Soho bomber David Copeland loses appeal over sentence

The immediate aftermath of the bomb blast at the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho

David Copeland, the Soho nailbomber who killed three people in 1999, has lost an appeal to have his sentence cut.

The 35-year-old, from Hampshire, set off three bombs over the course of two weeks designed to kill and seriously injure London’s gay, Asian and black communities.

Sixty-three people were injured by bombs he set off in Brick Lane and Brixton, but the final and most devastating incident took place in Soho, the heart of London’s gay scene.bIn that attack, three people, including a pregnant woman, were killed and 79 were injured.

The bomber, who told police he was a neo-Nazi when arrested, was found guilty the following year of three murders and three offences of planting bombs. He was handed six life sentences for the attacks. Originally, Copeland was told that he must serve a minimum of 30 years before he can be considered for parole.

In 2007, a judge increased that sentence to a minimum of 50 years.

Copeland attempted to appeal the decision but the Court of Appeal ruled this week to uphold it.

Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge said: “It is difficult to exaggerate the horror of these appalling crimes, which stemmed, as far as we can see, from the appellant’s abhorrent beliefs. Having reflected on this awful case, we have come to the conclusion that the appeal should be dismissed.”

Pink News

Don't be fooled, the BNP is really nothing like you

The British National Party has announced that, following pressure from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, it will now be admitting black members. Don't all rush at once, folks

Still, only fair, isn't it? After all, black people have every right to be racist knuckleheads, too. Maybe this new branch of the BNP could take it a step further and enter a float at next year's Notting Hill Carnival. After all, no sense in just preaching to the converted.

This being the BNP however, the ground-breaking declaration was made from a boozer near Romford. And as Nick Griffin, party leader, promoted the new inclusiveness, his company goons were encouraging a reporter from The Times to leave. That is the BNP term for it, anyway. The rest of us would say they were giving him a going over, nightclub bouncer style. Griffin said it showed the party was not going soft.

Anyway, if a bloody nose is the trade-off for reminding folk what the BNP truly represents, the man from the Thunderer might consider it a worthwhile exercise after all. A small episode of assault exposes the lie at the heart of the party because, incredibly, there are otherwise reasonable people who are actually convinced the BNP represents their views. It is the grab-bag manifesto of populist policies that does it. Weekly rubbish collection. The return of grammar schools. Hey, people think, this BNP lot are just like me.

But they are not. You are nicer than them. You are fairer than them. You are better, so much better, than the BNP. Do not confuse yourself with them. There are many who believe in educational reform. There are plenty who are upset at juggling four wheelie bins.

These are legitimate opinions, right or wrong. They do not make you a fellow traveller with the BNP, though. This is the con. This is what the BNP wishes you to believe. They want you to think of them as just another option, no different to the other parties; but they are. They are beating up people who question them, and this in the middle of a charm offensive, remember. Could you imagine what they would be like if they had the power to move out of the margins?

Walter Wolfgang, 82 and a Labour Party member for 57 years, was ejected from the Labour Party conference in 2005 for shouting 'nonsense' as Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, defended government policy in Iraq. The BNP would like to equate this with what happened to the man from The Times at the weekend. It bears no comparison.

The treatment of Mr Wolfgang, who was laughably prevented from returning to the auditorium by police enforcing the Terrorism Act, is one of the most shameful episodes in the history of Labour, or any mainstream political party, and will not be quickly forgotten. By contrast, what unfolded at the Elm Park pub in Hornchurch was business as usual for the BNP.

Their slogan is 'People Like You'. So are you like Ian Hindle and Andrew Wells, two names on the BNP membership list, who in 2008 were convicted of sexually abusing 14-year-old schoolgirls? Maybe you are like Martin Glasgow or Anthony Weeks, who both received prison sentences in October 2008 for racially aggravated assault? No?

It is quite a roll call, the list of BNP members who are not so much men of conviction as men with convictions. Gang rapists, public nuisances, nail bombers, murderers, arsonists, football hooligans, benefit cheats, wife beaters. Of course, every party has its share of bad apples, but in the BNP they do seem rather high in density. So are these people like you? It seems rather a lively bunch.

Some think if we ignore the BNP they will go away. I'm not so sure. If we dismiss them, if we do not continue pointing out that beneath the sheen of good schools and clean bins lurk the same old thugs who used to go Paki-bashing in the Seventies, then they stand more chance of taking some otherwise good people down with them.

