'I quit' says BNP council row man

British National Party member Peter Pirnie has quit his Kingswear council seat just three days after the controversial decision to co-opt him on to his village parish council.

The 49-year-old bus driver became a councillor on Tuesday and announced his resignation yesterday afternoon amid a wave of criticism over the parish council decision to hand a BNP member a seat.Mr Pirnie said he was quitting because of the strain the row was having on his already disabled wife Sandra.

"I am putting my wife's health first. I have decided to cancel my seat and let them get on with it," he said from his Kingswear home.

He said he had been forced to listen to people attacking him on the radio and had been deluged with media calls at his home. "I have just had enough of them. I don't want anything to do with politics for a while. My wife's health is more important," he added. He accused his critics of being 'nasty, narrow minded and jealous' and added: "I have lived in this parish for 31 years. If this is the sort of thing that people are going to do then let them all get on with it."

Mr Pirnie has stood in local and general elections as a Labour candidate and a BNP candidate but never got in. He stood clearly under a BNP banner for the district council seat in Townstal and the Kingswear parish council's Kingswear ward in last month's local election and came bottom of the poll in both counts. But when it came to putting his name forward as a candidate for co-option onto the Kingswear parish council's Hillhead ward this week he declared himself as an independent. And he, and another two candidates, were duly made councillors by the other seven parish councillors.

The row over his co-option broke as the BNP's official website celebrated Mr Pirnie as the party's first councillor in Devon and the second in the Westcountry.

Kingswear's parish council chairman revealed yesterday that he had given Mr Pirnie an ultimatum - to either quit as a councillor or quit the BNP.

"I understand that he is standing down as a councillor. I am going to his home tonight to collect his resignation and I will be very relieved to do so," he said.

Earlier Mr Hawkins had said that both before the parish council meeting on Tuesday and during it he had asked Mr Pirnie if he was standing as a BNP candidate or as an independent.

"He said he was standing as a resident of Kingswear an independent. On that he was co-opted with the other two candidates."

He went on: "If he had stood as a BNP candidate that parish would never have even considered him. He has lived in Kingswear for a long time. We would not have co-opted a BNP councillor."

Mr Pirnie had insisted his BNP membership would have no bearing on his conduct at the parish council. He said: "I am a member of the BNP but I am not a candidate for the party in Kingswear. When I go into meetings I will leave that at the door."

Herald Express

Hate-mail BNP's Wainwright's new shop

A champion pie-making butchers in Halifax has been sold – and it's been bought by a former BNP candidate who sent hate mail to Calderdale's first Asian councillor.

Brian Wainwright – who admitted sending offensive and threatening posters to Coun Mohammed Najib, to a Halifax mosque and to an anti-fascism campaigner – has bought J and P Cryer butchers in Ovenden.

Owners Jim and Pat Cryer have retired after 40 years – and they have passed on their secret pork-pie recipe to Mr Wainwright and his wife, Lorraine. For 30 years Jim and Pat have been making the pork pies and each morning they perfect their pastry and prime the meat before adding their own, very secret, ingredient.

It is the same ingredient that helped them secure fourth place at last year's unofficial world pork-pie championships at the Old Bridge Inn, Ripponden, making them the best pork pie-makers in Calderdale.

Jim took over the business from his father in 1966, transforming it into the award-winning establishment it has now become. He said: "When my dad worked there we just sold meat and sausages and I wanted to take the business further."

By the time Pat started working there the pies were a big success. She said: "It is the reputation of the pies that brings people back. Customers travel from Elland, Brighouse, Skipton and further afield."

The couple have two daughters, Jayne Greenwood, 40, and Sally Patefield, 38, and four grandchildren. They will spend their retirement globetrotting and visiting friends across the country.

The hate-mail charges against Mr Wainwright were later dropped because he was not charged within the six-month time limit for summary offences.

Mrs Cryer said: "We knew Brian had some sort of past with the BNP but we were not sure what it was about. We did not see how it would affect him taking over the business. As far as we are concerned it is something that is in his past."

Mr Wainwright would not comment when asked if he thought his court case would affect his trade.

Halifax Evening Courier

BNP spreading myths to sow division — Graham Stringer MP

Stories that asylum-seekers are being given money to buy cars are all part of a BNP bid to create division, an MP is claiming.

Graham Stringer, who represents Blackley, said it was time to dispel some of the myths that have been spread by the party and other far-right bodies. He told fellow members that race relations had improved but on occasions, when there had been waves of immigrants, the nasty bottom-feeding racists had exploited the situation to spread myths.

Mr Stringer said: “One is that Oldham Council provides asylum-seekers with cheques for second-hand cars. If I have heard that once, I have heard it 10 times. It is unusual and ridiculous, but it creates resentment if people are gullible enough to believe it.”

Oldham Council said there was absolutely no truth in the myth.

Mr Stringer said people also believed that asylum seekers were being given free bus travel across Greater Manchester. He said the matter was constantly brought up at meetings he attended, adding: “A number of councillors in the area have heard the same myths and, with me, have investigated the cause of the misconception.”

The Labour MP said he had spoken to the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive which had assured him that no such scheme operated although it was aware of the stories that were circulating.

It is believed some of the myths started after people saw an asylum-seeker with special bus tickets which are not available to the public. These were issued for travel on days when the asylum-seekers had to report to one of the government centres. Transport Minister Tom Harris said payment of travel expenses was a fundamental part of the Government’s policy to encourage asylum-seekers to comply with requirements and keep in touch with the immigration and nationality directorate. It is part of national policy that people living three miles away from a centre are given help.

Mr Harris said: “Asylum-seekers are not being provided with bus passes as some people are claiming. However, it is sadly typical of the extremists of the British National Party to try to exploit the fears of ordinary people and to whip up resentment and hatred against a vulnerable group of people purely for political gain. Frankly, that is a disgraceful attitude. Given the record of the British National Party on fact and truth, I am not optimistic that the myths will stop being circulated.”

