The BPP cannot count - are we surprised?

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Iliacus. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Although, of course, it's the arrival - eventually, maybe - of the BNP's accounts which gives us the greatest amusement, from time to time it's worth looking at the financial performance of some of the lesser players on the nuttier fringes of the far-right.

The BPP (British People's Party) for example. Now, credit to this group - at least it met the deadline for submitting its 2009 accounts, something the BNP failed to achieve. As it did for 2008. And 2007. And 2006. And 2003-2005 for that matter.

For those who don't know, the BPP is a far-right micro-party, born out of a split in the Nationalist Alliance. Its leading (I use the term loosely) lights are Kevin Watmough and David Jones, who between them fill the four official positions within the party. (A simple google search will tell you all you need to know about these two characters, their party, and their past). Their annual report for 2009 reveals that they fought no elections in the year, concentrating instead on building membership and organisation.

The success of these efforts can be gauged by their electoral efforts in 2010. They fought one ward - Todmorden in Yorkshire - where David Jones polled a magnificent 4.95% of the vote. Pretty terrible for what must have been a national target ward. After all, it was their only ward!

Anyway to return to their 2009 accounts. The accounts were, at least, on time. Unfortunately they're gibberish. Consider the following, and tell me if I've misunderstood.

Carried forward from previous year £120
Income during 2009 £2,655
Expenditure during 2009 £1,475
Balance at end of year £868.79

Now, my calculation is 120 + 2655 - 1475 = 1300
So where's the missing £431.21 gone?

Or are they just idiots? I think I know the answer to that one!

BNP accounts don’t add up

When the British National Party told its members in January that it had raised £70,000 as a result of its “Building to Grow” appeal, Searchlight was sceptical. After all, the appeal was launched just as the internal crisis erupted last December. Who in their right mind, we thought, would donate such sums to a party that seemed about to collapse.

We were wrong. A printout of transactions on the BNP’s main bank account, which fell into our hands recently, shows that between 14 and 31 December alone Ged Munns, the BNP’s chief fundraiser, paid in £41,605 described as “appeals”.

During January he paid in a further £30,011.50, making a total of over £70,000 though a long way short of the “well over £80,000” that a report on the BNP website on 14 February claimed the appeal had raised. Why tell the truth when it is so easy to lie to the party’s gullible members?

How strange then than the BNP’s audited accounts for the year to 31 December 2007, released by the Electoral Commission at the end of July, show the total raised from “fundraising activities” during the whole year was £23,433, less even than the £38,970 raised in 2006.

Why would the party not want to highlight the success of the “Building to Grow” appeal, run for Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, by the Belfast-based Midas Consultancy, to which the party paid £6,900 during March and April this year? Midas, owned by the hardline anti-abortion activist James Dowson, also produced the begging letters for the BNP’s recent “truth truck” appeal and arranged the party’s officer training sessions in Spain in spring.

It would be tempting to conclude that the appeal money swiftly found its way out of the BNP coffers and into Griffin’s back pocket, but that would be wrong. The bank account balance of £30,417.58 on the printout for 31 December matches the £30,418 shown on the balance sheet at that date, so all the income must appear in the accounts somewhere.

Has the “Building to Grow” income simply been hidden in donations, a figure that nevertheless fell from nearly £290,000 in 2006 to under £200,000 in 2007? Of this sum £36,000 came from four supporters whose donations were declared individually to the Electoral Commission. Including the “Building to Grow” income in “donations” would mask a huge drop in ordinary donations.

The BNP’s 2007 accounts revealed some other interesting features. Most notable is the opinion of Silver & Co, the party’s regular auditors, that the financial statements do not give a true and fair view of the state of the party’s affairs at 31 December 2007 and of the year’s results.

An adverse auditors’ report is normally devastating for a company, making it almost impossible to obtain credit. A normal political party would find that donors lose confidence that their money will be used properly and income dries up. The BNP no doubt hopes that its donors will not notice or be too stupid to understand.

Griffin tries to skate over the embarrassment by blaming Kenny Smith, who was one of the leaders of last winter’s BNP rebels. “Accurate accounting for this year is problematic owing to the point-blank refusal of the former head of Administration to account for large amounts of expenditure”, he writes in his introduction to the accounts. But mindful of the potential financial implications of a libel claim, he hastens to add that much of the money was undoubtedly properly spent.

