Target: Griffin

The following posts appeared on the rebel North-East Scotland Nationalists blog. We are republishing them without amendment to demonstrate that though the BNP rebel faction has (at least on the surface) lost the initiative in the racist party's internal civil war, there is a long way to go yet.

Both posts implicitly acknowledge what was stark-staringly obvious from day one - that whatever the accusations against Collett and Hannam, the real problem in the BNP is Nick Griffin himself. Belatedly, the rebels have shifted the focus to Griffin, but the weeks spent in half-heartedly professing loyalty to the BNP leader have cost them dear. Griffin is a ruthless operator, as the rebels knew full well before beginning their adventure, and nothing was more certain than that he would act aggressively, decisively and without scruple. Nothing less on the part of the rebels was ever going to bring them anywhere near success.

The posts reproduced below contain serious allegations against named individuals that we seek neither to confirm or dispute, and though these allegations have already appeared in the public domain, we disassociate ourselves from them completely.

This post appeared as a comment on the North-East Scotland Nationalists blog. Its apparent author is Chris Telford, previously BNP North East regional organiser, lately active in Glasgow. Telford is a member of the Blood and Honour group, Nemesis. His post contains references some readers may find offensive.

Dear Comrade,

I have 13 years active service as a BNP activist and independent pro-white musician. Many of those I am pleased and honoured to call "Comrade" and "Friend" have served their folk for many more years than that. Until the weekend of 8th/9th December 2007 I have counted Nick Griffin amongst them, but that ended when he ordered the burglary of Sadie Graham and Matt Single, and the foiled burglary of Kenny and Nicholla.

Let me confess a few things to you.

I was a regional organiser when N.G. launched his leadership bid in 1999. I wrote to the local members urging them to cast their votes for him. For many years after, the thought that I had played a small part in a painful but vital operation was a matter of quiet pride, tempered only by the fact I had to oppose people who I respected: Richard Edmonds, JT, Ian Dell, etc.

As Nick's cult of personality geared up I privately applauded it; reasoning, "Human nature being what it is... some people need that and If it helps us advance then so be it".

Sadly in recent years it's become more and more apparent that Nick has been developing the nasty little habit of surrounding himself with sycophants and numpties. However by this time I had made some artificial space between myself and the party to protect it from any criticism stemming from my involvement with the more "hard line" Blood and Honour music scene and secondly to grant myself a little artistic freedom.

As I was no longer a Party official it really wasn't my business anymore.I was happier being a grassroots activist without position or a membership card. Spreading a positive and honest message of racial survival through music is simply incompatible with asking a cowed and conditioned electorate to vote for you. Consequently I limited my BNP activities to leafleting, giving occasional speeches and helping to produce fund raising CD's and playing at concerts. (As well as doing a stand-up comedy set at the BNP's Red, White and Blue festival - a set that I hasten to add that was at Nick Griffin's personal request and one I only agreed to do after I ran some of the naughtier, politically incorrect material by Griffin.)

As time passed, news of one badly handled internal discipline problem after another reached me. I have seen this too many times with my own eyes in my native North-East. For example Darlington fundholder and widely suspected Special Branch errand boy, Trevor Agnew, was caught red-handed stealing Party donations but was then re-instated by NG who seemingly finds this treasonable behaviour acceptable.

Factionalism and deliberate branch sabotage in Sunderland was allowed to fester for years, fed by black propaganda from troublemakers like Agnew and the foaming, religious zealot Dave Guynan.

Action was finally taken when Nick Griffin took the belated step to actually accept the resignation of Guynan after his last orchestrated public screaming fit. (Hysterics which cost the Sunderland-South group its regular meeting place, the Landlord's support and even more members).

This half-hearted decision by Griffin to dispense with Guynan's "services" came at least seven years too late for Sunderland and the BNP. Party Leader Griffin was fully aware of the countless examples of Guynan's sabotage, of his public outbursts, his rampant character assassinations, his theft of the PO Box key, his physical assaults and his ranting speeches at meetings. (Full of truly Hollywood-Nazi "Jews control the weather" wackyness and fundamental Mormon-ism).

