No waking the dead in Preston

Fifty seven hard line racists gathered in Preston last weekend to commemorate the life of John Tyndall, the Nazi uniform wearing founder of the British National Party.

It was the sixth time that a collection of Nazis and Anti-Semites no longer welcomed or favoured in Nick Griffin’s new version of the party, have gathered to remember their mentor.

Tyndall was the eloquent writer of such immortal lines as “the Jew is like a maggot feeding off the corpse of the write race”. He died in 2005 while facing charges of behaviour likely to incite racial hatred, surprisingly.

In the dock with Tyndall back then was Nick Griffin (who Tyndall was also fighting a legal case against and who had become his sworn enemy) and Mark Collett, Griffin’s dynamic sure-to-be life long friend who only last week went onto the BBC’s Panorama programme to besmirch the very memory of their love-in.

The only thing that truly held all of those present in the same room was their burning hatred of Nick Griffin, and not any long term admiration of the fallen “Führer".

The meeting was organised by Mark Cotterill who has no real history of ever being much of a fan of Tyndall when he was actually alive. During the eighties and early 90’s Cotterill was instead a senior member of the Flag faction of the NF. They were anti-Tyndall’s BNP and vehemently and often violently, anti-Nick Griffin’s “Political Soldier” National Front. Confused? You should be.

Cotterill later moved to America to front-up the American Friends of the BNP a source of funding for the BNP once Nick Griffin took it over. That new found friendship didn’t last long and Cotterill soon found himself back in England and deciding to support the then displaced Tyndall.

Paul Ballard, a veteran Croydon based fascist made his way to Preston for this knees up. Ballard’s been in and out of the BNP over the years when he’s not been teaching English as a second language to “Johnny Foreigner”. In a rather non-illustrious career on the far-right, Ballard’s been everything from a hard line Nazi to a moderate and even occasionally, a Griffinite “radical”. He was even (another) co-defendant of Griffin’s during another race hate trial during the 90’s over editing something that Griffin had written. [Not well enough?-Ed)

Ballard was last seen in public sulking at a BNP meeting in Dagenham where the BNP had to vote to allow non-white members into the party back in February 2010.

Chastising Ballard on that fateful day in 2010 was none other than Richard Edmonds. Out of all of those present in Preston, Edmonds is probably the true heir to Tyndall’s legacy. He followed Tyndall in and out of the old NF, the New National Front and even into and then out of the BNP. And then back again.

Edmonds even ran the BNP and edited Tyndall’s long-running record of boredom, Spearhead during one occasion when Tyndall found himself again in prison in the 1980's and the BNP had a membership of some 400.

Back in February 2010, Edmonds upset a few old-timers when he used his lofty position as Tyndall's spokeperson on earth and gave Tyndall’s beyond-the-grave blessing to allow non-white members into the BNP. It seemed to have been mostly out of pragmatism or expediency because he was later filmed denigrating white people he assumed were “race mixers” because they did not like BNP literature being posted through their doors. Such obedience to Griffin back then not only helped Edmonds onto the BNP’s Advisory Council but also earned him the soubriquet “veteran Nationalist” from the party, which in their vernacular means “Old Nazi”.

Edmonds was back to being an “old Nazi” when he announced he was standing against Griffin to be party leader earlier this year and positively labelled a “crank” by Herr Griffin when he finally left the BNP earlier this month to rejoin the National Front. One can only assume that Ballard (bizarrely nicknamed Trotsky by his admirers), and Edmonds sorted out their little squabble in time for the long journey to Preston. As ever, Edmonds made a vicious and racist speech that mentioned all the usual favourites, Jews, blacks, Asians, Nick Griffin..

But they were not alone. If the BNP and NF are not cranky enough for you, the British People's Party sent a speaker along. This meant that a dog somewhere was without it's master. This tiny Yorkshire based sect are perhaps better known for administering the Redwatch website and producing homicidal paedophiles that keep bombs under their child’s bed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7469180.stm

The BPP’s Dave Jones, who enjoys nothing more than dressing up in historical costume himself, spoke of the wonderful work he has done in the village of Todmorden where he comes last in almost every election. Jones distributes a local leaflet with stunning regularity warning mostly, of the dangers of the local school/church/pub/bus stop/phone box being turned into a Mosque. Jones managed to waffle on long enough to earn the ire of most people, but did earn himself a small ripple of applause when he announced that he has been working very closely with the NF of late. This must have given Edmonds a bit of a migraine!

Most people were there however not to dig up old stories about “JT”, but to hear the BNP’s other MEP Andrew Brons, announce the launch of a new party. Brons, as he has consistently on this subject of late, disappointed. He didn’t even turn up. I was not surprised.

Brons and Tyndall go far back, further back than even Edmonds goes. In the mid 1960’s Brons was a member of the National Socialist Movement, a bitter rival to Tyndall’s Greater Britain Movement. To mention that there were two tiny Nazi sects around at the time would mean dragging up the history of the two group's competing leaders (Tyndall and Colin Jordon). So, here goes; having competed for the hand in marriage and become engaged to perfume heiress and all round naughty Nazi Françoise Dior in the sixties, poor old Tyndall got sent to prison and while in there and no doubt enjoying the pleasures of reading Mein kampf, his friend and mentor Jordan ran off with and eventually married Dior!

Later, Brons was to take over the leadership of the National Front in 1980 when Tyndall jumped before being pushed out of that party for being too public with his Nazism. So there was actually, no love lost between those two, ever.

Of course, Brons later had a fall out with Nick Griffin when they were in the National Front and Griffin wanted Brons removed from his job!

So, Brons and Griffin may have become friends again for a while and have now fallen out (again), but going to a memorial for Tyndall was obviously just too much, even for Brons. So instead of turning up, Brons sent along a letter in which the former politics lecturer pointed out that Tyndall had never been to university and also that they had often had differences of opinion!

There was no new party announced by Brons, and it still does not look likely there will be. He’s preparing himself for his own faction’s BNP conference this weekend which will be pretty much the same crowd that were at John Tyndall sixth annual wake.

In their game, friends become enemies and then friends again, even when you’re dead.



Thanks to Matthew Collins at HOPE not Hate

Man or a mouse?

BNP MEP Andrew Brons is coming under intense pressure to leave the party and form an alternative. Brons has been considering his options for the past nine months but so far he has failed to make a move. He first toyed with splitting from the BNP back in the spring in the aftermath of poor election results but he hesitated too long and missed his chance. He then challenged Griffin for the party leadership, half expecting to be thrown out of the party or to be given the excuse of obvious electoral fraud to walk away. Again he bottled it.

As Brons has dithered others have walked away. Jim Dowson and Paul Golding went off to form Britain First and then Eddy Butler and Chris Beverley joined the English Democrats. More recently Richard Edmonds and the bulk of Croydon BNP have gone over to the National Front.

Now, in the aftermath of the Panorama programme, he is once again under pressure to leave and form an alternative.

Our guess is that he will continue to pontificate and the opportunity will pass him by. And in the meantime the BNP, under Griffin's leadership, will continue its slow death.

Hope not Hate

Edmonds heads out the front door

One of the last remaining founder members of the BNP has quit the party to rejoin the miniscule and almost moribund National Front. Richard Edmonds returns to the NF after leaving them in acrimonious circumstances to help form the British National Party over thirty years ago.

Seventy year old Edmonds, a former school teacher, is one of Britain’s most notorious and hard line Holocaust deniers and one of a number of people now deserting the Andrew Brons faction in the BNP after Brons was narrowly defeated by Nick Griffin in the recent leadership elections. Edmonds had stood aside to allow Brons to challenge to Griffin, and is believed to have grown impatient as the Brons camp dithered over forming a new party.

Edmonds made his reputation as a notorious and controversial orator during the 1980’s when as the right hand man of then BNP leader John Tyndall, the BNP fermented racial hatred and an openly Nazi party saw a number of people including Tyndall, imprisoned under the race relations act. Edmonds also financed the opening of the BNP’s controversial head office in Welling south London and the distribution of the hate sheet Holocaust News that poured scorn on not just the Holocaust, but also the memory and testimonies of victims of the Nazi regime.

In 1993 Edmonds was jailed for a racist attack in Tower Hamlets, east London, when a black man walking with a white woman had the audacity to walk past Edmonds and a group of BNP supporters who had been attending a violent BNP mobilization in the area.

