New Right

It’s been a big few weeks for far right meetings. Just under a fortnight ago the crème de la crème of British fascists met in Preston to once more pick over the bones of their unlamented fallen Fuhrer John Tyndall, the founder of the modern BNP who died in 2005.

This weekend as many as 200 dissenters within the BNP, led by renegade MEP Andrew Brons, are meeting in the Midlands to discuss whether there is any future in the BNP. Rather like at the Tyndall meeting, these people will be more united in what they oppose (namely BNP leader Nick Griffin) than anything else. According to Griffin, this evening, this meeting will see the launch of a new nationalist party - which we are supposed to be behind!

Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Griffin’s “mainstream” BNP are also gearing up for their forthcoming meeting/conference/wake, which is likely to attract a pitifully small turnout.

Finally, a coalition of some of the finest Jew hating conspiracy theorists around are having a meeting of their own. And, in time honoured far right tradition, they are having a factional split of their own. The “New Right” is a quasi-intellectual political group formed by the former National Front activist Troy Southgate and unites various strands of far right thinking into a bi-monthly talking shop.

Having split into two warring factions, they’re aptly enough holding their next meeting in a London pub on the 5th November. The who’s who of the group makes for interesting reading. One faction is led by a professed “National Anarchist” and the other by a man who until recently boasted of working for Military Intelligence.

The New Right

The New Right is a quasi-intellectual political group formed by the former National Front activist Troy Southgate. Helping him to organise New Right is Jonathan Bowden.

The group was formed to unite various strands of far right thinking into a regular talking shop where “Intellectual” extremists from all over the world could meet and talk over their poisonous ideas.

United under the banner of The New Right, Holocaust deniers, anti Semites and racists young and old gather on a bi monthly basis to swap their ideas in one of London’s many back street public houses.

New Right organisers

Troy Southgate
A self-described “National Anarchist”, Southgate is a former Political Soldier and a prolific biographer of obscure political figures. A onetime adherent of the “radical” leadership surrounding Nick Griffin, Southgate moved out of the NF in the very early 90’s with the “Political Soldiers” before falling foul of the chief exponent of radical catholic fascism, Derek Holland.
Before discovering “National Anarchism”, Southgate led the "English Nationalist Movement" and the "National Revolutionary Faction" both of which dissolved and which he ran prior to the New Right. He is the vocalist in the band H.E.R.R and plays in numerous “Neo Folk” bands.

Jonathan Bowden
The BNP’s former "cultural" officer, Bowden is the chairman of “The New Right”. Initially a member of the Conservative party, Bowden was involved with “The Monday Club” and “The Revolutionary Conservative Caucus” two far right Conservative pressure groups in the 1990's where he made the acquainance of solicitor Adrian Davies.
He has previously been deputy chair of “The Western Goals Institute” an anti communist and anti immigrant group based on the US group of the same name.
He fancies himself as both an artist and a playwright, though few others share his passion for his own work.

Key supporters

Kieren Trent
Trent is often seen at New Right meetings. Has been involved with a host of far right groups including the National Front and British Movement and more recently, the BNP.
Trent once set up his own tiny group “The English National Resistance” whose main objective seemed to involve fly posting and graffiti. Took part in vicious assault on Asian youths with Matt Tait and ex London BNP organiser Bob Bailey during the 2010 election campaign in Barking.
Was photographed delivering English Democrat campaign material with Chris Beverley and Matt Tait earlier this year, has also attempted to ingratiate himself with dissident Irish Republican groups.


Matthew Tait
A regular face at New Right meetings, Tait is the former Maidenhead BNP organiser. Once seen as a potential “high flyer” within the BNP, Tait attended and spoke at the far-right American Renaissance conference in North Virginia in 2010, as well as a German Neo Nazi demo in Dortmund in the same year.
Another regular and failed candidate, Tait joined Kieren Trent and ex London BNP organiser Bob Bailey in the assault on a group of Asian youths during the 2010 elections in Barking & Dagenham.


Richard Edmonds
Ageing Holocaust denier and nazi, Edmonds recently switched from the BNP back to the National Front and in the process finally turned his back on the party he helped form with his mentor John Tyndall.
A convicted thug and vicious racist, Edmonds announced his intention to stand against BNP Leader Nick Griffin for the BNP's leadership earlier this year, but stood aside to allow Andrew Brons to challenge instead. He is closely linked to several German holocaust deniers and regularly attends hardline nazi gatherings across the continent.


