BNP activist told he is liable for unpaid debt

Adam Walker - broke as well as weird

A judge has ruled a North- East BNP activist is personally liable for unpaid debts following a county court hearing which could have far reaching consequences for the cash-strapped party.

District Judge David Robertson ruled that Adam Walker, of Spennymoor, County Durham, must pay £21,000 out of his own pocket to the party’s former graphic designer, Mark Adrian Collett.

A case brought by Mr Collett against the BNP itself, thought to be £700,000 in debt, was dismissed, but the judgement against Mr Walker could still spell disaster for the party. It paves the way for other creditors to take action against activists, who could be declared bankrupt and therefore barred or even stopped from holding political office at any level.

Durham County Court heard on Monday that Mr Collett, 30, was employed as the extreme far right party’s principal graphic designer and Mr Walker was a senior officer and staff manager.

The BNP was described as an unincorporated association with no corporate identity which left senior officers responsible for contracts.

An agreement was made on September 9, last year, between Mr Collett and both Mr Walker and the BNP, which Mr Collett said had been breached. Mr Collett said he only received £750 from the BNP, instead of the £7,500 he claimed was due at the time and, as a result, said the full amount of £15,750 was now liable.

District Judge Robertson awarded Mr Collett £14,250 plus £7,333.60 costs against Mr Walker, but dismissed Mr Collett’s claim against the party.

The BNP’s money woes were highlighted last year when former chief fundraiser James Downson wrote letters to creditors, seen by The Northern Echo, offering 20 per cent settlements. Mr Dowson told Newton Press, a printing firm in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, which is owed £16,500 for printing its newsletters, that the finances were like a “shipwreck”.

Newton Press confirmed last night that the debt was still outstanding.

Mr Walker, 42, of Winchester Court, Spennymoor, said last night he respected the judge’s decision and would do his utmost to comply with the judgement.

He added: “The contract was signed in good faith as party manager and at that time that was my job. I’m not the treasurer and I don’t decide where the money goes.”

Mr Walker, who represented himself against a barrister and a senior solicitor, said he was grateful the judge dismissed an application for the senior solicitor’s fees.

The former teacher said: “To anybody else in a similar position, I would say they should be very cautious about legal fees.”

Northern Echo

Griffin scrapes through...

Walker (in uniform) as Griffin blows a raspberry

I'm hearing reports that unlike his political hero Colonel Gaddafi, Nick Griffin has managed to survive another day- but not such good news for the BNP's party manager Adam Walker.

Walker is currently up on charges relating to alleged drink driving and chasing youngsters around with a knife. Not bad for a former teacher some might say!

Today I've heard from a good source that Walker's elevation to the higher echelons of the sycophants' who currently surround and protect their glorious leader finally found its price.

Approximately £21,000 it has just cost Walker I'm told, including costs. A court ruled that it was Walker who should foot the bill for the outstanding monies owed to the BNP's former pin-up boy Mark Collet.

People may recall the circumstances surrounding Collet's departure from the party last year, when it was alleged by the Griffin camp that he had among other things, conspired to murder Griffin.

Today Collet had his day in court. Durham County Court to be precise. Poor Adam Walker, facing a possible driving ban was told he now has to foot the bill for the BNP's gung-ho attitude towards the law. After his other "incident", he does not even have his old teaching job to fall back on.

Hope not hate

Newsflash – Chris Beverley defects to the English Democrats

Chris Beverley, a Leeds BNP stalwart and personal assistant to Andrew Brons, the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber has defected to the English Democrats Party (EDP) and is standing for them as a candidate in the forthcoming local elections in Leeds.

Beverley, who is also Brons Constituency Officer manager and the BNP’s long term link-man with the openly neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany is standing for the EDP in Morley South on 5 May. Beverley was also responsible for posting photographs of anti-BNP campaigners to Redwatch together with his then sidekick Mark Collett whose pronouncements on the virtues of the Hitler and the Third Reich became widely known as a result of the undercover television documentary Young, Nazi and Proud.

The move comes after Beverley, who is well liked and respected within the BNP, was recently suspended by the party chairman Nick Griffin as part of his on-going war on internal dissent within the party which has become increasingly vocal in its criticism of his lacklustre leadership.

Beverely who describes his decision to defect to the EDP as “huge” has promised to reveal his reasons to for defecting from the BNP tomorrow morning. “I am very excited about the coming campaign,” said Beverley, “and am proud to have been selected as a candidate for the English Democrats”.

Quite how EDP members themselves will react when news filters down that the party leadership have allowed a hard line fascist to join their ranks will be of interest.

Hope not hate

Decline and fall but not the far right’s end

Few will lament the BNP’s travails, says Sonia Gable. But something worse may supersede it

The British National Party came out of the European Parliamentary election in June 2009 with two MEPs, albeit by the slenderest of margins. These gains – which could have been greater, had it not been for a strong anti-fascist campaign – boosted the party’s respectability and finances, and enabled several BNP activists to move onto the European parliamentary staff payroll. They also led to an appearance on the BBC’s Question Time in October last year for BNP leader Nick Griffin and opened the possibility that the party would take control of its first council in May 2010.

Eighteen months on, the BNP is disintegrating. Party officers have been expelled and it cannot pay its bills. It has lost half its district councillors and its London Assembly member, who now sits as an independent. It is contesting few council by-elections and where it fights, it gets few votes. Members are leaving and it faces crippling legal costs if the High Court rules against the party in the action brought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over racial discrimination in its constitution.
The BNP’s collapse is not really surprising and is the result of several factors coming together. A dysfunctional party of bigots and extremists who prefer bickering among themselves to campaigning, led by a man who cannot bear genuine democracy, reason and compromise, and whose only real skill is in political intrigue and playing off one faction against another, could only go so far. Few people with any professional ability or management skills are attracted to the party and any who have been given party positions – which are in the sole gift of Griffin – have been removed as soon as they inevitably clashed with him. Others are promoted far beyond their ability on the back of their unquestioning support for their leader.

Many members were disillusioned after the BNP’s abysmal failure in the general and council elections in May. Right up until polling day, Griffin had held out the hope of taking control of Barking and Dagenham council and winning parliamentary seats. “We stand on the brink of a massive breakthrough”, he emailed supporters on May 3.

The heightened interest in the contest between the three main parties was only partly to blame for the wipe-out of the BNP. A massive campaign by Hope Not Hate dealt a heavy blow, especially in Barking and Dagenham, where the party’s 12 councillors all lost their seats. And Griffin’s mind was not fully on the campaign, as he was preoccupied with laboriously rewriting the party constitution in an attempt to get away with minimum compliance with race relations legislation, while taking the opportunity to insert provisions to consolidate his absolute power in the party and make it near impossible to challenge his leadership. Only a fascist party would give such power to one individual.

Five weeks before the election came the shock revelation that the BNP’s head of publicity had been arrested for threatening to kill Griffin. Mark Collett, who was in charge of producing the BNP’s election literature, was also accused of “financial irregularities and scamming” and of trying to sabotage the party’s campaign. He was suspended from membership and Eddy Butler, the BNP’s national elections officer, accused of conspiring with him, was relieved of his post.

Collett, who notoriously featured in the television documentary Young, Nazi and Proud, in which he said he was inspired by images of German Nazis “sieg heiling” in the streets, was unpopular within the BNP. In accusing him of financial irregularities, Griffin was undoubtedly trying to deflect attention from his own long record of financial mismanagement that would eventually result in the party’s near bankruptcy.

Searchlight has long been on the trail of the BNP’s dodgy finances. For the past few years, BNP national treasurers have lasted only a few months in the job. In 2004, a new treasurer shredded the financial records held by his predecessor. Accounts are delivered late to the Electoral Commission. The 2009 accounts are nearly five months overdue and the 2008 accounts remain under investigation because the auditors were unable to report that they represented a “true and fair view” – a devastating verdict for any organisation.

