EDL/BFP and the Leaked Phone Calls

The English Defence League's alliance with the British Freedom Party is close to falling apart today after a telephone conference between senior BFP officials was leaked on the internet.

The EDL and the BFP have recently announced that they are forming an alliance together. The reasons are mainly thought to be the fact that the BFP need people to vote for them and the EDL need to go political in order to survive and lose their 'toxic' reputation, a reputation gained by the fact that many of their demonstrations end up in violence and their Facebook page and membership in general are overun with hard core racists who are more interested in targeting the Muslim community than Islamic extremists.

Simon Bennett (pictured, left), Lee Barnes, Peter Mullins and Gary Marshall were recorded discussing how they can use the English Defence League to their own advantage and Barnes instructs Bennet to keep hold of the EDL's membership database.

Click here to see the video

The leaked recording, which has turned into a massive embarrassment for BFP leadership and Simon Bennett is thought to have been recorded ten months ago when the they were first started talks with the EDL.

In a Facebook status update, an admin thought to be either Bennett or Weston, is currently undergoing a damage limitation exercise and claiming that the recorded conversation took place ten months ago. The update is full of conspiracy theories about leaked members addresses and a plot by the Muslim Defence League to murder him and gang rape his children. We are unaware of any complaints being made to the police about this.

In response to the recent audio file 'leaked' by the Muslim Extremist Hackers of the EDL Facebook page, British Freedom wish to clarify a few points:Simon Bennett, British Freedom Party

Firstly, the leaker of this ten month old Skype recording is an expelled member of British Freedom that has been waging a hate campaign against British Freedom ever since.

So much so that they have conspired with the BNP and the Muslim Defence League in order to release the name and address of the EDL webmaster to the Muslim Defence League and MAC in order to have him (and his young family) murdered. This can all be substantiated with facts and hard evidence if need be. These are the people (just some of them) that Simon Bennett traced via IP addresses cross referenced against other data that have threatened to have his children ‘gang raped’ and murdered.

Now, the fact that this 'leaked' Skype conference was recorded by these people in the first place ought to raise the question WHY it was recorded. The reason is obvious, they had every intention of releasing it at a time which they felt would cause British Freedom and the EDL the most damage.

Bearing in mind that this conversation was recorded over ten months ago and at an early stage of ‘negotiations’ between British Freedom and the EDL two questions have to be asked:

1. Why record it.
2. Why release it now.

The answer is of course obvious. To try in a desperate attempt to break the alliance the two groups have worked so damned hard to create. This ‘alliance’ was no spur of the moment idea. It was 18 months in the planning. A huge amount of discussion, planning, brain storming and thought went in to it.

If Skype conversations did not take place discussing the issues then you have cause for concern. Take another listen to the ‘leaked’ audio. Nothing untoward was said or discussed that either party would be afraid to repeat today.
The simple fact is this;

The opposition are terrified, absolutely mortified by the fact that a credible, non racist, non nazi political organisation in its embryonic stages is about to render all other party’s below the Lib-Dems null and void. It is in their interests (and that of Islamic Extremists) to ensure that this alliance fails.

Don’t be sucked in by this amateur attempt to derail us. The very fact they are trying so hard to do just that speaks volumes.

EDL members are naturally suspicious of the alliance and not all are happy with it. Simon Bennett is failing to win hearts and minds, mainly due to the stitch up of the British National Party when he took their website down the day before the last general election.

Yorkie Pudd

re the alliance with bfp ......all sounds dodgy as fuck to me @simon your a public figure? you sound like a spoilt brat mate ...eddy makes a good point " if you fall out with EDL, what are you going to do? What did you do when you fell out with the BNP?" ...and as for 30 quid to join your having a laugh ... i could go on but as it as been proved so many times there is no point ..are you sure your not related to weyman the cunt bennet?

Alan Furniss

if the bfp think im having anything to do with them after the way they chatted about edl members they,v gotta another thing coming id rather be natfront

Kevin Layzell ‎

The opposition are terrified? no ones terrified no ones heard of British freedom.

• "credible" as a purely Facebook political group its very hard to be non credible as there's little you can do to make yourself non credible
• "amateur attempt" this amateurs keep hacking the page.. they have brought down the EDL without even leaving their houses.
• What evidence do you have that they conspired with the BNP (I highly doubt the BNP wants to see him and his family murdered)
• " Simon Bennett traced via IP addresses" Simon Bennett seems good at tracking people down and handing out information... didn't he betray the BNP to try to bring them down? what a honourable fella.
• why did it take 18 months for British freedom and EDL to form an alliance it doesn't seem like anything has changed?

Lee Collins

No no no no no! Don't you see? it gives us NO credibility. It makes us a laughing stock. If the EDL wanted to be more political it should have either formed a political party called the English Defence Party or had discussions with other parties, come to a decision an then those who didn't or couldn't support that party would leave. Having 'secret' discussions behind our backs to stitch up a deal with any political party just makes mugs of us all. And this is not a BNP vs BFP thing either. It could be UKIP it could be anyone. And stop saying we can vote for who we like! How can we vote for one party and belong to a movement which is actively helping another party

Chris Bangtidy Belsher

Tell you what Simon- how about you and this British Freedom Party get to fuck and when you get there you fuck off some more. You think that I've stood on the streets up and down this great country in freezing conditions, endured police giving me fuck and run the gauntlet of mad muslims throwing rocks and threatening to kill me just to be used to bolster some weak as fuck political parties numbers? You seriously think anyone is seriously going to vote for a party with no financial manifesto? no employment manifesto? Etc etc etc, you haven't got a clue.

Eddy Stevens

Simon, if you fall out with EDL, what are you going to do? What did you do when you fell out with the BNP? ANSWER: Took BNP website offline the day before a major election. I ask, would a genuine patriot have done that?

Yorkie Pudd

all sounds dodgy as fuck to me @simon your a public figure? you sound like a spoilt brat mate ...eddy makes a good point " if you fall out with EDL, what are you going to do? What did you do when you fell out with the BNP?" ...and as for 30 quid to join your having a laugh ... i could go on but as it as been proved so many times there is no point ..are you sure your not related to weyman bennet?

Chris Bangtidy Belsher

British Freedom Party- bit of an oxymoron really. You won't be getting my vote, you won't be getting my money and you'll definitely won't be getting my support. I'm EDL not BFP and if this so called freedom Party is made up of semi literate halfwits like Simon then they're doomed.

EDL News

It’s The EDL & British Fluffies Love-In!

Well, well, well, the EDL leadership have finally surrendered and admitted that their demos have been a complete waste of time and are now making a bid for political respectability by linking up with the fluffy fascist British Freedom. The recent demos have dwindled in numbers and many ‘members’ have left in disgust over the constant violence and overt racism of this ‘not racist, not violent, but violently racist’ peaceful protest movement.

The EDL have lost a lot of credibility in the last 6 months. After all their blether about ‘taking’ Tower Hamlets they were humiliated, massively outnumbered and unable to get to where they wanted to go – ‘we go where we want, when we want!’ Not really! The whole of Nottingham EDL were attacked and arrested and their pin-up, Joanne ‘Bus Stop Pole Dancer’ Dickens, fell off the coach and got a kick up the drainpipe. Their Birmingham demo attracted even less and ended up in a drunken brawl with a great many Facebook posters expressing disgust or resigning en masse. The Remembrance day round-up was even more embarrassing and disgraceful and since then Napoleon Lennon has desperately been looking for an out. Tiny Tom was lucky to not get sent down at his last court appearance for the Blackburn headbutt and he certainly wasn’t looking forward to another ‘hunger strike.’ Mrs. Tommy told him that he wasn’t to get into trouble anymore and his recent self-pitying video diary really took the Garibaldi! ‘Me Nan’s ill, me business is stuck, me assets are frozen and I’m having to sleep in the spare room with the unsold hoodies (still available! £10 discount!).’ So he needed a face-saving alternative and the very desperate and tiny British Fluffy Party offered him one: you bring in possible votes, we will give you an exit so you can concentrate on your ‘political career’ before rapidly fading out to ‘concentrate on the family.’

Many EDL are also bothered over Tommy being a prima donna and getting all that publicity: when Tommy is nicked, it’s demos outside the courthouse or prison and ‘Tommy Robinson Defence Fund’ collections (make all cheques payable to the EDL royal couple, Stella and Charlie). When the regular arse clowns are nicked, it’s tough luck boys, you’re on your own. And these cases are frequent let me tell you! Don’t take our word for it, check out the postings on the various court cases on Everything EDL:

Unbelievable.

