post the 2007 locals, the BNP continued to fight in by-elections, where it could concentrate its resources in pursuit of the best possible showing. Their results were lamentable - though there were areas, the East Midlands and adjacent districts being salient cases, where the party could produce a good first-time vote. Unfortunately for them, where the party's performance could be measured against previous outings in the same ward, their vote invariably fell.

Seeking a crumb of comfort, the party was overjoyed to retain a seat in Loughton, making a great deal of fuss over this "achievement" - and going to great lengths to silence wiser voices which pointed out that the BNP vote had fallen by a notable 5% and that the seat had been retained by a margin of 20 votes against a candidate who did not belong to one of the major parties. To say, as some did, that this was no small cause for concern was to invite attack as a "troublemaker", a "splitter", an "anti-BNP Red" and all the usual epithets beloved of the Griffinite BNP.

All that mattered was that the seat had been retained, and to hell with any unwelcome analysis.

They were to pay for this self-deluding complacency.

Ignoring for now the damp squib of the BNP's Decembrist revolt, the BNP began mustering its electoral troops early for the 2008 locals. As was clear from their numerous blogs and their posts on their usual internet hang-outs, they had worked themselves up for a real breakthrough.

This was going to be their year - they could feel it in their bones.

We couldn't. Everything we'd seen and recorded of BNP performances over the past year told us that though some gains were likely, nothing much was going to change and the established picture of electoral stagnation and reverse would continue.

For once, the BNP leadership cultivated a healthy restraint in its predictions, even inventing the meaningless spin-phrase "quiet revolution" to explain the BNP's snail's pace growth (or lack thereof) to a potentially restive membership. And there was a distinct air of unreality in the lead up to election day.

What struck us was the idiotic claim made by BNP deputy chairman and Griffin cheerleader Simon Darby that he had made a "breakthrough" by sealing a deal with the Pensioners Party whereby that party would recommend its members and supporters to vote BNP. The only fly in the ointment was that the PP had a total of six members, was completely unknown and without influence, and its leadership seemed to be unaware of any deal with the BNP. Members of other parties might have resented this cynical attempt to con them, but, all too typically, the BNP sheeple seemed more outraged that the con had been exposed.

Unreality continued as virtually powerless parish councillors became equated in Griffinite BNP spin with district councillors, an exercise designed purely to push up the total number of BNP "councillors" gained and to prove to an all too gullible membership of how well things were progressing for the BNP - proof in itself that the BNP's leadership had no great expectations for the 2008 locals. Several non-political parish council seats fell unopposed into the hands of the BNP, each "gain" being proudly reported on the BNP website.

It was so much whistling in the dark.

The BNP gained a grand total of ten "real" councillors, and its vote in its own heartlands fell, frequently by considerable margins.

Nick Griffin did not rush to bask in the reflected glory of this particular success, and though many BNP members still regurgitate the Griffinite smoke-and-mirrors line that something remarkable happened on May 1st, it is apparent that hard reality is finally beginning to bite for some of their number.

The plain fact, which they cannot ignore, is that by its own lights electoral conditions were never better for the BNP than they were on May 1st. A long serious of immigration controversies preceded the elections, some in the same week, there was the 40th anniversary of Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech, falling together with the BBC "White Season" series, and the party frequently received completely uncritical press coverage. They themselves were reporting on ecstatic doorstep receptions for their canvassers.

And still Nick Griffin could deliver only 10 extra councillors from the 612 seats fought by the BNP.

Following the locals we had to wait 24 hours for the results of the London Mayoral race and the GLA elections - 24 hours in which Griffin must have prayed for a miracle. At all events, the BNP's spinmeisters began to play down expectations (and with good reason), uncertain whether they would gain anything at all.

Disaster seemed to beckon for what party apparatchniks were calling the BNP's finest campaign, but finally the much-hyped Richard Barnbrook scraped a GLA seat with 5.4%.

In the wake of this apparent "landmark" victory, as they touted it, the BNP seemed oblivious to the fact that 30 years ago the more honestly racist National Front averaged pretty much the same vote and better over large swathes of London. The truth is that the BNP should have achieved election on 7-8% of the vote if there was to be any credibility to their claim of "progress". They did not.

Again Nick Griffin failed to deliver.

After nine years of Nick Griffin's "vision and flair", in the most favourable circumstances imaginable, the BNP still manages a miserable grand total of 55 (real) local councillors and one elected (just) member of the GLA.

This is not a record that would wash in any political party other than the BNP.

To sum up the nine years of Nick Griffin's leadership, then, there has been, from the beginning and ever since, a long series of legally challengable expulsions of those who either cast doubt on Griffin's financial management of the party or who were deemed a threat to his position. There has been a ruthless willingness to wreck the BNP in its own areas of strength for no better reason than that members in those areas felt their loyalties to the party over-rode any presumed loyalty to a man they did not trust or in who they lacked confidence. In short, there has been continual internal strife since 1999.

If the incessant amendments to the BNP's risible constitution were not enough to make Nick feel safe, then, as some of you will be aware, the party has issued "Activist Declaration" forms - the only case we know of in British politics where ordinary members of a political party are being forced to swear something not a million miles removed from the Nazi oath of allegiance, and at the same time to give themselves as hostage to fortune to whatever constitutional changes Griffin chooses to enact.

Clearly a trap is being loaded, since: "I agree to abide by the British National Party’s Constitution and any amendments made to it under the provisions of the Constitution".

Those signing this (Barnsian?) document, especially those closely allied with Griffin's internal opponents, may as well hand the man a loaded gun and wait to be shot the moment the inevitable constitutional amendments are made.

It can have no other purpose.

Perhaps the sudden appearance of this scurrilous document can be best explained by the fact that elections for the European parliament are now a year away, and if there is one thing we know Griffin longs to do it is to bag his ticket on the Euro gravy-train.

To that end he has already deposed Chris Jackson as North-west Regional Organiser in favour of himself, and parachuted himself in as the BNP's number one candidate in the region. We also saw, when a general election seemed but weeks away last autumn, that Griffin's overarching concern was to preserve BNP finances for the Euro elections - strange behaviour for a British "national" party.

You or I might think a good general election performance would be of more lasting benefit to the BNP than Griffin's flying off to Strasbourg and the riches of an MEP on the back of a tiny vote in north-west England, but the BNP have convinced themselves that this is the way forward - failing to notice that a similar exercise has done the UKIP no good at all, and never really asking themselves exactly what a lone BNP representative in Europe is going to achieve for the party.

However that may be, with the prize now in sight the Griffin Family Business must be protected from hostile takeover, and we can't help but to think that the "Activist Declaration" form is a large and sinister part of that protection.