Smith was also blamed in the 2006 accounts, both for their lateness and for a qualification to the auditors’ report on the grounds that no vouchers had been produced to show how £14,000 transferred during the year to Smith’s “B N Publications” account had been spent. In fact B N Publications was a separate business run by Smith outside the party so arguably did not need to explain how it spent the fees it received for its services.

The reason why the 2007 accounts were “not a true and fair view” may be the size of the amount involved, especially compared to the party’s gross income, which was considerably lower in 2007 than the previous year.

But there nay be another explanation, contained in a further attempt to cast aspersions on Smith as well as explain the party’s reduced income despite a claimed 56% growth in membership. Griffin writes: “Income was down on the previous year, but given that we never received crucial accounting records from British National Lottery or Excalibur [both then run by Smith], we have estimated that we could have lost nearly £70,000 in unaccounted income”.

Is Griffin saying that Smith extracted £70,000 from the party in addition to failing to account for £32,271 of fees paid to him? How? Even the newly revamped and expanded Excalibur is not expected to make more than £20,000 a year profit from a £40,000 turnover.

The accounts certainly do show a large reduction in income. Alongside the drop in donations, income from commercial activities fell by over £70,000 to £175,000. And nearly half of this income consists of sales of the BNP’s monthly publications Voice of Freedom and Identity to the party’s own local units.

The regional accounts, which bring together the income and expenditure of all the party units, suggest they only recoup a fraction of this from sales to the public. However the truth is unclear.

While some of the local units’ income is properly categorised as “donations”, “commercial activities” etc, more than half – over £147,000 – was not, and appears in the regional accounts as a “petty cash difference”. This failure fully to record income sources suggests that the BNP rebels had a point when they accused Dave Hannam, the regional treasurer, of incompetence. Stating where income comes from is one of the most basic of bookkeeping tasks, though the accounts blame the “volunteers” who keep the local groups’ petty cash books.

Returning to the main accounts, membership income is up, though not by the same proportion as the growth in membership numbers. Presumably some people are joining on the cheap. But the increase is not enough to set off the fall in donations and commercial income. Total income in 2007 was £611,000 compared to £726,000 the previous year.

Although the BNP managed to save on some costs, it ended 2007 with a deficit of over £50,000 compared to a £19,000 surplus in 2006, increasing its insolvency.

No wonder the party needed Dowson to extricate it from bankruptcy. The “Building to Grow” appeal was supposedly intended to expand the party’s capabilities. For example the BNP claimed the new funds enabled it to open its new premises in Deeside with “a vast array of new equipment with a value of well in excess of £35,000”.

In fact it seems that only about £18,000 was spent on buying new equipment, from a company called Twofold Ltd. The rest seems to be leased. Leasing is often commercially sensible but not when you give your members the impression that their donations have been invested in acquiring the equipment the party needs to progress.

The rest of the “Building to Grow” money is being spent on paying the salaries of the party’s officers and meeting its debts, such as the more than £20,000 it still owed to HM Revenue and Customs for value added tax and income tax and national insurance deducted from employees’ salaries.

As well as not paying over the PAYE deductions, the BNP continued to get away with paying half of its staffing bill in the form of “professional fees” to avoid national insurance and income tax. Staff paid gross included Simon Darby the party’s deputy leader, Munns, Hannam, Arthur Kemp who runs the party’s educational and training department, and a number of the BNP rebels who complained about the policy.

The BNP ended 2007 insolvent to the tune of £86,000. It survived because the party was able to borrow nearly £42,000 from its local units. In 2006 it ran up a debt of nearly £22,000 to the local units, but the full amount was repaid in January 2007 as the party was keen to announce.

Such prompt repayment was not repeated after 31 December 2007. The auditors’ report on the regional accounts highlighted the debt, pointing out that the party had “insufficient funds, which places doubt on the ability of the Party to repay this money”. Hannam’s treasurer’s report states: “It is the aim of central office to repay this internal loan with monthly standing orders”, but the party seems in no hurry to get on with it.