They mobilise members to disproportionately invade message boards, chat rooms, or the letters pages of local papers, giving the impression that the BNP view is sympathetic, even conventional. Yet the methods are insidious, like most propaganda campaigns. It is the blade of the stiletto, not the stomp of the jackboot: at first, anyway.

In the end, though, even on their best behaviour, the BNP can't resist beating someone up. And I don't think you are like that, because decent people are not. It is why violent thugs have to impersonate them in order to get elected.

Daily Mail

The BNP's secret agenda: just making money or civil/race war?

Back in 1999 the BNP used to produce a magazine named Patriot, then edited by Griffin-loyalist Tony Lecomber. The Spring issue carried an article by Nick Griffin entitled ‘BNP – Freedom Party!’ in which Griffin set out his plans for the ‘modernisation’ of the BNP, a process which involved the concealment of the party’s true agenda and presenting the public with an entirely fraudulent ‘image of moderate reasonableness’. The complete article can be read online here.

Though the party had managed to get a councillor elected (the execrable Derek Beacon) at Tower Hamlets in 1993, it had more or less stagnated since. This article was one of many that was to lead to Griffin’s victory over the founder and then-leader of the far-right party, John Tyndall, later in the year, resulting in him becoming the leader and allowing him to implement his proposed BNP ‘makeover’, a word that fits more aptly than you would at first think because clearly the ‘modernisation’ of the party is all cosmetic. Wipe off the make-up and you very quickly begin to see the same old fascist party underneath.

It was Griffin’s stated intention to put the boot-boy image that the BNP had behind it, presenting instead a clean image of a modern and acceptable mainstream party. The racism would still be there, just well-concealed. To a large extent, he has been successful. Certainly the fact that a voter intends to vote BNP no longer carries the social stigma that it used to just a few short years back – though this is really a consequence of changing societal attitudes rather than anything that Griffin or the party leadership has done. Nevertheless, the BNP’s makeover has made a difference to the public’s perception of it and its policies – but how much has it really changed?

Griffin’s contempt for the voters is apparent from the very first sentence, where he states: ‘The British people are incurably apathetic’. But his aim is for the party to appeal to those apathetic voters despite all the bad press it received in the past for its connections to the National Front, Combat 18, Blood and Honour and so on. The party, certainly back in 1999, was regarded as patently extreme, and this had to change. Griffin lays out the ground:

‘Let’s start with responsibility. Tony Lecomber’s review of The Failure of British Fascism in the last issue of Patriot included a frighteningly apt phrase in its description of the past efforts of British nationalism – "careless extremism". If we seriously want to be elected, the very first step is to look at the things we do, or condone, which make us unelectable, and then to strive to change them from now on, and to minimise the impact of past mistakes.’

So, he proposes that the BNP examine what puts people off about the party, with a view to changing things. But there’s also the problem of the membership. Referring to the unelectability of many members with violent and racist pasts, Griffin has this to say:

‘Of course people change and grow up, and some people who made such mistakes years ago have played, and will continue to play, very important roles in the BNP. But anyone who expects more than a marginalised minority to actually vote for such individuals is living in cloud-cuckoo land. This is not to call for a politically correct witch-hunt, or to advocate a softening of policies, but simply to point out that, if we really wish to be taken seriously, we have to offer to the public candidates for whom Mr. & Mrs. Average Briton can vote. Those people who have now bitterly regretted errors in their past can do one hundred and one things for the party, but standing as unusually vulnerable candidates in important elections should not be one of them. However much we expect our enemies in the media to try to beat us, it is only sensible and responsible to refrain from handing them sticks with which to do it.’

So the violent thugs can take a back seat while the suits can move to the front. Note the highlighted section that makes it clear that policies are not about to change. The fact that any apparent changes are only to fool the public is made very clear in this snippet:

‘As long as our own cadres understand the full implications of our struggle, then there is no need for us to do anything to give the public cause for concern. Rather, since we need their support in order to be able to turn impotent theory into practical reality, we must at all times present them with an image of moderate reasonableness.’

Thus the metamorphosis of the British National Party becomes clear. There is no metamorphosis – merely a mask that covers the old violent nazi party with a thin veneer of respectability.

‘This is so blindingly obvious that it shouldn’t even need saying, but there are still a few who confuse shouting hardline slogans with steady commitment to getting ourselves into a position in which we can put our principles into practice. Politics is always the art of the possible, so we must judge every policy by one simple criterion: Is it realistically possible that a decisive proportion of the British people will support it? If not, then to scale down our short-term ambitions to a point at which the answer becomes ‘yes’ is not a sell-out, but the only possible step closer to our eventual goal.’