A long time opponent of Nick Griffin, Edmonds had initially been suspended from the party not long after Nick Griffin assumed the leadership of the BNP in 1999. After Tyndall’s death in 2005 Edmonds found his way back into the BNP and even found himself on the party’s advisory committee, described as a “veteran nationalist” which would appear to be BNP vernacular for ‘unreconstructed neo-Nazi on his best behaviour’. Despite his history, Edmonds was one of the “veteran nationalists” who conceded that legally there was little point in the party resisting the legal obligation to allow party membership to non-whites.

In a difficult week for the BNP’s leader, the departure of Edmonds may prove to be one bright spot. Edmonds had over the last year slipped comfortably back into the anti-Griffin camp as a self appointed spokesperson for keeping alive the memory of his mentor and former master John Tyndall. Tyndall died while facing the courts alongside Griffin on charges of inciting racial hatred while at the same time, fighting a battle to be readmitted back into the party he had founded.

With Edmonds goes the bulk of the Croydon branch of the BNP. Once one of the largest and most active BNP branches in the country, it was through Croydon BNP that Nick Griffin made his entry into the BNP. The Croydon branch of the BNP is a potent mix of former NF hardliners who moved into the BNP in the early nineties, former NF “political soldiers” who followed Griffin into the BNP and other long term racists and fascists. The Croydon far-right scene has long been susceptible to the charms of far-right radicals and extremists, from as far back to before even the NF was formed. A large chunk of those moving into the NF appear to be either suspended or ex-BNP members. The branch had been acting independently of the BNP for some time.

On hearing that Edmonds had finally jumped ship, Nick Griffin tweeted "Good that old hardcore cranks leaving with baggage. Shocking they time it to help the BBC though.” It must have been a really bad week of “timing” as far as Griffin is concerned. The party has been rocked by among other things, the death of its former treasurer only a few days from the potential nuclear meltdown for the party that is the Panorama programme on the BBC.

How the NF will accommodate the rabid actions and demands of über-activists like Edmonds and co remains to be seen. They do not even produce a regular mass circulation newspaper or leaflets.

Edmonds and Brons will no doubt have plenty to talk about at the John Tyndall memorial meeting later this month.

Thanks to Matthew Collins at HOPE not Hate

Spineless Brons lets Griffin off hook

BNP MEP Andrew Brons has refused to make public a video showing embattled party leader Nick Griffin gatecrashing and abusing BNP members at a meeting addressed by Brons in Brussels on Sunday.

Griffin, variously described by witnesses as "aggressive", "in a real temper" and "abusive", stormed into the meeting to confront Brons, Eddy Butler, leadership challenger Richard Edmonds and others, apparently as Brons addressed the gathering, which had been on a weekend jolly to the European parliament organised by Griffin's enemy-in-chief Butler.

According to Michael Barnbrook, Griffin was "deliberately confrontational", calling Andrew Brons a liar and ordering Richard Edmonds to shut up before attacking Eddy Butler as the meeting broke up prematurely and attendees booed and shouted at Griffin - of whom Butler remarked: "It seems likely that he is having some sort of breakdown."

The meeting was videoed and Griffin's angry outbursts were recorded for posterity. Supporters of Butler and Edmonds had expected it to be released as damning evidence against the BNP leader, but according to Barnbrook Brons is refusing to make the video public because of the "embarrassment that it would cause the British National Party".

The majority opinion of those who witnessed Griffin's extraordinary behaviour is that the video's release would have been a decisive blow in the campaign to oust Griffin and should have been used.

Brons's decision to sit on the video could prove an expensive one for Richard Edmond's leadership hopes, since it is a golden opportunity lost - and not for the first time by the ineffectual Brons, whose record of dither and vacillation is legion in far right circles.

However, let's not jump to hasty conclusions. The BNP is something of a hall of mirrors at the moment, with both sides in the politically deadly dispute generating large amounts of spin and bluff. While Brons may be spineless, neither he nor his allies are stupid.

Brons still has to work with Griffin, though we must assume their relationship is ice cold, and has attempted (or at least attempted to appear) to remain above the worst of the vicious faction fighting, despite coming out in favour of Richard Edmond's challenge. It isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that his allies have every intention of making the video public while allowing Brons the time to publicly distance himself from the decision.

As we and our friends have been repeating for years, Griffin will never be beaten by those who think that playing fair will win the day. Griffin does not operate like that. He will only be beaten by opponents as cunning as he is and as ready as he is to land low blows.

Have the anti-Griffin forces within the BNP finally learned that truth?

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

Holocaust denier launches bid for leadership

With a large number of its activists either in hiding or on some kind of police bail, one of the party's founding members has decided that he has had enough of Nick Griffin's leadership and has indicated that he will stand for party leader later in the year.This is another distraction that the BNP's leadership could well do without.

Nearly seventy years of age, Richard Edmonds used to be a powerful and controversial orator when he was the warm up act for the party's hard-line Nazi founder John Tyndall, when he formed the party in 1982. A rabid Antisemite, Edmonds used to own and run the BNP's headquarters in Welling, south London at a time when it was common for the BNP to march around the country handing out copies of the newspaper Holocaust News, a newspaper that denied that the Holocaust had ever happened.

Not that Nick Griffin should mind Edmonds’s views on the Holocaust too much, he's had plenty to say on the subject himself too when it has suited him. The once hugely popular Edmonds is sure to be firing plenty of his notorious vitriol at Nick Griffin at a meting tonight in Mottingham, south London, where party rebels' are meeting to hear Edmonds launch his campaign when they really and probably should all be out elsehwere around the country handing out leaflets.

The meeting, which is for members only, is being held by the party's Reform Group who have decided they do not even want to wait until after next week's election before declaring open warfare. With Adam Walker, the party's cheap purging officer apparently still missing in action, someone else from the party's Head Office will have to be at Mottingham train station at 7.00 tonight to hand out the suspension and expulsion notices that normally follow once people have attended anti-Griffin meetings.

Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate/Searchlight

EDLs "Tommy Robinson" at Luton BNP Meeting ?

Are we mistaken, or is that the English Defence League's Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson pictured on the far left at a 2007 Luton BNP meeting in the King Harry Pub?

Speaking is Richard Edmonds, veteran Holocaust denier and BNP activist with a string of violent convictions. Also present on the top table is the then Beds/Bucks BNP organiser Steve Sherwood as well as John Pater, activist with the BNP as well as the national socialist November 9th Society.

Three Counties Unity

BNP boss earns £162,000 a year

The Rabid anti-abortion campaigner Jim Dowson

Rabid right-winger Jim Dowson is getting paid a staggering £162,000 by the BNP, we can reveal.

That’s £20,000 more than Prime Minister David Cameron gets paid to run the country!

The shock revelations have angered many BNP members and workers – not least because some party staff on mainland Britain have not been paid amid claims the party is in financial meltdown.

Scottish firebrand Dowson has been BNP leader Nick Griffin’s right-hand man, as well as party money-man, for the past few years now.

Dowson has been a rabid anti-abortion campaigner in the past and his list of criminal convictions include breach of the peace in 1986, possession of a weapon and breach of the peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992.

He hit the headlines last year when this paper revealed he was the man behind the BNP’s secret Belfast nerve centre which is situated in Dundonald.

Gangsters

From that base the far right party raise cash through membership recruitment and donations.

The office is almost exclusively run by members of Dowson’s and Griffin’s family including his daughter Jenny Matthys.

The BNP is in turmoil ever since their disastrous performance in the recent General and council elections which saw them wiped out.

But anti-fascist magazine Searchlight have uncovered a bitter feud which is threatening the future of the party itself.

Searchlight correspondent Matthew Collins says: “He gets paid more than the PM for advising a bunch of gangsters. It’s like something out of the Godfather.”

The revelations about Dowson’s inflated wages have come from a senior member of the party’s national advisory council.

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

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

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

Edmonds, who is very influential in the BNP especially among the more hardline members, states that Dowson gave him these figures himself.

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

The financial difficulties do not extend to the Belfast BNP call centre, which is run by Dowson.

The staff there received their June pay as usual, which is perhaps not surprising as they are mostly members of Dowson’s and Griffin’s families, including Griffin’s eldest daughter Jennifer.