Despite nearly a decade of this unnecessary disruption Sunderland was the first-ever BNP branch to stand a full slate of candidates in local elections. This is a feat which simply will not be repeated at the next election where there will only be a handful of compliant, Griffinite candidates standing. This serves all Racial Nationalists as a perfect example of where Griffin's cronyism and aversion to decisive Party discipline leads to. For years Griffin has allowed "shipwreckers" to ply their trade and "take their turn in the barrel" whilst honest, dedicated Racial activists have been forced to walk the plank.

Last year, as a further example of this malaise, we saw the Andrew Spence debacle. Spence, a man who raised the BNP's North East's profile to an all-time high last year in Sedgefield, has been discarded by Griffin in favour of the odious Movement parasite and Fire Exit Inspector, Mark Collett and the tragically inept Real Ale enthusiast John Walker. Farce has followed farce with almost always good people lost.

All of this has convinced me that the BNP will never again be a serious organ of resistance to our people's genocide under this man's stewardship. In fact the dark suspicion that Griffin has turned the party into a private money making machine, providing nothing but a play-ground for the worst elements of our movement, is bearing fruit(sour though it is). By this I do not mean the many good comrades who are still holding their tongues, as well as their faith, in our so-called Leadership but I instead refer to the two degenerate scumbags (Collett and Dave "Lock up your daughters" Hannam), who by their own admission tried to pressurise two underage girls into sex in their conference hotel rooms.

Nick has tried to sweep this fact into the memory-hole but he cannot pretend any longer that it did not happen, neither can I and neither should you.( As a matter of fact at Sunderland BNP's Christmas social in 2005 Mark Collett had to be warned off from a public clinch with an underage girl. At the time we put it down to a drunken lack of judgement, not knowing his penchant for trying to take advantage of impressionable 14 year olds).

Even an establishment Party, whose Leader had tried to keep such a sleazy scandal like this from it's membership, would be forced to act and that "Leaders" feet wouldn't touch the floor on the way out of the door.

By his inaction and ultimate complicity Nick Griffin has betrayed the BNP membership and has forced Party activists and supporters into an impossible position. When this scandal fully breaks, as it will, then how can any of us "go to the people" or go door to door espousing honest family values when those to whom we look to for leadership fail us so miserably.

We must remember that the BNP is far bigger than any one man, no matter how many degenerate parasites, wife-swapping doormen, (ex?)-commie journalists, paid trouble-makers, hit-list provocateurs like Lecomber, as well as the donation stealers, "Yes men" and South-African spooks he surrounds himself with.

I should point out that by "South-African spooks" I mean shady (ex?)-coppers and not Zulu or Xhosa Kaffirs, but that is only a matter of time.

I ask you again in all honesty and with a large degree of sadness; How can we look people in the eye any longer and ask them to vote for a party that is peddling it's much vaunted "Christian values" when some of it's disciples wallow in "last days of Rome" decadence? Although, to be fair, if you study the history of all Middle Eastern religions, then Collett and Hannam could honestly claim to be following many a Christian leader's example by trying to molest the underage.

It is to my eternal shame that I once sat in silence whilst Griffin's wife defamed Warren Bennett; slandering him as a thief of party funds (a lie shamelessly echoed by her husband but now fully exposed as spiteful fabrication). At the time I bit my tongue and told myself that it was best not to cause trouble for the sake of the Party.

I told myself that stability out-weighed truth. I now know that I was guilty of moral cowardice.

My silence now would only help store up trouble in the long run and I ask those activists who seem content to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic to act solely in the interests our children's future and decide today which type of British National Party they want.

The recent bragging to the Daily Mail by Party officials of Richard Barnbrook's decision to make himself a race-mixer by default has also helped to identify the leadership's true yellow colours and shows the real dangers of the course Griffstein has set us on; namely, spew enough **** and eventually you'll start to like the taste.

Do not forget that Our Infallible Leader has caused this crisis. His response to those who have dared to demand internal self-discipline is there for all to see: burglary, spying, intimidation, lies, false accusations, fabricated evidence and disabled goon squads demanding access to good comrades' homes.