So Tommy, all too aware of his waning popularity with the EDL and his wife, asked Mrs. Tommy if he could meet up with his chumleys for a ‘Way Backwards’ meeting somewhere in the Midlands on Saturday for an hour after teatime. There was a rumour buzzing about that he was going to stand-down as leader but he realised that this would lose him what little credibility he has left and instead he retained his position whilst offering his support to the British Fluffies. The meeting location was secret and consequently loads of EDL were wandering around confused in Brum which was probably a good thing as one who finally got there was less than impressed:

‘i was at the meeting i traveled a long way the meeting sarted very late was hold in public house so yes thats right by time meeting sarted several edl members had been drinking meeting was a shambles and not many members were even listing to busy having a dring there was very little respect couldlnt even hear quiestions and answers over drunken rabble (Sic!).'

Tommy also successfully ducked any questions over the Zionist connections and the Star of David flags. There is still discord in the EDL however and the North/South divide remains.

Fluffy Fascism

So who are the British Fluffies (BFP) then? Well, they are one of the smallest ones in the alphabetti spaghetti of the far right parties: so far we have BNP (Griffinites), BNP (Bronsites), UKIP, ED, NF, BPP, and the NPP. All are fairly interchangeable policy wise, operate on the cult of leadership principle and have too many Morecambe’s and not enough Wisdom. They all stand in the few places where votes are likely, in direct competition with each other, as the NF and BNP have always done, and split the far right vote. Despite calls for unity, it never happens.

The Fluffies were formed as yet another offshoot of the BNP and feature Simon Bennett, Peter Mullins, Peter Stafford and exUKIP Paul Weston. They have recently purged their leadership clique in a ‘Night of the Pen Knives’ and sidelined the likes of Batty Lee Barnes who has too much holocaust denial baggage and is mental anyway. He is now ‘writing a novel’ about a magic dog that talks. Bennett was the BNP webmeister who famously pulled the plug the day before the General Election and has since been reviled by a great many bitter Nazis. Peter Stafford was hounded out of Liverpool BNP for being gay and having a gay dad and so sought refuge amidst the Fluffies. I Googled Peter Mullins but just got a blank screen. As far as purging well-known Nazis the head Fluffies have operated with some political acumen. However, the Fluffies are now in cahoots with a violent football hooligan who has served time for assaulting a policeman and is under investigation for fraud. Nice one! Suddenly holocaust-denying, magic dog writers sound remarkably tame! This is clearly going to bite the Fluffies on the arse and it is only a matter of time before the usual recriminations start. The Fluffies have clearly been dazzled by the popular support of the EDL although they have come in a bit late as EDL numbers have never been so low and there are a great many EDLers who are unhappy over Tommy, Fluffy endorsement and the fact they are stalwart BNP voters. The EDL clearly haven’t read the Fluffies 20 Point Plan as one reads that they will ‘Ensure that a no class-A drugs policy is enforced.’ Some cheeky wee rascal on Urban75 said that ‘it’s a typo and they meant to say ‘Ensure that no class-A drugs policy is enforced.’ Naughty!

Factions

Apart from deserting members there are other splinter factions which include the 6 or so Liverpool EDL who are too incompetent to change their Facebook page and so are Infidels in all but name. They have been involved in scab activity such as attacking union offices and threatening people who were on strike. To make matters worse, Tiny Tommy’s PA Hel ‘Stomach Band’ Gower, who is 70, has fallen out with Paul Pitt in the Kent Division and they look seriously rocky. Other divisions have folded completely. Some of the more excitable elements have been threatening Occupy sites and attacked a pro-Palestinian group in Glasgow at the weekend. They have also been making noises about attacking workers’ organizations during the strike on November 30th! Scabs by any other name and acting like the fascists in the 1926 General Strike. Oh, and the Combined ExForces imploded rather publicly and spectacularly last week with the CO firing the 2nd in command and the 2nd in command firing the CO. The remaining 3 members are very confused indeed.

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/edl-watch.262722/page-198

Post 5928 onwards.

Conclusion

So, despite the initial bloom of romance will the Fluffy/EDL partnership flourish? Tommy has way too much ‘legal history’ to stand a chance in any election so this is clearly a way of backing out nobly whilst he can. The Fluffies have had the ‘Night of the Pen Knives’ and have ‘cleansed’ the ranks of those who were in ‘previously disreputable organizations.’ The EDL are split over those still enjoying the days out on the demos and the gradual realization that they have got smaller and smaller and the only media attention they get is wholly negative. We shall see...

Malatesta's Blog

British Freedom Party secretly discuss EDL

This is an audio recording of Simon Bennett, Lee Barnes, Peter Mullins and Gary Marshall discussing how they can use the EDL. Listen how Barnes tells Bennett to keep hold of the data base he (Bennett) has on EDL members...

...And they thought they wiped this Skype conference off the web? Suckers!

Live Leak

Thanks to LeakMeister for the heads-up

If You Blinked, You Probably Missed It: The Rise & Fall Of The BFP

Once upon a time, there was Oswald Mosley's Hitler-loving “British Union of Fascists”. Following a World War against Hitler, which somewhat dented their electoral popularity (although their vote probably still holds up in rural pockets of North Yorkshire and the Home Counties), Mosley founded the “Union Movement”. Figures from the UM, led by Arch-Nazi A K Chesterton, later split and went on to give it another go with the “League of Empire Loyalists”.

Following more splits, disagreements (and still not a sniff of electoral success) in the LEL, the “National Front” came into being.

The NF, under the rancid leadership of the purple-necked John Tyndall (and by associating itself with the rabble-rousing racism of Enoch Powell), managed to mobilise a brief resurgence of the Far-Right during the 1970's, but were soon shown the door by a massively bigger, broadly-based campaign in the form of the Anti Nazi League and it's hugely successful offshoot, “Rock Against Racism”.

Internal squabbles (and plotting by young leader Nick Griffin) led, in a now-familiar pattern, to the birth of the BNP.

Years of financial mismanagement, despotic behaviour and yet more plotting (this is, after all, a man who probably wakes up, tells Jackie he'd like cereal for breakfast and then spends the next half-hour working behind her back, starting online smear campaigns and forming various short-lived alliances to ensure that he gets eggy bread...) finally, and inevitably, led to the mother of all splits.

And so, in 2010, amid great fanfare, with a shiny, friendly logo, a stock library photo that made its membership look exactly 300% more attractive and pleasant than they actually are and powered by the hopes, dreams and Paypal clicks of slight-witted racists (but not TOO racist – that's their USP, you see...) across the nation, the “British Freedom Party” was born, helped into the world by midwives Simon Bennett and Lee Barnes.

Oh dear.

Sweeping all asunder as it powered its way to the heart of British politics, the BFP soon boasted a staggering (well, at least a couple of them enjoy a drink) 30+ Members. (There are those who say it could be twice that. Tremble, o ye Lefties!) The new force in Nationalism hit the ground running and wasted no time at all in fomenting discord within its ranks and having splits of its own.

Given that the Left has a reputation (albeit somewhat deserved) for splits and divisions (which, I might add, are entirely the fault of the Fabian Society. All the rest of us – especially me and people I happen to like – are completely blameless, you understand...), it's nice to see that our fallings-out pale into insignificance compared to the Permanent State Of Total War that exists at the other end of the spectrum.

Simon Bennett, self-styled hero of the Far Right, has (as has been pointed out before) a few funny little ways about him. In much the same way as the man who used to live in Derby (name of “Cosmic” Ray) and wore a skullcap fashioned from copper wire that enabled him, he claimed, to communicate with the Aliens who lived beneath Stonehenge, had his own “funny little ways”.

Aside from paranoia (a current concern is that he could be subject to attacks from Cornish Jihadists. Of which there are, in his own imagination, many.) , an obsessive nature and a very thin skin, Bennett has something of a temper on him. In fact, if politics were run in the real world like they are in the parallel dimension of the Bennettverse, we might get Hansard recording exchanges like:

Mr Edward Miliband (Lab Doncaster North): Does the Prime Minister not feel that more should be done to ease the burden of the less fortunate of our country, and that it is the rich who should pay?

Mr David Cameron (Con Witney): I thank the Honourable Member for his question, and would remind the **** that I know where he lives and he'll be getting a ******* visit from me and my ******* housebrick if he don't button it. I done it before, I did, and he should see the state I left the **** in that time.

On his own, Simon Bennett (like Griffin before him) is enough to spell doom for any outfit he latches onto. Team him with Barnes, however, and it's as though someone just hit a fresh, rich vein of new chuckles in a comedy goldmine that just opened in your back garden.

(He recently claimed to have "Some people very worried!" No-one's "worried", as yet, by the mighty army of the BFP. Very, very amused, maybe, but not exactly "worried".)

Barnes, with his background of wonderfully inept poetry, execrable attempts at novels and Tourettes-like swearing, sees himself as the intellectual wing of the Party, and he's long argued the case for the Far Right to “reach out” to the electorate by presenting as friendly and approachable a face as possible.

A notable example of Barnes p.r manner was this friendly, approachable post:

“Now shut the **** up you pathetic whining maggots.”

