BNP officers ‘scared’ Griffin will purge them

A former deputy chairman of the British National Party says that many party officers and staff members are “scared to say what they feel” because of the way Nick Griffin takes “every bit of criticism as a personal attack”.

Scott McLean, a BNP member for 20 years, Scottish organiser from 1990 to 2007 and deputy chairman from 2002 to 2007, condemns Griffin mismanagement and “wrong actions [that] have purged this party … of the best that we had”.

Writing in support of Eddy Butler, who is challenging Griffin for the party leadership, he declares: “Every problem I’ve seen in this party is due to the wrong people being given jobs normally because of who they are, not of what they can do. We’ve seen masses of talent get thrown out or leave the party. Ask yourself how many management people or officers are now gone because of policy disagreements? Very little. They are all gone due to mismanagement.”

Echoing Butler’s accusations over the BNP’s finances, which are born out by Searchlight’s analysis, McLean continues: “Ask yourself why the party finances are a complete shambles? Lots of money going through over the years. Misspent and thrown away on stupid misguided actions.”

McLean’s criticism of Griffin is significant not only because of his party position but also because he was one of a small group of people who organised Griffin’s takeover as party leader in 1999. McLean, who claims dubiously that he built up Scotland as the largest region in the party in the early 1990s, had recognised that John Tyndall, the party’s prime founder and former leader, was holding the party back. “His outlook was more on the past than the future,” says McLean, stopping short of admitting that the past to which Tyndall looked was a pre-1945 German one rather than anything British.

McLean identified Griffin, then not even a BNP member, as “by far the most impressive” of a few potential new leaders for the party. Griffin “took a look at the party and saw it’s [sic] potential. A short time after that he became involved,” writes McLean.

The leadership challenge came in 1999. “Modernisers in the party myself included,” explains McLean, “felt that the party was being held back by not embracing new techniques that had proved successful for our elections guru Eddy Butler. He hadn’t got the proper backing with finance and manpower when he needed it most. Nick was put forward as the candidate for change.”

McLean advised Griffin and his campaign manager Tony Lecomber, who in the 1980s had served a three year prison sentence for explosives offences and later was jailed for another three years for assaulting a Jewish teacher, to “run a clean fight”, which, he says, they did.

However “Mr Tyndall’s camp ran a dirty campaign which I didn’t expect from him. … John Tyndall thought that the BNP was his and he found out the hard way that he was only a part of the machine.”

McLean’s implication is clear: that like the pigs in Animal Farm the former “candidate for change” has now become just like the old dictator he replaced.

Butler has also won the support of Chris Roberts, the BNP’s London regional organiser, who, like McLean, claims that the party’s branches and groups have not prospered because Griffin falls out with far too many people.

He also calls for an immediate stop to non-members of the party having “a bigger and more influential say on its affairs than the members”, a reference to Jim Dowson, the convicted criminal who acts as Griffin’s right-hand man and effectively owns the BNP.

“Furthermore,” continues Roberts, “it is disgraceful to employ non-members on the payroll … it’s our activists who got BNP representatives elected in the first place and they should be put above any outsider and especially outsiders from rival parties”. Although he does not name him, his remarks are directed at Patrick Harrington, a former comrade of Griffin from his National Front “political soldier” days in the 1980s, who is now one of the leaders of the rival, though much smaller, Third Way party.

Harrington is the general secretary of the BNP’s fake trade union, the speciously named Solidarity and was recently taken onto the BNP’s payroll in a human resources role.

Roberts also has some damaging comments on the BNP’s accounts, which have failed to meet the deadline for submission to the Electoral Commissioner “when the National Treasurer has assured us that everything is in order.

“Well I know for a fact that everything is not in order,” writes Roberts. “I have spoken to members of staff who have been paid very late and to activists who have not had their print bills settled for leaflets for the last election. Stop treating the members like idiots. Tell us what the real position is so there can be a proper consensus on what to do!

“The party needs a coherent management structure that all members can understand and follow. Our accounts need to be open to members to examine so they know exactly what amounts are being received and a detailed account of what it’s being spent on. We need to get our talented people running this party efficiently utilising the undoubted skills that exist throughout our ranks. People being employed in specific areas where they are skilled, not employing people in positions of authority because the chairman thinks they are a ‘good egg’.”