Dowson is furious with stories which have appeared in this paper about him.

Last year he claimed in a TV interview that he hated the BNP’s politics. And he has complained to the Press Complaints Commission because we said he was a life member.

BNP Jim told the PCC in a letter on indignation: “They also allege that I am a BNP life member when I have never been a member of the party ever in my life!”

Failed

But a video passed to us shows Jim praising the racist party and urging people to join up.

And we’ve since discovered that Jim may not have paid his membership to the BNP – because according to sources he owns it!

During the seven minute video, which was taken during a fundraising event in Blackburn, Lancashire two months ago, Dowson repeatedly uses the phrases ‘we’ and ‘us’ when talking about the BNP.

The party hoped to get four MP’s elected to Westminster but failed to get a single one.

They had boasted about taking control of Barking and Dagenham council but were wiped out 51-0 by Labour.

Dowson and his Belfast operation was blamed by BNP members on the internet who said a series of cock-ups by Dowson were the cause of their election humiliation.

Click here for original article

Hope not Hate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sonia Gable at HOPE not hate

BNP Leader: 'East London Is Like Nairobi'

BNP leader Nick Griffin has been secretly filmed out on the far-right party's campaign trail, where he compared east London to Nairobi


The BNP is well known for having controversial policies, but it would appear the party also has controversial opinions when it comes to canvassing voters.

An undercover reporter from the People tabloid recorded what happened when senior party member Richard Edmonds was out leafleting in Dagenham.

When a woman told him she would not vote BNP, Mr Edmonds' response as he walked away was: "Silly ******* aren't they? Maybe she's got a black kid you see? Or maybe her sister's got a black kid? That I think is always the explanation around here. Once they go with blacks, they're part of the black tribe. Wicked, horrible, stupid. I've seen it many, many times."

Mr Griffin was also filmed talking about canvassing in Barking, where he is trying to oust Labour's Margaret Hodge.

"Yes, it's something like leafleting central Nairobi isn't it, I'm afraid," he said.

A spokesman for the BNP said the remarks were made after Mr Edmonds had been verbally abused in the street. The party did not want to comment further on the filming.

At its manifesto launch last week, the BNP insisted it was not a single-issue party.

Sky News

Nick Griffin: Barking's just like central Nairobi

Inside hate-filled world of BNP as boss bids to be MP

Race-hate peddler Nick Griffin launched his bid to become an east London MP by likening the seat to Nairobi - one of Africa's biggest cities. The BNP leader made the sneering comparison to Kenya's capital as he prepared to go out canvassing in Barking, where about a fifth of the population are from ethnic minorities.

He smirked: "It's something like leafleting central Nairobi, I'm afraid."

The jibe reveals racism is still at the core of the British National Party - and makes a mockery of Griffin's insistence they are not hawkers of hate.

He made the remark to an undercover People reporter who joined the BNP last month - and landed a job as Griffin's minder. Within days our man was signed up as a minder and was asked to the home of BNP stalwart Richard Barnbrook, a Greater London Assembly member.

When he arrived at the house in Dagenham, he found Griffin tying his shoelaces ready to start canvassing in nearby Barking. It was then that Griffin - bidding to oust tourism minister Margaret Hodge as MP and overturn her 12,183 majority - made his sick crack about Nairobi.

Our man told Griffin he had been harangued while canvassing for the BNP with party activists in Dagenham the day before. Griffin replied: "Well, when you think about what they have been told it's not surprising. They think you are on their doorstep to eat their baby."

Our man also told Griffin he had seen BNP supporters clash with members of United Against Fascism at the UK Border Agency office in Croydon two weeks ago. Griffin blamed police for the violence, whining: "They want to spark a reaction - that's what goes on television. The police are a bit caught because if they stop them too early they'll get done for abusing their human rights to protest. They've let it basically go too far. That's a lot of the cop-out."

Griffin said he picked Barking for his election bid because his anti-immigration stance appeals to white working-class voters who feel abandoned by Labour. As he took to the streets with camera crews in tow, Cambridgeeducated Griffin said: "There's a lot of support for us round here from honest, hard-working people who are fed up with being lied to."

Our man watched BNP activists knock on at least 1,000 doors - but only five potential supporters shook his hand. Later, Griffin told a radio phone-in he discussed immigration with a West Indian family he met canvassing - and claimed they backed his views.

He said: "They were saying the same as white people - that our kids are at the back of the queue when it comes to housing behind Somalis and Albanians who have only just arrived and it's not fair. There are plenty of West Indians agreeing with our message that Britain's full. They're not racist and nor are we."

But at no time during the hours we spent with Griffin in Barking did he talk about immigration to any West Indian family.

Griffin last night stood by his Nairobi jibe. He said: "Labour has given housing to West Indian immigrants because they need the black African vote after years of neglecting the white working class."

Catalogue of shame

Our man was routinely exposed to the violent hatred infesting the BNP during his three-week probe.

Desmond O'Flynn - who says he is a BNP organiser and boasts of having a criminal record - ranted: "I hate Muslims. I'd love to be a candidate in the election but I've got too much previous."

Gabriel Angelos, standing as a councillor in Enfield, also bragged about his violent past and raged against anti-BNP campaigners. He said in front of his own young daughter: "I hold them in contempt, the f***ing bastards."

And Richard Edmonds, 57, told our man not to visit addresses in Barking marked with an "F" on his copy of the electoral roll. He said: "F is for foreigners. There's no point talking to them. They're doing very well out of us and they want all their tribe over here."

Sunday People

Ernst Zundel and the BNP

Ernst Zundel, veteran Holocaust Denier and the author of The Hitler We Loved And Why, was released from Mannheim Prison in Germany on Monday after serving five years for Holocaust Denial. He was greeted by a small gathering of friends and supporters, as you can watch here (Zundel appears after about 5 mins):


You won’t be surprised to see that Michele Renouf was present and gave Zundel a big bunch of flowers to celebrate his freedom.

If you had been at all taken in by the BNP’s efforts to rebrand away their neo-Nazi, Holocaust denying heritage, you might be surprised to see BNP Advisory Council member Richard Edmonds taking photos of Zundel as he emerges (at about 7:10, with glasses, a bald patch and a dark green jacket). Edmonds’ presence is confirmed by a report on Zundel’s website [warning: link to offensive website].

CST

Lee Barnes: Jewish Bolsheviks to blame for Holocaust

When Lee John Barnes, legal officer of the British National Party, proclaims on his blog, “WW2 – Time To tell The Truth” you wonder if at long last the BNP leadership is simply going to tell its followers that Nazism was a uniquely hideous ideology; and that its innumerable crimes against humanity were epitomised by the Holocaust. But then you read the article, (penned as a response to Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express) and once again the grim reality of the BNP hits you between the eyes: because this is a poisonous and revealing article that depicts the Holocaust as a defensive action against “Jewish Bolsheviks”.

“…The Holocaust was the price ordinary Jews of Europe paid for the actions of the Bolshevik Jews in Russia after the Russian Revolution.

The fear of the Bolshevik threat, and the fact that so many Jews were Bolsheviks, allowed Hitler to link Jews with Bolshevism.

Therefore the Holocaust lays at the feet of those Jewish Bolsheviks in Russia and Germany whose actions allowed ordinary people, and ordinary Germans, to link Bolshevism with Jews.

Hitler used this linkage between Jews in Russia and the ideology of Bolshevism as the basis of his anti-Jewish propaganda, and this in turn led to the Holocaust itself.

Those like Rosa Luxemberg, a Jewish-Polish Bolshevik, were used by Hitler to create the perception that Germany was threatened with a Judeo-Bolshevik threat in Germany that linked Jews, Russia and Bolshevism – and this was, unfortunately, correct.”

The fact that Bolshevik scum like Rosa Luxemberg have statues erected in their honour in todays Germany shows how sick and degenerate Germany has become.

She would have turned Germany into a death camp like the Soviet Union, a charnel house of horror and murder with gulags filled with Germans, Jews, democrats and nationalists.

It was the actions of Bolshevik filth like Rosa Luxemberg in Germany during the Spartacist Uprising that allowed Hitler to equate Jews and Bolshevism – and thereby prepare the way for the Holocaust.

The issue that never gets debated in the media or the Hollywood movies is why did ordinary Germans participate in the Holocaust.

