Of bullshit-fests and makeovers...

This was the scene outside the Rockware Hotel, Standish Street, St. Helens, where the BNP was holding its EGM at which (surprise, surprise) Nick Griffin is working extremely hard at lying to gullible BNP members to get them to vote for him in the coming leadership challenge - if there is a leadership challenge at all, which some of our correspondents are beginning to doubt.

The usual dossers are standing around outside, with the biggest dosser of all, porky pervert Martin Reynolds, still head of personal security for the paunchy pig farmer himself, over on the extreme left for a change.

Mysteriously, the Lie Lorry was treated to a makeover of strawberry pink and egg white while the meeting was going on. Click on the image to see it full-size. Doesn't it look luvverly. :-)

Cheers to the anonymous picture provider.

Michaela Mackenzie sticks the boot in once more.

I'm getting the feeling that Griffin & Dowson Enterprises might have made a monumental cock up when they unlawfully sacked Michaela Mackenzie.

A couple of weeks after she released her Employment Tribunal Statement which can be found here she went a step further yesterday in her utter condemnation of Dowson and his business practices within the BNP.

In a speech lasting over 20 minutes at an Eddy Butler leadership campaign meeting she outlined her sacking and the incompetence of Griffin and Dowson and the three videos are worth watching.

The Truth Truck of Doom strikes again!

I'd be willing to bet that Nick Griffin frequently rues the day that he ever had the idea of conning the membership of the BNP into donating to the so-called Truth Truck appeal. Ever since it appeared, the truck has been nothing but trouble, only encouraging thick idiots like Clive Jefferson to disturb the peace by driving around while shouting incoherent rubbish at a bewildered public.

But that's been far from the worst problem - the main one being the question of who actually owns the bloody thing. Griffin raised the money on the back of a purchase of a new truck, apparently changed his mind (without telling anyone) and decided a decent second-hand truck would be better value for money, and has since been vilified for apparently leasing the truck from Dowson instead, rather than fulfilling his side of the bargain and buying one, second-hand or not.

One of Griffin's main problems is that he is a liar in a party of liars. It must be hard to be consistent (or indeed, coherent) in one's lies if everyone else is lying and changing stories all the time. Thus, at times, tales of fraud and incompetence within the BNP disappear into the ether not because they are untrue, but because they get lost in a swirling mish-mash of truth, lie, bullshit and ignorance. But just occasionally, a lie reveals a greater lie...

In a post on the BNP website in which Griffin refers to his intention to stand down as party leader in 2013 (assuming he isn't booted out or jailed before then), he has decided to clear the air about a number of things, among them the ownership of the Lie Lorry. He says;

'The Truth Truck is owned by the BNP, contrary to internet rumour-mongers, a fact confirmed in person by the BNP treasurer who paid for the vehicle, Jennie Noble.'

Fair enough. So why, on May 22nd 2009, was it reported that;

'...High Court Enforcement Officers attempting to seize the vehicle [the truck] to settle judgements on behalf of freelance journalist Mark Croucher were informed that the vehicle did not, in fact, belong to the BNP. This was confirmed in a subsequent letter from the BNPs solicitors, Gilbert Davies & Partners of Welshpool who wrote, “the goods referred to are registered in the name of another person who…has no connection with the judgement debtors”.'

If the Lie Lorry does in fact belong to the BNP, Mark Croucher was lied to and, incidentally, so were the BNP's solicitors, who would hardly have told Croucher what they did unless they believed it to be the truth. If the Lie Lorry does NOT belong to the BNP, the party is lying to the public and its membership, and Jennie Noble appears to be complicit in that lie. Either way, this whole Truth Truck/Lie Lorry scam smacks of fraud hastily and untidily being covered-up.

Heads the BNP is lying: tails the BNP is lying. Take your pick.

Image courtesy of this great thread on b3ta.

BNP's Lie Lorry zooms around Lancaster...

The BNP's Clive 'Am I drooling again?' Jefferson

A couple of days ago, Lancaster was treated to an extremely brief glimpse of the BNP's Lie Lorry as it zoomed around the city centre and back off to the motorway at high speed.

In the very short time it was passing through, an alert was sent out to supporters, though this had hardly been sent when we received confirmed information that the lorry, complete with the BNP's Chief North-Western Dimwit Clive Jefferson in the shotgun seat, was speeding away from Lancaster. Frankly, if it hadn't been for the excrutiatingly loud music and Thicky Jefferson's squawking through the sound system, no-one would have noticed the visit at all.

Naturally, the BNP and Jefferson in particular, can't bear to tell the truth about anything, and this day out for the lads was no exception. On his peculiar Cumbrian Patriot blog, he has this to say;

'The people of Longtown all came out of their houses and shops and lined the main street applauding us...'

Jefferson has posted a video on his blog - made on the day - and it at once struck me as bizarre that he didn't include this inspiring event for us all to watch. But maybe that's because it didn't happen and Jefferson is just bullshitting as usual.

Here he is trying to take a sideswipe at Lancaster anti-fascists;

'Another highpoint was Lancaster, its really interesting to see the effect music such as Rule Britannia and the colours Red, White and Blue have on the small zealot communist element of Lancaster. Some of the scruffy louts where actually jumping up and down shaking their fists at the Truth Truck...'

Er, no, they weren't. Nobody saw it for long enough to shake their fists. And as far as I know, there isn't a 'small zealot communist element' in Lancaster. There are a lot of people who hate the BNP and all it stands for though, and if Jefferson and his fascist chums had the balls to come here and stop for a while, they'd find out that the number of anti-fascists here has grown considerably since their last (short and expensive) visit. There is, needless to say, no video of anyone jumping anywhere or shaking anything.

We all know the BNP is riddled with thugs whose only talent lies in intimidation, and Jefferson proves this very nicely by standing outside the offices of the Cumbrian Newsgroup HQ, raving like a mad drunk, or as he puts it;

'we stopped outside the Cumbrian Newsgroup headquarters and I couldn't resist getting on the tannoy and having a little bit of fun with the editor - Neil -the zealot - Hogekinson, the anti-BNP Editor of the News & Star.'

Perhaps the editor of the News and Star could get his own Tannoy and respond by asking (at top volume) why Jefferson is driving around in a hired lorry that was meant to have been paid for outright by donations from the BNP's members. And then he could ask where the donations actually went. Then maybe he could ask Jefferson how long he's been paid by the party and how much - and precisely when he stopped claiming benefits. And what his views are on drug dealers...

If I were Thicky Jefferson, I'd spend a bit more time tucked away quietly indoors and a lot less time shouting my mouth off and telling porkies.

BNP campaign comes off the rails

‘‘We rather it hadn’t happened! ’’ That was the conclusion of Martin Wingfield, editor of the British National Party’s Voice of Freedom monthly, on the MPs’ expenses scandal. He was writing three weeks before polling day amid growing signs that the BNP’s campaign for the European election was falling apart.

MPs’ expenses had come on top of the “economic meltdown, credit crunch, Muslim threat, the loony left, employment, and home repossessions” combined with “a hated government and a mealy-mouthed Tory party” that Griffin claimed in a fundraising appeal in March would create a “perfect political storm” that would “result in this party exploding onto the world stage by taking several seats in the European Parliament”.

Yet even after days of media focus on political sleaze the opinion polls were reporting that the BNP was still only attracting 3-4% of the vote, far short of what it needed to win even one seat in Europe. It was the eurosceptic UK Independence Party to which disillusioned voters were turning.

Wingfield put it down to the “voter volatility” that the expenses scandal had caused. “Without the expenses scandal, the BNP was quietly working towards having three MEPs elected on June 4th,” he wrote. “It would have taken a political earthquake to stop us winning in the North West, Yorkshire and the West Midlands … and now, of course, that is exactly what has happened.”

What had happened was that the BNP had attracted the attention it craved, but the media were not playing ball. Journalists, with a little help from Searchlight, were looking beyond the BNP’s carefully cultivated veneer of respectability and finding the same old fascist party it had always been.