Butler has until 10 August to obtain the signatures on nomination forms of 20% of the party’s 4,200 members with at least 24 months’ continuous membership. Whether he succeeds or fails, with such prominent party activists in his camp, the rifts in the BNP are set to deepen.

Sonia Gable at Hope Not Hate

Nazi salutes and burning crosses ... now the BNP sets up Scottish youth camps

It's a nightmare political vision: burning crosses, Nazi salutes and extremist indoctrination. This is the dark heart of the British National Party - an organisation now setting up "youth camps" in Scotland.

The controversial far-right training regime was launched last month in Wiltshire and immediately drew comparisons with the Hitler Youth and Islamic jihad boot camps Now, campaign groups fear a return of the fascist and white-supremacist symbolism seen at previous Scottish events. An outdoor event held in Scotland several years ago saw BNP activists joking about concentration camps and burning a wooden cross in an undisclosed Highland location.

Scott McLean - one of the most senior BNP figures in Scotland - was filmed giving a Nazi salute, and other BNP members were recorded shouting "one-two-three-Auschwitz" before grinning activists gave Hitler salutes to the camera. At one point a man was cheered as he threw petrol on to a burning cross towering over a group of initiates.

At the new brand of camps unveiled last month, children as young as 12 are trained in shooting air rifles and in self-defence, and they learn an alternative version of history as sanctioned by party leader Nick Griffin, who has repeatedly claimed that the Holocaust never happened.

In between shooting lessons, children are instructed in the art of making dangerous weapons from everyday objects. "Dutch Arrows" are manufactured from string and sharpened garden canes, and the BNP website reports that one 13-year-old boy was able to launch an arrow more than 150 metres. Police have confirmed that the darts, if used outside the supervised campsite setting, could constitute offensive weapons.

The BNP told the Sunday Herald that it will roll out camps across Scotland within the next year, and adult activists are using social networking sites such as Bebo to recruit youngsters to the BNP's hardline nationalist cause.

BNP youth leader Mike Howson, a former soldier, said: "We eventually plan to have camps in all the regions. We've achieved our targets for youth recruitment in Scotland. We'll be doing camps there within the next 12 months."

The BNP has applied for government funding to pay for the camps, he added, but has so far been unsuccessful in its bid for state cash. Applications are now being made to charities.

Despite its claims to be a mainstream party, the BNP has faced censure in the past for its alignment with European fascist groups and the Nazi overtones of some of its actions.

Publicity material for the camps is designed to appeal to youths by offering a sense of inclusion and strength. An advert on the BNP's Bebo site promotes the organisation as a "big brother" to its young target audience. It boasts: "Only the YBNP and its big brother the BNP can secure a future for the indigenous children of this land."

Though party leaders say the youth camps are about "moral training" and education, they also aim to lure children with the promise of powerful roles within the adult wing of the party. "The youth wing can only get bigger and better, with older members already being fast-tracked into positions within the party," a BNP statement said.

Campaign groups responded furiously to news of the party's planned expansion among Scottish children. A spokesman for anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: "Their attempts to politically indoctrinate Scottish youth with their messages of prejudice and division are sickening. There is no place in Scotland for these camp sites of hate."

The recent surge in BNP youth activity has been driven by a conference of European nationalists earlier this year, which brought extremist groups together to "preserve our shared white European heritage". Skinhead delegates from hard-right Czech and German youth groups joined their hosts from the Swedish National Democratic Youth movement.

Revelations over the training and political schooling of children will come as a blow to the BNP, which is struggling to assert itself as a legitimate political force in Thursday's European elections.

Party leader Griffin was convicted in 1998 of inciting racial hatred. He has also referred to the Holocaust as the Holohoax'. Griffin has long sought to emulate the mainstream success of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the right-wing leader of France's National Front. Despite his ambitions, the BNP has been thwarted in recent years by a string of high-profile scandals and exposés.

Senior officials have been caught on camera making bigoted remarks against non-Christians, non-whites and homosexuals, and the party has failed to find any success outside of a few English heartlands.

A message left on Griffin's mobile phone asking to discuss this article elicited the one-word text message response: "Priceless!"

Sunday Herald

The BNP feud gets messier as it acknowledges a Searchlight mole in its leadership

BNP leader Nick Griffin is reeling under media expose of the feud which is ripping the party apart. After a week of total silence the press appears to be falling over itself to report on the crisis and Griffin is not coming out of it well. Channel Four More news even asked whether this was the end of the road for the BNP leader.