There are two reasons ;

1) They were ordered too [sic] as they would have been shot if they did’nt eg the troops involved in killings and shipping prisoners to concentration camps and concentration camp guards

2) They were terrified of Jewish Bolshevism as they saw what scum like Rosa Luxemberg did in Germany after WW1 and they feared that if the Communists took power, what happened in Russia would happen to them.

The Holocaust was not the product of ‘evil’ Germans, it was a product of the fear installed in ordinary Germans by the Russian Revolution and the actions of Jewish Bolsheviks like Rosa Luxemberg in Germany itself…”.

So, Barnes correctly plays the anti-antisemite card by repeatedly distinguishing between (bad, very bad) Bolshevik Jews and all other “ordinary” Jews, but how does this fit with his saying that Hitler was “unfortunately, correct” to link “Jews, Russia and Bolshevism”? There is no explicit condemnation in the article for the genocidal conclusions that Hitler and “ordinary Germans” (to use Barnes’s phrase) drew from this alleged Jewish/Bolshevik linkage. On the contrary, Barnes saves all of his hatred for one side only:

“…murdering Bolshevik scum…communist jackboot…Stalin, the insane butcher…[Jewish Bolshevik] blood frenzy…[Bolshevik] Jewish death cult…Soviet Union, a charnel house of horror and murder…Bolshevik filth…”.

The historical (in)accuracy of the article is another matter altogether. When an article correctly states that millions of Poles were murdered in WW2, you have to rub your eyes to believe that there really is no mention here of Nazis. Instead, its “the murdering Bolshevik scum that were murdering millions of Poles”. Indeed, when Barnes discusses who bears responsibility for WW2 and the mass murders of the period, the Nazis are once again invisible. Jews, however (especially of the Bolshevik variety) are certainly not:

“…The tragedy is that whilst the Bolsheviks from Russia were killing poles, the Jewish Bolsheviks in Russia that ran the secret police were killing millions of ethnic Russians, poles and their fellow Jews.

Stalin, the insane butcher that he was, was prepared to allow the Jewish Bolsheviks that ran the execution gangs and the secret police free rein to murder millions of his fellow ethnic Russians and Jews due to his insane paranoia.

These Jewish Bolsheviks were the driving force behind the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, and they projected their self loathing upon not just Russians but also those Jews who were not militant atheists and Communists like them. In their blood frenzy anyone who was a nationalist, anti-communist, a democrat, religious, Jewish or non-Jewish, was regarded as an enemy…

…the secret police NKVD and other security units were primarily an Jewish death cult determined to liquidate as many Christians, religious Jews and non-Jewish Russians as possible.

The war has to be laid at the feet of the Bolsheviks, Stalin and the Jewish terrorists in the empire of horror created by Stalin and his willing executioners.

No Russian Revolution = No Hitler…”

Barnes is canny enough to know that he shouldn’t just be quoting Hitler on the Jewish-Bolshevik tie up. So, he plays the British patriot card and quotes Winston Churchill on the subject:

“Let us not forget the words of Winston Churchill himself.

In an article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald on February 8 1920, Winston Churchill asserted::

” There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistic Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews.”

For sure, the BNP has come a long way since the 1980s and early ’90s: when (then) BNP deputy leader Richard Edmonds would stand bedraggled on the corner of Brick Lane in his tatty green coat, peddling soggy copies of the antisemitic rag, “Holocaust News” to bemused locals. But it still hasn’t gone that far, and it is beyond chutzpah that Barnes should be quoting the one world statesman who consistently warned against Hitler and led the stand against Nazism. When the BNP is able to show even 1% of Churchill’s opposition to Nazism then perhaps they will have the right to quote him.

As for the other sources that Barnes has drawn upon for his noxious piece, he lists two at the end of the article:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1033.htm
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p-4_Weber.html

‘Information clearing house’ reads as if it’s a surplus store for left wing news, sort of where TK Maxx meets Indymedia. It’s a fairly typical amalgam of anti-Iraq and anti-Afghan War articles, and the compulsory attendant sneering at Israel and “Zionists”. (The fact that Barnes is referring his readers to it, says as much about the modern left as it does the modern right, but that’s another story…).

The letters ‘ihr’, however, will be brutally familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the American far right and Holocaust denial scene. IHR stands for Institute for Historical Review and it was for many years the world’s leading supplier of Holocaust denial propaganda. It still trades in such filth, but the covers and titles of its propaganda are not quite as explicit as they once were. Still, when a senior BNP officer repeats the Hitlerite line that World War 2 and the Holocaust were defensive actions against Jewish Bolshevism – and he then links to the IHR website – you know that not too much has changed: even if Richard Edmonds is no longer hanging about on street corners.

CST

URGENT KIRKLEES UNITY NEWS

Richard Edmonds - Holocaust-denier and racist

It has been brought to our attention that the BNP in Kirklees intend again to hold another meeting in the Heckmondwike area on Thursday 23rd April

The meeting which is due to start at 8pm is to be held at The Royal Hotel public house which is located on High Street Heckmondwike WF16 0AL. The guest speaker for the night once again is Richard Edmonds the former deputy leader of the party under the John Tyndall regime.

Former teacher Edmonds has a string of criminal convictions. In 1988, The Sunday Times revealed that Holocaust News, a publication that claimed The Holocaust was an "evil hoax", was being published by Edmonds, on behalf of a BNP front organisation, the Centre for Historical Review, and distributed by members. The theme was returned to on 8th April 1991 edition of Panorama where Edmonds described the publication as 'a wonderful statement of the truth'

Edmonds also spent time in custody over a racial attack in 1993 and had previously been convicted for smashing a statue of Nelson Mandela on London's South Bank. Further controversy came in 1993 when he told The Guardian that 'we [the BNP] are 100% racist'.

Surprisingly to some, Edmonds was co-opted by Nick Griffin onto the BNP's Advisory Council in September 2008, thereby returning him to the top tier of the party and ending his period of apparent dissidence.

Edmonds was due to address a North Kirklees meeting at the Royal Hotel back in November 2008, however down to pressure from antifascists the meeting was called off. Because of the meeting cancellation the North Kirklees organiser at the time Ian Roper was sacked by Yorkshire organiser Adrian Marsden.

As The Royal is a Free House we are asking people to ring the pub and POLITELY lodge their complaint with the management. The Royal Hotel's telephone number is 01924 403265

We have proven already what can be done in November.

For more information on Richard Edmonds see here.

Kirklees Unity

Kemp is given Excalibur as Collett resigns. Just a day in the life of the BNP...

No, he's not gone yet...

The BNP's Advisory Council meeting minutes are far more interesting for what they don't say than for what they do, and January's AC minutes are a good example.

The Advisory Council meets at least three times a year and is the guiding body (it says here) of the party. And who sits on the AC? Everyone who is anyone, of course - or at least, anyone who is anyone in the fantasy world of the BNP. Thus we see the steroid-enhanced Martin Reynolds rubbing chubby shoulders with the idiotic Dave Hannam, while the emphatically lunatic Bob Bailey sits alongside the detestable Mark Collett. And who do we not see at January's meeting? Who is missing from this gathering of the BNP's glitterati, who we would usually expect to spot? Deputy Chairman and National Press Officer Simon Darby, for one. The reptilian Arthur Kemp, for another. And Richard Edmonds.

Edmonds' position of the AC was one of the consolation prizes offered as a sop to the rebellion of last year - clearly intended to pacify those on the harder right of the party who felt that Griffin was leading the party directly into the no-go area of, as it has been labelled, 'Tory nationalism'. For Edmonds is no soft nationalist - he is a fully-fledged neo-nazi, as Denise pointed out in an excellent article pondering Edmonds' placement on the AC back in October.

'A former mathematics teacher, Edmonds has a record that - anywhere beyond the shores of the fawning racist Right - is eminently unenviable. In 1987 Edmonds sustained a conviction for causing damage to a statue erected in honour of Nelson Mandela, and more seriously in 1994 he was convicted for his part in a 1993 racial attack in which a black victim was hit in the face with a glass. Sentenced to six months in gaol, Edmonds was released immediately, having already spent three months on remand.