Or how about “Just shut the **** up you boring gobshite ****.”

Gosh. It's like Kofi Annan, reborn.

With this pair beavering away behind the scenes, it's little wonder that the BFP have been shedding personnel (Chairs, Treasurers, etc) like there's no tomorrow. Or like the BNP. Which actually amounts to much the same thing.

The Holy Grail, of course, for all of the movers behind any of these short-lived, shabby little outfits, is to draw a salary and make a living from their followers. Griffin has set the benchmark here, as the first “Nationalist” since the days of Mosley to make a (very) comfortable living off the backs of racists and, as the BNP ship sinks there are sure to be plenty of others looking to take up where Griffin left off...

Born from splits, and they're dying the same way. In the case of the BFP, however, as they get ever smaller, there's at least the consolation that scientists will possibly use the phenomenon as the impetus to develop ever more powerful detection equipment; machines that can detect particles tinier that hitherto dreamt of...

Personally, my money's on a “relaunch” sometime soon before finally imploding at some point in 2011.

On the plus side: Once the BFP are out of the way, we can at least get back to taking the piss out of the Green Arrow.

The webmaster, the thugs and BNP-Lite

Simon Bennett, the BNP's former and now much-loathed webmaster, has always had a strange and manic desperation for recognition. Several weeks ago, when the British Freedom Party (or BNP-Lite) had only existed for about twenty minutes and had less than ten members, he appeared on TV as a representative of the BFP pontificating about whatever the current disaster was in the British National Party, which he had only recently left. As is common with many on the far-right, his complete devotion to his former party and its crooked leader turned to an all-consuming hatred almost overnight, and he found himself unable even to mention the BNP without exploding in all directions in his fury.

Having completely fallen out with the BNP, he then joined the BFP, a tiny far-right grouplet made up solely of BNP rejects and swivel-eyed lunatics like Lee Barnes, the BNP's former legal officer and resident fruitloop.

The BFP is a curious entity: it has done nothing of any consequence, has no real policies, has stood in no elections and has a membership that currently stands at around thirty, all of whom are committed losers, yet it seems to be sneaking around behind everyone's backs, trying quietly to gain some indefinable power from somewhere. Anywhere, in fact. And now it has bumped up against (and linked up with, if our correspondents are correct) the English Defence League.

Bennett's only claim to fame (apart from being a rabid fantasist - remember the BNP's very own James Bond plot?) is that he can put together a website that appears to work relatively well, even though it only runs as fast as Martin Reynolds after a heavy lunch. This talent appears to be much-valued on the far-right and Bennett therefore has a skill that others want to exploit - which one imagines is why the Islamophobic EDL is suddenly interested in Bennett and his little gang, and why Bennett is now running the EDL's website.

Rumour has it that the EDL is planning, in the near future, on moving more into politics and away from incessant street confrontations. The group's leaders can hardly have failed to notice that attendance at their numerous rallies is trending downwards (though the Luton demo this coming weekend is expected to be a biggie) and it is said that Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and the other twats who lead the EDL would like to gain some political recognition before it loses any more of its momentum.

Thus, they are seeking advice on how to break into politics. And who are they seeking this advice from? Yes, the barely-visible British Freedom Party, that doesn't have a clue about politics and couldn't break into a wet tissue with a chainsaw.

Political realities aside, the BFP has its own troubles to deal with at the moment in any case, having split over a suggestion that Bennett may have walked off with £752 from one of its bank accounts. One half appears to believe he has already paid the money back while the other seems to think he's nicked it. It's not the first time Bennett has been caught up in money troubles - one of the accusations that followed him after his separation from the BNP was that he had walked off with a pile of money earned by badge sales. In fact, the far-right is and always has been rife with accusations of theft and fraud - all the way from Porky Griffin's spectacularly sticky fingers right down to Yaxley-Lennon and co being accused of diverting money from T-shirt sales.

Missing dosh aside, it's easy to see why the BFP wants to jump on the current EDL bandwagon but it's hard to see what's in it for the EDL apart from the embarrassment of being associated with the likes of Simon Bennett and the BFP. Rumour suggests that the EDL is also involved in talks with another far-right group, the English Democrats. Though just as crap as the BFP, the ED at least have had the experience of standing in the occasional election (readers may recall that in the recent Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election they scooped up a staggering 0.4% of the vote).

Asking the likes of the BFP and the English Democrats for political advice is about as currently sensible and completely pointless as entering Nick Clegg into a popularity contest - and having Simon Bennett involved in anything at all is a disaster waiting to happen.

Hmm, maybe Bennett's lot and the EDL could be a marriage made in heaven, after all - for us, anyway.

My New Year Resolutions...

Hello again.

A bit late, I know, but it's that time, once again, when we're supposed to come up with New Year's Resolutions.

Given that I've generally given up on such bold pledges by the 5th, and have shamefacedly reverted to smoking/ drinking too much coffee/ eating junk food/ paying good money to see 200 million dollar movies with a “2” or a “3” after the title, I worked out that by applying the simple method of launching my Resolutions a few days later at least they'll make it a touch further into 2011 before being ditched.

(God, I need a fag.)

Those Resolutions in Full...

I Will Not Pick On Easy Targets

The likes of Green Arrow and his dwindling bunch of “Kinsmen” have given the world more innocent laughter at their hilarious hi-jinks and idiotic tomfoolery than the combined efforts of Boris Johnson, the England Football Team and anyone who's ever been on the X Factor.

They recently even took to debating the identity of the Antichrist, for (Anti) Christ's sake. (And of course they were all entirely wrong: Any scholar worth their salt will tell you that Biblical, Talmudic, Apocryphal and astrological references all point clearly to the ancient prophecy of George Osborne as being He Who Is Destined To Hold Sway Over The Hellish Realm.)

The steady decline in Morris' fortunes, as his old coterie of writers desert him to be replaced by a succession of escapees from the Acute Ward, is to be welcomed, sure; but it's not like he's regarded as anything other than a joke by anyone, on either side of the debate.

And it's not just him: I hereby resolve to lay off other easy targets. I will even lay off my local idiot – Maria ("Shaydee_Lady") Riley-Ward – whose contribution to her Party's cause is a dismal cut n' paste of Daily Mail articles, undiluted white supremacy and barking mad, tinfoil helmeted paranoia about flouride. I won't even bother pointing out that her recent idea of "helping" the BNP's public image (she's been a regular candidate, after all) was to post a video of “Hitler's Political Testament”. Much like being saddled with having Michael Gove as your spokesman for Education (or, in fact, anything), there are some people you just wouldn't want on your side in an argument.

(Anyone got a fag?)

I Will No Longer Read The British Democracy Forum

Of course, this one may last about as long as Simon (“The Man Who Cost The BNP The General Election Landslide That Surely Would Have Been Theirs”) Bennett, who recently made great show of “resigning” from the Forum having been caught out making a typically bizarre series of threats to another Member, only to return, under a cunning new identity, a short while later. (Note to Self: Include Bennett in the one about Easy Targets. Just about the only way to get an easier laugh than mentioning the self-styled Cornish Sage would be to sing an amusing song about Gillian McKeith while dressed as a clown. And then fall over.)

I Will Continue To Ignore The BFP

As will everyone.

(Hang on-there's half a pack of Gitanes around here somewhere...)

I Will Get Up To Oldham For A Day Of Leafleting

That way, when the BNP are (inevitably) humiliated on the 13th, I'll be able to imagine that it was all down to me. In much the same way as I've always held the fond belief that it was the two hours I spent on a picket outside South Africa House in 1988 that later caused Apartheid to crumble. (And the really galling part is that I never got so much as a thankyou card from Nelson Mandela...)

I Will Stop Using Griffin's Disability For Cheap Laughs

Why refer to his having one eye? There have, after all, been some terrific people with one eye: Nelson, Claude Rains, Sammy Davies Jr, James Thurber, Hannibal, Tex Avery, Peter Falk, John Ford... No. It cannot stand. No more on the “one eye” stuff.

Not when there's the begging letters, the weight, the lying, the cheating, the begging letters, the finances, the accounts, the nervous tics, the begging letters, the Pooterish image and the general fact that the man is so relentlessly full of shit that he normally resembles a septic tank with a haircut.

So. Those are my Resolutions.

And this time I'll stick to them.

Expect normal service to be resumed by this time next week.

(Ahh – Sweet, sweet, French tobacco...)

A tough year for the BNP

Griffin has faced challenges to his leadership

The British National Party's annual conference begins on Friday. Leaflets promise a spectacular event but internal rows and financial pressures have raised questions about its future.

All is not well at the BNP. Rebels have tried to unseat the leader Nick Griffin. Legal challenges have come thick and fast. Money has become tight.

Only last year the party had high hopes. It boasted two newly elected MEPs and leading politicians were publicly anxious it might break through at the general election. But come election day the BNP won no seats, despite increasing its national share of the vote, and saw many of its councillors ousted in local polls.