Oldham Evening Chronicle

Ex-KKK man guilty of 1964 murder of black teenagers

A US marshal escorts James Ford Seale, 71, from the federal
courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi earlier in the trial.

A 71-year-old man alleged to have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan has been found guilty of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers that sparked a summer of violence later depicted in the film Mississippi Burning.

James Ford Seale had pleaded not guilty to the charges relating to the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, both aged 19 at the time of their disappearance on May 2 1964. Their bodies were later found in the Mississippi river.

Seale's conviction was achieved on the words of a confessed Klansman, Charles Edwards, who was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for turning on his old friend.

He testified that Seale had belonged to the same Klan chapter, or klavern, as he had, which was led by Seale's late father. The prosecution team admitted to the jury they had made "a deal with the devil" but argued that it was the only way to get justice 43 years after the killings.

Seale, who declined to testify, now faces up to two life sentences. He is unlikely to leave prison alive.

As the guilty verdicts were returned, the victims' relatives hugged each other and cried.

Seale's prosecution may mark one of, if not the last trial of its kind from the brutal heyday of the KKK and its violent clashes with the civil rights movement. As witnesses pass away, the likelihood of further trials diminishes.

During the trial, the jury heard that white supremacists, often with the complicity of local police officers and the courts, were consciously targeting civil rights activists in an attempt to terrorise them into silence. Seale was arrested a few months after the men disappeared, but murder charges were later dropped against him.

Prosecutors alleged that the two victims had been picked up while they were hitchhiking, thrown into the boot of a car and taken to a forest where they were beaten in an attempt to extract information on firearms being brought into the area.

Edwards said that he saw Seale hold a gun to Dee and Moore, while the two young black men were beaten for about half an hour, 30 or 40 times each. Edwards claimed that although he had been involved in the beating, he had not been present when the men had been thrown into the river.

He said Seale later told him how the men were dumped alive in a backwater of the Mississippi river with weights attached to them.

Defence lawyers that the case was flimsy because it relied on the evidence of one man, an "admitted liar". "This case all comes down to the word of one man, an admitted liar, a man out to save his own skin. A case based on his word is no case at all," the lead defence lawyer, Kathy Nester, said.

Seale has always denied membership of the KKK.

Before the trial started, a former FBI agent gave evidence that he had confronted Seale and accused him of the murder a few months after the deaths. Edward Putz said Seale had replied: "Yes, but I'm not going to admit it. You are going to have to prove it."

Guardian

Labour hold off BNP (Charlestown)

Labour has fought off a challenge by the British National Party - despite their vigorous campaign to win a council by-election. But the BNP did finish second in Charlestown, which was left vacant by the death of councillor Eric Hobin, with more than twice the votes of the Liberal Democrats.

Labour's Veronica Kirkpatrick took the seat with a majority of 745 and said she was 'always confident' the BNP would fail to win what would have been their first seat on Manchester council. She pledged to continue the work of Mr Hobin and 'make Charlestown a safer and better place'.

The result, declared early today, saw Coun Kirkpatrick poll 1,373 votes, with the BNP's Joe Finnon on 628 and the Lib Dems' Carol Connell with 239. Kim Glasspole, of the Conservatives, was fourth on 188 and the Greens' Jackie Smith fifth with 81. The turnout was just over 26 per cent.

Politicians of all mainstream parties had been put on alert after Mr Finnon finished second in the neighbouring Higher Blackley ward last month, with more than 700 votes.

Sir Richard Leese, Labour leader of the council, said: "We have maintained our share of the vote and have got more than twice the vote of the BNP. They got significantly less than one month ago and once again the electorate has shown that it doesn't want fascists in Manchester."

Lib Dem leader Simon Ashley blamed his party's third place on what he called an 'unhelpful intervention' by local Labour MP Graham Stringer earlier this week. Mr Stringer had used a debate in the House of Commons to slam a government immigration policy adopted briefly in 2000, which saw large numbers of asylum seekers settled in north Manchester. Mr Stringer said the fact it had been done without more care had given rise to 'damaging myths' which had been exploited by the BNP - despite being completely untrue.

Coun Ashley said: "This was a considerable win for Labour, as you would expect so soon after the local elections. We think Graham Stringer's intervention was unhelpful. The BNP have registered a protest vote but it will not stick."

However, Mr Finnon said the other parties had taken the ward `for granted' and added: "To get one quarter of the vote is a very big breakthrough."

Manchester Evening News

Martin Webster has another go at the BNP's Nick Griffin

In the latest edition of his ebulletin, Electronic Loose Cannon, the far-right's extremely loose cannon, Martin Webster, has again attacked the BNP leader Nick Griffin. Webster, who has had his claws deep into Griffin since the announcement that there is to be a BNP leadership contest, regales us with a list of small but far from insignificant facts (?) which, added to the body of evidence collected over years by both the anti-fascists movement and his opposition on the far-right, show Griffin to be a shyster on rather an impressive scale, if true.

For the most part, we'll repeat the allegations from Webster verbatim but there we feel the need to comment, we'll enclose our comment in square brackets [like these].

'I have no knowledge of Nick Griffin's father, Edgar, beyond that he is a chartered accountant and that his father, Edwin, was a leading Freemason who left Nick, £300,000 in the late 1980s (which he quickly lost in stupid property deals).'

[Curiously, considering what an enormous amount of money £300,000 is, isn't this just after Griffin declared bankruptcy? If so, perhaps that's how he managed to be discharged.]

'On the one occasion in the mid 1970s that I stayed over-night at the Griffin family home (then at Hill House, Huntingfield, near Halesworth, Suffolk) the kitchen was filled with oriental carpets, giving it the appearance of a souk.

Mrs Griffin had bought a job lot of these and was proposing, somehow, to merchandise them. She asked my opinion as to their quality. I was surprised she didn't remark: "Never mind the quality -- feel the width". It became evident to me on that occasion that the entire Griffin family were money mad.'