The BNP's former National Organiser was also a long-time purveyor of Nazi and Holocaust-denial literature, notably Holocaust News, which found a wide circulation among the racist Right in the late 1980s. Edmonds told the BBC Panorama programme that Holocaust News was a "wonderful statement of the truth".

Not long after that, Edmonds told the journalist Duncan Campbell that the BNP was "100% racist". Note that he did not pettifog with the word "racialist" and the often-made inference that a "racialist" merely recognises and respects racial differences, upon which supposed differences the credo of "separate development" (apartheid) is allegedly built. He went directly for the word "racist", with its naked (and only) meaning of one who harbours an unreasoning emotional hatred against those of other races.

Nothing Edmonds has said or done in the intervening years could lead any unbiased observer to believe that the man is not now what he always was - an unrepentant anti-Semite, a racist, a Holocaust denier, and very much a standard-bearer for John Tyndall's brand of National Socialism.'

Missing from the meeting - and with no apologies for absence. Does that mean his job is done and he is no longer on the AC? If you know, let us know.

An anonymous correspondent has been in touch and has mentioned a number of points from the meeting which are worthy of note (and a big thank you to whoever you are). I've highlighted some of these below:

• Student membership accounts for only 0.01% of total membership. So much for the BNP's drive to engage young people.
• A 'properly constructed budget has been drawn up for 2009'. This is something of a surprise as the party has been going for twenty-seven years, ten of those under the authoritarian leadership of Nick Griffin. One would have expected a budget to have been an essential component of running a political party - even one like the BNP - but apparently it hasn't been until now.
• The party is investigating data protection principles – a bit late I would say. Mark Collett is now responsible for Data Collection (including date of birth and telephone number, which might be useful for him).
• All local BNP blogs must change their names and operate instead as a local community website. Use of the BNP logo must be discontinued. They report that it is impossible to control and oversee local websites centrally for legality of content and this measure protects the Party from any potentially costly legal challenges though it seems a tacit admission that the party is unable to control the lunatics in its midst.
• Members and officers whose personal e-mail addresses include ‘bnp’ should remove this reference for security reasons. Any officers who have an @aol address must switch to another service provider since AOL have blocked customers from receiving e-mails from @bnp.org. uk senders. For the first time ever, AOL gets my vote as an ISP with some moral courage.

But the two big items that are just casually mentioned in the AC report are the admission that 700,000 Euro warm up leaflets have been printed without an official imprint, prompting the moronic Collett to offer his resignation (sadly rejected), and the handing over of the tatty Excalibur 'merchandising' arm of the BNP to the ubiquitous Arthur Kemp.

Collett's cock-up will cost the party a fair amount of cash and goodwill as the party is offering branches (or units as it so kindly refers to them) free stickers to be adhered to the offending leaflets and a third of the money they paid back by way of compensation. Had an independent printer made the same mistake, he would have been expected to cover the cost of his error out of his own pocket. It'll be interesting to see whether Collett has to cough up or whether the party (and thus its members) take the financial hit. Personally, I'd've sacked the useless bastard for this, his umpteenth mistake. In any case, the party now has a 'National Proofreader and Marketing Consultant' who, along with the Chairman and National Elections Officer, will peruse all publications to ensure that Collett actually does what he's meant to do.

With regard to Kemp and Excalibur, the AC report has this to say;

'The Excalibur merchandising operation will now be run privately by Arthur Kemp under an annually renewable license from the Party. This is a saving to the Party in terms of storage costs and postage. Arthur will continue to work on the website, write the Party’s Education and Training manuals and will be overseeing Radio RWB.'

As our correspondent puts it, 'So much for all the lies in November about moving to bigger premises etc – is this the start of the end for Excalibur and Mr. Kemp?' Not too sure about the latter point but it certainly seems like the Excalibur operation is considerably smaller than party members and the outside world have been led to believe.

A number of questions immediately arise (though I'm sure our readers can think of a few more).

• Were the members ever consulted about this disposal of their assets? After all, they paid for Excalibur and have subsidised its existence up to now.
• Has Kemp paid anything for this 'licence' to run Excalibur as his private company? If so, how much?
• Why has Kemp been effectively given Excalibur anyway? Why not put it out to closed tender - restricted to party members?
• If it is now run by him as a private concern, one assumes Kemp will keep any profits that might be made - if so, how much will that cost the party/members per annum in lost revenue?
• If it is (as we suspect) loss-making, who will pick up the tab?

There's a whole host of questions that need to be answered regarding this highly dubious transaction - though the membership of the BNP will not be encouraged to ask them. They already paid for one company - Great White Records - which ended up being privately owned by the arch-twat Dave Hannam, and they pay Mark Collett for running a design company with a single client (the BNP) as a highly profitable and guaranteed business, and now it looks like they are to subsidise Kemp's own business (albeit on a annually renewable licence). None of this might actually be corrupt but it certainly stinks.

It really is time that the BNP membership woke up and realised that it's been taken for a very long and very expensive ride.

Sticky: Barnbrook to speak at the Royal

This is a sticky post. Newer posts appear below this one.

News again reaches us that The Royal Public House in Heckmondwike intends to hold a BNP meeting.

This follows the aborted meeting that the BNP intended to hold there back in November last year where the intended guest of honour was Richard Edmonds the former deputy leader of the party under the John Tyndall regime.

The Edmonds meeting was cancelled due to a massive response by anti fascists who telephoned The Royal and registered their disgust at the BNP being allowed to meet on their premises. The cancellation of the meeting led to the sacking of the then North Kirklees organiser Ian Roper. However, it seems that the BNP and The Royal have decided to give it another go.

David Exley the new North Kirklees organiser has arranged a meeting to take place in The Royal on Thursday 5th February and the guest of honour this time is to be Richard Barnbrook, Barking councillor and the BNP’s only representative on the GLA.

The meeting which is due to start at 8pm is to be held at The Royal Hotel public house which is located on High Street Heckmondwike WF16 0AL

Once again as The Royal is a Free House we are asking people to ring the pub itself and POLITELY lodge their complaint with the management.

The Royal Hotel's telephone number is 01924 403265

Keeping his enemies close

Sometime circa 400BC a famed Chinese general, Sun-tzu by name, gave the world an astute piece of advice that has ever since been a guiding principle of tyrants and dictators, kings, ambitious politicians, corporate executives, crime syndicates, and men (and women!) on the make generally: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

We wonder whether Sun-tzu's eternal words might have crossed the mind of one Richard Edmonds, as he accepted Nick Griffin's invitation to join the BNP's Advisory Council, an event only slightly less believable than that of Peter Mandelson's return to government at the behest of his most implacable enemy, the Prime Minister.

Glibly disposing of a long history of bitter personal hatred between the two men, Griffin announced Edmonds's appointment on the BNP's website, citing Edmonds as "one of the real old-hands of British nationalism whose counsel has been missed for too long", and adding: "...old differences between genuine nationalists need to be buried".

That these "differences" are not so old, and have a vampire-like tendency to find their way out of any crypt into which they have been interred, is silently acknowledged by Griffin, who refrained from heaping other than this most restrained of praise on Edmonds's thinning head.

Richard Edmonds is, of course, one of the BNP's few remaining founding members, and was for years deputy to John Tyndall, a man for whom he displayed intense personal loyalty. Edmonds's loyalty to Tyndall and the behind-closed-doors strain of Nazism Tyndall represented, stretches way back into the 1970s National Front, and since Tyndall's death the task of personifying and representing the small but still vibrant neo-Nazi - or Tyndallite - faction within the BNP has fallen upon Edmonds's wiry shoulders.

A former mathematics teacher, Edmonds has a record that - anywhere beyond the shores of the fawning racist Right - is eminently unenviable. In 1987 Edmonds sustained a conviction for causing damage to a statue erected in honour of Nelson Mandela, and more seriously in 1994 he was convicted for his part in a 1993 racial attack in which a black victim was hit in the face with a glass. Sentenced to six months in gaol, Edmonds was released immediately, having already spent three months on remand.

The BNP's former National Organiser was also a long-time purveyor of Nazi and Holocaust-denial literature, notably Holocaust News, which found a wide circulation among the racist Right in the late 1980s. Edmonds told the BBC Panorama programme that Holocaust News was a "wonderful statement of the truth".

