Dissent derails Stoke BNP election campaign

Alby Walker: could not stand the BNP’s nazis and Holocaust deniers

Simon Darby, the deputy BNP leader, once promised that he would never desert the people of Dudley North, where he had stood in previous elections. In January he did just that.

He had set his sights on the more winnable constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central. Over the past few years Alby Walker, the Stoke BNP council group leader, had given the BNP a measure of respectability, gradually gaining nine council seats and ‘setting the party on the road to ‘taking control. This steady progress has now been derailed. Darby and Nick Griffin, the party leader, in their rush for glory pushed Walker aside and declared Darby the candidate. Walker stood down as branch organiser shortly before Christmas causing the local party to fracture.

Wary of Walker’s popularity in the local BNP and the local community, the BNP cautioned its followers not to attack him. Darby damned him with faint praise on his blog, claiming that Walker had endorsed his campaign and would act as his election agent. However, on the day Darby launched his campaign Walker threw a spanner in the works with an announcement that he had left the BNP and would stand against Darby as an independent. The gloves came off. Darby began impugning Walker’s reputation, insinuating that the local Labour party had bought him off.

On a regional BBC programme Walker stated, “there’s a vein of Holocaust denying within the BNP that I cannot identify myself with. They’ve still got senior members of the BNP who will be candidates in the general election that have nazi, naziesque sympathies.”

He also accused Griffin of using the BNP “as some kind of vehicle to make himself rich and famous”. He added later that the BNP insisted its candidates undergo training on how to answer questions about the Holocaust, aware that its antisemitism was its Achilles heel.

The BNP responded viciously, stating that Walker had jumped ‘before he was pushed because of his “pressing mental health issues”, an accusation that is a hallmark of totalitarian regimes the world over. ‘It also insinuated that Walker was a former football hooligan. The statement was quickly removed from the party website but the damage was done. Ellie Walker, Alby’s wife who was also a BNP councillor, declared herself independent. It was to be expected, stated Simon Darby though gritted teeth.

Walker’s resignation has seriously affected Stoke BNP. In 2008 the party fielded a record 11 council candidates; this year it has only six, two of whom are councillors seeking re-election. Michael Coleman, who took over ‘from Walker, conceded that he had approached 25 people to contest the 20 available city council seats for the BNP but most declined.

“I have had a bit of a falling-out with people over this and it has caused a rift within the group,” Coleman admitted. “We thought we would be able to ‘put up about 14 candidates this year. The Alby Walker situation has also damaged us to a degree, as some of the people who would have stood for us have left because they feel he has been treated badly.”

Only a few months ago the BNP looked likely to emerge as the dominant force on a fractured city council. Instead, having found only four new candidates, Coleman is squandering one in an act of petty spite by putting him up against ‘Alby Walker in Abbey Green in an attempt to damage Walker’s chances of re-election. The remaining BNP councillor in Abbey Green, Melanie Baddley, enters the general election, in which she is contesting Stoke North, with her reputation tarnished following the arrest of her husband over an alleged drugs offence. He is currently on police bail.

Stoke BNP also has to contend with the emergence of the England First Party (EFP) in the city, which is giving disgruntled former BNP activists a vehicle for their discontent. Coleman dismissed it as “just vengeful hatred” from former members “directed against myself and possibly a few others in the BNP”. No doubt he is incensed that Spencer Cartlidge, once a regular BNP candidate who left before the 2008 elections, is challenging BNP councillor Anthony Simmonds in Weston and Meir North.

Another EFP candidate, Mark Leat, is a former BNP councillor for Longton North who was sacked from the BNP and subsequently defeated, but is contesting the ward again. The BNP could not find anyone to stand ‘against him. The EFP is also contesting Fenton, where the BNP polled 36.1% ‘in 2006 but is not standing this time. This, perhaps more than anything else, is indicative of the turmoil within the BNP in Stoke.

Searchlight

How many lies can you tell in a week? The BNP aims for the world record...

Well over a week after the non-aligned Independent councillor for Longton North (Stoke) Mark Leat decided he no longer wanted to represent the British National Party, the party issued a statement to The Sentinel, his local paper, to the effect that Leat had been thrown out for being idle.

As much as we hate to defend anyone with any connection to the BNP, this is simply not true. Not even BNP supporters believe the statement - the usually supportive Stormfront nazi forum has several wry comments about this poor attempt to save face, including this one; 'Ah, the usual botched "cover story" from the Griffinites. They can't even get that out in good time, Leat has been listed as "non-aligned" on the council website for the best part of two weeks already!'

The BNP's idiotic Young BNP leader Danny Lake then tried to bullshit the world with a bizarre report on Nick Griffin's visit to Bath.

You may recall that Lake tried to get Griffin in as an official speaker at the university but the Holocaust-denying leader of the party was denied permission to speak following protests from numerous anti-fascist individuals and organisations. Lake, in desperation, booked him into a local pub - misleading the landlord as to who the meeting was for and what it was about. Searchlight rang and told the landlord and he promptly cancelled the meeting, saying; 'A young man visited me the night before and asked if he could book a room. It was a very casual arrangement. The moment Searchlight rang to tell me who was behind it, I opted to stop it. I feel that I have been hoodwinked into holding this talk.'

Lake's version is different. He claimed in his report on the BNP's web page; 'They then, true to form, proceeded to scare the proprietor into cancelling the event' though confusingly he then went on to say; 'I was promptly told by the proprietor that the event would not be going ahead as he has a largely student and multi-ethnic clientele and was not prepared for his business to suffer as a result of allowing us to continue.'

Lake fits right into the BNP mould - a liar through and through. He should do well in the party. Griffin was eventually reduced to talking to four students for ten minutes while twenty protestors made themselves heard nearby.

In one last blast of confusion, Lake drones on about free speech and democracy in his piece on the BNP's page, ending with; 'At the start of the next academic year...I will be hoping to force the university into allowing Nick to speak to a proper audience on the Bath University campus itself. So much for democracy then.

The latest little lie-fest from the BNP appears as a result of a neat little expose by the Bath Chronicle, which revealed that Mike Howson, the BNP's regional organiser for the mid-west and former council candidate for the party, who is one of the people responsible for the BNP's ludicrous vigilante group (sorry, 'community patrol') in Corsham and who is also an apparently highly-regarded air cadet youth leader, has a web site littered with 'white pride' and 'white nationalist' videos, some of which have swastikas prominently placed on them.

One of the films added by Howson included text promoting white nationalists as 'ordinary white people who want to protect themselves from being mugged by multi-culturalism and raped by multi-racialism'. Another depicted a police officer being attacked on a public highway, images of the Israeli flag pierced by a dagger, American President George Bush taking a bite out of the neck of the Statue of Liberty and messages saying 'wake up, white people'. Howson's site is also linked to information about a group known as Unite Against Anti-White Racism.

Howson, remaining pretty casual about the whole thing, told the Chronicle that his Bebo [similar to MySpace] site was an information portal and if internet users did not like the content they did not have to watch it. 'My Bebo site is a private site and people on that site are friends and it is their choice to be so.'

The BNP though, obviously seeing yet another public relations disaster looming, quickly made up a story about how Howson hadn't known these items were on his site and how he zoomed into action to delete them. Then the party propaganda machine went into overdrive.

Suddenly and for no discernible reason taking it as fact that Howson's site was hacked and the information placed there completely unnoticed by him, the BNP attempts to give the story its own nasty little spin by implication, saying; 'We should say that we don’t believe that anyone on the Bath Chronicle was actually party to the hacking...' and 'This hacking follows on from a similar case from last year when a northern England BNP councillor [the King of the Standards Board, Paul Cromie] had his email account hacked into and 'adult images' emailed from it to the 'World and his Dog'.' Not content with claiming this little piece of over-exposure on a random hacker, the BNP decides to point the finger more clearly but still without any evidence at all, at a 'Left hacking scam'. Yes, of course.

For some reason, the BNP hierarchy can't get it into its thick communal head that to hand a website to a member of the BNP is almost certain to end in disaster. Despite numerous examples of BNP-related stupidity, such as Martin Reynold's Facebook lustings for a threesome with a couple of large women and Karl Newman's weird penchant for dressing up in nazi uniforms, the BNP still asserts 'that no-one...would be daft enough to post such obviously unacceptable material on such a public website'. Well apparently they do and all the BNP's lies, misleading hints and snidey comments are unlikely to stop that.

Even if they continue to churn them out at the rate they have over the last week.

BNP throws out 'lazy' councillor

One of the seven British National Party councillors on Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been thrown out of the political group.The far-right group got three more seats at last week's local elections, but lost sitting councillor Steve Batkin in Longton North.

Fellow Longton North councillor Mark Leat now appears to have paid the price for Mr Batkin's defeat. He has been removed from the group amid accusations he did not work hard enough. The decision leaves the BNP with six of the 60 seats on the city council.

BNP group leader Albert Walker said: "I am removing the party whip from councillor Mark Leat and he will no longer be part of the BNP group. We consider he is not a team player. He places unreasonable demands on the group and although he has done a very good job as chairman of the council's health scrutiny commission, his performance in other areas has been lacking, particularly in his ward where his work fell on to former BNP councillor Steve Batkin.

"He failed to help Steve Batkin in his election campaign, which contributed to Steve losing his seat in Longton North. We hold no malice towards Mark. We feel this will send out a clear message that only serious people who are prepared to work hard at their positions as ward councillors will be considered to be part of the BNP group."

Mr Leat, who was elected in 2004, rejected the accusations. He said: "I'm in a state of shock. I feel like I've been stabbed in the back." He added: "If you speak to people in my ward they will tell you I have done a considerable amount. I got fencing round the old people's bungalows on Kendrick Street - they were delighted. I have got people council houses and got money for the bowling club on Anchor Road and Longton Rugby Club.

"I have been doing a lot of things, and I think this is just a sour grapes. In the run-up to the elections, Steve Batkin was dragged around other wards to help out there, and Longton was neglected. I went round knocking on doors asking people to vote for him."

It is understood Mr Leat is keen to become a Conservative councillor in the authority's Conservative and Independent Alliance, but that will have to be approved by Tory central office.

The Sentinel

BNP loses councillor just a week after the local elections

Mark Leat, the Longton North BNP councillor on Stoke Council has decided he's had enough of the fascist BNP and stumbled across the council chamber to become a non-aligned Independent, thus wiping out in a single embarrassing go the staggering single extra seat that the BNP made at last week's local government elections.

So, after putting up the record number of 750 candidates and ploughing a phenomenal amount of money into the campaign - delivering up to six campaign leaflets in some areas, we're told - the party has ended up precisely where it started.

Leat's only claim to fame is a bit of BNP self-promotion when a pre-election Voice of Freedom article claimed the party was achieving credibility following his award of chairman of the Health Commission. Following this, the party claimed it was 'working towards the day when the BNP hold the majority on Stoke Council'. That's put an end to that plan.

More info as and when we get it...

Thanks to our friends at Kirklees Unity for the tip-off. :-)