Meanwhile, inside the BNP, accusations and recriminations continue to fly. The rebel faction have sent out a newsletter to every party member while the leadership has reproduced, on the party website, the contents of emails which they claim prove that the rebels were hacking into emails of party officials before they were expelled.

If ordinary members didn’t know about the crisis engulfing the party before then they do now.

Christmas is already a busy time for the police but it more appears that they are going to be diverted from tackling criminals on the street to dealing with illegality within the BNP. A quick summary of the allegations being thrown around include:

·

The BNP illegally recording a telephone conversation between Sadie Graham and Kenny Smith

The BNP gained access to Sadie Graham’s house by deception

BNP security took personal property belonging to Sadie Graham without her consent

The BNP leadership have been trawling through Sadie Graham’s computer, even opening new emails, in contravention of the Data Protection Act

Steve Blake as been illegally accessing email accounts of BNP party officials, including those of Nick Griffin

Scott McLean has forged a BNP disciplinary letter

Kenny Smith has removed £4,000 from the BNP Lottery account after he was removed from his party position

Kenny Smith and Sadie Graham have broken the Data Protection Act by sending out an unauthorised mailing to all BNP members

While Searchlight cannot comment of the validity of all of these claims but merely factually report what has been written, it is clear that the BNP is in trouble.

If that wasn’t enough the BNP has now posted this new claim on its party website: “For well over a year, the BNP has been aware that there has been a mole from the Communist Searchlight Magazine in the Advisory Council.”

Now, on that, I cannot possibly comment.

Nick Lowles, Stop The BNP

The last three months in the BNP

From our mate, Irish Tony. Want to see more of his YouTube clips? Click here. Enjoy...

BNP's Advisory Council to be shut down - the disasters continue...

The BNP's Advisory Council, which is in place ostensibly to oversee Griffin and the running of the party, is to be completely dismantled to make way for the new membership tier known as the 'Voting Membership'. As we reported here, Griffin regards the new VMs as an 'activist elite', by which he presumably means they do as they're told and they would support him whenever he embarks on yet another one of his lunatic schemes.

According to information we've received, the unelected VMs will include organisers and active councillors at branch level as a matter of course, regional organisers, those officers of the party that remain after the coming reshuffle (or bloodbath, as one of our correspondents put it) but curiously (or perhaps not) not fundholders/treasurers - or certainly not those at branch level.

Considering that Griffin made a point in his blog post of August 11th of specifically mentioning 'effective powers of scrutiny over all central party finances', we're surprised that he intends to keep local financial managers out of the loop - but maybe we shouldn't be all that surprised at all. BNP branches from all over the country have been griping for the last couple of years that money gushes eternally into the black hole that is BNP HQ, and is rarely returned in any way, even, it is frequently said, in the form of election leaflets that have been bought and paid for. The last thing Griffin would want is someone demanding financial accountability all the time, which is why he will effectively keep the financial side of things directly under the control of the party's treasurer (currently John Walker though not, we suspect, for very much longer).

One sign that clearly indicates the diminishing role of the Advisory Council is that though it is intended that it should meet 'no less than three times each year' according to the BNP's website, it has in fact not met since last September - very nearly a year. And this is the body currently charged with a number of crucial tasks:

'The purpose of the Advisory Council is to inspect the party's accounts, ensuring proper conduct of the party's finances, and to act as a forum for the party's leadership to discuss vital issues and carve out the party's agenda, without hindering the Chairman's ability to make the final decision on all matters.'

The lack of Advisory Council meetings might then go some way towards explaining why the party accounts are so late.

Problems seem to be rife for the BNP's Advisory Council at the moment, despite the usually politically-somnolent summer period. Jonathan Bowden left both the Advisory Council and the BNP itself in a fury after Griffin's attack-dogs at Covert were set on him at the end of July, Scott McLean has resigned the Advisory Council and his post as Deputy Chairman over the Andrew Spence debacle and Steve Blake now appears to be directly in the firing line over a constant stream of criticism of the BNP website, which is about as bland as a political site can possibly get without anasthetic, and far worse, having signed Chris Jackson's nomination papers in the recent leadership election. It looks like he's a strong candidate for the bloodbath, probably alongside his pal Eddie Butler, the former BNP election guru (attacked by fruitcake Tony Lecomber a while back) who, after the lacklustre results for the party in the May elections is now apparently frequently described by Griffin as a twat (and worse). We confidently expect to be waving goodbye to both Butler and Blake in the very near future.