The media did not have to dig far to find the BNP’s racism and shamefulness, which led Richard Pendlebury in the Mail on Sunday to describe it as “a marginal group with a rotten ideological core”. There was the embarrassing Activists’ and Organisers’ Handbook, which found it necessary to tell members not to look and behave like thugs and banned them from setting up local BNP websites and blogs because “they can’t write proper English” and “get carried away promoting cyberspace conspiracy theories which, even if true, strike the public as barking mad”.

Then there was the Language and Discipline Manual, which instructed members not to refer to “Black Britons” and “Asian Britons” because “such persons do not exist”. Exposure forced party bosses quickly to rewrite it.

The media revis-ited other episodes that the BNP would have prefer-red forgotten, such as the participation of its deputy leader, Simon Darby, at a fascist conference in Milan in April, where he was greeted by fascist stiff-right-arm salutes. The BNP’s claim that Private Johnson Beharry did not deserve his Victoria Cross and was only awarded it because he was black came back to haunt the party.

Darby came out with a clumsy attack on the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, describing him as an “ambitious African” and referring to his fellow Ugandans as spear-throwers. The BNP demanded that a banned Ku Klux Klan leader should be allowed to enter Britain, but was less keen on Gurkhas, with Griffin on Radio 5 Live describing them as “mercenaries” and saying, “We don’t think the most overcrowded country in Europe can realistically say, ‘Look, you can all come and all your relatives’.”

It did not help the BNP campaign when Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s most senior elected politician, got an airing for his admission that he had invented three murders in Barking and Dagenham to highlight knife crime, a claim for which he could be suspended from the London Assembly for up to six months.

And Bob Bailey, the BNP’s London organiser, was caught mass mailing implicitly threatening emails to anti-fascists. When challenged he said lamely: “I’m not denying I sent it but I can’t remember”.

There was worse, far worse. The BNP’s main slogan for the campaign is “British jobs for British workers”. It is illustrated ubiquitously by a picture of three white men in hard hats in front of a Union Flag. But they were no British workers.

The BNP had bought the image from a picture agency. The men were American models who posed for a general photo shoot in Portland, Oregon.

Other images on the millions of election leaflets the BNP had printed for distribution by the Royal Mail had also come from agencies. Alongside a white pensioner couple are the words: “We’ve seen how this country has declined under the present government and we’re voting BNP because they will put pensioners before asylum seekers and ensure our future.”

The couple turned out to be the Italian parents of the agency photo-grapher, who were appalled that their picture had been used to spread far-right propaganda. A doctor, a Guardsman and a mother, all quoted supporting the BNP, were no more genuine.

The former Scots Guards NCO Stuart Walker was shocked when the leaflet dropped through his letterbox with his picture and the made-up quote implying he would back the BNP because the party would stop soldiers being “abused” by Muslims. “They are scumbags and I’d never vote for them in a million years,” he told The Sun, adding that when he phoned the BNP to complain he was told to “f*** off”.

The only British voters on the leaflets were the Cass family, who in last year’s local elections appeared on BNP material all around the country pretending to be local voters – everywhere. Deceit is nothing new for the BNP.

The pictures were not the only lies. The leaflet outlined three key BNP pledges. One was to oppose “the dangerous drive … to give 80 million low-wage, Muslim Turks the right to swamp Britain”. But the population of Turkey is only just over 75 million and growing slowly, and they are by no means all low-waged.

No wonder many Royal Mail staff refused to deliver the BNP leaflets.

The British workers’ image has been plastered over the side of the BNP’s “truth truck”, better known as the lie lorry, a white Iveco advertising vehicle with Northern Irish registration plates. It toured the country during the campaign, though remarkably almost all the many pictures that appeared on BNP websites showed it cruising empty streets.

The BNP claimed to have bought the “truth truck” last year after a successful appeal to supporters to raise the £26,550 needed. In his 2009 New Year address, Griffin wrote, “your cash allowed the party to buy our very own state of the art advertising lorry and roll out the first of many nationwide Truth Truck Tours”.

It turned out to be another deception. Mark Croucher, a UKIP activist and freelance journalist, had obtained a county court judgment for several thousand pounds against the BNP for infringement of copyright for using one of his photographs without permission. When bailiffs tried to enforce the judgment by seizing the vehicle the BNP’s solicitors responded that: “the goods referred to are registered in the name of another person who … has no connection with the judgement debtors”.

The BNP’s campaign has run into other money troubles. In March the party started appealing for the £395,000 needed centrally to fight the European election. It included £210,000 to print 29 million leaflets, though this was not entirely honest as each region was also expected to raise the money itself for its own leaflets. It was because London region was unable to raise enough that it only had the A5 version of the BNP leaflet, according to Bailey.

There was also £25,000 for billboard advertising during the final two and a half weeks of the campaign and an-other £25,000 for newspaper adverts, including the online adverts that have appeared, though not for long, on local newspaper websites. All feature the stock American “British workers” picture.

A thermometer-style graphic on the BNP website showed rapid progress up to a bit over £325,000 and there it stuck. A succession of increasingly desperate campaign emails to supporters pleaded for donations to raise the final £90,000.

But the party could not leap the final hurdle. On 11 May David Hannam, the BNP deputy treasurer, passed on a letter from Griffin to branch fund-holders (the BNP term for treasurers) asking them to make all surplus funds available to Central Office “ASAP”. “Work with me on this it really is all hands on deck!” the letter ended.

On 18 May another campaign email appealed for the final £35,393, although the thermometer graphic, no longer on the BNP site’s home page, still showed a shortfall nearer to £60,000.

The BNP claims to be receiving 100 enquiries a day at its new call centre, the fruit of its “rapid expansion plan”, which Griffin claims raised £85,000 to equip four new party offices across the country. At its campaign launch in Grays the BNP proudly showed a film of its new staff hard at work in near identical surroundings. A sceptic might wonder whether was the same office filmed from different angles.

Amid all the bad publicity surrounding the BNP, the party grabbed the chance to crow after The Sun printed a story about a damaging BNP local leaflet that attacked the Gurkhas. The BNP said the leaflet was a forgery, The Sun took the story off its website and Griffin lied blatantly that he had always supported the Gurkhas. Had a maverick BNP supporter decided to set his very own Reichstag fire to kick new life into a faltering campaign?

The latest BNP begging letter implored: “It is crucial that we win a seat”. It was a far cry from the “six or seven” seats the party thought possible when Griffin appealed for funds in March. His desperation was palpable, as was his very personal interest in the outcome. “If you want to see me elected on June 4th … Help me now!” he wrote in a postscript.

The BNP has poured everything into this campaign. Griffin’s emails repeat the mantra, “We won’t get a second chance! It’s now or never”, and he is probably right. If the BNP cannot make it in the present political and economic climate, it never will.

Sonia Gable writing in Searchlight

BNP poster campaign for British workers uses American actors

British jobs for American workers - no, hang on a minute...

The poster demands “British jobs for British workers” and it shows three smiling men in hard-hats urging people to vote BNP. But the “building workers” in the ad – which is being driven up and down the country on a BNP vehicle called the “Truth Truck” – are not even British. They are American models who posed for a general photo agency shoot in Portland, Oregon, in the United States.

Another shot in the same set shows a black man working alongside white colleagues – but the racist BNP didn’t use that one.

Party bosses, led by Nick Griffin, have also printed millions of leaflets making bogus claims that a doctor and a respectable OAP couple are among their supporters.

A distinguished-looking medic is quoted saying: “I’m voting BNP because I see what immigration has done to the NHS. As a doctor I want to see an end to ‘health tourists’ and make sure British nurses are employed and paid fairly.”

But the man in the picture is another American model from a stock photo library.

The pensioners are quoted saying: “We’ve seen how this country has declined under the present government and we’re voting BNP because they will put pensioners before asylum seekers and ensure our future.”

But this couple are the Italian parents of the agency photographer. They can’t vote in Britain – and are appalled that their picture has been used to spread far-right propaganda.