The painful truth for me and many others who counted this man as a friend and a true comrade is that he is now plainly neither.He has betrayed the hopes of us all by putting his own selfish motives before honour, loyalty and the BNP -
the best defensive weapon the native British folk have in these darkest of days.

I will never forgive him. More importantly neither will our Ancestors nor the Generations still unborn.

I offer some good advice to those with the wit to heed it:

If you are the type who has only recently raised their head from the goyim feed-trough and in your new-found zeal you find the comforting urge to join in with the herd's fury at those who have dared question Our Glorious Leader-think twice before you do. Your shepherd is revealing himself to be a butcher. He has promised new green pastures if you hold faith but instead there are some of us who already have the stench of the slaughter-house in their nostrils.

Save your anger for farmer Griffin - you'll need it later on.

Yours for Race and Nation

Chris Telford

From Charles Mather, BNP Wigan organiser:

A message to Nick from Wigan BNP

The following letter was sent to Nick Griffin from Wigan BNP:

Wigan BNP Activists: Extraordinary General Meeting

Dear Nick,

As you are aware we have been extremely distressed over the discord in the party during the past month and it has only been our faith in Nationalism and its importance for our future that has kept us from throwing in the towel. We have read both sides of the dispute and have been struck by the difference in tone between them.

The intemperate language employed by Simon Darby in his blog when he first accused the “rebels” of being “Nazis" and the following day “Searchlight moles” does not incline one to believe other statements he makes. A blog full of contradictory statements is to say the least unpersuasive.

By contrast the “enoughisenough” blog is a lesson in restraint with no extreme or unbelievable statements. There is certainly no evidence of an attempt to take over the party. Admittedly it was foolish and wrong to start the blog. It would have been much better to resign in protest over the failings of Mark Collett and Dave Hannam but it was even more foolish to publish details of the dispute on the BNP web site for all to see and to brand those who support Sadie et al as Nazis. To then offer these Nazis an amnesty if they returned to the fold seems to be the height of political naivety and would surely be used against us by our opponents.

The appearance of South African security people in the higher echelons of our party is a certain vote loser and will also be exploited by our opponents.

Why do we need all this security and spying on our neighbours? We are a legitimate party and if we behave as such we should have no fear of the machinations of our opponents and have no secrets worth spying on.

We do NOT believe Sadie, Kenny and matt are Nazis or Searchlight moles, indeed they have been hard working and a credit to the party as have Nick Cass, Jonathan Bowden, Bev Jones, Richard Purdy and many others who are not now with us. We can not afford to lose good people such as these.

The only people who have brought the party in to disrepute are Mark Collett and Dave Hannam but they remain in the party.

On the website it says that no person is above the party and we heartily agree. We can’t see therefore why these two remain an exception to the rule. If they cared about the Party they would take a back seat or are they agents of the state? They have certainly caused more strife than any one from MI5 could have done.

In spite of the above, we remain committed to the Party and you as leader but our enthusiasm is much diminished.

Just think what we could achieve without this dissent.

The feeling of our group and prospective members is that while good workers are being sacked and trouble causers retained we will make no progress. We are losing members because of this and several people who indicated the intention of joining no longer wish to do so.

We resolve therefore to keep our group going on a minimum maintenance basis but feel we are wasting our time in actively campaigning until matters are resolved.

We hope and pray for a speedy, sensible and amicable conclusion to this sorry dispute or our Party and country are doomed.

This will not go away.

Yours sincerely,
Charles Mather,
Wigan BNP Organiser

More entertainment courtesy of our friends at Kirklees Unity:

Griffin and his Nazi salute - the facts

Giddy up, John (John Walker downloads animal pornography)

Gun search at home of former BNP councillor

Police arrested a man after searching for a gun at the home of a former BNP councillor. No weapon was found at Sadie Graham's property in Church Lane, Brinsley, but a police spokesman said that an item suspected to be a CS gas cannister was recovered. However Coun Graham says the item was StoppaRed, a legal but powerful self defence substance used to spray in the face of attackers.

Coun Graham, now an independent nationalist at Broxtowe Borough Council, said: "The item that was removed was only on suspicion of CS spray. My partner does not believe it to be that. He believes it to be something perfectly legal.

