BNP links to Troubles charity

Money, money, money...

A fundraising expert for the far-right BNP helped head a charity for Troubles’ victims that has raked in taxpayers’ cash

Fanatical anti-abortionist James Dowson was trustee of Solas NI — which has received more than £130,000 from Government and European Union peace grants. There is no suggestion that the money intended to help victims was misused.

Dowson confirmed his links to Solas NI after we started to investigate the secretive charity, which was set up to counsel those bereaved, maimed or traumatized by terrorist attacks. The support group has now mysteriously shut its Belfast headquarters amid revelations it has links to the far-right BNP.

Dowson was revealed in June as the man who runs the British National Party’s national call centre in Dundonald. The Dundonald BNP “bunker” is tucked away at Unit 5, Carrowreagh Business Centre.

Scottish businessman Dowson is a hardline anti-abortion campaigner who has a number of criminal convictions. He also featured in a flute band which produced tapes glorifying UFF killer Michael Stone’s infamous Milltown cemetery massacre in 1988. Dowson, 44, has a string of convictions including breach of the peace in 1986, weapon possession and breach of peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992.

When we first contacted him to ask about his links to Solas NI, he referred us to his solicitor. They released a statement to us through Dowson’s company Adlorries. In the statement, Dowson refers to Solas NI as ‘Solaris NI’. It said Dowson ceased to be a trustee of the group in February last year.

The statement added: “Jim Dowson is pleased to have been involved in a charity that set itself the agenda of making Northern Ireland safe for all by building bridges between persons of different faiths, different political persuasions and of different ethnic origins.”

Solas declares on its website that it embraces diversity and aims to ensure that victims of Troubles atrocities can turn to a “nonpolitical and non-sectarian organisation” for help. The group received £111,479 of European Union peace funding between 1998 and 2007. And from 2003-2007, Solas received £18,627 in Northern Ireland peace grants.

Dowson’s statement said that it was his “understanding” that Solas had been “dormant” since October last year. It added: “As far as Jim Dowson is aware, Solaris NI complied with all its legal, regulatory, funding and public disclosure obligations and requirements in full during the time he was a trustee and he has no reason to believe that this exemplary record was not continued by Solaris NI after he ceased to be a trustee.”

When we called at the Solas registered address in east Belfast last week, its doors were shuttered over and there was no sign. The deserted building on the Upper Newtownards Road is the same address which is still listed on the organisation’s website. A local businessman, who did not want to be named, said he had seen the BNP ‘truth truck’ – which is emblazoned with anti-abortion propaganda – regularly parked outside the Solas office.

Solas still has an operational website, but it is not clear if it is still accepting donations from the public. And when we rang the telephone number on its website, they refused to say if they had closed, how their cash was used or where they were now based.

Records show that Solas NI has the same address and telephone number as the Christian Youth Fellowship, set up by Jim Dowson. Online records show that the last registered chairman for Solas NI is Alex Thomas. Thomas’s wife, Marion, answered the phone when we rang the organisation using the number on its website. It has been claimed that Marion is in “overall charge” of directing calls to Dowson’s charity and business empire.

She refused to tell us where Solas was based when we asked about its closed headquarters. She also referred us to the same solicitor Dowson uses if we wanted further comment.

Unlike England and Wales, there is no charity register in Northern Ireland to give the public access to their details. It means there are no official documents we could view which show how Solas NI works.

Sunday Life via Hope not Hate

BNP Bosses Uncovered

Office chief James Dowson sent this pic of
himself with a shotgun to ex-employee after a dispute

This is gun-toting BNP fundraiser Rev James Dowson calmly walking down the street with his toddler son and wife – and a shotgun!

The crazed anti-abortion nutter, who has a list of convictions including possessing a weapon, sent the phone photo to a former employee after they fell out over a computer which holds the entire BNP membership database. The Scottish ‘businessman’, who has loyalist links and lives in Ballygowan, runs the right wing BNP’s national nerve centre in east Belfast under the cover name Adlorries.

But the entire operation was thrown into chaos recently after his right-hand woman quit her job of running the office and took a computer which contained the BNP membership list. Today the former employee lifts the lid on life working for 44-year-old Jim Dowson and the BNP in Belfast. She reveals how:

• Dowson sent her the photo of himself with a shotgun and threatened other members of her family with the UVF.
• The rabid nutter flew into a rage after a Belfast recruitment sent two Asian men and two gay people to work in the Dundonald office.
• Dowson runs a string of charities from the Belfast base and collects donations for doing nothing.
• BNP members have been conned into buying a lifetime membership which comes with a £100 watch – which is actually only worth £19.99.

It comes in the week when a fresh leaked list of alleged BNP members appeared on the internet and convicted race-hate leader Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on the BBC’s Question Time.

