Another rat leaves the sinking ship

Following the announcement yesterday that the BNP will face a winding up order if it doesn’t pay £45,000 to the courts within a fortnight, it comes as no surprise to hear that yet more BNP officials decide to call it time with the floundering party.

South West Regional Organiser Mike Howson announced today that he has had enough and resigned all positions within the British National Party with immediate effect.

Howson in his long and badly spelt resignation statement explains one of the reasons for his announcement was when Nick Griffin “Appointed in the main cronies to well paid positions instead of properly qualified professionals.”

Howson continued “The financial mismanagement has had disastrous consequences for the region. I lost three good branches and a lot of good people because of non payment of bills, not because of the actions of individuals in the local area, but because of the incompetence of well paid officials at Head Office.”

And in a final attack directed at his party leader he wrote “I have seen a man who I have followed, protected and supported snatch certain defeat from the jaws of victory, not only by his own actions, but also the actions of those around him. Recent events have also confirmed the sad state of the party”

I wonder who is next in line to jump from the sinking ship?

HOPE not Hate

Mock grave among the "attractions" at BNP "family festival"

A mock graveyard of people whom the BNP says were killed in anti-white racist attacks is among the "attractions" at the Red, White and Blue festival in Derbyshire this weekend. The event, held in Codnor-Denby Lane, Denby for the third consecutive year, started yesterday.

Anti-BNP protesters claim it is a fascist show; the BNP insists it is for families. The party said other events at the festival would include teaching teenagers how to deal with "anti-white racism" in schools, colleges and the workplace.

Last year the Derby Telegraph was barred from the site, but yesterday our reporter was able to enter. The graveyard featured about 30 wooden crosses with the names and faces of murder victims. A sign at the graveyard read: "The forgotten victims: a memorial to those who paid the ultimate price. Please take a moment to remember them. Victims of anti-white racist violence. Light a candle and pray that our efforts are rewarded in this political struggle before more lives are wasted."

Elsewhere on site, T-shirts were on sale with slogans like "It's a white thing" and leaflets available headed "Islam: A threat to us all".

Head of the BNP's youth and student wing, Mike Howson, said he expected about 50 young BNP members to take part in youth events over the weekend. He said this would include explaining to older teenagers how to deal with "anti-white racism". This will involve the youths being told what their rights are if they belive they are victims of what the BNP called discrimination against whites.

The BNP has refused to say which speakers from abroad will be at the festival and refers to only one unnamed foreign guest speaker in its programme. Anti-BNP groups claim the speakers will include a number of spokespeople from fascist European parties. Yesterday, a US white supremacist, Preston Wiginton, was banned from entering Britain to speak at the festival. Wiginton was barred by officials at Heathrow airport. The UK Border Agency said it had intelligence that Wiginton was to give a speech and said it was feared he would promote "extremism, hatred and violent messages".

Today, more than 2,000 protesters were expected to take part in a peaceful march from Codnor Market Place to a point on Codnor-Denby Lane. It was being organised by Unite Against Fascism, Stop the BNP, Derby Racial Equality Council, Amber Valley Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and the TUC.

Derby Telegraph

Leafleting at Corsham and Braintree

Corsham - May 9th

Anti-BNP Leafleting of Corsham. Meet 10:00 am Saturday 9th May at Corsham Fire Station, Beechfield Road, Corsham, Wiltshire, SN13 9DN Organised by Wiltshire Trade Unions.

Corsham is the local hot spot for the BNP in the West Country

• they have a town councillor there (elected unopposed)
• they have a relatively large and active branch
• Corsham resident Mike Howson is national youth officer for the BNP
• they have announced their intention to stand in the new Chippenham constituency for the general election (which includes Corsham), where the Tories have a black candidate
• in March this year, they held a regional meeting of 90 BNP activists in Corsham Community Centre

We are hoping to leaflet as much of the town as possible on Saturday May 9th. Please pass this message on, and encourage other trade unionists to attend.