"The reason why he has that is because he was the training officer for BNP security. I am not interested in firearms, I am a councillor. I am serving on my job as a councillor."

The search was made on December 20. Matt Single, 36, was arrested and later bailed.

A spokesman for Notts Police said: "A 36-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of possessing a section five firearm. A suspected CS gas canister was recovered and he has been bailed till April pending further enquiries."

Coun Graham suspects people called the police giving false reports of a firearm at her house in an attempt to discredit her and her partner.

She was dropped from the BNP on December 9 after being allegedly involved in the writing of an internet blog which the party claims had been aimed to "attack and smear fellow party officials".

Notts Police are also investigating an alleged theft of a computer from her home. It was allegedly taken by the BNP after she was dismissed from her former party.

Nottingham Evening Post

The BNP - just the NF in sharp suits

In a small article posted on his Cumbrian Patriots (BNP) blog, Clive Jefferson, one of the crew of bully-boys who attempted (and failed) to gain access to Kenny and Nicholla Smith's flat to grab computers and other items that could be used to incriminate them in the eyes of the BNP membership, has posted up a picture of some of his fellow Cumbrian BNP members 'helping out' the locals in the Ibstock by-election, due to go to the polls tomorrow.

The BNP, forever in denial about the nazi thugs it has always had in the party, is constantly trying to show how it is packed with ordinary people - not nazis, not thugs. Jefferson's blog follows the same format - in fact the current top item has a picture of these activists (above) along with this text;

'Some of the canvasing team that helped out at the weekend- A BOX STANDARD [one assumes he means bog-standard] TYPICAL GROUP OF SKIN HEADED THUGS ? No of course not the picture is a good, cross section of the BNP membership'

Indeed it is. The tall guy, fifth from the left, is Ian Meller who represents the BNP in Whitwick Ward, a part of North West Leicestershire District Council. The other BNP councillor for that local authority is Graham Partner, who is also the BNP's North West Leicestershire Fundholder, or was until he joined the rebels.

Meller, in common with many BNP members, has a chequered past. This part-report from the Leicester Mercury of August 4th 2000 might be enlightening.

'Gay rights march: Four men appear in court

Four men have appeared before Leicester magistrates following clashes at the city's gay rights march last weekend. The four were arrested during the event on Saturday, which attracted attention from across the political spectrum.

Ian Derek Meller, who was described in court as a member of the National Front, was fined £400 after being caught carrying a piece of wood in Humberstone Gate. Meller, a builder from Jenny's Lane, Ravenstone, admitted a charge of carrying an offensive weapon. He was also ordered to pay £55 costs...'

Two organisations were involved in the protest against the gay rights march that August 4th. One was the National Front, the other a group calling itself The Silent Majority.

The Silent Majority spokesperson at that time was one Denise Pfeiffer, who we have featured here before and who turns out, not surprisingly, to be closely linked to the British National Party - in fact her then partner was Clive Potter, Leicester's former BNP parliamentary candidate in the last two general elections and former president of the BNP's trade union Solidarity and the Christian Council Of Britain until his spectacular recent fall-out with Solidarity's now general secretary Patrick Harrington and BNP leader Nick Griffin.

How incestuous the BNP and NF are.

In case you're wondering about the piece of wood that Meller was carrying; it was a chair leg, presumably carried (as he admitted its capacity as an 'offensive' weapon) to be used against the gay marchers and/or anyone else he disagreed with during the event. Luckily he was nicked before he had a chance to use it on someone. Rather less lucky was a Big Issue seller who tore up one of the NF's leaflets that day - he was beaten up for his trouble.

The modern British National Party - just the nazi National Front in sharp suits.

[Thanks to our friends at Kirklees for the heads-up]

Racist attacker spared jail with victim’s help

The victim of a racist assault has saved his attacker from jail after he told police everyone deserves a chance. Egyptian shopkeeper Alan Noaman said he did not want to see Anthony Weeks or his family suffer after he lost his job.

Weeks, 38, punched Mr Noaman at a leaving party for a colleague from Bookers cash-and-carry in Darlington last summer.