In perspective, then: in nine years Nick Griffin has taken the BNP from nowhere to next to nowhere. In the most favourable conditions ever to exist in which a racialist and nationalist party could expect to grow, the BNP under Griffin has remained stunted, its membership numbering well under 10,000, despite the regular repetition of the lie that hundreds join every week.

It remains electorally moribund, and where it has met with success it has done so despite the turbulent Griffin, not because of him. His record is, by any measure, lamentable, nine years of effort and eye-watering expenditure on the part of the BNP producing a paltry crop of 55 local councillors who all too often are not up to the job and all too prone to find themselves confronted with past indiscretions.

That Griffin has managed for so long to pass off his leadership as a story of unparalleled success is an achievement of sorts, we suppose, but we on our side of the fence really do thank our stars that the BNP chose to land itself with the most divisive and incompetent leader ever to grace the stage of the far-Right in Britain.

"Flair and vision"? It seems more like stuff and nonsense to us.

Holocaust denier launches bid for leadership

With a large number of its activists either in hiding or on some kind of police bail, one of the party's founding members has decided that he has had enough of Nick Griffin's leadership and has indicated that he will stand for party leader later in the year.This is another distraction that the BNP's leadership could well do without.

Nearly seventy years of age, Richard Edmonds used to be a powerful and controversial orator when he was the warm up act for the party's hard-line Nazi founder John Tyndall, when he formed the party in 1982. A rabid Antisemite, Edmonds used to own and run the BNP's headquarters in Welling, south London at a time when it was common for the BNP to march around the country handing out copies of the newspaper Holocaust News, a newspaper that denied that the Holocaust had ever happened.

Not that Nick Griffin should mind Edmonds’s views on the Holocaust too much, he's had plenty to say on the subject himself too when it has suited him. The once hugely popular Edmonds is sure to be firing plenty of his notorious vitriol at Nick Griffin at a meting tonight in Mottingham, south London, where party rebels' are meeting to hear Edmonds launch his campaign when they really and probably should all be out elsehwere around the country handing out leaflets.

The meeting, which is for members only, is being held by the party's Reform Group who have decided they do not even want to wait until after next week's election before declaring open warfare. With Adam Walker, the party's cheap purging officer apparently still missing in action, someone else from the party's Head Office will have to be at Mottingham train station at 7.00 tonight to hand out the suspension and expulsion notices that normally follow once people have attended anti-Griffin meetings.

Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate/Searchlight

Nowhere man

On the campaign trial in Barking and Dagenham: Eddy Butler (left) with Richard Barnbrook now an independent member of the London Assembly (centre) and BNP leader Nick GriffinOn the campaign trial in Barking and Dagenham: Eddy Butler (left) with Richard Barnbrook now an independent member of the London Assembly (centre) and BNP leader Nick Griffin

As part of our series looking at the wider British right, Searchlight assesses the prospects for Eddy Butler.

After Eddy Butler failed last summer to surmount the impossibly high hurdles that Nick Griffin placed in the way of anyone hoping to challenge his leadership of the British National Party, the big question among Butler’s supporters was whether to keep on fighting within the BNP or form a new party.

Butler was against a new party. He had been there before and in surprisingly similar circumstances. Shortly after Griffin replaced John Tyndall as BNP leader in 1999, the party’s treasurer and deputy chairman accused Griffin of financial wrongdoing. Griffin responded as he always does, by expelling his accusers. Butler and several others left the BNP in disgust and in December 2000 formed the Freedom Party.

Apart from getting one councillor elected in South Staffordshire in 2003 the Freedom Party made little impact and by 2006 was dead. Butler had already returned to Griffin’s side in 2003 after realising that the BNP, which had won three councillors in Burnley in May 2002, had the better prospects.

Butler’s opposition to forming a new party proved prescient. In October 2010 some of his former supporters, together with others who had fallen foul of Griffin, set up the British Freedom Party. They soon fell out with each other publicly and nastily, its leadership went through a number of changes and although it may field a few candidates in this year’s local elections, it has zero public profile and no attractive personalities.

Butler and many of his supporters believed that the future for the far right remained in the BNP. Whereas many disillusioned members were leaving the party, Butler urged supporters to renew their membership so they could vote in a future leadership election. He went to great trouble to contribute to a “consultation” on changes to the party’s constitution, only to have his effort rejected.

However, if Butler thought he could carry on agitating against Griffin inside the BNP, he must have been very naïve, surprisingly so for someone who has been active on the far right for 30 years and has an honours degree in history and politics. Butler was first suspended from the BNP, then expelled, though he retains his employment on the European Parliament payroll with Andrew Brons MEP, who has maintained a somewhat uncomfortable fence-sitting position between Butler and Griffin.

On 24 December Butler changed his view on whether party members should renew. Reminding his readers of Griffin’s financial mismanagement, which had left the party with debts of over £500,000, Butler declared that members get: “No chance to vote on anything, no chance to decide anything. He [Griffin] will never allow anyone any chance to vote on anything.” Griffin had to be “starved out” said Butler, adding: “This is harsh but it is the only way.”

Since then Butler has continued waging war on Griffin from the comfort of his blog. Many of his articles, and those of a handful of guest writers, contain insightful analysis and plenty of useful information for anti-fascists. But it is unclear quite where Butler hopes to go. Constant calls for Griffin to be removed are not accompanied by any strategy for achieving that aim.

The BNP constitution, which requires a challenger to obtain the support of 20% of all party members of at least two years’ standing, remains in place and it is unclear when changes discussed at last year’s BNP conference might be put to a vote. The first problem a challenger faces is to find out which members to canvass, as the party does not supply a list.

Nevertheless a group of party members grouped under the banner of BNP Reform 2011 has said a leadership challenge will be mounted this summer, although: “To protect the candidate and ensure he/she is not expelled or suspended before the period for leadership nominations we shall not be revealing his/her identity at this time.”

BNP Reform 2011 is independent of Butler, though many of its members supported him last year and Butler has condemned Griffin’s moves against the group. Several prominent party activists have been suspended recently by Griffin’s henchman Adam Walker, the BNP’s national organiser, simply for attending reform meetings.

However whether Griffin will still be party leader in summer and whether the party itself will survive or be salvageable is uncertain. The BNP continues to be saddled with huge debts which it has no prospect or intention of repaying, members are leaving amid sinking morale and fundraising has nearly dried up. Griffin spends most of his time at the European Parliament, adding his daily attendance allowance to his substantial MEP’s salary, and has left the party in the charge of the power-crazed Walker, the moronic Clive Jefferson, laughably acting as the party’s treasurer and national elections officer, and the highly unpopular Patrick Harrington, who is not even a BNP member.

The BNP is an unincorporated association and Griffin is personally responsible for most of its debts. There have been claims for several months that enforcement proceedings are being taken against him, though little seems to have happened. The problem for creditors is that Griffin has made sure he has no property in his name, meaning that it may not be worthwhile to incur the costs of taking action.

