BNP facing accusations of fraud

Mr Griffin accused the BBC and Panorama of bias in the reporting of the BNP

The British National Party is under investigation by the European Union and the Metropolitan Police for alleged fraud and breaches of electoral law.

The dual investigations come as a former BNP administrator told the BBC's Panorama programme that she was instructed to falsify invoices. Those invoices were then submitted by the BNP to the Electoral Commission. The BNP has strongly denied any suggestion of wrongdoing.

The allegations come as the party struggles with debts run up during the 2010 general election campaign. Internal party documents seen by Panorama reveal that 12 months ago the BNP owed creditors more than £570,000. Party chairman Nick Griffin recently said the party now owes just £52,000.

Former party worker Marion Thomas said after the 2010 general election she was instructed by the party's treasurer, Clive Jefferson, to alter invoices and in at least one case stamp an outstanding invoice as "paid". The invoices were submitted to the Electoral Commission and had been altered, Mrs Thomas said, in order for it to appear that the BNP had complied with the law on election spending. Asked how she felt about doing this, Mrs Thomas said: "I made my objections known."

She added: "You can't do that, you cannot do that. That is fraud."

Mr Jefferson told the programme that Mrs Thomas' allegations are "untrue".

Mrs Thomas, who now works for Britain First, a rival political organisation, has since been interviewed about her claims by detectives from the Metropolitan Police who are investigating alleged breaches of electoral law by the BNP. That investigation began after Richard Barnbrook, who used to be the BNP member of the London Assembly and Mr Griffin's 2010 election agent, went to the High Court to say that he had submitted printing invoices totalling nearly £10,000 as paid when they too were outstanding.

Mr Griffin also signed those returns. Both he and Mr Barnbrook, who has since been expelled from the party and now sits as an independent in London, have said they acted in good faith, believing the bills had indeed been paid. The High Court judge has referred the case the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Metropolitan Police were notified.

Another former party worker, Alistair Barbour, was recruited to Mr Griffin's European staff after he and one other BNP candidate were elected members of the European Parliament in 2009. Mr Barbour was hired to work on European Parliament business and was to be paid out of the £260,000 pot of EU money that each MEP has available to them to pay for staff and expenses. He told the programme that some money intended for MEP business was diverted to help bolster the party itself.

"Europe was the big cash cow you know, 'let's get our noses in the trough and see what we can get out and... see what we can fund the party with,'" he said of the approach to the MEP funds. He added: "This is what it was all about, party work and just trying to figure out what expenses we could get out of the European Union."

Other party insiders have told the programme that at one point electricity from Nick Griffin's European constituency headquarters on an industrial estate in rural Cumbria was siphoned to the unit next door which served as the BNP's national headquarters.

When the European Parliament's fraud unit, OLAF, travelled to Cumbria five months later to investigate the allegations they found no evidence of an electricity scam but Panorama understands that they continue to investigate other allegations of misuse of European money by the BNP. The BNP has denied using money from the European Union to fund national party work.

Panorama: BNP - The Fraud Exposed, BBC One, Monday, 10 October at 2030BST and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.

BBC

The fundamentally decent Nicholas Griffin

As the ever-shrinking BNP heads towards its rigged General Members' Meeting on Sunday, we thought it timely to republish a Lancaster Unity article from May 2008, unamended and still referring to the "Activist Declaration" form idea that was quickly, quietly and very wisely dropped when it theatened further dissension in what had been yet another period of violent turbulence as Nick Griffin's paranoiac leadership entered its ninth year.

Now led by the (for anti-fascists) dream team of Griffin and Patrick Harrington, the BNP has become little more than a fascinating case study in derangement, phsychopathy, corruption, greed, deceit and delusion. It seems more suited to psychiatric than political analysis - but wasn't that always true?

Without apology then, from May 2008...

Nine years of vision and vermin


It's been nine long years since Nick Griffin unseated John Tyndall as BNP leader in what can fairly be described as the only relatively honest leadership election (in purely mechanical terms) the BNP ever held. And it's only ever held two.

Naturally, neither man was entirely honest in how they conducted their campaigns, and still less honest with their respective supporters as to their future intentions - but of the two only Nicholas Griffin was presented with the opportunity to demonstrate the fact, and upon winning lost very little time in giving the BNP a hefty dose of the control freakery and paranoia he had once administered to the National Front, the same which sent that organisation into terminal decline.

What is striking at this remove is John Tyndall's magnaminity in allowing the then recently arrived Griffin's 1999 challenge, to the point of permitting Griffin the full use of BNP structures and mechanisms even as the six-month campaign quickly descended into a long series of visceral dog-fights. It is, after all, John Tyndall who we see pictured in Nazi uniform, not the alleged "moderniser" Nick Griffin.

In 1999 Griffin claimed to be running an "open and honest" leadership challenge based on "positive ideas for the future", calling himself the candidate with "flair and vision". This certainly struck a chord with the BNP's newer members, and even appealed to some hardline BNP veterans all too aware of Tyndall's advancing years and of the tiredness of his leadership.

It did, however, obscure Griffin's woeful record in the National Front, where he spent much of his time engaged in factional activities, seemed to view political positions as expendable commodities, and was even then the subject of much disquiet in the matter of finance.

Griffin passed himself off as the BNP's "unity candidate", threatening that a Tyndall win would "lead inevitably to a most disastrous split" (presumably Griffin would be the leader of this putative split) - words that would earn anybody in today's Griffinite BNP instant expulsion. There were also dire warnings of purges ahead at the hands of Tyndall, while, "in happy contrast", Nick's "mature, level-headed and fundamentally decent approach" would restore unity and stability to the BNP. There would be "not one single expulsion" if Nick were to assume the leadership - "No cronysim, no favouritism, no grudges" he promised.

History tells a very different story.

One of Nick's first "positive ideas" as leader was to ensure that no challenger would ever again have the scope or freedom to campaign as he had done, and there began the first of a series of changes to the BNP constitution that should have rung loud alarm bells among those who had taken Griffin at his word

People like convinced Griffin supporters Steve and Sharron Edwards, who, within a year of Griffin's assumption of the leadership found themselves asking some searching questions about the new man's financial probity and as a result became victims of paranoic accusations that were the pretext for expelling them from the party.

They were among the first, and many legally dubious expulsions have passed under the BNP bridge since then.

That first proof that Griffin the BNP leader preserved exactly the same frame of mind as Griffin the National Front chairman (and author of the insane and infamous "Attempted Murder" pamphlet), gave wider currency to Tyndallite grumbling and opened the eyes of many early Griffin loyalists, few of whom have remained in place, due either to being cast aside as their usefulness to Griffin came to an end, were purged, or grew disillusioned.

The problem was that the only person capable of mounting a credible challenge against Griffin was John Tyndall, at the time subject to a campaign of vilification for that very reason - but Tyndall, with his Nazi past and barely reconstructed views, was anathema even to those Griffinites who had come to loath their leader.

Tyndall's death removed the biggest thorn in Griffin's side, and there has since been no other personality within the BNP who stands out even remotely as likely leadership material - not that a personality likely to present a future threat to Griffin will ever have the chance to stand out, as Jonathon Bowden discovered last summer (2007).

Had the BNP not begun to experience its first real electoral successes as disaffection with Griffin began to rise then it quite likely that the party would have descended into vicious faction-fighting, which might have been the end of the extreme-Right for a decade or more. But election success - albeit localised - did come, and Griffin was quick to take the credit.

BNP members - more like the "sheeple" they despise than they care to believe - were happy to go along with him, and in so doing were prepared to overlook their leader's less savoury character traits and blind themselves to the stark evidence that the BNP was increasingly beginning to look like what Martin Webster christened "the Griffin Family Business".

Of course there are many reasons for the BNP's initial spurt of electoral success, none of them much at all to do with Nicholas Griffin.

It might be argued that the best election agent the BNP ever had was Blairism and its apparent (if not intentional) attempts to disconnect itself from its core electorate - an electorate unlikely, especially in the northern towns where the first BNP gains came, to find any merit in voting for the then divided and demoralised Tories, or the Liberal Democrats. We must add in to that the 2001 Oldham riots, and the fact (much as it grieves us to say it) that in certain areas of strength the BNP did have capable organisers who ran intelligent, competent local campaigns with which Nick Griffin had no connection at all.

Further gains followed, of course, and Nick identified himself with every success, to the point where many BNP members really did (and still do) believe that without the guiding hand of Griffin the BNP would have achieved nothing at all.

This is utter nonsense. If there were any truth to it at all then the BNP would have achieved comparable results to those it obtained in places like Oldham and Burnley over the remainder of the country. Save for some small pockets where the circumstances outlined above pertained, it did nothing of the kind - but Nick was never eager to take the credit for that.

The probable truth is that finding himself the leader of the most electorally successful British racist party to date came as of much as a surprise to Griffin as it did to everybody else. Even so, Griffin seemed fixed on undermining "his" achievement by continuing the ludicrous (and legally expensive) hunt for John Tyndall's scalp, the unending litany of expulsions and proscriptions, and was quite prepared to wreck the BNP in its strongest electoral areas (Burnley being the textbook case) if he smelled the least whiff of personal disloyalty.

To many, even the BNP's enemies, these seemed like the actions of a demagogue more interested in preserving his hide than those of a man possessed of "flair and vision" with "positive ideas for the future".

