Current list of party officials/councillors who have resigned/resigned the BNP whip

Andrew Gatward (West Lindsey Organiser)
Bev Jones (North West Regional Fund-Raiser, Tameside Secretary, Manchester North Fundraiser and Ex-North West Regional Organiser)
Brian Riley (Glasgow Organiser)
Charlie Baillie (Glasgow Fundholder)
Cllr Chris Beverley (Yorkshire Elections Officer, Leeds Organiser - Mark Collett's local Branch - and Advisory Council Member)
Cllr Dave Brown (Broxtowe)
Cllr Graham Partner (North West Leicestershire Fundholder)
Cllr John Ryde (East Midlands Press Officer and Education & Training Officer)
Cllr Lewis Allsebrook (Amber Valley Organiser)
Cllr Nina Brown (East Mids Regional Secretary and Broxtowe Organiser)
Cllr Roger Robertson (South East Regional Organiser and Advisory Council Member)
Cllr Sadie Graham (Head of Group Development, East Mids Regional Organiser and Advisory Council Member)
Danny Lake (YBNP Leader)
Dave Jones (National Data Protection Officer, North West Regional Secretary, Regional Press Officer and Tameside Fundholder)
Dave Taylor (Bradford Contact)
Gary Pudsey (Bridlington Organiser)
Ian Dawson (Yorkshire Regional Secretary, Former Head of Group Support and Advisory Council Member)
Ivan Winters (Bradford Fundholder)
Kenny Smith (Head of Administration, Scottish Regional Organiser, Scottish Elections Officer and Advisory Council Member)
Kieran Dinsmore (Ulster Regional Organiser)
Lee Haggan (Doncaster Organiser and Great White Records Recording Artist)
Lesley Dathan (Sunderland Fundholder)
Louise Scott (Scarborough Secretary and Northern Regional Voices Correspondent)
Malcolm Porter (West Lindsay Fundholder)
Mark Payne (Former Assistant National Treasurer)
Mark Wain (Melton & Rutland Press Officer)
Mark Westbury (Nottingham Secretary)
Matt Single (Department of Security Secretary and Training Officer)
Michael Clarke (Ashfield Organiser)
Mike Cooper (Hull Fund-Holder - Dave Hannam's local Group)
Neil Craig (Bradford Organiser)
Nicholla Smith (Managing Director of Excalibur, Falkirk Organiser and Advisory Council Member)
Nick Walsh (Hull BNP Organiser - Dave Hannam's local Group)
Paul Harris (Barnsley Organiser)
Peter (Boston, Holbeach & Spalding Fundholder)
Peter Hollings (Yorkshire Regional Fund-Raiser and Leeds Secretary - Mark Collett's local Branch)
Richard Chadfield (North West Regional Fundholder and Former Stockport Organiser)
Rick Foster (Lincoln Organiser)
Rob Walker (Wellingborough Contact)
Robert Walker (Huddersfield Organiser)
Sammy Shaw (Falkirk Fundholder and Forum Moderator)
Scott McLean (Former Deputy Chairman, Scottish Regional Organiser and Advisory Council Member)
Steve Blake (Web Editor, Head of Education & Training and Advisory Council Member)
Steve Thomson (Aberdeen Organiser)
Stuart Russell (Former National Press Officer and Advisory Council Member))
Tom Linden (Harrogate & District Organiser) Unconfirmed
Trisha Scott (Scarborough Organiser)
Wendy Russell (East Midlands Regional Fundraiser, Regional Information Officer and Peacock Club Chairman)

J’accuse! Chairman Griffin rails against his detractors

BNP leader Nick Griffin breaks his silence on the split that is tearing his party apart. David Williams looks at his outburst against the plotters:

Griffin’s appalling lack of judgement has precipitated an internal crisis within the BNP, the magnitude of which has already spiralled beyond his control. Having done so he proceeded to make things worse by simply maintaining a monastic silence whilst his minions scurried too and fro silencing internal debate leaving minor members and voters rather bewildered as to what on earth was going on. Griffin’s failure to provide leadership at this vital time has damaged his authority within the BNP further.

