Brown, Murphy and Darling all targeted by BNP in Scotland

The leader of the BNP in Scotland will contest Jim Murphy’s Westminster seat at the next general election as part of a publicity-grabbing campaign which the fascist party believes will help them win a Holyrood seat in the 2011 election

BNP representatives will also stand in Gordon Brown, Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling’s seats.

Although the party expects to lose against the Scottish Secretary in the General Election, BNP chiefs hope to gain enough attention during the race to win a regional list seat when the Holyrood elections come round in 2011. Mr Murphy will be fighting for his political life at the general election as the Tories see his East Renfrewshire seat as one of their key targets, and will be counting on every vote.

Campaigners have attacked the BNP’s Scottish leader Gary Raikes and claimed his decision to stand in multicultural East Renfrewshire, which contains almost half of Scotland’s Jewish population and large Islamic communities, could inflame community tensions. In response to the BNP move, Mr Murphy is now vowing to recruit Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups to fight what he described as the “abhorrent” far-right party.

Raikes said: “Jim Murphy is a very important target for us. We’d like to see all Labour politicians lose their seats.”

The BNP’s Scottish leader added: “This is just a step to 2011 when we will be in with a chance of winning a regional list seat. The sheep will still vote Labour in this seat, however I do think the Tories are in with a real chance of winning the seat. If we can take a thousand or so votes off Murphy and help him lose his seat we will be happy.”

The BNP also plans to stand against Gordon Brown in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Alistair Darling in Edinburgh West and in Alex Salmond’s Banff and Buchan seat, although Salmond will not be contesting it. Candidates will also stand in Aberdeen North and Aberdeen South, which is Anne Begg’s seat.

The next tactic will be to field candidates for all eight regional list seats in 2011, in the hope of winning a place in Holyrood. The BNP claimed it has a “good chance” of getting enough of the vote in the Central and Glasgow regions to win a seat. The BNP hopes to capitalise on recent public resentment over the expenses scandal. Mr Murphy warned that anger with politicians was “being exploited by people with evil intentions.”

The Scottish Secretary now faces the prospect of sharing a platform with the BNP. “I didn’t ever think I would have to debate a fascist party,” Mr Murphy said. “I thought that type of politics was a thing of the past but that poison is back in the form of the BNP.

“They are now planning to stand against me and its time for them to give some answers about their denial of the Holocaust and their hatred of immigrants. Their politics are alien to our British way of life – where we try to see people for who they are rather than their skin colour, nationality or religion. The BNP’s Nazi salutes and Holocaust denials turn my stomach.”

Mr Murphy has a history of battling the BNP and has previously said that its members are a problem facing Scotland, not just England, and that their support has grown tenfold in the past decade to 29,000 across Scotland.

Mr Murphy now plans to muster support from all religious groups in his constituency to mount a fightback.

He added: “We need to rise to this challenge sooner rather than later and we must succeed not for the sake of politicians but for the sake of our country. I will consult with churches, Jewish and Muslim groups about the best way to engage with, and defeat, the abhorrent views of the BNP.”

Scotland has faced a number of “fascist” threats recently, claimed Aamer Anwar, human rights lawyer and organiser of Scotland United, a coalition that stood against the far-right Scottish Defence League when it tried to march in Glasgow.

He said: “This should be of concern because the BNP has repeatedly been exposed as a fascist organisation. They have so far failed to get a toehold anywhere in Scotland ... but what is of concern is the publicity they will try to gain in these high profile seats.”

Sunday Herald

Sobibor survivor: 'I polished SS boots as dying people screamed'

Thomas Blatt (above) will give evidence at the trial of John Demjanjuk this week

Thomas Blatt testifies this week at the trial of John Demjanjuk. Here, he tells Tony Paterson of his life in the camp and an extraordinary escape

He is a small, energetic looking man with thick spectacles and white hair. He speaks English with a thick, slightly American accent. As he stands in the queue outside Munich's criminal court in his beige zip-up jacket, he looks like any ordinary pensioner with time on his hands. He might have come to watch justice being done merely as an impartial observer.

Yet Thomas "Toivi" Blatt is no ordinary senior citizen. Aged 82, he is one of the last people alive to have survived the hell of the Nazi extermination camps in which millions were systematically slaughtered by brutal German and Ukrainian SS henchmen during the Second World War.