A court heard yesterday that Weeks launched a drunken verbal attack on Mr Noaman, who was at the event because he was a customer. It was said Weeks was upset at having to load Mr Noaman's van several weeks earlier because the trader had a back complaint.

Chris Williamson, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court that Weeks shouted: "I shouldn't have to do that... I only get £5.50 an hour."

Weeks then said he was a member of the British National Party, and shouted: "All you foreigners should not be in my country."

The court heard that Weeks then punched Mr Noaman, who runs Noaman's News, in Brook Terrace, in the town, before the two men tumbled to the floor and banged their heads.

Mr Noaman was taken to hospital and released, but went back the following day and was put under observations after he complained of dizziness. After initially making a complaint, Mr Noaman told police he wanted the charges to be dropped and said: "I hope this was a drunken mistake rather than a planned, thought-out attack."

Weeks, of Marsden Walk, Darlington, admitted racially aggravated assault when he appeared before magistrates in November. His case was transferred to crown court for sentencing, and he was yesterday given a ten month jail term, suspended for two years, and ordered to pay £600 in compensation.

Judge Peter Bowers also ordered Weeks to carry out 80 hours of unpaid work for the community, and told him: "Whatever the background, this was grossly offensive behaviour. I think Mr Noaman has shown considerable forgiveness. But for Mr Noaman's intervention, you would have gone immediately to prison."

Sam Faulks, in mitigation, told the court that family man Weeks was not a racist, and was well-respected in the community for coaching junior footballers.

Mr Faulks said Weeks gave up his job as a warehouseman at the cash-and-carry after the incident, which took place at Darlington fire station, because he was so ashamed.

He said: "This was not so much an offence which arises from race or race hatred. It is a stupid and petty grievance concerning Mr Weeks' job description."

The Northern Echo

BNP in crisis – one month on

A month has passed since the opening salvo of the internal feud within the BNP. On 8 December a BNP security team entered the home of the party’s Group Development Officer Sadie Graham and removed her computer. Several hundred miles away another BNP security team was trying to enter the home of the party’s Head of Admin Kenny Smith. The following day the BNP website reported that both had been sacked from their party jobs and were on their way to being expelled from the party itself.

Over the course of the next two weeks over 60 BNP organisers and local officials have gone on strike in support of Graham and Smith. Among them were five regional organisers and several councillors. Both factions have used the Internet and the national media to attack one another, with both sides accusing the other of harbouring ‘Nazis’ and Holocaust Deniers.

With a calendar month now having passed, Searchlight looks at where the dispute lies now and ponders the long term damage to the BNP.

The split inside the BNP has been deeply damaging. Despite the official BNP position that it is a ‘storm in a teacup’ it is clear that the rift within the party will be difficult to heal. Most of the rebels come from Yorkshire and the East Midlands, the two strongest BNP regions in recent years. With Scotland and much of Greater Manchester also joining the rebellion it is clear that many of the party’s most able organisers and activists have left the BNP for good. In Sadie Graham and Ian Dawson, the BNP is set to lose the two people who have done so much in recent years to build the party structure on the ground.

It is going to be hard for BNP leader Nick Griffin to quickly rebuild the party in these regions. The appointment of failed BNP councillor and convicted C18 thug Adrian Marsden as the party’s new Yorkshire Regional Organiser shows how depleted the ranks are for Griffin. Likewise the fact that Griffin has taken over the North West is also interesting given that it shows a complete lack of alternative talent on the ground and a signal that he is unwilling to provide a potential power base for the one man, Chris Jackson, who appears willing to do the job. Jackson, it must be remembered, unsuccessfully challenged Griffin for the party leadership last year.

However, the rebellion appears to have run its course in terms of personnel leaving as well as the regions effected. Virtually no-one from the North East, Wales, West Midlands, London, Eastern, South East or South West has joined the rebels and with Eddie Butler deciding to stick with the party leadership the all-important East London and Essex branches have been rebellion free. The rebels boast continued support but it does rather feel that the momentum is ebbing away from them. Perhaps by not actually making a physical split from the party (except for the handful of officials who were actually expelled) the rebel leaders have backed themselves into a corner. They won’t be able to change things internally and will gradually be isolated and edged out, or at least away from the levers of power within the party.