Simon Bennett, who used to run the BNP website, said the party was in disarray. He is one of a number of expelled former members who want Nick Griffin to go.

"When I first got involved with the party I just automatically assumed I was dealing with professionals, people who knew what they were doing," said Mr Bennett. "It took a year for me to realise I was working with complete morons."

He left after a bizarre pre-election stunt that saw a jar of Marmite prominently displayed on a BNP video. The owners of the yeast spread took legal action in which Mr Bennett said he was named. He left. And the BNP had to pay an out-of-court settlement.

That was not the only legal drama to put pressure on the BNP's bank account. It has spent tens of thousands of pounds responding to a challenge by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission that wanted the party to change its constitution.

Nick Griffin said his party had debts of around £250,000 and "very little money" in the bank. But he believed the problem would be resolved in the coming months, and was dismissive of Mr Bennett's criticisms. He said: "It's the oldest problem in the book that any employer or organisation who gets rid of someone for a very, very good and unavoidable reason then has to put up with them coming back and biting their backs to try and get revenge."

Others - with less confidence - have been plotting a rebellion. The former party candidate and former National Front member - Eddy Butler - tried and failed to depose the BNP leader earlier this year. He did not manage to secure the 800 signatures from party members necessary under the BNP constitution to spark a vote. But he maintains a website featuring videos of estranged party members. According to him the BNP's internal culture was cynical, grasping and jealous. He is appealing, having been expelled from the party.

Nick Griffin's personal fortunes will be tested again when he stands as a candidate at the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. He plans to step aside as party leader in 2013. His critics among those on the far right fear for the BNP's future. But those who study the far right say even if it falters, its activists may go on.

Dr Matthew Goodwin from Nottingham University suggested some of its supporters could simply migrate to organisations with similar sympathies. He said: "If the BNP does descend into infighting and doesn't make an election breakthrough we may begin to see BNP activists in far greater number move over to the English Defence League after coming to the conclusion that there will be no breakthrough."

BBC

Far-Right Talkboards: A Whole Other World Out There...

I wouldn't make a very good spy. In 1985, I thought it would be a good idea to pop along to a pub in Ilkeston and melt into the background during a National Front meeting.

I'd have got away with it, too, if I didn't have long hair, flares and an Afghan coat. If nothing else, the smell would've given me away.

A couple of weeks ago I registered on of the Far-Right Talkboards. Under my own name (I've never really seen the point of pseudonyms), with no hidden agenda, and no motive other than wanting to understand why people think the things they do (and this particular Board seemed to have a few Members who might be able to actually argue the toss, rather than just go for name-calling and dark, sinister – if seemingly never acted upon – threats).

When the World History of Pointless Exercises is written (presumably by Giles Brandreth, with an hilarious forward by Richard Stilgoe), there might be room for a tiny sidebar sandwiched somewhere between a chocolate manufacturer changing the pronunciation of their name from “Nessuls” to “Ness-Lay” and the entire acting career of David Bowie. That's where you'll find My Heroic Foray Into The Alternative Universe Of The Ultra Right.

Ultra Right, I found for starters, isn't so much a political delineation as a philosophical stance: Most people are willing to accept that they've got it wrong occasionally. It's not very nice, but it goes with the whole “Being Human” territory. Not these people, though. On any subject, no matter how trivial. They aren't just “right” they're very, very, very right. All the time. About everything. Loudly. In their own imaginations.

Call me naïve, but I actually believed it may be possible to engage in some debate: A sensible exchange of views, coolly yet cogently expressed, based around a central theme. But waiting for a suitable juncture to drop my two penn'orth in was like hanging around outside a phone booth for a tramp to stop having a dump inside it: The waiting around was unpleasant enough, and I wouldn't have fancied going in afterwards, anyway.

The nature of the “debate” on the Forum often follows a pattern:

A) This is my point of view.

B) Frankly, I disagree with your point of view.

A) Sorry to disappoint you, but I still hold to my original point of view.

B) As do I.

C) Neither of you are True Nationalists, unlike myself, and I have it on good authority that you both enjoy the practise of ____________ , which you are wont to pursue in the company of _________, who likes to ___________ while you both insert ___________ into one another's ___________.

From this point onwards, things tend to go downhill rapidly.

The Lunar Society it ain't.

One of the few interesting things about the Board is the insight it gives into the various splits and factions among the Far-Right. There's the...

BNP Loyalists (“Griffinites”). These are the people, most of whom have joined the Boards only recently, who see their job as being to derail any debate that may be going on as soon as it becomes uncomfortable to their stance. Which is all the time. Their typical tactic, to this end, is to either use distraction, by sending things off on an entirely unrelated (but harmless) tangent (“Has anyone seen any good movies lately?”), or to just take the straightforward “I seen your Mum _________ with a __________!” approach.

There are the BNP Reformers (“Butlerites”). These are still Members, but detest Griffin and genuinely believe that they will somehow be able to wrest control of the dying enterprise from his tightly grasped claw.

Michael Barnbrook (“of the Yard” - I always expect him to end his posts with “Mind how you go” or “Keep 'em peeled”...) is a Reformer (and of the minority on the Board who actually seems to understand the concept of “debate”). He's also someone with form (to dig into my own vast experience of Met' argot: years of watching The Sweeney finally paying off there...) within his Party. Whatever the role he actually played in the Expenses Scandal (which will be debated for years to come), being on the side of the Taxpayer isn't something to be knocked, whatever your politics. He does, however, display a touchingly childlike innocence in his fond belief that, should he become Leader (he intends to stand), there might actually be something to inherit other than a pile of unpayable iou's and a brand name slightly less respected than Enron.

As a sidenote: The Griffinites routinely refer to Butler as “Brothel” Butler, or just “Buttler”. Waggish sophisticates that they are.

Then there are the Unaligned Nationalists. They aren't members of any faction, but they've done more for “Nationalism” over the years than anyone else and they're more patriotic than You. Fact. End Of. Got It?

Unaligned (now, at any rate) is one Jim Dowson, who recently posted (as “The Bruce”) a series of incoherent, grotesque rants and taunts. Aside from their entertainment value (“Griffo is the mighty king and I am his prince!”), they show his mental state to the World better than a team of burly men chasing him with a straitjacket and a butterfly net.

A recent showing on the Board is the BFP. Indeed, the Board is about the only place they exist (yesterday's “Launch” doesn't seem to have happened) and, as their “raft of policies” are distinguishable from the BNP's only with DNA analysis and a Hadron Collider, they've got their work cut out for themselves in making any kind of impact whatsoever.

And then there's (ex-BNP Webmaster) Simon Bennett. To describe him as “a bit of a strange one” is like saying Howard Hughes had the odd "funny little way" about him. In the days and weeks following his defection from the Party (a result of the Marmite fiasco), he was a Very Angry Man. But this was the kind of anger that soon turns into a Crusade For Justice. I have a friend who got a parking ticket in 2003 and has since compiled a dossier on that particular parking space that could rival the Collected Papers and Investigations of the Royal Society for exactitude, detail and pedantry. On the one hand, his Crusade against the Parking Enforcement Department of Nottingham City Council has paid off – no warden will ever mess with him again. On the other hand, he doesn't get invited to many parties anymore.

So with Bennett. At first, he seemed to be an interesting character; knowing where the bodies were buried, and always (it seemed) on the brink of marking them on a big map. But little more has come of it, and he's become yet another “Nationalist”: Albeit the self-proclaimed Guru of the Boards, who will shout down any perceived opponent and endlessly defend his own stance with an obsession (at times he seems to be on there 24/7) bordering on the unwell, and a (self-proclaimed) taste for violence and threats that doesn't so much “border” as “take up residence at the centre of” psychotic (a recent missive to someone who seems to have irked the touchy fellow ran: “Post one more time and my bat will connect with your f*****ng head you c***. I know your IP and your address you f*****g c**t”). As an asset to any emergent party (he's closely associated with the pre-doomed BFP) he can be ranked alongside Lee Barnes (whose rantings have already led to the resignation – after just over a week – of their much-trumpeted, straight-arrow Treasurer, John Savage).

If anything, the Boards demonstrate that the Far-Right are just as good (if not even better) at falling out and fragmenting as the Far-Left ever were. Once upon a time, there were three of us would (attempt to) flog the Socialist Worker (pronounced “Sooooo-Shlist Work-Ah!”) in Derby. If we'd only devoted a fraction of the energy to plotting against Thatcher that we spent planning one another's downfall, the Old Bag would've been finished by 1986.

The Boards will continue to be a useful resource for us. It's on there that the splits, the bickering, the petty squabbles and the (very) occasional useful lead are laid bare.

I think I'll rather just watch from the sidelines from now on, though...