One person who is doing well out of the BNP is Mark Collett, the BNP’s former director of publicity who is still responsible for its graphic design. One of the main targets of the BNP rebels, he remains widely unpopular in the party. Between May 2007 and April 2008 his Vanguard Promotions business received nearly £50,000 from the party, most of it after “Building to Grow” started bearing fruit.

If the success of “Building to Grow” was repeated in the Truth Truck appeal, the BNP may now have reversed its financial woes. The election of Richard Barnbrook to the London Assembly in May will also have helped. His £50,000 salary is far higher than any BNP officer receives so he has generously agreed to donate £5,000 a year to party funds. In addition he has been able to employ three assistants at London taxpayers’ expense, one of whom is Darby, saving the BNP the expense of paying him. It is such financial gains multiplied several fold that await the BNP if it succeeds in getting candidates elected to the European Parliament next year.

Searchlight

The Accounts (5) : "a slender merit of providing cosmetic comfort"

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Iliacus. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

The previous articles by Iliacus regarding the BNP accounts are below:

The Accounts (1): First Impressions
The Accounts (2): "We wuz robbed"
The Accounts (3): Figure Skating
The Accounts (4): "and for my next trick"

I have recently been reading, as one does, a history of the Neath and Brecon Railway. This was a fairly insignificant railway company in South Wales, operating - oddly enough - between Neath and Brecon! It may not immediately seem of any relevance to the cause of anti-fascism except that its financial affairs (to which I might return in a future article) echoed those of a certain far-right political party of the present day.

In particular I was taken by the following comments by the authors, written in 2005 in respect of accounts published in the 1860s:

"The balance sheet for year end 1866...is tantalising in what it leaves unsaid and without further figures...it is only part of the picture. This statement falls short of the standards of reporting required today and its odd assortment of balances have the slender merit of providing cosmetic comfort to the casual observer."

What a splendid turn of phrase - and so appropriate to the subject of this series of articles, the 2007 BNP Accounts!

In this final article I want to concentrate on two areas - the sales of party publications (Identity and Voice of Freedom) and the Trafalgar Club. I will start with the publications, and a quick review of what they comprise. Voice of Freedom is a monthly tabloid; the front page normally carries an emotive lead story related to the evils of immigration while the other three pages are full of accounts of local meetings raising unprecedented levels of donations, adoration of the leader, and plenty of opportunities for readers to send money to the BNP for various items of tat! Identity is the party's exploration of the theoretical principles of nationalism (i.e. it's full of middle-aged white men ranting about the evils of the modern world!)

My comments are based on an interpretation of the way these items are dealt with financially. I have to make reasonable assumptions, which may be rash in the context of BNP accounting. Those assumptions are as follows:

• that intitial printing costs are met by the party nationally;
• that sales are then made either directly or via branches, and the latter therefore appear in the accounts of the RAU (Regional Accounting Unit);
• that expenditure by the RAU (in buying copies) is balanced in the income column of the National Accounts (as supplier).

Of course, being the BNP, anything is possible!

So, let's look at the performance in selling this stuff in 2007, and a comparison with 2006, starting with Identity.  In 2006 printing cost £30,000 - by 2007 it was £34,000; allowing for inflation this implies a small increase in print runs. Income in '06 was nearly £45,000 (a surplus of around £15,000 but see below); in '07 income nationally fell to £32,000 (a deficit of £2,000). A bad enough trend, but there's worse to come [worse for the BNP I emphasise; I think it's great!]. In 2006 the RAU (i.e. the branches) spent nearly £17,000 buying Identity - and raised £11,000 by selling them, wiping out a fair chunk of the National Accounts surplus. In 2007 the RAU spent over £22,000 on copies of Identity - and raised just £8,000 from selling them!

So in 2006 the branches "lost" £5,500 selling Identity - and in 2007 they "lost" over £14,000 doing so. In 2006 just over a third of copies were unloaded by the national party onto the branches - by 2007 that proportion had nearly doubled!

Let's have a look at Voice of Freedom (VoF). In 2006 the party spent £37,000 printing copies - this fell in 2007 to just over £32,000. Perhaps Mr Collett negotiated a special deal, but to this cynical observer it suggests a fall in the print run. Certainly the fall in national sales, from £66,000 to £57,000 suggests that copies weren't flying off the metaphorical shelves! And when we get to branch level, the trend identified with Identity is repeated, and then some! 