Pete Rushton
Another Holocaust denier, Rushton has also travelled the world spreading hatred and Anti-semitism. Has been in just about every tiny and insignificant fascist grouping in this country, never staying long however. He began his political life in the British National Party, before being expelled by Nick Griffin for allegedly being a Searchlight spy. He is currently deputy editor of Mark Cotterill's magazine Heritage and Destiny and recently helped organise the John Tyndall memorial meeting in Preston. He is regularly in the company of Michele Renouf, both here and abroad.

Some of the speakers at past New Right events

Norman Lowell
Maltese Anglophile and Anti-Semite Norman Lowell is the leader of the minuscule Maltese party “Imperium Europa”. Lowell Describes Adolf Hitler as his hero and has labelled the holocaust as “The Holy Hoax” and has also praised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In 2008 Lowell was convicted of racial hatred and insulting the Maltese president for which he received a two year suspended sentence.




Dr Tomislav Sunic
A former Croatian diplomat and professor in the US, Sunic is a director of “The American Third Position” a far right white nationalist political party.
Sunic has shared platforms with a number of Holocaust deniers. In 2003 he spoke alongside convicted terrorist Horst Mahler who is currently serving a 12 year prison sentence in Germany for Holocaust denial, at a conference sponsored by Germany’s Neo Nazi party the NPD. Sunic is a regular speaker on the far-right scene in this country.



Adrian Davies
Former member of the Tory-right, Davies has flirted with the extreme far-right in this country since the 1980’s. In the 1990’s he joined up with some BNP rebels to form a new party after they walked out during one of that party’s earlier financial traumas. A barrister by trade, Cambridge educated Davies has registered a new political party in what would appear to be a premature move to align with Andrew Brons’s rebels.




Michele Renouf
Former model and actress, Australian born Renouf is a staunch defender of a number of well known Holocaust deniers including David Irving, Robert Faurisson, Richard Williamson, Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zündel and countryman Fredrick Töben. Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem told “The Australian” newspaper: "This woman is especially dangerous... she can put a pretty face on a very ugly movement."
Renouf has previously described Judaism as a "repugnant and hate-filled religion”. She attended a “Holocaust denial” conference hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entitled “Holocaust Review: A Global Vision” in Tehran in December 2006. Others at the conference included former KKK leader David Duke.


Martin Webster
The last living link to the leadership of the National Front of the 1970’s. Webster has remained on the sidelines of the far-right in this country since being forced out of the NF back in 1983. A vicious racist and Anti-Semite, Webster gave a series of interviews in 1999 claiming that he once had an intimate relationship with a young Nick Griffin, when the future BNP leader was in the National Front.




Jeremy Bedford-Turner
One of the most interesting people to have been involved in the New Right is Jeremy Bedford-Turner, or Jez as he is known within the far right. He has boasted of being a serving soldier in the Royal Signal Corp, which, according to the Army’s website are “leaders in information technology and communications” and “provide the Army with communications throughout the world.”

Despite his self-pro-claimed intelligence links, which includes speaking Pashtun and allegedly being a translator for Military Intelligence, Jez has been a leading member of the New Right network for several years, organising meetings and speakers. He is also a leading figure in the Friends of Oswald Mosley group.

He is a member of an Army club in Pall Mall and regularly takes his fascist friends there after New Right meetings. Bedford-Turner was pushed out of New Right during the summer after Troy Southgate claimed that he was a security risk. Of course this is nonsense as Southgate had known of Jez’s army links for several years. Indeed, Bedford-Turner was questioned by police during a British People’s Party meeting in Paddington in July 2008 and later claimed that he was subsequently questioned by Military Police as a result. Rather, Southgate appears to have become jealous of Bedford-Turner’s growing prominence within the group and simply used his army links as an excuse.

Cast adrift, Bedford-Turner has now launched IONA, taking the name of a National Front affiliated group of the 1980s which was run by Richard Lawson. The first IONA meeting was held in August and was addressed by Jonathon Bowden, Dr Alexander Jacob and Prof Andrew Fraser. His next meeting was a month later was billed to be addressed by Bowden and Lady Michele Renoulf.

Bedford-Turner has also formed a close relationship with the Holocaust Denier, Bishop Richard Williamson.

After being denounced for his links with Military Intelligence Bedford-Turner recently claimed that he left the Army in August. Questions remain. If he is genuinely a right wing extremist then why did the British Army allow him to remain in post? If he was working for his employers then why did so many of Britain’s far right fascist leaders did not question his involvement earlier given that he has been boasting about his job since he first got involved?

Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate

Fish supper and a dry sherry?

