BNP staff not paid while ‘consultant’ pockets over £3,000 a week

Jim Dowson, the fundraising consultant brought in by Nick Griffin, the British National Party leader, is paid £162,000 a year for his services, according to a senior member of the party’s national advisory council.

Richard Edmonds, who helped found the BNP alongside John Tyndall long before Griffin joined the party, has come out in support of Eddy Butler, who is currently challenging Griffin for the leadership.

Writing on Butler’s blog on 8 July, Edmonds says a leadership challenge is a chance for members to raise matters of major importance for the party and the issue he wants to raise is the employment of “an outside businessman, Mr Jim Dowson, who acts as a ‘consultant’ to our Party at a salary of just under £2,000 per week”.

He goes on to explain that as well as receiving £7,500 a month as a “consultancy fee”, Dowson is also paid £72,000 a year for “managing a party of the internal administration” of the BNP. That comes to £162,000 a year, or £3,115 a week, an amount Edmonds describes as a “scandal”.

Edmonds, who is very influential in the BNP especially among the more hardline members, states that Dowson gave him these figures himself. That makes them more reliable than the statement on the BNP website at the end of May that Dowson’s Midas Consultancy had been paid a total of £165,000 since the end of 2007, a period of over two and a half years.

The fees paid to Dowson, an extremist anti-abortion campaigner with several criminal convictions, will stick in the craw of party staff on mainland Britain who were not paid in June according to Butler, who says the party is “insolvent” as a result of Griffin “deliberately, avoidably and recklessly” involving it in a series of legal cases.

The financial difficulties do not extend to the Belfast BNP call centre, which is run by Dowson. The staff there received their June pay as usual, which is perhaps not surprising as they are mostly members of Dowson’s and Griffin’s families, including Griffin’s eldest daughter Jennifer.

Meanwhile Griffin and his sidekick Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s national elections officer, continue to try to thwart Butler’s challenge by expelling his supporters from the party. Writing on the website set up by Simon Bennett, the BNP’s former webmaster, Colin Poulter, the party’s former Eastbourne organiser, says that an expulsion notice emailed to him on 28 June included the accusation that he was: “Working to collect signatures for a challenge against the Chairman whilst disqualified from all party association.”

Poulter, who joined the BNP in October 2008 and claims a long list of achievements in organising the party in Eastbourne, says: “So what of the deadly accusation that I am collecting signatures, SO WHAT, is this another pathetic attempt to intimidate people away from nominating or voting for Eddy Butler, or any other candidate, against Nick Griffin in the leadership contest?”

Elsewhere Alistair Barbour, who briefly served on the staff of Griffin’s European Parliament constituency office last year, has shed light on why he left so abruptly. After joining the BNP and achieving rapid promotion to Carlisle organiser and then North West secretary, he “started to see them for what they really are.

“When I got on Griffins staff I walked away in disgust,” Barbour writes. “Yes they are all they say they are. But there also as corrupt as mainstream politicians, in fact there worse. Main stream politician fleece the tax payer. BNP Ltd fleece there own as well. They use propaganda to the outside world via the website. But most importantly they use propaganda to there own supporters and members. Distorting facts and figures and hiding behind a veil of secrecy and lies. Propaganda is the largest tool they have. One other famous party in history relied heavily on propaganda I’m sure you all know who I mean.”

Griffin continues to revel in his highly paid position as an MEP. His latest act is to nominate the “brave Dutch MEP Geert Wilders” for the Sakharov prize for freedom of thought.

The award, in honour of the Soviet dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov, is meant to honour people who fight for human rights and freedom, not a rabid Islamophobe whose mission in life is to incite division and hate.

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate

A place in the sun

Jim Dowson (pictured), Ulster loyalist, militant anti-abortionist and the man who bought the British National Party, has been at the centre of allegations from within and outside the party about his property dealings.