The party is in disarray in many parts of the country and Paul Golding, the party’s former communications officer, recently described the BNP brand as “completely toxic”.

Even if Griffin were to be ousted, any new leader would still have to deal with the debts. Prospective challengers might hope that with Griffin gone and the party in more competent hands, supporters’ donations will come flooding in, and it is true that BNP supporters may be stupid enough to throw more money at the dead horse.

At the start of this year Butler raised a third prospect, that of unity between the UK Independence Party, BNP and the various smaller groups “on the patriotic, nationalistic, ‘right-wing’, populist, non-politically correct, identity-related side of the spectrum”. Such a party would “have over 30,000 members” and “instantly be a major force in British politics”.

Butler believed such a union would benefit the BNP as “it would provide respectability and distance from a more violent and hard-line past”. For the UKIP it “would give them relevance” between European elections. The UKIP immediately rejected the idea totally and went on to poll considerably better than the BNP in two parliamentary by-elections.

Butler recognised that “jealous personalities”, the biggest of whom is Griffin, would not let unity happen and that it was just a dream.

On 20 March he came up with a new variation on the unity theme. Claiming that “Griffin’s grasp is faltering” and he saw “unmistakable signs of a sinking tyrant”, Butler called for reconciliation between all those opposed to Griffin, including those who left years ago or never joined the BNP because they were alienated by Griffin. “Nothing must stand in the way of common action to rid the movement of the curse that is Nick Griffin and his regime as quickly as possible,” declared Butler.

To this end he has been speaking at meetings around the country. However it is difficult to see how he might bring reconciliation about. The far right has always been characterised by splits and inadequate individuals all wanting to be big fishes in their own small ponds. Butler’s strength lies in running election campaigns. It was his work in the East End that got the BNP’s first elected councillor in Tower Hamlets in 1993, although the party lost the seat seven months later. However leading a successful political party takes much more than organisational skills and an understanding of campaigning techniques.

And although Butler is an educated man, who held down a finance job with the Corporation of the City of London for many years, he is also a violent one. When Butler was running the BNP’s “rights for whites” campaign in the East End in the early 1990s he and a team of thugs laid into a group of anti-fascists with hammers and other weapons, although he was never charged with any offence. That incident, which he has never denied, would keep coming back to haunt him as a leader. He also does not suffer fools gladly, and there are certainly a lot of fools around on the far right. All in all, it does not look like Butler is going anywhere anytime soon.

Searchlight

BNP officers ‘scared’ Griffin will purge them

A former deputy chairman of the British National Party says that many party officers and staff members are “scared to say what they feel” because of the way Nick Griffin takes “every bit of criticism as a personal attack”.

Scott McLean, a BNP member for 20 years, Scottish organiser from 1990 to 2007 and deputy chairman from 2002 to 2007, condemns Griffin mismanagement and “wrong actions [that] have purged this party … of the best that we had”.

Writing in support of Eddy Butler, who is challenging Griffin for the party leadership, he declares: “Every problem I’ve seen in this party is due to the wrong people being given jobs normally because of who they are, not of what they can do. We’ve seen masses of talent get thrown out or leave the party. Ask yourself how many management people or officers are now gone because of policy disagreements? Very little. They are all gone due to mismanagement.”

Echoing Butler’s accusations over the BNP’s finances, which are born out by Searchlight’s analysis, McLean continues: “Ask yourself why the party finances are a complete shambles? Lots of money going through over the years. Misspent and thrown away on stupid misguided actions.”

McLean’s criticism of Griffin is significant not only because of his party position but also because he was one of a small group of people who organised Griffin’s takeover as party leader in 1999. McLean, who claims dubiously that he built up Scotland as the largest region in the party in the early 1990s, had recognised that John Tyndall, the party’s prime founder and former leader, was holding the party back. “His outlook was more on the past than the future,” says McLean, stopping short of admitting that the past to which Tyndall looked was a pre-1945 German one rather than anything British.

McLean identified Griffin, then not even a BNP member, as “by far the most impressive” of a few potential new leaders for the party. Griffin “took a look at the party and saw it’s [sic] potential. A short time after that he became involved,” writes McLean.

The leadership challenge came in 1999. “Modernisers in the party myself included,” explains McLean, “felt that the party was being held back by not embracing new techniques that had proved successful for our elections guru Eddy Butler. He hadn’t got the proper backing with finance and manpower when he needed it most. Nick was put forward as the candidate for change.”

McLean advised Griffin and his campaign manager Tony Lecomber, who in the 1980s had served a three year prison sentence for explosives offences and later was jailed for another three years for assaulting a Jewish teacher, to “run a clean fight”, which, he says, they did.

However “Mr Tyndall’s camp ran a dirty campaign which I didn’t expect from him. … John Tyndall thought that the BNP was his and he found out the hard way that he was only a part of the machine.”

McLean’s implication is clear: that like the pigs in Animal Farm the former “candidate for change” has now become just like the old dictator he replaced.

Butler has also won the support of Chris Roberts, the BNP’s London regional organiser, who, like McLean, claims that the party’s branches and groups have not prospered because Griffin falls out with far too many people.

He also calls for an immediate stop to non-members of the party having “a bigger and more influential say on its affairs than the members”, a reference to Jim Dowson, the convicted criminal who acts as Griffin’s right-hand man and effectively owns the BNP.

“Furthermore,” continues Roberts, “it is disgraceful to employ non-members on the payroll … it’s our activists who got BNP representatives elected in the first place and they should be put above any outsider and especially outsiders from rival parties”. Although he does not name him, his remarks are directed at Patrick Harrington, a former comrade of Griffin from his National Front “political soldier” days in the 1980s, who is now one of the leaders of the rival, though much smaller, Third Way party.

Harrington is the general secretary of the BNP’s fake trade union, the speciously named Solidarity and was recently taken onto the BNP’s payroll in a human resources role.

Roberts also has some damaging comments on the BNP’s accounts, which have failed to meet the deadline for submission to the Electoral Commissioner “when the National Treasurer has assured us that everything is in order.

“Well I know for a fact that everything is not in order,” writes Roberts. “I have spoken to members of staff who have been paid very late and to activists who have not had their print bills settled for leaflets for the last election. Stop treating the members like idiots. Tell us what the real position is so there can be a proper consensus on what to do!

“The party needs a coherent management structure that all members can understand and follow. Our accounts need to be open to members to examine so they know exactly what amounts are being received and a detailed account of what it’s being spent on. We need to get our talented people running this party efficiently utilising the undoubted skills that exist throughout our ranks. People being employed in specific areas where they are skilled, not employing people in positions of authority because the chairman thinks they are a ‘good egg’.”