Trent: Not waving - saluting!

Invites have gone out for this year's BNP AGM. I'm pleased to inform one and all that I have my invite here in front of me, but it does cause such a dilemma.

I used to go to the BNP's Red, White & Blue festivals and report back on the drunken fights, threats and Nazi songs around the camp fire. Heavens, one year I even had to report how one of the BNP's councillors attacked another member with a broken glass.

It was never quite the highlight of my social calendar, but it got me out of the house and it caused no end of upset to the BNP knowing that I had been there. One year they even stopped proceedings to demand I stand up and reveal myself. I declined, obviously.

So this year, the question is whether I should risk it all by having one last sneaky look into the party's near defunct machinery. But there is another problem, too: I'm allowed to bring a guest with me!!

Normally on boring functions I take Matthew Collins with me. He tends to liven the event, sometimes I even just send him in my place. But to a BNP AGM I don't think that would get past even the BNP's radar. Plus, Matty has been to a few of his own. His book talks about them all Nazi saluting and brawling in the bar at York Hall in London in the early nineties so I don't see him as being much use in sitting quietly at the back munching on his meal deal from Boots the chemist-no matter how much he does like the sandwich combo.

No, for this year it has to be someone quite special. if I'm going to make a weekend of it at £50 per head including a buffet lunch and a gala dinner it will need to be someone who can sit quietly and not ask any questions during the advertised Q&A session. The BNP describe it as an opportunity to "hone your political skills" but everyone knows that asking questions is a sure fire way to get yourself thrown out of the party. And we wouldn't want that. Here's what normally happens when people ask difficult questions at BNP meetings.

I'll be interested particularly in the presentation by "Operation Fightback" currently led by Adam Walker, the BNP officer who is probably more likely to be presenting "giving my car back" given his latest legal difficulties. "Operation Fightback" is, according to the BNP a "counter-attack measures against the enemies of our country, our heritage and our people".

This presentation should be good as we also have the opportunity to meet "charismatic Carlos" the BNP's London candidate for the GLA. Carlos Cortiglia, who is Uruguayan (don't ask me!) spoke out in favour of Argentina during the Falklands war. Translated from an interview given in Spanish, Carlos once said "I am Argentine East, in other words, Uruguayan by birth, and I feel very emotionally linked to Argentina. In 1982 I volunteered to go to the Falkland Islands”. Should be fun...

Then there is the update from the BNP's "number one" MEP (i.e. the only one that still talks to them). That MEP, Nick Griffin, will give an update on the "fight to take Britain out of the EU". Maybe I should take a bookmaker with me? I'll be quids in if I bet that Griffin is out of the European Parliament long before this country is. Of course, I can't take the BNP's very own bookmaker Martin Wingfield, he seems to have also fallen from favour with the party too. Bad Martin, no Argentine corned beef for you!

The real treat will be for me and many others I'm sure, the presentation by "Resistance" the BNP's "militant youth wing" who seem to have a logo very similar to that of the EDL. What with Carlos being "charismatic", I'm sure Kieren Trent will be going all out to beat Carlos with his own presentation skills. Usually these involve Nazi saluting and long winded speeches against homosexuals. I know there will be some at the AGM wanting to have a word in his ear about his other "talents", particularly after his recent attempted foray into the world of Irish republicanism from where he was apparently given short shrift.

So there you have it. Dress down for the occasion and whatever you do, do not ask difficult questions. It's not the great "British" affair of yesterday as the BNP would like to have it, but that says more (thankfully) about Britain than it does about the BNP. This year's AGM is going to be less about talk (well it would be, wouldn't it), and more about "action".

The chances are it will be court action.

Hope not hate

The falling out continues

As I predicted, with the BNP in meltdown and a number of activists' going missing or into hiding, the BNP's press officer Simon Darby prefers to offer us on his blog pictures of his dinner instead of giving us a response as to the absolute mess the BNP is in internally.

My colleague Matthew tells me that all being well there should be another story about the BNP in the Northern Irish press this weekend, one that I admit has had us all highly amused. So good it is, that Simon Darby may well end up photographing himself stuffing a chicken before jumping into the oven with it!

Elsewhere, the BNP's North East regional organiser Cheryl Dunn who was arrested last week, is threatening to quit the party having "had enough" of the internal bickering and infighting, much of which it seems is being directed at her and her partner, the BNP's Youth Leader Kieren Trent. Most of this stems from the picture of her boyfriend giving the Nazi salute that leaked out last week. While she is bitterly defending him her former partner is languishing in prison allegedly as a result of an assault on Trent. Is it any wonder the party has done such little campaigning over the last week or so?