Tyndall died, and the BNP's then electoral high point came and went, Griffin and his leadership team reduced to promising breathroughs to come.

Last year, as we all remember, along with the BNP itself we expected the party to add to its tally of 49 sitting councillors at the 2007 local elections. Everything seemed set fair for them to do so. We gritted our teeth, the racists prepared to crow - but early into the election night results it was clear who would be doing the crowing, and it wasn't the BNP.

The next morning we wrote:

The BNP's march to power turned into a cul-de-sac of indifference yesterday, with the racist party failing to make any impression in the English local elections.

Predicting at least a doubling of their 49 councillors, a devastated BNP finds its tally (at the time of writing) remains 49. Though the BNP did pick up seats it lost the same number, making no net gains. Of the nine BNP councillors up for re-election only one successfully defended his seat.

Claiming "mixed results" in an attempt to hide an electoral calamity from its shell-shocked members, there was no real disguising of the BNP's utter failure over large swathes of the country. The party's fortunes stalled and went into reverse in areas where its hopes were high, notably Sandwell and Birmingham, where thousands of votes were lost. Votes in cities such as Coventry were barely improved over those obtained thirty years ago by the National Front. In an effort to distract attention from the Birmingham debacle, the BNP is focussing attention on the fact that it gained more votes than the renegade Sharon Ebanks and her tiny number of New Nationalist Party candidates.

Griffin did not rush to identify himself with this particular set of results, nor did he attempt to explain why, when - by its own assessment - conditions had never been better for the BNP, all that could be reported was abject failure.

Of course, Griffin had other concerns by then, the lacklustre leadership challenge of Chris Jackson assuming a new and threatening importance in the light of the appalling election results, which challenge had to be hamstrung (as it was) before any damage to Griffin's position was done.

The paranoid sequel to Jackson's challenge was well enough reported here and is fresh enough in our minds not to bear a full re-telling, save to recall Griffin's infamously insane "vermin", "thieves" and "liars" blog diatribe, backed up by an equally hysterical and inventive four page spread in the BNP's "Identity" magazine - and, naturally, the purging and proscribing quickly followed.

Post the 2007 locals, the BNP continued to fight in by-elections, where it could concentrate its resources in pursuit of the best possible showing. Their results were lamentable - though there were areas, the East Midlands and adjacent districts being salient cases, where the party could produce a good first-time vote. Unfortunately for them, where the party's performance could be measured against previous outings in the same ward, their vote invariably fell.

Seeking a crumb of comfort, the party was overjoyed to retain a seat in Loughton, making a great deal of fuss over this "achievement" - and going to great lengths to silence wiser voices which pointed out that the BNP vote had fallen by a notable 5% and that the seat had been retained by a margin of 20 votes against a candidate who did not belong to one of the major parties. To say, as some did, that this was no small cause for concern was to invite attack as a "troublemaker", a "splitter", an "anti-BNP Red" and all the usual epithets beloved of the Griffinite BNP.

All that mattered was that the seat had been retained, and to hell with any unwelcome analysis.

They were to pay for this self-deluding complacency.

Ignoring for now the damp squib of the BNP's Decembrist revolt, the BNP began mustering its electoral troops early for the 2008 locals. As was clear from their numerous blogs and their posts on their usual internet hang-outs, they had worked themselves up for a real breakthrough.

This was going to be their year - they could feel it in their bones.

We couldn't. Everything we'd seen and recorded of BNP performances over the past year told us that though some gains were likely, nothing much was going to change and the established picture of electoral stagnation and reverse would continue.

For once, the BNP leadership cultivated a healthy restraint in its predictions, even inventing the meaningless spin-phrase "quiet revolution" to explain the BNP's snail's pace growth (or lack thereof) to a potentially restive membership. And there was a distinct air of unreality in the lead up to election day.

What struck us was the idiotic claim made by BNP deputy chairman and Griffin cheerleader Simon Darby that he had made a "breakthrough" by sealing a deal with the Pensioners Party whereby that party would recommend its members and supporters to vote BNP. The only fly in the ointment was that the PP had a total of six members, was completely unknown and without influence, and its leadership seemed to be unaware of any deal with the BNP. Members of other parties might have resented this cynical attempt to con them, but, all too typically, the BNP sheeple seemed more outraged that the con had been exposed.

Unreality continued as virtually powerless parish councillors became equated in Griffinite BNP spin with district councillors, an exercise designed purely to push up the total number of BNP "councillors" gained and to prove to an all too gullible membership of how well things were progressing for the BNP - proof in itself that the BNP's leadership had no great expectations for the 2008 locals. Several non-political parish council seats fell unopposed into the hands of the BNP, each "gain" being proudly reported on the BNP website.

It was so much whistling in the dark.

The BNP gained a grand total of ten "real" councillors, and its vote in its own heartlands fell, frequently by considerable margins.

Nick Griffin did not rush to bask in the reflected glory of this particular success, and though many BNP members still regurgitate the Griffinite smoke-and-mirrors line that something remarkable happened on May 1st, it is apparent that hard reality is finally beginning to bite for some of their number.

The plain fact, which they cannot ignore, is that by its own lights electoral conditions were never better for the BNP than they were on May 1st. A long serious of immigration controversies preceded the elections, some in the same week, there was the 40th anniversary of Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech, falling together with the BBC "White Season" series, and the party frequently received completely uncritical press coverage. They themselves were reporting on ecstatic doorstep receptions for their canvassers.

And still Nick Griffin could deliver only 10 extra councillors from the 612 seats fought by the BNP.

Following the locals we had to wait 24 hours for the results of the London Mayoral race and the GLA elections - 24 hours in which Griffin must have prayed for a miracle. At all events, the BNP's spinmeisters began to play down expectations (and with good reason), uncertain whether they would gain anything at all.

Disaster seemed to beckon for what party apparatchniks were calling the BNP's finest campaign, but finally the much-hyped Richard Barnbrook scraped a GLA seat with 5.4%.

In the wake of this apparent "landmark" victory, as they touted it, the BNP seemed oblivious to the fact that 30 years ago the more honestly racist National Front averaged pretty much the same vote and better over large swathes of London. The truth is that the BNP should have achieved election on 7-8% of the vote if there was to be any credibility to their claim of "progress". They did not.

Again Nick Griffin failed to deliver.

After nine years of Nick Griffin's "vision and flair", in the most favourable circumstances imaginable, the BNP still manages a miserable grand total of 55 (real) local councillors and one elected (just) member of the GLA.

This is not a record that would wash in any political party other than the BNP.

To sum up the nine years of Nick Griffin's leadership, then, there has been, from the beginning and ever since, a long series of legally challengable expulsions of those who either cast doubt on Griffin's financial management of the party or who were deemed a threat to his position. There has been a ruthless willingness to wreck the BNP in its own areas of strength for no better reason than that members in those areas felt their loyalties to the party over-rode any presumed loyalty to a man they did not trust or in who they lacked confidence. In short, there has been continual internal strife since 1999.

If the incessant amendments to the BNP's risible constitution were not enough to make Nick feel safe, then, as some of you will be aware, the party has issued "Activist Declaration" forms - the only case we know of in British politics where ordinary members of a political party are being forced to swear something not a million miles removed from the Nazi oath of allegiance, and at the same time to give themselves as hostage to fortune to whatever constitutional changes Griffin chooses to enact.

Clearly a trap is being loaded, since: "I agree to abide by the British National Party’s Constitution and any amendments made to it under the provisions of the Constitution".

Those signing this (Barnsian?) document, especially those closely allied with Griffin's internal opponents, may as well hand the man a loaded gun and wait to be shot the moment the inevitable constitutional amendments are made.

It can have no other purpose.

Perhaps the sudden appearance of this scurrilous document can be best explained by the fact that elections for the European parliament are now a year away, and if there is one thing we know Griffin longs to do it is to bag his ticket on the Euro gravy-train.

To that end he has already deposed Chris Jackson as North-west Regional Organiser in favour of himself, and parachuted himself in as the BNP's number one candidate in the region. We also saw, when a general election seemed but weeks away last autumn, that Griffin's overarching concern was to preserve BNP finances for the Euro elections - strange behaviour for a British "national" party.

You or I might think a good general election performance would be of more lasting benefit to the BNP than Griffin's flying off to Strasbourg and the riches of an MEP on the back of a tiny vote in north-west England, but the BNP have convinced themselves that this is the way forward - failing to notice that a similar exercise has done the UKIP no good at all, and never really asking themselves exactly what a lone BNP representative in Europe is going to achieve for the party.

However that may be, with the prize now in sight the Griffin Family Business must be protected from hostile takeover, and we can't help but to think that the "Activist Declaration" form is a large and sinister part of that protection.

In perspective, then: in nine years Nick Griffin has taken the BNP from nowhere to next to nowhere. In the most favourable conditions ever to exist in which a racialist and nationalist party could expect to grow, the BNP under Griffin has remained stunted, its membership numbering well under 10,000, despite the regular repetition of the lie that hundreds join every week.

It remains electorally moribund, and where it has met with success it has done so despite the turbulent Griffin, not because of him. His record is, by any measure, lamentable, nine years of effort and eye-watering expenditure on the part of the BNP producing a paltry crop of 55 local councillors who all too often are not up to the job and all too prone to find themselves confronted with past indiscretions.

That Griffin has managed for so long to pass off his leadership as a story of unparalleled success is an achievement of sorts, we suppose, but we on our side of the fence really do thank our stars that the BNP chose to land itself with the most divisive and incompetent leader ever to grace the stage of the far-Right in Britain.