Only 82 people survived the death factory camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Auschwitz-Birkenau in Nazi-occupied Poland. Thomas Blatt is one of them. He still has a bullet lodged in his jaw to show for it. He got it when he was shot in the face and had to "play dead" after a miraculous escape from Sobibor in October 1943.

This Tuesday, having travelled from his home in California, he will enter the witness box in the clinical surroundings of Munich's modern neon-lit criminal court and recall the horror he endured as a 15-year-old Jewish prisoner in Sobibor, where 250,00 people including his parents and his 10-year-old brother were murdered.

Mr Blatt's testimony is expected to be crucial in deciding the outcome of what has been called the world's last Holocaust trial. The alleged former Nazi SS guard John Demjanjuk, a former Ukrainian citizen, who was extradited to Germany from Cleveland, Ohio last year, is accused of complicity in the murder of 27,900 mainly Dutch Jews who were gassed or beaten to death at Sobibor in the spring and summer of 1943.

Demjanjuk, who is 89 and suffering from numerous ailments, is refusing to speak at his trial, and follows the proceedings in court lying on a hospital stretcher with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes. He has denied complicity in mass murder.

Mr Blatt has not been able to identify Demjanjuk as having been one of the 100 Ukrainian guards at the camp, although he believes he was certainly there at the time he was a Sobibor prisoner. His testimony will nevertheless make it chillingly clear that anyone employed as a Sobibor guard was a vital cog in the machinery of genocide. "We were terrified of the Ukrainian guards at Sobibor. They were worse than the Germans – and I was there at the same time as Demjanjuk," he said.

Mr Blatt was born in Izbica, only 43 miles from the Sobibor death camp. A Nazi SS squad picked him up with his father, mother and young brother during a routine "Jew round-up" in April 1943. They were bundled into a truck. "The camp gate opened to reveal what looked like a beautiful village," he said. "We had heard what went on in there, but we refused to believe it. But I knew better, I was 15 and I realised that I was going to die," he added.

He remembers a man standing next to him peering through a hole in the truck's side at a group of Ukrainian guards equipped with bull whips. The man said, in Yiddish, how the place was "black" with them in reference to their black SS uniforms. Within a matter of seconds the Jewish prisoners were herded out of the truck and set upon by the screaming, whip-wielding guards who drove them up a path known as the "Himmelfahrtstrasse" or "road to heaven" towards the gas chambers.

"They mistreated us, they shot the old and the sick new arrivals who couldn't walk anymore. And they were the ones who drove the naked people into the gas chambers with their bayonets. They would come back with splashes of blood on their boots," Mr Blatt told The Independent on Sunday. "I often had to work a few feet away. If they refused to go on, they hit them and fired shots. I can still remember their shout of 'Idi siuda', which means 'come here'," he added.

Young Thomas saw his father being beaten with a club."Then I lost sight of him. I said to my mother, 'And yesterday I wasn't allowed to drink the rest of the milk, because you absolutely wanted to save some for today'. That strange remark of mine still haunts me today – it was the last thing I said to her. My brother stayed at my mother's side. They were all murdered in the gas chambers within the hour." A few weeks later, Thomas Blatt was forced to watch his best friend, Leon, being slowly beaten to death.

Middle-class Dutch Jews started being sent to Sobibor shortly after his arrival and the SS changed their tactics to trick them. "When a Dutch transport arrived, usually an SS man would hold a speech. He would apologise for the arduous journey, and said that for hygienic reasons, everyone needed to shower first. Then later they would be given jobs. Some of the new arrivals applauded. They had no idea what was in store," he recalled.

He survived only because the SS had executed a number of so-called "work Jews" at Sobibor the day before he arrived. The camp commandant was looking for replacements and 15-year-old Thomas pushed himself forward, pleading "Take me, take me!".

His jobs included polishing SS men's boots, sorting the clothes and shaving the hair off naked women prisoners before they were driven into gas chambers pumped full of exhaust fumes. It took up to 40 minutes for those inside to die. "We heard the whine of the generator that started the submarine engine which made the gas that killed them. I remember standing and listening to the muffled screams and knowing that men, women and children were dying in agony as I sorted their clothes. This is what I live with," he said.