Griffin, meanwhile, has seen his authority severely undermined, though not terminally. The manner in which he obtained the evidence against the rebels, the vitriolic and almost immature public attacks that followed on the party website, and the clear distortion of facts, if not downright lying, has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many activists who have not publicly committed themselves to either camp. Three days before Christmas he issued an ultimatum to the 60 party officers to publicly withdraw their support for the rebellion or be disciplined. In a sign of his weakening authority he then obviously failed to sway any of the rebels and his ultimatum suddenly vanished.

On top of this there is also a police investigation into the entry of Sadie Graham’s home by deception and the theft of her personal computer.

Griffin obviously decided at an early stage that he was not going to compromise with the rebels, even if that meant losing key activists. He appears to be willing to write off Yorkshire as a functioning BNP region and this will have severe repercussions for BNP candidates, active and well-run branches and levels of activism at least in the short term.

He must have been heartened by fact that no organiser or councillor in London has broken ranks and with the London Assembly elections being contested under PR he surely thinks that a strong showing here will silence his doubters. The 2009 European Elections, again contested under PR, will be another centrally run election and so the affects of depleted branch structures, such as in Yorkshire, will be negligible.

However, this strategy will stand or fall on whether Griffin can get people elected to the London Assembly and the European Parliament. With the exception of the Barking and Dagenham breakthrough, Griffin hasn't really delivered a great deal since 2001-2003 and that was more down to external factors than his own fantastic leadership.

With few local elections being contested in the East Midlands this May, Griffin must hope that he has time to rebuild a party structure before 2009.

So, a month on from the split, it is the rebels who must be scratching their heads and pondering their next move. The current state of limbo, where both factions trade insults over the Internet, only benefits the leadership in the long term. Some party members who might currently sympathise with the rebels will grow tired of the feuding and return to party business as elections approach.

If the rebellion is to succeed then a change of tact is required. The rebels need to find a way to increase the pressure on Nick Griffin, to revitalise their ebbing momentum and give their supporters a real alternative and proper leadership. Sadie Graham has admitted to journalists that there exists a photograph of Nick Griffin giving a nazi salute. If this is true, then she needs to publish it. Only that way can she pin the nazi tag back on the BNP leader.

If they continue to oppose the party leadership whilst falling over themselves to appear loyal to the party then they will wither away in the not too distant future. Griffin appears to have weathered the worst of this crisis but other difficulties lies ahead. Mark Collett, who appears deeply unpopular even amongst party loyalists, is still in place and likely to upset other people in the future. The South Africans, who Searchlight has revealed include former Intelligence operatives, are clearly disliked and distrusted by much of the party. And, more significantly, Griffin’s own management style, which has repeatedly led him to fall out with everyone around him, is likely to cause conflict and splits in the future.

In the meantime, Searchlight and all anti-fascists will continue to enjoy the unfolding spectacle. The allegations being thrown around the Internet has given us a lot of additional information, much of it previously unknown, which we can use against both factions in the future. It is also clear that the two sides can never be reconciled and among the rebel leaders who are about to be formally expelled from the BNP are a number of competent organisers. This, and the loss of several other branch organisers who are set to drop out in sympathy, will leave the BNP in a much weaker position that they were one month ago.

Stop The BNP

The hunt for Doctor Death

As an SS medic, Aribert Heim carried out horrific experiments on concentration camp prisoners. He escaped and is thought to be hiding in Argentina - but the net may finally be closing. Rory Carroll and Uki Goñi on the search for the last of the Nazis

It was 1945 and Europe was a crime scene. The most destructive war in history had left a miasma of ruined cities, refugees and occupation armies, but there was worse than that. The Nazi extermination camps had been discovered and little-known placenames were becoming sickeningly famous. Auschwitz, Birkenau, Belzec, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Sobibór, Treblinka. It was time for a reckoning.