[It shouldn't take anyone long to come to that conclusion.]

'I was informed last year by Daily Mail feature writer David Jones that Nick Griffin's sister is "Susan Patricia". Jones said he had tried to locate her via a search of the on-line Registry of Electors, but had no luck. There is a real mystery concerning why she has broken off all contact with her family and made efforts to cover her tracks.

Susan Patricia was once engaged to Ipswich National Front branch organiser Tony Williams, a boyhood friend of Griffin's. At the time (late 70s/early 80s) Williams (whose father was a wealthy businessman) was building up a very successful off-licence business in East Anglia. During the 1970s Susan Patricia stood at least once (I think in Ipswich) as an NF local council candidate.'

[There's nothing about Susan Griffin on the net but it would be interesting to find out more about her. Any information would be welcome.]

'I don't know when or why the engagement between Susan Patricia and Williams ended. It may have been something to do with the following:

'NICK GRIFFIN'S FIRST SWINDLE?

In the mid/late 1980s Griffin swindled Williams of a couple of thousand pounds. Griffin told Williams that he had got news about a bargain supply of CDs somewhere on the Continent, but that he didn't have the cash to take advantage of the offer. He implied the purchase was for his own private business enterprise and promised to repay Williams in cash "within two weeks". As they were friends, the deal was transacted without paperwork.

Weeks went by and no repayment was made. When Williams asked for his money, he was astounded to be told by Griffin that the money was "a loan to the party" (i.e. what remained of the National Front, or one of its splinters) not a personal loan to him, or a loan guaranteed by him, and that if Williams wanted his cash, he should chase the party.

But this was at the time that the remnant of the NF was splintering into little grouplets and Griffin was helping Roberto Fiore set up the International Third Position, so in effect there was no identifiable "party" to chase and any litigation against the then impecunious Griffin would be futile.'

[If this is indeed true, we doubt very much if it was Griffin's first swindle but this does sound very much like Griffin's first foray into the music business, Rock Against Communism, a cash-generating racist music scene that eventually evolved into the enormously successful Blood and Honour.

It is believed by many who were involved in the scene at the time that Griffin realised that the 'white power' music scene was a money-making scam of epic proportions but it appears he was eventually sussed by none other than Ian Stuart Donaldson, the late lead singer of Skrewdriver, one of the most famous bands in the whole Blood and Honour movement, who, with a few others who were involved (Nicky Crane of the British Movement being one) got the hell out and largely separated the music from the politics (and the thieves from the money). Great White Records doesn't seem to be doing quite as well.]

'JUNK PRINTING EQUIPMENT AND A DRUNK'S LIFE-SAVINGS

You will know that Griffin was eventually forced to quit the ITP after a deal which involved the purchase of printing equipment which turned out to be only just so much scrap iron; and swindling one of its members, Colin Todd, caretaker of the Fiore-owned building Liss House at Liss Forest, Hants.

Somehow Griffin persuaded Todd to "invest" his life savings in a venture. It was a scam and Todd lost the lot. When confronted with this cruel swindle Griffin shrugged it off, remarking that "Todd is a drunk".

The two thousand pounds loss which [Tony] Williams sustained as a result of Griffin's crookedness was not the worst aspect of the sting. It was the crass and cynical dishonouring of an agreement between two long-standing friends. Williams just could not believe Griffin could be so dishonest and so brazen - and so casual about a long friendship.'

[Which is precisely what he's going to do to the membership of the BNP - take their money and run.]

'THE FIRST FARM BUILDING RENOVATION SWINDLE

This made Williams loathe Griffin and, decades later, prompted him to make available to me a DVD copy of a video he had shot of a building restoration project which had taken place in 1984 on Hill House, the Griffin family home in Suffolk.

Griffin told the NF that he had persuaded his parents to grant the National Front's youth wing, the Young National Front, free use of a number of outbuildings of their farmhouse, but that restoration work would need to be done free of charge.

YNF and NF members went to the farm for weekend after weekend during that year and did hard and dangerous building work for no wage. They paid their own fares to and from the site and slept on the floors of the buildings they were renovating.

A SWINDLE WITH GRATIS AD LIB LAGER FUNDED "FREE MEALS"

They were given "free" meals, but the meals were in fact paid for by means of a petty swindle.

Williams had delivered to the site before work commenced a van-load of tins of continental lager which had just gone by their 'sell-by' date and could not be sold via the off-licence trade. Williams GAVE the lager for FREE distribution to the young idealists. Griffins knew a business opportunity when they saw it and they set to work grinding off off the 'sell-by' date from the cans, which were then SOLD to the workers at £1 per can! Easily £2 in today's values. But this was only a trivial side swindle.

The worst aspect of the main swindle - the building restoration - was that the youngsters were put to work on an a major asbestos clearance.

"IF HE DOESN'T BREAK HIS NECK HE'LL DIE OF ASBESTOS POISONING"

By that time a law had been passed requiring asbestos clearances to be conducted by specially licenced asbestos clearance contractors whose staff had been specially trained and who use special protective equipment and who bagged and disposed of asbestos waste in a prescribed manner.

Needless to say, the NF/YNF people were ignorant of the dangers and of the law governing such work, and they simply climbed on to the roof of "the Asbestos Barn" and hurled the asbestos sheets to the ground, sending up clouds of potentially lethal dust. This and other aspects of the work was filmed by Tony Williams on his video camera.

Griffin wrote and spoke a commentary to the video. His voice is unmistakable. At one point in the film John Field, then the organiser of Hackney YNF, is shown on the roof without any protective equipment or safety harness, hammering down asbestos sheets as clouds of dust rise.

Griffin remarks in his commentary: "If he doesn't break his neck, then he'll die of cancer due to asbestos poisoning".

This remark was made with cold matter-of-factness.

WHY SHOULD ALL THIS BE DRAGGED UP NOW - AFTER SO LONG A TIME?