He survived by supplying his Ukrainian tormentors with the gold coins he found in the victims' clothing after they were gassed. The guards used the money to pay for prostitutes. He tried to look healthy, strong and useful to avoid being murdered in the routine executions of the "work Jews". "I knew the Germans like it when you were clean and healthy looking," he said. "I watched out that my pants didn't get wrinkled and that they kept their creases and I always went around looking for possibilities to escape," he added. The chance came in October 1943 soon after a group of Jewish Red Army soldiers arrived at the camp. Within two weeks they had planned an uprising, which later became the subject of a book by Blatt The Forgotten Revolt, and an award-winning television film Escape from Sobibor. Thomas Blatt helped to kill 12 SS officers by tricking each one separately into believing that a fine leather coat had been saved for them from one of the Jewish transports. Prisoners armed with axes and knives killed the SS men as they arrived to collect their booty.

A breakout ensued. Jewish prisoners scaled the perimeter fence under a hail of gunfire from the camp watchtowers, which were still manned. The ones who got over the fence were blown up by mines that surrounded the camp. Mr Blatt escaped this fate because his jacket caught on the fence. He eventually got through the minefield by jumping through the pits in the ground caused by the explosions.

He and a friend bribed a Polish farmer to hide them under the floor of a barn in return for loot they took from the camp. But after stripping off some of their clothes and hiding them in a pit, the farmer decided it would be safer to kill them. The farmer shot at them and Thomas was hit in the face. He pretended to be dead and then managed to escape, spending the rest of the war hiding in woods or abandoned buildings and scavenging for food.

Mr Blatt says he is not seeking vengeance. "I don't care if he [Demjanjuk] goes to prison or not – the trial is what matters to me," he said.

"The world should find out how it was at Sobibor. As the camp's last living perpetrator, Demjanjuk should confess, he knows so much."

IoS

BNP election launch off to a bumpy start

Scuffles with demonstrators marked the official launch of BNP leader Nick Griffin's national election campaign

About a dozen protesters broke through a police line and ran at Mr Griffin as he was being bundled into his waiting car by minders. One activist was dragged to the floor by police, while another reached the BNP leader's vehicle before being hit by a bodyguard. There were no arrests, but 16 uniformed and plain-clothes officers had to form a protective cordon as Mr Griffin sped from the scene.

The far-right party chairman travelled to Stoke-on-Trent yesterday to unveil his General Election strategy. Demonstrators waving anti-fascist placards chanted "Nazi scum" as Mr Griffin arrived at the Meir Community Education Centre, 90 minutes behind schedule, surrounded by his security staff.

The protesters, led by Staffordshire University's Students' Union president Assed Baig, pictured below far right, were clearly audible from inside the tiny classroom throughout the 15-minute press conference.

Mr Griffin told supporters that his party has its best ever chance of winning a Parliamentary seat in the Stoke Central constituency. He said: "For the first time I can honestly say that the party is in with a serious chance of winning seats, including here in Stoke, without a shadow of a doubt. I want us to make the Parliamentary breakthrough here, and I think it's possible."

But he tried to play down the revelation in yesterday's Sentinel that former city BNP group leader councillor Alby Walker is standing against deputy party leader Simon Darby for the Stoke Central seat.

Mr Griffith said: "I think it's highly likely that Alby Walker will be standing in Abbey Hulton as an independent councillor, but it's highly unlikely that he will be standing against Simon in Stoke Central. I have spoken to Alby and I know that he has got a few family issues to sort out, and he has been under a huge amount of pressure.

"He is torn because of the support he has received from residents, but if he feels that standing as an independent councillor is the only way he can carry on in politics then he should do so. My advice to the local BNP is that they should not stand against him and that they should back him as an independent councillor."

But he also said: "It will be unfair if he does stand against Simon, as he had said he didn't want to do it. Obviously it will be a blow to us if he does stand, but I hope that he won't."

Mr Darby also initially said there was no chance of Mr Walker standing against him, saying: "I spoke to him last night and he is not going to be standing in that constituency."

However, The Sentinel has learned that Mr Griffin called Mr Walker straight after the launch event to try to persuade him not to stand. Mr Walker said: "Nick rang me afterwards and said how disappointed he was to read in the paper about my decision to stand against Simon. He was hinting that I should retract what I had said, but I wasn't willing to. I told him I was disillusioned with the BNP and the state of the city, and that I just need to find at least £500 to fund my campaign."

Stoke Central Labour MP Mark Fisher, has dismissed Mr Griffin's claims that his seat is vulnerable. He said: "It looks as though the wheels are coming off their election campaign already, as it seems to be falling apart before it has even begun. I don't think it says much for the BNP's chances if they can't even hold on to the former leader of their party in the city."