However, in yet another wonderfully ill-judged decision Griffin has now gone on the offensive against the “bitter betrayal” he evidently feels he has suffered.

Griffin lays the blame for this “unpardonable sin of running to wash dirty linen” in public on a small clique of “middle management”. This might be some comfort to his internal enemies who only on Sunday were dismissed as “junior members”. Having been sacked Griffin has now promoted them. How odd. The truth is of course that most of them were senior members of the party who sat on its twenty strong advisory committee. Still Griffin has never been one to let true get in the way of a good lie.

Off on a trip down memory lane Griffin opines how only he knows true pain of self-sacrifice for the cause having once felled trees and stacked shelves whilst leading the BNP in 2001. After Jackie Griffin told the world her husband had never done and honest days work in his life we’d had him marked down as a lazy so and so. To give him his due though, trying to promote race riots in Oldham in 2001 whilst stacking shelves must have been more demanding on his time than we had previously thought.

Ever the martyr Griffin whinges that its “tough at the top” but this ungrateful bunch of malefactors who have it easy have been well paid for doing “what was expected”. In other words, you’ve been paid so shut up. Continuing his astonish rant Griffin states categorically that paid party officials have a “soft ride” and have “no proper checks on expenses claims. No mileage forms or activity sheets to complete. No clocking in. No one holding target setting and review sessions. It was taken on trust.” In short Griffin is openly boasting that under his leadership there has been no internal audit of officials expenses. Where the money comes from and where it goes is it seems of no concern to him. With accountancy procedures such as these the BNP could find itself in dire financial trouble. Oh, wait a minute. It is! No wonder Griffin and his minions have been quick to accuse Kenny Smith of responsibility for the sum of £17,000, which appears to have gone missing. Could this explain why the BNP accounts have not been submitted yet?

And yet, and I’m trying not to laugh whilst typing this, Griffin has the chutzpah to accuse his detractors of trying orchestrate a “palace coup” against him because he was trying to bring their cushy little number to a close!

I must be missing something here. I thought that Sadie Graham and Kenny Smith not to mention Ian Dawson were expelled precisely because they had questioned the financial competence of the Treasury team and indeed the honesty of publicity director Mark Collett.

Clearly Griffin still subscribes to Goebbels’ dictum that if you’re going to tell lies tell a Big Lie. And this one, even by his standards of dishonesty is a whopper.

Griffin has the honesty at least to admit that he wasn’t “blameless” for the splits that tore the National Front apart in the 1980s. He even states that he and Martin Wingfield can “laugh” about it now. One wonders if he found it quite so funny at the time when Nick Griffin said some truly appalling things about both Wingfield and his wife. We remember Martin, do you? And if you do one has to ask, where’s your self respect? That’s your wife he was talking about!

In a final lie before returning to the theme of how bright the future looks Griffin remarks on an e-mail Sadie Graham appears to have sent to Steve Blake which he uses as evidence of a conspiracy to “prove” that Sadie is a “wrong ‘un” who sought to paint his beloved Dave Hannam in an unfair light. In truth all she did was to stop taking the flak for his mistakes by covering for his incompetence anymore. Fair enough you might think.

The emerging rival BNP faction – those that Griffin hasn’t already expelled – was appalled by their chairman’s diatribe against them. Ian Dawson responded for them stating that the “betrayal” was his not theirs. It was his utter failure to deal with the real problem i.e. the financial incompetence of the Treasury and the obnoxious wrecking ball personality of Nazi boy Mark Collett that had brought them and the BNP to this impasse.

Dawson threw Griffin’s words back at him. His claim that they were trying to stage a coup was “a fiction of your imagination” when in fact all they had done was to protest against the BNP being run as “a little boys club” for which they were hounded out by “your South African Intelligence Department” led by Lance Stewart.

Far from them giving succour to “Communist thugs” it was Griffin who had done so by allowing Collett the freedom to parade his noxious views and low mentality in front of TV audiences time and time again. He also pointed out Griffin’s hypocrisy for airing his own dirty linen in public. After all shortly after Chris Jackson’s failed leadership challenge didn’t Griffin label the 10% of the BNP that supported Jackson were “vermin”?