Nearly two years ago Searchlight revealed that a property acquired in the village of Estubeny, near the City of Valencia in Spain, was being hired out to the BNP as a management training centre for party officers. At least two courses were organised there by Dowson’s Belfast-based fundraising and management training business, the Midas Consultancy, with which the BNP signed a three-year consultancy contract.

Local people were surprised to see a bunch of British fascists wandering around their village instead of the mothers and babies they had been told were being sheltered there through Dowson’s charitable activities.

Rumours abound that Dowson acquired the property with the help of his milch-cow, the supporters of his extremist anti-abortion UK LifeLeague. The organisation, which is secretive about its finances, uses highly provocative tactics, such as publishing the home addresses of abortion clinic staff.

It would not be the only time Dowson had not told the whole truth to donors. Last year the BNP claimed to have bought an advertising lorry, which it called the truth truck, after Dowson ran an appeal for the party to raise the £26,550 needed.

The vehicle turned out to be the same “truth truck” that Dowson had bought two years earlier for the UK LifeLeague, after appealing for donations from supporters. A press release in April 2006 claimed Operation Truth Truck would “enable the pro-life message to reach the unreached across the towns and cities of Britain”. The UK LifeLeague and the BNP had milked their gullible supporters twice over for the same “truth truck”, which the BNP in fact leases from Adlorries.com Ltd, one of Dowson’s businesses.

The Midas Consultancy boasts offices in London, Belfast, Dublin, Valencia, Budapest, Dubai, Atlanta and most recently Warsaw. It is now understood to be eying up Turkey for another mother and baby home scam.

Our investigators are still looking for an ex-pat South African who has set himself up as a property developer in Anna, another village near Valencia, and is said have links with Dowson’s local dealings.

Gerry Gable at Searchlight

BNP MEPs would not serve full term

A British National Party Member of the European Parliament would have to stand down after four years of the five-year term and hand the seat to the second person on the BNP candidates’ list, the BNP has said. The requirement, revealed at a meeting of the party’s Advisory Council on 25 January as its candidate selection process was getting under way, shows that the BNP does not take the role of an MEP seriously.

It is unclear whether Nick Griffin, the party leader, would also have to comply with this rule in the event of his election in the North West, where he heads the BNP candidates’ list.

MEPs play an important role in the European legislative process, and thereby in the creation of national legislation in the 27 member states of the European Union. They have an important say on European Commission directives and regulations, international treaties and legislation on many issues, such as the free movement of workers, the internal market and consumer protection.

The European Parliament also shares equal responsibility with the Council of Ministers for the EU budget and exercises supervision over the Commission and management of EU policies.

BNP members elected to a local council commonly take months if not years to understand their function. Learning the ropes in Strasbourg and Brussels would be far harder. The party’s insistence that its MEPs should stand down just at the point they have a chance of actually doing something is bizarre.

The idea that this allows the second person on the list “to gain experience” before the next European election is nonsense. Would the originally elected MEP then not stand again or does the BNP realistically think it will get two MEPs elected in any region in five years’ time?

The truth is that the BNP has no interest in taking part in EU government. All it really wants is the salary and expenses that come with an MEP’s job and the opportunity to further its alliances with extreme-right parties in other EU states. MEPs will have to give 10% of their salary to their party region and “submit their expense claims for full Party audit” – presumably to make sure they claim enough for the party’s benefit.

The Advisory Council, which meets only every three or four months, also decided to appoint an “inner cabinet” to oversee the election campaign. Its members are most of the party’s main national officers together with “Midas Consultant” Jim Dowson, the man responsible for the party’s fundraising over the past year and providing management training for party officers in sunny Valencia.

Dowson’s contribution to the election campaign seems to consist largely of copying Searchlight’s HOPE not hate campaign, though not very well. Several recent BNP campaign initiatives, such as sending out regular campaign emails and encouraging supporters to sign up as activists, are poorly executed copies of HOPE not hate tactics.

But it would be wrong to underestimate Dowson. His fundraising campaign has brought in more money than the BNP has ever enjoyed and it expects to have a turnover of £1 million this year, according to the AC minutes.