The BNP do have a base there, but it is very fragile and we hope to isolate and demoralise them

• in a by election last year they got only 7% of the vote
• key BNP activists are barred from many of the town's pubs
• the extremism of Corsham BNP has driven more moderate members of the BNP out of the organisation

Braintree - May 2nd

Also, we will be leafleting against the BNP in Braintree on Saturday 2 May. From 10am until 1pm at Bank Street

Please come along and help

Fascist firebomber out on parole

On Friday I was visited by Julian Corbett, from the Public Protection Department of Wiltshire Police.

He came to ask me what my relationship was with wannabe Nazi terrorist, Mark Bullman (pictured, left), and to warn me that Bullman is now out of prison, and is looking for me - I have moved address since he went to prison. Bullman had been sentenced to 5 years for racially aggravated arson, but has now been released after two and a half years. (Bullman also goes by the name Mark Bullock)

As I have reported before, in August 2006, BNP supporter, Bullman attempted to burn down the Broad Street mosque in Swindon using a petrol bomb. Mark was the registered fund holder for Wiltshire BNP, and actively campaigned for the party in the 2006 local council elections, just four months before the arson attack. Strangely Mark used to write to me while he was on remand, and even telephoned me from prison - not in a threatening way, but for a friendly chat.

He had left the BNP shortly before the fire bomb attack to form what he called the “1290 sect”, named after the year the Jews were expelled from England, and he wrote to me: “I only attacked the mosque because there is no synagogue in Swindon, and it was close enough for public consumption”. The fuse used for the fire bomb was a rolled up BNP leaflet.

It since transpires that Danny Lake, (former leader of the YBNP and also from Swindon, and who has since been expelled from the BNP), had raised concerns about Bullman with Nick Griffin, but the BNP did not consider Mark Bulman’s mental instablity, propensity to violence and gross anti-Semitism to be a problem. Bullman was supported by Wiltshire organiser, Mike Howson, and Danny Lake claims that Howson encouraged Bullmans’ extremism. Ironically, the main plank of Mike Howson’s campaigning in his native Corsham is “law and order”.

Mark’s letters to me, which I passed on to Searchlight, were filled with a virulent hatred of Jews, mixing up three themes. i) racialised anti-semitism; ii) Christian anti-judaic traditions; and iii) opposition to Israel’s War in the Lebanon, and the occupation of Palestine.

Bullman started [to] ring me regularly late at night sometime during 2005. I decided when Bullman contacted me that it was simply safer to talk to him than snub him, and establish a human relationship, and impress upon him that I was a real person with young children, not just an objectified “enemy”.

I knew that it was him who had fire bombed the mosque as soon as I saw the pictures, because the Swastika daubed on the outside wall was identical to the rather idiosyncratic style that Bullman had used in letters to me. But before I could go to the police I heard that Bullman had already been arrested, indeed he had turned himself in and confessed.

The police decided to contact me after Bullman told his probation officer last week that he had visited my old address, in Avenue Road, where in Bullman’s own words “a communist lived” and Bullman told the probation officer he wanted to apologise to me.

Fair enough, I actually take that at face value. For all his weaknesses Bullman is a troubled and actually quite likable lad. He seems to have always been a bit of a misfit, and found a group of friends who accepted him through football hooliganism and far right politics. It was quite spooky having the police do an audit of the security of my house, and checking out the approaches to it in case they decided I was in serious danger and they had to put me on a rapid response list.

I was actually quite encouraged that they were also assessing the risk to Bullman himself. The bewildered lad has been playing games in his head with his Nazi fantasies, irresponsibly encouraged by BNP activists who exploited him. And his attempts to contact me suggest that he is drawn back to revisiting the same haunts and habits that he was in before his arrest.

Bullman fire bombed a mosque and daubed it with Swastikas. I am prepared to be understanding to Bullman only because I have had personal contact with him, and I have some partial insight into what a troubled and unhappy young man he is; who really needs help and not to be further ostracised and isolated from society. But other people might be less understanding and charitable about what he did than I am.

What really is scandalous is the way the BNP used this young man. They had no problem with exploiting his obvious mental distress, they had no problem with his open support for genocide against the Jews, instead they encouraged him, they used him up and spat him out.