Following a dispute with Dowson the former employee, who can’t be identified, says she kept a computer belonging to the BNP because he refused to pay her substantial wages she claims she was owed. Dowson then sent her this picture of himself, armed with a shotgun. “I took that as a threat – why else would he send someone he was in dispute with such a photo?” says the former BNP officer manager.

“I worked for them at their office in Dundonald for the last eight months because it was a job and I needed the work, plus it paid well. At the start it was just like organising any other office but recently he wanted me to get more involved in the political side of things and I ended up working more for the BNP directly. But it got too difficult because I hate what the BNP stand for, plus I live with my partner in a republican area. I’m not scared of Dowson though – he’s a wannabe hardman and I think he’s full of shit.”

Dowson, who once told the Sunday World he would never “get into bed” with the BNP, has a string of convictions including breach of the peace in 1986, possession of a weapon and breach of the peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992. He also has close links with loyalist groups here and has produced flute band tapes which glorify UFF mass killer Michael Stone.

Following our expose of his secret BNP office back in June, Dowson told UTV that he hated the BNP and only ran their call centre on pure business grounds. However we can reveal that Dowson is a fully paid up ‘life’ member.

The former employee says Dowson once flew off the handle after a Belfast recruitment agency sent gays and Asians to work in the BNP office.

“He went mental when these two Asian fellas arrived to work for us. I asked them did they realise who they would be working for and they said they didn’t care, so long as they got paid. Then they sent us a man and a woman who were quite obviously gay and he had them chucked out before they even got an interview. I left in the middle of September and he told me to keep the computer in exchange for the wages he owed. But things turned nasty when my sister, who also worked there, left but before she did she changed all the passwords on the computers. My sister only did it because they treated her like a dogsbody.

“Jim then demanded the computer back and started to get nasty. We argued for about two days over the phone about it and then on Saturday I got the picture of him with his wife and son and a shotgun. He then called the cops to my house and had me arrested for theft. The cops are raging because he told them a load of nonsense about there being cops’ and top judges’ personal details being on the computer just to get them to arrest me.”

She says Jim idolises leader Nick Griffin and loves the BNP.

“Jim went nuts after the Sunday World story in June and pulled us all in to a meeting. He banned mobile phones in the office and he installed cameras everywhere. But so many people have left he only had one call centre salesperson left. Jim is terrified that the place is going to fold because the business has dried up. During my time we brought in 4,000 new members but he can’t get past 13,000 members.

Nutter Nick’s girl is working undiecover in his Belfast office

Jenny Matthys, daughter of race hate nutter Nick GriffinTHIS the daughter of race hate nutter Nick Griffin – and she’s set up home in Ulster. Posing in her underwear she looks like a decent fun-loving girl – but behind the veneer she’s as bitter as her dad.

Jenny Matthys is a dyed-in-the wool BNP fanatic and has been sent by MEP dad Nick to Belfast to run the party’s membership office. Jenny, who’s 23 years old, is living in a tiny flat in Comber with her new Welsh husband who also works for the BNP in Belfast.

Her dad made a controversial appearance on the BBC’s Question Time programme on Thursday night and it’s believed Jenny was in London to bask in her father’s ‘glory’. The Sunday World can reveal that Jenny moved over here in July after a string of visits to Northern Ireland. Now she’s living here permanently and has become a fan of loyalist band culture.

“Jenny loves the whole loyalist thing,” says the former office manager of the Belfast BNP office. “She’s a big fan of the Goldsprings Flute Band who are a blood and thunder band from Comber. Jenny even joined them recently and goes to band practice every week. She doesn’t play anything – instead they let her carry the flag. She went up to Derry recently with Jim Dowson and his family to see the band parade.”

Jenny is also filled with contempt for ethnic minorities.

“Jenny is just like her dad. She loves the BNP and wants to follow in her dads footsteps. In fact she’s even worse than her dad because she says stuff that he even realises is too stupid to say. And she’s like him in other ways too – she’s extremely arrogant – in fact she’s a complete bitch.

As a 17-year-old Jenny planned to run for council as a BNP representative but the plan never got off the ground. But she has spent most of her life since she was a teenager working to promote the vile views of the BNP. Her husband Angus works in the mailroom of the Belfast office and came over from Wales to live here with Jenny.

Racist gets invite to Ulster

Hardline loyalists are to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin to address supporters in Ulster.

A fascist group based in Mid-Ulster have been in contact with the BNP’s head office in London. It followed his appearance on the BBC1 Question Time show on Thursday which was watched by a record 8 million viewers. The hardline loyalists want the MEP and one of his right wing councillors to come to the province in the New Year to host a question and answer session.