Thus the Advisory Council dissolves around Griffin's ears, ready to rise again in the form of a loose body of activists, the Voting Membership, and Griffin will only have to suffer the ignominy of answering to it once a year at the party's annual conference. This will effectively hand dictatorial powers to the leader of this already far from democratic party, giving him carte blanche to do as he pleases when he pleases with nobody to answer to except his unelected hardcore activists who he has himself placed into their positions of authority. Who in their right minds would give any party leader that kind of complete power over his party - especially someone as notoriously untrustworthy as Nick Griffin? And who would want to be a member of a party where the ordinary membership is regarded as of no value at all except for the price of their membership card?

We hear Jackie Griffin is swanning around showing off her nice new Peugeot sports car - a snip at around six and a half grand. The election results for the BNP might be crap, the executive of the party might be collapsing, the fake businesses dying off as fast as they are formed and the membership figures stagnating but the money still appears to be fast-flowing into the Griffin household. If I were a party member, I'd be worrying about that.

Nick Griffin's most recent Chairman's Blog post deconstructed...

After an astonishing five-month hiatus that illustrated pretty much everything that he thought of communication with the membership, Nick Griffin has finally updated his Chairman's Blog, earning himself the 2007 Pinnochio Award for most lies told in a single blog post. The first lie, although maybe it's a pig-farmer's idea of a joke which I just didn't get, is where he explains the reasons for not posting on his blog since Methusaleh was at kindergarten, where he states that 'I enjoy writing the blog too much...I am very wary of making it too regular'. You can stop worrying, Nick. One post after a five-month gap is not too regular, no matter how you try to spin it.

Griffin immediately goes on the attack against those around the recent leadership challenge. Obviously furious that anyone would dare to stand against him, you can almost hear the spluttering and see his face redden as the blood pressure rises.

'The challenge was not a genuinely legitimate one from a candidate with the genuine ability to run this party as it is, let alone take it further forward. It was a pathetic, pitiful, desperate attempt to cause trouble for the most modernised and most successful nationalist party in British history by a handful of cranks left over from the BNP’s most sterile past, aided and abetted by a gaggle of Hollywood Nazis, congenital losers and thieves.'

As the latest copy of Searchlight points out, five founder-members, two advisory council members, three councillors, eight branch organisers and 20 election candidates came out openly in support of the challenger Chris Jackson. Presumably, Griffin means them. But he isn't finished yet...

'...he should have known better than to allow himself to be wound up and manipulated by such vermin. I’m certainly not going to kick him out for standing against me (for one thing, by giving the membership the chance to give me a 91% mandate to continue with our current direction...)'

Interesting use of the word 'vermin' there. More important though is this frequently quoted '91% mandate' that Griffin received in the leadership vote. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Griffin and other BNP contributors crowed when Labour were voted in on a minority vote, claiming that the 'silent majority' had spoken by not voting at all. Curious how he seems unable to transfer this to his own situation where, because of the pitiful 43% turnout for the leadership election in the tiny BNP, it turns out that Nick Griffin's mandate is a mere 39%. Not a mandate at all, in fact.

Strangely, Griffin chooses discussion of the leadership challenge to discuss democracy within this least democratic of all political parties, dismissing as 'Tory nationalists' all those who call for a one-member one-vote (OMOV) system to replace the current 'Voting Membership' system within the BNP, which gives the vote on issues of importance only to those who can afford to pay more money for their membership; clearly votes for cash - exactly the phrase the BNP shouts at anyone who is accused of corruption at the ballot box. The attack on those calling for internal democracy within the party, and the inevitable result of such calls, is stated unequivocally:

'This group must now accept that their scheme to put the destiny of the BNP in the hands of anyone who deigns to pay their membership has been comprehensively and permanently rejected, in favour of a system that gives power only to those who have earned it, and who continue to earn it. The argument is over, and anyone trying to raise it again against the repeatedly expressed will of the vast majority of the party will mark themselves out as a would-be saboteur and a candidate for expulsion.'