"Flair and vision"? It seems more like stuff and nonsense to us.

BNP leader Nick Griffin isolated after election disasters

Key figures threaten to form breakaway group as party chairman faces second leadership challenge in less than 12 months

The British National party's dominance of far-right politics in the UK is under threat for the first time in a decade after a string of poor election results and a growing rebellion against its leader, Nick Griffin.

The BNP chairman, who has led the party since 1999, is facing a second leadership challenge in less than 12 months, a mass defection of key organisers and the prospect of a new "popular front" made up of other far-right groups and former BNP activists.

Nick Lowles from the antifacist organisation Searchlight, said: "There is a serious split within the leadership of the BNP. After another humiliation at the polls and massive debts, Griffin is isolated and his position is weak. We are likely to see a rival party formed, a BNP mark two, and Griffin will be left with little more than a rump of a party."

This week Richard Barnbrook, who was the BNP's sole representative on the London assembly until he was expelled from the party last year, said it was time for a realignment in "nationalist politics" in the UK..

"The chairman, Nick Griffin, who has been a long-standing friend in the past, has to go," Barnbrook said. "There is no question about it. He is creating more harm than anything else."

Barnbrook, who now sits as an independent on the London assembly, has written to leaders of four other far-right or nationalist organisations – including the English Defence League and the English Democrats – calling for the creation of "one strong, united, cohesive force".

Griffin is also facing an increasingly emboldened rebellion inside the party. Richard Edmonds, seen as a "BNP hardliner", has launched a formal leadership challenge and although it is unlikely he will win, his defeat is expected to trigger another wave of defections.

Andrew Brons, the BNP's second MEP and an increasingly significant figure, has distanced himself from Griffin and this week appeared to back the leadership challenge, prompting speculation that he is preparing to lead a breakaway group.

Griffin has been under growing pressure since the BNP's poor showing in last year's general and council elections, when it lost all but two of the 28 councillors up for re-election and was wiped out in its east London stronghold of Barking and Dagenham. And the rebellion has gathered pace since this month's local elections, when it again performed poorly, losing all but two of the seats it was contesting.

The growing rebellion has seen a growing number of BNP organisers either leave the party or defect to join other rightwing groups. Searchlight says dozens of BNP members – including several key figures – have left and joined the English Democrats recently. Lowles said there appeared to be a "concerted and orchestrated attempt by many of the BNP's most effective and competent former organisers" to establish a foothold in the English Democrats.

Matthew Goodwin, from Nottingham University, who has written a book on the BNP, said: "There are two key questions here. First, can the rebels depose Griffin, which in my view is unlikely given the BNP constitution.

Second, can they then form a credible alliance with other groups which appeals to the large number of voters who are anxious over immigration, insecure about their economic position and dissatisfied with the main parties. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that Griffin's leadership is under sustained fire."

The Guardian

BNP chairman may face high court over bills from Newton Aycliffe firm

Invoices from a North-East firm that are said to be unpaid could see British National Party chairman Nick Griffin brought before the High Court.

A judge has ordered papers be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions after hearing of an alleged breach in election expense rules following last May’s General Election. The case centres on two alleged unpaid invoices, totalling almost £10,000, for the BNP’s Voice of Freedom newspaper printed by Newton Press, based at Aycliffe Business Park, in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.

Mr Griffin used the material during his failed campaign to be an MP in Barking, London. The invoices were declared as paid on the electoral expenses return. The alleged inaccuracy amounts to an offence under the Represention of the People Act, which contains draconian penalties for breaches of election rules.

The court heard that the invoices were made out by the Newton Press and they cannot now be paid without the court’s permission. The issue came to light after Mr Griffin’s then election agent, Richard Barnbrook, applied for protection against prosecution.

Mr Justice Tugendhat heard that Newton Press contacted Mr Barnbrook in February but the Greater London Authority councillor – who has since quit the BNP – knew nothing of the bills.

Mr Barnbrook said the printers had “asked the police to investigate why they haven’t been paid” and when he contacted Mr Griffin, the BNP chairman promised to arrange payments if Mr Barnbrook returned to the BNP. When the judge asked Mr Barnbrook if his relationship with Mr Griffin was “not particularly good”, he replied: “I think that’s putting it mildly my Lord”.

Mr Justice Tugendhat said he had “no reason to doubt” Mr Barnbrook’s plea that the mistake was “inadvertent” and that there was “no want of good faith” on his part. However, he adjourned the case, saying Mr Griffin, as election candidate, may also have to come to court to seek relief against potential prosecution.

Speaking after Monday’s hearing, a spokesman for Newton Press said last night: “It has got nothing to do with us and it wasn’t our action.”

The Northern Echo

Griffin’s agent made false election return

The British National Party’s election agent for Barking in last year’s general election could face prosecution for falsely stating a printing bill for election leaflets had been paid after he accepted a brazen lie from the party’s treasurer.

Richard Barnbrook, who at the time was the BNP’s London Assembly member, included bills from Newton Press in the return of election expenses that he submitted to the Barking returning officer on behalf of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, and marked them as paid. Election law requires all a candidates’ expenses to be paid within 28 days.

Not only had the bill not been paid within 28 days, but Newton Press, a small printer in County Durham, is still waiting for its money. According to Eddy Butler, a former BNP officer who is campaigning for Griffin’s removal as leader, the BNP has refused to pay the firm around £15,000 that it owes for various printing services, including issues of the party’s paper Voice of Freedom.

Newton Press did not take the BNP’s no for an answer and established that around £6,000 of the bill was for newspapers delivered in Barking and that Barnbrook had accepted responsibility as Griffin’s agent. Making a false election expenses declaration can carry a prison sentence of up to one year or an unlimited fine or both unless the High Court accepts there was “reasonable cause” for the failure.

Barnbrook, who resigned the BNP whip last summer and now sits on the London Assembly as an independent, duly applied to the High Court. Yesterday Mr Justice Tugendhat rejected Barnbrook’s plea that the false return was not his fault because Dave Hannam, the party treasurer, had provided him with invoices falsely stamped “paid”. The agent is expected to be in real and genuine control of election expenditure, Mr Justice Tugendhat ruled, and Barnbrook should have made certain that the invoices had in fact been paid before signing off the return.

Mr Justice Tugendhat, who four years ago threw out a BNP candidate’s vexatious libel claim against Searchlight, has referred the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions, as election law requires, which means Barnbrook is likely to end up with a criminal conviction. According to Butler, Barnbrook, who “demeaned himself by touting himself around to various parties” in an attempt to get onto a London Assembly list that will secure his re-election in 2012, is now trying to return to the BNP.

The DPP could also proceed against Griffin as the candidate and agent are jointly responsible for the accuracy of the expenses return.

The BNP’s problems are unlikely to stop with Newton Press. The party has debts of over £500,000 including to several other printers money. Romac Press, the Belfast firm that printed the party’s main general election leaflets is owed £45,000, which means that election expenses returns in several constituencies were probably false.

After the European election in 2009, it emerged that most of the party’s election bills had been paid by Adlorries.com Ltd, a company owned by Jim Dowson, the party’s fundraising consultant who ended up controlling most of the BNP’s assets. Griffin’s party had to repay the “loan” over several months.

The BNP’s continuing inability to pay its debts and readiness to lie means that any candidate or election agent will be personally at risk if they use election leaflets supplied by the party. Butler has called on BNP members not to stand as a candidate or act as an agent while Griffin is chairman.

Hannam, who was widely derided in the BNP as incompetent, is no longer BNP treasurer, replaced after less than eight months in the job by the moronic Clive Jefferson on his rapid rise through the party. Lying seemed to come naturally to Hannam. Last summer he boasted that the BNP’s financial controls now ensured that “all legally required statement [sic] of accounts are submitted on time”. The next day it emerged that the party had failed to submit its 2009 accounts to the Electoral Commission by the deadline of 7 July, the third time it had been late.

In 2007, when Hannam was deputy treasurer, Ian Dawson wrote in his letter of resignation from his position as the party’s head of group support: “Hannam has messed things up from day one, before he got ‘bogged down’ in an audit, during it, and after it. If he worked in a bank he would not last a week. Not only is he incompetent, he also lies. Again, this can be proved time and time again, yet it seems that no matter how much some people lie, and however big the lies are, they get away with it. I can’t think of one thing that Dave does well – if there is something I have not seen it. That is not an exaggeration or an unnecessary insult, it is a fact.”

Griffin seems unconcerned about the latest blow to his party. In the week when nominations are due for the local elections in May and many party members are already refusing to stand in protest at his leadership, he is sunning himself on holiday in Cyprus. Rumour has it that Griffin, who may be held personally liable for the BNP’s debts, is looking for a bolthole in Northern Cyprus, which has no extradition treaty with the UK.

Hope not hate

BNP Barking election expenses examined by High Court judge

Two unpaid stationery invoices from last year’s Barking election could mean British National Party chairman, Nick Griffin, has to explain himself before the High Court.

A top judge has ordered papers to be sent to the director of public prosecutions after hearing of an infraction of strict rules relating to election expenses, where Mr Griffin suffered a crushing defeat in the general election last May.