In 2006 the branches were billed for just over half of all VoF sales (£34,000 - 52% of the total). By 2007 the branches were being billed for over £52,000 of sales - an extraordinary 91% of the total! And this wasn't because they were finding it any easier to sell the damned things! Sales at RAU level fell from £26,000 in '06 to under £20,000 in '07.

So overall, in 2006 the party as a whole made a surplus of £9,217 from Identity and £20,580 from VoF.  In 2007 Identity lost £16,186 and even VoF recorded a deficit of £7,641. At branch (or RAU) level both made a loss in both years, a sign of the local membership subsidising the party centrally. But the scale of that subsidy has rocketed.

In 2006 the RAU lost £5,500 on Identity - in 2007 it was £14,215.
On VoF the RAU lost £8,698 in 2006 - in 2007 this shot up to a £32,515 loss.

In 2006 local branches, through Identity and VoF, subsidised 'HQ' to the tune of £19,715. In 2007 it was £46,730! And what will it be in 2008 at that rate of increase?

In the context of the earlier articles in this series there is a clear picture emerging of a party sliding into financial difficulties from the centre, and frantically plugging the gap by increasingly sucking money from the local organisations. The evidence for this is not just the growing subsidy through Identity and VoF sales identified in this article, but also the increasing 'loan' from the RAU to the national party set out in article number 4.

And so to a brief word on the Trafalgar Club. This is basically a dining club which, in principle, differs little from similar schemes run by other parties. In this case, in return for a substantial donation, you have the opportunity to enjoy a meal (of debatable quality) followed by a speech from Nick Griffin. Astonishingly, some people actually take up this offer!

What is strange is the way this is handled in the Accounts. It is, we are told in the Chairman's Introduction" a "body ... administered by this department [Administration] ... in order to avoid the danger of 'all eggs in one basket' the National Treasurer is not permitted to handle this body's finances" but it is subject to "full external audit".

This is a very strange arrangement, as well as being pretty offensive to a treasurer who is allowed to handle everything else but not - for some reason - the Trafalgar Club. By external audit they are presumably referring to the audit of accounts prepared by Silver and Co - but they are reporting on Accounts prepared by...the National Treasurer, who is "not permitted to handle this body's finances"! So are the Trafalgar Club's transactions contained within the BNP's Accounts or not? And if so, where? And if not, then how are they subject to "external audit"?

There are malcontents within the BNP (or recently expelled therefrom) who allege that the proceeds of this Club have too close a relationship to Nick Griffin's back pocket - there is nothing in the BNP's accounts to disprove those suggestions!

The BNP Accounts (Part 1): First Impressions

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Iliacus. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Credit where credit is due, the BNP almost got its 2007 Accounts to the Electoral Commission by the legal deadline. Almost, but not quite ! In the event they seem to have been submitted within a month of the July deadline, which is pretty early by their standards.

Anyway, to turn to the substance of the document let's start with a general overview. My first impressions you might say. I once heard someone say of the bikini that "what it conceals is more significant than what it reveals", and that remark kept coming to mind as I leafed through the Accounts!

This year there seems to have been some proofreading before the papers were submitted, with fewer of the childish errors of grammar, spelling and syntax which have so amused us all in the past! However the Chairman's Report, eight scintillating pages of the wisdom of Nicholas Griffin, displays the startling mix of naivety and paranoia so typical of the far right. I will deal separately with some of his claims regarding their electoral "progress" and his inventive explanations of their failure to thrive, but how many other political parties could produce the following list of conspiratorial opponents :

Oxfordshire police; Labour Party thugs; illegality by Labour Cabinet Ministers; undemocratic thugs from the far-left; local newspapers; the police and the Electoral Commission; third party disparagers; the unions; the Daily Mirror; postal fraud by Labour and LibDem activists; unscrupulous council officials; a small clique of staff and middle ranking officials [within the BNP !]; the violent far-left of the Labour regime; the viciously anti-BNP neo-Nazi fringe. (All listed and identified in Griffin's 'Chairman's Report' as acting against the BNP, and many of them accused of illegal behaviour. Only surprised that he forgot the BBC. Thank goodness he isn't paranoid!)

