ONE FOR THE ROAD: Boozy Bailey beers it up with his mates at a fascist festival last year
Robert Bailey, leader of the BNP group on Barking and Dagenham council, thinks that Times journalists are "ugly and nasty".
Speaking to the Romford and Havering Post to defend the violent ejection of a Times reporter from a BNP meeting on 14 February, Bailey said: "A lot of people that work for The Times are very ugly and nasty".
The meeting, in an insalubrious pub in Elm Park, Hornchurch, voted to allow non-whites to join the BNP, but made other constitutional changes to ensure that they could never gain any power in the organisation.
Bailey, who is also the BNP's London organiser and has a drink driving conviction, is known for shouting abuse at a woman journalist through a loud hailer outside the offices of the Ilford Recorder.
Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor of The Times, is evicted from the BNP meeting in Hornchurch
The British National Party voted yesterday to change its constitution to allow black and Asian people to become members
The decision came at an extraordinary general meeting in Essex that was called after a court ordered the far-right party to comply with race relations laws. A court will decide in March whether the changes bring the BNP within the legislation. However, the party’s democratic credentials were called into question when a reporter from The Times was bundled out of a press conference shortly before Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, was due to speak. A party official objected to a profile which had appeared in the newspaper at the weekend.
The Times had been invited by Simon Darby, the party's press officer, with other media, to hear Mr Griffin describe the constitutional changes. However Richard Barmbrook, a local councillor and a member of the London Assembly, who was upset by an article about him in The Times on Saturday, said that the newspaper was unwelcome inside the Elm Park pub in Hornchurch, where the meeting took place.
After The Times tried to explain that the newspaper had been officially invited into the building, the BNP's security staff lifted and shoved its reporter out of the building, grabbing his nose. A punch was also thrown by security staff and the reporter was flung at a parked car outside.
Mr Griffin said The Times had lied about the party. He said: “Because he is from The Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and it lies and it lies and it lies about this party. So he was told ’we’re sorry, you told one lie too many’, The Times, so we are not allowing anyone from The Times in – kindly leave. He refused to leave when he was asked so he had to be encouraged to leave.”
A BBC reporter asked if he would be removed if he said the wrong thing. Mr Griffin replied: “If you utter some outrageous lie about me... you won’t be welcome again.”
Mr Griffin told Sky News he expected a “trickle, rather than a flood” of applications from black and Asian people. He said: “Anyone can be a member of this party. We are happy to accept anyone as a member providing they agree with us that this country should remain fundamentally British.”
One man grabbed my nose and tried to remove it from my face. I was seized and shoved out of the door towards a parked car. I threw my hands out to steady myself. A BNP thug snarled: “Don’t touch people’s cars mate.” Obviously, I offered no resistance.
I had gone to the Elm Park pub in Hornchurch to report on a press conference at which Nick Griffin, MEP for North West England and chairman of the British National Party, was to explain how his activists had just passed an historic membership reform. Although I had been invited, one prominent BNP politician had taken exception to an article in Saturday’s edition of The Times. After he lost his temper with me I was quickly shoved and lifted out of the building, hit in the back and had my face squashed.
The BNP, the most successful hard-right party since Oswald Mosley’s 1930s neo-Nazi Blackshirts, had been forced by equality legislation to hold an extraordinary general meeting to let non-whites become members.
The party faithful had gathered at Upminster railway station at 11am to be given directions to a secret location — all part of the effort to outwit any left-wing agitators who might have been leaked Mr Griffin’s location. The activists soon found themselves on a five-minute drive through East End suburbs to the Elm Park pub.
It was Valentine’s Day but the hundred or so white activists, mainly men and almost all clad in black, walked past the florists into a room with a bar, snooker table and stage festooned in St George’s crosses, Union flags and posters saying: “Support our troops — bring our boys home”. Everybody in the BNP looks like a bouncer, so it is only by the “Security” signs on the back of their jackets that the real protection team can be spotted, ready to save their leader from the Lefties who had, frustratingly, failed to appear.