Some may ask why such wickedness should be made an issue now.... "after all, it was a long time ago". There are two equally important answers, as follows:

Firstly, asbestosis is a terminal condition which takes decades to manifest itself. The people who as young men worked on the asbestos clearance at Hill House are now coming into the time when, if they have been unlucky, symptoms will start to present. They may have no idea what is happening to them, or why.

Secondly, anybody who in his 20s (an adult) who could perpetrate such a thing against anybody, let alone "comrades", and who could perpetrate sundry other swindles against friends and associates, is not somebody who at any subsequent time should have any trust reposed in them.

Needless to say, the property, once renovated, was never made available to the NF (nor was the video!!). The whole thing had been a trick whereby the Griffin family exploited their political connection to con young idealists to get dangerous, expensive and potentially lethal work done for free.'

[If the story about the lager is true, it simply shows what we already know - that Griffin will exploit anyone to make a quick buck. It just shows the actions of a petty thief. It's the other story that should concern us more - the asbestos story. If that's true and if evidence exists in the form of a film, it should be passed on to the police, Environmental Health and the Press with a view to pursuing criminal charges against Griffin. Without the film or at least evidence from the other people who were there at the time, this is all hearsay. With the film, Griffin could end up nicely tucked away in Strangeways. Come on Webster, do what's right.]

'VIDEO MADE TO CREATE ILLUSION OF "A HISTORIC PROJECT"

Griffin had only asked Williams to make the video to give the YNF lads the illusion they were engaged in "a historic project" - and how those innocents played up to the camera! Williams says he was as much conned as to the real purpose of being asked to make the video as he was conned by the use made of his supply of lager.

The work which those lads did added greatly the value of the Griffin property. When the property was sold, not a penny of the enhanced value created by the renovation work was directed to any nationalist political movement, as promised by Griffin at the outset.

Fiore and other of the Italian ITP prominenti occasionally turned up to Hill House inspect the good work, since the concept of a "rural community centres" was then very much one of their ideological fads.

One would have thought that the swindle they saw Griffin perpetrate against the NF would have warned them off trusting him with their financial affairs...but Fiore and his gang were then and are now greedy for money, so perhaps they admired Griffin's style.

THE SECOND FARM BUILDING RENOVATION SWINDLE

Griffin performed another "Barn conversion" swindle soon after he became chairman of the BNP in 1999 - in about 2001/2.

The BNP put up the money for the materials and provided free skilled labour for the renovation of his barn on his 'Y Gribbin' farm in Wales. This barn is supposed to function as a venue for party meetings. If as and when it is used as such, the party is invoiced by Griffin for its use. Griffin did not grant the party any equity in the property in return for its "investment" so that if as and when the farm is sold, the added value created by the barn renovation go entirely to Griffin and not a penny to the BNP.

For some reason Griffin never secured the video (with his commentary dubbed on it) of the Hill House outbuildings renovation of 1984. Perhaps in the hurley-burley of political splits and financial shenanigans he forgot all about it.

WILLIAMS' HILL HOUSE VIDEO GOES WALKABOUT

Williams left the NF at about the time of its final disintegration under Griffin's (mis)management and some time in the 1990s became head of the minuscule National Socialist Movement. The NSM became exposed by the media for one reason or another and Williams fled the country and settled in a far-off land. He took with him the video of the Hill House renovation.

Eventually he made a DVD conversion of the video and made available a copy to me. The ownership of the copyright of this film is retained by Williams under contract.

Information about this DVD has been given to a wide cross-section of the media. I have retained the complete file of all the negotiations which took place. In all instances there was an initial flurry of keen interest and then, in all cases, the interest suddenly evaporated without any explanation.'

[Share it with us - we'll spread it around!]

'THE STRANGE REACTION OF THE MEDIA

Can one imagine what the reaction of the media would be in normal circumstances where a politician - of ANY party - was on record on a DVD of being involved in such a matter and of commenting sarcastically about the possible death of one of his duped helpers?

To put the gravity of the current situation into some kind of perspective, one would have to recollect the kind of huge smears, based on the most trivial of pretexts, levelled at personalities in the National Front during the 1970s.

In 1978, for example, the Daily Mirror concocted a double-page spread exposing the organiser of a local branch of the NF as "a Nazi" because part of the minute pattern on his tie, when hugely enlarged, could be said to resemble a "pattern of swastikas"!

The NF official concerned (Paul Kavanagh) was a respectable middle-class importer of machine tools with no "Nazi" background whatsoever. Indeed, he was widely rumoured to be an MI5 informant (but that is another story!). He was co-founder with Andrew Fountaine of the "National Front Constitutional Movement".

How does that bit of nonsense about Paul Kavanagh's tie compare with Griffin's outrageous record?'

[A nazi is a nazi whether his tie identifies him or not. Griffin's record though, if all this is true, is appalling.]

'WHO KILLED-OFF DOMINIC CARMAN'S BIOGRAPHY OF NICK GRIFFIN?

My recent experiences of the media via-a-vis Griffin seem to be very similar to that of the author Dominic Carman (son of the famous libel lawyer, the late George Carman QC).

Three years ago Carman was engaged in researching Griffin prior to producing a biography. Carman subjected me to two long in-depth interviews, the first was video-taped, the second audio-taped. He took copies of a lot of documents I have on file. The questioning covered a lot of ground, including most intimate matters.

In-between Carman's first and second interview with me, he had visited the Griffin farmhouse home in Wales. I understand he spent the weekend there and took the opportunity to interview Nick's wife Jacky separately from her husband Nick.

She was very frank on delicate matters. Carman also took information from former pupils at a girls public school in Suffolk, whose sixth form Nick and one or two other lads were permitted to attend. The information which they gave chimed with that provided by Jackie and provided context for my information in the same general area of sexuality.'

[This is presumably yet another reference to Griffin's interestingly hypocritical past.]

