Bond of hate: The BNP and the British Freedom Fighters

What’s on under the suit? Two faces of Shaun Grimsley.

(Skrewdriver was a leading Nazi bonehead band.)

The BNP has shunned the old image of the “boots and braces” skinhead, instead favouring cheap suits, old school shoes and tacky gold jewellery. Simon Cressy proves that the neo-nazi bootboys in the BNP haven’t gone away.

When John Tyndall formed the British National Party in 1982 it inherited a large number of skinhead followers from both the National Front and the British Movement. Tyndall was quite happy with this as he saw the skinheads as the natural foot soldiers of his racist ideology.

After Nick Griffin took over the party leadership in 1999 the attitude towards skinheads cooled. Griffin realised that skinheads did not equate to votes (or membership fees) and publicly shunned them.

However the reality is somewhat different. Last month Searchlight revealed that Eliots Bistro, the Nuneaton pub run by the BNP’s new West Midlands organiser, Alwyn Deacon, hosted a nazi shindig.

Embarrassingly for the BNP, which holds meetings in the pub, and for Deacon, photographs were taken of the drunken event which show skinhead members of the nazi British Freedom Fighters (BFF) along with members of the violent Racial Volunteer Force giving Nazi salutes outside the premises. The incident caused some anger among BNP organisers in the West Midlands and at least one, Chris Turner of Coventry, resigned his position because of it.

But the links between the BFF and the BNP do not stop there. Also pictured with the BFF at Eliots Bistro is Shaun Grimsley, who claims to be the West Midlands commander of the BFF.

Grimsley is the BNP candidate for a Cannock Chase District Council by-election in Heath Hayes East and Wimblebury ward on 15 October 2009. He also admits to being a member of the NF and associated with Blood and Honour, the nazi skinhead organisation.

He says he attended the English Defence League protest in Birmingham on 8 August, which ended in violence, and intends to be present if the EDL marches in Manchester as planned in October.

Grimsley is an unabashed National Socialist. One statement on his Facebook site reads “Hail The British Freedom Fighters, I am a Nazi HAHAHAHAHAHA 88 red scum”. The number 88 is code for HH – Heil Hitler”. Commenting about Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, Grimsley wrote: “The man I most admire ever”.

When one of his friends made a lengthy posting about the London nail bomber David Copeland, who killed three innocent people including a pregnant woman and injured 129 others, Grimsley left the chilling note “Hero 88”.

Another BFF nazi from the photographs taken outside Eliots Bistro was part of a contingent of Liverpool BNP activists who handed out leaflets outside the TUC Congress in Liverpool last month.

He is believed to be close to Liam Pinkham from Wirral, yet another BFF activist who visited Deacon’s pub. Pinkham was arrested with three others at the BNP’s European election victory rally in Blackpool in June and was charged with racially aggravated intentional harassment.

Pinkham also pleaded guilty to intentionally causing harassment to bookshop staff in July after he took part in a BNP rally in Liverpool city centre. Staff said he burst into the News From Nowhere bookshop and threatened to burn it down.

Griffin claims he does not want nazis in the BNP. We await news of the expulsion of these BFF activists.

Hope Not Hate

Merkel under pressure to ban neo-Nazi party

Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under mounting pressure to ban Germany's main neo-Nazi party following a brutal attack on eight Indian traders who were chased and beaten by a mob screaming racist abuse.

A leader of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) was charged with inciting racial hatred yesterday after he proposed Adolf Hitler's former deputy, Rudolf Hess, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Hours after Udo Voigt made the remarks in a speech in Jena marking the 20th anniversary of Hess's death last Saturday night, the Indian men were chased through the nearby town of Mügeln.

Kurt Beck, the leader of Ms Merkel's Social Democrat coalition partners, said that in light of the attacks he was preparing a new legal initiative aimed at outlawing the NPD. But Ms Merkel said she remained sceptical about such a move.

"I found the previous experience we had with this highly disagreeable," she said. "I definitely don't want a repeat of last time." An effort to ban the NPD failed in 2003 when judges at the country's highest court rejected the government's case after it emerged that some of the testimony was from government informants within the party.