When Tuesday comes

On Saturday morning the BNP website carried one of those venomously torrid articles in which it seems to specialise, which baldly stated that "disgraced" former webmaster Simon Bennett had stolen the BNP's email list and that legal action was being taken against him.

Some time during the afternoon the post (along with a lone "Hang him!" comment from a BNP nematode) disappeared into the cyber-ether, promoting an article on the failure of the CPS to prosecute BNP street thug and drink-driver Bob Bailey to lead story.

The BNP has a long history of threatening (or at least informing its gullible members that it is about to take) legal action against some person or entity, and almost always failing to do so. From memory, I believe we recorded three examples over the spring and summer of 2009, one of which included a promise to put the "lying" Daily Mirror in court for its coverage of "BNP mum" and female thug Helen Forster, who the BNP denied was a member after her conviction for the intimidation of neighbour Mrs Meherjan Miah was reported in the newspaper. The BNP despatched the long forgotten "Operation Fightback" in the form of lying Paul Golding to film an interview with lying Helen Forster, both of them brazenly continuing to deny Forster's BNP membership. Within hours of the film and the BNP's threats against the Mirror appearing on the party website, "Helen Forster" was recognised as "Helen Colclough" - BNP activist, and perfectly well known to Golding. The story quickly disappeared.

Why the BNP got cold feet after publishing its blunt accusation of theft against Simon Bennett we do not know. The normally voluble Bennett, prone to engage in long and tedious online spats with various representatives of the Green Arrow nursery class, does not appear to have noticed, but since he did not break off from arranging boxing matches and informing the world that his father was "lifed off for murder when I was two years old" until 4.20 am, perhaps he was still in bed when the accusation was removed.

Since Bennett, like the party from which he is estranged, is given to promising action which never materialises, it is unlikely that the highly libellous accusation was removed from the BNP website through any fear of him launching a legal action. It might have been taken down when somebody sobered up and realised what counter-productive hysterical nonsense it was, or because it was realised that the idea of the BNP having the financial wherewithal to launch a legal action against anybody would produce an avalanche of laughter from one end of the BNP to the other (Paul Morris and company excepted), as Nick Griffin had admitted that the BNP was skint and sinking just the day before.

Visitors to the BNP website cannot have failed to notice that despite repeated appeals from Griffin the BNP's EHRC Fighting Fund, with a target set at £30,000, has remained stubbornly stuck at the £10,000 mark - itself a highly dubious figure.

Griffin's latest appeal drips utter desperation in every word. "We need to raise £150,000 to keep the wolves at bay and to ensure our survival," he pleads.

He's clearly not going to get it unless some deranged benefactor with a penchant for lost causes comes to the rescue.

The parlous state of the BNP is frankly admitted by Griffin's close friend Tony Lecomber, who posts on the British Democracy Forum as BNPhappy:

Activism has already dried up. Last month the whole of the East Mids got 4 enquiries and the whole of the North East got two! Whole branches are likely going to fold. When the fence sitters see this, they are going to get disheartened and also drift away. The knock on effect of this is that, ironically, those who have been loyal to Nick will then also get disheartened and many of those will drop out.

The Shelley Rose episode appears to have been the final straw for many "fence sitters", particularly in the light of Jim Dowson's craven and very public failure either to refute Rose's allegations or to begin proceedings against her. Commenting on the Green Arrow website - one of the few places on the planet he can count on an uncritical hearing - Dowson lamely challenges Rose to go to the police, then claims that she is not worth "200 or 300k fees in clearing my name" - figures plucked out of thin air by a man clearly writhing in deep discomfort.

Dowson's curiously non-combative attitude has only lent weight to Rose's claims, and will boost Eddy Butler's leadership campaign as the nomination gathering process draws to a close.

In the midst of all this fascist angst has come the expulsion of Mark Collett, a matter that once would have occupied several posts on this website but which - though Collett is central to the current turmoil - seems scarcely worthy of a sentence. It is, of course, as we haven't heard the last of Collett (allegedly owed £20,000 by the BNP), who is involved in Eddy Butler's campaign but who, for the negative emotions he excites, is wisely being kept from view.

To cover for the fact that the police and CPS dropped the Griffin/Dowson inspired "death threat" charges against Collett for lack of evidence, Griffin's camp are suggesting that a private prosecution may be started against Collett. We don't expect to be reporting any such case any time soon.

The nominations deadline is Tuesday, when it should become clear whether or not Eddy Butler has gathered his required 20% voting member signatures. His last call for support has the urgent air of a Nick Griffin appeal for donations. It does not ooze confidence, but then Butler has been understandably tight-lipped on the matter of exactly how many nomination signatures he has gathered to date.

If he cannot gather 840 signatures then there is no challenge. Even if he does there is the tantalising question of whether scrutineer Andrew Brons will accept those submitted on Butler's own forms, as we understand that Brons is far from happy with the nomination procedure imposed by Nick Griffin.

Whatever happens, Tuesday will prove one of the most notable days in the history of the BNP, and the party's civil war is certain erupt into ever higher levels of viciousness. Stay with us for news of the endgame as it plays out.

Bilious Nasty Pathetic

Axed BNP webmaster Simon Bennett claims that supporters of leader Nick Griffin are behind a "hate mail" campaign that targetted every residential and business address in his home town of Camelford.

"Make no mistake about it," said Bennett on his website. "This sick hate campaign will have been approved by Nick Griffin."

Bennett claims that he was made aware of the campaign this morning (Friday) when Devon and Cornwall Police called him. Bennett says:

"They were alerting me to a hate mail campaign that had been conducted against me that had targeted every single residential and business address in my home town of Camelford and the surrounding areas. The police informed me that they had been inundated with complaints from local residents that know myself and my family very well, and that these people were absolutely horrified that someone could do such a wicked and evil thing to us."

The hate mail, which appears to have been posted in East London, consists of a two-sided flyer purporting to be the work of an unknown group calling itself the "Southwest Awareness Group", and makes "allegations" against Bennett of theft, drug use, forgery, blackmail and extortion - allegations made against Bennett on a smear blog set up by supporters of beleaguered BNP leader Nick Griffin. The flyer (below - click for larger) also includes Bennett's full address, where he lives with his partner and young children, aged eight and ten



Interestingly, the BNP claims to be in possession of exactly the same kind of software package that would be necessary to mass-mailshot residents and businesses in a particular area, and - unsurprisingly - Bennett's friends have not been slow to make the connection.

If Bennett's claims are true, and if this hate mail campaign is the responsibility of Nick Griffin's supporters, then the consequences for the racist party will be dire. The use the Royal Mail in this way is a serious criminal offence in the simple matter of one individual sending such mail to another individual, but there is no precedent that we know of in which a political party has hate-mailed an entire town in pursuit of an almost gangster-style vendetta against an individual.

Apart from the BNP leadership, Bennett has earned the visceral hatred of internet joke and Griffin sycophant Paul Morris (aka Green Arrow) and West Wales deputy BNP organiser Roger Phillips, who made death threats against Bristol anti-fascist Mark Watson in December of last year.

The green, Green Grass of Nantyglo

Morris, who is not a BNP member, suffers a disorder which causes him to believe that BNP leader Nick Griffin keeps a special place in his heart for Wales' best known sycophant. In fact, Griffin's opinion of the windy keyboard warrior veers between contempt and utter contempt.

"Warsash", as he likes to be known in his increasingly empty Paltalk chat room, blew an online fuse shortly after Simon Darby announced "his" decision to stand down from the post of BNP deputy leader. Hearing that a number of people had signed leadership challenger Eddy Butler's nomination papers at a meeting of Crawley BNP on Wednesday evening, "Warsash" Morris promised to publish the name of every BNP member signing the papers. In the past, of course, Morris supported and encouraged Lee Barnes, who threatened to publish the names and addresses of BNP members less than 100% loyal to Nick Griffin - which in part prompted us to publish Morris's address and led to a prolonged bout of self-pitying whining on the part of the lager-boiling hero.

Morris has made no secret that he believes any BNP member signing Butler's nomination forms should be purged from the party, and is supported by Vernon Atkinson (aka Vernon SE), who encouraged pro-Griffin members to email details of what was said at BNP branch meetings, together with the names of pro-Butler members, for non-member Morris's use.

Atkinson attended the Crawley meeting but walked out when the anti-Griffin sentiments expressed proved too much for him to bear.

Second only to Morris in his sycophancy, Atkinson is a former member of UKIP and stood as a BNP south eastern regional candidate in the 2004 Euro elections. In May, standing in Crawley's Furnace Green ward, Atkinson - who for some reason is noted for putting BNP logos on kites (go figure) - achieved a dreadful 228 votes (7.4%), yet managed not to connect his awful vote with Griffin's awful leadership.

We feel certain that Atkinson's open endorsement of the leaking of internal BNP matters and members' names to an outside agency (Morris) will result in Atkinson's swift suspension.

It will, won't it?