I recognised Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s London Assembly member and a local councillor, outside the pub and approached him for a quote. When I introduced myself, he became extremely angry, objecting to an article in The Times on Saturday that said that in his local area he was spat at on the street and that some of his neighbours were worried about kind of visitors he had at his house.
A few minutes later he stormed across the road carrying a copy of the story, printed from Times Online at 10.57 yesterday morning, just before the party get-together. He made it clear that The Times was not welcome in his manor. I listened patiently to his objections but made no comment.
While the BNP met behind closed doors I visited people from ethnic minorities in the neighbourhood to see if they would join when the rules changed. A Turkish man serving at a general store had no idea what they stood for and was unable to comment.
I followed the sound of clapping upstairs to the Redeemed Christian Church of God, where one of the elders. Peter David, 56, who came to Britain from Trinidad in the 1970s, left the worshipping to tell me that, yes, he would consider supporting the BNP. He said that he was a former Labour councillor but had become disillusioned. “I have come to the point where this small island, if you put too many people on it, the island might sink. It’s only now the British Government have decided the borders have got to be tightened and secured. The BNP have been talking about this for some time. People have the wrong idea of the BNP as a racist group.”
With this viewpoint in my notebook, I headed back to the pub, where a press conference was being organised. Simon Darby, the BNP’s national spokesman, had been speaking with me on the telephone during the day and had briefed me for ten minutes about the constitutional reform while we stood on the pavement outside.
The press were led to the entrance to the pub, where we could hear a tape of Jerusalem being played, followed by enthusiastic applause. The security guards checked each individual into the room. The Times photographer and I were clearly identified. Mr Darby called me by my first name and said that I could come in, although he added: “Don’t send Fiona” — a reference to my colleague Fiona Hamilton, who has a series of BNP scoops behind her. In my job I have to try to speak with people from all walks of life. I have met Mr Griffin before and spoken with him plenty of times on the telephone. This was the first time I had met Mr Darby in person although we had often discussed matters by phone. Both are quite capable of displaying basic manners.
Mr Griffin, wearing a smart suit and looking younger and fitter than I last remember, was preparing to do some interviews for television cameras and I prepared to take notes of what he said. At that point Mr Barnbrook appeared and said that I was unwelcome in the pub because I worked for The Times. I tried to explain to an official that I had been invited in by the press officer but I was told to leave. A security official gave me a sneaky hit in the small of the back. I pointed out that he had assaulted me. He denied it.
I stood my ground. The official asked me whether I would leave, and warned me that I would be ejected. I declined to give a yes or no answer since I thought that there must be a misunderstanding and that Mr Darby, or maybe Mr Griffin, would sort it out. It was a long way to the door, and I could hardly believe that they would physically force me out of the room in front of the massed media, having invited me in by my first name.
In a matter of moments I found about half a dozen security guys enthusiastically removing me. One threw a punch but it failed to land.
Inside, Mr Griffin gave a series of interviews. Asked about my rough ejection, he said that it was “because he is from The Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and it lies and it lies and it lies about this party. So he was told, ‘We’re sorry, you told one lie too many’, so we are not allowing anyone from The Times in — kindly leave. He refused to leave so he had to be encouraged to leave.”
No such exchange took place. I was simply invited in and then ambushed by his henchmen.
Maybe they were all just frustrated because the Anti-Nazi League failed to turn up. I’ve just looked in the mirror at the Burger King where I am filing this story and spotted the blood drying on my face. I never thought I would actually get my nose bloodied trying to cover a press conference for a British political party — but that is the true face of Nick Griffin and his BNP. The Times
Here is a video with the above taking place in the background.