Trent, who we have written about here http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=347 was originally regarded as a future leader of the BNP, but to say his head has been turned of late would be an understatement. Cheryl seems to be taking a lot of the flack for not just that, but also her former partner's current predicament. If Dunn does keep her promise to quit that would be another huge headache for Griffin as she was just about the last Griffinite left in the region. He won't want to lose Dunn because as she writes, she wants the "white race to be preserved not inbred and ran by jews" (sic)

Not helping is that Trent has himself apparently announced that "Resistance" the BNP youth wing that he heads, is no longer aligned to any Nationalist party. As well as giving Nazi salutes, it looks like he is quite happy to pose in front of any old flag or poster. For someone so young, the "Young, Angry & White" Mr Trent has been in something like five different organisations’ already, including the National Front, British Movement and English National Resistance.

We are being sent so many pics and stories by disgruntled and fed up BNP members that our in boxes are overflowing. Some of these pictures are not fit for publication, such is the ire of scorned Nazis these days.

The fall out from the BNP's antics in Yorkshire on St George's day also continues. Former corrupt police officer Simon Goodricke who is supposed to be the regional organiser for Yorkshire is getting most of the criticism for the behaviour of his underlings. Being photographed with his trousers at his ankles while a number of the party's candidates posed with fake firearms has not endeared him to party leaders at all.

We're still working away here and will continue to do so right up until the polls close next week. Help us to keep the BNP out.

https://donate.hopenothate.org.uk/page/contribute/donate-for-hope



Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate/Searchlight

Young, angry and on the rise

The Young BNP, followed by the short-lived “BNP Crusaders” and now “Resistance” are intended to represent Nick Griffin’s personal ideological legacy to the “movement”.

Having temporarily succeeded in masking elements of his own dubious political history, Griffin is trying to forge the future of his party on a quasi-paramilitary outfit for people aged 18 to 30 with lashings of hearty, white Britishness thrown in. These new “Young Turks” are presented as driven by the wholesome love of their country and untainted like so many of their peers by Nazism and racial hatred.

Since its inception, the BNP’s youth wing has been surrounded by older gun nuts and heavy drinkers. The YBNP with its Nazi volk imagery was supposed to encourage teenage party members to adopt a healthy outdoor lifestyle by playing with knives and airguns while dressed in paramilitary costumes. Around camp fires junior nazis got drunk and engaged in “healthy” teenage debauchery.

After a series of national newspaper exposés, the YBNP morphed into the BNP Crusaders as the party continued to search for a long-term replacement for Griffin. Because of that wider context, a position in the leadership of the youth, or now “young adult”, wing of the BNP is an honour for young white patriots who can thereby present themselves as the future leaders of the BNP.

Among the alumni of the BNP’s youth leadership are Mark Collett, who disgraced himself on national television (more than once), Griffin’s daughter Jennifer, the argumentative Danny Lake, who was sacked by a text message telling him to “p*** off”, and the party’s appalling karaoke recording “artist” Joey Smith. But now, raise your right arms for the fiery star of Channel 4’s 2010 documentary Young, Angry and White, Kieren Trent.

Trent, who is articulate and working class, was seen as something of a boutique acquisition for the party. Certainly angry and white, Trent had been filmed contemplating the temptations of the rival National Front and “autonomous nationalists” of the now-defunct English National Resistance.

Trent’s personal life was a bit of a gift to amateur psychologists. His mother had fled two abusive relationships with Kieren in tow while his father made a new life with a new wife and family elsewhere in the country. Trent, 20, also exhibited a puritan view on sex and relationships, castigating open-mouthed friends as “degenerate”, in particular on the issues of homosexuality and inter-racial relationships, courting unchallenged controversy in a bid for further attention. He even went as far as to check his girlfriend’s ethnicity.

Someone so young with so many insecurities and hang-ups was ideal to head the BNP’s youth section. In February, Trent was named as the leader of the latest incarnation of the young BNP, Resistance, at its launch in a London pub.

His elevation came despite a strange incident the previous month. An interest in European fascism and trips to Europe with other BNP officers and members had stirred Trent’s interest in his own Irish ancestry, always a tricky subject in the BNP. In January he tried to attend a Bloody Sunday commemoration meeting in Conway Hall, London, held jointly by the Republican Network for Unity and the Irish Republican Prisoners’ Support Group, both of which campaign, among other things, for recognition of dissident Irish republican prisoners.