Having penned a fawning tribute to Simon Darby, Morris sat back while his little army of Griffin cultists weighed in with their tributes. Atkinson was soon off the mark (BNP spelling and grammar preserved): "Simon is also an iconic nationalist who will be written as a legend in the nationalist books of history of the savours of the British peoples."

And so was East Goscote (Charnwood) BNP Councillor and apostrophe enthusiast Cathy Duffy: "I cried my eye's out when I read of Simon's resignation, and can't stop now even, but I pray to God that Nick gets re-elected and Simon will come back as his deputy. If anyone is to take over this party, as might just happen, I so prayed that it was Simon. I so despair at what Eddy Butler and his crew have done to split this party, and as an elected Councillor representing the party, I don't know what the hell to do now if he should win when I do not/ can not support him and his lot! What on earth does he think he can do in ONE year and who has HE got lined up as the next leader as he say's that he will only take the position for one year only?????????? This whole thing has really upset me to say the least, and that these so called 'Nationalist's' could do this to our party is totally beyond my comprehension."

"Warsash" Morris's band of sycophants then charged over to Simon Darby's blog for a thoroughly enjoyable mass prostration at the feet of the ex-deputy leader.

Nick Griffin could, of course, rein in the out of control Morris. We have often wondered why, since Morris's activities have always diverted highly desirable funds away from the BNP proper, he has never done so to date. That Morris is openly collecting data on BNP members gives him every reason he could ever need to proscribe the ridiculous Warsash before Morris can do any more to harm the good name and reputation of the BNP.

He will, won't he?

'BNP suspension is against party code of conduct'

Three British National Party (BNP) members from Cornwall have been suspended indefinitely for criticising leader Nick Griffin.

Parliamentary candidate James Fitton, who stood in the St Austell and Newquay constituency, has also accused the party of breaking its own constitution after he was suspended. Two other members, Peter Mullins, from Liskeard, the party's former regional organiser for the South West and Simon Bennett, from Camelford, who designed and maintained the BNP's website, have also been suspended.

In a letter from party bosses, Mr Fitton is said to have been suspended for a "serious breach of BNP code of conduct" but the letter does not state any specific reason – something Mr Fitton says is against the party's own constitution. He said: "Myself and two others in Cornwall have been suspended along with a member in Torbay and there's been members suspended in the East and West Midlands."

Section 9.9 of the BNP constitution states: "The individual member concerned should, as soon as practically possible thereafter, have in writing details of the alleged offence."

Mr Fitton also accuses the party of bending the rules to suit its own needs, after a member who joined in February became sub-region organiser for Devon and Cornwall in April. Party rules state that members are on probation for two years and are unable to attain any positions within the party during that time. All three members of the party have been vocal in their criticism of Nick Griffin in recent months and the party's attitude towards Cornish members.

Mr Bennett, a member for five years, has accused Mr Griffin of "entrenching himself" as the leader. "There's been a vast majority of members up for removal, there's a climate of fear. But the truth is more important," he said.

Mr Mullins said: "There is a pyramid structure within the party and at the apex is Nick Griffin. What he says happens. He doesn't do democracy and it's virtually a dictatorship. They've kissed goodbye to the whole of Cornwall and literally thrown us in the bin."

Both Mr Mullins and Mr Bennett recently attended a meeting in Leicestershire, where a vote was carried to support Eddy Butler, from Essex, as a potential challenger for the leadership.

Cornish Guardian

It's time for Simon Bennett to stand up and be counted

One of the more entertaining aspects of running a site like Lancaster Unity is seeing the BNP regularly taking chunks out of itself when it comes under serious attack from one of its own, normally as a direct result of mistreating the member concerned.

We can say anything we like while opposing the BNP and to deflect any criticism the party will automatically claim we're lying, that we're paid to attack the BNP and thus not to be trusted or that we're working with MI5 - but there's nothing quite like an angry ex-member to really boot the boot in good and hard.

Remember Sharon Ebanks, the BNP's former Birmingham organiser? She was so angry at the way she was treated that she has spent the three years or so since then attacking Griffin in print and even went to the extreme of starting her own party. Then there was Matt Single, who was so pissed off at the antics of Griffin's gang that he released the BNP membership list into the wild to great hilarity all round, incidentally causing a lot of problems to the party and to quite a few members.

The December rebellion that followed the sackings of Kenny Smith, Sadie Graham and Single from the party produced a host of recriminations from other members and a lot of them sent information to us, which brightened things considerably from our end.

With Simon Bennett however, the party might have bitten off rather more than it can chew. Bennett, the party's former webmaster, seems to have been involved in pretty much every aspect of the BNP's operation from flogging badges to fund-raising, and the information he is revealing is gradually building up into a pretty damning indictment of the leadership. We won't dwell too much on all this because exposure is looming and we wouldn't want to prejudice any future court case. A couple of things have been mentioned of late though, which are worth a comment or two.

One of these concerns donations to the BNP. As you'll probably be aware, political parties are obliged by law to report donations that exceed a certain amount, depending on whether they are donated within or outside the UK. The accounts, which are due into the Electoral Commission shortly, are not expected to show any large donations but according to Bennett, the party has received some that qualify. Here is Bennett's take on this, from a post on the ghastly VNN forum:

'I know of several website donations that were way over £1500 that were made in the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010.

Many were clearly fake, but a good few looked totally legit. These were for £2,500 and appear not to have been declared. I know they are processed in Belfast, but under what company name is anyones guess.

I have records of ALL donations made through the website. I'd be a piss poor webmaster if I didn't. I build websites based on stats and logs. I impliment what works and what doesn't - that's my job!

I have a legal right to hold this information as Adlorries Ltd are trying to squirm out of paying me the commission they promised me, the commission I NEVER asked for or claimed - until now.'

IF this is true and can be proven and IF they are not declared, criminal charges should follow - but ONLY if Bennett provides that proof to the EC and/or the police. But this might very well be the tip of an astonishingly large iceberg. Another of his posts on VNN has this to say:

'I am sat on something that could and almost certainly would finish the BNP in an instant. It would see the party hit with a bill for £1.4m.

If I wanted to sabotage the BNP I could have done a proper job during the EU elections with what I know. The fuck ups made during that were so bad they could of (and still can) finish the party overnight.

Just ask Nick Griffin why £70,000 worth of paper was re-ordered in case the £1.4m cock up came to light...'

Intriguing stuff but I don't particularly like being teased, even with £1.4m. And the problem with dropping teasers around like this without following up pretty swiftly with some hard detail is that it merely gives scum like Griffin and his cohorts the opportunity to cover everything up.

An additional facet of this is that Bennett is, if he is to be believed, knowingly sitting on information that shows the party to have acted illegally - or at the very least, to have acted with supreme incompetence - yet he has kept quiet. If illegality is involved, doesn't that make him an accessory?

Strangely enough, this is suggested to him by a BNP member, Bev Kerry, a nasty piece of work by anyone's standards. Kerry is currently a moderator on the VNN forum, has been one on the Blood and Honour forum and posts regularly on the Stormfront forum - all hardcore nazi - all while openly being in the BNP. Tut-tut.

On his own blog, Bennett has attacked the BNP, apparently going to the extreme of uploading a telephone conversation between him and Griffin, recorded without Griffin's knowledge or consent. Kerry, playing Little Miss Legal Assistant, berates Bennett as having broken the law - even to the extent of listing the relevant laws. Very clever of her - but don't I recall the BNP releasing a recording of a conversation between Kenny Smith, Sadie Graham and Matt Single that was made without their permission or knowledge?

The BNP and Nick Griffin in particular seem to believe that they operate outside the law, largely because they have done so for years and just keep getting away with it because their opponents lack the courage to take that extra step and take the information they have to the relevant authority or even simply to make it completely public. If Bennett wants to see Griffin and his gang of crooks out of the BNP for good, this is the only way it's going to happen. In short, if Bennett wants to win his corner, he has to stop being defensive and go on the attack.

The December rebels lost out because they didn't keep up the attack on Griffin - or at least not sufficiently. By the time they had decided to break out the big guns, most of their supporters had already scuttled back to the party. Colin Auty's leadership challenge was all-round weak and feeble right up until the last minute, by which time, he'd lost any advantage he might have had.

Bennett is in a unique position because he has all the ammunition he needs and he clearly has the ability to make use of it, but if he wants to topple Griffin, he needs to move fast and hard, and if he does so, he could clear out the rest of the crap like Jim Dowson, Arthur Kemp and Clive Jefferson/Aitken along with their boss.

Bennett can take action now and can achieve what he wants to achieve, or he can sit back and ignore all the illegalities and the incompetence, thus becoming openly complicit in the continuing disaster that is Nick Griffin's BNP. The choice is his but it needs making sooner rather than later or he'll end up being yet another forgotten rebel in a very long list of forgotten rebels.