Perhaps wisely (from the BNP's perspective that is) the listing of branches/ groups/ contacts no longer appears - thus denying us the opportunity to have a good laugh at the constant organisational instability which bedevils the BNP. In particular we can no longer identify the areas in which the BNP effectively admitted a total lack of any membership or organisational structure.

Still, if we cannot gauge the instability at branch level the accounts do underline the chaos at a more senior level with six of the 18-member Advisory Council removed during the year, mostly in the "purge" of December.

And so we say 'farewell' to the Chairman's Report, and turn to the financial accounts themselves. I will be reviewing these in further detail in a future article, but here are the News at Ten-style headlines:

BONG
Auditor says "the financial statements do not give a true and fair view of the state of the party's affairs"

BONG
Auditor says they "do not give a true and fair view of the results for the year"

BONG
Donation Income falls by 32%

BONG
Membership income up by 38% (?)

BONG
Income from commercial activities down by 68%!

BONG
Deficit for year is £50,000 (against £18,000 surplus in 2006)

BONG
Current cash accounts in chaos

BONG
Balance sheet shows net liabilities of £85,000+

BONG
Party owes £20,000 + in PAYE and VAT - (that's £20k less for schools and hospitals!)

Hope that's an appealing taster. More to follow, starting with Griffin's excuses for electoral failure!

BNP still insolvent

The BNP finally published its 2006 accounts days before the fine for their late submission to the Electoral Commission would have doubled to £2,000. They make interesting reading, not only for the figures, and the failure to solve the mystery of the printing equipment, but also for the names of party activists listed in their various roles.

For a start the BNP's nominating officer and campaigns officer throughout the year was none other than Tony "Mad Bomber" Lecomber, despite his claim to have left the BNP 18 months ago after he was found out trying to hire a hit man to murder a leading politician and was sacked as the party's group development officer.

A full list of the party's Advisory Council will prove useful to those BNP members trying to establish the identity of the Searchlight mole that the BNP claims is present in that select group. It is also interesting to compare the list with the names of those who have signed up to Sadie Graham's and Kenny Smith's dissident group.

History is rewritten too. According to the chairman's introduction to the accounts Simon Darby "gave a very good account of himself in difficult circumstances" in a Channel Five studio discussion. In fact Darby was verbally slaughtered by Lord Lester QC. The account of the trial on race hate charges of Nick Griffin, the party leader, and Mark Collett, the BNP's former director of publicity, recently demoted to graphic designer, is also heavily embellished.

Seven "key permanent members of staff" are shown: Nick Griffin, Sadie Graham, John Walker, Dave Hannam, Martin Wingfield, Tina Wingfield and Steve Blake. Some have proved a good deal less than permanent and Hannam's position as assistant treasurer has recently been abolished, although it is unclear whether he has been made redundant.

Membership is stated as 6,281, down from the 6,502 shown in the 2005 accounts and a far cry from the 10,000 figure currently being bandied around by the BNP leadership. At the time of the BNP leadership election the voting figures indicated that the party had 8,604 members but this was widely thought to be an exaggeration.

The treasurer's and audit reports reveal that the party had not yet completed the task of setting up proper internal controls, which it started early in 2005, and so the auditors, Silver & Co of Cannock, had "to rely upon assurances and explanations given us by officers of the party". This is not an unusual let out for small organisations and gives the lie to the claim that the auditors would not sign the accounts until Kenny Smith was sacked for failing to provide receipts for administration expenditure. When asked about this allegation Frank Hogarth, a partner in Silver & Co, refused to comment.

Announcing the accounts on its website the BNP highlighted the increase in income and the surplus for the year. Income from donations and membership fees has indeed gone up, although income from commercial activities is down, something that will no doubt be blamed on the dissidents.

Campaign expenditure is a mere £19,016, almost all on leaflets. Even this tiny figure for a national organisation is an improvement on 2005 when nothing was spent on campaigning leaflets. Presumably party branches have to pay for everything themselves.