Hitting back at Griffin’s “pathetic” claim that his minions were all well paid for their work Dawson stated that he earned £14,000 a year from the party, a rather stingy salary by anyone’s recognisance which precluded incidentals such as mileage etc. Dawson also claimed that working 70 hours a week plus (considerably more than Griffin no doubt) was not a “soft ride”.

Dawson’s parting shot was to ask after Griffin’s henchman gained entry to Sadie Graham’s home by deceiving her friend and fellow BNP organiser Nina Brown to steal her computer “how any BNP member or Official could ever trust you again.” Given his track record of vicious sectarianism, dishonesty and dissimulation we find it hard to believe that any of them believed Griffin in the first place.

Stop the BNP

And the list of BNP resignations just carries on growing...

A bit of a messy post here but I thought an update would be of interest to our readers along with the statement of what happened by Nina Brown (ex-East Mids Regional Secretary & Broxtowe Organiser).

Brian Riley (Glasgow Organiser)
Charlie Baillie (Glasgow Fundholder)
Cllr Chris Beverley (Yorkshire Elections Officer, Leeds Organiser & Advisory Council Member)
Cllr Dave Brown (Broxtowe)
Cllr Nina Brown (East Mids Regional Secretary & Broxtowe Organiser)
Cllr Roger Robertson (South East Regional Organiser & Advisory Council Member)
Cllr Sadie Graham (Head of Group Development & East Mids Regional Organiser & Advisory Council Member)
Danny Lake (YBNP Leader)
Dave Taylor (Bradford Contact)
Ian Dawson (Yorkshire Regional Secretary, Former Head of Group Support & Advisory Council Member)
Kenny Smith (Head of Administration & Scottish Regional Organiser & Advisory Council Member)
Kieran Dinsmore (Ulster Regional Organiser)
Malcolm Porter (West Lindsay Fundholder)
Mark Payne (Former Assistant National Treasurer)
Mark Wain (Melton & Rutland Press Officer)
Matt Single (Department of Security Secretary & Training Officer)
Michael Clarke (Ashfield Organiser)
Neil Craig (Bradford Organiser)
Nicholla Smith (Managing Director of Excalibur & Falkirk Organiser & Advisory Council Member)
Robert Walker (Huddersfield Organiser)
Sammy Shaw (Falkirk Fundholder)
Scott McLean (Former Deputy Chairman & Scottish Regional Organiser & Advisory Council Member)
Steve Blake (Web Editor & Head of Education & Training & Advisory Council Member)
Steve Thomson (Aberdeen Organiser)
Peter Piling (Burnley fundholder)
Gary Pudsey (Bridlington Organiser)
Stuart Russell (Former National Press Officer & Advisory Council Member)
Doncaster BNP

If you hear of any more, please let us know via the comments section.

Statement from Nina Brown

I wish to clarify the situation that led to the “raid” on Sadies home and the removal of her personal computer and various other items.

For a couple of years I have been a keyholder to Sadie’s house, originally to feed her cat whilst she was away on holiday, but more recently for local organisers to pick up their monthly orders of the Voice of Freedom, Identity, campaign leaflets etc during Sadies absence. On Saturday morning I spotted the Party van, which I recognised from the monthly literature run, parked outside Sadie’s home, with Martin Reynolds in the drivers seat, his wife Lindsey and several other security guys hanging around the front of Sadies home. I found that slightly odd as I knew that Sadie and Matt were away for the weekend. By the time I had turned the car around and pulled up to the house, four guys were walking down the passage that led from the back of the house to the front. I walked up to the van and spoke to Lindsey through the open window, I asked her if she knew that Sadie and Matt were away, inititally thinking that they had arrived for a security meeting and there had been a mix up with dates. I asked why they were there, but they wouldn’t tell me, which in itself is not so unusual as Security has always been just that, Secure and is never questioned, for obvious reasons. Just for the record, but goes without saying, if I knew what was going on, I would never in a million years have let them in.