Mr Justice Tugendhat acted after hearing of a bitter falling out between Mr Griffin and former BNP stalwart and Greater London Authority (GLA) member, Richard Barnbrook, who acted as his boss’s election agent in Barking but has since been expelled from the BNP. However, he adjourned the case, saying that Mr Griffin, as the election candidate, may also have to come to court to seek relief against potential prosecution.

The case centres around two printing firm invoices - totalling almost £10,000 - for leaflet publishing before the poll. They were declared as having been paid in full on the election expenses return, but the court heard they have in fact still not been settled. That inaccuracy amounts to an offence under the Representation of the People Act - which contains Draconian penalties for breaches of election rules - and Mr Barnbrook is now asking the High Court to lift the threat of prosecution from over his head.

Under the rules, election expenses must be paid within 28 days of the poll result, and the judge added that the printing bills cannot now be paid without permission from the court.

Barking and Dagenham Post

Waiting in the wings

White van man. From flickr LoopZilla

The crisis engulfing the British National Party opens opportunities for other right-of-centre parties and might perhaps lead to the formation of a new party altogether. Beginning a series of articles on right-wing alternatives to the BNP, Searchlight takes a look at the English Democrats Party.

Robin Tilbrook senses that this might at last be his moment. After several years struggling to get his party, which he has personally bankrolled, noticed he believes that the time for the English Democrats Party (EDP) has arrived.

The EDP was formed in 2002 to call for the establishment of an English Parliament. It positions itself on the right but denies it is racist, though this claim is undermined by the involvement of many leading activists from the English Defence League. It has contested European, parliamentary and local elections but with very little success. Its one moment of glory was when Peter Davies, son of Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, was elected Mayor of Doncaster in 2009.

With some high profile supporters, such as the columnist and TV critic Garry Bushell, the EDP thought the Doncaster result would herald a new chapter for the party. This failed to materialise and it continued its poor run of election results.

In the 2010 general election the EDP fielded 107 candidates, enabling it to qualify for a party election broadcast, but only saved its deposit in Doncaster North, the seat of the Labour leader Ed Miliband. Last month the party stood in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election but despite running a vigorous and expensive campaign it received only 144 votes, one less than the Monster Raving Loony Party. By contrast the BNP received 1,560 votes.

And this is the heart of the EDP’s problem. Whatever its internal and political deficiencies the presence and profile of the BNP has restricted opportunities for the EDP. Tilbrook has long understood that his party would be able to prosper only if the BNP collapsed.

In the run-up to 2009 European election the EDP formed an alliance with the England First Party in the North West region. The EFP, led by Mark Cotterill, is a minuscule hard-right group based in East Lancashire. Its politics are quite different from the EDP, but they share a belief in an English Parliament and a hatred of the BNP.

The two parties worked together, the EFP providing organisational and logistical support for the EDP. It was unclear whether the EDP would have been able to stand without it.

The driving force behind this link-up was Steve Uncles, the EDP’s national membership secretary, and Michael Cassidy, its Yorkshire chairman. Both are on the right of the party and appeared to favour a deeper link with the far right. Tilbrook agreed with the plan but he was driven more by short-term advantage, namely trying to stop Nick Griffin being elected as an MEP, which he believed would massively boost the BNP and end EDP hopes of becoming a major political party.

The plan only narrowly failed, but although Griffin was elected the BNP has not made the expected wider breakthrough and with its current internal problems and financial crisis the EDP senses another opportunity.

Tilbrook appears to have been keen to bring disillusioned BNP members into the EDP. However when former BNP members in Merseyside, Cumbria and Yorkshire began joining the English Democrats, it caused some rumblings of discontent.

It was the courting of Richard Barnbrook that caused most anger. Last November Barnbrook, who resigned from the BNP in August, approached the English Democrats. He knew that to retain his seat on the London Assembly, where he sits as an independent, he needed the financial and organisational support of a political party. Cliff Dixon, the party’s vice chair in London, voiced his concern but was told by Tilbrook to keep an open mind and that the final decision would be taken by the London Committee, chaired by Roger Cooper.

Uncles had other ideas and was keen to push Barnbrook’s application through as fast as possible.

Separately, Tilbrook had been in discussions with Eddy Butler, the former BNP national organiser who was expelled from the party after challenging Griffin for the leadership. However the two had different agendas. Tilbrook was looking to build the EDP while Butler was not convinced that the EDP, particularly in its current form, was the right party for him. Conscious that he had to keep the racial nationalists on board, Butler was unhappy with the EDP’s moderate nationalist programme. Rather, he preferred the idea of uniting the broad nationalist movement, from the racial nationalists to the right-wing populists, around a few shared themes while a longer discussion took place about what kind of party was needed.

Some have argued that Butler was biding time for Andrew Brons to make his move. While the Yorkshire MEP has stayed loyal to the BNP he is increasingly acting independently and separately from Griffin. Butler, though no longer in the BNP, works for Brons.

Dixon became increasingly concerned about the actions of Tilbrook and Uncles. Eventually he decided to speak out after the party hired Jim Dowson to run its fundraising. Not only did the EDP’s appeal letters look remarkably similar to those Dowson wrote for the BNP during the three years he worked for the party, but Dixon believed that Butler now had the EDP’s entire membership list.

After Barnbrook was accepted into the EDP at its January national council meeting, Dixon broke ranks and went public with his outrage.

He was quickly followed by Ed Abrams, a member of the EDP’s national council, who had already resigned from the party in disgust at the courting of BNP members.

“It does not please me one little bit to see the current turmoil that the party that I still consider to be my political home is in but if it is to survive then Tilbrook and Uncles have to go,” Abrams declared.

“I therefore call upon the loyal members of the English Democrats Party to call for a EGM and propose a vote of no confidence in Tilbrook and Uncles.

“Please remember that ENGLAND comes before everything, Uncles and Tilbrook have had there [sic] day, the cause and the good name of your party comes first and only by passing a vote of no confidence in these two will you be able to wipe the slate clean and move forward.”

Also supporting this position was Alistair Barbour, the BNP’s former Carlisle organiser who switched his allegiance to the EDP in protest at the extremism of the BNP. He too resigned from the EDP after other BNP members began to join though claims still to be loyal to the party’s overall aims.

“Do yourselves a favour, stay a progressive moderate party and do not allow the likes of Butler Barnbrook etc to take you to the right,” he wrote. “Tell them to crawl back to Griffin were [sic] they belong and take Uncles with them. Don’t let another so called nationalist party destroy England’s chances of recognition and salvation.”

The EDP is in a state of flux. The crisis in the BNP, which appeared to present an opportunity to the EDP to emerge out of the political margins, now seems to be spreading to the EDP. Whether the party can emerge stronger will be determined partly by what happens to the BNP but also by its own members’ reactions to the arrival of former BNP members in their ranks.

Searchlight

Richard Barnbrook warned not to bully staff

Richard Barnbrook has been warned not to bully members of staff at City Hall after a former employee accused him of "continual bullying" which reduced one member of staff to tears.

Neo Nazi activist Tess Culnane who worked for Barnbrook for nine months, alleged that he:

• Failed to respond to requests from members of the public "on the few occasions he attended City Hall" and threatened the complainant with dismissal when she brought such requests to him
• Had a "continual bullying manner" and constantly threatened to sack his staff and replace them with his own people.
• Forced the Complainant’s colleague, X, to resign because of his perpetual hectoring manner. The Complainant alleges that, on one occasion, Mr Barnbrook reduced X to tears, followed her into the ladies’ toilet to continue to bully her, and then followed her into the City Hall café to continue to verbally abuse X and threaten her with the sack.

Culnane also submitted a recorded telephone conversation with Barnbrook and statements from three other witnesses.

The Standards Committee decided that there was not enough firm evidence to refer the complaint for further investigation. However they noted that they were still "extremely concerned about the nature of the allegations" and referred Mr Barnbrook for official guidance from the Monitoring Officer "as a precautionary measure, sought to safeguard existing and future staff."

Last year Barnbrook was suspended by Barking and Dagenham Council for making false claims about murders in the borough. He then went on to lose his seat on the council this May alongside every other BNP councillor in London. He has since been expelled from the British National Party and has indicated his intention to stand as an independent member of the London Assembly in 2012.

Tory Troll

New BNP appointments will not stop party sinking

Disillusioned British National Party activists are ignoring most council by-elections and achieving little in the few places they do stand. In October the party fought just two by-elections, obtaining 6.2% and 2.9%.

The party did relatively better with 9.3% in a Walsall by-election on 11 November, but the following week Peter Tierney, who recently completed a sentence of 100 hours of unpaid work for a violent assault, managed only 4.7% for the BNP in Croxteth ward, Liverpool.

With little else to do, BNP activists continue to set up stalls in town centres to gather signatures for its supposed “Bring our boys home” petition, in reality the party’s autumn recruitment drive, as its leader Nick Griffin openly admitted. So far there has been no sign of the campaign moving on to its next stage, which was to include a “whirlwind tour” of the UK by the party’s misnamed “Truth Truck” advertising lorry and a mail shot to “opinion formers” with a special “Bring Our Boys Home” brochure. One can only assume that Griffin’s appeal early in October for £22,000 to fund these activities was either a sham or a failure.

Instead, the BNP leadership is busily shuffling the deck chairs before the party ship sinks and filling posts vacated by the large number of officers who have left or been pushed out. Last month Griffin, an MEP for North West England who made himself London regional organiser in August on the basis that “I pass by while on the way to Europe anyway”, appointed Steve Squire as deputy organiser in the capital.