Butler has until 10 August to obtain the signatures on nomination forms of 20% of the party’s 4,200 members with at least 24 months’ continuous membership. Whether he succeeds or fails, with such prominent party activists in his camp, the rifts in the BNP are set to deepen.

Sonia Gable at Hope Not Hate

‘Neo-Nazi gran’ hired as aide to BNP member on London Assembly

A grandmother working for the BNP at City Hall is feared to be behind plans to unite far-Right activists in advance of the general election. Tess Culnane, dubbed a “neo-Nazi granny” by her rivals after being a member of the BNP and National Front, has been recruited as an aide by London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook.

Opponents of the BNP believe this suggests that factional infighting has ended, allowing the party to focus on the general election and borough elections. BNP leader Nick Griffin is challenging Labour minister Margaret Hodge for the Barking seat, while the party aims to build on its councillors in boroughs such as Barking and Dagenham and Redbridge.

Mrs Culnane, a grandmother of 12 from Mottingham, who is believed to be in her seventies, is working part-time at City Hall as an agency worker.

She was a strong supporter of former BNP leader John Tyndall and has stood in London Assembly, European and council elections. She was the National Front candidate in the Haltemprice and Howden, Yorkshire, by-election in 2008 that was called after then shadow home secretary David Davis quit and then retained his seat.

In a pre-Euro election speech last year, she said she and her family had suffered vandalism and crime at the hands of black neighbours since 1969 and railed against “the tragedy that has hit my family through multiculturalism”. She added: “Many British families are suffering the scourge of multiculturalism. The British bulldog has had its nose rubbed in the dirt long enough.”

Speaking of Mrs Culnane's role, Labour assembly member Murad Qureshi said: “In this instance the BNP has revealed its fascist underbelly, and voters should not be fooled by the party's attempts to present a more moderate image.”

Former mayor Ken Livingstone, who headed an anti-BNP conference at the weekend, said: “It is a travesty that the BNP has a seat on the London Assembly to give platform to its toxic propaganda.”

Mrs Culnane declined to answer questions but said: “I'm certainly not a Nazi* — I'm a true blue patriot. If anybody called me a traitor I would be upset.”

This is London

*Our photograph shows Culnane addressing the openly Nazi British People's Party.

The respectable and democratic BNP?

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Roddy Newman. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Despite the BNP's claims that it is now a respectable and democratic political party, its 2009 election candidates and top officials have included people with far from respectable and democratic views.

For example, an article in "The Observer" of May 31, 2009, "Exposed:ugly face of BNP leaders", said of one of its North West region candidates, Gary Aronsson [pictured]: "...Griffin's running mate for the European parliament in the North West, posts an avatar on his personal web page featuring a Nazi SS death's head alongside the statement, "Speak English Or Die!"...He lists his hobbies as "devising slow and terrible ways of paying back the Guardian-reading cunts who have betrayed the British people into poverty and slavery. I AM NOT JOKING."

In an article in the "News of the World" of May 31, 2009, "BNP chief's Facebook race rants", you could read: "...senior election organiser Jeffrey Marshall wrote vicious comments about the death of Tory leader David Cameron's disabled son.

"When challenged that his views made him either a Nazi or a Marxist, he replied: "Nazi for preference.""

It is hardly surprising that the BNP should have picked people with views like these as its 2009 candidates and top officials, because the late founder and first leader of the BNP, John Tyndall, was an admirer of Arnold Leese, the pre-World War 2 Imperial Fascist League leader, who may have inspired the Holocaust, as British fascists living in Nazi Germany, like Unity Mitford, who was Hitler's girlfriend for a while, according to Martin Bright's Channel 4 documentary, "Hitler's British Girl", could conceivably have told Hitler that Leese had long wanted to gas all Jews, who, in the 1930's, the Nazis said that they wanted to deport from Germany, but not kill.

In an article in the "The Jewish Chronicle" of April 22, 2009, "Neo-Nazi leader Colin Jordan's legacy", you could read: "...Arnold Leese, who led the pre-war Imperial Fascist League and as early as 1928 had advocated the gassing of Jews."

To read the articles which I have quoted from, go here, here and here.

Revenge is sweet

We received a small — but unusual — donation at the NSS this week. It was inside a card that announced on the front: “The Michael Young Fund”. The Fund was apparently established to disburse a small sum of money left by the late Michael Young who died in August 2000, shortly after his 100th birthday.

The message inside the card said: “He was not a good man – quite the opposite. He was strongly anti-Semitic, had a deep-rooted distaste for coloured people, who he feared would pollute the white races, propagated a mean-spirited and unforgiving interpretation of Christianity.

“He paraded these beliefs under the banner of patriotism, was a founder member of the League of Empire Loyalists and claimed, with pride, that he tipped a bucket of offal over Jomo Kenyatta, at that time President of Kenya, a member of the Commonwealth. He corresponded with, and supported financially, Lady Birdwood and John Tyndall of the British National Party as well as various fringe religious movements. He wrote a number of poisonous pamphlets.

“He was wholly self-centred, had no interest in anything beyond his Bible studies and preparation of his meals, neither read a newspaper nor stirred out of his house for the last 10 years of his life. It is hard to find any redeeming feature in the man.

“So, it seemed a nice idea to pass a little of the money he left to some of the individuals and small organisations who try to do some good in the world, and, where possible, to ones he would have disapproved of.”

His ‘mean-spirited and unforgiving interpretation of Christianity’ as well as his political affiliations mean he would have been horrified that any of his money should go to the National Secular Society.

On the back of the card, there is an explanation of how the Fund works: “If you like the idea of making small grants to decent people but don't want to set up your own fund, email a request for some of these cards to anthony@evelynwilliams.com. You can use them yourself or ask us to post on your ‘grant’ if you want to remain anonymous.”

What an excellent and classy way to take revenge on a nasty old man. It's almost enough to make you wish there was an afterlife so his ghost could watch and be tormented by what is being done in his name. That would really be hell.

The National Secular Society

BNP GRIFFIN: 'HE HATES JEWS SO MUCH'

BNP leader Nick Griffin describes his predecessor and BNP founder, John Tyndall ' he hates Jews so much.'

He then launches into anti-zionist rhetoric - that 'the Jews have bought the West, in terms of the press, for their own political ends' before concluding 'if Hitler hadn't been so daft they'd have exterminated the German Jews.'

Bond of hate: The BNP and the British Freedom Fighters

What’s on under the suit? Two faces of Shaun Grimsley.

(Skrewdriver was a leading Nazi bonehead band.)

The BNP has shunned the old image of the “boots and braces” skinhead, instead favouring cheap suits, old school shoes and tacky gold jewellery. Simon Cressy proves that the neo-nazi bootboys in the BNP haven’t gone away.