The reason I did not question further what they were doing there is, because I knew the guys pretty well from several occasions, including the recent Blackpool Conference and had become to regard them as good friends, as they were with Sadie and Matt. These were the Security Team which we had come to like and trust with our well being at high profile meetings, such as the recent local meeting in Kimberley, why would I have reason to question their actions? I did say to Lindsey, “Do you want me to call Sadie or will Martin phone them”, at this point Martin was already on his mobile phone, which I assumed was to either Sadie or Matt, Lindsey then got out of the van, obviously now to make sure I would be out of earshot of Martin’s conversation with, who I now believe to be Nick Griffin.

After 20 minutes or so on the phone, which Lindsey and I laughed about as she said “Martin will have to have that phone surgically removed from his ear these days”. Martin got out of the van and walked up to me, I asked him if everything was sorted with them (meaning with Sadie and Matt), and I said to him “So am I ok to let you in?”. He nodded, it was at this point I opened the door and went inside, I picked up our bundle of newspapers, Voice of Freedom which had been left for me just inside the door, they all followed me inside. I then went straight back outside to carry on the conversation with Lindsey, by this time all the guys were inside, I did not see what they were doing as I was standing outside and away from the door. I did see the large printer being put into the van, but I still thought nothing of it as printers, photocopiers etc were sometimes moved around the regions when new ones were acquired. Also I knew that several senior members of the Party had recently received new mobiles and laptops, as Sadie was a high profile member, I guessed she was simply receiving brand new equipment at some point.

Why on earth would I not trust our Security Team, the lefties had always been the enemy, never our own people!

On finding out the full truth later in the day, to me it had now become personal, this left me with no other option but to hand in my resignation from my positions as Parish Councillor and Local Organiser. For over two years I have put my heart and soul into the Party and like others am deeply saddened at recent events. Sadie and Matt have worked tirelessly for the Party, I consider them fantastic people, they have worked above and beyond the cause with the nation and members interests first and foremost. I could not have fulfilled my prior rold of EM Regional Secretary and Broxtowe Organiser and later becoming a Election Candidate in Kimberley without her full backing and support. I consider Sadie and Matt true friends, I like many others, cannot understand how the Party can function without them.

Cllr Nina Brown
Ex Broxtowe Organiser

Trouble at the court of Mad King Nick

When party members pass damaging documents to “the enemy”, you can be sure there is something seriously wrong in the British National Party.

Over the past two months Searchlight has been inundated with information from inside the BNP which paints a very different picture from the one proffered by the party leadership. Instead of the public image of remorseless advance, the BNP is beset with internal problems, poor morale and a leadership that is becoming increasingly detached from many of the party’s key organisers.

What marks this present crisis out compared to previous internal disputes are the people who are becoming alienated from the BNP leader. We are no longer talking about the old Tyndallites – supporters of Nick Griffin’s rival and former BNP leader John Tyndall – whom Griffin happily dismisses as “vermin”, but about some of the more able organisers and party staff who have until recently been close to the party leader.

This group includes Sadie Graham, Chris Beverley, Ian Dawson and Steve Blake. The latest problems come on top of the departure of several other leading BNP officers and local organisers, including Scott McLean, Jonathan Bowden and Stuart Russell.

There is a variety of reasons for the growing frictions inside the BNP, though most are the product of poor morale and a sense of drift. Despite its public bravado, the BNP has not been having a good time of late. The 2006 election results certainly did not live up to expectations, recruitment continues to be like trying to fill a bath with the plug out, with too few members renewing, and the party has clear financial problems.

Three distinct groups seem to have emerged at the heart of the BNP. Firstly there are the “über-nationalists”, many of whom have not actually joined the BNP but currently have the ear of Nick Griffin.

Then there is the brat pack, made up of Mark Collett, head of publicity, party treasurer John Walker, his deputy David Hannam, head of security Martin Reynolds and Bradford councillor Paul Cromie. They have formed a laddish sect within the party but many others consider them not particularly able.

Finally, there are the party apparatchiks, or “Young Turks”, the more able organisers who have emerged in prominent positions and formed a tight bond over the past two years. They include Graham, Beverley, Dawson, Blake and Kenny Smith. They are the super-activists who are driving the party forward on the ground.