Not long after that, Edmonds told the journalist Duncan Campbell that the BNP was "100% racist". Note that he did not pettifog with the word "racialist" and the often-made inference that a "racialist" merely recognises and respects racial differences, upon which supposed differences the credo of "separate development" (apartheid) is allegedly built. He went directly for the word "racist", with its naked (and only) meaning of one who harbours an unreasoning emotional hatred against those of other races.

Nothing Edmonds has said or done in the intervening years could lead any unbiased observer to believe that the man is not now what he always was - an unrepentant anti-Semite, a racist, a Holocaust denier, and very much a standard-bearer for John Tyndall's brand of National Socialism.

Nick Griffin has been all of these things, or at the very least worked hard to give an impression that he was, most notably during the early stages of his long campaign to usurp John Tyndall, when it was necessary for Griffin to ingratiate himself with the BNP's founder.

Unlike Nick Griffin, Tyndall never heeded the advice of Sun-tzu. Perhaps for feeling safe within his own authoritarian constitution, he appears genuinely to have believed Griffin to be a rare "talent" in a movement noticeably short of the commodity, and, as he later admitted, was prepared to ignore the warnings of his more perceptive wife to bring the National Front's undertaker on board the BNP. But the undertaker, even if he had never heard of Sun-tzu, did know the value of keeping his enemies closer than he kept his friends, and the truth of Griffin's duplicity was a long time dawning on the deluded Tyndall.

Naturally, when Griffin made his long-planned bid to oust John Tyndall, the Hess-like figure of Richard Edmonds was also firmly in his sights, and Edmonds duly received his allotted portion of opprobrium and hatred. When the scurrilous campaigns of both sides were over and Griffin stood as Leader regnant of the BNP, Edmonds's name appeared on the same ticket as the names of John Tyndall and John Morse as prime candidates for expulsion.

If you can no longer keep your enemies close, and if they suspect that one day you will (while extending a friendly hand and wearing a disarming smile) plunge a stiletto between their shoulder-blades, then you must destroy them openly, and by any means possible.

Griffin's first, well-documented, attempt to do this descended into an expensive farce, as his second (negated by Tyndall's death) was almost certainly fated to do.

Tyndall's timely demise, and the subsequent purging and resignations of miscellaneous Tyndallites should have afforded some relief for the paranoic Griffin, then riding high on the self-generated myth that Success and Griffin were transposable terms, but enough Tyndallites remained as to be a minor cause for concern - one of them being Richard Edmonds.

It is a fact that the Tyndallites remaining within the BNP have demonstrated a greater intelligence than those who found themselves without and who were obliged to coalesce around various Nutzi grouplets - one suspects that even their adored spiritual leader would regard them as being of the lowest grade of human material (to use Tyndall's turn of phrase). Those remaining within the BNP sat tight and endured following the shock of their leader's death, playing what, with hindsight, appears to have been a canny waiting game.

Hardliner Christian Jackson's 2007 leadership challenge has been well enough documented on this website not to require further elaboration, but there were several things worthy of notice at the time to which our attention is again drawn.

The timing of the announcement of Jackson's candidature, coming as the BNP's 2007 local election campaign got underway, seemed designed to cause inner turmoil at the worst possible moment, and handed to Griffin a large stick with which to beat those behind Jackson's challenge - something Jackson's backers cannot possibly have failed to have considered if they were at all serious about driving the challenge forward.

There was also the muted response to the allegation that the barely-known Jackson constituted little more than a stalking-horse candidate, smoking out the real strength of Nick Griffin's support and laying the ground for a subsequent, better known candidate to hole Griffin below the waterline should Griffin's support come in at 80% or less.

We should also note the huffing and puffing concerning, and ultimate spineless surrender to, the anti-democratic terms imposed by Nick Griffin on the conduct of the election. Hand in hand with that went Griffin's demand that the pro-Jackson Britain Forward internet blog be shut down. It was Richard Edmonds, not exactly coy in his support for Jackson, who ordered the plugs to be pulled.

Why re-visit all this?

Well, what is striking is that the Tyndallites and their allies knew that they could very well do irreparable harm to the BNP's election prospects if the national press were to take up the story, portraying the BNP as a party in turmoil, with its leader under attack. Though they might deny it, they made strenuous - but fruitless - efforts to do exactly that.

What is also striking is that never in their wildest dreams did the Tyndallites expect Jackson to win, and knew very well that Griffin's hamstringing of their campaign was bound to scupper even a modestly encouraging vote in their favour.

And yet they persisted.

It follows that if the Tyndallites did not expect Jackson to win, then they must have expected - or hoped for - something else. The generally accepted premise is that Jackson was indeed a stalking-horse, but the events of this spring, when Jackson announced and withdrew from a second challenge, seem to negate this.

The only other likely scenario is that the Tyndallites hoped to cause a split in the party from which they could benefit - just as the veteran arch-plotter Nick Griffin surmised in his deranged "vermin" "liars" and "thieves" rant.

Prominent among the "vermin" "liars" and "thieves", of course, was Richard Edmonds, and there must be more than a suspicion that he would rather have split the BNP than see Nick Griffin remain at the helm. Chris Jackson's leadership challenge doesn't appear so badly managed at all when viewed in that light, even if it did appear to fail to attain any of its objectives.

But did it fail? If there was a fall-back objective of feeding Griffin's paranoia and chaining him with a bad case of the jitters, then it succeeded magnificently, as events ever since bear witness.

Though Edmonds and other Tyndallites appeared to offer some remote and desultory support for the Decembrist rebels (they attended a Voice of Change meeting in January), they could never have believed that these were the people to overthrow Griffin. To a man of Edmonds's hardline convictions, the Decembrists were little more than Tories, not even on a par with the National Front "populists" he opposed more than thirty years before. The Decembrists did, however, demonstrate a willingness to wash Nick Griffin's dirty linen in public, which Tyndallites always welcome, and there was a vanishingly small chance that they might begin the process that would unseat Griffin - to be unseated in their turn by the Tyndallites, who would never have countenanced leaving the BNP in the hands of mere "civic nationalists".

It is a matter for speculation whether in the febrile post-Decembrist period Griffin, still jittery and finding himself with more internal enemies than he could cope with, somehow made tentative contact with the keeper of John Tyndall's flame, and that - as part of some as yet unrevealed initial deal - Edmonds agreed to call off Jackson's unserious second challenge. The reverse might equally be possible.

Whatever really happened in the swell of internal debate surrounding the constitutional position of BNP leadership challenges, it is difficult not to believe that somewhere along the line a deal was cut, and that much of the internal "debate" was mere window-dressing for the benefit of the BNP infantry. This appears also to be the suspicion of some of the more astute BNP members.

At all events, we do not believe for an instant the tale that Richard Edmonds simply turned up at the BNP's EGM and made such an impression on Nick Griffin that the BNP leader suddenly felt impelled to bring him in from the cold and to offer him a seat on the party's Advisory Council.

Things simply don't happen that way.

The visceral years-long hatred Griffin and Edmonds nurture for one another is not of the kind that melts into unalloyed love overnight - or even over years. There is too much history, too much distrust for that to be in any way a realistic prospect. Griffin knows full well that Edmonds would depose him this instant if he could do it, and Edmonds knows full well that Griffin's dearest wish is that Edmonds should follow his political master into the grave at the first convenient opportunity.

We heavily suspect that sometime before the EGM these two irreconcilables made some compact, and that the instigator was Griffin. For whatever reason, the idea suited both men, but neither of them will have engaged with it for the benefit of the other.

The stage-managed fudge agreed to at the EGM might be a morsel of the carrot offered to Edmonds, and a seat on the Advisory Council another, but before speculating on the purpose of Griffin's apparent about-face regarding his arch-enemy, we might consider Edmonds's reasons for his apparent turnaround.

And here, we must confess, we are at a loss. His AC seat will certainly give him a higher profile and the opportunity to put forward his ideas; it might be that Edmonds believes he can quietly beaver away undermining Griffin at a higher level, and that when the next bout of factionalism strikes - as it surely will - then his respectability and influence as a member of the Advisory Council will stand him in good stead.

Of course, Edmonds may simply have turned-coat and accepted his metaphorical thirty pieces of silver in return for keeping the hardliners quiet.