When John Tyndall formed the British National Party in 1982 it inherited a large number of skinhead followers from both the National Front and the British Movement. Tyndall was quite happy with this as he saw the skinheads as the natural foot soldiers of his racist ideology.

After Nick Griffin took over the party leadership in 1999 the attitude towards skinheads cooled. Griffin realised that skinheads did not equate to votes (or membership fees) and publicly shunned them.

However the reality is somewhat different. Last month Searchlight revealed that Eliots Bistro, the Nuneaton pub run by the BNP’s new West Midlands organiser, Alwyn Deacon, hosted a nazi shindig.

Embarrassingly for the BNP, which holds meetings in the pub, and for Deacon, photographs were taken of the drunken event which show skinhead members of the nazi British Freedom Fighters (BFF) along with members of the violent Racial Volunteer Force giving Nazi salutes outside the premises. The incident caused some anger among BNP organisers in the West Midlands and at least one, Chris Turner of Coventry, resigned his position because of it.

But the links between the BFF and the BNP do not stop there. Also pictured with the BFF at Eliots Bistro is Shaun Grimsley, who claims to be the West Midlands commander of the BFF.

Grimsley is the BNP candidate for a Cannock Chase District Council by-election in Heath Hayes East and Wimblebury ward on 15 October 2009. He also admits to being a member of the NF and associated with Blood and Honour, the nazi skinhead organisation.

He says he attended the English Defence League protest in Birmingham on 8 August, which ended in violence, and intends to be present if the EDL marches in Manchester as planned in October.

Grimsley is an unabashed National Socialist. One statement on his Facebook site reads “Hail The British Freedom Fighters, I am a Nazi HAHAHAHAHAHA 88 red scum”. The number 88 is code for HH – Heil Hitler”. Commenting about Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, Grimsley wrote: “The man I most admire ever”.

When one of his friends made a lengthy posting about the London nail bomber David Copeland, who killed three innocent people including a pregnant woman and injured 129 others, Grimsley left the chilling note “Hero 88”.

Another BFF nazi from the photographs taken outside Eliots Bistro was part of a contingent of Liverpool BNP activists who handed out leaflets outside the TUC Congress in Liverpool last month.

He is believed to be close to Liam Pinkham from Wirral, yet another BFF activist who visited Deacon’s pub. Pinkham was arrested with three others at the BNP’s European election victory rally in Blackpool in June and was charged with racially aggravated intentional harassment.

Pinkham also pleaded guilty to intentionally causing harassment to bookshop staff in July after he took part in a BNP rally in Liverpool city centre. Staff said he burst into the News From Nowhere bookshop and threatened to burn it down.

Griffin claims he does not want nazis in the BNP. We await news of the expulsion of these BFF activists.

Hope Not Hate

Do the BNP and EFP leadership still believe in the mass slaughter of billions?

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Roddy Newman. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

In November 1995, the guest speaker at the BNP's annual rally in London, was the most extreme fascist party leader that the world has ever produced since Hitler, the late William Pierce (1933-2002), who led the National Alliance splinter group from the American Nazi Party. In Pierce's 1978 novel, "The Turner Diaries", which he wrote under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald, fascists use nuclear weapons, terrorist bombings, and other methods to wipe out all of the world's Jews and non-white people, or, in other words, billions of people. The novel can be read online though if you want to read it, you'll have to find it yourself because we're not linking to it.

Not surprisingly, when the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, found out about Pierce's 1995 visit to London, he banned him from visiting the UK for life. See an obituary of Pierce here, which was written by the late John Tyndall (1934-2005), the BNP leader who invited him to London, to read about Howard's lifetime ban.

Pierce also wanted to kill many white people. In his July 26, 2002 obituary in "The Independent" newspaper, you can read:

When writing The Turner Diaries, he recounted in a radio broadcast in 1997,

"I wanted to take all of the feminist agitators and propagandists and all of the race-mixing fanatics and all of the mass media bosses and all of the bureaucrats and politicians who were collaborating with them, and I wanted to put them up against a wall, in batches of a thousand or so at a time, and machine-gun them."

Pierce's novel, which is very well known in international far right circles, has sold nearly 500,000 copies, which is why the FBI has described it as "the bible of the racist right" (see an April 3, 2000 article on the website of "The Guardian", "Gospels of hate that slip through the net", to see how many copies the novel has sold, and the FBI quote), and which is why a prominent American Jewish anti-fascist group, the Anti-Defamation League, has described the novel as,

"One of the most widely read and cited books on the far-right".

So, is it conceivable that John Tyndall did not know about Pierce's pro-murdering billions of people views when he asked him to be the guest speaker at the BNP's November 1995 annual rally, seventeen years after Pierce's novel had been published, and did Tyndall also secretly wish that he could kill billions of Jews and non-white people?

Pierce's National Alliance does not stand in elections like the BNP, so Pierce did not have to worry about his insane ideas putting voters off his party, but the BNP does stand in elections, which may explain why Tyndall never openly said that he shared Pierce's views.

The British anti-fascist magazine "Searchlight" has said of the popularity of "The Turner Diaries" in Tyndall era BNP circles:

"The growing influence of US nazi ideas was illustrated in November 1995 when William Pierce, leader of the National Alliance, addressed the BNP annual rally. Pierce was also the author of The Turner Diaries, a fictional account of a race war which, it has been claimed, inspired Timothy McVeigh to carry out the Oklahoma bombing. By the mid-1990s The Turner Diaries was better known on the British right than Mein Kampf."

(Searchlight feature, "A century of British fascism", "1990 to 1999: Ballot box to bomb - fighting on all fronts").

In the earler mentioned "Independent" obituary of Pierce, you can read:

"His influence on Britain was incendiary: after reading another novel of his called Hunter [in which the hero travels around killing various types of people who fascists do not like, for example, interracial couples, journalists, and politicians]...[Tyndall era] British National Party members began a sticker campaign against "mongrelisation", and attacked a mixed-race couple in a London pub."

"Hunter" was dedicated to an American racist serial killer, Joseph Paul Franklin, a former American Nazi Party and Ku Klux Klan member who has been accused of 20 racist murders. Franklin also confessed to shooting the American pornographer Larry Flynt, plotted to assassinate the African American politician Jesse Jackson, and threatened to assassinate US President Jimmy Carter because of his pro-black civil rights views.

Nick Griffin, who was famously convicted for inciting racial hatred after he denied the Holocaust in a 1998 article for the BNP magazine "The Rune", claims that the BNP has become a respectable democratic political party since he took over its leadership from its hardline pro-Nazi founder, John "Mein Kampf is my bible" Tyndall, who led the BNP from when he founded it in 1982 until 1999, but I will show in a moment that respectable Holocaust-denier Nick Griffin's claim may be as incorrect as his view of the Holocaust.

