The BNP's Nick Eriksen bites the dust

You can always tell when the BNP has shot itself in the foot - it wriggles around for hours in a vain attempt to throw off the current disaster without having to look too bad, then acts all shocked and horrified and claims complete ignorance of the fact that its candidate was running a blog that was much admired by the usual suspects in the party right up until the day it was noticed by the wider world.

The Evening Standard, as we have seen in the article prior to this, has blown the lid on Nick Eriksen as a misogynist shit with appalling ideas on women, rape, beating children and all kinds of other disturbing stuff. Tonight, after several hours of ignoring the problem and hoping it'll go away, the BNP, in the form of its dismal Mayoral candidate, pornmeister Richard Barnbrook, the party has finally had to bite the bullet and throw Eriksen to the wolves.

In a brief interview for BBC London, Barbrook said that Eriksen's views were not those of the BNP and that he had overstepped the line by publishing them. Considering Eriksen's blog ran from April 2005 to September 2007, the BNP sure took its sweet time to condemn him.

In reality of course, the party did no such thing. Simon Darby, the BNP's deputy leader, posted on his blog at 10.03am. In his post (which he titled 'Smear Time') he derided the expose on Eriksen, complaining that posts had been taken out of context from his 'satirical and provocative blog'. Presumably the BNP no longer regards the statements on Eriksen's blog as 'satirical'?

The last word (for the moment) will go to the Green Party's Sian Berry, who said; 'Eriksen's comments are a timely reminder of the true values of the BNP - destructive, hateful, and violent. The disgust that he feels towards women is unmistakeable, and characteristic of his organisation's attitude to so many other people in London'.

Too damn right.

Women are more troubled by bag theft than rape, says senior BNP candidate

A senior BNP leader with a strong chance of winning a seat in the London Assembly next month has written that rape is a "myth" and that "some women are like gongs - they need to be struck regularly."

The Evening Standard has revealed that Nick Eriksen, the BNP's London organiser and the second-highest candidate on its list for the Assembly, is the author of "Sir John Bull," a notorious far-Right blog which has regularly advocated hatred and abuse against women. The disclosure will be a serious blow to the BNP's hopes of London electoral success.

In August 2005, Mr Eriksen wrote: "I've never understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth machine into believing that rape is such a serious crime ... Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal.

"To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched. The demonisation of rape is all part of the feminazi desire to obtain power and mastery over men. Men who go along with the rape myth are either morons or traitors."

In November 2005, in an item entitled "Give her a slap!," Mr Eriksen approvingly quoted Noel Coward as saying: "Some women are like gongs - they need to be struck regularly." He later claimed that "the vast majority of domestic [assaults] are initiated by the woman."

Mr Eriksen also wrote that mothers "should never go out to work" and described career women as "unnatural and vile... it is a strange kind of woman who would want to invest [her] energies into her job rather than into a man."

Eleven of the 25 Assembly members are elected on a London-wide basis using a form of proportional representation. The BNP is likely to win at least one of these seats, for which it needs around five per cent of the vote, and has strong hopes of winning a second, for which it needs around seven to eight per cent. If the BNP does win two seats, one of them will go to Mr Eriksen and one to London party leader Richard Barnbrook.

Gerry Gable, publisher of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said: "It is horrifying, and an amazing indictment of the BNP, that someone with these views could be elected to the London Assembly. What is his attitude going to be to his women constituents?"

The author of the Sir John Bull blog, which stopped publication last autumn, is not identified on the website itself. But the Standard established that it is Mr Eriksen by posing as a BNP sympathiser and sending a message to the site's contact email address, johnbull@englandmail.com.

Within two days, Mr Eriksen replied, signing his name, giving Mr Barnbrook's contact number and saying: "As for your kind comments about the blog, I may well restart this after the elections - we shall see what happens! All the best, Nick."

Mr Eriksen admitted the blog postings were written by him, but said they were "deliberately provocative" in order to stimulate debate.

"I was trying to make the point that there are two kinds of rape," he said. "There is stranger rape and there is so-called rape by somebody the woman knows. I was raising an important issue in a provocative way to allow people to make up their own minds."

Mr Eriksen insisted that he "did not condone violence in any way," but was "trying to highlight the fact that violence against men is unacceptable."

He said: "It's typical of the media to distort what the BNP say."

Mr Eriksen, a former Tory councillor and ex-civil servant at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport who lives in Richmond, says he will not resign. If he and Mr Barnbrook are elected, BNP leader Nick Griffin says the party will be invited on the BBC's Question Time.

Daily Mail