'THE ESTABLISHMENT IS HAPPY WITH GRIFFIN AS BNP CHAIRMAN

Two years rolled by but Carman's book did not appear. A brief article about Griffin by Carman appeared in the Daily Mail colour supplement about a year ago which was clearly based on his book researches, but since then there has been complete silence.

Intrigued by this, I e-mailed Carman on 25th April this year, saying:

"..... you will understand my wondering if the reason why your book on Griffin has not appeared has anything to do with my experiences of trying to get quite crucial information about Griffin's character and background into the public arena at a time when the mainstream media profiles of him are edging towards hagiography. Any reply will be kept confidential by me if you so request....."

Carman received my e-mail but has sent no response. I quite understand. He wants to be able to continue to earn his living from the mainstream media.

For want of any other explanation, I feel entitled to propose that the media was and is being orchestrated not to do anything to dislodge Griffin from his perch at the top of the BNP.

It is evident that the Establishment has every reason to be happy to have [a] creature like Griffin at the head of the premiere "nationalist" party in Britain, just as it is happy to have corrupt creatures at the head of every other political party which strives for the rewards which only Establishment patronage can bestow.'

Apart from detesting Griffin for all the reasons laid out above, we can't see any particular reason for Webster to make all this stuff up. Apart from anything else, the information in the article simply confirms much that is already known (but from the other side, as it were) except the shocking asbestos story, which we feel deserves a far wider readership than we can give it.

Webster clearly has his own agenda and appears to be driven to write all this down by his loathing of BNP leader Nick Griffin. Nevertheless, the items in the article should be essential reading for anti-fascists and BNP members alike. The latter should at least be afforded the opportunity to quiz their party leader to discover how much truth there is to the items. If they could see the film too, it could dramatically change the way the current party loyalists view their not so glorious leader.

Disgraced UN chief and Nazi war criminal Waldheim, dies aged 88

So the old rogue is dead. That is all I could say when I heard yesterday that Kurt Waldheim had reached the end of his days at 88.I spent months, years, investigating his dark past in what we now call Bosnia, when he - let us not be coy about this - was part of the Bosnien-Kampfgruppen of Wehrmacht Army Group E of General Löhr, fighting "terroristen" (yes, indeed, the Nazis called them terrorists, just as they talked about the "RAF Terroristenfliegen") in the Balkans. Waldheim had been secretary general of the UN, had lectured UN officers in Lebanon on the lessons of "terrorism" and, well - as was later to ruminate - he knew about that, didn't he?

I remember, when Waldheim was President of Austria - stamps were issued, heaven spare us; no mention of course of 1943 or 1944 or 1945 - how he turned up in Jordan where the Plucky Little King Mark One (King Hussein, who liked to rule a British Jordan) met him on the apron. I was at Amman airport when this outrageous little man snapped to attention in front of the Jordanian guard of honour, clicked his heels just a little too quickly, I thought, much as he must have done when he saluted his masters in Yugoslavia during the Second World War.

Waldheim - how his friends would prefer that they didn't read these words this morning - was based at a town called Banja Luka, a market town where Serbs and Jews and communist Croatians were murdered en masse, hanged like thrushes from mass gallows or raped to death in the nearby Jasenovac extermination camp. Waldheim would have us believe that he knew nothing of all this, that he was a mere intelligence officer for Army Group E of the Wehrmacht, whose commander, Löhr, just happened to be tried for war crimes after the Second World War.

It was an Austrian journalist who alerted me to Waldheim, a reporter whose father had fought in the Wehrmacht, who had survived the evacuation of north Africa ("I do hope I didn't kill him," the "Enigma" cryptologist said to me when I told her of his attempt to escape by air - his plane got through the Allied net). "Look for the letter W," the Austrian journalist said, the letter W after each debriefing, each Allied commando captured by the Gestapo, each prisoner to be extinguished by "nacht und nebel" - by night and fog.

No, Waldheim didn't order their deaths. He didn't even interview the captured British commandoes, or so he said, but merely "collated" their reports. His junior officers did the interviewing (let us not contemplate what that meant). Then the British prisoners disappeared into night and fog.

I recall finding the German interrogation papers of a young Briton who had been caught trying to escape from Yugoslavia during the war. They lay in the files of the Public Record Office at Kew (now known as the National Archives) and they were pitiful proof of what the Nazis could do. Yes, he admitted he was a British agent, yes he was wearing British uniform, and yes - there it was, in all its symmetry, the "W" - he was interviewed by Waldheim. And then he was taken away and executed, and Waldheim - whose colleagues (no secretary generals, they) had saved the lives of British prisoners - didn't give a fig about their souls.

I remember how I visited Bosnia in 1990 to investigate Waldheim's past. He had written a PhD thesis, he told the world, in the last years of the war; he knew nothing of the Nazi subjugation of the Balkans. He had been wounded on the Russian front. But there was a certain manipulation of the truth. He had been sent to Yugoslavia. He was an intelligence officer for Army Group E. He was based at Banja Luka and - years before the town became the Bosnian Serb capital in the outrageous war between Muslims and Christians - I visited his former headquarters, where the Serbs showed me his files, still cloaked in the see-through parchment of the Wehrmacht.

I even visited his interrogation office, next to an execution pit wherein Serbs and Jews were massacred daily. Did the rifle shots not disturb Kurt Waldheim's concentration? Oh, what it must have been to have the peace and quiet of the UN headquarters on the East River.

Monty Woodhouse was the top man for SOE - Special Operations Executive - in Greece during the war, and he pursued Waldheim for years afterwards, along with an immensely brave Jewish academic. Waldheim published a "White Book" claiming to prove his innocence of war crimes (he was later based in the Hotel Angleterre in Athens). He didn't know, he said. And his friends noted quietly that it was his wife who was the Nazi party member in Austria in the 1930, not himself; that Waldheim was merely a civil servant, one who - in the damning words of the Jewish academic - "helped to give the wheel a push."