BNP leader Griffin last week launched the party’s biggest election drive. His members are contesting 69 out of the UK’s 72 European Parliament seats and hope to win up to seven. But the party’s millions of leaflets could be BANNED if they are found to breach strict Royal Mail election material rules, following a complaint by Welsh party Plaid Cymru, who uncovered some of the photos.

Plaid MP Adam Price said: “These leaflets hideously misrepresent the views of the people photographed. I believe they have breached the guidelines set out for electoral communications and I call on the Royal Mail to stop distribution immediately.”

A spokesman for anti-fascist group Searchlight said: “This is a catastrophic own goal by Nick Griffin and the BNP.”

And senior Labour MP Jon Cruddas said: “How cynical can the BNP get? I can only assume no decent person would pose for posters or leaflets for the BNP so they had to make it all up. The British people will see this for what it is – a cynical con. How low can they go?”

Sunday Mirror

BNP parish council candidate invited to speak at Morecambe meeting - CANCELLED

THIS MEETING HAS BEEN CANCELLED. WELL DONE, FOLKS

We have been informed that the Poulton Resident's Association has invited BNP candidate Ms Vicky (Julie) Blain to a hustings for Poulton Ward Parish Council candidates at the Poulton Children's Centre, Clark Street, Morecambe.

Obviously, this cannot be allowed to happen, so we're asking you to phone the centre and register a strong but polite protest at the fact that they are allowing the BNP on to the premises to spread its racist poison.

The meeting is planned for Monday May 18th at 7pm and if necessary, we shall be calling upon local anti-fascists to demonstrate that evening.

Local anti-fascists have always responded strongly and immediately to even a hint of the BNP popping its ugly head up, to the extent that rather than have a stall in the town centre, the BNP now chooses instead to park its Lie Lorry up in a back street somewhere or to race around the one-way system before scuttling for cover. They know they're not welcome here and we need that message to get across clearly and repeatedly every time they appear.

You can call Poulton Children's Centre on 01524 833644

Clergyman drives BNP activist out of cathedral grounds

The Ven Chris Liley, the Archdeacon of Lichfield, confronted the supporter of the far-right party after he parked its "Truth Truck" outside the cathedral in Staffordshire.

The 61-year-old cleric told him to stop taking photographs of the van in front of the building, then ordered him to leave the cathedral close.

He now plans to tell the BNP, which hopes to put up candidates for county council elections in Staffordshire this year, not to publish any material featuring Lichfield Cathedral or imply that the Church of England supports its policies.

The party, which wants an end to immigration and the "voluntary resettlement" of foreign-born residents of Britain, believes it will receive a large number of votes because of opposition to a mosque being built in the city.

Earlier this year the Church of England's governing body, the General Synod, voted overwhelmingly to ban clergy and lay staff from being members of the group amid growing fears it is trying to disguise its extreme policies and portray itself as a Christian organisation.

The BNP is using a picture of Jesus in a new billboard campaign ahead of European elections in June, together with a quote from the Bible reading "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you" and posing the question: "What would Jesus do?"

Mr Liley said: "Lichfield Cathedral is a place of Christian worship and the centre of mission for the Diocese of Lichfield. We are open to all and want everybody to feel welcome here – but people visiting the Cathedral must act in a way which does not damage the cathedral nor the welcome that we are able to offer other visitors.

"The BNP are wrong to suggest that Jesus would vote for the BNP. I don't know who he would vote for, but his parable of the Good Samaritan was a clear example about the value we should place on people from other communities.

"Lichfield Cathedral encourages people to vote in elections and we seek to engage with all legitimate politicians. But we will not endorse any particular candidate or party and it is wrong for any party to seek to use the Cathedral in a way which might imply endorsement, regardless of how much we may support or oppose what they stand for."

A spokesman for the BNP said the activist had only been trying to take a photo with the cathedral in the background, on Tuesday afternoon, to show the places its campaign bus had visited.

He said: "The cathedral is synonymous with Lichfield. It's a very quaint English place so when you depict it, what better thing to show than the cathedral?

"We're about to put our first candidate in Lichfield and I think we're going to get a very big vote. There's a big mosque planned for Lichfield but there's a lot of opposition to it."

The Telegraph

Nelson school in row over BNP stunt

A still of the Lie Lorry from the YouTube video

A row has erupted after BNP members parked a campaign trailer outside a school.

Representatives, including two councillors, were filmed arguing with a senior teacher from Pendle Vale College, in Oxford Road, after a large sign emblazoned with the party’s logo and a slogan was driven to the site. Now the footage has been posted on YouTube, as well as the BNP’s website.

Coun Derek Dawson, who represents Gannow ward on Burnley Council, said he and Pendle borough councillor Brian Parker were in front of the school to do an interview for BNP TV about the Government’s £250million Building Schools for the Future programme. Schools across Burnley and Pendle have been merged and rebuilt as part of the flagship scheme.

Coun Dawson said a senior teacher, believed to be an assistant head, came out of the school to tell them to move. He added: “We were on the road outside the school and causing no trouble.”

Yesterday, Pendle Vale headteacher Steve Wilson said: “We have a duty of care to all of our pupils. With that in mind, we felt that having a BNP billboard parked outside our multicultural school may have had an impact on pupils as they were leaving, and we asked the occupants of the vehicle to move it, as we would have done with any similar vehicle displaying a political message.”

Lancashire Telegraph

Reader report: BNP's Lie Lorry comes to Lancaster (but not for long)

A van towing a large mobile advertising hoarding promoting the BNP was spotted in Lancaster today (Friday 3rd April). It drove around the one-way system several times with loudspeakers blaring out its racist messages, and also parked for a while in Dalton Square. BNP footsoldiers were spotted handing out leaflets promoting their campaign for the forthcoming Euro-Elections that will be held this June.

This BNP incursion encountered spontaneous opposition from Lancaster people, who don't want these fascists whipping up racist and xenophobic hatred. Local people are proud of our diverse and tolerant city. Within an hour of the BNP's appearance, locals using text messages were assembling a crowd of devoted anti-fascists in Dalton Square. However, the BNP fascists had fled before this crowd could mount an organised protest! So instead, the local anti-fascists busied themselves by handing out hundreds of leaflets exposing and opposing the BNP to local shoppers.

The BNP were almost certainly from the small but highly active unit that party has in Cumbria. They are focusing all their energies on the Euro-election, and hope to get their leader, Nick Griffin elected as a Euro-MP for the North West Region, which is their main target. They only need around 8% of the vote to win a MEP seat here in the North West, and received 6.4%. last time in 2004. That's why they are standing their fuhrer Nick Griffin in our region. We could therefore possibly wake up to find a neo-Nazi, convicted racist and holocaust denier as our MEP. He would then be provided with an local office, plus staff and £250,000 a year from the taxpayer to fund his propaganda machine.

He would also get to hang out at the European Parliament and enjoy the EU gravy train with his old friends from the growing band of European neo-Nazi parties, which have MEP's from racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic ultra-nationalist formations in Poland, Latvia, Italy, Austria, France, Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere. These are the old allies of Griffin.

Local community campaigners will be taking a stand, and building a campaign against the BNP. Info-stalls are planned in Lancaster City centre in the next few weeks - watch this space. Volunteers needed.

This Saturday (April 4th) anti-fascists will also be leafleting in Barrow-in-Furness, South Cumbria, Manchester and other parts of the North West. Please prepare to help the campaign over the coming weeks - with money, offers to distribute leaflets and any ideas you have.

The 'Hope Not Hate' campaign commented:

"Nothing is certain in politics and while the terrain is certainly getting tougher the BNP can be defeated. However for this to happen requires a massive campaign to mobilise everyone opposed to the politics of hate to turn out and vote. We have shown time and again that there is a huge anti-BNP vote out there and if it is organised and motivated then it will turn up at the polling stations and be decisive in an election".

Barry Kade

BNP turns to deception as donation fatigue sets in

Sonia Gable investigates the BNP’s latest scam to get money out of its supporters

The fifth begging letter from the British National Party this year shows that the party may have reached the limit of its members’ and supporters’ financial resources and is resorting to yet more lies to fill its coffers.