What that ‘eventual goal’ is, is not made clear. Presumably, as the article was in Patriot, a magazine for BNP supporters, the reader was assumed to know. This reader however, finds the phrase extremely sinister. You don’t have to hang around BNP territory long to hear the phrases ‘civil war’, ‘race war’ and ‘revolution’ disturbingly often. At least often enough to feel that the phrase ‘final solution’ is just around the corner.

This aside, Griffin also uses this document to set out his plans for the business side of BNP activities. Much-failed businessman or not, he clearly sees the BNP membership as a source of funds – not simply via its sales of related goods but in other ways too. Thus, we read this:

‘In increasingly hard economic times, a group of people the size of the BNP and its support base can provide a significant assured market for a variety of small businesses.’

Here then we find the justification for such idiocies as Albion Life, the BNP’s disastrous life insurance arm that failed shortly after it started, the pointless skip hire and double-glazing websites, the Affordable cars fiasco, the bankrupt travel agency, the failed printing business, the internet radio station that never was, the surprisingly successful Trafalgar Club and the illegal but lucrative fund-raising Civil Liberty. In short, Griffin has found a source of funds in the BNP’s membership and he is determined to relieve it of as much cash as possible – whether to use for himself (barn conversions spring to mind), to support his pals in the BNP hierarchy or to fund the ephemeral ‘eventual goal’ is debatable but might be clearer after reading this passage:

‘Here too is a process which has already begun, but BNP teams such as the Media Monitoring Unit, the video unit, and initiatives such as the Land and People farming/environmental circle are only the start. Many, many more such semi~ autonomous BNP-linked operations will have to be created as we duplicate various functions of the old system and create the ‘state-within-a-state’ which is an essential part of the preparations for any cultural and political revolution.’

There’s that word ‘revolution’ again.

In many ways, Nick Griffin is a laughable character. He comes across as the Del Trotter of politics, always with one eye (no joke intended) on the main chance. If he wasn’t so dangerous, he’d be funny. But, unlike his peers in the mainstream parties, he has long been aware of the power of the internet and TV – though the two look likely to merge in the next couple of decades – so much so that eight years ago, he was preparing his troops to embrace this intertwining of the old and new media.

‘The way in which TV soap operas have become pseudo-families for millions of lonely TV watchers gives us a clue as to the power which could be wielded by an Internet TV station in a few years’ time.’

Indeed. A fact which seems to have been missed by all the other parties up to now and which is only just beginning to be addressed. Nevertheless, Griffin is not infallible. Far from it, in fact, as witnessed by the numerous business disasters with which he has been associated. Nor, despite the disasters, is he to be taken lightly. While he seems to find it difficult to separate the cause from the cash, hence; ‘the BNP is a holy crusade to save and rebuild all we hold dear, but it is also a business’, he also goes to great pains to make himself clear in this document. Thus we read:

‘What message and image should we be aiming to get across in those elections? For the public as a whole we must keep it simple and put things across in the least controversial way possible. Of course, we must teach the truth to the hardcore, for, like you, I do not intend to allow this movement to lose its way. But when it comes to influencing the public, forget about racial differences, genetics, Zionism, historical revisionism and so on – all ordinary people want to know is what we can do for them that the other parties can’t or won’t.’

The phrase that’s highlighted is, in my opinion, extremely disturbing and is really what this entire article is about. David Copeland, the Soho nailbomber, was heavily influenced by his time in the BNP, and his stated intention was to provoke a race war. Robert Cottage, currently awaiting retrial for possession of weapons and explosive chemicals, and a long-time BNP member and several times a candidate, claimed to be preparing for what he saw as an inevitable civil war. The disturbances that took place in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford back in 2001 were said to have been provoked and encouraged by the BNP and other extreme far-right groups. One wonders, reading this, if this is in some way allied to ‘the truth’ that Griffin insists must be taught to ‘the hardcore’. Certainly these events, and so many others, smack of Griffin’s worrying ‘holy crusade’.

It is a fact that last month Nick Griffin made an interesting remark as an aside in his blog about his speaking tour of East Anglia. Referring to the English Civil War, he said; ‘…in due course, it will of course have to be called the First English Civil War, in order to differentiate it from the one to come.’

Since the riots in 2001, there has been a growing belief that the BNP was working to a secret agenda as well as its public one. This document, written in 1999, seems to confirm that this is indeed the case.