Kick in the teeth for Liverpool BNP activist

Tony Ward

Two vocal supporters of Eddy Butler’s challenge to Nick Griffin’s leadership of the British National Party have been suspended with immediate effect.

The Liverpool activists Peter Stafford and Tony Ward have received letters from Clive Jefferson, the party’s national organiser who acts as Griffin’s Rottweiler, suspending them “pending an investigation into alleged serious breaches of the BNP Code of Conduct”.

While suspended they are not allowed to take part in any party event. Failure to comply “could result in your expulsion from membership of the Party, and Civil or Criminal proceedings being taken against you”, as if Griffin has not got the BNP embroiled in enough expensive and hopeless legal actions already.

Tony Ward is a long-time activist whom party members held in esteem after he got hit in the head with a hammer when protesters objected to the presence of a BNP campaign trailer in Leigh, Greater Manchester, in March last year. Now, the hammer blow to his head has been followed by a kick in the teeth.

Stafford, who is openly gay and has attracted opprobrium in the BNP because of it, posted on Facebook that Jefferson had been kicked out of a Liverpool BNP meeting last night “when the membership demanded answers he wouldn’t give”.

Stafford continued: “He thought he could throw his weight about and destroy a strong branch and the members would roll over. He was mistaken!”

Hope not Hate

BNP pulls activists away from election campaign on Merseyside

Peter Tierney, Jamie Luby, some other twat and
Gary Lucas, some of Liverpool BNP's roving band of goons

Nick Griffin thinks the BNP have no chance of winning any seats on Merseyside on May 6th. He’s ordered local party workers down to London on two weekends before the election to help canvass in the Barking & Dagenham seat he’s contesting.

Liverpool BNP, like the good little fascists they are, have to obey orders, and are off to London while neglecting their own pathetic campaign here – so much for standing under the slogan of ‘local people first’!

Local people get kicked into touch when fuhrer Nick snaps his fingers.

Griffin’s contempt for Merseyside voters is well known. Having been elected as a North West MEP last June, he’s been virtually invisible in the region, preparing to abandon his constituents here for a cushy London parliamentary seat – and now he’s getting his local band of misfits and thugs to trail down to London to help him.

However, Liverpool Anti-Fascists aren’t going to take time off from our campaign against the BNP. We want to counter their racist lies, minimise their vote as much as we can and ensure they have no success locally.

Liverpool Antifascists

More intimidation tactics by Peter Tierney and Merseyside BNP

Today, activists from Liverpool Antifascists delivered leaflets in Halewood. The event was an overall success, but once again Merseyside BNP revealed that they rely more on intimidation tactics than on politics to get their point across.

As we set off from the Summerfield on Hillfoot Avenue, there was a brief encounter with a BNP supporter. Mistaking the antifascists for the BNP, he had joined us and asked whether Peter Tierney would be turning up soon. One activist explained to him that he was in the wrong group, whilst grabbing the opportunity to offer him a leaflet and explain why the BNP were not the party for anybody genuinely concerned with the plight of the working class. Events later in the day suggested that an antifascist making a similar mistake would have gotten more than a leaflet.

Despite the gloomy weather, there was a good turnout of activists, who managed to cover a significant area and deliver 500 leaflets in the surrounding working class estates. The event was extremely succesful and, as with a leafleting session around the shops the previous week, the response from the public was an overwhelmingly positive one.

On the way back to the original meeting point, however, we encountered Peter and Andrew Tierney. The brothers, along with an unidentified third fascist, had been delivering leaflets of their own and were just about to leave in Peter’s Land Rover. When they recognised several of the antifascists, however, they were quick to grab their cameras and start taking pictures.

Within moments, they were circling around the tired group of leafleters, taking photos as close as they could and chasing around those who tried to turn their face away. Their clear aim was to intimidate and provoke a small group of passers-by (at this point, they had distributed all their material and had nothing on them to identify their allegiances) which included two women, one of them elderly. At one point Peter, still awaiting trial for assaulting an antifascist back in April, referred to one man as a “shithouse” for not rising to the provocation. His brother Andrew, whose photographs and videos have emerged on Redwatch and various other neo-Nazi hate sites, suggested instigating a third-party assault. “Let’s get some local lads in, nothing to do with us, of course,” were his exact words, after feigning gangster-status by declaring that the leafleters should leave because “this is our territory.”

However, Liverpool Antifascists held our ground. If we had left, we risked being followed, which left individuals particularly vulnerable once they had to part ways. And if we had arisen to the provocation, it looked as though more BNP supporters would have emerged from the nearby pub to support the Tierney brothers. Instead, we stayed where we were until the two thugs got bored, seeing they weren’t getting a rise, and scuttled off.

To those familiar with the BNP, or indeed the Tierneys, this incident will come as no surprise. It also serves as a timely reminder that the party remain, despite their propaganda line, violent goons willing to threaten and intimidate anybody who dares oppose their fascist politics.