The BNP likes to present itself as a party that tells the truth, unlike mainstream political parties that rely on lies, misrepresentation and spin, but have yet again demonstrated that this is far from the case.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, recently wrote an article for the Times on immigration and the rise of the BNP. Carey was immediately denounced by the BNP Legal Director as an ‘idiot’ working for ‘Zionists’, but the BNP’s official statement on the article has wisely avoided following Barnes’s line (as it usually does). The BNP website’s take on Carey’s article (‘Lord Carey predicts BNP victory in Dagenham’) puts a typically dishonest spin on what he actually said. From the BNP’s commentary, you’d think Carey was on the verge of joining the party and it appears that he has endorsed them.
BNP website:
Writing in The Times this morning Lord Carey warns:
“The fact is that a rise in the UK population by ten million in two decades will put our nation’s resources under considerable strain, stretching almost to breaking point the enormous reserves of tolerance and generosity of the British people. Failure to take that action could be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society.”
He also acknowledges that the million people who voted for the British National Party at the European Elections had genuine concerns about both overpopulation and the ability of this nation to integrate new communities whose values are sometimes very different, even antithetical, to our own.
What Carey said:
The fact is that a rise in the UK population by ten million in two decades will put our nation’s resources under considerable strain, stretching almost to breaking point the enormous reserves of tolerance and generosity of the British people.
The declaration by no means spells out a halt to immigration. In fact we welcome the contribution of both economic migrants and asylum seekers to our lively cosmopolitan culture. But we urge a return to the levels of the early 1990s, about 40,000, compared with 163,000 in 2008. Failure to take that action could be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society.
Last year nearly a million votes were cast for the British National Party. We cannot ignore the fact that such far-right groups exploit genuine concerns about both overpopulation and the ability of this nation to integrate new communities whose values are sometimes very different, even antithetical, to our own.
BNP website:
He then went even further, and predicted that the British National Party could win the parliamentary seat of Dagenham at the General Election.
He told the readers of Britain’s premier newspaper:
“In Dagenham, where I was brought up, the white working-class electorate, alienated by far-reaching social change and largely ignored by the mainstream parties, could vote for a BNP Member of Parliament.”
He said that people were supporting the BNP because it was the only political party echoing the sense of unfairness that many people felt about immigrants, economic migrants and bogus asylum seekers coming to Britain and availing themselves of our social services and our jobs.
What Carey said:
In Dagenham, where I was brought up, there is a very real danger that a white working-class electorate, alienated by far-reaching social change and largely ignored by the mainstream parties, could vote for a BNP Member of Parliament. This would be a tragedy in our long history of parliamentary democracy. Yet we play into the hands of the far Right if we do not seriously address the concerns that have led to some otherwise decent people supporting modern-day fascism.
For some reason, the BNP’s statement fails to offer a link to Carey’s article. I wonder why that is?
To hear the phrase “Christian Britain” coming from the mouth of Nick Griffin made me shudder. It was the most chilling moment of Question Time, perhaps better described as the Nick Griffin Show.
And what a pity that none of the other panelists challenged Griffin’s deceitful attempt to align his despicable policies with Christianity. This squalid racist must not be allowed to hijack one of the world’s great religions.
All of us who believe in tolerance and decency must stand shoulder-to-shoulder in rejection of Griffin’s notion that “Christianity” has any place in his bigotry. I tend to agree that the BBC was mistaken to give the BNP such prominence. To use Margaret Thatcher’s phrase, it was the “oxygen of publicity” that propelled the insignificant and undeserving party into the Big Time. The BBC’s Director General errs in arguing that in a democracy all views should be heard. The views of the BNP are not simply false, they are dangerous, indeed irredeemably evil.
Nevertheless, ‘Any Questions’ DID expose Nick Griffin’s views to public scrutiny. What we saw on our screens was a 21st Century pipsqueak heir to Hitler and Mosley. If the public believed beforehand that support for the BNP was a protest vote against remote or out of touch politicians, they were proved wrong. The BNP leader was unveiled as a sly, shifty figure who would hide unpalatable truths, and cynically spin regardless of the truth, for the sake of votes and funds.