The calls for a ban on Germany's largest neo-Nazi party - which has won parliamentary seats in two eastern states in recent regional elections - were the latest response to last weekend's disturbing outbreak of xenophobic violence.

Local people in the small town in the east German state of Saxony were enjoying the final hours of an annual street party on Saturday night when a drunken mob of 50 youths rampaged through a market and started harassing eight Indian stall holders who were selling textiles.

Shouting, "Get out of Germany" and chanting the far right slogan "Long live the national resistance" the gang chased the terrified Indians, who took refuge in a pizzeria and tried to barricade themselves in with the restaurant's tables. However, the mob smashed their way into the building, kicking and punching the Indians and attacking them with bottles. More than 70 heavily armed riot police rescued them. Gurminder Singh, one of the injured men, appeared on German television with a six-inch long head wound.

Amal, one of the main anti-Nazi groups in the region, said there had been 137 neo-Nazi attacks on individuals in Saxony during the first half of 2007, but believes the unofficial figure is much higher.

A recent survey conducted by the Forsa research group showed that every second east German youth between the age of 14 and 25 believed that National Socialism had " good sides".

The NPD won seats in Saxony in the state's last elections, and also captured seats in Ms Merkel's home state of Mecklenburg-Pomerania last year, when violent crimes by far-right extremists reached their highest level since the country's reunification in 1990. Rising far-right violence prompted Ms Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder to launch an attempt to ban the NPD in 2003, but the result was a legal fiasco. A ban was rejected by Germany's Karlsruhe constitutional court after it established that most of the evidence against the far-right party was inadmissible as it had been collected by government intelligence agents who had infiltrated the organisation.

Independent

Jewish leader sounds alarm after racist attack

· Brutal assault on Indians sparks call to curb far-right
· East German xenophobia 'scaring off foreign firms'

A leading member of Germany's Jewish community has accused the government of failing to control rightwing extremism following an attack on a group of Indian men in an eastern town. Stephan Kramer, the general secretary of the Central Council of Jews said that until a nationwide action plan was launched to tackle the problem, attacks on minorities would only get worse.

His remarks followed a brutal attack on eight Indians in the town of Mügeln, near Leipzig, at the weekend. During a town festival the men were chased through the streets by around 50 young Germans, who hurled abuse at them, including the taunt "foreigners out". All of the men were beaten up, one of them seriously. "Yesterday it was coloured people, today it's foreigners, tomorrow it'll be homosexuals and lesbians and maybe Jews," Mr Kramer told the German daily newspaper Taz.

Prior to the Mügeln incident, police had been braced for trouble in certain east German towns as rightwing extremists commemorated the anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Mr Kramer said that parts of former communist eastern Germany were "no-go" areas, which people who looked foreign should be warned against visiting. He accused the government of "delivering the same sentiments" every time there was an attack, but failing to produce results with its anti-extremist strategy. "This isn't hysteria," he said. "This is the bitter truth."

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, condemned the attacks and pledged to put the issue high on the agenda at a strategy meeting of her grand coalition taking place today and tomorrow. "It is not acceptable for people in German cities to be chased through the streets and beaten," she said through her spokesman, Thomas Steg.

There is increasing evidence to suggest that the frequency of far-right attacks is having a detrimental effect on the ability of parts of eastern Germany to attract foreign investment and tourism. "These no-go areas - so-called foreigner-free zones - really exist and non-Aryans know why they don't go there," an expert on rightwing extremism, Anetta Kahane, said. "The fact is that many American or Asian firms that have a mix of employees don't come to east Germany."

The Mügeln incident came almost exactly 15 years after a far-right attack on a home for asylum seekers near Rostock, in which 120 people narrowly escaped death. That attack led to a political outcry and closer monitoring of far-right activities.

Yesterday prosecutors said they were investigating two men from Mügeln, aged 21 and 23, for being behind the recent attack and were looking at charging them for breaching the peace. The town's mayor, Gotthard Deuse, drew criticism after insisting that those who assaulted the Indians were not locals and that the area did not have a far-right problem.

Guardian