Staff costs are down £20,000 to £227,732 of which £145,447 is for employees and £104,764 on "professional fees" – payments outside the compulsory PAYE system of accounting for tax and national insurance contributions on employees' wages. One of the allegations Searchlight made based on the 2005 accounts is that the wages figure was impossibly low for the number of employees declared, suggesting that some employees were paid outside PAYE. The position has hardly improved. The accounts state that the total number of staff has increased from nine in 2005 to 13, which means that the average wage per staff member is still only around £11,000. Remember Ian Dawson, the former group support officer, recently stated that he worked for the party earning £14,400 and this was "probably the lowest full-time wage in the party".

Collett is not listed as a key staff member, although he clearly spends a considerable amount of his time working for the party. Either he is one of those still paid as a self employed person or his remuneration comes in another way. Perhaps some of the BNP's £30,000 of expenditure on commercial printing and reproduction goes his way, or the similar sums spent on producing The Voice of Freedom and Identity. Quite what Collett did as director of publicity is unclear seeing as the party spends so little on leaflets and only £1,410 on "promotional expenditure".

Income from tickets to the BNP's Red White Blue summer festival fell from £15,808 in 2005 to £9,242 but the cost of putting the event on also fell by £4,000. Perhaps BNP members have started getting bored with it. Trafalgar Club income and expenditure is not separately itemised, an example of the lack of transparency about which the dissidents have complained. What does the party have to hide here?

Although the BNP made a surplus of nearly £19,000 compared to a deficit of nearly £95,000 in 2005, it was not enough to take the party out of insolvency. A £35,000 surplus of liabilities over assets was financed partly by running up a debt of nearly £22,000 to the regional accounting unit (party branches and groups), although this was paid off in January 2007 out of the £46,000 cash it had in the bank at 31 December 2006. The amount owed to HM Revenue and Customs for PAYE and value added tax was half the sum at the start of the year, suggesting that HMRC became less tolerant of the BNP's attempts to borrow from the taxpayer.

The largest liability is "subscriptions in advance". This would normally cover the proportion after 31 December 2006 of annual subscriptions to publications paid in the course of the year. In this case it is probably membership subscriptions because it is way too large for subscriptions to Freedom and Identity. That this sum has doubled to £67,548 may be because the BNP made a big effort to get people to pay their 2007 membership fees at the end of 2006 rather than at the beginning of 2007. This would be consistent with the large cash balance at the end of the year, much of which was spent in January 2007 on paying off the party's debt to the branches. In other words, much of 2007's membership income has been spent in 2006.

A note to the accounts takes a swipe at Kenny Smith, though not by name, for failing to provide receipts for £14,000 of funds "transferred to the B N Publications account so as to allow the printing department to funding [sic]". The party first accused him of failing to account for "up to £17,000" and rapidly dropped the "up to". The fact that it is now £14,000 will undoubtedly get overlooked by the Griffin loyalists. And why the B N Publications account should be off balance sheet is unclear, as it would appear to be part of the party's administration.

Another note explains that the Excalibur stock held at the year end has not been included in the accounts. Its omission would depress the commercial (and therefore taxable) profit (though as in 2005 there is no sign that any corporation tax is paid). It is the reason for the omission that is interesting, namely that "the very nature of the stock raises questions as to it's [sic] realisable value". Well we certainly wouldn't buy it.

"Certain party officials are involved and hold positions with 'Great White Records'", the accounts state, revealing that the party buys CDs at commercial rates from the company, owned by Hannam, and resells them. Great White Records also supplied "sound assistance at venues" amounting to £9,618, another means of transferring money to Hannam. As we expected, the accounts do not show the rumoured investment by the party of £50,000 in Great White Records, which is therefore either a myth or another "off balance sheet" transaction.

And finally, there is no solution to the mystery of the BNP's printing equipment. In 2005 the party claimed to have spent variously £75,000 or £70,000 on printing equipment, but the 2005 accounts only showed acquisitions of equipment (of any sort) of £51,671. In June 2007 when Chris Jackson challenged Griffin for the party leadership, some people asked questions about why Collett was always late in producing leaflets for the BNP after the party had spent "£70,000" on printing equipment. The BNP's reply was that the party had bought four high quality digital duplicators, three folding machines and power guillotine for £70,000 but that after the 2005 general election they were "given to the regions" and no longer kept for head office jobs.