The Nuremberg trials sent Hitler's senior henchmen to the gallows or long stretches in prison. But others escaped. Quietly, with barely a ripple, middle- and low-ranking war criminals slipped the Nuremberg net and subsequent efforts to catch them. They obtained false papers, packed their bags and vanished across the Atlantic to a safe haven: South America.

Legends followed them. There were stories of U-boats packed with Nazi gold docking on the coast of Patagonia. Novels and films imagined a shadowy Fourth Reich of mosquitoes, swastikas and eugenic laboratories in the Amazon jungle and Andean foothills. Some fantastical accounts had the Führer himself in a Panama hat somewhere clipping orchids.

The reality was more prosaic but still sinister. Hundreds, possibly thousands, had escaped through the "ratline" and found sanctuary. As the decades slid by, a handful were caught. Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust, was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960. Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyons", was extradited from Bolivia in 1983. Erich Priebke, a Waffen SS captain, was extradited from Argentina in 1995. The story petered out. The fugitives were no longer just pensioners but octogenarians, nonagenarians and, for the most part, dead. When the 20th century ended so, it seemed, did the hunt for Nazis.

Not quite. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre recently made a bombshell announcement. The hunt was back on. The Jewish human rights group revealed that it was launching one final drive to locate the remaining genocide collaborators hiding in South America: Operation Last Chance. "We don't know how many Nazi war criminals are in those countries but we think it's dozens, if not hundreds," said Efraim Zuroff, the centre's chief Nazi hunter. It was extremely late in the day, he acknowledged, but not too late.

After years of indifference or outright obstruction, the region's governments had decided to help the hunters. Private and public money had been raised to offer rewards for information. And there were leads. Police had names, bank accounts and tip-offs. Wire-taps were yielding tantalising clues. Media campaigns in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil were publicising telephone hotlines and the $10,000 (£5,000) reward for each tip leading to a conviction. Even after six decades the trail seemed warm.

"Given the large number of Nazi war criminals and collaborators who escaped to South America, this has the potential to yield important results," says Zuroff. He is uncompromising about his prey. "The natural tendency is to be sympathetic towards people after they reach a certain age, but these are the last people on earth who deserve sympathy. Their victims deserve that an honest effort be made to find them."

Zuroff does not fit Hollywood's image of a dashing investigator. In his three-piece suit, big spectacles and shiny black shoes, he looks every inch the 59-year-old academic that he is. A New York-born Israeli historian specialising in Holocaust studies, he is the successor to Simon Wiesenthal, a Viennese Jew who survived the camps, moved to the US and tracked Nazis until his death in 2005. Zuroff's tools are reports, databases, tip-offs and publicity. Hardly James Bond, but for a small organisation on a tight budget there are limited ways to scour haystacks for tell-tale glints.

South America is big, a continent almost twice the size of Europe stretching from the Caribbean through the Andes, the Amazon and the pampas and tailing at the icy tip of Tierra del Fuego. Thirteen countries, thousands of cities, 370 million people. If you were a Nazi, where would you lay your hat? Skim the Lonely Planet guidebook and one town leaps off the pages. It resembles a Tyrolean ski resort, the plaza has an "Alpine design", the restaurants serve fondue, venison and chocolate cake, and there is a cable car soaring up "Gothic spires of rock". Welcome to San Carlos de Bariloche.

It appears so perfect as to be a cliche, but this holiday capital in Argentine Patagonia is the suspected bolthole of the most wanted Nazi in South America. Investigators have a hunch that somewhere among the skiiers and student revellers who throng the picturesque streets is a 93-year-old Austrian by the name of Aribert Heim - otherwise known as Doctor Death, or, in Spanish, Doctor Muerte.

"This is the most important manhunt in over 20 years. If we only get Heim it will be a success," says Zuroff. The most sought after Nazi since Josef Mengele has a bounty of $448,000 (£227,000) on his head and the governments of Argentina, Chile and Germany on his tail. "When three countries are bent on finding somebody, he will be found. Where there's a will, there's a way," says Zuroff.