Recognised by the stewards and barred, Trent entered into a long and pained discussion in which he portrayed his membership of the BNP as his own struggle for national liberation, likening it to membership of Irish republican groups. Not only could he reconcile the two, he claimed their interests were mutual. He also offered up some less than complimentary opinions about members of his party, but was still given short shrift.

However Trent has developed other new and potentially dangerous interests.

It seems the girlfriend whose ethnicity Trent doubted has been kicked to the kerb to be replaced by an older woman well known to BNP watchers. The new belle on Trent’s arm is none other than the North East organiser Cheryl Dunn from Hartlepool. This “love match” has caused no end of problems for Trent and the BNP as Dunn already had a partner, the one-time Hartlepool BNP organiser Peter King.

King was convicted last year for racially aggravated harassment and possessing an offensive weapon. Dunn described her relationship with King, a man blessed by a notoriously short fuse, as “violent and abusive” on an internet forum.

With Dunn at Northumbria University and King working in London, opportunity knocked and Dunn and Trent started an affair, sharing as much time together at BNP events as possible.

Eventually the inevitable happened and King found out.

When Trent and Dunn attended a recent BNP event in London together, King confronted the couple, violently assaulting Trent in front of several BNP members. The police were called and King was arrested and remanded in custody. Trent’s injuries were so bad that he was taken to hospital.

Another rising young star is Jordan Pont from Sheffield, the Yorkshire organiser of Resistance. Pont, 21, is known for his Facebook rants against people he feels are holding him back from achieving his ambitions in the party. In a high risk strategy, he even described some of Griffin’s most trusted lieutenants as “useless” when he was demanding last year that he be imposed on the BNP’s Sheffield branch as its organiser.

Now safely ensconced in this role, Jordan has become a loyal Griffinite, but initially toyed with joining the BNP Reform group, which wants to depose Griffin as leader. After a change of heart he dramatically stormed out of a meeting addressed by the party renegade Eddy Butler who is touring the country trying to organise the anti-Griffin movement.

Keen on self promotion, Pont filmed and posted on YouTube his own (dreadful) party political broadcast in support of his campaign to get elected to Sheffield council in East Ecclesfield. He is also a keener participant on internet forums, where he drives home his extreme dislike of Muslims and Islam. In one attack on a critic of the party, Pont rounded on an accusation that the BNP admired Adolf Hitler. Exploding into another of his semiliterate rants, he raged. “How can you say we admire Hitler. Hitler enjoyed having muslims [sic] in his SS, He loved the Islamic Faith! The BNP aren’t to [sic] fond on Muslims and i [sic] for one is against the Islamic Faith.”

Pont’s rise up the BNP ladder has cost him one friendship. Tom Holmes, another young party member with a rather colourful online persona, has taken to posting articles attacking Pont on the internet in a bid to draw unwelcome attention to Pont and thwart his ambitions.

Holmes and Pont initially fell out when Pont accused Holmes of grooming a young girl. Holmes did not deny it but said he had been duped. Holmes now spends time on the British Democracy Forum, Facebook and Indymedia website, posting messages against Pont and the BNP generally, which he feels has overlooked his own brilliant leadership potential. Their dispute could rumble on for a while yet.

Thanks to Searchlight

BNP youth leader arrested

Kieren Trent, leader of the British National Party’s “young adults” organisation Resistance, was arrested by Thames Valley Police yesterday (Sunday), according to a report on a far-right activist’s blog. His computer equipment was seized.

The arrest followed a demonstration in Wolverton, Milton Keynes, against a local councillor who voted in favour of granting planning permission to Bletchley mosque. Councillor Mike Galloway, a Liberal Democrat, is a member of the Milton Keynes Development Control Committee, which deals with planning applications, and chair of the Local Development Framework Advisory Group.

Bletchley mosque has been the target of BNP opposition since last autumn, with Trent leading several protests.

Trent and another person were held in custody on suspicion of committing an offence under section 5 of the Public Order Act – disorderly behaviour, the report said. If convicted he could be fined.

The report says the demonstration forms part of a new approach to activism consisting of “explaining the failures of an individual councillor to their immediate neighbours and ensuring that the community realise who is responsible for the changes that are coming about”.

It seems more a new excuse for harassment than anything else. Trent, who has stood unsuccessfully for election to Milton Keynes council, was one of a group of BNP activists involved in a violent confrontation with Asian youths in Barking a few days before last year’s general election. The incident was caught on film, posted on YouTube, but Trent was not charged despite being clearly visible landing blows and kicks to someone on the ground.

Hope not hate

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up