So no OMOV and no discussion of OMOV allowed either. How very democratic.

Griffin's post then goes off into a curiously disturbing diversion about a young BNP member suspected of being a mole for Searchlight. In this section, he speaks of the young man corresponding with Gerry Gable 'from an email account set up for him by a BNP loyalist, so we were able to see precisely what he was doing...' Er, what? You read the guy's emails? Isn't that illegal? And does the BNP regularly read through the emails of members that have been set up for them by 'BNP loyalists'?

Whether that's the case or not we don't know but Griffin's BNP is certainly trying to control many aspects of the member's lives that aren't entirely to do with the BNP itself. Referring to those he calls 'conspiracy-mongers', Griffin states clearly that;

'They are perfectly entitled to believe whatever they want to believe, and to discuss their beliefs privately with others already of like mind. But they are not to go posting their fancies online...they are not to spout their theories at meetings, either as officials or from the floor. They are not to write to local newspapers...and they are not to pour their personal opinions into the ears of new or young activists.'

Did the phrase 'thought-police' just pop into your head? Because it did in mine.

Griffin then goes on to attempt to deflect two of the most recent accusations against him and the party, concerning Croatia and the Trafalgar Club money. Regarding Croatia, he attempts to dismiss all discussion with, curiously because up until now there has only been denial, an attempt at an explanation.

'We were offered a share in the profits for the party if we could provide the contacts needed to develop land there inherited by a long-term party supporter, and on that basis myself and several others made a brief exploratory visit. As it happens, for various reasons we concluded that the project was probably a non-starter, so that’s the end of that.'

Not so fast, boyo. As we mentioned here and Stop the BNP reported here, there is rather more to this story than is at first apparent. The fact that Roberto Fiore is lurking around in the background in all of this, gives the whole idea a lot more credibility, if only because Fiore has been involved in at least two previous attempts to start 'white nationalist' communities in the past (both of them with Griffin, oddly enough), one in France and one in Spain. The further facts that the land has been bought and paid for and is regularly and increasingly visited by BNP bigwigs and that there has been much talk of offshore accounts and so on, lead one to assume that Griffin is trying to deflect too much interest in the project at this early stage in its development. Hard luck - we're interested and we're staying interested.

Regarding the Trafalgar Club accounts, which Griffin certainly doesn't want anyone prying into, he refers to 'the allegation that the income and expenditure of the Trafalgar Club does not appear in the BNP’s accounts. Of course it does, every single penny...'

Er, where? Early last month, we printed an article that questioned the Trafalgar Club income. We received no answers then and we really don't expect any this time either but in a spirit of optimism, we'll try again.

'One of the emails [we had recently received] pointed out that the Trafalgar Club (the Trafalgar Club is the group for the wealthier BNP member - allegedly the 'elite') members pay £180 per year for the privilege of belonging to it which apparently entitles them to a TC tie and an annual blow-out with Griffin. Wow - that must be worth £180 of anyone's money! The email then went on to point out that there are about 200 Trafalgar Club members which, to my reckoning, comes to around £36,000 per year. Added to this are the emails we received which pointed out that the annual Trafalgar Club dinner saw a collection which came out at £10-15,000. Yet the only mention of the Trafalgar Club in the BNP's accounts for 2004/5 are of the £4000 it apparently cost to set it up in 2004, and income of £1155 in 2005. Clearly there is a major problem in the accounts there which we expect either the auditors or the Electoral Commission to watch for in a couple of weeks when the next accounts are due to appear.'

And now we get to the little matter of the resignation from the Deputy Chairmanship and the Advisory Council (though not the party itself) of Scott McLean, following the appalling Collet/Spence/Walker incident at last week's Red White and Blue annual piss-up. As we reported, having received a few emails from irate BNP members, 'Scott McLean, Griffin's Deputy Chairman and the person responsible for maintaining discipline in the party, has clearly stated that he is resigning, having told all his long-time pals in the party that his position has been undermined again and again by Griffin's constant refusal to take action against Collett. We're informed that McLean gave Griffin an ultimatum a few days ago - him or Collett - and Griffin is sticking to Collett.'

Nick Griffin has always rewritten history to suit himself and his blog post carries a fine example.