Said a source: “Loyalists are fed up that their local unionist politicians who don’t speak up for them. We want Ulster to remain British. We don’t foreigners coming and taking our jobs and our homes. We want a councillor to stand in next year’s elections as mid Ulster has a large foreign national population. We will give him a warn welcome because we believe he speaks up for the loyalist people of Ulster.’’

Nick Griffin is no stranger to Ulster and has a long association with hardline loyalist groups over his opposition to Sinn Fein and the IRA. Five years ago, the Sunday World revealed how Griffin held a series of meetings with neo Nazis groups at a Belfast hotel. He also met a number of senior UVF figures who were Ulster cheerleaders for the BNP.

Sunday World

BNP’s secret Belfast lair

Hardline ex-criminal boasts that he makes £500k each year for reviled political party

The British National Party is peddling its vile fascist propaganda from a secret Belfast bunker. The BNP’s national call centre is tucked away in an industrial estate in Dundonald — right under the nose of First Minister Peter Robinson, who lives just minutes away. The man who runs it is Ballygowan-based Jim Dowson — a top BNP fundraiser and a militant anti-abortion campaigner who has a string of criminal convictions and has had links to mass-murderer Michael Stone.

In online BNPtv footage filmed at the Belfast HQ, Scotsman Dowson brags that the Belfast base is raking in £1,500 per day — more than £500,000 per year — and has 12 staff.

Visitors to Carrowreagh Business Centre are blissfully unaware that work is being carried out for the BNP at Unit 5 — there are no signs to advertise their existence. And even staff at the Dundonald base — who had innocently replied to call centre job ads — do not have their wages paid directly by the BNP. Staff wages come from Dowson’s company Adlorries.com Ltd, which has registered address in Leicestershire. Dowson is the only named director of the firm. Adlorries.com keeps a low profile — its website lists no phone numbers or address, you can only contact them by email.

A former worker at the centre told Sunday Life that one man at the centre enjoyed dishing out verbal abuse to anti-fascists when they call to complain about the BNP. The source said: “There is one bloke who will literally run across the room to take over a call if he knows it’s someone giving out about the BNP. I was shocked and decided there and then I wasn’t working in a place like that.”

The outraged ex-worker also said that the sackloads of mail to the Belfast HQ would often include hatemail — some with human excrement and vomit inside. The insider added: “I couldn’t believe that, it was disgusting but obviously it shows the extent to which people hate the BNP.”

Dowson is the man who has masterminded the set-up of the BNP’s nerve centre in Belfast. In a BNPtv News broadcast which can be found on YouTube, he brags: “I’m speaking to you from the reception of the British National Party’s latest plant to open. The British National Party is now mainstream and is growing so incredibly quickly that these plants are absolutely necessary to keep the party running and to cope with the growth.”

The footage then cuts to BNP leader Nick Griffin in the ‘distribution warehouse’ who boasts that they have 29million BNP leaflets there and states “it’s a huge operation here”. It then cuts back to Dowson at the ‘political headquarters’ —which is in fact the Belfast office, which Dowson says is the “adminsitrative hub for the party”. He says: “Here we’ve recruited staff of the highest calibre to take the party to the next level.”

Later in the video he says there are 12 staff at the call centre dealing with 35,000 calls over the election period.

Dowson says the operation cost £100,000 to set up — but boasts that the centre is taking in £1,500 per day. He adds: “It’s a very worthwhile and intense operation and certainly no other political party in the United Kingdom has anything like this, it’s going very well. There is no other political party in Britain or Europe that has anything like this, it’s very modern and very efficient.”

Workers are handed a ‘British heritage script’ which provides a template and information to promote the BNP and products to callers to boost the party’s coffers. Among the ‘pointers to mention’ in the script it says “mention the trouble with the Muslims and our troops”. Staff at the Belfast HQ handle incoming enquiries and mail, post out BNP propaganda, take donations and pester lapsed members to try and get them back in the BNP fold.

The office used to be occupied by Alphagraphics, a firm which has no association to the BNP. But outside Dowson’s home in Ballygowan is an advert for a plumbing business called ultraplumb.com and vehicles with the company logos were parked both at his home and at the BNP’s east Belfast hideaway. Dowson’s son James is listed as a director of ultraplumb.com and also works at the BNP office.

When Sunday Life called at Dowson’s home yesterday to ask him about his BNP work, he said: “This is private property, get off my land or I’ll call the police.”

BNP leader Nick Griffin made a secret trip to the Belfast base less than two weeks ago to film a propaganda video. Our exclusive picture shows Griffin pictured at the Belfast HQ flanked by two members of staff, whose identity we have protected. His victory at the polls has been met with outrage and the 50-year-old and colleague Andrew Brons were besieged by protesters and pelted with eggs at Westminster last week.

Belfast Telegraph