The Sentinel

Rise in hate crime follows BNP council election victories

Reports of racial and religiously motivated crime rose following the election of British National party councillors in several far-right strongholds, police statistics have revealed

Complaints of hate crime increased in wards in the West Midlands, London and Essex after the election of a BNP member, in spite of declines in reported hate crime in the wider police areas. In other wards race crime reportedly rose in the runup to BNP election victories, according to the figures, obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

The findings came as the party stepped up its campaign to win its first seats in the House of Commons with a "weekend of action" in Barking and Dagenham, where the culture and tourism minister, Margaret Hodge, faces a challenge for her Labour seat from BNP leader, Nick Griffin. Hodge said the new figures cast doubt on police assurances that there is no link between racially motivated crime and a BNP presence.

Yesterday, BNP member Terence Gavan was jailed for 11 years after police found nail bombs and 12 firearms at his home in the borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, where the BNP has councillors. The Old Bailey heard that Gavan harboured "a strong hostility" towards immigrants.

One of the biggest increases in hate crime came in Barking's Eastbury ward, where racially motivated violence, theft and criminal damage more than doubled in the year after Jeffrey Steed won a council seat for the BNP in May 2006. A year later, hate crime rose again and 45 racial incidents were reported in 12 months.

In several other BNP wards, race crime fell in line with declines in the wider areas, but anti-fascist campaigners believe rises may be linked to BNP election wins. "Voters have been emboldened in their racist views by seeing the BNP in power and that could have led to the increases in racist attacks in some areas," said Sam Tarry, campaign organiser for the Hope Not Hate campaign, set up by the anti-fascist group Searchlight.

"The figures suggest that if the BNP wins more seats, people from ethnic minority and gay communities could face greater persecution because racist and bigoted views will have been further legitimised."

The BNP denies that increases in hate crime are related to its activities and blames the rises on increased immigration. Bob Bailey, the party's London organiser said: "This is due to an increase in the ethnic [sic] population. There are more people who are prepared to go to the police complaining they are victims."

The Guardian has analysed data from 11 police forces covering 29 wards across England where voters have elected BNP councillors in the past six years. In eight wards reports of hate crime rose following BNP election wins despite a wider decline across the police force area. It declined in 14 wards, in line with force-wide reductions, and there was no change in four and an insignificant amount of data in three.

In Essex, complaints of race crime rose after the election of BNP councillors in parts of Epping Forest, while in Chelmsley Wood, a suburb of Birmingham, the average annual incidence of race crime almost doubled after George Morgan won a seat for the BNP in May 2006.

In the four years before his election, there were an average 11 incidents a year rising to an average of 21 a year in the following four years. West Midlands police said some cases involved assault, while most were incidents of verbal abuse in shopping centres, taxis and in the police station with white and Asian victims.

Detective Chief Inspector Sharon Goosen said: "None of the offences reported in the area since 2006 can be directly attributed to an elected member or political organisation."

The BNP is understood to be planning to field more than 1,000 candidates in local elections and 300 candidates in the general election. Griffin and the BNP deputy chairman, Simon Darby, who is standing for Stoke Central, are considered to have the best chance of winning seats at Westminster.

Guardian

BNP leader Nick Griffin criticised for Haiti remarks

People dig for bodies in Port-au-Prince

Claims by BNP leader Nick Griffin that the UK winter will cause as many deaths as the Haiti earthquake have been condemned by the leader of Labour MEPs

Glenis Willmott said fellow MEP Mr Griffin was trying to "stir up racial hatred" in his comments, made on social media websites on Thursday. She said: "How can anyone not look at those horrific pictures from Haiti and not feel compassion?"

In response Mr Griffin described UK aid to Haiti as "stinking elite hypocrisy". Mr Griffin's original postings, on Facebook and Twitter, said: "While the Haiti earthquake is terrible, the winter death toll in Britain will be similar. No aid here though."

About 45,000-50,000 people have died since Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince and 300,000 have been made homeless, according to UN estimates. The Pan American Health Organization has estimated that the death toll could be as high as 100,000.

Ms Willmott, Labour MEP for the East Midlands, said: "Yes, people will die here this winter, even though the Labour government set up a welfare state that spends billions to help prevent too many deaths."