However, Griffin accident-ally revealed his true plans on Twitter: “He’s now deputy RO but I hope to confirm him as full one in January. In meantime, treat him as being in charge”. Bob Bailey, well known drunk and failed BNP councillor, is the party’s new London elections officer.

Unimpressive

Squire comes with an unimpressive track record. In the council elections in May he stood in Enfield Lock and came tenth out of ten candidates with 6.3%.

In the BNP’s Eastern Region Pat Richardson, the party’s last representative on Epping Forest district council, was appointed membership secretary at her first regional council meeting, which she attended with Rod “Mr Angry” Law, a Loughton town councillor.

Also in a new role is Kieren Trent as Eastern regional press officer. Trent was one of a group of BNP activists who helped Bailey attack three young Asians in Barking and Dagenham just before polling day last May. BBC video footage showed a clearly visible Trent landing blows and kicks to someone on the ground. No charges were brought.

In North Wales a new organiser and fundholder (treasurer) relaunched the party’s Wrexham branch just six months before the Welsh Assembly elections next May. In 2007 the BNP came within 2,580 votes of winning a seat in North Wales in the regional list part of the election, which is fought under proportional representation. Lack of funds and a haemorrhaging membership will make it hard for the party to improve on that result.

Meanwhile Griffin has launched yet another appeal for donations to continue his legal battle with the Equality and Human Rights Commission over whether the party had complied with a court order in March to remove racially discriminatory clauses from the party’s constitution. Griffin absented himself from a High Court hearing on 8 and 9 November after being admitted to hospital with suspected kidney stones, though recovered rapidly to join a large BNP group on a two-night trip to Belgium for Armistice Day.

“Simply lying”

His current barrister, David Reade QC, argued that there was no case for the party to answer as the court order was ambiguous. Robin Allen QC, appearing for the EHRC, accused Griffin of “simply lying” when he said he did not know the terms of the order. He described Griffin as a “persistent offender” who had repeatedly failed to comply with various orders to change the constitution.

Judgement was reserved and there will now be a further two-day hearing in December. If the BNP loses, it is likely to face crippling legal costs, adding to its debts, which are believed to be at least £600,000 so far.

It would appear, however, that Griffin has given up the fight in his failing legal action against four former BNP employees who rebelled against the party leadership in December 2007. His withdrawal from the case against Steve Blake, Kenny and Nicholla Smith and Ian Dawson is expected to leave the party with tens of thousands of pounds in legal costs. The BNP has still not paid the substantial settlement it agreed with Michaela Mackenzie in front of an Employment Tribunal in June.

One piece of better news for the beleaguered party leader is the return to the fold of Richard Edmonds. Griffin booted the veteran nazi off the BNP’s Advisory Council in summer after he revealed the huge sum – £160,000 a year – that the party was paying its unpopular management and fundraising consultant James Dowson.

Edmonds was refused entry to a BNP meeting in Dagenham, east London, in August and in September attended a “Reform Group” conference held by Eddy Butler, the unsuccessful challenger to Griffin’s leadership. But by November Edmonds was the guest speaker at a BNP meeting in Somerset where he urged: “Everyone needs to support the BNP as Britain needs it more than ever and before it’s too late”.

Griffin needs all the support he can get, even that of an old Holocaust denier, and has presumably forgiven Edmonds’s indiscretion since his own big fallout with Dowson, which has meant a rapid exit of the party’s call centre out of Belfast to Nuneaton. Griffin’s closest henchmen are constantly bickering with each other as Clive Jefferson, promoted far beyond his capabilities, struggles to carry out his myriad party roles.

Andrew Brons, Griffin’s fellow MEP, continues to employ Butler on his European Parliamentary staff, while Butler sits on the sidelines exposing and attacking Griffin’s mismanagement of the party. Brons has recently been running a “consultation” on possible changes to the BNP constitution, to which Butler has contributed at length. Brons has put forward options for “fairly modest reforms” and “more far reaching reforms”, but it is not clear whether the proposals will ever be put to the members or whether the exercise is designed only to give the appearance of democracy in the fascist party.

No impact

Although Butler maintains his belief that the BNP can be rescued from Griffin’s deathly grasp, some of his erstwhile supporters launched a new rival party at the end of October. The British Freedom Party has made no impact so far and has distinguished itself only by appointing its second national treasurer in less than a month. John Savage, about whom the BFP boasted it was “probably the first time in decades a nationalist party has a qualified accountant as its treasurer”, resigned “during the early hours” of 6 November after an intem-perate article by Lee Barnes appeared on the BFP website.

Barnes had advocated hanging Abu Hamza, whereas Savage pointed out that under British law he first had to be tried by a court and found guilty. Unlike others in the BFP who are “spellbound” by Barnes, Savage instantly recognised him for the lunatic he is.

“For some strange reason which I am unable to quite fathom,” wrote Savage, “Mr Barnes, who has never joined the British Freedom Party, seems to have a great deal of dominant influence and hold over my former colleagues in the party. However … arguing with him is like trying to push back a tornado with one’s hands. He will not give any quarter nor listen to any other viewpoint or argument other than his own …

“I regret that the British Freedom Party is not at all the party I thought I was involved with in setting up. Mr Barnes seems to have now ensconced himself so deeply into it that no other opinion is possible.”

In true fascist tradition the BFP quickly wrote Savage out of its short history. An announcement praising the appointment of its new treasurer Michelle Marshall, not an accountant but a former assistant adjutant in the Royal Air Force, made no reference to her predecessor.

Sonia Gable in Searchlight

EDL rejects Barnbrook approach

A lonely Richard Barnbrook, who resigned the British National Party whip in the London Assembly over Griffin’s financial mismanagement of the party, has been rejected by the Islamophobic thugs of the English Defence League.

Spotted hanging around the EDL’s violent protest in Leicester on 9 October, Barnbrook then turned up at a meeting of London EDL and Casuals United Youth on 19 November but, reports the Casuals United blog, he was “forced to leave for his own safety”.

Casuals United, which describes itself as “uniting the UK’s football tribes against the Jihadists”, explained that it had no objection to “people who voted BNP in the past as a protest vote joining as long as they arent [sic] BNP members now … but your hardcore Nazi types and holocaust deniers like Barnbrook are NOT wanted in our movement. We arent [sic] racists, we are patriots.”

Barnbrook is not particularly at the forefront of Britain’s Holocaust deniers and the EDL is not normally so fussy. As Searchlight revealed in October, Wayne Baldwin, an EDL regular and convicted criminal, is an unabashed nazi who has the obligatory swastika tattoo on his chest and has been photographed posing in front of a swastika flag. And Trevor Hannington and Mike Heaton, members of the shadowy nazi Aryan Strike Force, attended EDL events before they were jailed in summer for posting violent and vicious racist messages on the internet.

More likely is that the EDL just doesn’t like the pathetic twerp obsessed with his own self-importance, who used to go nowhere without his London Assembly identity badge, once starred in his own gay porn movie, and is probably only looking for new drinking companions with whom to succumb to his well known vice.

Hope not hate

How Griffin turned nasty to oust Barnbrook from Barking

Nick Griffin threatened to ditch the British National Party’s sole London Assembly member last year if he stood in the way of Griffin being the party’s Parliamentary candidate for Barking in the general election, it has been revealed.

Richard Barnbrook, who was also a BNP councillor in Barking and Dagenham, felt it was his right to stand in what the BNP thought its most winnable constituency, but many in the BNP leadership were concerned at his dismal performances in the London Assembly, his tendency to make “factual errors” that led to appearances in front of council Standards Committees, and his alcoholism that was at the root of all his other problems.

According to Eddy Butler, who failed in his attempt to oust Griffin as BNP leader this summer and has since been expelled from the BNP, it had been agreed in the party that Griffin should not be the Barking candidate as he would look like a carpet-bagger. Instead, the day after Griffin’s Question Time debacle, Griffin went on a walkabout in Thurrock and announced his commitment to standing for Parliament there.

Butler had the job of persuading Barnbrook to stand down, after Barnbrook had already put up billboards in the constituency stating “Barnbrook for Barking”. Barnbrook told Griffin he would not stand down in favour of any lesser candidate than Griffin himself, but apparently prevaricated. So Griffin composed a long press release detailing Barnbrook’s shortcomings, which he threatened to release if Barnbrook did not back down.

The blackmail had the desired effect. According to Butler: “On 14th November in front of the media and a room full of members, Nick Griffin with his faithful onion at the ready, put on one of his stock weepy performances … as he shamelessly announced that Richard Barnbrook, had voluntarily stepped aside to allow Nick Griffin to contest Barking!”

The rest is history. Griffin polled abysmally and Barnbrook, who had been promised the leadership of Barking and Dagenham council, lost his council seat, as did all the other BNP councillors. Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s moronic national elections officer (among several other party positions), persuaded Barnbrook to act as a stalking horse candidate to thwart Butler’s challenge to Griffin’s leadership. Eventually at the end of August Barnbrook showed that despite his “weaknesses” he still had some principles and resigned the BNP whip in the London Assembly until Griffin’s financial mismanagement of the BNP had been tackled. He now sits as an independent and has not updated his blog since that day.

As for the press release, it shows, in case anyone doubted it, the lengths to which Griffin will go to get what he wants, even if it damages his own party. We reproduce it in its entirety so that readers can gain an insight into both the character of Griffin and – as we have no reason to believe the details in it are untrue – the way Barnbrook has represented those who voted him into the London Assembly.