It is they who appear to have become most disillusioned with the direction of the party and the political judgement of Griffin himself. While they are at present staying loyal to the party some of them are prioritising local activity over national work.
In late September Dawson wrote a long letter to Griffin resigning from his post as head of group support. He had become disillusioned with the way the party was being run, and in particular the strong but highly damaging influence of Collett, Walker and Hannam.

“I have to work on a daily basis with Treasury, specifically Dave Hannam,” he explained. “Add this to the fact that Hannam, Walker and Collett have their own little clique which will stop at nothing to undermine, antagonise and mock decent nationalists, then something has to give.”

Dawson directs particular venom at Hannam, of whom he has nothing positive to say. He voices his frustration that his repeated criticisms of Hannam have fallen on deaf ears. He dismisses the notion that the party accounts were late (again) because of overwork and even questions the legitimacy of the party finances. He claims that the local bank balances are often wrong and rarely up to date, standing orders are processed very late, cheques are not cashed and new party units have to wait “an infuriatingly long time” for treasury packs.

“I don’t know what more I have to do or say to get through the point that Dave is completely incompetent,” he adds. “I would have replaced him ages ago, in a diplomatic way of course, yet as his face fits he is still on board, despite constant lies and incompetence. Just how bad do people have to be to do their job, and how many lies do they have to tell to cover it up, before they are sacked?”

Collett also comes in for intense criticism. “Mark Collett is without doubt the most deceitful, devious, arrogant, spiteful, greedy moron that I have ever come across. He is not a nationalist, plain and simple. Playing gangster rap music while hurling personal insults at hard working nationalists is about as low as it gets. What on earth is he doing in the Party? Yet not just that, what on earth is he doing as a national officer?”

Dawson is not alone in his disenchantment with the direction of the party and open hatred towards Collett and his group. Beverley recently resigned from the Advisory Council and his position running Excalibur, the party’s merchandising operation, to concentrate on his job as a local councillor.

Graham, the BNP’s group development officer, received a disciplinary letter from Griffin complaining that she was meddling in affairs outside her role. Apparently he backed down, admitting that he had not read an email from her. When word leaked out of Graham’s unhappiness, Griffin was forced onto the defensive, declaring on the BNP website on 3 October that she remains “firmly in place”.

Collett and Walker also appear to have acted as a catalyst for the resignation of Stuart Russell as the party’s press officer and the expulsion of the party’s recent Sedgefield by-election candidate Andrew Spence. Russell’s wife, Wendy, had been on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse and the final straw was when Arthur Kemp, Griffin’s new ideological enforcer, allegedly told him he was a useless fat old f***er who should just go away.

And although McLean cited the exigencies of business and family life when he resigned as the BNP’s deputy chairman, some say the real reason is that Griffin prevented him, in his capacity as head of the party’s disciplinary committee, from dealing with Collett.

So far it appears that Griffin is refusing to act against the Collett axis. Why, we don’t know, but Dawson’s claim that Collett has threatened to turn Queen’s evidence against Griffin if he is ditched is illuminating.

There is also increasing resentment from many establishment organisers towards the growing influence of the über-nationalists, the new kids on the block who have emerged as Griffin’s inner circle. They are increasingly influencing the direction of the party despite many of them being outside the party.

There is growing frustration that Griffin and his close entourage are ignoring party structures. The failure to hold regular meetings of the Advisory Council, supposedly the leadership body of the BNP, is further evidence that Griffin is building his own separate operation.

Many of the “Young Turks” have a longstanding dislike of Lee Barnes, particularly Blake. It recently flared up again on the BNP forum, the internal discussion board for BNP members. Replying to a posting on Barnes’s blog last month, which continued a highly abusive and personal attack on Sharon Ebanks, the party’s former Birmingham organiser who left to form the New Nationalist Party which folded last month, Blake wrote: “What purpose does the dissemination of this unattributed and unsubstantiated gossip serve?
“This is totally unfounded nonsense and just the kind of rubbish our mortal enemies want us to distribute in order to bring about doubts, suspicions and weaken morale.”

Barnes had dismissed “nationalist” opponents of the BNP as, “The retarded wing of pseudo-British Nationalism …”, calling Ebanks a “demented harridan” and her followers a “little clique of simpering scumbag accomplices”.