Whatever Edmonds's motives, there can be very little doubt that when Nick Griffin decides that differences need to be buried it is because the decision serves the interests of Nick Griffin, and no other. If Nick Griffin wanted to place Richard Edmonds on the Advisory Council it was most emphatically not because he had the greater good of Edmonds and his supporters in mind.

The fact is that Griffin - as always - holds all the aces. Griffin could not as easily rid himself of Edmonds as he did Jackson-backer Mike Easter. Edmonds has a following, a name, worldwide connections, and can demonstrate his deep roots in the fascist scene, added to which he is a founder member of the BNP - Tyndallism in human form. All this makes him extremely difficult to tackle, the more so when, as an "ordinary" member, he openly exercises his right to back a legitimate leadership challenge. There is also the high probability that Edmonds would not take the verdict of any Griffinite kangaroo court lying down, and would have little difficulty in obtaining the funding to mount a legal challenge in the event of his expulsion.

However, as a member of the Advisory Council, certain restraints apply to Edmonds and how he henceforth conducts himself. Should he say or do anything that may even loosely be interpreted as inimical to the interests of the BNP (for which we may normally substitute the name of Nicholas Griffin) then he will be isolated and attacked with savage implacability for misusing his position, for disloyalty to the man who magnanimously restored him to favour, or any other of the inexhaustible supply of all-purpose excuses the Griffinites magic into existence as weapons to deploy against their opponents.

In accepting his AC seat, then, Edmonds has voluntarily accepted curbs on his freedom of action. In doing as much he may not have quite put his head in the noose, but he has certainly brought himself nearer to the scaffold, even if he isn't aware of it - "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

We believe, though, that the real reason for the Griffin-inspired rapprochement with his mortal enemy is as simple as it is self-serving: it is all about Griffin's prospects of jetting off to Strasbourg and the riches of an MEP on the back of a low turnout in the Euro-elections.

To that end it would be rather nice for Griffin if those hardliners in the North-west (where he has carpet-bagged his favoured constituency) would stop saying nasty things about him and scuttle their plans to stand "independent" nationalist candidates for the express purpose of preventing Griffin's election. It would also be rather nice if there were no distracting leadership challenges that might draw the unwelcome attention of the press and stretch the loyalties of the members. Since, with the demise of the Decembrists, only the Tyndallites remain capable of mounting a challenge, it follows that if Griffin can neutralise their living god-head - perhaps even bring him on-side - then he will have gone a long way to ensuring internal peace in the long run-up to the elections.

Should he accomplish this much, then Griffin will have achieved for the BNP one of the longest periods of internal harmony the party has known since he plotted his way into the leadership.

We shall see, but of one thing we can be certain: a man of Nick Griffin's stripe does not keep his enemies close through fair-minded altruism. He does it because his instinct for survival impels him to do it. And that is why, one fine day, Richard Edmonds will surely feel the glistening steel of the stiletto sliding quietly, and painfully, between his shoulder-blades.

Anarchists arrested after clash with BNP activists in East End

Six anarchists were arrested in a street fight after they discovered BNP activists had duped a vicar into letting them use his church hall for a rally by saying it was a "book club" meeting.

The six were part of a group of about 30 supporters of the Antifa anti-fascist group who had been lying in wait for the British National Party in Bethnal Green on Sunday. The anarchists had found out that some 40 BNP members, including former Millwall councillor Derek Beackon, were staging a strategy rally in the church hall of St John on Bethnal Green.

They tipped off the rector, the Rev Alan Green, who had been told by the person reserving the hall it was for a "book club" discussion. When Mr Green called the group and asked them to leave, the BNP refused. The vicar then called the police.

As six officers escorted the BNP out of the hall, the anarchists pounced sparking a running battle with cops who called in back-up units and used CS spray to fight back.

An Antifa spokesman told the Advertiser: "We had about 40 of our people in the area, but we didn't want to cause problems for the church, so we waited outside for the fascists to come out. We told them they weren't welcome in east London and not to show their faces again."

The Advertiser understands the BNP's meeting was called to drum up support for a new electoral offensive, and possibly a re-formed branch in Tower Hamlets, before next May's European polls.

The Antifa spokesman said: "Getting elected in the London elections has given them confidence and they're slowly marching back into old territory in the city."

Vicar Mr Green, chair of the Tower Hamlets Inter-Faith Forum and one of the most respected religious leaders in the East End, said he was "disturbed" by the incident. He said: "We were told it was a book club, but it was quite clear after the meeting started that this was nothing of the sort. I could hear them from my office near the hall, it was a political rally. When it was quite clear they weren't going to leave, I called the police. I only found out later there had then been fighting."

He also pledged to vet groups wanting to use the hall, which is let out free of charge, more carefully. He added: "They booked under false pretences. We have quite an open policy, but in future I think someone will have to be present when new groups arrive. Extremists are not welcome here."

BNP spokesman Simon Darby said speakers at Sunday's rally included former national organiser Richard Edmonds, Barking councillor Bob Bailey and author Jonathan Bowden. Mr Darby said: "It's a sad reflection of the times that we should have to book legitimate meetings under a false name and then be intimidated and violently attacked by left wing, politically motivated stooges."

The six anti-fascists arrested, aged between 19 and 29 and including one woman, were detained overnight, police said. Five were released on police bail and no further action will be taken against the 19-year-old.

East London Advertiser

The apologist for terror and the BBC

The chances are you haven’t heard of Nicholas Kollerstrom. At first glance this North London resident, who holds a PhD in astronomy, appears quaintly eccentric with his keen interest in the “science” of alchemy. Harmless enough you might think. But behind the veneer Nicholas Kollerstrom is in fact an antisemite, Holocaust denier and apologist for terror.

Having written a number of books on astronomy quite how Kollerstrom came to dip his toes in the foetid waters of Holocaust denial is unclear. But it was not long before Kollerstrom was fully immersed in it. It was to be some baptism.

On 22 February 2007 Kollerstrom joined the forum of an American Holocaust denial website called ironically the Campaign for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH). His user name was “astro3”. CODOH is run by Bradley R. Smith, a veteran Californian antisemite who founded the organisation in 1987 with the assistance of Mark Weber of the Institute of Historical Review (IHR). Smith too was closely associated with the IHR, which is the world’s leading forum for Holocaust denial, and Weber, a former member of the neo-nazi National Alliance, was a co-director of CODOH. Smith used to publish a newsletter called Prima Facie, which denied that Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust and which was gleefully advertised in Spearhead, then the house organ of the British National Party.

In an essay entitled “The Auschwitz ‘Gas Chamber’ Illusion” Kollerstrom argued that although there were gas chambers at Auschwitz these “were operated for purposes of hygiene and disinfection, in order to save lives and not take them”. The real victims, he argued, were the Germans beca-use: “As surprising as it may sound, the only intentional mass extermination program in the concentration camps of WW2 was targeted at Germans. From April, 1945 five million Germans were rounded up after surrendering, and deliberately starved until well over one million had died.”

By comparison the Jews had a rather nice time. In an article entitled “School Trips to Auschwitz” posted on CODOH in March 2008 Kollerstrom put forward his view that Auschwitz was not in fact a horrific death camp, but a Nazi-run Butlins-style holiday camp, where inmates could sunbathe by “the elegant swimming pool” while watching water-polo matches, and paint pictures and read books serenaded by no fewer than six orchestras. They could also go to the cinema, theatre or, if the urge took them, the brothel, or simply write postcards to loved ones, which the postman would collect “twice weekly”.

Kollerstrom believes his arguments are original and groundbreaking. However, as even a cursory perusal of his writings reveals, his “research” is nothing of the sort. It represents the undigested and regurgitated pseudo-science of comprehensively discredited sources such as Fred Leuchter. Kollerstrom denies he is a Holocaust denier. He might even believe it. He recently wrote to the Jewish Chronicle protesting his innocence and denying he was a Nazi sympathiser.

Whether or not he is a Nazi sympathiser is immaterial. He uses far-right antisemitic sources to argue far-right antisemitic causes. Kollerstrom is a Holocaust denier.

Holocaust denial is not Kollerstrom’s only interest. He is also particularly active in what is broadly known as the 9/11 “truth” movement, which peddles some of the craziest conspiracy theories around.

