Police investigate alleged death threats over YouTube BNP video

Police are investigating a senior member of the BNP in Wales over alleged threats to kill a man who posted an anti-BNP video on a website

Roger Phillips, the BNP’s deputy organiser for West Wales, allegedly made the 12-minute expletive-filled telephone rant after he discovered the video about him on YouTube. Mark Watson recorded the call, in which Mr Phillips allegedly threatened to kill him, and handed it to police.

Avon and Somerset police said they had been in touch with South Wales Police and were investigating the complaint, which they described as “serious”.

Mr Watson, 46, an independent filmmaker living in Bristol, said he started getting phone calls from businessman Mr Phillips, 42, after he made an anti-racist video and posted it online. He said: “He started contacting me to tell me to stop making videos and telling me he would come and get me. When I found some more pictures of him and made them into another video, he phoned me and started shouting and swearing at me to take it down.”

One of the pictures in Mr Watson’s video included the BNP member’s 18-year-old son, and it was this that allegedly led Mr Phillips to make the death threats.

“He told me I had to take the picture of his son down,” said Mr Watson, who has subsequently removed the video from his YouTube page.

The threats, heard by Wales on Sunday, cannot be repeated for legal reasons because they could be used as evidence in court. But in one 40-second clip the caller, believed to be Mr Phillips, swore 14 times and threatened to kill Mr Watson twice. Mr Watson and his friend recorded it by switching his phone to speaker mode and recording the rant on a separate phone.

“My first reaction was ‘my God, I’ve got him now’,” he said. “But afterwards I realised this guy meant business and I really got scared.”

Mr Watson has kept a video diary of his life since the phone call, which was made on Tuesday December 1, and has posted it on YouTube, receiving thousands of hits in days. He is hoping to make a feature-length documentary about his experience after the police investigation and any subsequent court case is complete.

He added: “So many of my friends have been threatened by the BNP and they have backed down because they are scared, and I don’t blame them. But I wanted to stand up to them and show people exactly what they are. Since then I’ve been constantly bombarded with online messages and I’ve even been threatened again by somebody else, but I’ve also had a lot of support and that is really what’s keeping me going.”

A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said: “A man has made a complaint to the police. This is a serious allegation and we are investigating.”

When WoS tried to contact Mr Phillips, his phone was switched off.

The BNP’s spokesman and deputy leader Simon Derby said he would not comment until the police investigation was complete.

Last month, WoS reported how Mr Phillips was forced to withdraw “racist” football merchandise following threats from top Premier League sides. His company Patriot Products, which was based in Ammanford, sold an extensive range of nationalistic memorabilia, including golliwog badges with the names of clubs such as Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea.

Mr Phillips received numerous complaints from the clubs and the items were removed from the company’s website.

Wales Online

Top clubs ban Welsh BNP goods

A leading member of the BNP in Wales has been forced to withdraw ‘racist’ football merchandise following threats from top Premier League sides.

Roger Phillips, the BNP’s deputy organiser for West Wales, is the director of the online operation Patriot Products.

Launched at the BNP’s Red, White and Blue rally in August, Patriot Products, which is not currently trading, sold an extensive range of nationalistic tat and clothing, including golliwog badges with the names of clubs such as Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea. They depicted a golliwog with a football holding a scarf aloft with club names and colours. The official BNP merchandising store, Excalibur, sells the same golliwog badge holding an England scarf.

The anti-racism football organisation Kick It Out alerted the English clubs involved in September. It said of the clubs involved: “Some have contacted the website direct, some have deferred it to the club lawyers.”

One of the Premier League clubs, Chelsea, confirmed they had prepared to take legal action against Phillips last month but found the offensive items had been removed before action was required. A spokesman for the club said: “We absolutely abhor the sale of any racist merchandise. We took the necessary steps to prevent it.”

Welsh Secretary and Chelsea supporter Peter Hain said: “This man is the true poisonous face of the BNP not the respectable one they pretend to have.”

A spokesman for the Football Association said: “There is no place for racism in football and we utterly condemn any organisation or individual that seeks to encourage or make financial gain from it. We help to fund Kick It Out and work very closely with other anti-racism organisations to do as much as we can to eliminate racism in football.”

Mr Phillips, 42, whose Facebook photos include one of a cornflakes box with an open-mouthed black minstrel and the doctored logo ‘Coon flakes’, wrote: “I have had my business contacted by the FA and Sheffield Football Club trying to bully me into removing Golly badges from my range. Here is my response – FUCK YOU.”

Businessman Mr Phillips, who did not return our calls, revealed in a documentary on the BNP broadcast on S4C earlier this year, in June, that he would flout employment laws to avoid employing Muslims.

“As far as Muslims are concerned, I wouldn’t be happy to employ them,” he said. “There is a reason for that. They would want time off in the afternoons to pray. You’d have to sort out prayer rooms for them. I’m not going to do that. It’s up to me how I run my business.”

On his Facebook page Mr Phillips fantasises about hanging Gordon Brown and repeats the recently regurgitated lie by the BNP that Mr Hain is a former bank robber.

Mr Hain, a vociferous anti-apartheid campaigner, countered: “I would expect nothing else from the racists and fascists who have attacked me for 40 years now. Everyone knows that in 1975 I was a victim of mistaken identity and acquitted of bank theft when I was almost certainly set up by the South African police in the bad old days of apartheid which the likes of the BNP supported.”

A BNP spokesman dismissed the sale of golliwogs. He said: “We sell golliwog toys on our Excalibur merchandise site. We market the golliwogs basically to stick two fingers up to the establishment”.

Wales Online