The letter, printed on garish yellow paper and sent in the second week of March, was a second attempt to raise money for the party’s “Rapid Expansion Plan”. The party was “struggling due to unprecedented growth”, according to the first appeal sent out at the end of February. So many people were “flocking to the BNP” that “we cannot cope”. So “I need you to support the party’s ‘Rapid Expansion Plan’ NOW”, demanded Nick Griffin, the party leader, followed by three exclamation marks.

The BNP needed to win a seat in the European election but it also had to have a “telecommunications system” and a “central administration office to deal with the current huge increase in enquiries, party membership and organisational growth” and the “40,000 – 75,000” enquiries and membership applications that would result from the distribution of “over 30 million leaflets across the UK” over the next six months.

On and on the six-page letter went, bandying about the word “professional” and claiming that £85,150 was needed to cope with a projected 400% growth in the party’s “database” in the next six months.

And the money was needed quickly: Griffin needed “to put the orders in next week”. There was even a marketing brochure for the “professional communications system for medium-sized enterprises” that Griffin said he wanted to buy for £28,650, though nothing about how the BNP’s largely incompetent staff would ever learn how to use it.

Clearly the money was not forthcoming, not in a week or even three. And the problem would not go away. In fact between the February and March letters “we have become even more popular”, Griffin claimed, because of the party’s “massive victory in the Swanley council election”. Only a party with so few councillors could trumpet a single council by-election win as a massive national victory.

Griffin’s marketing consultant, Jim Dowson, must have advised him that outlining the political need for the desired equipment was all very well, but the appeal might work better if supporters thought they were getting a bargain and at the same time benefiting party members. “Normally, the set up costs for what we are doing would cost over £200,000,” the March letter said, “but by using companies owned by members and supporters we have cut the cost down to £85,150”.

The brochure that came with the February letter had one strange omission, the name of the company that was offering the “HiPath 3000” system the BNP wanted to buy. A search readily revealed a five-year-old brochure with an identical front page, except for the inclusion of the company’s name and website. The company was Siemens, the Germany-based global conglomerate operating in IT, communications, energy and many other industries. It was hardly a company owned by a BNP member.

A spokesperson for Siemens Enterprise Communications, which makes the HiPath system, said the company was completely unaware of the BNP’s use of its graphics in its campaign. The system was normally sold to customers through resellers, who would use Siemens’s product information in their own branded brochures. However resellers would not lift Siemens’s images and design in this way and would certainly not produce a brochure without their own name on it.

She also thought it strange that anyone would issue a brochure produced in 2004 for an old version of the communications system that is no longer sold.

So what is going on? Is Griffin afraid to admit that he wants to spend his members’ donations on a product from a German-owned company? Or is the brochure just window dressing, the supplier’s name omitted to make it easier for Griffin to fob members off with some second-hand second-rate equipment bought from Dowson or his ilk, just like the BNP’s “truth truck”, better known as the lie lorry.

Perhaps it is simply that the BNP is worried that any publicity will scare the reseller off. After all, nobody respectable wants to be seen doing business with the BNP.

Fed up

Even before the latest letter, BNP members and supporters were getting thoroughly fed up with the stream of letters from Griffin asking for donations to support this, that or other aspect of the BNP’s “growth” and its European election effort.

The year had barely started when Griffin’s “new year address” landed on hard-pressed supporters’ doormats, with a plea to contribute to the party’s “People’s Defence Fund”. The fund had been set up following the publication on the internet of the BNP members’ list last November, with the aim of raising money to “employ legal experts to defend those of our people suffering hardship, discrimination and persecution in their employment for being members of this party”.

The People’s Defence Fund also had a wider political purpose: to “give a bloody nose to all those little press creeps and the Lab/Tory/Lib Dem sycophants who have built careers on the back of attacking the BNP and our long-suffering people”.

The new year address followed six appeals in 2008 for the “Building to Grow fund”, the London election campaign, to buy the “truth truck” and to publish and distribute the outrageously racist Racism Cuts Both Ways pamphlet. Griffin claimed that all these appeals achieved “amazing results”.

Confident that his members and supporters had bottomless purses or a moronic level of financial acumen, Griffin did not even wait until January was out to launch the party’s appeal for funds to fight the European election. Headed “The Battle for Britain Commences”, it waxed lyrical on how winning “just one” seat in the European Parliament “would put us on the world stage and would lead to an avalanche of popular support throughout this country”.

Controversially a leaflet enclosed with the letter adopted the image of an RAF Spitfire, now revealed to be one flown by the celebrated 303 Squadron of the RAF, made up of Polish airmen rescued from France shortly before the Nazi occupation. The BNP has continued to use the image on its fundraising material in the face of ridicule and accusations of hypocrisy.

The leaflet invited supporters to attend the party’s “2009 European election campaign nationwide roadshow”, which promised “multi-media sound and vision”, speeches from “Chairman Nick Griffin and invited European mystery guest” as well as champagne reception, entertainment and light supper, all at a cost of £30. “I guarantee you will never have seen anything like this,” wrote Griffin.

The reality turned out a bit different. The European mystery guest never showed up and the “roadshow” encountered opposition from local people and last-minute venue cancellations wherever it went.

Hot on the heels of that exuberantly written appeal, full of bold text, underlining and italics, came a more personal and undated letter from Griffin asking supporters to make a standing order of “just £3.00 a week” to “save this country from destruction before it’s too late”.

It was recognition of how our HOPE not hate campaigning was hurting the BNP. “The Labour Party, the liberal media and a whole host of leftist fanatics, led by Searchlight, have now become so concerned about our success, that the latter has employed the services of the WORLD’S TOP campaigning team to prevent us from winning,” wrote Griffin. “Blue State Digital. They’re the team that co-ordinated Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House!

“Your £3 per week can help send Obama’s boys back to Washington with their tails between their legs,” claimed Griffin, after condemning them for being American. Griffin’s own longstanding connections with American nazis are of course quite different.

Those who have responded to these appeals may be regretting it. In January Mark Collett, the BNP’s head of publicity, had to admit responsibility for printing 700,000 “Euro warm up leaflets” without an official imprint, which meant they could not be distributed. We understand that dozens of BNP activists who could have been out canvassing are spending many hours peeling off thousands of tiny stickers to place on the leaflets as straight as they can manage.

The “HiPath 3000” brochure distributed by the BNP likewise has no imprint. Did Collett print that too, in bid to con BNP members into coughing up for their party once more?

* Since Searchlight went to press, the BNP has sent another begging letter, the sixth this year. This one purports to be the “Official Launch 2009 European Election Campaign Fund” – implying that all the fundraising to date, including the Battle for Britain tour, was in some way not official. It also claims that the “Rapid Expansion Plan” appeal succeeded in raising the required £85,000.

Hope not hate

Weekend briefing

Sneaking into Wigan following the multiple refusal of other venues in nearby Leigh to host its increasingly fugitive "Battle for Britain" fund-raising roadshow, the BNP is claiming an attendance of "well over one hundred people" for the event - notoriously symbolised by a stolen graphic showing a World War Two Spitfire flown by a Polish fighter ace.

Even giving the BNP the benefit of considerable doubt, "well over one hundred people" seems to us to be a very small number of activists to draw on from the populous North-west region for what was a heavily trailed showcase event, held on Friday night.

It is difficult to see how the BNP can claim the Wigan meeting the success it does, when according to the same party its ordinary branch meetings regularly attract an attendance of around one hundred. The North-west being home to a sizeable number of truculent anti-Griffin BNP dissidents is one possible reason for the derisory regional turnout.

An increasingly active and effective coalition of anti-fascists and concerned locals is very possibly another.

What is clear is that the BNP was seriously wrong-footed in the North-west. Not only was it forced to arrange a number of fall-back venues for its high profile roadshow, but the claim that there was "standing room only" at the final location is also an admission of how small and unsuitable it really was.