Kollerstrom is not, as he is wont to style himself, a courageous lone researcher seeking to penetrate beyond the “official” narrative of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005. He is a fantasist who seeks to defend the indefensible. Of the 7/7 bombers he wrote: “Very simply, there is no evidence that puts the four alleged bombers in London on that morning, let alone setting off explosives, that would stand up in a court of law for two minutes. Period, end of story.”

Kollerstrom completely ignores the incontrovertible evidence of their guilt, harassing and distressing the victims’ families with his spurious claims that it was a “false flag” operation perpetrated by “CIA-Mossad-MI6” to buttress the case for the “war on terror”. One could dismiss him as a deluded idiot but taken together with his Holocaust denial it is hard to see him as anything other than an apologist for terror.

His activities were highlighted on 12 April when he attended the launch of the peace activist Milan Rai’s book about the London bombings and attempted to hijack it, giving a speech from the floor on the supposed “innocence” of the terrorists. Survivors of the 7/7 attacks such as Rachel North were appalled. She was not alone. On 14 April Kollerstrom was unmasked as a Holocaust denier by the Blairwatch website.

Three days later Tony Gosling, who moderates the 911forum website to which Kollerstrom contributed, banned discussion of the Holocaust in a thread entitled “Mossad trick – Link 9/11 Truth to Holocaust Denial”. Even when confronted with irrefut-able proof that Kollerstrom was an antisemite, the “truth” movement interpreted it as evidence of an Israeli plot to discredit their beliefs by linking them to antisemitism.

Kollerstrom aside, there is ample evidence that antisemitism and Holocaust denial remain rife within the so-called “truth” movement, where the denizens of such forums can be found muttering darkly about 9/11 being a “Zionist crime”, which dovetails neatly with Islamist claims that it was an “inside job”.

Perhaps the most famous son of the “truth” movement is the former MI5 agent turned “whistle blower” David Shayler who, if the Daily Mail is to be believed, now proclaims himself to be the Son of God. Further evidence that Shayler is experiencing some psychological difficulty came in a recent speech in which he stated, “we know from documents like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that the New World Order were going to use control of the money supply to create depressions and recessions”. The Protocols is a notorious forgery from tsarist times, often quoted by nazis.

Kollerstrom had held an honorary research fellowship in University College London (UCL) Science and Technology Studies. However, when his activities became known UCL terminated the fellowship with “immediate effect” on 22 April.

Running out of forums in which to peddle his odious views, Kollerstrom turned to the Iranian satellite television station Press TV, founded in July 2007 “to break the global media stranglehold of Western outlets” and to compete with other satellite channels such as the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. It is funded up to the hilt by the Iranian regime to the tune of 27 million dollars.

In its mission statement Press TV claims to offer “unbiased” reporting and “in-depth and complete analyses of current affairs, portraying viewpoints, which are often ignored by current mainstream media outlets”. Quite what this meant was revealed on 18 May 2008 when Press TV reproduced on its website Kollerstrom’s article “The Walls of Auschwitz”, which claimed the gas-sing of the Jews was “scientifically impossible”.

Press TV became acquainted with Kollerstrom through the agency of David Irving’s cheerleader-in-chief, Lady Michele Renouf. On 7 May, shortly after his dismissal from UCL, Kollerstrom had approached her for “advice” on whether he would be able to “travel safely” to Germany to present his paper “the Walls of Auschwitz” to an academic conference in Berlin on the Holocaust. Never mind that he had not been invited nor was welcome at what was after all a genuine historical conference rather than an antisemitic free-for-all. Renouf advised him against going as he would no doubt be imprisoned, though this did not deter her from seeking a press pass for the event herself, which was refused.

Renouf recommended to Press TV that they interview Kollerstrom about his “scientific article”. Renouf has some clout with the Iranian media, boasting on her website of her “elected role” to take Tehran’s antisemitic road show to Europe following her participation in the Tehran-sponsored Holocaust denial conference. There, to her evident delight, she met President Ahmadinejad, the toast of antisemites the world over following his calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Press TV duly broadcast an interview with the “distinguished academic” on 14 May. Kollerstrom evidently hoped that a scientific journal could be persuaded to sponsor his own on-site chemical analysis of the walls of Auschwitz “in the tradition of the Leuchter Report and the Rudolf Report”.

His self-induced fall from grace did not deter the BBC from inviting Kollerstrom to be the subject of one programme in the new series of The Conspiracy Files to be broadcast in autumn. There was outrage when it was revealed that the BBC had paid his expenses though it emphatically denied paying him a fee. The Evening Standard revealed how in a particularly ghoulish manner Kollerstrom took to pestering and harassing the families of those who had lost loved ones in the 7/7 bombings. He put it to the father of one victim of the Tavistock Square bus bombing that her body had been placed there by the British, American and Israeli security services. He appears unmoved by the distress he caused.

According to the Evening Standard the BBC also paid for him to travel to Leeds to try to meet the family of the 7/7 ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan and the relatives of the other bombers. They all refused to meet him. The victims’ families have uniformly branded the BBC’s disgraceful indulgence of Kollerstrom’s warped theories an utter outrage. John Taylor, whose daughter died at Aldgate, observed “he is helping the terrorists more than anything and I am not happy with the BBC giving him a platform”.

There are plenty of others equally astonished that the BBC should use pubic money to further the activities and agenda of a hardcore Holocaust denier and apologist for terrorism.

Britain’s Holocaust deniers

• Michele Renouf Cheerleader-in-chief to the writer David Irving, Lady Michele Renouf, who gained her title from a brief marriage to the Australian financier Sir Frank Renouf, has earned a reputation as one of the most active antisemites in Britain and indeed Europe. Renouf, who runs Telling Films, a company that distributes DVDs denying the Holocaust, was banned from addressing the Croydon BNP branch by Nick Griffin, the party chairman, for fear her presence might taint the BNP. Ever one for the double standard, Griffin was spotted sharing a platform with her in the US together with David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, in 2005. She attended the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran in 2006 and has maintained her links to Iranian antisemites ever since.
• Richard Edmonds who was the BNP’s national activities organiser in the 1990s, has recently found a new acceptability within the BNP for the Jew-baiting and Holocaust denial he has made his speciality for three decades both here and abroad. This should come as no surprise in a party that has adopted Arthur Kemp’s classic antisemitic work March of the Titans as its main ideological primer. After the BNP came into existence, Edmonds picked up from where Martin Webster, the national organiser of the National Front during its 1970s heyday, left off by producing a new edition of the NF’s Holocaust News. Hundreds of thousands of copies of this hate sheet were distributed internationally. A devotee of David Irving Edmonds demonstrated against Irving’s imprisonment in Austria outside the Austrian Embassy in 2005.
• Yakob Zaki Born James Dickie, Yakob Zaki is a Muslim convert who works as an associate director of the pro-Iranian Muslim Institute, in which capacity he has contributed Holocaust denial articles to its publication Crescent International as well as the Tehran-based publication Kayhan. Addressing a rally of the Islamist group al-Muhajiroun in Wembley in April 1998 Zaki declared: “nobody was gassed to death in the concentration camps … David Irving has the right idea, destroy the Holocaust myth and you have destroyed Israel.”
• David Irving Once upon a time David Irving had a promising historical career ahead of him and his books were favourably reviewed by mainstream broadsheet papers. But his reputation has gone downhill since he was branded a liar in a libel action over his 1968 book The Destruction of Convoy PQ17. He has accumulated bans from entering several countries and has convictions in Europe. He famously lost a libel action against the American academic Deborah Lipstadt, when Mr Justice Gray described him an “active Holocaust denier”, an antisemite and racist who “associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism” and who “for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence”. He was imprisoned in Austria in 2005 for “glorifying and identifying with the German Nazi Party”. Nevertheless Irving maintains his high standing among antisemites the world over and enjoys substantial financial backing from them.
• James Thring who is the convener of Planning for Peace and the author of Peace with Iran, was a close confidant of the veteran antisemite Lady Jane Birdwood. In May 2002 he spoke at a conference in Baghdad alongside the Russian fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the French far-right activist Serge Thion and the Respect MP George Galloway. He has declared that Israel is “an illegal, criminal, psychopathic, belligerent, apartheid entity bent on desecrating the Holy Land and destroying anyone or even any country that tries to seek justice for the Palestinians”. After David Irving’s imprisonment in 2005 Thring was among those who demonstrated outside the Austrian Embassy for his release.

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