Another member of the “inner cabinet” is Mark Collett, the head of publicity. Collett should have received a severe dressing down for wasting a large chunk of Dowson’s money when he printed 700,000 “Euro warm up leaflets” without an official imprint, which meant they could not be distributed. But “golden boy” Collett can do no wrong in the eyes of the party leadership. He apologised and offered his resignation, which naturally was refused. “You stupid boy!” as Captain Mainwaring might have said.

BNP units were offered new leaflets with the imprint or a 33% discount on the illegal one plus free “overlay stickers” containing the imprint. BNP groups around the country are no doubt busy organising “sticker parties”, probably in pubs, at which activists will take time out from campaigning and peel off thousands of small stickers to place on the leaflets. Voters will be able to spot the leaflets done later in the evening by the wonky stickers and beer stains.

Although the party leadership acted quickly when the imprint’s absence was spotted and told units not to distribute the leaflets, some may have got out. York BNP held a day of action in Ryedale in January and distributed an anti-EU leaflet, which it reproduced on its blog. Strangely the part of the leaflet where the imprint should be was cut away, making it impossible to see whether it was there or not.

HOPE not hate

Loyalist helps BNP spread race hate message

A Belfast-based loyalist night defended his decision to link up with the extremist BNP.

Former Orangeman James Dowson, who runs Midas Consultancy, told Sunday Life that he had “no problem” providing senior members of the right-wing party with management training and marketing skills. Scots-born Dowson, who is also a hardline anti-abortion campaigner, has been responsible for helping the BNP send letters to businesses throughout the UK in a bid to raise cash.

The loyalist, who makes regular trips to Northern Ireland, helped mastermind the party’s ‘Truth Truck’ campaign [see here and here], which included lorries visiting towns in England to spread the BNP’s ‘nationalist message’. And Dowson, who admitted coming from a “loyalist background”, claimed the BNP’s message would soon be coming to Northern Ireland.

He said: “I specialise in a business pool which includes Belfast and Scotland and I’m proud to describe myself as a loyalist and a unionist. A wide range of organisations come to us because we provide management training and marketing skills. When the BNP contacted us, I had no option but to work with them — it was an exciting business proposal. I understand the truth truck could soon be on its way to Northern Ireland, but that’s nothing to do with me.”

Added Dowson: “The BNP are not an illegal organisation so why shouldn’t I work with them? I don’t think their members are involved in criminal activity. I have worked in Northern Ireland for a long time, but not for any proscribed organisations. The BNP is not a proscribed organisation. It would be wrong for me to pontificate about the views of the BNP and I honestly can’t think of anyone I wouldn’t work with.”

The link between the BNP and Dowson caused concern among anti-racism campaigners in the province. Said one campaigner: “Dowson’s marketing plan is nothing more than a begging letter. The BNP is in very serious financial trouble and this is how they think they can get money. The BNP may not be illegal, but they articulate views which clearly motivate people to commit very serious attacks on minorities.”

Sunday Life revealed last year how Northern Ireland’s only Chinese politician slammed the BNP’s latest attempt at a recruitment drive in the province. The right-wing party published a leaflet — entitled ‘What Now for Northern Ireland?’ — claiming the province was on its way to a “multi-cultural hellhole” and that towns here had become “dumping-grounds” for migrants.

But Alliance MLA Anna Lo said she was “disgusted” by the BNP's intolerant language — and said the party was wasting its time in Northern Ireland “because people are not racist here”.

She added: “There is an element of inciting hatred. There is no attraction in Northern Ireland for this type of politics and I would discourage this party from coming over here. We have always had good race relations in Northern Ireland. There may be the odd incident, but that does not represent the majority of people here.”

In 2006, the BNP’s leader Nick Griffin was cleared by a court of stirring up racial hatred — a move that prompted then-chancellor Gordon Brown to consider changing Britain's race laws.

Belfast Telegraph