Prior to the roadshow a group of Liverpool BNP activists found themselves in an altercation outside the Ellesmere public house in Leigh that led to one person sustaining minor injuries and the arrest of another. There was also damage to BNP vehicles when locals objected to the presence of the BNP and its advertising trailer. We understand that the BNP members got out of their vehicles to confront the locals and had the worst of the ensuing violence.

BNP websites are now claiming that the violence was instigated by "blacks".

As I write, there is a certain amount of online speculation among far-Rightists that the Liverpool BNP contingent was ordered to the Ellesmere pub as a ruse to throw anti-fascist campaigners off the scent. Another way of putting it is that the BNP hung its Liverpool members out to dry, since the group and its advertising trailer could not fail to attract the attention of campaigners. Naturally, BNP Security was safely indoors protecting Nick Griffin from whatever threats to life and limb the party leader risks at the hands of his own members, and the Liverpool members were left to hold their own.

On Thursday, in a blatant attempt to inflame anti-Muslim passions, newly elected BNP councillor Paul Golding (of the dodgy family background) drove the BNP's Lie Lorry to Luton, the scene, earlier in the week, of a confrontation sparked when police allowed 20 Muslim religious extremists to demonstrate against the homecoming parade of the Royal Anglian Regiment.

"BNP’s Truth Truck Faces down Islamist Extremists in Luton" screams a headline on the BNP's website, for all the world as if Golding had single-handedly confronted an army of scimitar-wielding Dervishes.

The truth of Luton is that just 20 isolated lunatics failed to gain any support at all from a local Muslim population numbering 30,000 - since 99.93% of Luton's remaining Muslims managed to ignore the campaign of publicity and recruitment conducted by the extremists in the weeks preceding.

We think that says a lot for Luton's Muslim community - quite a number of whom were in the crowds cheering the Anglians along, as local news footage clearly shows.

The failure of the extremists to attract any support at all is not something you would know about from the subsequent hysterical media coverage of the affair, much of which would have been more at home on the pages of a BNP publication.

While politicians and community leaders in Luton worked hard (and largely uncredited) to repair the damage caused by the twenty extremists the opportunistic BNP worked just as hard to undo it. On the BNP website Golding brags that he took the Lie Lorry to Luton's largest mosque - an action that could only have been intended to provoke, and might well have resulted in violence.

Not being quite the British Lion he likes others to think he is, Golding "faced down" the Muslim faithful by driving off when some of them made unspecified "threatening moves" towards the Lie Lorry - which, translated, means that people were entering and leaving the Mosque as usual and a nervous Golding got cold feet.

Nick Griffin's grasping reaction to Luton was to fire off another in his interminable series of begging emails, hysterically claiming that the 20 isolated lunatics at the root of the trouble constituted a "horde of Muslim extremists". If a grouplet of just 20 can be extrapolated into a "horde" then we're left wondering if the "well over one hundred people" attending the BNP's Wigan roadshow is a product of the same imaginative thinking.

Taken together with a 2.5% vote loss in Rainhill (St. Helens) ward - in the heart of the North-west - in a by-election on Thursday, not the most glorious week in the BNP's history.

Paying for incompetence

British National Party members and supporters are getting thoroughly fed up with the stream of begging letters landing on their doormats. Already this year there have been four, all signed by Nick Griffin, the party leader, asking for donations to support this, that or other aspect of the BNP’s “growth” and its European election effort.

The year had barely started when Griffin’s “new year address” landed on hard-pressed supporters’ doormats, with a plea to contribute to the party’s “People’s Defence Fund”. The fund had been set up following the publication on the internet of the BNP members’ list last November, with the aim of raising money to “employ legal experts to defend those of our people suffering hardship, discrimination and persecution in their employment for being members of this party”.

The People’s Defence Fund also had a wider political purpose: to “give a bloody nose to all those little press creeps and the Lab/Tory/Lib Dem sycophants who have built careers on the back of attacking the BNP and our long-suffering people”.

The new year address followed six appeals in 2008 for the “Building to Grow fund”, the London election campaign, to buy the “truth truck”, better known as the lie lorry, and to publish and distribute the outrageously racist Racism Cuts Both Ways pamphlet. Griffin claimed that all these appeals achieved “amazing results”.

Confident that his members and supporters had bottomless purses, Griffin did not even wait until January was out to launch the party’s appeal for funds to fight the European election. Headed “The Battle for Britain Commences”, it waxed lyrical on how winning “just one” seat in the European Parliament “would put us on the world stage and would lead to an avalanche of popular support throughout this country”. Controversially a leaflet with the letter adopted the image of an RAF Spitfire, now revealed to be one flown by the celebrated 303 Squadron of the RAF, made up of Polish airmen rescued from France shortly before the Nazi occupation.

The leaflet invited supporters to attend the party’s “2009 European election campaign nationwide roadshow”, which promised “multi-media sound and vision”, speeches from “Chairman Nick Griffin and invited European mystery guest” as well as Champagne reception, entertainment and light supper, all at a cost of £30. “I guarantee you will never have seen anything like this,” wrote Griffin.

By February the BNP was “struggling due to unprecedented growth”. So many people were “flocking to the BNP” that “we cannot cope”. So “I need you to support the party’s ‘Rapid Expansion Plan’ NOW”, demanded Griffin, followed by three exclamation marks.

The BNP needed to win a seat in the European election but it also had to have a “telecommunications system” and a “central administration office to deal with the current huge increase in enquiries, party membership and organisational growth” and the “40,000 – 75,000” enquiries and membership applications that would result from the distribution of “over 30 million leaflets across the UK” over the next six months.

On and on the six-page letter went, bandying about the word “professional” and claiming that £85,150 was needed to cope with a projected 400% growth in the party’s “database” in the next six months.

And the money was needed quickly: Griffin needed “to put the orders in next week”. There was even a marketing leaflet for the “professional communications system for medium-sized enterprises” that Griffin said he wanted to buy, though nothing about how the BNP’s largely incompetent staff would ever learn how to use it.

One could be forgiven a slight sense of déjà vu. In January 2008 the BNP was proclaiming proudly that its operations had been centralised for the first time in Excalibur’s “brand new ground-floor warehouse” with a “vast array of new equipment” as a result of the “Building to Grow” appeal. What happened to all the equipment after the party was evicted from the Evans Business Centre in Deeside was not revealed.

Hot on the heels of that exuberantly written appeal, full of bold text, underlining and italics, came a more personal and undated letter from Griffin asking supporters to make a standing order of “just £3.00 a week” to “save this country from destruction before it’s too late”.

It was recognition of how our HOPE not hate campaigning was hurting the BNP. “The Labour Party, the liberal media and a whole host of leftist fanatics, led by Searchlight, have now become so concerned about our success, that the latter has employed the services of the WORLD’S TOP campaigning team to prevent us from winning,” wrote Griffin. “Blue State Digital. They’re the team that co-ordinated Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House!

“Your £3 per week can help send Obama’s boys back to Washington with their tails between their legs,” claimed Griffin, after condemning them for being American. Griffin’s own longstanding connections with American nazis are of course quite different.

Those who have responded to these appeals may be regretting it. In January Mark Collett, the BNP’s head of publicity, had to admit responsibility for printing 700,000 “Euro warm up leaflets” without an official imprint, which meant they could not be distributed. We understand that dozens of BNP activists who could have been out canvassing are spending many hours peeling off thousands of tiny stickers to place on the leaflets as straight as they can manage.

HOPE not hate

One Flew Over The Pig Farm: the BNP and us in 2008 - August

Summer arrives with a vengeance and a nicely sarcastic series of articles by our friend Iliacus, who begins the task of inspecting and analysing the BNP's accounts for 2007 - delivered to the Electoral Commission late, as usual. Iliacus points out the highlights, which to the untrained eye, show a party in great financial trouble, as shown by the auditor for the accounts who states 'the financial statements do not give a true and fair view of the state of the party's affairs'.