Withdrawal of BNP Whip From London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook

It is with regret that the British National Party announces the withdrawal of the party whip from Richard Barnbrook, up until now a BNP councillor in Barking and the party s sole Member on the Greater London Assembly.

We are aware that sections of the media will use this as a stick to beat the BNP, and have worked hard to persuade Mr Barnbrook to make the changes to his lifestyle and attitudes which could have avoided this outcome. In the end, however, the party’s short term political convenience has to be put second behind the interests of our voters and the long term need to maintain our reputation for honesty and competence.

We are therefore unable any longer to allow our voters and our members to be abused and let down by a man who, after so much early promise, has let everyone down so badly.

In itself, Richard`s refusal to seek treatment for his alcohol dependency would be his personal problem and tragedy, but this illness is now having a catastrophic impact on Barnbrook the elected politician. The main, but not the only, problems that result are

* His increasingly erratic and poor attendance record at the GLA

* His repeated and personally disloyal attempts to bully and blame staff members and BNP colleagues for his own failings

* His failure to perform his constituency duties, cancelling meetings without warning or valid excuse. The final straw in this regard was his recent decision to go on an Internet blind date rather than take up a request to attend the funeral of a young victim of the London knife crime epidemic on which he was so active when first elected

* His attending meetings and disciplinary hearings, and giving interviews while drunk

* His ignoring repeated warnings and pleas from colleagues not to drink and drive. We make this a matter of public record here in the hope that the resulting possibility of greater police scrutiny will compel him to revert to travelling by public transport and thereby prevent a serious accident that is at present just a matter of time

* His breaking of his personal pledge to give 10 % of his gross salary to the party, giving instead irregular smaller amounts and repeatedly refusing to provide copies of his council pay slip so as to allow a proper assessment of the resulting shortfall

* His repeated approaches to BNP members with requests for donations and 'investments' into private business proposals and unauthorised personal political projects

* His repeated attempts to blackmail the party leadership by threatening to 'go Independent' in the GLA a move which he has actively discussed with senior officials at the GLA and to split the BNP vote in Barking by standing there in the General Election as an Independent under the slogan 'Barnbrook for Barking'

* His underhand efforts to secure BNP staff time and donors' money for his proposed Independent parliamentary campaign by claiming that this is authorised by the party leadership.

* His insistence on acting as an unofficial spokesperson on television and radio. His two most recent performances after his disciplinary hearing and also following Question Time in themselves make it clear that Richard, for all his qualities, would be wholly unsuitable to represent the Party in the highest level of government in Britain and the most demanding debating chamber in the world.

A number of meetings have been held between Mr Barnbrook and members of the BNP leadership in an effort to resolve these and other problems, but it has been impossible to reach a satisfactory outcome. As a result, Richard Barnbrook's status as a BNP councillor and London Assembly Member is revoked with immediate effect. This decision is reversible if he responds to this sacking by seeking and accepting professional help to deal with his alcohol problem, which is clearly the root of all the failings outlined. But failing that he will not be standing as a BNP candidate in any elections for the foreseeable future.

Our council group in Barking and Dagenham will be reduced by one, but will continue to be led by Cllr. Robert Bailey. The two BNP members who are at present working for Mr Barnbrook in the GLA have been informed that it is entirely their own decision as to whether to continue in post should he wish to retain them. As far as we are concerned it is now no different to any civil service job and we wish them well.

We will be announcing our prospective candidate for the Barking constituency following a selection procedure in which Mr Barnbrook will not be considered. We will be going all out to unseat Margaret Hodge and to replace her with a loyal, competent British National Party MP who will serve the electors of Barking with the dedication they deserve.

Hope not hate

BNP leader Nick Griffin could lose Euro seat as party faces bankruptcy

Porky Griffin: nearly bankrupt - again!

Griffin could lose Euro seat as party faces bankruptcy

BNP leader Nick Griffin faces being axed as a Euro MP as he fights to avoid bankruptcy over his party's soaring cash crisis. He is among top officials thought to be personally liable for the racist group's £700,000 debts - which it admits it cannot pay. Anyone made bankrupt is legally barred from being an MP or Euro MP.

The BNP's money woes were laid bare by ex-chief fundraiser James Dowson in a letter seen by the Mirror. Mr Dowson told North-East printers who produced its newsletter that the finances were like "a shipwreck".

He added: "Cash is in very short supply... [it is] impossible for the BNP and persons associated with it to pay outstanding bills in anything like a normal timescale, if indeed at all." The "very grave" crisis meant it could only pay 20% of what it owed, he added.

Its money problems have been made worse by having to settle a legal row after illegally using Marmite in an ad and the cost of fighting the Equality and Human Rights Commission over its whites-only admission rules. Meanwhile, electoral chiefs are still probing its 2008 accounts as they contain gaps that breach the law.

The BNP's debt meltdown comes amid a spate of defections and expulsions. Mr Dowson and media officer Paul Golding have left while campaigns chief Eddy Butler and London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook were recently expelled.

Mr Griffin was not responding to our requests for a comment last night.

Mirror

BNP expels Richard Barnbrook as bitter feud threatens to tear apart party

Richard Barnbrook, one of the British National party's most senior figures, has been expelled as part of an increasingly bitter feud threatening to engulf the far-right organisation.

The London Assembly member, who was one of a group of rebels who tried to wrest control of the BNP from party leader Nick Griffin last month, was informed via an internal memo this week that he was no longer a party member.

"Sadly we have concluded that we are left with no alternative but to expel Richard Barnbrook from membership of the British National party," it reads. "I have written to him informing him that I have taken that action today and he is no longer a member of our party."

Barnbrook, who was the party's sole representative on the London Assembly, is one of the BNP's most high-profile officials and his expulsion comes as the party faces a growing political and financial crisis.

Since its poor showing in May's general and council elections, several senior figures have come out against Griffin, at least three local councillors have resigned the party whip and many key activists have been suspended.

The prospect of a permanent split has been heightened by the party's dire financial plight and the formation of a new faction – the BNP reform group – which is openly discussing forming a new party.

"Even by its own vicious standards this has been a bloody episode for the BNP," said Nick Lowles from anti-racist organisation Searchlight. "The relentless infighting has done serious damage to Griffin and the party's organisational ability."

Griffin's opponents have rallied around another leadership challenger, Eddie Butler, who has run the BNP's election machine in recent years. Their anger is focused on Griffin's leadership style and concern about the party's debts.

"You may think I should have little reason to have sympathy for Richard Barnbrook's plight," Butler wrote on his blog this week. "But I can see that they used and abused him … watch and observe. This is the way Nick Griffin's British National party treats its members."

Concern about the BNP's finances has been exacerbated by news that the Electoral Commission is investigating the party's 2008 accounts and that its 2009 accounts are already late. The BNP faces further legal action from the Equality and Human Rights Commission over allegations that it has failed to remove potentially racist clauses from its constitution. Lawyers say the case, due to go before the courts again in November, could see Griffin landed with a fine or even imprisonment for contempt of court.

The BNP refused to comment on reports that the party is more than £500,000 in debt or to confirm how many members had been suspended or had resigned. But Griffin has sent members increasingly desperate appeals for donations to "keep the wolves at bay and to ensure our survival". In one email he admitted that the party was "cash-struck" and needed money to fight the case being brought by the EHRC. "Be clear on this, if you don't give, we can't fight … and if we don't fight we will be shut down and killed off."

Griffin's position has been under attack since the party's poor showing in May's general election when it saw a small increase in its vote but failed to make its promised breakthrough. It also performed badly in the council elections where all but two of its 28 sitting councillors standing for re-election were beaten and it was wiped out in its east London stronghold of Barking and Dagenham. However, last month he managed to see off a leadership challenge when Barnbrook and Eddie Butler both failed to secure enough support to trigger a leadership ballot.

Barnbrook, who lost his Barking and Dagenham council seat earlier this year, resigned the party whip last month calling for an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by party officials, although he remained a member of the party.

The memo from Clive Jefferson, the BNP's national organiser, said Barnbrook had had time to understand that his actions were "disloyal and unacceptable"

Barnbrook said yesterday that he would launch an appeal against his expulsion and that he would remain an assembly member as an independent.

The Guardian

Richard Barnbrook reported for 'bullying'

A former staff member for Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s former London leader and London Assembly member, says she has reported him to the GLA’s standards watchdog for his “unreasonable” and “bullying” behaviour towards her.

Tess Culnane, the “Nazi Granny” who was the BNP candidate for mayor of Lewisham this year, tells me she has made an official complaint to the City Hall standards officer, Ed Williams, calling for Mr Barnbrook’s suspension.

She says: “Richard Barnbrook failed to respond to requests for help from members of the public. When I did tell him about people who had come forward, he very often adopted a resentful manner towards me and threatened me with dismissal.
“His continual bullying manner and threats to sack me became intolerable. He would fall into a strop. He would make faces behind our backs when we were talking. He was a total embarrassment to those of us in his office.”

Mrs Culnane also says that Mr Barnbrook took out his anger on other members of his office, including another staffer, Emma Colgate. “She was forced to resign due to Richard’s perpetual hectoring manner,” she said. “At one point he followed her into the ladies’ toilet hectoring her.” Mrs Culnane says her complaint also alleges that Mr Barnbrook has been drunk during Mayor’s Questions.