'By one of those strange coincidences that is probably nothing of the sort, Scott McLean, who has held the Deputy Chairmanship responsibility as a steady rock for seven years now, called me a week before the RWB and told me that he is stepping down from the position, and from the Advisory Council. He explained that he needs to concentrate on with a very hectic business and family life without the BNP Sword of Damocles poised to fall on his head at a moment’s notice without any warning.'

What a load of rubbish. If anyone in the BNP believes that, they're an bigger idiot than even we would believe. You'll remember that the BNP has tried this on on a number of occasions when things have been going pear-shaped for the party. One of the most notable was when Robert Cottage was arrested in October of last year for stockpiling chemicals that could be used to make explosives. The BNP announced that Cottage was no longer a member, though omitted to mention that membership then ran from January to December and that Cottage had stood for a council seat for the party in May 2006 and thus would have had to be a fully paid-up member at that time. A stupid lie that the party has tended to repeat ad nauseum despite the fact that everyone knows it's a lie.

Curiously, there is a section on the new voting arrangements within the party that absolutely no-one internally appears to be questioning - the peculiar 'Voting Membership activist elite' that will be deciding how the party is run in future.

Griffin has mentioned something similar before but now he's being more explicit. Torn between the desire to keep control of the party in the hands of his closest allies, and increasingly strident calls for greater internal democracy, he has apparently compromised by creating the new membership tier (the Voting Membership, who pay more to have that voting power).

This 'elite' who, let's face it, are all likely to be Griffin's chums anyway (organisers and so on) are to get a number of extra rights over and above their extraordinary voting rights. It should be noted that an ex-colleague of Griffin's back in the old days when the late and unlamented John Tyndall was in charge of the BNP, recently pointed out that 'the only thing consistent between now and then has been [Griffin's] desire for a multi-tiered membership. Something that has always seemed like an attempt to solve a problem that does not actually exist.' Indeed.

These additional rights for the elite include (don't laugh) 'effective powers of scrutiny over all central party finances', 'key failsafe powers over the leader and leadership elections at present vested in the Advisory Council and Deputy Chairman' (the role of DC going along with Scott McLean into the dustbin of BNP history), and 'to step up the level of ideological training for VMs'. Quite what this last bit means, we have no idea, but the phrase 'ideological training' sounds deeply worrying and something one would expect to hear from an internment camp for political dissidents.

Interestingly, Griffin then segues into a piece on the need to find a role within the BNP for Arthur Kemp. Kemp was mentioned in July's Searchlight as a former operative in South African Intelligence and, of course, the author of the monumental March of the Titans: The History of the White Race. A few chapter headings should give you a rough idea of which way Kemp's ideology leans.

'The rise and fall of civilizations explained in terms of their racial homogeneity; with the Near East civilizations as examples.'

'Roman conquest of mixed race Middle and Near East lands; Influx of mixed race peoples and slaves into Rome causes dissolution of original Roman population.'

'The White Race war against the non-White Muslims in Palestine; Egypt, North Africa and Portugal, under the guise of Christianity.'

'The non-White Moors invade Europe and are driven out by White armies; Jewish co-operation with the non-White Moors.'

'White civil wars caused by Christianity; One third of the White Race killed as a result.'

'Whites explore and start settling the world'

'The White Conquest of South and Central America and the creation of modern South American population; fall of Incas and Aztecs explained through racial mixing.'

'All significant inventions which shape the world originate with the White Race; comprehensive list of inventors, inventions, dates, places.'

'The Jewish role in the creation of Communism; Soviet anti-Zionism.'

'The dissolution of contemporary Western civilization through breakdown in racial homogeneity; racial discordance (race and crime); Current rates of non-White immigration will mean not one majority White country left on earth by 2090.'

I'm pretty sure you've got the gist. Kemp is a hardcore racist and white supremacist. Unfortunately, though not perhaps unsurprisingly, the job of ideological training within the BNP is to pass directly into his hands. It looks like a return to more hardcore racism and continued/increased adoration for the 'White Race' at the BNP in the future.