Yet neither the 2005 accounts nor the 2006 accounts show any disposal of equipment, which if by means of a gift would have turned the small 2006 surplus into a loss. Was the equipment ever in the accounts? Who owns it now? Was the BNP lying in 2005, in 2007 or both? We think party members have a right to know.

BNP in crisis

BNP fined by Electoral Commission

The far-right British National Party (BNP) has been fined by the elections watchdog for failing to declare its accounts on time.

The Electoral Commission issued the £1,000 penalty after the party filed its figures for 2006 - almost six months late.

Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, the BNP was required to submit the statement of accounts by July 7.

The blow comes amid internal rows in the controversial right-wing party and calls for a police investigation into claims of "illegal spying" on its members.

Labour MP Jon Cruddas used Parliamentary privilege this week to highlight the alleged bugging, which he had reported to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.

The claims follow the resignation from the party of a series of members, including Broxtowe councillor Sadie Graham, over the BNP's leadership.

In the Commons, Mr Cruddas also raised allegations of "financial irregularities" by the BNP which had been researched by the anti-fascist Searchlight Information Services.

ITN

Solidarity - an email update from the Vice-President Tim Hawke

Following all the fuss around the BNP's fake union Solidarity and the two articles we produced over the past few days (here and here), we have now received an email from Solidarity Vice-President Tim Hawke that attempts to put the record straight(ish). We provide the whole thing to keep you up to date with the apparent chaos that surrounds anything the BNP organises or Nick Griffin gets his sticky little mitts on.

Dear Sir / Madam

I have recently been informed that the internal activities of our union have been brought to your attention.

Since the events have been aired in public, may I set a few issues straight. On the 20th May 2007 during an Executive Committee Meeting in London, Mr Potter (who is in my opinion a man of great integrity) expressed his deep concerns regarding the financial clarity of the accounts. Mr Harrington refused to provide the accounts in details, even though the requests for these went back a month or more and so stated that he would begin the process of an investigation. Harrington refused this but I agreed. The minutes will confirm this – there’s your quorum 2-1 approved

On the 3rd of June Mr Potter requested that I to attend a Special Executive Meeting in Liverpool (such meetings do not require a quorum within the constitution) and Mr Harrington was suspended. A member with considerable union experience and who has been a member since Feb 2007 (the Membership and his membership card number will confirm this) agreed to head the Investigation due to his impartial status and was chosen as the Acting General Secretary, however he has made it clear that he would abstain from voting on any issue regarding Mr Harrington and that he views his role as temporary.

Regardless of the hype, myself and Mr Potter have driven this union with the genuine intention of fighting for the workers of this country who are being exploited on a daily basis, the rich poor divide is widening but the current unions (in my opinion) have neglected that struggles that I personally witness regularly onsite,

Our core 6 principles of opposition are totally genuine to me, and Mr Potter if you consider his actions. Union corruption is a terrible act of betrayal to members and I hope that you would support our activities in combating this. Be assured that the concerns are serious and that I would fight for the ending of any corrupt organisation to prevent it from spreading.

With regards to the BNP, it seems that Mr Harrington has extremely close links with its chairmen and have hatched a takeover plan before the investigation is complete – a possible sign of guilt? During the many months that I took off work to advance this union, I met many decent BNP members including Mr Potter and would hope that it was understood that most members are good people just wanting what’s best for their nearest and dearest.

Once the investigation is complete we should all know more, but the certification office are investigating due to our contacting them, however if others wish to do so then they have our full support.

Yours truly,
Tim Hawke
Vice-President of Solidarity

P.S. A members bulletin will be dispatched shortly informing them of the situation, what a shame that this could not have been done in a more professional manner

Although we clearly will not agree with Mr Hawke over the integrity of Solidarity or anyone involved in it, we thank him for emailing us to let us know the current situation as he sees it.

One point that we think is worth making is that it's our belief, based on advice we've received from a couple of different and trusted sources in the past few days, that by refusing to hand over the disputed accounts, Harrington is apparently acting illegally.

We wonder if Solidarity is considering any legal action to obtain these accounts before the BNP forces an Extraordinary General Meeting and puts a stop to any investigation, which it certainly will if given half a chance?