If the BNP were a normal political party, there would have been universal outrage at one of the leader’s inner circle writing such words and Griffin would have been forced to dump him. But the BNP is not, so Griffin continues to heap praise on Barnes’s warped blog.

The mistrust appears to be mutual. The Collett gang has little time for the “Young Turks” and does what it can to undermine them and blame them for its own shortcomings. Collett and his clique are also becoming increasingly outspoken about what they perceive is favouritism from the Graham faction to some branches and councillors over people close to Collett.

Likewise, the über-nationalists, who appear to enjoy acting as “advisers” rather than doing any real work on the ground, seem to have little time for many of the party’s organisers. The dismissive way in which they acted towards Russell is symptomatic of their overall approach.

Cass: pushed or jumped?

Over the summer, Nick Cass either stepped down or was sacked as party manager. According to some reports he was sacked minutes before an Advisory Council meeting in Wales after a string of blunders for which he was blamed.

Cass posted a denial of this version of events on various rightwing websites, insisting that he chose to resign and was offered another job in the party but declined, in favour of spending more time with his family. It is not clear whether this is the truth or Cass simply remaining loyal to Griffin, with whom he has been closely associated for many years. Dawson’s resignation letter certainly supports the former account. Criticising the party’s management style, Dawson comments: “Not telling people two minutes before a meeting that they have been replaced, e.g. the recent case involving Nick Cass”.

Either way, the result is that Cass is no longer on the party books and is concentrating on his local branch. Dawson and Beverley have followed suit, with Beverley not only giving up Excalibur but also stepping down from the Advisory Council.

Avoiding the issues

Griffin is trying to rectify some of the internal problems. He has established a three-person Central Management Team of “volunteer long-standing party activists” to help run the party. Tony Brewer, Michaela Mackenzie and Mark Clutterbuck will supposedly bring “decades of business management experience” to handling “internal staff management affairs”.

But while the intention may be commendable, Mackenzie is yet another person at the centre of the party’s internal disputes.

Griffin’s response to the current disquiet is true to form. He is letting his supporters make highly personal and abusive attacks on individuals, or at least not reining them in. Griffin could have dealt quickly and firmly with the supporter who virtually accused the BNP’s former education officer, Jonathan Bowden, of being a paedophile, but he did not. He could have told his attack dogs to stop abusing Stuart and Wendy Russell, but he did not.

Rather, he has joined in. In the immediate aftermath of his victory in the party leadership election in July he dismissed those who backed the rival candidate as “vermin”. Again, if Griffin had been leading a normal political party he would have been forced to resign or at least apologise publicly for such an outburst.

But this is history repeating itself. During the 1980s Griffin played a major factional role in the destruction of the National Front. He was behind many of the personal and political attacks on his group’s internal rivals and this contributed to the party’s virtual collapse.

The manner in which Solidarity, the BNP’s trade union front, is run, and the way Griffin is silencing through expulsion anyone who criticises his line, show that he has learnt nothing from the past. Passing the blame and refusing to accept responsibility for his own failures is another of Griffin’s traits.

It is also clear that at the moment Griffin does not want to, or feels he cannot, move against Collett et al. Until he faces up to the Collett problem there is little chance of an end to the increasingly damaging disputes in the BNP.

Dawson spells out the point in his resignation letter. “The party is in danger of fragmenting. … There are so many good people in the party that are being sidelined and have not been listened to. People are sick and tired of seeing the odious clique of Hannam, Walker and specifically Collett get away with things time and again.”

Dawson might have decided to resign of his own accord but in his letter he was articulating the views of the “Young Turks”.

What Griffin has done, and again this is true to form, is to shout conspiracy. Nothing pleases the BNP activist more than to believe that the political establishment is so scared of its potential that it will stop at nothing to undermine the advance of the BNP. In recent years we have heard claims that the UK Independence Party was established just to provide a respectable but ineffective home for British nationalists, that Labour opted for all-postal elections in 2004 in the north of England just to prevent the BNP from winning more council seats and that any internal criticism of Griffin, including Chris Jackson’s challenge to his leadership, is all part of a cunning plot by the security services to derail the BNP juggernaut.