The relationship between tabloid reporting and the increase in the BNP's popularity is an interesting one to look at. We know tabloid nonsense gets churnalised over on the BNP's website, we know that the party advertises and sells Melanie Phillips' book via its website, and we know the policy of attacking Muslims rather than any other group is based on the prominence of negative stories in the news media, so it seems the tabloids are at least contributing to an environment where far right ideas may seem more attractive to some.
There is still a little bit of ambiguity between cause and effect here though. Does tabloid coverage cause people to vote for the BNP, or are the tabloids merely reflecting a rightward shift in public opinion? I know what I think, but you know what? I'm not going to bother arguing it right now. And that's because it's much much easier to show how the tabloids contribute to support for the campaign of new ball-'eds on the block, the English Defence League, to kick off violent confrontations with brown people Muslims. (More on the EDL at Bartholomew's Notes on Religion, and the BBC). The EDL have produced a video to drum up support for their campaign to stir up violent trouble and drag the country back to the seventies and 40 odd years further back with their black shirts and stiff armed 'seig heils' march for freedom by supporting the restriction of religious, er, freedom. Or something. It's geared toward an upcoming event in Manchester.
The video's a bit rubbish, and amounts to a series of still images juxtaposed against each other to stirring music. Rumbold at Pickled Politics has pointed out the pisspoor crusader imagery, but there is a series of 22 images in the video that are of particular interest to this blog.
These 22 images are of headlines from the news media and around the internet - headlines to negative stories about Muslims. Only three of these stories are not from the mainstream media. Here's a league table of where the 19 that are left come from:
The Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday (8)
The Daily/Sunday Express (4)
The Daily/Sunday Telegraph (3)
The BBC (1)
The (DGMT owned) Evening Standard (1)
Here's the surprising thing. Only six of those stories are about specific terrorist plots, and none are about 9/11 or 7/7. Rather than stories including emotive images of the twin towers exploding or the Russell Square bus with the roof blown off, the remaining 12 articles pictured are examples of scaremongering about sharia law, the number of schoolchildren speaking English as a second language and so on. It would probably be useful to go through them and give quick and dirty rundown of the 'ooga-booga look at the scary brown people mainstream articles' used for recruitment to the EDL cause.
Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday Will Britain one day be Muslim? - an opinion piece (in the 'News' section and not flagged as opinion), which mentions 'the enemy within', scaremongers with guff about birth rates and bigs up Mark Steyn.
Schoolboys punished with detention for refusing to kneel down and pray to Allah - a story that fails to explain or link to later information about the case that revealed that the boys were not given detention for failing to kneel and pray to Allah. You might have thought that would be relevant. It wouldn't have mattered much if the EDL had included screenshots from the story that revealed that the teacher had never made pupils kneel and pray to Allah or put anyone in detention for refusing to do so anyway, as it was still headlined Teacher sacked after 'making pupils kneel and pray to Allah' during RE lesson. Hurrah for truth and honesty.
Government renames Islamic terrorism as 'anti-Islamic activity' to woo Muslims - a James Slack classic. The headline makes the value judgment that terrorism carried out by Muslims is 'Islamic' at the same time as offering a false reason for the change in the way such terrorism is referenced. The article later reveals that the change is because "Security officials believe that directly linking terrorism to Islam is inflammatory, and risks alienating mainstream Muslim opinion" - and that Jaqui Smith used the term once rather than it becoming the official government label for such activity. Truth and honesty?
Daily/Sunday Express HATE PREACHER: I WANT SHARIA LAW IN BRITAIN - there's a better description of Anjem Choudhary than 'Muslim'. Or 'prick', for newspaper purposes at least.
BROWN: DON'T SAY TERRORISTS ARE MUSLIMS - the headline isn't actually true. It refers to the same sort of thing as the Mail story above. Although that one came six months later.
The Daily/Sunday Telegraph We want to offer Sharia Law in Britain - a more sober look at sharia courts from the Telegraph, which still manages to open with a negative vignette about the 'mundane' tasks they carry out.
CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US - a story actually about how a former CIA officer who had advised Obama told the Telegraph that the biggest threat was from Britain. Not, as the headline would suggest, a story about how Obama is currently being advised by the CIA that Britain is definitely the greatest terrorist threat to the US.
Now, although the EDL do further monkey around with these stories with the way they're juxtaposed (putting the more sober Telegraph story next to the fearmongering ones from the Express and Mail, or the one about children not being able to speak English next to ones about Muslim Schools 'banning our culture' for instance) most of their work has been done for them. Even the papers themselves create false impressions by monkeying around with the juxtaposition of images and words and even entire stories, just like the EDL. Look at the Mail story scaremongering and making false claims about the number of school pupils who can't speak English. It only tangentially involves Muslims, and yet it's included in an anti-Muslim video because the picture the paper used to illustrate it includes a girl in a headscarf.
But it's not just the careful placement of images and stories that the tabloids help out with.
Of the six Mail headlines that aren't about specific terrorist plots, three are false (I'm including the 'detention for not kneeling and praying to Allah' story because the updated version is false), one is opinion dressed as news, one is reporting the results of a right wing think-tank as absolute truth and the last labels a ridiculous extremist merely with his religion, which is about as useful as labelling him 'bearded man'.
Of the four Express headlines, three have been exaggerated beyond the recognition of the facts in the story itself, and two perform the famous Express trick of casting Muslims as not 'us' or 'ours'.
The rest (including the ones from the Telegraph and Standard) are either spun in a quietly negative manner or reporting something Anjem Choudhary has said. There's little wrong with those things by themselves, but when they're included alongside misleadingly exaggerated scaremongering - as they are in the papers themselves as well as the EDL video, they don't really help community relations very much.
I've left aside the ones about terrorist plots, because you can't really blame papers for reporting these. They have also been exaggerated, but not only by the papers. Obsolete has more about these, and they're not exactly straightforward themselves.
So there you have it. Tabloid distortion used directly to recruit for extreme right-wing activity. I'm not merely surmising that these stories might help in this aim - I'm showing recruiting material that deliberately uses direct screenshots of the stuff I write about here to stir up support for the goons we've seen trying to provoke violence - sometimes successfully - in recent months.
Here's the difficult question. Would the EDL exist to produce this video at all if it wasn't for the sort if dishonest coverage the video contains?
Poll puts the United Kingdom Independence party on 15%, compared to 3% for British National party
The UK Independence party rather than the BNP appears to be the main beneficiary of public disillusionment with the political elite, according to polling this week. In a YouGov survey for the Sun published today, 15% of voters said they would vote Ukip in the coming European elections and 3% for the far-right British National party.
Paul Nuttall, Ukip's chairman and a candidate for the European parliament in the north-west of England, said: "This ties in with everything we are seeing when we are out campaigning and everything we are hearing on the doorstep. It is good that people are starting to see that the voice of protest is not the BNP but Ukip."
This week Ukip said they would replace the expenses system with one similar to that of Sweden, where second homes in Stockholm for members who live outside the capital are provided by the parliament, the Riksdag, and let to MPs free of charge.
A Times/Populus poll this week put Ukip on 6% and the BNP on 2%. BNP polling figures may be an underestimate, however, since voters can be reluctant to declare their support for that party.
The BNP launched their local and European election campaign this week concentrating on the expenses scandal. Four men in pig masks appeared on the stage behind Nick Griffin, the party leader, stuffing fake money into their pockets before actors dressed as "workers" wearing fluorescent jackets and hard hats beat them away with placards.
Griffin claimed his party would win six or seven seats in the European parliament at the elections.
About 100 workers have told Royal Mail bosses in Bristol and Somerset that they refuse to deliver BNP leaflets. A Royal Mail spokesperson said: "Where possible we will try to be flexible and sensitive to individual personal circumstances or beliefs. However, we need to balance this with Royal Mail's legal obligations under the Representation of People Act, to deliver election material."
ONE FOR THE ROAD: Boozy Bailey beers it up with his mates at a fascist festival last year