So what memories did Waldheim carry with him to the grave? During the war, Woodhouse's Greek partisans captured a Gypsy who was spying on his comrades for the Italians. Woodhouse decided that he should be hanged.

I asked him what it felt like to do such a thing - to commit what, I suppose, we would call a war crime, were it Waldheim whom it had been proved had done it. Woodhouse replied to me - and I have his words in my own handwriting as I write this: "It was terrible - I felt terrible. I still bring the scene back to me from time to time. He was a wretched youth. He didn't say anything really - he was so shaken. He was a sort of halfwit. I was at the hanging. He was hanged from a tree. They simply pulled a chair from beneath his feet. I don't think it took long for him to die. I don't know exactly how long. We were only a hundred men or so - it was the early days of the occupation. If we had let him go, he would have told the Italians... After that, I told Zervas not to take any prisoners."

When I left Bosnia in the summer of 1988 in the aftermath of my Waldheim investigations, I called my foreign news editor, Ivan Barnes of the The Times, to tell him that I saw so many parallels in modern-day Yugoslavia with Lebanon on the eve of conflict in 1975 that I believed a civil war would break out in Bosnia in the near future. The local Serbs even abused me for driving to Waldheim's ex-headquarters with a Croatian driver. "We'll report it if it happens," Barnes roared down the phone at me. In 1992, I did report the Bosnian war - for The Independent.

And what of Waldheim? The Austrian state defended him. He appeared on postage stamps. He went to the opera. He was forbidden entry to the United States - long after he ever needed to go there. He produced a "White Book", supposedly proving he knew nothing of war crimes.

His former United Nations colleagues clucked and re-clucked over his hypocrisy. And I well remember his number two at the UN telling me how he always knew that "KW" was a "crook" - this just three days before I came across a second-hand copy of Waldheim's memoirs in Waterstone's bookshop in Piccadilly with the very same man's warm appraisal of Waldheim as a "man of principle" in the frontispiece.

In 1987, King Hussein took Waldheim to the heights of Um Queiss to overlook the Israeli-occupied West Bank and awarded him the Hussein bin Ali medal - named after Hussein's grandfather. The Plucky Little King praised Waldheim for his patriotism, integrity, wisdom and "noble human values". General Löhr, I should add - Waldheim's superior officer in Yugoslavia - was hanged as a war criminal.

Independent

We must all share shame at BNP's joy

A West market town became the first to see the race war close up this week, but those involved should be ashamed of themselves, according to Wiltshire reporter Tristan Cork

On another balmy June evening in another West Country market town, you might have thought it was carnival time. Drummers, singing, people dressed up, the police stopping the traffic and flags a-waving.But there was tension in the air, abuse and vitriol, and the smiling faces barely hid the grimaces of hatred flying across Corsham High Street.

This summer marks the 20th anniversary of writing my first ever report in a local newspaper in Wiltshire, and in the decades since I have never experienced anything quite like the hours leading up to a town council meeting in Corsham this week. I have never seen, or heard, anything like it in this normally peaceful, picturesque part of the West. In Corsham? If I hadn't been there to see it, I wouldn't have believed it.

How did this happen? How did a race war you'd normally find in Bradford or Brick Lane, in London's East End, come to sleepy Corsham? And in one phrase we have the heart of the matter - 'sleepy Corsham'.

For in Corsham, like the sleepy market towns right across our region, many people who put their names forward to be councillors just walked right into the position without doing anything other than writing their name.

It's not just Corsham, it's everywhere. Let's take, purely for argument's sake, South Somerset. Of the 95 parish and town councils that held elections last month, 74 actually didn't. Now although most of them are little parish councils where things are done much like they are on the Vicar of Dibley, there were many market towns in that list of shame: The likes of Wincanton, Castle Cary and Ilchester, for instance.

All of these councils did not have enough people standing to have the need for an election. Many of them, perhaps most, still had spaces, and chairmen and clerks are now spending the summer months cajoling the local shopkeeper, WI leader or vicar to join them to make up the numbers.

It's a pretty sorry state of affairs. I'm not going to comment on the BNP, their policies, their overt discrimination - people who aren't deemed by them to be British enough can't take up full membership even if they wanted to - or their followers. But if they were just twice as organised, well supported and clued up as they are now, it isn't difficult to imagine how they could have a seat or three on town and parish councils across the West by now.

Obviously the 350 demonstrators shouting and bawling at the 25 Union Flag-waving young men in Corsham don't like the BNP, and don't think a political party like theirs should be able to be anywhere near anything approaching political power.

But none of this would have happened had any one of those chanting demonstrators had the slightest bit of interest in the town council elections that took place in their community in early May.

Corsham may be sleepy, but it appears its people, like people from Wincanton to Stow on the Wold, are sleepwalking. They may be passionate about protesting in Corsham, but where was their passion for town hall democracy when it actually mattered?

The protest is too much, too late. I would imagine almost all the people demonstrating - the ones from Corsham at least - would struggle to name any of their town councillors anyway, let alone whether any of them are from political parties they might not like.

In fact, it's not the done thing to be party political on Corsham Town Council, so the chances are Councillor Mick Simpkins will never get to spout the BNP's views on immigration at a meeting of the finance and general purposes committee, or maybe the Summer Fete working group, even if he wanted to.

I'm not sure the BNP has a policy on the imposition of unpopular parking charges by North Wiltshire District Council in market towns like Corsham. But Mick Simpkins - irrespective of his odd views on the inclusion of Islam as a world religion in the national curriculum's RE syllabus - probably has a personal view, and one that now, given that he put his name forward, he is entitled to provide.

The fact is that he stood for election in the Rudloe ward, and no one else did. Those hollering demonstrators from Corsham should actually be ashamed of themselves for their apathy, and should have quietly slunk away vowing to get involved in the community politics of their town so that there wouldn't be a next time.