Mr Barnbrook didn’t return repeated calls and text messages today to answer these allegations. They should be seen, of course, in the context of the fact that he has been in dispute with the BNP for some time. There may be an element of revenge here.
He resigned the BNP whip on the Assembly last month after the re-election of Nick Griffin as leader. Yesterday, he was thrown out of the party. He was also sacked as the BNP’s Barking and Dagenham organiser after the racists lost all their seats – his included – on the local council in the May elections.

A spokesman for the London Assembly said the procedure with complaints was for a sub-committee to decide whether they had enough merit to be considered by the full standards committee. Until then, he said, he could not confirm or deny whether any complaint had been received.

The Telegraph

Richard Barnbrook: A Political Obituary

It's often said that the “Characters” - the “One-Offs” - are disappearing from British politics to make way for the bland and the corporate. In fact, only last weekend, the Labour Party have bravely attempted to redress the balance by rejecting the leadership bid of presentable, clone-like “Mr Spock” Miliband in favour of the altogether more visually exciting “Aardman Animation” Miliband.

Over on a rather smaller stage, meanwhile, we have lost a true, erm... “Character”. Richard Barnbrook – the BNP's Man At The London Assembly, has (ironically for one so obsessed with knife crime) finally been stabbed in the back by Nick Griffin.

His political “career” (and I use the term advisedly: Not so much as a series of interlinked terms of employment but rather as something that's out of control and hurtling downhill), has done so much to brighten the humdrum days of Anti-Fascists that it'll be hard not to miss the fool, come May 2012.

The ex-teacher first aroused (if that's the right word) attention when his 1989 student film “HMS Discovery: A Love Story” came to light and was described by some who saw it as “gay porn”. While the mere fact that it contained scenes of male nudity and flagellation shouldn't be used to automatically condemn it as “porn” (after all, “The Passion Of The Christ” has that. AND Judas gets to plant a big kiss on Jesus...), the snippet I've seen is such a towering anti-masterpiece of shonky camerawork, staplegun editing and incoherent narrative that it would be fairer to take issue with its being called “a film”.

His directorial career in tatters, the famously Dyslexic Barnbrook entered the world of politics; first as a Labour Party activist before realising his mistake and joining the BNP. His Dyslexia must be REALLY bad.

Meanwhile, he was employed designing decorative planting schemes to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Only one such bed was completed, however, before his BNP activities were discovered and he was invited to move on. ( There Presumably being some kind of protocol issue in HRH being associated with more than one rancid old xenophobe at a time.)

So politics beckoned. Adopting his now-trademark beige suit – a particularly unwise choice - it just makes him look like he's come dressed as a sepia print – Barnbrook worked tirelessly as a BNP organiser, standing as the doomed Parliamentary Candidate for Barking in the 2005 elections and the doomed Mayoral Candidate in 2008, before finally making it to the GLA (thanks to the List System) in the same elections.

Next to his career in the Assembly, Barnbrook's early attempt at filmmaking looks like the lost works of Orson Welles. If Boris Johnson could, in terms of his eloquence and quiet dignity, make Ozzy Osbourne look urbane, then Richard Barnbrook could make Shane MacGowan resemble a veritable Cary Grant with the intellect of a Stephen Fry and the oratorical skills of Plato. It's even rumoured that, come 2012, should the Tories hold the office, Boris will keep him on the Mayor's payroll – paying him a handsome stipend just to stand next to him and make him look normal.

The tics. The eccentric turn of phrase. The funny voices. The occasional treat of his St Georges' Day parade – Dickie could never be accused of being a political giant. But, my God – if he speaks in the Assembly you sit up and watch him. Maybe not for the reason he'd want you to, but you certainly watch him...

And his personal life has become as entertaining as his political conduct: Rumoured to be something of a Player on the Party's social circuit (although one possibly doesn't have to try too hard among the available company: given the conduct of most BNP males, I suspect that if you can manage to eat with your mouth shut and close the toilet door you'd be regarded as something between Roger Moore and Nigel Havers), he has been linked to a number of like-minded partners; the highest profile being Simone Clarke, the “BNP Ballerina” (formerly of the Royal Ballet: Currently based in a Leeds village hall. Another fine example of the BNP's effect on career advancement).

On the subject of Dance: Whatever happens in his political career, Dickie will always retain a place in the public affection for his own, unique contribution to the Terpsichorean Arts (see the video below). Of course, the same display also points to his lack of political savvy – if only he'd thought it through and said it was a performance-based artwork exploring concepts of political alienation interpreted through the medium of free-form slamdancing, he probably could've picked up a tasty GLA grant for it.

Given the Candide-like shambles of his life, it's hardly surprising to note that Barnbrook has long been beset with rumours of a drink problem. Not that such a thing is unusual in politics: My own father was, long ago, on the regular campaign team for our one-time local MP, George Brown. Who was pissed from around 1945 to the mid-eighties. Didn't stop him making Foreign Secretary, though (although check out the infamous “Archbishop of Lima” story...). Indeed, Disraeli was reputed to enjoy the odd glass (or ten) and Churchill managed to win a War while completely hammered. These people didn't, however, seem to let it interfere with their work: Given Dickie's “eccentricities”, it's almost impossible to tell.

To paraphrase St John: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his political life for his Leader.” For all his weird behaviour, the least accountable has been Barnbrook's willingness to sacrifice his credibility and career (such as they are) to come to the aid of his beloved Nick Griffin.

A shoe-in to fight Barking and Dagenham in May's General Election, he caved in to his Leader's demand that Griffin get a free run at the seat when it began to look a safer bet than Thurrock, the constituency he was already pledged to fight. The result, of course, was total annihilation: Nick's golden touch, easy charm and legendary popularity with his electorate ensured that, not only did he drop the vote by 2% but he wiped out every BNP Councillor there while he was at it.

Then came the “Leadership Election”. For whatever reason (but, of course, we suspect because his Master told him to), Barnbrook stood as a stalking horse candidate. If the B & D election was merely embarrassing, the Leadership Contest must have been the political equivalent of being forced to dance naked in a muddy puddle while tramps throw fruit at you. A staggering 23 people chose to back him. Out of more than 2000. He probably felt like a drink after that one.

And then, finally learning the lesson that doing favours for Nick Griffin is about as solid a guarantee of engendering goodwill as buying a box of chocolates for a puff-adder, Barnbrook resigned the Party Whip in the GLA.

Predictably, there was fury at Welshpool. Even more predictably, Clive Jefferson was dispatched to deliver the final blow and expel him from the Party.

It's unclear at the moment whether Barnbrook will vacate his Assembly seat in favour of the next person on the List. Personally, and just to annoy the hell out of his (former) Leader, I hope he stays put.

Or at least takes his dance show on national tour.

Last Orders Mr Barnbrook.

It is with great sadness that we have to announce the passing of one of the finest political careers this country has seen.

Such highlights include the embarrassing St Georges Day parades, the BNP ballerina affair, the gay porn film, the false claims about knife crime and the subsequent suspension, the beige suits, the masterly command of the English language, the recent leadership campaign that brought in a resounding 23 votes out of over 2000 eligible members and last but not least the dancing.

The Battle for Barking & Dagenham

Thanks to Hope not Hate

BNP leader interferes in independent’s work

The leader of the British National Party is trying to interfere in the work of an independent member of the London Assembly.

Nick Griffin, who recently appointed himself acting London regional organiser for the racist party, visited Chris Roberts at his City Hall office on Friday to discuss “GLA work” according to a report on the BNP’s London Patriot website. Roberts is employed by the Greater London Authority as an assistant to Richard Barnbrook, who earlier this month resigned the BNP whip until “allegations of serious wrong doing concerning senior British National Party officials” are investigated.

Griffin’s attempt to influence Roberts to work in the interests of the BNP rather than for the member he is paid to assist is highly irregular. The previous night Griffin told a party meeting in Barking and Dagenham, from which many dissident longstanding activists had been excluded, that he himself would be taking charge of the party’s campaign for the London Assembly and mayoral elections in 2012.

“To be successful, the BNP need a high profile candidate who can generate the publicity needed to mobilise the capital’s remaining demoralised traditional British population to come out and vote,” wrote Martin Wingfield, Griffin’s communications officer following the meeting. But that’s not all, once elected the BNP representative must be influential within the Assembly chamber and make sure that the patriotic voice of British Nationalism is heard at every opportunity,” an implied criticism of Barnbrook’s failure to do so.

London Patriot also reports that Griffin had a long meeting on Friday with solicitors to prepare for the next round of the Equality and Human Rights Commission court case over the party’s racist constitution.

“Mr Griffin will be representing himself in court against a renewed attack from the EHRC which has included a request to have the BNP leader imprisoned,” according to London Patriot. Whether this is because the impecunious BNP cannot afford a barrister or because no barrister is prepared to act for the dictatorial BNP leader is not stated.

The Barking and Dagenham meeting was treated to more of Griffin’s lies in response to questions about serious irregularities in the party that have emerged during the course of Eddy Butler’s unsuccessful leadership challenge.

The raising of the nominations threshold for a leadership challenge – to 20% of members of at least two years’ standing – was, he claimed, not his decision but that of the members at a party general meeting on 14 February this year, which adopted the new party constitution.

In fact members were only shown those parts of the constitution that had been amended in response to the Equality Commission legal action. Griffin slipped in the new rules on leadership challenges without even showing those clauses to members expected to vote for them and the amended constitution could only be accepted or rejected as a whole.