A major issue in the rebellion within the BNP at the end of 2007 was the incompetence of the treasurer and deputy treasurer. Griffin sided with the treasurers and expelled the rebels. He also brought in James Dowson to kick life into the party’s fundraising ability. Dowson, a man with criminal convictions, who had achieved some success for a militant anti-abortion campaign, made some headway for the BNP. Although many members complained about the constant begging letters, they brought in money.

But Dowson brought with him the seeds of the BNP’s destruction. Searchlight relentlessly exposed every lie, such as the claim that the BNP had bought its own advertising lorry, the misnamed “truth truck”, which remained all the time in Dowson’s ownership. Searchlight also tracked Dowson’s takeover of the bulk of the BNP’s assets and operations, including the leases for party offices and the Belfast call centre, opened before the European elections.

Searchlight’s accusation that Dowson owned the BNP reached the ears of many BNP activists, who were already unhappy at how Dowson, who claimed not even to be a BNP member, had, in effect, become Griffin’s consigliere. Worse, he was being paid £160,000 a year for this. And faster than Dowson brought in the money, Griffin spent it – on long, drawn-out and inept legal battles, unfairly dismissing employees and deliberately provoking Unilever by using a Marmite image in a party election broadcast.

All that might have been forgiven had Griffin brought home the election goods in May. As it was, it sparked an attempt to challenge his leadership. Butler, the sacked elections officer, had no disagreements with Griffin on policy, but condemned his financial and administrative incompetence, his reckless legal actions and Dowson’s excessive power. Griffin pulled out all the stops to prevent Butler getting the almost impossibly high number of signatures needed to require a leadership election, imposing rigid procedural rules and suspending several of Butler’s supporters from party membership.

Inevitably Butler failed and was expelled. He now sits on the sidelines, promoting a new party constitution and exposing Griffin’s continued shortcomings in the belief that he can still rescue the BNP. Some of those who supported Butler’s challenge have formed a new party, the British Freedom Party, largely based in the south-west of England. Ironically, it replaced its first treasurer less than a month after his appointment. With similar policies to the BNP and no charismatic personalities, it is likely to follow the Democratic Nationalists, formed by the rebels of December 2007, into near oblivion.

The BNP continues to lose members rapidly. It has debts that even when Dowson’s fundraising was at its peak, it would have struggled to pay. These debts could cost Griffin his treasured seat in the European Parliament if he is held personally responsible for them and made bankrupt. Dowson appears to have walked out, while Griffin’s dwindling band of henchmen, who now include Patrick Harrington, an old comrade from Griffin’s days as a National Front “political soldier”, are constantly bickering with one another and jockeying for petty positions.

The BNP may limp on, as does the NF, which still insults Britain’s war dead on an annual basis by marching to the Cenotaph on the afternoon of Remembrance Sunday. Few of the BNP’s ex-supporters have joined other far-right parties. The risk is that, disillusioned with electoral politics and with a simplistic outlook on the world, they will be attracted to the English Defence League’s brand of Islamophobia and street violence, fuelled by outrageous and irresponsible daily attacks on Muslims in the right-wing gutter press.

Sonia Gable is deputy editor of Searchlight

Tribune

Police to take no further action over plot to kill head of BNP Nick Griffin

Cops investigating an alleged plot to kill the head of the BNP are taking no further action against a former member accused of planning to kill him.

Mark Collett, 30, from Rothley, Leicestershire, was arrested by Humberside police in April over alleged threats against Nick Griffin. He was sacked as the BNP’s spin doctor the same month for trying to launch what the far-right party described as a “palace coup” against Mr Griffin.

Mr Collett said: “I’m elated, I’m extremely happy, as is my family. I’m very happy and I’m now trying to get on with my life. I’m not connected with the BNP any more, although I’ve still got friends who are. As far as I’m concerned, justice was done.”

Sunday Mercury

Woe is Nick - accounts late, Collett charges dropped, Decembrists return from the grave

Despite promise after promise that this year it would be different, the BNP has yet again failed to submit an annual statement of accounts to the Electoral Commission, incurring an automatic minimum £500 fine. The party's Regional Accounting Unit has also failed to submit accounts and will be fined a minimum of £100.

In a statement made earlier today (Thursday) by the Electoral Commission, Chief Executive Peter Wardle said:

Most parties and accounting units submitted their accounts on time; one [the SDLP] made what we hope will prove to be a one-off mistake and will face a fine for late submission. But two parties have repeatedly failed to put information about their income and expenditure into the public domain on time.

That is not acceptable, and as well as fining these two parties for late submission, we will be monitoring them closely to try to ensure they meet the same standards of reporting as the others. The sanctions we currently have available to deal with this sort of non-compliance are limited, but we look forward to Parliament giving final approval to a wider range of sanctions, before the end of this year.

Joining the BNP in the doghouse is the tiny Christian Party.

Should the BNP fail to submit its accounts within the next three months the fines levied on the party will double, as they did last year when the party played fast and loose with the EC's patience (and its own members' subscriptions and donations).

Ever since the spotlight fell firmly on the BNP's finances post-general election, Nick Griffin has been going out of his way to give an impression that all is well and that this year the accounts, now - allegedly - under the management of a professional accountant, would be submitted as required. Griffin must have been aware for some time that this would not be the case.

Cynics dissecting the series of self-serving treatises put out by Griffin post-election, forecast that the BNP accounts would again be late, since Griffin continually harped on about the complexity of the party's financial operations and the difficulties inherent in keeping them in order, and seemed to be laying down an advance trail of plausible excuses.

This may also explain why a clearly uncomfortable David Hannam, the party's national treasurer, has been pushed to the fore in the past week, being chivvied, we strongly suspect, into making a video for the BNP website and issuing a statement on behalf of his treasury department which promises much but clarifies little. The emailed version is "From Chairman Nick Griffin", and while we don't suppose he did more than outline what he expected the statement to contain, it's also difficult to believe that Hannam's is the only hand involved.

Nick Griffin having conveniently departed the country for a holiday, explanations for the lateness of the BNP's accounts will be sought from Hannam, who may be wondering if he hasn't been set up for a fall.

(For a fuller examination of this matter, see Sonia Gable's HNH/Searchlight article, republished here.)

In the meantime...


Humberside Police have dropped charges against sacked BNP publicity director Mark Collett (above, with Griffin), according to a post on leadership challenger Eddy Butler's blog. Collett was arrested on April 1st after Griffin had contacted the police claiming to have received death threats. A police statement made after Collett was bailed said: "This investigation was initiated as a result of a complaint by a member of the British National Party and inquiries are ongoing."

Clearly, no, or insufficient, evidence existed upon which a charge could be sustained.

At the time Nick Griffin sent out a hysterical email linking Collett not only with the utterance of alleged death threats but with financial impropriety and of being part of a "palace coup" about to be staged against his leadership. Despite claiming that he was unable to discuss the matter due to rules of "sub judice" (which was untrue), Griffin (ignoring sub judice as it suited him) instigated a widely ridiculed "inquiry" that was held on Easter Monday (April 5th), in which twelve dupes were sent off to "authenticate" a highly edited recording of the "death threats". Naturally, they gave the required answer.

Along with Collett, Eddy Butler and Emma Colgate were dismissed from their posts, and it is now apparent that the entire saga relates not to "death threats", the misappropriation of BNP monies on Collet's part or to "palace coups" but to allegations of serious financial wrong-doing at the top of the BNP, of which the trio had become aware.

News of Collett's arrest was deliberately leaked to the media from within the BNP just as the party's general and local election campaign was set to launch. How much damage was done to the BNP's vote as a result, and how much it was responsible for the loss of so many BNP councillors is difficult to tell, since we believe the BNP was always on course for a hiding at the ballot box.

It is self-evident to all but the most blind and sycophantic of Griffinites that the dodgy "death threat" episode, played out in the press and on television, was an enormous own goal on the part of the leadership, far more damaging than the fleeting loss of the party's website just before polling day. People may go to political websites in their hundreds, but they read newspapers and watch television in their millions.

With the charges dropped and any loyalties he might have held for Nick Griffin shattered, Mark Collett may well end his prolonged silence on the affair, an eventuality that on the surface can only benefit Eddy Butler. Butler is closer to Collett than he cares to admit, and thus far the Nazi Boy has been a peripheral, almost invisible figure, with very good reason. Collett is so widely reviled within the BNP that any open association between him and Butler would seriously damage Butler's leadership campaign. His open involvement in the campaign would almost certainly kill it. Collett, then, is of limited use to Butler, no matter how innocent he may be of the charges levelled against him by Griffin - though he may yet damage Griffin to the favour of Butler in an apparently independent "off stage" role.

The weight on Griffin's mind has been added to by news that the final part of the case he instigated (and has so far roundly lost) against the December Rebels will be heard at the High Court in Newcastle on November 29th.

Kenny Smith, one of the leading Decembrists, has reactivated the derelict Enough Is Enough website to announce that "Judgement Day is coming!"

Remarking that Griffin and Simon Darby "have tried every trick in the book, and indeed continue to invent new ways of delaying proceedings, to prevent the case they instigated at the Party's expense coming to trial", Smith gleefully adds:

Sadly for them, but happily for those who want to see justice done and the truth finally revealed in full, the trial has been fixed to start on Monday the 29th November 2010 at Newcastle High Court.

Kenny, Nicholla, Steve and Ian are all looking forward to their days in court and finally being able to expose Griffin and his cabal for what they are!

The Decembrists, somewhat pre-empted as Griffinite bugging of their private conversations led to the exposure of their intentions, launched the last serious attempt at unseating Nick Griffin, but the campaign soon floundered through indecision and the want of firm leadership. Then as now, Griffin began expelling or suspending individual Decembrists on eminently challengable grounds. At the time we observed that just one challenge to Griffin's worthless writs of expulsion would stop him in his tracks and galvanise support for the rebels as hesitant individual members lost their fear of the Leader's edicts. It is a lesson Eddy Butler's supporters have failed to learn, as they allow themselves to be picked off one by one.

Griffin's smothering tactics worked at the time but disguised the extent of latent discontent within the party. Seemingly united for the Euro election campaign, the cracks soon began to show as the false foundations on which the Euro success had been built were exposed by ever worsening votes which reflected the BNP's true electoral position, and by Griffin's inept approach to the EHRC case. The awful Question Time appearance, the dislodging of PPCs in favour of party "names", the wild allegations against Collett, thuggish behaviour towards journalists and others, the needless courting of Unilever litigation, the general and local election rout have all done for Griffin what the Decembrists never could.

He did it all himself. And if he really were a leader of vision, the genius of strategy he is so frequently claimed to be, then he would have known that cutting off the Decembrist head while smothering Decembrist sentiment would leave hundreds within the BNP to brood and bide their time.

That they have done, for what else is Eddy Butler's campaign but the second coming of the Decembrists, with new leadership, bigger and badder than ever?

Coverts spied on Butler "since 2006"

"This election, if it goes ahead, should be carried out in the most rapid manner possible with zero publicity allowed for the joke candidate (who may in other circumstances be described as a decent and 'nice' bloke etc) and the least disruption to our continued efforts. That is the best way to minimise the harmful effects."

So wrote Eddy Butler on the occasion of Colin Auty's abortive leadership challenge just over two years ago. In the same missive Butler pointedly spoke of the "temerity" of those mounting leadership challenges.

Hardly the language of a convinced democrat.

Post-Auty, Butler was instrumental in pushing through the series of constitutional changes intended to protect Nick Griffin from the BNP membership, each change significantly tightening leader Griffin's grip, as Butler was well aware. Sometimes he openly helped do the dirty work, sometimes he kept quiet, Butler only lately detailing his convoluted and not particularly honourable reasons for doing so on his blog.

There is, then, a kind of poetic justice that as he comes to mount his own leadership challenge Butler is faced with the almost insuperable obstacles placed in his way by a Byzantine nomination system that he - whatever he now may say - helped impose upon the BNP.

What is curious is that Butler consistently gave solid support to Nick Griffin even when it was obvious to outsiders that as far as Griffin was concerned, Eddy Butler's number was up years ago.

Back in 2007 we reported that Griffin's close friend and hatchet-man Tony Lecomber attacked Butler outside Loughton underground station. Butler insisted Lecomber be sacked and proscribed, or he would involve the police. Griffin had little choice other than to comply, which he did with reluctance and bad grace, penning a proscription notice that was little more than a hymn of praise to the talents and loyalty of the thuggish Lecomber.

It was all too clear, as I wrote at the time, that given the choice Griffin would have broken Butler's neck, not Lecomber's, and that the clock was ticking for Butler.

As it happens, by then the clock had already been ticking for some time. Tommy Williams and Dave Howard, Griffin's chavish Covert Undercover Nuisance Tactics attack rats, recently admitted that they had been "on his [Butler's] case since around 2006".

Posting on the Nazi VNN Williams also admitted to eavesdropping on Butler at the 2009 RWB: "We deliberately set up behind BUTTlers tent, infact anyone who was there will remember people having to move tents so we could move in. We were also privvy to BUTTlers conversations (lots of them) that have been recorded all quite legally."

Eavesdropping on leading party members is, of course, something in which the Griffin leadership is deeply experienced, as the Decembrists Sadie Graham, Matt Single and Kenny Smith discovered when a transcript of a private conversation between the three was published on the BNP website at the same time that BNP goon squads were converging on their homes.

Other recent allegations of bugging, key-logging and e-mail interception on the part of the leadership remain strangely and ominously undenied.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to throw upon the chosen few who constitute the party's upper echelon a nagging awareness that their conversations may be recorded and logged - the possibility instils just the right amount of fear and paranoia and takes the edge of those who might otherwise be inclined to ask awkward questions. It's classic Stalinist-style psychology.

If Butler was ever aware that the leadership monitored his conversations and associations he gives no indication of it. Even with Clive Jefferson's cameraphone in his face during the drunken Belgian episode, and even with Jefferson giving a carefully staged running commentary, the 100% certainty that he was being set up never seems to have crossed Butler's mind.

Mr Butler does not appear to be the most perceptive person in the world.

Down the years of his association with Griffin, Butler cannot have failed to be aware of the many serious allegations of financial impropriety made against the BNP leader - indeed, the Freedom Party split of which he was part was largely founded upon them, - yet only now does Butler admit that there is evidence of wrong-doing at the very top of the BNP.

Replying to allegations made on one of the Griffinite smear-blogs set up to destroy his credibility, Butler says that he was "told about some very serious financial allegations made against the current Chairman of this Party", and that he resolved to raise the matter at the first post-general election Advisory Council meeting.

Butler claims that treasurer David Hannam told Nick Griffin of the allegations after Hannam had been told by Mark Collett. This resulted in Butler being removed from his position together with - and Butler is explicit - "the two other people who knew". The two others, of course, being Mark Collett and Emma Colgate.

Now, if, until Collett spoke to the duplicitous Hannam, only Collett, Colgate and Butler knew of the allegations, and if Butler (as he says) was told of them, then the source must have been Collett or Colgate.

If, as in light of subsequent events (including the infamous in absentia show trial) seems likely, it was Collett, then we have something approaching an explanation for the hysterical "murder plot" allegations made by Griffin and Jim Dowson to the police as the BNP's general election campaign got underway - as neat a little story as anything we could have dreamed up, and which did so much more than the loss of the party's cumbersome website to undermine its already flawed campaign.

Only a Nick Griffin could have thought up anything so damaging at such a crucial time, and in the process help throw so many of his candidates' hard-won deposits down the electoral drain.

Despite his dismissal (though he says he has not been officially sacked), Eddy Butler remained quiet about the allegations concerning Griffin until after the general election, whereupon "I openly declared my intention to pursue the matter".

And indeed he did, but by then the sleazy Clive Jefferson was doing Butler's old job, and in his first skin-saving post-election pronouncements Nick Griffin was clearly setting up Butler as the fall guy for the BNP's appalling election performance. Butler could see which way the wind was blowing and had nothing to lose, expulsion being a certainty, so of course he was going to pursue the matter.

But if, as Butler seems to be inferring, these allegations of financial impropriety are of a criminal nature, then why has he failed in his duty as a citizen to present himself and his evidence to the police, which is the only proper body to which such matter should be submitted?

Butler has warned Griffin that he must follow proper procedures (as enshrined in employment law) if he intends to end Butler's employment with the BNP. The near certainty of a damaging, revealing employment tribunal is probably all that presently prevents Griffin from kicking Butler (and his leadership challenge) into touch.

Griffin must make a concrete move soon, as the deadline for a leadership challenge nears, since he can not afford for Butler to be seen to gain anything near the 20% member nominations a challenger requires - though the Griffin-penned constitutional procedures are so vague in the matter of verification that it is entirely within the realms of possibility that Butler could sail past the 20% qualification and never know it.

The BNP's civil war will continue then for at least another four weeks (until the nominations deadline), and after that perhaps only for as long as until Griffin can devise a watertight exit strategy for Eddy Butler. Should Butler reach his 20% nominations, and should Griffin surprise us all and admit it, then we have four months in which to enjoy the BNP shedding its own blood.

In fixing that ridiculous self-serving 20% qualification Nick Griffin may have thought himself very clever, but in setting such a high aiming point for a prospective challenger Griffin has also ensured that a challenger must be better connected and network far harder and more professionally than ever a Jackson or an Auty could. In other words, the challenge will be far more serious and single-minded in its purpose because the challenger has no other option but to engage in a protracted, damaging campaign to secure enough nominations - and should the challenger gain his or her 20% nominations to enable a contest then that is tantamount to an admission before a vote is cast that 20% of the party is out of love with its leader.

Griffin has effectively undermined himself with his own self-preservation strategy. Even if Butler does not make the 20% and is quickly expelled there is a strong possibility of some sort of split; and should that fail to materialise Butler's widespread dissident network will remain in place as an unfailing source of misery to Griffin.

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

BNP leaflet to black Christian voters branded 'obscene'

Far-right party mails 24,000 'black' electors in Barking and Dagenham urging them to vote against 'unchristian' Labour

A BNP leaflet designed to woo the black Christian vote in Barking and Dagenham has been branded "obscene" by one of its recipients.

The targeted leaflet, which accuses Labour of undermining Christian values and promoting "ungodly lifestyles", was sent to 24,000 people in the borough. It features a picture of Nick Griffin next to the Rev George Hargreaves, the leader of the Christian party, and was sent out last week after the BNP trawled the electoral register looking for people with "African names".

In it, Griffin says: "I am writing to you personally to set your mind at rest. A lot of rubbish is being written and talked about how the BNP is supposed to be some kind of 'threat' to black and ethnic minority groups in Barking … I want to reassure you that, as a Christian and a man who believes passionately in core British values including democracy and freedom, I am not standing in this election to persecute or hurt anybody, or any race and religion."

After berating the government for damaging Christian values and encouraging "the spread of Islam", he adds: "Surely, no believer can vote Labour and walk with the Lord Jesus Christ."

A BNP spokesman said: "Our campaigners trawled through the electoral register and identified 24,000 African names. They have each received a personal letter from Nick Griffin to counteract the alarmist claims being made by [Labour MP] Margaret Hodge that if the British National party are elected the borough will descend into chaos."

Hargreaves told the Guardian there was nothing his party could do about his image appearing on the leaflet.

"I haven't seen the leaflet, so I can't comment on it, but we're taking legal advice," he said. "[But] they haven't defamed us, so there's nothing we can do."

He said that although there was a "politics of fear stalking Barking", the Christian party was urging people to vote on principles rather than prejudice.

"Our message is faith, not fear," he said. "Our scriptures tell us that we should not go to the polls because we are frightened of anybody, but because we believe in the values of those people who are standing."

One Barking and Dagenham resident – a British citizen with Indian Caribbean heritage – described the BNP leaflet campaign as "obscene". The resident, who did not want to be identified, does not have an African first or second name and expressed surprise at receiving the leaflet.

"I was extremely concerned to receive direct mail from the BNP, particularly as it was sent to me on the basis of my ethnicity," said the resident. "I find it disturbing that a political party with far-right links and extreme views is keeping lists of people categorised by ethnicity. Ethnic profiling is not an acceptable means of polling and I am very scared."

The leaflet, the resident added, had stirred fears that the BNP would "consider repatriation of me and my mixed-heritage child to several countries that I no longer have links to … It is obscene."

The BNP did not respond to the Guardian's questions about how it had obtained data on Barking and Dagenham residents who do not have African names.

Although the party had predicted it would create a "political earthquake", claiming it was on course to win two parliamentary seats and take control of Barking and Dagenham council, its campaign has been beset by problems, and it is floundering in the polls.

Internal criticism over Nick Griffin's leadership came to a head last month when the publicity director, Mark Collett, was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill him. In Stoke, the party's number two electoral target, Alby Walker, who led the BNP on the local council for four years, is standing as an independent.

Yesterday, a new row erupted when the BNP's website was closed down and replaced with a posting from the webmaster Simon Bennett, stating he had been "in dispute with some elements of the management of the party" and claiming there had been "several attempts to steal" his work. The website was later reinstated but on his own blog Bennett added that there had been a number of "highly questionable shenanigans going on at BNP HQ" with which he was unhappy.

The letter can be read here.

Guardian

Young, nazi and out of a job

Mark Collett: accused of financial irregularities and threatening Nick Griffin

A record number of general election candidates masks a British National Party suffering from internal tensions, a series of embarrassments and continuing questions over its finances

As British National Party members were still taking in the implications of the extensive constitutional changes forced on them by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, they were hit by news of the suspension of the party’s national publicity officer.

A bulletin to party organisers on 31 March accused Mark Collett of “conspiring with a small clique of other party officials to launch a ‘palace coup’” against Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, and spreading “lies and unfounded rumours”. He had therefore been “relieved of all positions within the party with immediate effect”.

Collett, 29, was also accused of “financial irregularities and scamming” over printing BNP election material and its Identity magazine, leaking sensitive party information on the internet and feeding “lies” to anti-BNP blog sites. And there had been a “catalogue of recurring and seemingly inexplicable ‘gaffes’ being made at various stages in our preparations for the general election by certain individuals within the party”.

The same bulletin stated that the police had been “made aware of very serious allegations potentially affecting the personal safety” of Griffin and Jim Dowson, the BNP’s fundraising and management consultant.

The “other party officials” said to ‘have conspired with Collett were not named. However two days after the announcement Emma Colgate resigned as the party’s staff manager saying she wanted to devote herself full-time to the election campaign in Thurrock, where she is standing for parliament and also hoping to get more BNP councillors elected.

“We’re in with a real chance in Thurrock and I want to give it my best shot,” she said. “I cannot properly work fill-time [sic] on the campaign while being paid by EU taxpayers to manage our European staff.”

As it was a party position from which she had resigned, this was a clear admission that the BNP had been ‘using EU taxpayers’ money to fund its party apparatus.

There was also a rapid exit by ‘Eddy Butler from his position as the BNP’s national organiser and national elections officer. His replacement, Clive Jefferson, is a rising star in the party. Appointed as North West regional organiser and national nominating officer last year, he too is on the BNP’s European Parliament payroll.

However Butler was “still very much with the BNP and is set to play a leading role in the party’s attempt to take control of the Barking and Dagenham council,” a special meeting of party officers and organisers was told.

The meeting, rapidly convened ‘on Easter Monday, “unanimously” appointed a “four man strong subcommittee” to listen to an alleged tape recording of a conversation between Collett and the party treasurer David Hannam, which the party claims would enable the police to “investigate a number of potential crimes including threats to murder, assault, fraud and falsification of accounts”, according to a BNP statement issued afterwards.

The committee declared the tape genuine, although the statement did not explain how they arrived at that verdict. However it is understood that the police are unlikely to bring any charges because the tape has been “edited”.

Perhaps the BNP did not really want a prosecution as a court case might reveal a lot more than it wishes to be made public.

Butler’s precise role in the BNP’s Barking and Dagenham campaign is unclear. Last November Griffin anno-unced that Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s London Assembly member, would spearhead the campaign. ‘Perhaps he has not been producing ‘the canvassing returns Griffin expects.

Barnbrook and Butler are both standing for election in Goresbrook ward, where the BNP currently has two councillors. Butler recently put himself on the electoral register in Dagenham, despite remaining on the register at his real home in Loughton, Essex. Barnbrook and Bob Bailey, the BNP’s council group leader, pulled a similar trick at the time of their election in 2006. They got away with it then, but Butler and some other BNP candidates who have suddenly “moved” to Barking and Dagenham are likely to face investigation if elected.

Even so, the BNP has only managed to find 34 candidates for the 51 council seats in the borough, making it near impossible for it to win the 26 councillors needed to gain control.

This is not the BNP’s only problem. Delays have beset the party’s general election manifesto. As we went to press, the BNP said it would be launched in Stoke-on-Trent on 23 April, less than two weeks before polling day. The party has previously announced that its main election themes would be withdrawal from Afghanistan, immigration and “the global warming conspiracy”. ‘On the issue that is near the top in most voters’ minds, the economy, the fascist party has little to say.

Whether the manifesto delay is one of the “gaffes” being blamed on Collett is not known, but Collett would most likely have been responsible for its design and printing.

One huge gaffe unlikely to be Collett’s responsibility, because it occurred on 14 April well after ‘Collett’s departure, was the Normandy veteran fiasco. The previous day HOPE not hate sent an email to supporters asking them to join its big day of action on 17 April. Headed “I fought the Nazis. Will you?” it consisted of a personal message from Kenneth Riley, a Normandy veteran who fought in the Tank Division.

Amazingly the next day the BNP posted a nearly word-for-word identical message on its website, excepted that it implored people to support the party. ‘It was signed off by “Bob Head”, who claimed to have been “attached to the 51st Highland Division”. Instead of asking for volunteers, it solicited ‘£20 donations.

Riley was furious that the BNP had “stolen” his words and put his name to a new email for HOPE not hate to raise money for the anti-BNP campaign. ‘The Normandy Veterans Association said it had never heard of Head and ‘cast doubt on his claimed service record and medals.

Head’s email was one of only a small number appealing for donations for the BNP’s election campaign. Unlike in the run-up to last year’s European election, the BNP’s fundraising effort this year has been lacklustre. No begging letters have been dispatched for some time ‘and appeals on the party’s website and by email have been unambitious. Website donation links go straight to a form without any exhortation to encourage generosity.

The official launch of the BNP’s campaign fund on 10 April claimed ‘that the party had already raised £275,000, including £165,000 in election deposits, and was looking for another £180,000. The party was not being entirely straight. Most general election candidates are expected to pay their own £500 deposits or raise the money locally.

For several weeks the party has been reporting branch meetings around the country that have raised highly unlikely sums, considering that most of its supporters come from the lower socio-economic groups. Revelations that Griffin and Andrew Brons, his fellow MEP, have been misusing their European parliamentary expenses, coupled with the Collett “financial irregularities” accusation, cannot have enhanced the confidence of potential donors that their money would be well spent.

To add to the party’s financial woes, the Electoral Commission announced on 15 April that it had upgraded its review of the British National Party’s accounts to a formal investigation.

The BNP has already been fined £1,000 because its 2008 accounts ‘were submitted nearly six months late. They came with a report from the party’s auditors, Silver & Co, stating that they did not give a true and fair view and did not “comply with the requirements of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 as adequate records have not been made available”. Even Griffin admitted the accounts were “inadequate”.

The Electoral Commission emphasised that the fact that an investigation had been launched did ‘not mean that electoral rules had ‘been breached. A statement by the commission explained that “no conclusion has been reached and therefore no assumption should be made as to whether a breach of the ‘rules has occurred”.

That did not stop the BNP describing the investigation as “an obviously politically motivated attack” and claiming ludicrously that the party had been assured it would be closed the following week.

Meanwhile the embarrassing leaks of financial information that the BNP tried to blame on Collett appear to be continuing. Earlier this year it emerged that the BNP had paid over £360,000 to businesses connected with Dowson during the first 11 months of 2009, a significant proportion of the party’s budget. This fact and the central position Dowson holds in the BNP’s operations gave rise to our conclusion that Dowson in effect owns the BNP.

The latest leak suggests that Dowson’s hold over the party continues, with more than £51,000 paid to his company Adlorries.com in March alone.

It has been suggested that Dowson was responsible for Collett’s suspension and supporters of Collett have thrown the “financial irregularities” accusation back at Dowson. Many in the BNP are suspicious of the close relationship between Griffin and Dowson, who claims he is not a party member.

Whether Collett’s BNP career is truly over remains to be seen. His Wikipedia page, which was hastily updated to record his suspension, states that his membership was reinstated a week later, though he has not got his old job back.

Collett has bounced back twice before, once after he notoriously starred in the television documentary Young, Nazi and Proud, in which he said he was inspired by images of German Nazis “sieg heiling” in the streets, the second time after the internal rebellion in the BNP in winter 2007-08, when he was widely accused of incompetence. He claims to remain “completely loyal” to the party and has offered to help with local election material.

Searchlight

Is Killer Collett back in the BNP?

Like Gary Glitter, he's back again - Killer Collett rejoins the ranks (maybe)

How confusing is it to be a member of the BNP? Just over a week ago, the world was informed that a plot to unseat the leader of the party had been discovered and that a taped telephone conversation between the party's treasurer David Hannam and the its former head of publicity Mark Collett revealed threats of murder and assault and talk of fraud and falsification of accounts, including 'skimming' off printing bills for the party.

Last Monday, party organisers met up and were treated to a ten minute snippet of the tape that apparently included the threats and non-specific mention of the fraud that had taken place, though the whole tape was held back until a committee declared on its authenticity. This committee, led by taxi driver and world-renowned tape authenticity expert [sarcasm] Michael Simpkins, declared that the tape was genuine and, we gather, the shortened version was given to the police.

Why the shortened version? Because the complete tape was almost an hour and a half of Killer Collett slagging off party leader Nick Griffin and fundraiser Jim Dowson, along with a multitude of accusations of theft and complicity in a massive and persistent fraud on the membership of the British National Party. These allegations were, we're told, so detailed that the police would have had at least enough information to begin investigating the party's finances - and that would have been disastrous for Griffin and the party itself.

According to information we have received, the police are not prepared to take any action based upon a tape that has clearly been tampered with, leaving the police with nothing to investigate.

Given that the party is anxious to hide any sign of wrongdoing by its officers - particularly by its leader - for fear that a whole financial can of worms would be opened up, the only thing to do was, in the words of one of our correspondents, 'to take that wanker Collett back at least until after the elections'. Thus, we're informed that Collett is back in the BNP fold though on a much-reduced salary and only on condition that he keeps his mouth firmly shut in future.

It's hard to know what Collett will be doing in the party after his reinstatement because it seems that the design of leaflets has been handed over to the detestable Paul Golding, a Griffin-acolyte who appears to be much-loathed in the party, while printing has been shifted to - surprise - one of Jim Dowson's many companies, leaving Paedo-boy to sit around twiddling his thumbs.

Nevertheless, the man who, just a week ago, was accused of conspiracy to unseat Porky Griffin as leader of the BNP and was said to have uttered threats to kill him, is apparently back because the party leadership is terrified of what havoc he could wreak by exposing the corruption that saturates the party from top to bottom.

It could only happen in the BNP...

BNP candidates in Liverpool down by a third

The BNP today revealed it would be standing only eight candidates in the local elections in Liverpool on May 6th. This is eight too many, but it is one third less than the twelve it put up in 2008 and represents the effects of a determined anti-fascist campaign against them and of the internal divisions within this racist party.

Of these eight, most are ‘paper’ candidates who know themselves they have no chance of winning in May. Three of the eight are from the same family, indeed, the same household, which is further proof of the limited appeal fascism has in Liverpool.

Given the disruption caused by the BNP’s former Director of Publicity, Mark Collett, being investigated on charges of threatening to kill party leader Nick Griffin, the BNP locally will have few resources at its disposal in this election. However, Liverpool Anti-Fascists are determined that the BNP will have NO SUCCESS in dividing people in our city, and will be out campaigning against these racists wherever they decide to show their faces or spread their poisonous message.

The eight candidates are:
Anfield - Karen Gillian Otty
Clubmoor – Peter John Squire
County – Peter James Stafford
Everton – Jacqueline Stafford
Fazakerley – Peter Stafford
Kirkdale – Steve Greenhalgh
Norris Green – John Edgar
Old Swan – Steven McEllenborough

Liverpool BNP will shortly announce its candidates for the general election. The same names will likely reappear on the Westminster ballot papers – proof positive that the BNP is a marginalised and extremist group which cannot command significant support from the working people of Liverpool.

We call on everyone to join us in our campaign against the BNP. We are going to be out on the doorsteps putting the case that the BNP only offers division, hatred and defeat. By standing together, we can drive out the racists and keep Liverpool fascist-free.

Liverpool Antifascists

Caption comp: When friends fall out...

Best friends forever. Er...

After the events of the last week, it's time to relax with a caption competition while we ponder the question of whether Mark Collett has the balls to take Nick Griffin down in revenge for getting the boot. If he has, now would be the time to do it.

Meanwhile, as we're waiting for Collett to do the decent thing, let's take the piss like we usually do and have some captions for this peculiar picture. Go for it...

“You’ll be found dead on the streets” – the message from a BNP supporter

‘You’ll be found dead on the streets.’ That was the message I received a few weeks ago from an identifiable BNP supporter. Why? Because I was taking a stand against Nick Griffin. When someone writes this to you because you’re fighting as a Lib Dem in a parliamentary campaign against Griffin and the BNP, it makes you think very hard about your political opponent and the campaign they intend to fight. It also makes you think about how you should respond.

I reported the threat immediately to the police. They came to my house and have since referred the matter to SO15 – Counter Terrorism Command. I also urged Nick Griffin to intervene and condemn the culprit. I wrote: “This is London in 2010, not Berlin in 1933.” The response: silence.

The Guardian reported the matter. And that of another death threat – a video put on the web in the name of Wandsworth BNP, featuring Equality and Human Rights Commission chief Trevor Phillips. It suggested he be “dealt with”.

On March 21st, a BNP activist was arrested for threatening to kill Labour peer, Baroness Uddin. His Facebook message read: ‘were (sic) going to hang you one day. Regards the BNP.”

This weekend comes the news that senior BNP official and parliamentary candidate, Mark Collett has been arrested on suspicion of making threats to kill Nick Griffin. Collett was arrested after Griffin made a statement to the police. A Humberside Police spokesman said: “A 29-year-old man has been arrested and bailed on suspicion of threats to kill. We can’t comment further.”

Griffin becomes the fourth person in four weeks to have received a death threat from a BNP member. As BNP chairman, he should not be surprised. His party membership list is full of criminals with convictions for violence. This is the true face of the BNP showing itself in public: a party of violence, committed to violence, using the language of violence.

And Griffin himself uses the language of violence frequently. He once called for a defence of white rights with “well directed boots and fists.” He told me in interview that people “have the right to hurt people to maim and blow things up when they are not allowed any other any way of expressing a legitimate grievance.”

When he had Dominic Kennedy of the Times roughed up and ejected from a BNP meeting in February, Griffin said it proved his party was “not going soft.”

When I asked Nick Griffin who was his political hero, it was not Adolf Hitler or Oswald Mosley. The man he chose was Gerry Adams. Griffin would perhaps do well to remember: ‘Hate begets hate; violence begets violence.’ If he has received death threats from within his own party, then it is perhaps a true reflection of the culture of violence he encourages and supports.

Liberal Democrat Voice

BNP officers unite ‘unanimously’ after anti-Collett hate session

The British National Party’s sacked head of publicity set up a series of front companies apparently with the intention of “skimming off” printing bills, yesterday’s special meeting of the British National Party heard.

Party officers and organisers gathering near Coventry were told that a copy of a tape recording of a conversation between Mark Collett and the party treasurer David Hannam was in the hands of the police who “would be able to investigate a number of potential crimes including threats to murder, assault, fraud and falsification of accounts”, according to a BNP statement issued afterwards.

The meeting had not been allowed to hear the tape and draw its own conclusions, however, but appointed a “four man strong subcommittee” to listen to it and report back on its “full contents and implications”. Its spokesman Michael Simpkins, a BNP town councillor in Corsham, Wiltshire, declared the tape was genuine.

The BNP statement left several questions unanswered, above all why Eddy Butler has been replaced as the party’s national organiser and national elections officer by Clive Jefferson, the North West regional organiser. Members were told that Butler was “still very much with the BNP and is set to play a leading role in the party’s attempt to take control of the Barking and Dagenham council”. However Butler has not issued any personal statement.

Last November Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, announced that Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s London Assembly member, would spearhead the party’s Barking and Dagenham council campaign. Presumably he has not been producing the canvassing returns Griffin expects.

Griffin read out a statement from Emma Colgate, who resigned as party manager last week, warning that “fake Facebook and YouTube accounts” were being set up in her name “with the obvious intention of sowing confusion”. Despite her continuing important role, running the BNP’s campaign in Thurrock, she was apparently not at the meeting.

BNP members have clearly not been told the full story about the abrupt departures of Butler and Colgate from national party positions and the party’s EU payroll, and their connection with Collett’s “misdemeanours”.

Another omission from the statement is any reference to Jim Dowson, the BNP’s fundraising and management consultant, whose extensive financial hold over the BNP makes him in effect the party’s owner. Last week’s BNP organisers’ bulletin, which first announced Collett’s suspension, referred to a threat to the “personal safety” of both Griffin and Dowson and there have been suggestions since then that it was Dowson who discovered Collett’s financial irregularities.

Collett has long been accused of making a profit at the party’s expense and of being very poor at the graphic design and leaflet production that are a major part of his role, but Griffin has only listened to the allegations now. That may be because Griffin was in desperate need of a scapegoat to allay dissent in the party following his disastrous performance on Question Time last year, his capitulation to the Equality and Human Rights Commission over changing the party’s racist constitution, accusations from members that the central party apparatus is appropriating branch funds, questions about Dowson’s control over the party and Griffin’s very own EU parliamentary expenses scandal.

After venting their “hate” for Collett, in events reminiscent of Geroge Orwell’s 1984, the party united “unanimously” behind Griffin, according to the BNP’s statement, and will contest 326 constituencies in the general election on 6 May.

As for Collett, he claims to be “completely loyal” to the party and willing to help people with local publicity material in the run-up to the elections. “There is currently a smear campaign against me,” is all he has said publicly so far.

Collett had been lined up to contest the Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough constituency against David Blunkett in the general election but has been replaced by John Sheldon, a Sheffield BNP activist.

The events of the past few days are far more than the sort of differences of opinion and personality clashes that any political party suffers. Griffin constantly claims he is the leader of a moderate, non-violent organisation, but it is difficult to see how he can square that assertion with his statement to the police that his own head of publicity has been threatening to kill him. The BNP remains a party full of thugs.

Hope not hate

BNP official Mark Collett questioned over alleged threat to kill Nick Griffin

Nick Griffin and Mark Collett after winning a court case in 2006

Police arrest publicity director accused by BNP leadership of plotting 'palace coup'

The BNP has been thrown into turmoil weeks ahead of the general election after a senior party member was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill Nick Griffin.

Key party officials have been summoned to a meeting tomorrow to discuss "urgent organisational matters" after Griffin and colleagues made statements to police resulting in the BNP's publicity director, Mark Collett, being detained on Thursday. Collett, 29, had been due to contest Labour MP David Blunkett's Sheffield Brightside seat in the election but has been stripped of his position within the party which accused him of conspiring to launch a "palace coup" against Griffin.

The BNP alerted members to the crisis on Wednesday. In a message to party organisers, the party said its internal security team had been investigating "alleged financial irregularities" relating to leaflets and publications, the "leaking on to the internet of sensitive party information" and "feeding lies to certain anti-BNP blog sites" for several months.

"As a result of this investigation, a very serious matter has been uncovered," the memo said. "Earlier this week, the police were made aware of very serious allegations potentially affecting the personal safety of party chairman Nick Griffin MEP and senior management/fundraising consultant James Dowson. Formal statements have now been made to the police, including by Mr Griffin."

The message said it had been necessary to act immediately "to ensure the safety of those at risk".

The timing of the row is a further blow to the BNP as it looks to build on success in last year's European elections by winning its first seat in the House of Commons. Last month the party's membership policy was ruled to be discriminatory, despite the BNP having removed a whites-only clause in February.

The BNP said it was unable to provide further details of the alleged threat to Griffin – who is standing against Labour's Margaret Hodge in Barking and Dagenham – and Dowson for fear of prejudicing legal proceedings.

The memo continued: "Since political, as opposed to allegedly criminal, conspiracies are not illegal, we are able to say that Mark Collett was conspiring with a small clique of other party officials to launch a 'palace coup' against our twice democratically elected party leader, Nick Griffin, and that in order to create the artificial climate of disillusionment necessary for this to stand any chance of success, lies and unfounded rumours have been spread, and were planned to be spread much further."

Officers asked Collett to attend a Humberside police station last week. A spokeswoman said: "A 29-year-old man was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of making threats to kill. He was interviewed by detectives at Humberside police and he has been released on bail pending further inquiries. The investigation was initiated as a result of a complaint by the member of the BNP."

BNP regional organisers and key officials have been asked to attend an "urgent briefing meeting" tomorrow to discuss the events of the last few days and the party's future plans.

A spokesman for the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said rows over finance, particularly Griffin's European expenses, had led to the conflict. Griffin and Andrew Brons were elected to European parliament in June 2009 but have been criticised in recent weeks for failing to publish details of their spending.

"Nick Griffin is constantly claiming he is the leader of a moderate, non-violent organisation," the Searchlight spokesman said. "It is difficult to see how he can square that assertion with his statement to the police that his own head of publicity has been plotting to kill him."

The Guardian attempted to contact senior figures within the British National party, but none were available for comment.

Guardian

Exit of three top BNP officers confirmed

Following our report earlier today of the resignation of Emma Colgate from her post as BNP manager, the BNP has amended its national contacts spreadsheet. Absent are Colgate, Eddy Butler, the former national organiser and national elections officer, and Mark Collett, the former head of publicity.

The changes confirm the stories circulating on nazi web forums that the unpopular Collett has finally fallen out of favour. A BNP organisers’ bulletin circulated on 31 March referred to “financial irregularities and ‘scamming’ concerning the procurement of print, especially large election print run, leaflets and regular publications including Identity magazine”. It appears that Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has finally accepted that there is substance to the long-standing accusations that Collett has been making a huge personal profit on the design and print procurement he carries out for the party.

Collett is also accused of leaking “sensitive party information” onto the internet and “feeding lies to certain anti-BNP blog sites”.

The organisers’ bulletin continues: “Earlier this week, the police were made aware of very serious allegations potentially affecting the personal safety of Party chairman Nick Griffin MEP and senior management/fundraising consultant James Dowson. Formal statements have now been made to the police, including by Mr. Griffin.”

Although the bulletin says it the party is “unable to provide any further details in order not to prejudice any resulting legal proceedings”, it goes on to announce that: “Mark Collett was conspiring with a small clique of other party officials to launch a ‘palace coup’ against our twice democratically elected party leader, Nick Griffin, and that in order to create the artificial climate of disillusionment necessary for this to stand any chance of success, lies and unfounded rumours have been spread, and were planned to be spread much further. Mr. Collett has therefore been relieved of all positions within the Party with immediate effect.”

As a result Collett’s Wikipedia entry was updated with incredible haste to state that he “was Director of Publicity for the Party before being suspended from the party in early April 2010”.

A second organisers’ bulletin calls on “regional organisers and key officials” to attend an “urgent briefing meeting” on Easter Monday, which “will cover recent events, urgent organisational matters, including a crucial update from our new National Elections Officer Clive Jefferson”. Jefferson, who only a few months ago was promoted to North West regional organiser, quietly replaces Butler in the national elections officer role. He is also one of the BNP officers fraudulently on the European Parliament payroll.

All this comes at the worst possible time for the BNP, five weeks before elections in which it hopes to win control of Barking and Dagenham council and get Griffin and Simon Darby, the party's deputy leader, elected to the House of Commons.

Collett stood trial alongside Griffin in 2006 on race hate charges and was acquitted. Although Griffin always stood by him, he knew Collett was a fool. “I constantly have to lecture Mark Collett about all sorts of things,” said Nick Griffin. “He is a pig ignorant man. Often it goes in one ear and straight out of the other.”

A few years ago Collett starred in a Channel 4 documentary called Young, Nazi and Proud, in which he said he would prefer to live in 1930s Nazi Germany than in today’s Britain. He also attacked Winston Churchill and the British Royal Family.

Hope not hate

BNP admits EU money pays for party staff

Councillor Emma Colgate has resigned as the British National Party’s staff manager to devote herself full-time to the election campaign in Thurrock, the BNP announced today

Colgate is standing for election to Parliament and also hopes to get more BNP councillors elected to Thurrock council, where she is the party’s sole representative. She told the BNP website: “We’re in with a real chance in Thurrock and I want to give it my best shot. I cannot properly work fill-time [sic] on the campaign while being paid by EU taxpayers to manage our European staff.”

Colgate is one of 11 staff paid by the European Parliament to run constituency offices for the party’s two MEPs and support them in their European roles. All of them also have major roles in the BNP party apparatus.

Searchlight has always accused the BNP of misusing taxpayers’ money to pay for party staff. Despite winning election to the European Parliament on the back of the MPs’ expenses scandal with the slogan “punish the pigs”, the BNP MEPs wasted no time in jumping onto the EU gravy train.

Colgate’s announcement that she has resigned from her party role, described on the current BNP contacts’ spreadsheet as “party manager, party staff manager, staff administration”, on the grounds that she cannot campaign while being paid by EU taxpayers, is a clear admission that the BNP is using EU money fraudulently to fund party staff.

Whether Colgate was truly motivated by a desire not to misuse EU money further is unclear. Several of the nazi web forums have reported that she and Eddy Butler, the BNP’s national organiser, were sacked. As yet the BNP has made no announcement about Butler’s role, nor about the accusations, also doing the rounds of the nazi forums, that there has been a huge falling out between Mark Collett, the BNP’s unpopular head of publicity, and Jim Dowson, its equally unpopular “consultant”, whom Searchlight describes as “owning” the BNP because of his extensive financial hold over the party.

Colgate still likes to quote a Searchlight description of her last year as a “hard-working” councillor, not appreciating that we were only noting that she attends all her council meetings, as any councillor should and in contrast to almost all the BNP’s other councillors throughout the country, who do as little as possible for their councillors’ allowances.

Nevertheless it is surprising that she repays the “compliment” by making wild accusations against Gerry Gable, publisher of Searchlight, most recently on the streets of Thurrock surrounded by a mob of BNP activists trying to prevent the distribution of an anti-BNP HOPE not hate newspaper in Thurrock as part of the democratic election process.

As for her claimed wish not to use EU money to fund her election campaign, we wait with bated breath for the nine other BNP EU-funded officers also standing for Parliament in the general election to follow her lead and resign.

Hope not hate

Mark Collett suspended? April Fool or (very) late Christmas present?

The nazi and so-called nationalist forums are agog with the news that Mark Collett has been, according to a BNP Organisers’ Bulletin, 'relieved of all positions within the Party with immediate effect'.

According to a number of posts on these forums, Collett is embroiled in allegations of corruption, sabotage and possible involvement in a plot 'potentially affecting the personal safety of Party chairman Nick Griffin MEP and senior management/fundraising consultant James Dowson'.

Whether any of this is true is doubtful - particularly when you glance at the date - but we hope so. It seems more likely to be the work of one of the many disgruntled and disenfranchised former BNP members who see Collett as a liability to the party and an all-round arrogant pain in the arse.

The alleged Organiser's Bulletin is below. More info as/when/if we get it.

BNP Organisers’ Bulletin - March 2010

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

For several months the party’s internal security team has been running an extensive and long-running investigation. This was initially tasked to investigate:

1. Alleged financial irregularities and ‘scamming’ concerning the procurement of print, especially large election print run, leaflets and regular publications including Identity magazine.
2. The leaking onto the internet of sensitive party information.
3. The ongoing, co-ordinated and sustained hate campaign, feeding lies to certain anti-BNP blog sites.

More recently, its focus has moved on to the catalogue of recurring and seemingly inexplicable ‘gaffes’ being made at various stages in our preparations for the general election by certain individuals within the party.

As a result of this investigation, a very serious matter has been uncovered.

Earlier this week, the police were made aware of very serious allegations potentially affecting the personal safety of Party chairman Nick Griffin MEP and senior management/fundraising consultant James Dowson. Formal statements have now been made to the police, including by Mr. Griffin.

We therefore concluded that it was necessary to act on this immediately to ensure the safety of those at risk. Thus the timing of this affair was, from the very beginning, out of our hands.

The entire matter is therefore now in the hands of the police. We are unable to provide any further details in order not to prejudice any resulting legal proceedings.

Since political, as opposed to allegedly criminal, conspiracies are not illegal, we are able to say that Mark Collett was conspiring with a small clique of other party officials to launch a ‘palace coup’ against our twice democratically elected party leader, Nick Griffin, and that in order to create the artificial climate of disillusionment necessary for this to stand any chance of success, lies and unfounded rumours have been spread, and were planned to be spread much further. Mr. Collett has therefore been relieved of all positions within the Party with immediate effect.

All General Election leaflets already with the printers will be unaffected. Alternative measures are already being put into place to ensure that late submissions and local election addresses will be produced. Contact details for this and related operations will be issued shortly.

There is also extensive circumstantial evidence that those involved have been working to sabotage our forthcoming local and national election campaigns. More specific examples and details of such underhand efforts will be presented to an emergency meeting of the Advisory Council and key officials from all over the country, which will take place in the Midlands on Monday 5th April.

All in all, we believe we have uncovered the most serious and dangerous threat to this Party and its officers that we have ever witnessed.

We understand that all the evidence and exhibits are now in the hands of the police who are investigating several serious allegations uncovered by our security operation.

Obviously the safety of those named as the intended victims in this alleged plot and the safety of their families are paramount to this party and the police at present. As a precaution and until the police advise us of the ongoing status of the alleged plot, extra security has been provided to several key party officials and aides.

The timing of this couldn’t be worse but we believe that thanks to the diligent and swift actions of our security apparatus we have prevented a most grievous attack on key individuals and rescued our election campaign from a concerted effort to derail it.

No doubt the media will try to exploit this, but the timing was of course not of our choosing, and we trust that, whatever ‘spin’ our opponents try to put on all this, the public will see that we have employed the proper legal channels and procedures to deal with what many will perceive as just another underhand and deeply shady attack on our Party and the right of the public to an effective democratic choice at election time.

Be assured, this party its officials and ELECTED leader and representatives will never bow down to any form of threat from without or within. The Establishment, our undemocratic opponents and their puppets should take note, that the harder they hit us, the tougher we become. The BNP is still on course for its biggest General Election ever, in the course of which our focus on our opposition to the Afghan War will give millions of our fellow Britons the chance to demand an end to that murderous folly. No wonder the Powers That Be are so worried!

The British National Party: We’re here and we’re here to stay!

Complete nobody reforms unknown band

Joey Smith (right) and another nonentity reform unknown band

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headline of the week...BNP Appoints David Hannam as National Treasurer

Naziboy Collett and his moronic sidekick, David Hannam

I almost choked on my cup of tea when I read that on the BNP website. Then I thought maybe I hadn't noticed the time passing and we'd hit April 1st already. But no, it's the truth. Squeaky Dave Hannam, serial-shagger, schoolie-fancier (along with naziboy Collett) and all-round incompetent twat, has been made National Treasurer, presumably because he was the only person moronic enough to take the job.

Although the only people to report this world-shattering news so far, the BNP always likes to give the impression that it is constantly being approached by the media for any tidbits it cares to throw for them. It isn't, but they do like to pretend. Thus, the report says;

Approached for comment, Mr Hannam said he wanted to “see central office accounts run as smoothly as the Regional Accounting Unit.”

Let's be clear about this. The Regional Accounting Unit is an unmitigated disaster. So much money has been stolen from the regions that they have now begun to conceal them from HQ in the hope that funds will be there to be used for whatever the regions want, rather than to support the Griffin/Dowson families in their never-ending striving to join the Sunday Times Rich List.

On behalf of all anti-fascists everywhere, I'd like to say how much we're going to be looking forward to the BNP's next financial disaster which, I have absolutely no doubt at all, will be caused entirely by Hannam. Even if it isn't, he'll get the blame.