• Donation Income falls by 32%
• Membership income up by 38% (?)
• Income from commercial activities down by 68%!
• Deficit for year is £50,000 (against £18,000 surplus in 2006)
• Current cash accounts in chaos
• Balance sheet shows net liabilities of £85,000+
• Party owes £20,000 + in PAYE and VAT - (that's £20k less for schools and hospitals!)

Who is to blame for all this? The party's chairman? Its incompetent treasurer? Perish the thought. Nick Griffin has the answer and says so in his Chairman's Report.

'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!)'

Iliacus' masterly summary of the mess that is the BNP's accounts can be read by clicking the links 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"
The Accounts (5) : "a slender merit of providing cosmetic comfort"

Meanwhile the BNP, the party that has nothing but respect for all things British (ho-ho), pisses off everyone by flogging fake Victoria Crosses, thus showing its contempt for our armed forces and incidentally using the income from sales to fund more of the party's extremism and racism. Hero Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry, 28, who won the VC four years ago for saving 30 pals in Iraq, condemned the BNP. He said: “Selling fake VCs is very disrespectful. The honour of the medal and its history shouldn’t be tarnished like this. I take so much pride in my medal and I hate seeing it abused. The medal is not about money or politics and it shouldn’t be worn for fun – that devalues the sacrifice of the soldiers who won it.”

The BNP's Lie Lorry looks to be one of its key moneymakers if the number of begging letters sent out referring to it are anything to go by. You'll recall that the party asked for £30,000 to buy the truck but now they are asking for more to actually put it on the road. No-one in the party (apparently) has the sense to ask why this wasn't factored into the original appeal.

The truth is that the Lie Lorry is yet another of Griffin's scams - remember Boudicca the amazing invisible bus? How much money was raised by the membership for that? Nobody knows, except Griffin and co. And where is the bus? Nobody knows that either. The Truth Truck, being shared with UK LifeLeague, will no doubt appear and will cost the membership dearly. It already has - but this is just the beginning of the scam. And I'll bet there are many more to come.

News reaches us of plans to change the constitution of the BNP to allow leadership challenges to take place quadrennially, rather than annually. There are many changes in the pipeline as Griffin seeks to consolidate his slippery grip on the BNP, many of which are planned for an Extraordinary General Meeting which is to take place at the Red, White and Blue later this month.

The moronic Tommy Williams (he of Covert fame) got in trouble for trying to claim on the nazi Stormfront forum that a bomb had been set off at the entrance to the RWB site. A complete lie that he only told because he thought 'reds' (meaning anyone who opposes the BNP) would get the blame. Silly boy. After a snorter of a telling-off from Nick Griffin, who could obviously imagine the cash-carrying punters melting away into the sunset, Williams quickly printed a retraction, blaming the incident on local children setting off fireworks. Strangely, there is no record of any such incident taking place - not with the police, the local newspapers or any local residents I asked. Am I surprised? Well, no.

Mid-August saw a 700-strong demo against the RWB in Denby somewhat disproportionately policed by 250 officers, many in riot gear. This huge number was supplemented by as many (it seemed) on the BNP's security team. There's a full report of the demo here but one of the highlights was a group of anti-fascists listening to Martin Reynolds, the BNP's then head of security, being told in no uncertain terms by police control to 'breathe deep and calm down' after he called for help in a mad panic. Since then, Reynolds appears to have been replaced by the arrogant Cumbrian and dandy Clive Jefferson. The RWB had a bright spot for Nick Griffin though - he walked away having secured a severance package that could bankrupt the BNP overnight.

At the end of August, the BNP stepped up its production of racially-inflammatory material with yet another leaflet blaming the heroin trade entirely on Muslims via its Preston branch, which seems to have permanently renamed itself the Preston Pals. As usual, the police seem reluctant to take any action despite the fact that there have been numerous complaints about the leaflet. One wonders why...

The month ends with the news that a group calling itself Daten-Antifa has hacked into the servers of the Blood and Honour neo-nazi group, pinching nearly 32,000 items of data on members, their email addresses and their messages from all over the world. While we naturally disapprove of this sort of behaviour, the databank can be found here.

Meet the BNP hijacker … or maybe not

As part of our service of keeping BNP members informed about what is going on in their own party, we pass on details of a Hounslow BNP branch meeting featuring the guest speaker Paul Golding, well known in the party as a "London super-activist" and driver of the BNP's lie lorry.

In an attempt to round members up for the meeting on Friday 13 February, Councillor Bob Bailey, the BNP's London organiser and leader of the BNP group on Barking and Dagenham council, says: "Paul is an excellent speaker and leading light in the south east and London. He is the candidate in a by election in Seven Oaks [sic] Kent. Polling day Thursday 12th so with any luck we may be greeting Councillor Paul Golding!"

This may cause consternation among BNP activists being dragged over to Swanley St Mary's ward, Sevenoaks, to carry on canvassing for their candidate right up to the actual polling day on 19 February. This latest blunder by Councillor Bailey follows his glowing endorsement of the BNP's candidate in the Waddon ward, Croydon, by-election on 12 February, Charlotte Lewis. When her animal rights terrorism conviction was revealed, Bailey told the local paper it would increase the BNP's share of the vote.

Why Bailey was acting as as a BNP spokesperson for Croydon, south London, is unclear. Party members are wondering what has happened to Bob Gertner, the south London organiser.

Members and supporters wanting to attend the Hounslow meeting in west London are told to make their way to the rendezvous point at Uxbridge underground station at 7pm and "look for activists with Union flag". Is that the Union Flag Golding claimed to have hijacked in his recent statement, widely publicised by Searchlight: "We have hi-jacked the Union Flag, now we must hi-jack the word ‘British'"?

Confused? Why not give the Hounslow organiser, Dan Finch, a call on 07722 166755?

Stop the BNP

BNP attempts to infiltrate wildcat strikes

Warnings are being sounded about far-right involvement in the Lindsey wildcat strike over foreign workers, with the deputy leader of the British National party telling politics.co.uk: "We'll be the last people there."

Trade unionists and anti-fascist activists have been alerted to the growing BNP presence around the picket line. The strike spread across the country yesterday, with heavy snow doing nothing to stop over 300 people gathering around the site as the sun rose.

"We'll be there for the foreseeable future," Simon Darby, deputy leader of the BNP, confirmed to politics.co.uk. "We'll be the last people there."

He continued: "Unfortunately Labour have sent in the Socialist Workers party storm troopers who have been aggressive against our people. Police were supportive of us, but the left got rather aggressive. The police said 'we can't guarantee your safety'. The last thing we want is clashes with the left on TV."

That particular event carried a different interpretation from anti-fascist organisation Searchlight. A spokesman told politics.co.uk: "The local trade union people have gone to the police and said we don't want these people anywhere near the picket line. They've got nothing to do with the dispute. The police said to the BNP 'if you bring your truck to the picket line we'll do something about it'. They were forced to move to about half a mile away."

Yesterday the party started handing out leaflets about the strike.

"It's all over the place," the spokesman said. "It has lots of typos but the basic reason it doesn't make any sense is that they don't understand what the trade unions are about."

The Socialist party, which has members on the strike committee, is also handing out a leaflet tomorrow, but one targeted at the Italian workers brought in to work. Written in Italian, the leaflet says Italian workers have more in common with their British counterparts than Italian management.

The BNP, which is at the site in its 'truth truck' (nicknamed the 'liars' lorry' by anti-fascist activists), are understood to be using a BNP-based union called Solidarity' to become involved in the strike, which expanded to include Sellafield nuclear power plant workers yesterday. Solidarity is a registered trade union formed in 2006. Its last returns to the certification office said it had only 100 members, although that number has almost certainly risen slightly since then. It does not have a certificate of independence, meaning it can't represent members at tribunals or in court and employers are under no obligation to recognise it.

The party has dedicated large sections of their website to the strike, with photos of Italian workers showing cameramen the V-sign displayed prominently beneath the slogan: "British job s for British workers – When we say it we mean it."

The response of the unions to a BNP infiltration has been mixed. A spokesman for the GMB union told politics.co.uk "We held mass meeting with our members. We recommended our members go back to work. They decided not to take our advice. You're talking to me about something that's not our responsibility."