Ex-BNP webmaster confirms Jim Dowson owns the BNP

The British National Party learned the hard way that exploiting and cheating its own supporters has unpleasant consequences, when two days before polling day its webmaster removed the BNP website from the internet

Simon Bennett replaced the site, which received more visitors than any other political party website, with a brief statement accusing the party of “several attempts of theft today with regards to design work and content owned by myself”. He also claimed that Arthur Kemp and Jim Dowson, two close aides to Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, had threatened violence against him and his family.

Bennett’s action meant that supporters could no longer make online donations or membership applications. For the first time for many months, BNP e-news bulletins came without a donation button.

Bennett had been in dispute with Dowson, the convicted criminal who in effect owns the BNP, for a year, but matters came to a head when Griffin insisted, against Bennett’s advice, on adding an image of a jar of Marmite to a version of the BNP’s television election broadcast pre-released on the party website.

Simon Bennett (above) pulled the plug on the
BNP website alleging Jim Dowson tried to steal his work

According to a longer statement by Bennett, this “very deliberate copyright infringement” was a stunt by Griffin and Dowson to provoke a reaction from Unilever, which owns the Marmite brand, and so “create publicity and a fund raising opportunity”. In the event, Bennett claimed, website traffic, donations and membership applications barely increased at all.

After Unilever responded by launching proceedings over copyright infringement, Griffin and Dowson realised they had underestimated the severity of the legal and financial consequences and came up with pathetic excuses, such as a claim that a “joker” had amended the film. When Unilever’s lawyers refused to believe them, Bennett says he was expected “to go to court and lie through my teeth in order to bail them out of a ridiculous hole they had dug themselves into”.

Griffin and Dowson had misjudged Bennett. Unlike they themselves and their more sycophantic supporters, Bennett “was not prepared to spend five years in prison for perjury just to protect the financial interests of fools” and told Unilever’s lawyers the truth.

Bennett had refused to do their bidding so Griffin and Dowson wanted him out. Bennett was prepared to go but wanted to be paid for his website design work. Claiming he had invested around £40,000 into the site, he said he was not prepared simply to hand it over to Griffin and Dowson so that they could use it to make more money. “It was my bloody hard work, commitment and money that developed that site into the success it became,” wrote Bennett, “and for Dowson to try and force control of it for his own advantage made me feel sick.”

Money is what it is all about – not for Bennett but for Griffin and Dowson, who, Bennett claims, is paid £120,000 a year by the party. As Searchlight already knew from other sources, Bennett’s dispute with Dowson started over the fact that the telesales staff at Dowson’s call centre earned commission from subscriptions and party memberships and so were telling party members not to renew their membership on the website because it was “unsafe and had been hacked”.

Bennett complained to Griffin who said he would look into it. Shortly afterwards he was contacted by the call centre manager, Kate Hunt, and Dowson. A heated exchange ended with Dowson threatening: “I am a Glasgow/Belfast man as you are about to find out. I was patient simon [sic] but you crossed the line sir, its time some manners were put on you.”

Bennett had crossed Dowson and could not win. As Bennett says in his statement, confirming the conclusions of Searchlight’s investigations: “Jim Dowson now controls just about every aspect of the party structure (including the recently acquired print services) and also the party’s finances with one exception. You’ve guessed it – the website!”

By the Sunday after election day the BNP had a new website up and running, set up by Chris Barnett who, Bennett says, used to run a web server for an online pornographic studio in Birmingham. But the story was not over. Bennett also had control of the party’s Facebook site, with its nearly 26,000 members, and its Twitter feed. He now linked them to a new website of his own on which he exposed Dowson’s financial dealings with the BNP and called for reform of the party.

As well as setting up his own site Bennett posted on various far-right internet forums, disclosing the nefarious ways the BNP operates. On one he revealed that Kemp, the BNP’s website editor who had moved through a variety of party posts, had also threatened Bennett and had once opposed Griffin.

“He threatened to drive to Cornwall, rip my head off off and shove it up my @rse,” wrote Bennett. “I expected better of him too, but I noticed the change in his anti-griffin attitude once he started ‘fund-raising’ for our best friend Jim. From that day on he became very pro-Jim and pro-griffin, even though he knew they planned his downfall at the EU election planning meeting in 2008. They humiliated him, stripped him of his position, income and dignity. He suffered it for over a year until he was offered a scrap of food which he grabbed with both hands and stabbed me in the back to get to it.”

Bennett also removed Griffin’s personal MEP’s website though not the similar websites he runs for Andrew Brons, the BNP’s other MEP, and Richard Barnbrook, the party’s London Assembly member, with whom he has no dispute.

The BNP has taken legal proceedings against Bennett, presumably paid for out of members’ donations, but that has not silenced him. Bennett is gradually adding to his new website, which is likely to become a centre for any moves to oust Griffin from the BNP leadership in the coming months.

Searchlight

Griffin tries to buy time with resignation ploy

Under pressure from a series of revelations by the British National Party’s former webmaster Simon Bennett and calls for new leadership by party activists and organisers stung by their disastrous election results, Nick Griffin has announced that he will step down as leader “by the end of 2013”.

His declaration, made to a meeting of the party’s Advisory Council and key organisers on 22 May, is unlikely to satisfy those who have been contributing to Bennett’s website trying to win support for a leadership challenge this year. Many will consider that three and a half years is too long for the party to stagnate under Griffin, and will be all too well aware of Griffin’s past form at wriggling out of awkward situations and commitments.

According to a statement on the BNP website, Griffin intends to concentrate on getting re-elected to the European Parliament in 2014. He then intends “to help the other European nationalist parties to achieve the level of sophistication which the BNP has been able to build up, because a victory for any one of these parties is a victory to all of us”.

These “European nationalist parties” are likely to include some of Europe’s most hardline racist and fascist organisations. Griffin and his fellow BNP MEP Andrew Brons are members of the Alliance of European National Movements, a far-right group in the European Parliament formed in Budapest last October. Its other members are the three MEPs from Hungary’s fascist Jobbik party and the three French National Front MEPs.

The group is also supported by Italy’s Fiamma Tricolore, the Belgian National Front and the Swedish National Democrats, none of which have MEPs.

Griffin’s announcement shows that he remains more an internationalist fascist than a British nationalist, true to the politics he learned from his mentor, the convicted Italian terrorist Roberto Fiore. No doubt he has also become accustomed to the European Parliament’s generous salary and expenses regime.

Between now and 2013, Griffin intends to concentrate on “putting into place of the last ‘building blocks’ of the BNP’s administrative and political machine”. This is a more buoyant description than in his e-newsletters since the election in which he said that the party’s “underdeveloped elections department” had to be overhauled and restructured.

Griffin would then make way for “a younger person who does not have any baggage which can be used against the party,” a recognition that his presence is a liability for the party. Finding a person without “baggage”, who “will be able to drive support up to where it [the BNP] can be a serious contender for power” may be hard. Until now, any person fitting that description has left the party either in one of Griffin’s “purges” or because they have discovered that the party is not what they expected it to be.

The extended Advisory Council meeting also heard “consultant” Jim Dowson claim that “contrary to internet rumour-mongers”, the BNP owns the “Truth Truck” advertising vehicle for which Dowson raised a reported £80,000 or more in 2008. This was apparently confirmed in person by Jennie Noble, “the BNP treasurer who paid for the vehicle”.

If that is true then why did the BNP’s solicitors tell bailiffs trying to seize the vehicle to meet a debt that it was owned by an unconnected third party?

Dowson also stated that he did not take a commission on transactions through the BNP’s Belfast call centre. However he was silent on whether his call centre staff, who include friends and relations of Dowson and Griffin, were paid commission on party memberships and other sales, as evidenced by Bennett.

He did however reveal that he, under the guise of his “Midas Consultancy” business, was paid £165,000 for raising £2.6 million in donations for the party since January 2008.

Whether Dowson really has raised £2.6 million cannot be verified at present. The 2008 accounts showed an increase in donations of £662,000 over 2007, but the 2009 accounts will not be available until the end of July, provided the party manages to submit them on time. The BNP claimed to have raised over £500,000 for its European election campaign and there have been some fundraising appeals since then, such as to fight the legal action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) over the BNP’s “whites only” membership criterion, but central party fundraising for this year’s elections seemed to have stalled. Much of the money to pay for general election deposits and leaflets was raised locally by party branches, with no input from Dowson.

Even if Dowson has raised a seven-figure sum, BNP members might raise eyebrows at the amount paid to a consultant who is always keen to point out that he is not a party member.

The meeting was told that BNP membership now stands at “just under 14,000 … increasing by several hundred every month” and that the rate at which BNP members fail to renew has decreased from over 70% to less 20%, now doubt testament to the harassment several members have reported from Dowson’s call centre – people rejoin just to stop the constant phone calls. The BNP has past form in exaggerating its membership and we can only wait to see how these claims compare with the audited figures in the party’s 2009 and 2010 accounts.