See the Conservative Party blog webpage here to see a picture of Tyndall in a Nazi uniform, and to see the "Mein Kampf is my bible" quote.

Tyndall stayed at Pierce's home in 1979 when he was in the US, and put Pierce up at his home when he visited Britain in 1995, as Tyndall admitted in his 2002 Pierce obituary, "A Great Man Passes On", so personally I really do not have much doubt that Tyndall secretly shared William "Great Man" Pierce's wish to kill billions of people.

If Holocaust denier Nick Griffin's claim that the BNP has become respectable since the Tyndall era is correct, he must have at least distanced himself from Pierce, because of his murderous views, but a "Searchlight" webpage has alleged that Griffin was close to Pierce: "Dr. William Pierce, who before his recent death was one of the world's foremost neo-Nazis and [allegedly] a close ally of Nick Griffin."

That webpage, which is here, also states that Griffin's pamphlet, "Who Are the Mindbenders?", which listed Jews in the British media, was inspired by a Pierce article and pamphlet about Jews in the American media, "Who Runs America?"

A Northamptonshire Racial Equality online article, also alleges that Griffin based his pamphlet on Pierce's article and pamphlet: "Mindbenders is [allegedly] based on Who Rules America?, a similar pamphlet written by Dr. William Pierce, one of the world's foremost neo-Nazis and a self-confessed ally of Nick Griffin."

The same article also said: "The BNP has a long relationship with William Pierce...In August 1999, Pierce addressed an American Friends of the BNP meeting in Arlington, Virginia...Pierce's articles regularly appeared in Spearhead when it was the official BNP magazine, and in 1995 he addressed a BNP rally in London."

So, does Nick Griffin secretly wish that he could also kill billions? He became the BNP leader in September 1999, the month after Pierce spoke to the AFBNP meeting, but he was allegedly a "close ally" of Pierce, and allegedly based his pamphlet on an article and pamphlet which was written by Pierce.

Does Nick Griffin also have the same kind of kill mass media owners fantasies that Pierce had, because on August 11, 1996, Griffin was quoted in the "Wales on Sunday" newspaper as having said: "The politicians, those in charge of the mass media, police chiefs and others responsible for creating this multi-racial hell hole must face trial and pay the ultimate penalty."? That quote is also in the just cited Nothamptonshire Racial Equality Council online article noted above.

What about Mark Cotterill, the founder, and original leader of the England First Party splinter group from the BNP, who was an EFP councillor in Blackburn from 2006 to 2007, and an EFP candidate for Preston City Council in 2009? He went to see William Pierce, and said that he spent three of the most enjoyable and interesting days of his life talking to him, so does Cotterill secretly wish that he too could kill billions of people?

In "Hands Across the Water", an article about the American Friends of the BNP group which was published in the Fall 2001 issue of "Intelligence Report", the quarterly magazine of the American civil rights law firm the Southern Poverty Law Center, you can read:

"His [Cotterill's] networking in the United States began in 1993, when he visited neo-Nazi William Pierce at his National Alliance headquarters in West Virginia.

"'I managed to talk to Dr. Pierce in depth", he wrote later. 'I had three of the most interesting and enjoyable days of my life there, and I hope to make a return visit in the near future.'

"In 1995, Cotterill moved to the United States. He was the U.S. distributor of the British far right publication Right Now! and corresponded with future BNP leader Nick Griffin."

Go here to read the full article about the AFBNP, which was founded by Cotterill. As the article points out, Pierce's "The Turner Diaries" was sold at AFBNP meetings.

According to an Anti-Defamation League webpage in 1999, Pierce gave a speech in Thessaloniki, Greece to members of far right parties from Greece, Portugal, Romania, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Austria, and South Africa, and given how well known "The Turner Diaries" is in far right circles, is it conceivable that the leaders of those parties also did not know about Pierce advocating multiple genocides, 21 years after his "bible of the racist right" novel had been published? Do the leaders of those far right parties secretly wish that they too could kill billions of people?

Pierce's novel is not simply a far right fantasy which will never inspire violence, because it is no secret that a number of fascist terrorists were inspired by it (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, London nail bomber David Copeland, and three American terrorist groups, the Order, the New Order, and the Aryan Republican Army). See the already cited "Guardian" and "Independent" articles, a webpage of the already mentioned and highly respected American civil rights law firm, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and especially the already cited Anti-Defamation League webpage, to read about "The Turner Diaries" inspiring those terrorists.

The SPLC is highly respected because of its tolerance education, because of its informative quarterly magazine about hate groups, "Intelligence Report", which is widely read in American law enforcement circles, and because its compensation for racist violence lawsuits have bankrupted a number of American fascist organisations and leaders in recent decades.

For example, after the White Aryan Resistance skinhead gang killed an Ethiopian student, an SPLC lawsuit against the group and its leader, forced it to pay over $12 million compensation to the student's son, which led to the seizure of all of the assets of the group and its leader.

Another SPLC lawsuit bankrupted the Aryan Nations group by forcing it to pay over $6 milion to a woman and her son who AN members had shot at and beaten up. AN was forced to sell its famous compound to pay the compensation award.

It would be a good idea if European lawyers began using SPLC type lawsuits to bankrupt the BNP, Nick Griffin, and other European fascist organisations and leaders. No doubt the SPLC would be happy to tell European lawyers how to sue fascist groups and leaders, who could also be sued after homophobic violence, or after other types of violence. This SPLC webpage which discusses some of their lawsuits might be helpful.

It is also no secret that "The Turner Diaries" inspired the most notorious American racist murderers of modern times, John William King, Shawn Allen Berry, and Lawrence Russell Brewer, who battered a black man, James Byrd, Jr., and then shackled him to a truck and drove off. When he was shackling Byrd to the truck, King allegedly said: "We're starting "The Turner Diaries" early." See the ADL webpage to read more about Byrd's murder.

David Copeland said that he planted his three nail bombs in London to spark off a race war which would make white Britons vote BNP, and more "Turner Diaries" inspired fascist terrorism could be round the corner, because if you go to the website of the "Searchlight" magazine, and put the word "terrorism" into its search engine, you will find articles which discuss a number of British would-be terrorists who were members of the BNP, or other British far right groups.

See a HOPE not hate anti-fascist group webpage at to read more about former BNP member David Copeland and his attempt to create a race war to make white Britons vote BNP. The HOPE not hate page has a link to a BBC News profile of Copeland which discusses his BNP membership, and his involvement with them.

Hitler worship, pervert sex videos and racist postings of jailed BNP weapons importer Michael Winfield

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Hexapla. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Last month, Nottingham Crown Court jailed BNP member Michael Winfield for illegally importing lethal, offensive weapons he had purchased from a neo-nazi group in the United States. When police raided the home of Michael Winfield back in December 2007, not only did they discover the weapons but also Michael Winfield’s disturbing collection of neo-nazi books, BNP pamphlets, racist stickers and a photograph of himself brandishing a weapon.