But a political officer for the union took a different stance, telling politics.co.uk: "We want to make sure the BNP don't hijack this to peddle their hate. This is not a dispute concerning immigration or asylum seekers. It's completely different to that. I've not heard people say they can see a lot of BNP activity at the moment although I acknowledge there is some."

He added: "We'll make sure that members and people on picket lines are alerted to the fact they will be about and they will try to recruit. We need to be smart enough to know they will be there and act against it."

Police plans to bus in the Italian and Portuguese workers today are being treated as a statement of intent by strikers, with many saying it is reminiscent of the miners' strike in the 1980s.

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From Welshpool with love...

Do you remember the ludicrous story the BNP tried to inflict on a weary public back in April 2006 in which Nick Griffin was alleged to have been the target of an assassination attempt? It doesn't really matter if you do or not because the story wasn't true, as we explained here. In the same article, we referred to another work of fantasy - the story that, in February 2007, Griffin had been attacked by a bunch of thugs on his way to a meeting but that his assailants were fought off by his heroic, if steroid-bound, bodyguard, Martin Reynolds. That one also never happened.

We referred to these flights of fantasy as a couple of the top-ten list of classic BNP lies and up until today I personally would have expected the fake assassination attempt to make the number one spot. Now though, we have a new contender...

Simon Bennett, supposedly some kind of computer whiz (though he seems to have made a real dogs dinner of the BNP site), has, it is alleged by the fantasists at BNP HQ, been approached by Special Branch, who not only asked him to provide them with information on what went on at branch level but also offered him £200 in used notes as an incentive.

According to the report on the BNP's website, Bennett had just returned from a 'business trip' to Northern Ireland when he was stopped and held by the police, the offer being apparently made at that point using the pretext that SB was keeping an eye out for potential extremists inside the party.

If this is the case, why on earth would Special Branch approach a known Griffin-loyalist who makes money out of the party (and apparently has his own business) to take him on as an informer and, a rather better question, why would they offer him an amount like £200 which, to the likes of Bennett, who can afford to gallivant to and fro across the Irish Sea, is a pittance?

Although highly improbable, the story isn't that bad so far - or at least until the BNP try being clever in the report and go just a little over the top.

Having told Nick Griffin and several other key officials about the approach, Mr Bennett was given the ‘OK’ to continue and to see how long it took them to get down to their real business. He met them several times over the following few weeks and, once again, they didn’t do anything other than say how much they agreed with large amounts of BNP policy.

When they called him to another meeting in a local pub, however, one of the two handed Mr. Bennett a menu. Inside were several photos of individuals and he was asked if he could identify any of them. He said that he couldn’t and gave the menu back, only to have a roll of twenty pound notes shoved into his hand...the SB men told Mr Bennet that they had prepared a safe house for him because he had to “be protected.” Mr Bennett was given the code name ‘Nicky Price’ and told to text in a message to the agents every night “to let them know he was safe.”

“The safe house story was obviously made up,” Mr Bennet said. “They said they were on their way back down from Windermere, which told me that they had gone up there to carry out surveillance on the premises where the meeting was to be held, and most likely to bug it with a listening device.”

(The meeting went ahead as planned, but the attendees, all warned in advance, were careful to ensure that they did not discuss anything indoors which they did not want the Special Branch to know.)

“That’s far enough for me. I’ve donated their bribe to the party, and am going public so they know that they have no hold on me. I think it’s disgusting that, at a time when they still haven’t caught the Islamic extremists who groomed and duped a Special Needs youngster into trying to bomb the Giraffe restaurant in Plymouth, the secret police are wasting time and taxpayers’ money trying to subvert the British National Party.”

Oh dear. A safe house? A menu with photo's tucked away inside? A fake name? All this on a pay-off worth a measly £200? I suppose we should only be grateful that the whole thing didn't take place on a bench in Kew Gardens. You know the kind of thing. Scene opens with man sitting at bench eating an ice cream, another man sits on bench putting newspaper down beside him, second man leaves a couple of minutes later without newspaper, ice cream man picks up newspaper and wanders off, inside newspaper are plans for secret Russian submarine base in Norway, world is saved from encroaching threat of Communism, play music, roll credits, fade out. Ian Fleming, eat your heart out.

So let's take a quick look at Simon Bennett. Is he the serious kind, who would risk all to play the role of James Bond within SPECTRE SMERSH the BNP? No, because he's a childish idiot. Look at this tosh. And it seems he runs three websites that one would have assumed to be completely independent; those belonging to the BNP, NLP and Third Way. Bennett is a strange and dodgy character and is, I would have thought, a very unlikely candidate for Special Branch to select as an informer. On the other hand, he seems to be trusted by Griffin, as witness his trip over to Northern Ireland where he was, we are told, negotiating a new rental deal for the Lie Lorry - the vehicle the membership of the BNP raised money to purchase, not rent.

Special Branch must be on overtime if the BNP is to be believed, for it claims that there has been a second recruitment attempt, this of one Kieran Dinsmore, the party's Northern Ireland organiser. Dinsmore, it seems, was followed home from work but was not offered a safe house, a false name, a fake moustache or a tiny spy camera the size of a molecule. That'll teach him not to watch James Bond films.

Just to drive the point that we are actually in the middle of a film set and that the BNP is in fiction a good deal more exciting than in real life, the party claims that a further two attempts have been made to recruit for Special Branch.

We can also report that we are already aware of two other BNP members — one of them not even a local official — who have been approached by Special Branch officers under the guise of making inquiries into people’s safety after the List leak, in an attempt to recruit them as informers.

We wondered what had caused this attack of fantasy mania - but the end of the article suddenly makes everything clear.

“In all probability there are other individuals out there right now who have been sucked in completely and are now wracked with guilt over letting down their friends and colleagues. Fortunately, there is no need for anyone to bear that burden...All anyone who has been groomed by the Special Branch into becoming an informer has to do to put it all behind them is to come and tell us...We’re not worried about what Smith’s Snoops have been told, or how long it’s been going on. We want to get their snouts out of our lawful business, and will not hold anything against anyone who comes clean. We’re not even going to shout about it, but we do need to be told.

Nick Griffin, no doubt encouraged by his South African spook-run 'Intelligence Team', is on his annual paranoia kick. Last year it was Searchlight moles and December rebel supporters; before that was the furore over the party's treatment of Sharon Ebanks and its obsession with kicking her and her supporters out, and this year it's Special Branch recruiting wholesale - all of which leads us to the final and most important part of the story.

Finally, for the large numbers of non-member readers who may not have come across this sort of thing before except in novels, please ask yourselves if you are happy living in a country where a politicised police force spies on opposition parties and arrests their activists, MPs and leaders. And, make up your mind to do something to help restore the democracy for which so many of our people have sacrificed so much...You could make up your mind to join the British National Party right now, or at least make a donation to help our fight back against Labour’s creeping tyranny. Persecuted BNP teacher Mark Walker needs £3,000 in legal fees URGENTLY to get his appeal finalised. Civil Liberty has already found £500 but it’s up to us to give him the rest...Mark has a young family to look after this Christmas, so it wouldn’t be fair to leave him to find that money. He’s at the frontline of our fight, at the frontline of the struggle to preserve your freedom. Please hit back by helping him now. Thank you.

Yes, that's what all the James Bond rubbish leads to - yet another piss-poor attempt to screw a load of money out of the BNP membership, by making use of the party's corporate persecution complex and using Mark Walker's case (and a mention of Christmas) as a final twist. Why does Walker need money? Isn't he represented freely by Solidarity? Isn't he taking legal advice freely from legal whiz Lee Barnes?

The truth is he doesn't need the money any more than any of us do - but what's the betting that the next payment for the Lie Lorry is around £2500-3000?

The BNP's stories and lies get more extravagant all the time but it's difficult to know how they'll get better than the rubbish they've used on this occasion. Perhaps next time, the story will involve Batman in some way. Or possibly Jack Bauer. The only thing we can be absolutely sure of is that it won't involve the truth.