She added: "Our government and local councils are quite rightly funded to do all they can to help everyone suffering from the cold. But I am also proud that our government will do all it can to help the people in Haiti and I totally support all the work done by the charities to get supplies out there as soon as possible."

Mr Griffin, MEP for North West England, responded with another Twitter post, saying: "Individuals should give whatever they feel appropriate, but Britain is bankrupt. Fifty thousands pensioners will die...of cold this winter. Boys get blown to bits because we can't afford to armour their Land Rovers.... Sending aid to rioting ingrates while our own people die is stinking elite hypocrisy."

Asked about Mr Griffin's comments, BNP deputy leader Simon Darby criticised the government's £6m contribution to the aid effort in Haiti. He said: "I'd rather see that £6m that we spent keeping our own people alive. You look after your own first. If they've got surplus money to give away to Haiti - how many people have died because we didn't have the infrastructure to grit the roads?"

BBC

>>>DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal<<<

Batley BNP man jailed over explosives arsenal

A drawer of weapons found at the home of BNP member Terrance Gavan

A BNP member who spent a decade building up a cache of weapons in a bedroom hideaway has been jailed for 11 years

Bus driver Terrance Gavan manufactured highly dangerous firearms and explosives at the home where he lived with his mother in Batley, West Yorkshire. Police discovered 54 improvised explosive devices including nail bombs and a booby-trapped cigarette packet at the address, as well as 12 firearms.

The former soldier told detectives that he had "a fascination with things that go bang", the Old Bailey heard. But Gavan also had a "strong hostility" towards immigrants and planned to target an address he had seen on a television programme that he believed was linked to the July 7 bomb attacks in London.

He told police he was a BNP member and letters to him from the party, as well as a copy of its magazine Hope and Glory, were found at his home. The court heard that hand-written notebooks were found, in one of which was written the slogan: "The patriot must always be ready to defend his country against enemies and their governments."

Gavan pleaded guilty to 22 counts including collecting information useful for terrorism and possessing explosives and firearms.

Yorkshire Evening Post

Defector damages BNP election plan

Alby Walker: kicking Simon Darby where it hurts

The BNP's hopes of winning a maiden Parliamentary seat in Stoke-on-Trent are in disarray today following the defection of one of its most popular members

Alby Walker now intends to stand against the far-right party's deputy leader, Simon Darby, in the General Election. Mr Darby has set his sights firmly on snatching Labour MP Mark Fisher's Stoke-on-Trent Central seat. And he had confidently predicted that Councillor Walker was to manage his campaign.

Mr Darby sees the seat as winnable, due to public discontent with mainstream politicians, and is bullish about his chances. But The Sentinel can exclusively reveal that, far from masterminding Mr Darby's campaign, Councillor Walker actually intends to stand against him as an independent candidate.

The embarrassing blow comes as Mr Darby and BNP leader Nick Griffin are due to launch their national election strategy, and their challenge for the Stoke Central seat, in the city today. Councillor Walker's move is likely to split the right-wing vote, as he has a personal following in his own Abbey Green ward.

Speaking yesterday, Mr Darby seemed to have no idea that his former ally would be fighting him for the same seat. He said: "I don't think that's the case at all. I've not heard anything about that. I know that anything can happen in politics, but I wouldn't have thought that was true."

He added: "It was Alby that asked me to stand and offered to be my election agent, so I can't see him standing against me for the same seat."

But when confronted yesterday about rumours of his political defection from the BNP, Councillor Walker admitted he is planning to quit the party and stand against Mr Darby. He said: "I am not going to deny the rumours about standing as an independent candidate, although I would need to find a financial backer in order to make that happen. I was going to walk away from politics, but so many people in my ward have begged me to stand because they feel I have worked hard for them as a councillor. I am therefore considering standing for re-election as an independent councillor as well as standing for the Parliamentary seat."

Mr Walker, who stood down as the BNP's city council group leader without warning last month, said he had become increasingly disenchanted with politics and wanted to focus on helping residents. He said: "I'm fed up of party politics. I believe it is fragmenting the council and hurting the city because nothing is getting done. Being a councillor has really opened my eyes and I realise that the only important thing is the residents and the community."

He added: "I have been heartened by the approaches I have had from many people in my ward asking me to stand, but I am only willing to stand as an independent and work for local residents."