We must make sure, no matter what, that these thugs are not allowed to gain ground in Liverpool, Knowsley, or elsewhere.

¡No Pasarán!

Liverpool Antifascists

BNP member Peter Tierney denies assaulting anti-fascist demonstrator

Protestors outside Liverpool Magistrate's Court today

A well-known member of the British National Party has denied assaulting an anti-facist demonstrator on St George's Day.

Peter Tierney, 52, is charged with assaulting a protestor in St John's Lane near St George's Hall on April 23 this year. He pleaded not guilty to the attack which allegedly left a man with a cut on the back of his head. The protestors were said to have been handing out leaflets protesting against the BNP earlier that day.

Tierney, wearing a black suit, wore his long brown hair in a ponytail and his six-inch beard in a plait as he stood in the dock at Liverpool magistrates' court yesterday. He pleaded not guilty to one charge of committing assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Demonstrators protesting against his party gathered outside the court building in Dale Street before the hearing. Several police officers stood outside the court.

Tierney, of High Street, Hale Village, opted to have the matter dealt with at the crown court.The case will be committed to the crown court on October 29.

Liverpool Daily Post

Peter Tierney arraigned for assaulting anti-fascist

As Peter Tierney of Liverpool BNP was arraigned for smashing an anti-fascists head in with a camera tripod, protesters organised by the magistrates court in opposition to fascist violence. But much more can be done.

Today, BNP "super-activist" Peter Tierney was arraigned at the Liverpool Magistrates Court on assault charges. On St George's Day, he split open a man's head with a camera tripod during an attack perpetrated by him and Steve Greenhalgh on anti-fascists who had managed to organise opposition to the party's city-centre leafleting on a moment's notice. Despite accusing another anti-fascist of attacking him, Tierney was eventually arrested and charged by Merseyside police.

In response, the BNP claimed that it was in fact they, "including women and elderly folk," who were "suddenly physically attacked" by "a mob of violent Tory and Labour-supported UAF thugs." These "thugs," of course, being local anti-fascists who were not "harassing" Tierney and his fellow fascists but leafleting against them and their lies.

In the run up to the court-date, the BNP mailing list urged armchair fascists to "email or phone the Crown Prosecution service," in an attempt to subvert the course of justice with a flood of crank calls. Merseyside BNP also called on "all democratic, peace loving Nationalists" to show "support" for Tierney by protesting outside the court.

Today, however, after Merseyside antifascists organised an opposition rally to "show the BNP that we won’t tolerate their racism and violence in Liverpool or anywhere else," the story was somewhat different. Around fifty anti-fascists turned up at the Magistrates Court to protest both the fascist gathering and Tierney's violence, but the BNP were nowhere to be seen.

On the other side of the road from the antifascist gathering, however, four known local fascists - believed to be of the British Freedom Fighters (BFF) rather than the BNP - gathered to jeer at the protesters and take pictures. In response, many in the crowd produced their phones to photograph the snoops whilst a chant of "I'm on Redwatch and I don't care" started up. Eventually, the four slipped away to massive jeering, though not before skulking under the nearby motorway bridge to take a few more photographs.

Inside the court, meanwhile, Tierney was decidedly the worse for wear, looking as though he was "off his face on some or other substance" and being unable to remember his own address. His bail conditions, namely a ban from Liverpool city centre, were reimposed, and he will stand trial on September 3rd. It is vital that anti-fascists come out to demonstrate their opposition to Tierney's violent thuggery once again.

However, although today's protest served its stated purpose well, I can't help thinking that it could have been better done. Although local Liverpool anti-fascists were the first to call a demonstration, it was Unite Against Fascism (UAF) who quickly dominated the event, with UAF and trade union "leaders" there as speakers. One major problem I have with the UAF and similar organisations is that theirs is an opposition to the extreme right centred on hierarchy and authority, with a lot of neglect as regards grassroots organisation.

In Liverpool we do not simply need a band of people who will come out to hold banners at protests in "safe" areas pre-arranged with the police. What we need is solid, grassroots organisation of activists who will not just come out to shout "scum" at fascists but also mobilise their community, engage with ordinary people, and combat the ideology as much as the physical presence of fascism. We need to be there in great numbers when fascists come out, and to present genuine opposition - not to simply negotiate with police to sell the Socialist Worker in an area of their choosing. Most importantly, we need a movement that is tied into class-struggle, not one that tries to turn people off the BNP by directing them towards a government enacting their worst policies.

Successful anti-fascist movements recognise that real power lies with the people, not with "leaders" and "spokespersons." Moreover, they organise with the aim of taking back the streets from fascists wherever and whenever they may be, and they realise that asking police permission to occupy a small corner for a short time does not even come close to this goal. Tierney and his fellow thugs must be opposed, not by bureaucrats with a permit but by ordinary people with cries of "¡No Parasan!"

Truth, Reason and Liberty