Lie lorry tour fails to deliver

Talking to himself: Nick Griffin aboard the lie lorry

“We will start in Scotland and work our way south over one month, stopping in all major cities from Edinburgh to Southampton,” promised Nick Griffin, the BNP chairman, in a fundraising appeal in September.

This so-called truth tour, using the BNP’s notorious “lie lorry” advertising vehicle, was intended to promote the launch of the party’s Racism Cuts Both Ways brochure. Copies would be handed out along the way and “millions will see and hear our message”.

The truth was rather different. Driven by Paul Golding, director of the BNP’s British Pride “white history” website, the truck left London at 8.30am on Monday 10 November. Over five days, wrote Golding, it “visited Brighton, Portsmouth, Winchester, Salisbury, Bath, Corsham, Wolverhampton, Dudly [sic], West Bromwich, Birmingham, Stoke, Manchester, Oldham, Huddersfield, Leeds, Middlesborough [sic], Sunderland, South Shields, Barking, Dagenham, Thurrock, Grays, Tilbury, Blackburn and Blackpool”.

And that was it. The geographically convoluted tour “ended on Friday night at our annual conference,” said Golding, whose name is notably absent from the leaked list of BNP members.

Even though the tour missed huge areas of the country, including the whole of Scotland and Wales, wherever it stopped Golding and Mike Howson, the middle-aged leader of the Young BNP, distributed “thousands and thousands of the Racism Cuts Both Ways booklets to an eager public,” boasted Golding. In Oldham the team “received a wildly enthusiastic response from the public”, similarly in Huddersfield “it was mobbed by highly enthusiastic members of the public”.

The trouble was that the reports were accompanied by pictures of the lie lorry in the various locations visited. And the one thing that the photos had in common, apart from the truck, was the complete absence of any members of the public, eager or otherwise. In fact it was remarkable how many big empty spaces the BNP managed to find in England’s supposedly overcrowded towns and cities.

No doubt Griffin is relying on the people who put up the money for this fiasco being too gullible to notice.

Racism cuts both ways

Racism cuts both ways - Don't let the BNP divide our communities

BNP targets young people in hate drive

It will be “the biggest and most ambitious strategy that this Party has ever undertaken,” promised a British National Party fundraising letter in September. The “Racism Cuts Both Ways” initiative will detail “the crimes against our people – rape, murder and discrimination”.

The conspiracy nuts of the BNP have long claimed that, in the words of party leader Nick Griffin, “the political elite, the media, the police and the courts are covering up an epidemic of racist violence against the long suffering indigenous people of this country”.

For the past two years the BNP has been putting together a list of “the forgotten victims”, researched by Alan Newark, a former left-wing Scottish journalist who defected to the far right many years ago. In an attempt to give the project authority Tony Shell, a “professional systems analyst” and the BNP’s Plymouth organiser, has written two reports “analysing” crime figures to prove the BNP’s thesis. There are lies, damned lies and statistics, and the BNP knows how to use all three.

Now their work has been distilled into a 12-page full colour brochure that will be sent in the first instance to MPs, members of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, London Assembly and House of Lords, and journalists. The BNP admits that most of them will bin it. It is intended as a provocation, “priming the fuses for our main attack”, the direct mailing of it to “large numbers of 18-year-olds, personally”.

The BNP claims to be targeting 18-year-olds because, “not only are these new voters with no loyalties to the old parties, but reaching out to so many young people will send the opposition frantic and guarantee publicity that will magnify our efforts tenfold”.

The fundraising appeal aims to raise £78,750 to finance the campaign, including £22,000 to print an initial 200,000 brochures and £45,000 for postage. With this they intend to mail out 10,000 brochures to “each key town and city in every one of the BNP’s 12 regions”.

Postage of £45,000 would only pay for around 120,000 brochures sent out individually. But the campaign will also be promoted by a “nationwide Truth Tour” using the “truth truck”, better known as the lie lorry, acquired after the party’s last big fundraising effort. It will start in Scotland and work its way south over one month.

The brochures will be distributed in schools where the BNP has enough activists, Simon Darby, the BNP’s press officer, told a journalist. Most school students are under 18, suggesting that the BNP will be very happy to hand it out to younger, less politically experienced, teenagers who might be more easily taken in by the glossy but viciously hate-filled publication.

The brochure is at pains to claim that the “injustices” inflicted on the “majority community” are “in no way the fault of immigrants themselves”, but caused by “the attitude of the ruling political elite”. But articles on “racist murder” and rape impart the opposite message. The page about “racist grooming” is especially disgraceful and clearly intended to incite race hate.

“All ethnic groups contain paedophiles” it states, “… But in most communities these sickos operate alone, ashamed of what they do. One community, however, is different. Wherever there are large numbers of young Muslim men, groups of them team up to lure girls – often as young as twelve or thirteen – into a nightmare world of sexual abuse, rape, beatings, drug addiction and prostitution. Some of these perverts are recently arrived ‘asylum seekers’, others come from settled immigrant communities and were born in Britain.

“But what all the Muslim sex gangs have in common – on top of their religion, with its low status for women – is that they never target girls from their own community. The vast majority of the victims are white, although Sikh, Hindu and West Indian girls are also targeted.” Note the attempt to show that the BNP has sympathy with BME communities that it perceives as more accepted by its target white audience.

Searchlight says

The BNP’s decision to target school children in its latest campaign is both predictable and despicable. Over the past few years the fascist party has launched Mothers Against Paedophiles in Keighley and Mothers Against Knives in London (hijacking a genuine campaign) and on both occasions it has been exposed and rejected. However, there can be no room for complacency and Searchlight will be preparing counter material to expose the lies the BNP is peddling.

Teachers’ view

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, the largest UK teachers’ union:

“Action must be taken to prevent the BNP peddling this vile propaganda which, as always, is designed to promote division and intolerance. The fact that they are planning to ambush children, young people and parents at school gates demonstrates that there is no level to which they are not prepared to sink to peddle their hateful message.

“This demonstrates that the NASUWT was absolutely right to press the Government to include the activities of the BNP and far right in the guidance it has issued recently to schools on tackling extremism and that the Department for Children, Schools and Families was right to do so. The NASUWT will expect the Government to scrutinise any report the BNP produces and seek to bring the full weight of the law to bear to prevent its distribution and prosecute those involved in its production.”

White history month

At the same time as launching this poison, the BNP is promoting what it calls “white history month”. In the past the BNP has objected to “black history month”, which is celebrated in Britain every October. Now the fascist party has changed tack and trying to make out that it has no objection to black history month but white people should have their own equivalent.

This is all part of the BNP’s agenda of making out that “indigenous” white Britons are oppressed, second class citizens in their own country. Black history month started in the USA in 1926 because black history had largely been ignored. At that time, most representation of blacks in history books only referred to them as slaves or descendants of slaves.

Even now in Britain the history of black civilisations and the achievements of individual black people receive far less attention than white history. Hence the need for black history month, to redress the balance.

A “white history month” is in no way the same thing. White people in Britain are not discriminated against because they are white, they are not victims because they are white. White history month is purely and simply an attempt to promote a BNP myth.

The BNP has said it will distributed over 10,000 white history month leaflets in schools, universities and colleges. It intends to email and post material to head teachers, student groups, campus unions, scouts and brownie groups and other organisations involved with young people to promote this insidious campaign.

The BNP’s London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook is being roped in to help. The BNP says it will put on a white history month exhibition at City Hall and at pubs across the country.

The BNP’s lie lorry will tour Britain “meeting activists and campaign teams in towns, cities and universities”, presumably promoting white history month alongside the Racism Cuts Both Ways initiative. The two certainly go together.

And users of Facebook, Bebo, Myspace and other social networking sites should look out for the BNP spreading its propaganda there.

Report incidents of BNP activity

Please tell us if you come across any BNP activity to promote Racism Cuts Both Ways or white history month, especially in schools or other educational institutions, social networking sites or anywhere else. Email us here.

Racism cuts both ways