The Sentinel

English Defence League in Stoke, 23 January

There is a strong Stoke division of the EDL, based around Stoke City supporters, and unofficial Stoke City internet message boards are full of talk about their mobilisation in the city on 23 January.

The link between certain Stoke City supporters (the “Naughty Forties”) and the fascists has existed for a number of years, and has been documented in past issues of Searchlight. The BNP deny that they are in any way linked to the EDL, but in practice the local EDL supporters are also BNP supporters. For example, Shaun Grimsley, who recently stood for the BNP at a by-election in Cannock Chase, is also a self-confessed Nazi and an EDL activist.

There have been some tensions in the local BNP recently. Alby Walker, the leader of the BNP group on the City Council, recently resigned unexpectedly. Walker was seen as a “moderate” (in BNP terms), and is likely to be succeeded as leader by hardline Nazi Michael Coleman.

NorSCARF is the North Staffordshire Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, which was originally founded in 1977 to oppose the National Front. We are an autonomous local anti-fascist campaign covering Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and the Staffordshire Moorlands. We have links with both Searchlight and the UAF: there is no separate UAF group in the area.

NorSCARF has close links with the trade union movement through the North Staffordshire Trades Council. NorSCARF is quite unusual in encompassing all strands of anti-fascist opinion within a single organisation, and of course the kind of debates going on inside the anti-fascist movement generally have been taking place within NorSCARF.

How to relate to the disaffected working-class people attracted to the BNP and the EDL is, of course, the big question. NorSCARF are aware that to date we have been simply firefighting, and that we do need to carry on serious sustained work in the working-class estates where the BNP have made inroads.

One of the particular problems we face in Stoke-on-Trent is the fragmentation of the political scene. The City Council is made up of at least nine separate political groups, including several distinct groups of “Independents”, including some politically close to the BNP.

In this year’s May elections, the BNP are defending three seats. However, seven more are vulnerable to a BNP win (these are wards which have previously elected BNP councillors, or where the BNP has come second). In the worst scenario, the BNP could win all these seats.

Adding these ten to the six not standing for re-election this time, that would increase the size of the BNP group to 16 — the largest single group on the Council, with more councillors than the Labour Party. They would become the official opposition to the current ruling coalition of Tories and Independents.

From a personal (rather than a NorSCARF) perspective, I would add that the Labour Party are barely credible as an opposition. There is an internal war within the party locally, whereby the Blairites (mainly located in Stoke South constituency) are trying to purge the party of the old left (mainly located in Stoke Central and Stoke North), with the assistance of the party’s regional organiser.

A number of very experienced former councillors, including a former leader of the Labour Group, have been prevented from going on the party’s panel of candidates. Only eleven prospective candidates have been approved, despite the fact that there are twenty wards in the City. The Labour Party will therefore not even be able to stand a candidate in every ward.

• 23 January: assemble with NorSCARF 12.30pm, outside NORSACA, Lindsay Annexe, Cannon Place, Hanley ST1 4EP

Worker's Liberty

Four investigated over neo-Nazi links

Two suspected neo-Nazis due to appear in court tomorrow are alleged to belong to the same extreme right wing organisation as a County Durham father and son arrested on terrorism charges.

Trevor Hannington, 58, and Michael Heaton, 42, are accused of being “administrators” of the Aryan Strike Force website and used wall posts to encourage others to murder Jews. They are due before the Old Bailey tomorrow facing a string of terrorism and public order offences dating back to January 2008. Also alleged to have links to the Aryan Strike Force are former pub DJ Ian Davison, 41, and his son Nicky, 18.

Ian Davison was brought before City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London last June accused of stashing deadly poison and explosives at his North East home. He was arrested along with Nicky, of Grampian Place, Annfield Plain, near Stanley, on June 2, when counter-terrorism detectives raided his home on Myrtle Grove, Burnopfield, County Durham. He is currently remanded in custody charged with offences under the Terrorism Act including acquiring a quantity of the toxin ricin, explosives and other manuals and disseminated them to others, encouraging others to commit acts of terrorism.

He also faces two offences of possessing a record containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. One of those charges relates to a manual containing information and instructions on the use or production of firearms, explosives and chemicals, the other relates to information and instructions on the use or production of explosive substances and related items. He is also accused of an offence under the Chemical Weapons Act for possessing the ricin, and is due back in court in April.

Nicky Davison appeared in the same court accused of a single terrorist offence. He was released on bail and is understood to have to returned to his County Durham home. His bail conditions include a ban on contacting members of the Aryan Strike Force.