He said he would now ask for changes to the constitution to give the party leader a longer term of office, in other words abolishing the right to challenge him each year.

Griffin was cagey in response to questions about the party’s contract with Jim Dowson, the fundraising consultant with a string of criminal convictions whom Griffin brought in at great expense at the start of 2008. One questioner pointed out that the contract Dowson produced at an employment tribunal hearing over the sacked BNP employee Michaela Mackenzie had ended at December 2009. Griffin said that was not true. He claimed that Dowson’s help had been “invaluable” and said he would extend the contract with him if he felt it was in the party’s interests to do so.

Many in the BNP believe that Griffin will extend Dowson’s contract if it is in Griffin’s and Dowson’s personal financial interests to do so, but those who might say that openly had been kept out of the meeting.

Griffin also blamed the BNP’s current dire financial state on those who had called for members to stop giving money to the party until there was greater financial transparency, claiming this had cost the party around £300,000, an unlikely figure, and an attempt to divert attention from the fact that it is Griffin’s reckless pursuit of hopeless legal actions and Dowson’s huge salary and commission that are the largest contributing factors to the BNP’s debt mountain, now believed to be around £600,000.

Hope not hate

A liar and a coward: Butler goads Griffin

Eddy Butler ramped up the pressure on Nick Griffin following a farcical "organisational meeting" held in Dagenham on Thursday evening, from which Butler and his supporters had been banned by an unnerved Griffin.

Butler's personal blog report on the events of the evening constitutes one of his most savage attacks on the beleaguered BNP leader to date, employing the word "lie" seven times, "lies" six times, "liar" three times, and "lying" once, in a statement that leaves Nick Griffin looking deeply foolish and very guilty.

The "reform" leader repeatedly sneers at Griffin and brazenly attacks his personal integrity in what appears to be a transparent attempt to goad Griffin into taking precipitate action against himself and his supporters.

Butler relates how, despite being warned by letter not to attend the Dagenham meeting on pain of disciplinary action, "Everyone turned up!" while "A group of suspended members waited outside the venue with gags on their mouths, holding up placards reading ‘Gagged for telling the truth’."

"Griffin sneaked into the venue and locked himself into the meeting room for forty five minutes sweating with his security entourage," Butler gloats, then details that Griffin put his security goons (who included Clive Jefferson) on the door armed with a revised list of those to be refused admittance.

"Pandemonium broke out," says Butler, but in the disorder several reformers got past the goons, one threatening to call the police if Griffin's men laid a hand on him, though some were hauled out of the meeting room.

One of those refused entry was former goon Jay Slaven, who our readers will remember hustled Griffin away from the egg throwing incident outside parliament last year, and who brutally chopped the throat of an innocent (black) female pedestrian engulfed by Slaven, Griffin and several other panicking fascists, who then trampled her body as she fell to the ground.

Interestingly, Emma Colgate, one of the BNP's last remaining councillors in the south east, was also refused entry. Colgate has kept a low profile so far, but her transformation from BNP to "independent" councillor in Thurrock cannot be long in coming.

Butler and ourselves (via another source) agree that about sixty people eventually got into the meeting, leaving between fifteen to twenty excluded. As many attending came from outside London, this turnout tells us much about the woeful condition of the BNP in the capital.

In his hubris, Nick Griffin claimed that ninety attended the meeting, which he described as "long and productive". In fact Griffin talked and talked, and lied and lied (as Butler has it), leaving almost no time for questions.

Describing this, Butler is scathing. "A poor excuse for a man," he says of Griffin, adding that the BNP leader's speech was "boring and nervously delivered by a perspiring and stammering excuse for a man", and "Virtually every word than came out of Griffin’s mouth was a lie."

Griffin's account, needless to say, differs markedly from that of Butler and a "reform" supporter who sat through the meeting. Griffin claims (or, being careful, says he was "told") that he spoke for an hour and answered questions for two, which is not what we have been hearing.

On the BNP website a report, detailing the organisational changes to be made in the London region, has the same flavour as the legendary tale of the man who re-arranged the deck-chairs on a sinking Titanic. Griffin has split London in to five new "regions", with Griffin trusties installed as local organisers - though he clearly trusts none of them enough with the post of regional organiser, which he retains. What, exactly, these new organisers will organise isn't clear at all.

Butler's report can be found on his personal blog, and speaks for itself. It is angry, contemptuous, and above all provocative, viz:

GRIFFIN IS A LIAR – VIRTUALLY EVERTHING HE SAYS AT A BNP MEETING NOW IS A LIE.

HE CANNOT FACE ME IN FRONT OF BNP MEMBERS AS HE KNOWS I WILL DESTROY HIS LIES AND LEAVE HIM A PATHETIC AND WASTED WRECK IN FRONT OF EVERYONE IN THE AUDIENCE.

IF GRIFFIN HAD THE COURAGE OF HIS CONVICTIONS HE WOULD NOT ACT LIKE THIS. HE IS A COWARD.

News from the north east, that was also news to us, is to be found at the head of Butler's report, where he claims that "twenty five long standing members – officers, candidates and activists from South Tyneside and Morpeth" resigned en bloc from the BNP on Thursday in protest at Griffin's "tyrannical actions", which included the sacking of regional organiser Ken Booth.

In the north east Adam and Mark Walker are looking increasingly isolated as the local membership evaporates around them, and were recently obliged to import a small number of the similarly evaporating Liverpool activist base to help out in Adam Walker's campaign for election to Spennymoor Town Council - a campaign the BNP has perhaps misguidedly hyped beyond its importance, most especially in light of Walker's disgraceful comments prior to VJ-Day that Japanese war criminals "were doing what they thought was right at the time", which is returning to haunt him.

Also helping out (or was he really being guarded?) in Spennymoor was Richard Barnbrook, also isolated, though for different reasons, and since cast adrift.

Barnbrook appears to have acquired either a ghost-writer or an extremely helpful "friend" to help him keep his barely-regarded blog up to date, and continues to labour under the delusion that he has any use at all to Griffin and the BNP.

In a "Message to voters and supporters", Barnbrook, with touching sincerity, says that he had despatched a missive to "head office" (by which he means Nick Griffin) in which he set out his own observations of the current disputes and suggestions on their resolution.

This missive is so naive and child-like we can only assume Barnbrook's ghost-writer had great troubles in maintaining a straight face as he tapped it out. We have no way of knowing whether the following suggestion gestated in Barnbrook's mind or that of his unseen helper, but as part of the drive to root out infiltrators Barnbook recommends that polygraph tests be imposed on everybody at the level of regional organiser and above, apparently including (rather cheekily) Nick Griffin.

"I have not yet had any response which indicates to me that action will be taken on the points that I raised," Barnbook concludes.

Richard just doesn't get it, does he?

BNP activist banned from party meeting

A veteran British National Party activist has been ordered not to attend a party meeting in Barking and Dagenham on Thursday at which new arrangements for running London BNP and future plans will be announced.

Bob Gertner, a former Croydon BNP organiser, received an email from Mark Walker of the BNP’s “political admin office” telling him that the special organisational meeting was “open only to members and supporters who wish to put recent disputes behind us and move on in a wholly positive fashion”.

Writing on behalf of Nick Griffin, who recently appointed himself the party’s acting London regional organiser, Walker continues: “You are one of a small number of individuals whose behaviour or alleged behaviour in recent weeks has led to a large number of people at present viewing you with suspicion. Whether or not this is justified, I therefore judge that your presence at this meeting would not be conducive either to its smooth running or to the moves for the private addressing of genuine concerns and to work towards reconciliation which will be made separately.”

Walker’s explanation is bizarre in that it bans a longstanding activist even if “suspicion” is unjustified and that it appears to suggest that Gertner’s concerns, which led to him supporting Eddy Butler’s challenge to Griffin’s dictatorial leadership of the fascist party and are shared by many, are not to be discussed in a members’ meeting.

Griffin took over as acting London organiser from Chris Roberts, another activist who fell out of favour after voicing concerns about the financial mismanagement in the party, the way Griffin constantly falls out with “hard working dedicated nationalists” and the influence in the party of non-members such as Patrick Harrington, a leader of the tiny Third Way party and a former comrade of Griffin in his National Front “political soldier” days. Roberts too supported Butler’s challenge.

Griffin’s only connection with London is that: “I pass by while on the way to Europe”, as he said on Twitter announcing that he was putting together “a great new London management team” and would be acting as their organiser “while they find their feet”.

Clearly Griffin was unable to identify a single Griffin loyalist in London willing and capable of organising the region, following several suspensions of activists and widespread disillusionment.

“Vital we organise now to maximise chances in 2012 gla election,” Griffin’s tweet continued, hoping party members would forget his statement after the BNP’s defeat in Barking and Dagenham in May, when he wrote off fighting elections in the capital saying that by the next general election London would be “completely unassailable” and “no longer part of Britain”.

Elsewhere the three BNP councillors who have turned independent have left the party with only 24 council seats compared with nearly 60 a year ago. Deidre Gates, who was the organiser of the party’s West Hertfordshire group, had actively supported Butler but resigned from the party on 17 August, not heeding Butler’s call to continue the fight from the inside. She was elected to Hertfordshire County Council last year, one of just three BNP county councillors, of whom only one now remains. Seamus Dunne, who sits on Three Rivers council in Hertfordshire, has resigned the BNP whip but remains in the party.

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate