Midland hospital snubs BNP donation

Selly Oak Hospital: refusing to fall for the BNP's charity con-trick

Hospital snubs BNP donation for our heroes

A Midland hospital which treats hero soldiers wounded in Afghanistan has refused a donation from the British National Party. Bosses at Selly Oak hospital in Birmingham turned down money from the far-right party after its members made the collection, claiming it would be donated to build a burns unit for injured squaddies.

The BNP, whose leader Nick Griffin is MEP for the North West, say they were selling stickers calling for troops to withdraw from Afghanistan in a bid “to help our brave and wounded soldiers”.

But a spokesman for Selly Oak Hospital, which houses the army’s Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, said: “The British National Party is selling merchandise with the promise of donating the proceeds to the Selly Oak Hospital burns unit. Neither the University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust nor its official charity, UHB Charities, have been contacted by the BNP about this venture, and the Trust does not accept money from any political party,” said the spokesman.

Labour MP for the area Dr Lynne Jones said: “I think the BNP is using the good name of the hospital to further its distasteful views.”

In October the hospital was at the centre of a political storm when Mr Griffin claimed injured soldiers on Selly Oak’s wards had to pay to watch television. Griffin was attempting to justify his wearing of a poppy on a televised debate against the wishes of the Royal British Legion. He said he would remove the poppy if the Legion would put pressure on the Government to stop “charging young British soldiers with no legs in Selly Oak Hospital” to watch TV. His claims were described as “absolute rubbish” by an Army spokesman who stressed military patients had free access to internet, television and phones.

Last night, John Walker, the BNP’s spokesman, said the party was disappointed by the hospital’s decision not to accept their donation.

“I am sure that it’s because it’s the BNP that they are doing this,” he claimed. “We have as much right to campaign on soldiers and these issues as any other party. If Selly Oak won’t take the money, we will find a soldiers’ charity that will.”

Earlier this year, a group of senior military commanders attacked the BNP for hijacking the sacrifices of soldiers in order to gain votes. After the BNP used images of Winston Churchill to fight their European election campaign, former heads of the British Army General Sir Mike Jackson and General Sir Richard Dannatt wrote an open letter saying the party was “fundamentally at odds” with the values of the British military.

“We call on all those who seek to hijack the good name of Britain’s military for their own advantage to cease and desist,” the generals said. “The values of these extremists – many of whom are essentially racist – are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness.”

Griffin, who was convicted of inciting racial hatred in 1998 for publishing material appearing to deny the Holocaust, responded by comparing the generals to Nazi war criminals.

Sunday Mercury

Spitfire is not BNP's to use, says Sikh pilot who fought the Nazis

One of the last surviving Indian Second World War fighter pilots has launched an attack on the BNP after it used images of a Spitfire in its campaign.

Mohinder Singh Pujji hit out at the far-Right party, and urged all British ethnic minorities not to shun the forces. The 92-year-old RAF Squadron Leader flew a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain and also met Sir Winston Churchill. He was one of only 18 Indian pilots in the RAF in the war, and the only Sikh to fly wearing his turban.

Sqn Ldr Pujji said he was outraged at the way the BNP has used imagery from the war: "The BNP are wrong to use the Spitfire as representative of their party. They forget people from different backgrounds helped in the Second World War. I am proof of this - I was flying a Spitfire. I also met Winston Churchill. Even in those days, there were ethnic minorities fighting for the British. I would recommend the armed forces for young people, regardless of race."

Sqn Ldr Pujji was born in Shimla, India, and volunteered for the RAF in 1940 after qualifying as a pilot in 1937.He was shot down twice and flew missions in North Africa and Burma, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he flew commercial airlines, settling in Newham before moving to Gravesend. He was made a freeman of Newham in 2005.

Last week BNP leader Nick Griffin announced his intention to contest the Barking constituency, in Newham's neighbouring borough, at the election.

London Evening Standard

Outrage as BNP hijacks South Wales VE Day photograph

Former residents of a South Wales street have hit out at the BNP for “hijacking” a picture of their VE Day party

Family members were shocked to see the photograph of the event in Cromwell Street, Merthyr Tydfil, used as a backdrop by the far-right party at an event in Manchester. They have now called on BNP leader Nick Griffin to apologise for using the image and to stop using the picture in publicity.

It is not the first time the BNP has been attacked for using a wartime image. It was previously accused of attempting to “hijack” the reputation of the military by using images of Spitfires and caused outrage by claiming that Winston Churchill would join the British National Party if he were alive today.

The Cromwell Street image appeared in the background when BNP leader Mr Griffin addressed a media conference at a Manchester pub in June, days after he was elected as MEP for the North West of England. The 1945 picture had been superimposed on a backdrop for Mr Griffin, and emblazoned with BNP and VE DAY. It wasn’t until after the picture was printed in a national newspaper that people in Merthyr became aware of its use by the party.

Irate former headteacher and ex-serviceman Lyn Perkins was reading the article when he spotted what he thought was a familiar face in the foreground. As he took a closer look he also recognised the street. Mr Perkins, now 82, had enlisted in the Navy, aged 17, two months before the war ended.

“I suppose there are many people in this photograph still alive and there must be lots of people who, like me, would be incensed that the photograph was used in support of the BNP,” he said. “I was looking at it and thought ‘Good gracious. I’m sure I know that girl’ and that’s what made me look at it more closely. I would think most of the people in that photograph would not want to be associated with the BNP. I certainly think there should be an apology from Nick Griffin.”

When Malcolm Sweet, 66, who was at the party as a small boy, saw the representation for the first time he said: “I think it’s a total disgrace that the BNP has done this. I certainly don’t agree with Nick Griffin’s politics. My mother and father are also in the picture but are obscured by him. I’d like to know where they got this.”

Alan George’s mother Phyllis can be seen on the extreme left and sister Brenda is second from left on the left-hand bench.

“I’ve seen the picture used before but I really don’t like this,” said Mr George, 64, who runs an Old Merthyr picture archive website. “I’m pretty much disgusted. I don’t like anything the BNP do or represent. I think an apology is in order. They should not use it as part of any campaign and should withdraw it.”

And sister Brenda Prosser, 68, said: “I find it offensive. The BNP has now hijacked our street party. I don’t particularly like the idea of being associated even in this way with the BNP. I don’t like their politics.”

But BNP spokesman John Walker defended the use and was adamant the BNP would not apologise for using it.

“This was a grainy black and white photo, which was only partly visible because it was used with logos over it,” he said. “It was a representation of the wartime theme that we used to great effect as part of our European election campaign which we called The Battle for Britain Campaign. The BNP was not even in existence when these photographs were taken. So how could there be any suggestion that these people could be associated? How could anyone infer that from a photo taken in 1945?

“Do people expect the BNP to have to try to trace every single person in a grainy old photograph from 1945? It’s a ridiculous proposition and people should just see this for what it was. It was a representation of the wartime spirit . It doesn’t imply any of these people would support the BNP 70 years later. Most of the people must be dead to be honest, all the adults would be. At the end of the day we are not going to stop using it and not going to apologise. We just see this as another pathetic attack against the BNP.”

Wales Online

BNP squaddie in Nazi salute

A British soldier heaps shame on the Army by showing off his BNP credentials with a defiant Hitler-style Nazi salute

Squaddie shames the Army with nazi salute

The disgraceful photo of Private Craig Orwin, who serves with the Light Dragoons, emerged days after former Army generals declared war on the extremist party. Orwin boasts of being a BNP member and reveals his vile views in the entry on his Facebook page.

The 19-year-old Hull City supporter, seen running on to the pitch in a photo on the social networking site, says his religious leaning is to "kill Leeds fans". He says he belongs to groups including "Salute our war heroes or piss off back to where you came from", "Racist Blacks" and "I hate white teenagers who feel the need to act like blacks". The yob also says he supports the "Harry Roberts he's our friend" group. It calls for the release of Sixties killer Harry Roberts serving life for the murder of three policemen.

Orwin lists "drinkin" as one of his hobbies. His BNP links have emerged less than a week after former Army top brass warned that far right groups were trying to hijack the Army for propaganda purposes. A letter signed by ex-Army chiefs General Sir Mike Jackson and General Sir Richard Dannatt warned groups like the BNP were "fundamentally at odds" with the values of the British military.

BNP leader Nick Griffin has already sparked outrage by claiming wartime PM Winston Churchill would have been a member of his party. Griffin said: "Winston Churchill, certainly by modern standards, would be regarded as a racist."

Protesters voiced their anger outside the BBC's West London base last Thursday when Griffin made an appearance on BBC1's Question Time.

Supporter Orwin now faces a grilling from Army chiefs. His antics have brought shame on his unit which is based in Swanton Morley, Norfolk. It has twice served in Iraq and also completed a six-month tour of Afghanistan. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "We are investigating an incident and if rules have been broken, disciplinary action will be taken. Members of the Armed Forces are free to join any political party but any racist behaviour or breach of the Army's Values and Standards will be dealt with."

Sun

Jeered, scorned and ridiculed - still BNP's Nick Griffin milks his moment in spotlight on Question Time

In for a rough ride - Griffin on the Question Time panel

Nick Griffin was booed, jeered and mocked by a hostile television audience on the BBC's Question Time last night. But the British National Party leader's priceless air time still left the Corporation facing accusations of 'publicity-seeking' naivety.

Senior Labour figures warned of racist attacks in the coming days, leaving the BBC with 'blood on its hands'.

Mr Griffin ran the gauntlet of 1,000 angry protesters who had laid siege to the Question Time studio at Television Centre in West London. The 50-year-old, who has a criminal conviction for inciting racial hatred, was loudly booed as he went before the cameras under tight security.

Facing angry heckling, and at times looking shaken, Mr Griffin:

• Repeatedly refused to give his views on the Holocaust, drawing attacks from Jewish members of the audience.
• Claimed that Winston Churchill would have joined the BNP.
• Was branded 'disgusting' by one black member of the audience.
• Was forced to deny he had said that black men 'walk like monkeys'.
• Was laughed at when he admitted meeting Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and claimed the organisation was 'non violent'.
• Was jeered by a lesbian member of the audience who told him: 'The feeling of revulsion is mutual'.
• One Asian member of the audience called for a whip round to pay for him to go and live at the South Pole where he could enjoy a 'colourless landscape'.

The BBC was forced on to the back foot over the decision to invite Mr Griffin on to the show. David Dimbleby, who chaired the session, tried to calm audience unrest by insisting that the programme 'won't be the Nick Griffin show'. But he refused a request to take an audience vote on the rights and wrongs of the decision.

Baroness Warsi, the Tory panel member, said: 'If you look at the audience and reaction outside, people are outraged by his views and he has been exposed for what he is.'

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the evening capped a 'catastrophic week for the BNP'.

They were joined on the panel by Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne and black poet Bonnie Greer. Mr Huhne said Winston Churchill would be 'rolling' in his grave if he could hear Mr Griffin speak today.

Around a thousand anti-fascists protest against the BNP at the BBC

Things get a tad hairy as flares are set off in the crowd of angry protestors

About 25 protestors breached security and were promptly hauled out

Earlier Mr Griffin's appearance provoked angry scenes outside Television Centre. Three police office officers were injured and six protesters arrested. At one stage, around 25 people stormed inside the West London building as they attempted to find the Question Time studios. Flares were let off and women dragged kicking and screaming back outside by security guards.

Mr Griffin, meanwhile, was smuggled in via a side entrance by up to 40 dark-suited security guards. Inside, he attacked Mr Straw saying his own father was in the RAF in the Second World War, while Mr Straw's was arrested for refusing to fight.

A black man in the audience was cheered when he confronted Mr Griffin. His voice shaking with emotion, the man said: 'For just one minute could you not think of the benefits my parents brought to this country and other parents from an Asian, Indian or Pakistani background have brought? No, all you're thinking of doing is trying to poison politics and poison the minds of people in this country. The vast majority of this audience find what you stand for to be completely disgusting'

Mr Griffin smirked when he was asked whether he denied the Holocaust but refused to answer detailed questions on the issue. Of his previous comments, he said: 'I can't explain why I used to say those things.'

He acknowledged that the BNP had been a 'racist and anti-semitic organisation', but claimed it had changed under his leadership. 'I am not a Nazi and never have been,' he said. He was wearing the poppy he rarely removes. He says he wears it in protest at the poor treatment of soldiers injured in Afghanistan.

Shimal Thakrar, 33, from Edgware in London, said: 'It certainly wasn't as controversial as had been made out beforehand. The guy couldn't stand his ground at all. He contradicted himself throughout. He had no consistency. It was a needed debate. But he's not a politician.'

Mr Thakrar said the audience hissed and booed during the filming and shouted 'Liar' and 'Get out the door,' at Mr Griffin. The BBC had received more than 1,000 complaints ahead of the broadcast.

Senior Labour politicians predicted that black and Asian people would face a violent backlash in the coming days. The BBC insisted it had no choice but to offer an invitation to the BNP following the party's success in the European elections. But critics have accused the corporation of being naive and driven by a desire to boost ratings.

Higher Education Minister David Lammy, one of Britain's first black ministers, said ordinary people from ethnic minority backgrounds would face violence as a result. He added: 'This is a seminal moment for the country. I am very worried about the days that will follow. Many people across the country, black and white, will be appalled that Nick Griffin has been given a platform on the BBC's flagship current affairs programme for his terrible racist views. Many others, a long way from Broadcasting House, will be left very scared.'

However Mr Lammy acknowledged that the mainstream parties had to accept some of the blame for the rise of the BNP.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett criticised the BBC for 'publicity seeking'.

'To spend the first ten minutes of the Six O'Clock News covering their own decision and the consequences of putting the leader of the BNP on Question Time, was a total distortion of news priority and a deliberate promotion of their own publicity-seeking decision,' he said.

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson yesterday defended the decision to offer an invitation to Mr Griffin. Mr Thompson said the Government should change the law if it did not want the party to appear on news and current affairs programme. He said: 'Censorship cannot be outsourced to the BBC.'

Daily Mail

Note: If you missed the programme, you can watch it and laugh at Griffin here.

Lee Barnes: Jewish Bolsheviks to blame for Holocaust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are two reasons ;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Russian Revolution = No Hitler…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CST