Hannington and Heaton are accused of writing threatening, abusive or insulting comments about Jews and black people. The pair were arrested on December 9. Jobless Hannington, from Cardiff, faces three charges under terrorism laws for possession of records containing information that could be used in preparing or committing acts of terrorism. He faces a further charge of disseminating information on his website informing others how to construct a flame thrower out of a water pistol.

Factory worker Heaton, from Wigan, Lancashire, allegedly stopped his alliance with the Aryan Strike Force last year. He faces no terrorism charges but is charged with two counts in relation to solicitation to murder and two counts of using threatening internet posts to stir up racial hatred.

Last month at City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London District Judge Daphne Wickham released Heaton on bail while Hannington was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey tomorrow.

Journal Live

French journalists' union calls for Le Pen debate to be scrapped

Union leaders demand cancellation of television debate featuring Marine Le Pen saying it would worsen social tension

French journalists' union leaders have demanded the cancellation of a live television debate featuring Marine Le Pen, the vice-president of the Front National, claiming it would be "a disgrace" for a public broadcaster to provide a platform for the far-right.

In echoes of the controversy over the appearance of BNP leader Nick Griffin on the BBC's Question Time in the autumn, the journalists' branch of the CGT union has said the proposed discussion – scheduled for tonight – should be taken off air. It says the clash, which will pit Le Pen against the immigration minister, Eric Besson, on the theme of "national identity", risked exacerbating existing social tensions which had already been aggravated by Nicolas Sarkozy's "big debate" on the same thorny subject.

"[This debate] between the representative of the extreme right and the figure who makes its ideas commonplace can only end badly," said union leader Jean-François Téaldi. A statement from the CGT said Sarkozy's national debate had "nationalistic, islamophobic and demagogic undertones".

However, France Télévisions, the public broadcaster, insisted the event would go ahead as planned. "It is the public service's function to organise debates. We are the only ones who do it," said Nathalie Saint-Cricq, editor-in-chief of the France 2 programme A vous de juger. Another executive insisted the programme would "not be a red carpet rolled out at the feet of Marine Le Pen".

But their assurances cut little ice with journalists. Téaldi said the appearance of the daughter and heir apparent of FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was irresponsible so close to regional elections in March.

"The national identity debate is getting out of control on the internet and in towns and is serving merely to boost votes for the Front National," he said. "A vous de juger will, with this debate, be airing arguments which will aggravate the social divide."

A poll commissioned by Le Monde and France 2 today indicated that, while over three-quarters of those surveyed said they "completely disagreed" with the ideas of the FN, the number of people saying they believed the far-right party to be a "danger" had decreased since 2006. Critics of Sarkozy's national identity debate say he has moved the debate on immigration to the right and made the ideas of Le Pen and his daughter more mainstream than they were before.

Guardian

Auschwitz asks Britain for help to preserve decaying death camp

'There is only one thing worse than Auschwitz itself...and that is if the world forgets there was such a place.'

Henry Appel, Auschwitz survivor

The guard towers of Auschwitz are splintering, the barracks are waterlogged: the concentration camp where one million Jews were slaughtered is decaying so fast that conservationists have called on Britain to help to save it. The theft last month of its distinctive, sinister sign, Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free) has underlined the vulnerability of the Nazi death camp, stretching over 20 hectares (50 acres) of southern Poland.

“Nobody could have imagined such a horrific act of vandalism,” Jacek Kastelaniec, director-general of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, said. “Now try to imagine the public outcry if one of the barracks started to fall down, impossible to restore.”

Auschwitz was built on boggy ground between two rivers; as a result the high groundwater and bad drainage has rotted the foundations. Walls are blistering and starting to lean, roof frames are buckling, plasterwork and wall-paintings are flaking.

Mr Kastelaniec will go to the Cabinet Office tomorrow to press the Government on Gordon Brown’s promise to contribute to a €120million (£110million) endowment fund that will guarantee the preservation of one of the main sites of the Holocaust. Mr Brown visited the camp last April, and, plainly upset by what he had seen, declared: “We will join with other countries in supporting the maintenance and retention of the memorial at Auschwitz.” No figure has been suggested publicly for Britain’s possible contribution, but Polish sources say that the conservationists are hoping for about €10million.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has said that her country would put up half of the costs, but the managers of the Auschwitz museum need other commitments. Mr Kastelaniec will also visit France, Belgium and the United States. The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has sent an appeal to 40 heads of government.