Socialist Unity

Lie lorry tour fails to deliver

Talking to himself: Nick Griffin aboard the lie lorry

“We will start in Scotland and work our way south over one month, stopping in all major cities from Edinburgh to Southampton,” promised Nick Griffin, the BNP chairman, in a fundraising appeal in September.

This so-called truth tour, using the BNP’s notorious “lie lorry” advertising vehicle, was intended to promote the launch of the party’s Racism Cuts Both Ways brochure. Copies would be handed out along the way and “millions will see and hear our message”.

The truth was rather different. Driven by Paul Golding, director of the BNP’s British Pride “white history” website, the truck left London at 8.30am on Monday 10 November. Over five days, wrote Golding, it “visited Brighton, Portsmouth, Winchester, Salisbury, Bath, Corsham, Wolverhampton, Dudly [sic], West Bromwich, Birmingham, Stoke, Manchester, Oldham, Huddersfield, Leeds, Middlesborough [sic], Sunderland, South Shields, Barking, Dagenham, Thurrock, Grays, Tilbury, Blackburn and Blackpool”.

And that was it. The geographically convoluted tour “ended on Friday night at our annual conference,” said Golding, whose name is notably absent from the leaked list of BNP members.

Even though the tour missed huge areas of the country, including the whole of Scotland and Wales, wherever it stopped Golding and Mike Howson, the middle-aged leader of the Young BNP, distributed “thousands and thousands of the Racism Cuts Both Ways booklets to an eager public,” boasted Golding. In Oldham the team “received a wildly enthusiastic response from the public”, similarly in Huddersfield “it was mobbed by highly enthusiastic members of the public”.

The trouble was that the reports were accompanied by pictures of the lie lorry in the various locations visited. And the one thing that the photos had in common, apart from the truck, was the complete absence of any members of the public, eager or otherwise. In fact it was remarkable how many big empty spaces the BNP managed to find in England’s supposedly overcrowded towns and cities.

No doubt Griffin is relying on the people who put up the money for this fiasco being too gullible to notice.

Racism cuts both ways

Pub bans BNP's Michael Simpkins

Pub landlord Mark Foster has refused to serve BNP councillor Michael Simpkins amid fears that his presence would upset regulars.

Mark Foster, landlord of the Hare and Hounds in Pickwick, confirmed he refused to allow the controversial Corsham town councillor to hold a party at the pub last night. The councillor is now demanding fellow BNP supporters boycott the pub, claiming that he has been discriminated against because of his political beliefs. However, Mr Foster has defended his decision to refuse the booking, which marked the university graduation of Coun Simpkins' future daughter-in-law.

Mr Foster, 33, said: "As a pub we can reserve the right to serve anyone we choose. During the local election there was a great strength of feeling surrounding Mr Simpkins and I felt that his presence would stir up a debate at the pub and that would unsettle our regular customers. We weren't prepared to let that happen."

Coun Simpkins was told he was not welcome in the Hare and Hounds after a family member went into the pub on Monday to confirm the booking. Mr Foster said the family member has asked whether Coun Simpkins' presence at the pub would be a problem.

He said: "I told her that we would be uncomfortable and Coun Simpkins would not be welcome."

A furious Coun Simpkins said: "This brings to question whether a public house should start to ban people not for what they say or do, but for what they think. Should pub goers now have to declare their political allegiances on entering?"

But Mr Foster strongly denies claims he has issued a blanket-ban to BNP supporters - but merely reserves the right not to serve Coun Simpkins.

He said: "I have not banned the BNP as a party, in fact many of our regulars are BNP members and supporters and have been good customers here. The reason we decided not to serve Coun Simpkins is not purely because of his political beliefs but because of the atmosphere we believed it may create in the pub."

BNP chairman for Wiltshire Mike Howson said: "This is discrimination of the lowest kind and this act should be treated with contempt. We are urging all of our voters and those who continue to support us to boycott this establishment."

Wiltshire Gazette and Herald

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.