They might be entitled to stand up to declare that Corsham isn't the kind of racist, intolerant town people might think it is for having a BNP councillor, but they are quite wrong to try to pressure a democratically non-elected councillor to stand down.

The campaign organiser grandly announced at the end of this week's demo that they would be holding some kind of alternative election: As if Mick Simpkins had got in sneakily, somehow unfairly, that these good demonstrators had been somehow denied the right to vote against him and as if someone else was to blame. The irony and hypocrisy of this was lost on the crowd. They had their chance and they couldn't be bothered to even realise.

People queue for days just to exercise their right to vote across Africa and Asia. People put their lives on the line from Colombia to Iraq to stand for election, and many die for it.

It was Edmund Burke, the brilliant MP for Bristol, who apparently said 230 years ago that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. He must be turning in his grave at our apathy.

Western Daily Press

Muslims under attack at centre

Muslims are being pelted with eggs and stones in anti-Islamic attacks on the South Woodford Muslim Community Centre seven years after it was destroyed in a petrol bomb attack.

"A few weeks ago there were people throwing eggs at children leaving the centre," said Qaiser Malik, secretary of the Qurani Murkuz Trust behind the centre in Mulberry Way. "People have thrown eggs and stones from the flyover. They spit on our doors and have left ham and bacon on the doorstep. Apparently the same things are happening to people at bus stops in Woodford."

Redbridge is the ninth most diverse borough in the country with 28,487 Muslim residents, however racist Islamaphobic attacks are not uncommon and the Redbridge Racial Equality Council is addressing Islamaphobia in the community with a new myth-busting pack.

Dr Mohammmed Essam El-Din Fahim, head Imam and chairman of the South Woodford centre, said Islamic hatred has been stirred up by BNP leaflets being distributed in the area condemning Islam and the mosque.

David Landau, racist harassment co-ordinator at Racial Equality Council, who has compiled a myth-busting pack, said he was not surprised by recent attacks on the mosque.

"We do not know that this is to do with the BNP and it may very well be racist Islamaphobic behaviour that is happening anyway. These events happen because of the potency of these myths so it shows how important it is to have a pack like this."

The information pack contains impartial facts about Islam to help people challenge negative misconceptions about the religion, and is aimed at community organisations and young people. Mr Landau said: "The image people tend to have if Islam is either of a fundamentalist religion or of moderate Islam with fundamentalists rocking the boat as if that is unique to Islam. Actually this runs through religions, it is not that Islam is an especially aggressive or fundamentalist faith, you get that in pretty much every religion."

Mr Malik said the pack shows a good effort to clear up common misconceptions, adding: "A lot of people don't have any knowledge of Islam and there is a lot of misconception and ignorance."

If you would like a copy contact the Redbridge Racial Equality Council on 08514 0688.

Your local Guardian

Lancaster BNP's Chris Hill gets all over-excited at eviction

Eviction from Lancaster University student's SCAM forum, that is!

A couple of years ago, a bunch of Lancaster University students got together to form an online alternative to the worthy but dull Students' Union newspaper Scan, and eventually came up with a forum which they named SCAM. Everything you might expect to find on it is there - discussions on politics, courses, uni life, music, lust, gossip, booze and so on. All the things in fact, in which one would expect students to show an interest.

As expected before long, someone recently asked the question 'Should the BNP be allowed on Campus?' The usual arguments were aired - 'it's a legitimate political party', 'no platform', 'allow a platform then shoot their arguments down', 'they're not welcome on campus' and so on.

The NUS has a very clear 'no platform' policy regarding fascists, generally followed by the Uni and Lancaster University Students' Union (LUSU) except when corporate crooks want to use the facilities, and Scam appears to actively adhere to this policy. So when Lancaster BNP's Chris Hill, who is a grad student, posted in the 'Should the BNP be allowed on Campus?' thread, the forum administrator acted in a way that would make any anti-fascist (in the NUS or not) proud - immediate deletion of all Hill's posts followed by this unequivocal statement:

'As owner of this website I wish to inform Chris Hill that he is specifically not authorised to post messages on this forum, under his own name or otherwise, and that for him to cause this server to carry out the operations required to post a message will therefore be an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

I would further like to inform him that any such messages he posts will be deleted. Now being aware of this, should he continue to post he should take note that the actions he knows I will take will cause me annoyance and inconvenience. Therefore, posting in this knowledge and to this purpose would be an offence under Section 43 of the Telecommunications Act 1984.

Chris Hill may like to remember that it is not necessary for him to be prosecuted for any law breaking to affect him. The University will doubtless wish to avoid their systems being used for acts which are of questionable legality and may reconsider their provision of services to him in this event.

To everyone else: don’t encourage him, don’t debate him, don’t take actions that support him. Ultimately, this is a privately run site and I’ll not have my money going to spread the message of the BNP.'

Bravo to the site admin/s, whoever he, she or they may be. But Chris Hill has taken great exception to being denied a platform to spread his lies and the BNP's racist filth.

Over on his third-rate blog, he has descended into the usual barrage of abuse that the BNP always indulges itself in when denied a space to preach, throwing the word 'fascism' about with reckless abandon, droning on about his 'right to reply' and free speech (something the BNP denies on many of its own sites - the Chairman's own blog and that of the party's Press Officer to name but two).

This is what Hill had to say:

'Fascism (of the left wing sort that is) is alive and thriving on campus at Lancaster University. The National student union organisation has, for a long time now, had a far left slant to its ruling body. A policy called no platform, which basically allows it to deny free speech to anyone they disagree with, has been introduced by some student unions, although not yet by LUSU (Lancaster University's Student Union)...This is of course the only action these left wing fascist can take when faced with reasoned debate, because they know they would lose in a free and open discussion of policies. Today the local student internet discussion forum removed my right of reply to postings made on its site...The no platform policy is supposed to apply to fascists; the irony is they are the very people who impose it...Can I assure the people running Lancaster’s SCAM forum, your fascist censorship will not in any way stop, or hinder, the growth of the British National Party in Lancaster...'

