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.
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