In this article, we reveal Michael Winfield’s postings in praise of Hitler and the US neo-nazi killer David Lane; his sex video; and, his racist postings against Jews and Blacks.

Michael Winfield’s praise of Hitler

In the comments section of a YouTube video on failed British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, Michael Winfield, posting as ‘Heckles300’, claims to be devotee of Adolf Hitler in his following posting:

“We adhere ourselves to Hitler and his policies because he was the only man with ebough courage”

Michael Winfield further confirms his devotion to Hitler by ending his tribute to the neo-nazi killer David Lane with ‘Heil Hitler’ in the form of the neo-nazi symbol ‘88’. Eighty-eight is used as code among neo-nazis to identify each other. ‘H’ is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so 88 is taken to stand for HH which in turn means ‘Heil Hitler’. Why one would boast of being an adherent to Hitler, given his failure and private sexual perversions, is incomprehensible to an ordinary, well-adjusted person. But, Hitler, being a massive loser, will always attract other inadequate losers such as BNP member Michael Winfield. Indeed, one only has to look towards past and current BNP leaders such as John Tyndall and Nick Griffin to see that the dark fascination with Hitler is hard-wired in the hard-core malfeasant BNP mind.

Michael Winfield’s praise of David Lane

Posting under his forename, Michael Winfield posted the following message on a nazi website in praise of deceased neo-nazi killer David Lane:

“A great loss to our great movement, he will surely be missed but let us never forget the famous 14 words by which we all should be living by: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children 14/88”

David Lane is one of the most notorious and violent neo-nazis of the modern era. David Lane founded the neo-nazi terrorist group The Order which embarked on a killing and robbery spree across the United States in the 1980s. Prior to founding The Order, David Lane was an organiser for the Klu Klux Klan and then the Aryan Nations. David Lane was eventually jailed for 190 years for, amongst things, the racist killing of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg and racketeering crimes.

Michael Winfield’s pervert sex video

Under the moniker Heckles300, Michael Winfield posted his home-made video ‘XXX Hardcore Porn Advice’ on YouTube. Michael Winfield describes his video as follows:

“the wizard of rothsdale graces us with his presence once again and delivers some extreme advice on cock sex fuck piss shit tag words wanker dead people eat grapes”

That video, featuring a man in a balaclava talking to the camera, can be viewed here:

Michael Winfield’s description of his video is interesting. Given its sexual depravity, it makes a mockery of the BNP’s claim to be an upstanding, moral party.

Michael Winfield’s racist postings against Jews and Blacks

In response to a YouTube video interview by an Asian man with a BNP member, Michael Winfield posted, again as Heckles300, the following racist abuse against Jews and Blacks:

“yeh ya entirely right gee must of been all those spear chucking africoons that came up with all the medical breakthroughs we all take for granted. wow im surprised white people are still alive thank the lord all those greedy money grabbing jews keep us alive by robbing us left right and centre”.

In response to another YouTube video (on the topic of racism), Michael Winfield again racially abuses Jews and Blacks in his following posting:

“fucks sake whoever put this shit up needs to get a life moronic jew fucker probably, ooo hope im not being to racist for you faggit loving jew nigger >:-( "

One is not surprised that a BNP member is publically racially abusing Jews and Blacks.

Michael Winfield as representative of BNP members

With his fascination for all things nazi and Hitler, inspired by the oft-violent contemporary neo-nazi scene in the United States, and racially abusive towards Jews and non-Whites, Michael Winfield is, unsurprisingly, broadly representative of many BNP members. In particular, his praise for David Lane especially stands out. It serves as a timely reminder to the British public of the cross-over between US-based neo-nazi groups and the BNP. Such groups exert a considerable influence on many BNP members who see their racist US counterparts as sources of emulation. BNP members such as Michael Winfield are undoubtedly attracted by their central ideology of an inevitable race-war and have attempted to import their visions for an impending racial apocalypse into the United Kingdom. To date, they have been frustrated by the vigilance of the police and the public. But, we should not let our guard down - the BNP harbours many far-right lunatics such as Michael Winfield who are only too willingly to act on their violent racist impulses and fantasies. Indeed, it is a well documented BNP strategy to whip up racial tensions in major urban centres with a view to exploiting those tensions for electoral gain. We ignore them at our peril.

¡No Pasarán!

Andrew Brons: the genteel face of neo-fascism

British National party MEP and former National Front chairman who started political life in group set up in honour of Hitler

It was on Hitler's birthday, deliberately chosen, that the National Socialist Movement was formed in Britain in the 1960s. It was the first political organisation of the far right that Andrew Brons, the newly-elected British National party MEP for Yorkshire and Humberside, was to join – but not the last.

The group that he signed up to as a teenager had been founded in honour of Hitler by the British fascist leader, the late Colin Jordan. No mention of this early political involvement features on the BNP's website celebrating Brons's victory. Instead, Brons is portrayed just as a "veteran British Nationalist".

Brons, 61, comes from what might be described as the genteel wing of British neo-fascism. He lists William Cobbett, the radical journalist and author of Rural Rides, as his favourite historical person, the Pickwick Papers as his favourite book and Zelig as his favourite film. But his early associations with the far right were when it was at its most overtly racist and before it had started to try to present itself as just another political party.

The group he first joined included among its members people responsible for arson attacks on Jewish property and synagogues. According to the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, which has been tracking his career for decades, Brons appears to have approved. In a letter to Jordan's wife, Brons reported meeting an NSM member who "mentioned such activities as bombing synagogues", to which Brons responded that "on this subject I have a dual view, in that I realise that he is well intentioned, I feel that our public image may suffer considerable damage as a result of these activities. I am however open to correction on this point."

By the 1970s, Brons had moved on the National Front, then the leading far-right group in Britain. He was voted on to the NF's national directorate in 1974 and, as the NF's education officer, he hosted seminars on racial nationalism and tried to give its racism a more "scientific" basis.

After the late John Tyndall left the NF in 1980, Brons was promoted to the post of chairman. Among his allies was Richard Verrall, the author of Did Six Million Really Die?, with whom he edited the NF journal, New Nation. In August 1981 he led a rally in Fulham, west London in support of "rights for whites" and concluded his speech with a call for compulsory repatriation, chanting: "If they're black, send them back." According to Searchlight, in 1982 Brons led an NF march through Northfield on which marchers chanted "We've got to get rid of the blacks".