Quite why Hill imagines the BNP is growing in Lancaster is beyond any rational human. As the graph here plainly shows, the BNP's presence in Lancaster is rapidly waning and, pending another Margaret Hodge stupidity, will continue to do so. However, that's all beside the point. As a commentor points out on Hill's blog; 'It's not just the left who hate the BNP. The right don't like them either...'[and the] student body at large regards a chunk of its manifesto to be gravely offensive...prospective students (be they black, white, purple, blue or green) would be put off Lancaster University if they knew that there was an active BNP group.'

Hill's response is atypically BNP. 'As for the activities of a group on campus putting potential students off coming to Lancaster to study, don’t you think that the potential students might be put off knowing they are not allowed free political association on campus, which by the way is guaranteed by the human rights act.'

Which, for what it's worth, the BNP doesn't and wouldn't under any circumstances subscribe to, although naturally they're prepared to make use of it when it suits them.

Hill then states his case on four sections of BNP policy; race, immigration, homosexual rights and Islam.

On race: 'We do not want to see the mongrelisation of any race...'
Which clearly means that he is opposed to mixed-race relationships, diversity and a multi-cultural society.

On immigration: '...along with the vast majority of British people I would stop all immigration tomorrow.'
Obviously not true or Nick Griffin would have his feet tucked under the table at 10 Downing Street right now.

On homosexual rights: 'My own view is that homosexuality is a mental illness.'
My own view is that Chris Hill is a homophobic idiot who needs to get out more.

On Islam: 'This is not a religion, it’s an evil cult.'
Clearly showing that he's spent more time listening to the insane rants of Nick Griffin instead of investigating Islam through one of Lancaster's friendly mosques.

Hill then makes this strange statement; 'I hold no commission to talk for the British National Party on any issues or policies...'

Er, yes you do. You're the local BNP candidate. If you don't have a commission to talk for the party, who the hell does?

All of which goes to show that fascists believe they have a right to go anywhere and spout their ridiculous opinions, no matter who they offend in the process, that anyone who opposes them is automatically either a raving red or a fascist themselves (or preferably both) and that Chris Hill has no idea of the role a candidate plays within a political party - indicating that for all the smart suits and weasel words the BNP is no nearer to being a political party than I am to being a duck.

Overcoming barriers to integration

Towns and cities across the UK are expected to be far more ethnically diverse in future.

Most are unlikely to end up resembling the Wood Green district of Haringey in north London, which ranks among the most culturally mixed boroughs in the country.

As a government-appointed commission comes up with new recommendations to improve relations between migrants and local communities in England, what do its residents feel about integration? The commission considers the inability to speak English to be the single biggest barrier to integration.

John Okono, 28, came to the UK from Nigeria - an English-speaking country - three years ago and can see how some of the immigrant friends he has made have become isolated because of a lack of language skills. Mr Okono, who is working as a security guard as he studies for a masters degree, can see himself applying for British citizenship one day.

"Whenever you come to a different country you have to integrate yourself with the culture and speaking the language is a very important part of that," he said.

It is a point not lost on charity worker Patricia Rodgers, who was brought up in Glasgow in the 1960s and 1970s and has lived in Haringey for three years, after a spell in Spain teaching English.

"It's definitely important for people to learn the language," she said. "I have taught it here to a lot of the Polish community and I'm going to start doing it again on a voluntary basis as there's a big need for it."

New shops

The shops of Wood Green, like most suburbs of London, offer clues to the changing make-up of its population.

Greek and Turkish-run grocers sit side-by-side Afro-Caribbean food retailers, Halal butchers and stores selling eastern European provisions. Accommodation advertisements in Polish, Russian and Chinese now appear in newsagent windows.

According to the 2001 Census, about 33% of Haringey's population of 216,000 were born outside the UK. White British people made up 45% of its residents.

Another message from people in Wood Green is that mixing with other residents is the key to becoming a more integrated community.

Emerging from a bagel shop is technician Mohammed Ali Hassan, 45, who came to the UK from Somalia in 2006 and has been granted asylum.

"I've only been here for a year so I don't really have friends of different nationalities yet - but when our children go to school, the parents have meetings and discussions so there integration takes place," he said.

Peter Cercek, 33, a computer worker who arrived from the Czech Republic in 2004, highlights a position communities moving to less diverse areas may find themselves in.

"For the first six months I only knew people from my country, but now I have friends of all different nationalities," he said. "If I lived in a small town I probably wouldn't mix, but there are so many different people it's impossible not to."

Sheraz Ahmed, 26, who came to London from Pakistan just five months ago, is working part-time on a stand selling telephone cards and studying English, ahead of starting an MBA. Friends he has made through work are from Mauritius and Albania, but his housemates are also Pakistani and he says he does not really know any British people.

"It's difficult to mix with other cultures when I've only been here for a short while," he said. "But that's why it's important to speak English."

The comments of student Christopher Lewis, 16, suggest that promotion of a common language more than Britishness is the most effective way to integrate communities in 2007. The UK-born son of Greek immigrants said he was not entirely at ease with being described as British.

"I've friends from Latvia and Africa but at the end of the day families always have tradition. You can socialise but your roots are going to be closer to you than your outside contacts," he said. "Some parts of me are British and some parts are not. The UK is a multi-cultural society now - it is not 'just British' anymore."

BBC

Racist letters sent to churches

A number of churches daubed with racist graffiti and swastikas in Lancashire also received offensive letters. The graffiti was painted on the Baptist Church, St Peter's and St Paul's Church and The Methodist Church in Rishton near Blackburn.

Lancashire Police said two garages, a fish and chip shop and a library were also vandalised. The force said it was treating the incidents extremely seriously and investigations were ongoing. Insp John O'Reilley, of Lancashire Constabulary, said: "Some written material has been posted through some of the addresses. It is consistent with the type of language and graffiti written on the outside of the premises so we are following that through as well."

BBC