This sudden inclusion of the despicable Kemp into the inner circle of the BNP - in fact to the very top of the party - could well indicate a coming significant change to its stance on race and how the BNP deals with it. If I were Pat Richardson (Jewish), Laurence Rustem (Anglo-Turkish), both BNP councillors, or Sharif Abdel Gawad (Greek-Armenian), a former BNP council candidate, I'd be extremely nervous. In fact, if I was a BNP member at all, I'd be nervous. There is a feeling of great shift in the air, partly generated, I believe, by the leadership challenge and all the recent controversy around Griffin, money and (among other things) Croatia. When a dictator gets nervous, he tends to lash out in all directions. Griffin's most recent blog post reads like the first crack of the whip. We believe there are a lot more to come.

The truth about Spence and the RWB punch-up - McLean resigns

It's a good job there are some people in the British National Party with integrity or we would never get to hear the truth about anything. Let's hope they've let someone who can look at them honestly to take a look at the accounts before they're submitted to the Electoral Commission. The membership might actually get a true picture of the state of the party then. But this article isn't about the accounts - it's about Andrew Spence, the BNP's ex-poster boy, who, to trumpets from on high, joined the party just six months ago only to resign in a huff last Saturday night.

The gist of the incident has already been reported here but until now we've been stuck for the detail - until, that is, a couple of angry BNP members got in touch to put this situation right. These kind people both pointed out that discussion on this subject has been censored dramatically on the BNP's own forum, with threads being closed as soon as they were started. We have also observed severe censorship over at the Stormfront nazi forum - the BNP member's favourite alternative to its own despite it having been proscribed by the control-freaks at BNP HQ. When will the BNP learn that the membership at least, deserve honesty and openness?

Anyway, back to Saturday night. This is the story as we have it...

Allegedly, after a bad row on the Friday night of the Red White and Blue, BNP Head of Publicity and chief dork Mark Collett spent twenty minutes on Saturday night goading and picking at Andrew Spence about money that was promised to him by the party over some damage that occurred to his car during the recent by-election campaign. Party Treasurer John Walker refused point blank to hand over the cash (shades of the Sharon Ebanks' fiasco there) and even refused to accept that the party was in any way liable, telling Spence to go see his insurance company about it. Eventually, we're told, tempers got frayed and Spence pushed (rather than punched) Walker. Collett, ever the coward, slapped Spence around the back of the head then did a runner pushing people aside, including the Norfolk Organiser and her young daughter.

This all took place after the row on Friday where, during a meeting to rehash the Sedgefield by-election, Collett made some stupid remarks about the campaign and Spence stormed out of the meeting in a huff, cursing Collett as he did so and promising that he would get even with him. This anger has been inspired, we're told, by Collett's inability to get the Sedgefield leaflets out on time on three separate occasions during that single campaign. Collett (naturally) blamed Spence for being picky while Spence blamed Collett for being a lazy useless bastard.

Spence, as you already know, has resigned from the party while Collett - who appears to have played a key role in provoking the incident - faces no action, as usual, despite having himself assaulted another party member.

This incident has caused fury in the ranks, so much so that Scott McLean, Griffin's Deputy Chairman and the person responsible for maintaining discipline in the party, has clearly stated that he is resigning, having told all his long-time pals in the party that his position has been undermined again and again by Griffin's constant refusal to take action against Collett. We're informed that McLean gave Griffin an ultimatum a few days ago - him or Collett - and Griffin is sticking to Collett. So much for loyalty then.

Griffin has been anxious to gain more control over the party for a while now and has already indicated that he personally will take over the role of party disciplinarian, stepping into McLean's shoes while his feet are still in them. One would have expected the party leader to have enough on his plate already but that's not, as we know, how dictatorships work.

One wonders precisely what hold Collett has over Nick Griffin. Clearly a liability, he has managed to act the buffoon on numerous occasions, causing numerous problems for the BNP's doomed attempts to appear to present itself as a 'normal' political party, praising the Nazis, verbally attacking gays and generally talking crap whenever a camera is stuck in his face. The fact that everyone knows him to be an outstanding idiot who is also lousy at his job, makes our correspondents believe that whatever he has on Griffin must be of enormous interest both to the membership of the party and, of course, us. If anyone has any information that might help us to discover what his secret hold over Griffin might be, please email us and give us a laugh.

In the meantime, we look forward to reading that Scott McLean is to be expelled because he's a) a Searchlight mole, b) an MI5 mole, c) a secret Red or d) he's moving to Croatia.

Talking of Croatia, Sadie and Matt left for Croatia on Sunday right after the RWB. Just a holiday or a look at the Nick Griffin Holiday Camp from Hell?