Indeed, Griffin devoted four pages in a recent issue of Identity, the BNP’s magazine, to claim that the internal rumblings were simply another frantic state plot. He even claims that the writer of this article is a well-known nazi, although this is slightly undermined by his attack dogs on the internet who have insisted that Nick Lowles does not exist but is in fact Gerry Gable!

Crisis, what crisis?

Do the BNP’s internal wranglings really matter? Well actually yes. Despite what Griffin and his apologists claim, the BNP is in crisis. While it is true that the BNP is more popular than any previous British fascist organisation, in many areas its support has begun to plateau or fall. This trend began in the 2004 local elections but gathered momentum this May.

What is worse for the BNP is that many of the areas where its fortunes are ebbing, for the moment at least, are in their traditional heartlands: Oldham, Bradford, Kirklees, Calderdale, Sandwell and Dudley to name but a few. The BNP’s share of the vote was considerably lower this May compared to previous elections, especially in its key target wards.

This is having a knock-on effect on BNP branches. Oldham and Blackburn have virtually collapsed. Bradford and Burnley have suffered huge splits and the loss of two councillors in Sandwell has rocked and perhaps terminally damaged local fortunes. The BNP may be emerging in new areas, such as the East Midlands, and remains strong in others, such as Stoke-on-Trent, outer east London and Thurrock, but it is unlikely to win seats elsewhere.

The internal problems within the BNP stem partly from poor leadership but also from declining morale. A run of good election results and a new wave of recruitment could quickly turn the party’s fortunes around. Anti-fascists must step up work ahead of next year’s local elections to ensure that the ructions within the party continue.

On their way out

Several key people have left the BNP or resigned from their positions over the past three months.

Scott McLean (Deputy Chairman)
Left to concentrate on his business, but had become increasingly disillusioned with the party.

Jonathan Bowden (Educational Officer)
Resigned after a Griffin supporter publicly accused him of being a paedophile.

Nick Cass (Party Manager)
Resigned but was blamed for some of the internal problems in the party.

Stuart Russell (Press Officer)
Resigned after verbal exchanges with Mark Collett and Arthur Kemp.

Ian Dawson (Head of Group Support)
Resigned in exasperation after Griffin’s failure to deal with Mark Collett and Dave Hannam.

Ian Leadbitter (Sunderland organiser)
Resigned after falling out with other BNP members.

Walter Hamilton (Glasgow organiser)
Resigned to concentrate on business commitments.

Simon Smith (Black Country organiser)
Left the BNP over financial mismanagement.

Clive Potter (President of Solidarity)
Expelled from BNP after refusing to toe the Griffin line in Solidarity.

Personality clashes

A growing number of personality clashes are emerging in the BNP which threaten the party’s effectiveness.

David Shapcott v Sharon Wilkinson (Burnley)
Many people in Burnley BNP have little time for “Shoulders” Shapcott, the local organiser. Sharon Wilkinson is furious that Shapcott grabbed the glory over their High Court battle to win a recount after disputing the result of last May’s election in Rosegrove with Lowerhouse ward after he contributed nothing to the action.

Paul Cromie v James Lewthwaite (Bradford)
Bradford BNP is increasingly demoralised after it failed to build on its 2004 momentum. A major split has emerged between local chairman Paul Cromie and former councillor James Lewthwaite, to the point that Cromie is contemplating disciplining his former colleague for hampering the party’s recent election campaign.

Michaela Mackenzie v Robert Baggs (South West region)
Baggs has become increasingly frustrated at the growing prominence of Bristol-based Mackenzie and now he suspects her of being a Searchlight informer. Relations between the two have been bad for several years, after Baggs spurned her advances.

Mark Collett v Chris Beverley (Leeds)
The two former university colleagues have increasingly gone their separate ways in recent times. It is claimed that Collett deliberately failed to promote Excalibur in Identity, when Beverley ran the BNP’s merchandising operation. For his part, Beverley is dismissive of Collett’s abilities.


This article is the complete BNP in Crisis article from Stop the BNP and can be downloaded from here.