“The conservationists say we need to start work in the next two years if we are to avert irreparable decay,” Mr Kastelaniec told The Times, “and that will only be possible if the money is paid into the fund now.”

The decay of the camp is politically sensitive. The current trial in Munich of the alleged Sobibor camp guard John Demjanjuk is being seen by the public as the last for Nazi war crimes — the 89-year-old defendant is wheeled into court on a hospital bed. Holocaust survivors are dwindling. “In ten years there will be no witnesses,” Mr Kastelaniec said, “and it will be easier for the crazy people who say nothing happened in the camps.” Only the buildings will remain.

Auschwitz cannot simply have a makeover because that would undermine its claims to authenticity, and open the way for those on the far Right who try to deny or trivialise the Holocaust. The strategic point of the restoration is to use its almost over-powering sense of menace as a clinching counter-argument against anti-Semitism and racism.

The portfolio to be presented to the British Government underlines the vast scale of the camp. The priority is being set on 45 brick barracks. The managers estimate that it will cost up to €890,000 to restore a single barracks building. On top of that come 22 wooden barrack rooms — where inmates were crowded into bunks up to the ceiling. Each will cost €310,000.

Then there are the remains of 210 barrack buildings. Some sheds have collapsed, but there are concrete outlines where floors and chimneys stood. Without some strengthening, these foundation markings will disappear. Cost: €78,000 per barrack room. The 27 wooden guard towers need to be reinforced at an annual cost, for the next 14 years, of €62,000.

Work is under way on conserving the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoriums, but the managers want to extend this to include a provisional gas chamber-bunker, two other crematoriums and the unloading ramp.

Property taken from prisoners before they were gassed, now exhibited in small piles in the museum, is also showing signs of age: 460 artifical limbs, 40kg (90lb) of discarded spectacles, 260 prayer garments and 3,800 suitcases that belonged to people who ended their journey in Auschwitz.

The sluggish response worldwide to the restoration had been down, in part, to the feeling that the main burden should be on Germany. Mr Kastelaniec said: “The breakthrough came when we convinced not only Germany but also other contributors that this was not a project about guilt, but about the future.”

Times Online

Auschwitz

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BNP deputy leader abandons ‘own people’

BNP deputy leader Simon Darby

The British National Party has put forward its deputy leader as its general election candidate in Stoke-on-Trent Central, one of its top target seats nationally

Simon Darby will help the party launch its nationwide campaign to withdraw Britain’s troops from Afghanistan at a press conference in Stoke-on-Trent on Friday 15 January. Opposition to the global war against terrorism, in the form of the Afghanistan war, will be the BNP’s primary general election campaign theme, Nick Griffin, the party leader, announced at the end of December.

The press conference will also spearhead the BNP’s campaign for the three Stoke-on-Trent parliamentary seats and its local election effort, where the party hopes to defend three of its nine seats and make new council gains. Two BNP councillors, Michael Coleman and Melanie Baddeley, will stand for Parliament in Stoke South and Stoke North respectively.

Darby’s selection in Stoke Central was unexpected as he had already declared a firm intention to fight Dudley North, where he stood in the last general election. “Dudley North is where I will once again demonstrate my faith in my own people, a constituency where in 2005 I doubled my vote to 9.7%,” Darby wrote on 1 August 2009.

“Even if through their gullibility the people of this historic, English town manage to find themselves displaced, disenfranchised and replaced by the evil ambitions of the Islamo-Marxist monsters I will not have it said that nobody cared enough about them to give them a choice between effectively life or death.”

Darby’s concern for the people of Dudley North appears to have been overtaken by the prospect of greater personal glory in Stoke-on-Trent. He thinks there is “a real chance of a BNP victory here”, especially as the Conservatives have “decided to insult the electorate with a joke candidate – a Pakistani, belly-dancer”. It is unclear whether it is her ethnicity or her profession that upsets Darby more.

Darby claims that his selection for Stoke Central was “agreed some time ago”, but “kept under wraps”. That seems unlikely as Alby Walker had been expected to contest the seat until his sudden decision just before Christmas to quit as leader of the city’s BNP council group.
According to Darby, Walker has offered to act as his election agent and Ken Griffiths, a BNP Black Country activist, will step into the breach in Dudley North.

Hope not Hate