In June 1984, Brons was convicted by Leeds magistrates of using insulting words and behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace. The court was told that when PC John Raj, the area's community constable, who was of Malaysian origin, told the group to disperse, Brons, then 37, responded: "I am aware of my legal rights. Inferior beings like yourself probably do not appreciate the principle of free speech." Brons denied the allegations at the time and continues to deny them, describing them as "absurd". His challenge to Raj's evidence was not, however, accepted at his subsequent appeal at Leeds crown court.

After drifting out of far-right politics, he became a lecturer in politics and law at a further education college in Harrogate. He joined the BNP in its current incarnation three years ago. Divorced, with two grown-up daughters and four granddaughters, his election platform was that he "would work to expose the activities and corruption of the EU to strengthen Britain's case for withdrawal" and "would co-operate with patriots in other countries who seek to bring the EU to an end".

Sonia Gable of Searchlight said that his past made him a strange choice for a BNP seeking to create a "respectable" image for itself.

"Everyone in the BNP is trying to look respectable and Brons is an odd choice because he was in the NF at its most racist," she said.

She added that she thought Brons had been chosen as a candidate because Nick Griffin, the chairman of the BNP, believed that he would have strong links with far-right organisations in Europe.

The BNP denies being an anti-semitic organisation, and when asked about Brons's involvement with the NSM and the NF and his calls for compulsory repatriation, a spokesman for the party said: "That was nearly 30 years ago, times have moved on … You print what you want."

Guardian

Can the BNP ever lose its racist reputation?

A vandalised British National Party billboard in John Street, Carlisle

Splattered with paint and daubed with the words “Nazi scum”. . . an attack on a British National Party billboard in Carlisle shows emotions are running high ahead of European Parliament and county council elections.

Yet the far-right party, which has condemned the vandalism, insists it has received a positive response from voters across Cumbria as it canvasses for next Thursday’s ballots.

Some remain less enthusiastically inclined towards the BNP though. They are concerned a low turnout or an anti-establishment voting trend – in fury at the Westminster expenses scandal – could play right into the party’s hands and deliver the mass protest vote it has been hoping for. Those worries have triggered a campaign to limit any BNP gains.

Opinions about the BNP have rarely hit the middle ground since its formation in the early 1980s by John Tyndall, a former chairman of the National Front. He was a man photographed in Nazi uniform – without attending fancy dress parties – and who described Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf as his bible.

Other members have also been reported making extreme pro-Nazi, racist or homophobic comments over the years. Mark Collett, the BNP’s director of publicity, was made infamous by the 2002 television documentary Young, Nazi and Proud.

Former deputy leader Tony Lecomber was jailed for possessing explosives in 1985 and again in 1991 for assaulting a Jewish teacher.

Party chairman Nick Griffin, who visited Whitehaven on Saturday, has tried with limited success to rid the party of its racist image. But controversy continues to follow him. He denied the Holocaust ever happened in a party publication in 1996 and received a suspended jail sentence two years later for inciting racial hatred.

Mr Griffin – his party’s lead Euro election candidate for the north west – this week claimed the ‘controlled media’ had resorted to rehashing comments made a decade and a half ago to throw the BNP into a poor light.

“I have gone on record repeatedly as saying such things [Holocaust rejection] were immature politics and all of us have moved on,” he said.

Yet his insistence on having turned a corner has done little to wipe the slate clean of suspicions which still stalk the party. There was outrage last week at the prospect of Mr Griffin attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace. Yesterday he announced he would not be attending the garden party, in order not to embarrass the Queen.

And leading clergymen – including University of Cumbria chancellor Dr John Sentamu – have pleaded with the public not to let the Westminster expenses scandal convert into BNP votes, in protest against the three major parties.

Carlisle Against Racism has been a prominent campaign group against the BNP, which is standing in 42 of the 84 council seats. By the end of this week, it will have distributed 30,000 copies of its anti-BNP leaflets to homes including those in Carlisle, Longtown, Brampton, Penrith, Wigton, Silloth and Alston. Chairman Brent Kennedy believes the newly glossed image of the party – activists wearing suits proffering slick campaign leaflets – could lure many towards an alternative.

“They don’t know about the truth,” he said. “People just see the glossy leaflets – the false image they are physically putting out.”

He and other campaigners have been working to gather support for their work in Carlisle city centre. Mr Kennedy said: “We have had people saying they are going to vote BNP because they are racist. Some are people who are not racist but desperate because of the economic crisis and angry about MPs enriching themselves. On the other hand, a big majority were really supportive. They were thanking us for campaigning against the BNP, which the political parties are not doing.”

The anti-racism activist, who claims he has been attacked and intimidated while carrying out his work, has clear fears should the BNP taste electoral success.

“I’m worried there will be an increase of racist abuse and attacks on people and political opponents of theirs if they get a Euro MP elected. I have already contacted the police about that,” he revealed.

The church has also been drawn into the electioneering arena with Dr Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams urging people to use “great vigilance” when deciding who to vote for. They claimed some parties would exploit the current political situation if elected and said the BNP fostered “fear and division within communities, especially between people of different faiths or racial background”.

“This is not a moment for voting in favour of any political party whose core ideology is about sowing division in our communities and hostility on grounds of race, creed or colour,” they added. “It is an opportunity for renewing the vision of a community united by mutual respect, high ethical standards and the pursuit of justice and peace.”

BNP supporters in Cumbria are undoubtedly in a minority. But in the European elections – where a proportional representation voting system is used to ensure the number of MPs from each political party reflects the share of votes they received regionally – that could be enough to secure a seat. That is a factor which has mobilised trade unions. The Public and Commercial Services Union has launched a Make Your Vote Count campaign, backed by the Northern TUC, and will be in Carlisle on Saturday. May 30.

Regional co-ordinator Gordon Rowntree said: “Because the European elections use proportional representation there is a fear there. In the north west Nick Griffin could be elected. That’s why we’re working to get turnout higher because that would help the other political parties.”

Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s Cumbrian organiser, maintains his party has moved on and away from the racism linked to it in its early days. He said: “All of the opposition or people who would tar us with the same brush are using things from decades ago. It’s not relevant to the party today.”

The activist, who said his chairman did not encounter any aggression in Whitehaven on Saturday and criticised senior churchmen for their comments, vehemently denied his party was racist.

“It’s not racist, fascist or Nazi, as left-wing extremists dub us. I don’t think the majority of people think that now. What we’ve got are left-wing extremists, as I would call them, peddling this kind of rubbish,” he added.

Mr Jefferson also denied activists used any intimidation and said: “If anyone is telling you that, I would like them to tell me. It should be reported to police. This will not be tolerated. That’s not how we go about things. We are a political party.”

He described the vandal attacks on the poster in Caldewgate, Carlisle, as “nasty”.

Polling stations will be open between 7am and 10pm on Thursday, June 4. Cumbria County Council ballot papers will be counted the following day. The European count will be delayed until other countries have voted on June 6 and 7.

News and Star