Missing from the announcements was any response to the numerous members who are calling for greater transparency in the BNP’s finances.

Griffin concluded by claiming that the party had “emerged from the meeting re-energised and ready for the ongoing struggle to save our nation from destruction at the hands of the old parties”, which is a rather creative way of describing the widespread disillusionment following the twin blows of the party’s capitulation over admitting “non-white” members and its rout in the general and local elections.

Hope not hate

Simon Bennett removes Griffin’s website

Click on image to see it full-size

Simon Bennett, the BNP’s former web-master, has taken his fight against the BNP to a new level and removed Griffin’s personal website. He has, however, left Andrew Brons’ site alone.

It seems that Bennett is unlikely to give up any time soon – rumour has it he has launched a new website attacking the BNP. Things are going from bad to worse for Griffin and the BNP.

Nothing British

BNP leaflet to black Christian voters branded 'obscene'

Far-right party mails 24,000 'black' electors in Barking and Dagenham urging them to vote against 'unchristian' Labour

A BNP leaflet designed to woo the black Christian vote in Barking and Dagenham has been branded "obscene" by one of its recipients.

The targeted leaflet, which accuses Labour of undermining Christian values and promoting "ungodly lifestyles", was sent to 24,000 people in the borough. It features a picture of Nick Griffin next to the Rev George Hargreaves, the leader of the Christian party, and was sent out last week after the BNP trawled the electoral register looking for people with "African names".

In it, Griffin says: "I am writing to you personally to set your mind at rest. A lot of rubbish is being written and talked about how the BNP is supposed to be some kind of 'threat' to black and ethnic minority groups in Barking … I want to reassure you that, as a Christian and a man who believes passionately in core British values including democracy and freedom, I am not standing in this election to persecute or hurt anybody, or any race and religion."

After berating the government for damaging Christian values and encouraging "the spread of Islam", he adds: "Surely, no believer can vote Labour and walk with the Lord Jesus Christ."

A BNP spokesman said: "Our campaigners trawled through the electoral register and identified 24,000 African names. They have each received a personal letter from Nick Griffin to counteract the alarmist claims being made by [Labour MP] Margaret Hodge that if the British National party are elected the borough will descend into chaos."

Hargreaves told the Guardian there was nothing his party could do about his image appearing on the leaflet.

"I haven't seen the leaflet, so I can't comment on it, but we're taking legal advice," he said. "[But] they haven't defamed us, so there's nothing we can do."

He said that although there was a "politics of fear stalking Barking", the Christian party was urging people to vote on principles rather than prejudice.

"Our message is faith, not fear," he said. "Our scriptures tell us that we should not go to the polls because we are frightened of anybody, but because we believe in the values of those people who are standing."

One Barking and Dagenham resident – a British citizen with Indian Caribbean heritage – described the BNP leaflet campaign as "obscene". The resident, who did not want to be identified, does not have an African first or second name and expressed surprise at receiving the leaflet.

"I was extremely concerned to receive direct mail from the BNP, particularly as it was sent to me on the basis of my ethnicity," said the resident. "I find it disturbing that a political party with far-right links and extreme views is keeping lists of people categorised by ethnicity. Ethnic profiling is not an acceptable means of polling and I am very scared."

The leaflet, the resident added, had stirred fears that the BNP would "consider repatriation of me and my mixed-heritage child to several countries that I no longer have links to … It is obscene."

The BNP did not respond to the Guardian's questions about how it had obtained data on Barking and Dagenham residents who do not have African names.

Although the party had predicted it would create a "political earthquake", claiming it was on course to win two parliamentary seats and take control of Barking and Dagenham council, its campaign has been beset by problems, and it is floundering in the polls.

Internal criticism over Nick Griffin's leadership came to a head last month when the publicity director, Mark Collett, was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill him. In Stoke, the party's number two electoral target, Alby Walker, who led the BNP on the local council for four years, is standing as an independent.

Yesterday, a new row erupted when the BNP's website was closed down and replaced with a posting from the webmaster Simon Bennett, stating he had been "in dispute with some elements of the management of the party" and claiming there had been "several attempts to steal" his work. The website was later reinstated but on his own blog Bennett added that there had been a number of "highly questionable shenanigans going on at BNP HQ" with which he was unhappy.

The letter can be read here.

Guardian

Stop the BNP from shamelessly exploiting injured British soldiers

Letter from the BNP's Simon Bennett, with useful notes

Last Friday we received an email from the BNP purporting to be from an ordinary member of the public. It asked for people to send in birthday cards to a BNP collection centre in the West Midlands so that they can be delivered to Fusilier Tom James, a badly injured Afghanistan veteran.

Our concern has been that the BNP will attempt to use these birthday cards for political advantage. (Please read our campaign Advisory Notice here explaining our evidence).

Last October we organised a campaign which highlighted the BNP’s distasteful attempts to exploit veterans, supported by Generals Sir Richard Dannatt, Sir Mike Jackson, Lord Guthrie and Major-General Patrick Cordingley. The campaign was also supported by brave veterans such as Andy McNab, Simon Weston and Iraq War commander Colonel Tim Collins.

The lack of transparency on the BNP’s part for this particular campaign is shameful. According to the owner of the picture, Picture It Now, Simon Bennett did not obtain a valid licence to use this picture in this email. In short this nothing more than obtaining good will by deception.

The BNP’s “Fusilier Tom James campaign” has been slammed by members of the veterans community and those who are closely associated with the military.

Major General Patrick Cordingley attacked the BNP’s lack of transparency. He told Nothing British

“It is just so regrettable that they are being anything less than transparent.”

Simon Darby has already said on his blog that the British National Party intends to use our veterans and the military throughout its election campaign as party political propaganda. But the purpose of this is not to stop the BNP from shamelessly exploiting our veterans, but to remind the public that a party mired in corruption, violence, criminality and un-British behaviour are using shadowy tactics to exploit the heroism of those who are prepared to die for this country. As very senior former member of the Armed Forces told Nothing British this week, “One of the number one rules in the British forces is that you don’t exploits our boys and girls in the forces.” We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

Simon Weston, a former veteran of the Falklands War, has said that “deplored the subterfuge and underhand politics” of the email and the BNP. Mr Weston said that he had no problem with people wanting to send birthday cards to veterans so long as they were “open and honest” but he said it should not be used as a “political ploy”, as with this campaign. He then added that these sorts of shadowy tactics and the BNP’s attempts to play on the “insecurities of ordinary people” was “anti-British”.

Adam Holloway MP, a former Grenadier Guardsman and member of the Defence Select Committee, exclusively told Nothing British:

“I was with a British Asian Paratroop Regiment mate of mine who has served in Afghanistan and has won loads of medals for this country. A few weeks ago he met some supporters from the BNP in a pub and asked them what have they ever done for this country. They couldn’t answer him. To me that says it all.”

Liam Fox MP, Conservative Shadow Defence, told NB:

“This is a shameless and disgraceful exploitation of our injured service personnel to promote what is a hateful political organisation.”

Veterans Scotland, an organisation that represents all the veterans charities in Scotland, told us they were sending out our memo to all veterans charities in Scotland. COBSEO, the umbrella organisation for UK veterans charities, have also been informed.

Nothing British

British Wildcats Exposed

[Ministry of Truth] reveals that the operator of the British Wildcats website, which featured on tonight’s Newsnight, is actually BNP ‘web guru’, Simon Bennett.

Infantile buffoon Simon Bennett and friends

Bennett, who lives in Cornwall and is listed on the leaked BNP membership list as an activist, also operates a number of other BNP front websites, including those of the ‘Association of British Ex-Servicemen’, the BNP’s fake ex-forces organisation and that of its religious front operation, the ‘Christian Council of Britain’. He is also the designer/webmaster behind the website of BNP London Assembly member, Richard Barnbrook, and the BNP’s main national website.

The proof?

A WHOIS search on britishwildcats.com gives an IP address of 87.117.239.65 and DNS records hosted by nameservers registered to copperflash.com.

Bennett is the owner of copperflash.com, which he registered under his real name, giving the domain name, simonbennett.co.uk as its administrative contact, leading us back to Bennett’s personal site - www.simonbennett.co.uk - and to his ‘featured sites’, including Barnbrook’s and those of ABEX, CCOB, The ‘National Liberal Party’ (yep, another fascist front) and the BNP’s ‘Great White Records’.

Of these sites, all but the ABEX and Great White Records sites operate from the same reseller account and IP address - 87.117.239.65 - the same IP address and account as the British Wildcats site.

And, to clinch the deal, the BNP’s own national website, which credits Bennett as its designer, operates from the same hosting service/account, albeit under its own IP address of 87.117.239.66, just one address away from that of Bennett’s site, Barnbrook’s site and the British Wildcats site.

All of which confirms this to be an official/semi-offical BNP front operation.

Ministry of Truth