The reason Heim tops the most wanted list makes for grim reading. As an SS doctor at Mauthausen, a concentration camp near the Austrian city of Linz, he earned a reputation for exceptional cruelty. Camp survivors said he injected prisoners in the heart with petrol and poison and timed the deaths. He allegedly performed amputations without anaesthetic, removed the tattooed flesh of a prisoner to make seat coverings for the camp command-ant's flat and boiled the flesh off a head to use the skull as an exhibit.

After the war, the young physician was overlooked by Nuremberg investigators and moved to a spa town near Frankfurt where he found work as a gynaecologist, married and played in the ice hockey team. However, by 1962 Austrian investigators were closing in and Heim fled. Over the years there were alleged sightings in Egypt, Uruguay, Chile and Spain. But now all attention is on Bariloche. Heim has a 64-year-old daughter, Waltraud, who lives just across the border in the Chilean town of Puerto Montt. His one-time lover and Waltraud's mother, Gertrud Böser, visited Chile 18 times between 1979 and 1992. Gertrud is dead and Waltraud declines to discuss her father. Heim's other family, a wife and two sons in Baden-Baden, Germany, say he died of cancer in Argentina in 1993.

If so, that would repeat the anti-climax of the hunt for the other notorious doctor, Mengele. Investigators discovered his bones in a cemetery near São Paulo in 1985. Auschwitz's "Angel of Death", memorably played by Gregory Peck in the film The Boys from Brazil, apparently had a stroke while swimming six years earlier. Might the hunters also be too late for Heim?

A retired Israeli air force colonel, Danny Baz, has published a book claiming he was part of a squad that tracked down and killed him in California in 1982 and dumped the body in the Pacific. Zuroff dismisses that as fantasy and says the evidence strongly indicates that Heim was alive. In 2001, his lawyer sought a refund from German tax authorities on the grounds that his client was living abroad. Heim's wife and sons were secretive and uncommunicative and had not tried to claim a Berlin bank account in his name containing €1m (£750,000). Surveillance records showed that the mother phoned her sons on his birthday to remind them of the date.

"We are very serious about capturing Heim," says Hans-Jürgen Schrade, a captain from the State Office of Criminal Police in Stuttgart, which is handling the case. Schrade, who visited Chile and Argentina in April, is convinced that Heim is somewhere near Bariloche and close to his daughter's town: Puerto Montt is only two hours away from the Argentine border. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre had received "potentially very important information" along the same lines, says Zuroff, without elaborating.

If Doctor Death is captured in the resort town, it will suggest a certain Nazi herd mentality. It was here that Erich Priebke, an SS officer who participated in the massacre of 335 prisoners on the outskirts of Rome in 1944, was confronted by a US television network in 1994 and from here that he was subsequently extradited to Italy. Currently serving a life sentence under house arrest in Rome, the 94-year-old is a poster-boy for master-race longevity. He scoots to court on the back of his lawyer's Vespa, takes calls on his cell phone and flogs his autobiography on his own internet page.

There is believed to be a smattering of fugitives in Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, but by far the most popular destination was Argentina. A government panel reported in 1999 that at least 180 Nazis facing criminal charges in Europe had moved to Argentina. That excluded rank-and-file Nazis not facing individual charges. There is no mystery about why so many ended up here: they were invited. The government of Juan Perón established "ratlines" to spirit war criminals and collaborators into Argentina. With the cold war breaking out, America, Britain and the Soviet Union poached Nazi scientists, so this is a subject without moral high ground, but Perón's welcome extended to men with few talents beyond mass murder.

There were several reasons. When posted as a military attaché to Italy in 1939-41, the ambitious Argentine developed a taste for Mussolini's firebrand fascism. He forged a relationship with SS agents who gave him intelligence on South American countries in return for Argentine cover. They cooked up an aborted plan to install a puppet regime in Bolivia. The professional soldier in Perón considered the Nuremberg trials an insult to military honour. As a nationalist president he wanted scientists, jet-plane designers and nuclear experts for his arms industry. On his immigration papers, Eichmann stated his profession as "technician". Mengele claimed to be a "mechanic".

Declassified documents in Argentina, America and Europe show how Buenos Aires teamed up with Vatican officials, notably the Argentine cardinal Antonio Caggiano and the French cardinal Eugène Tisserant, to rescue beleaguered Nazis and collaborators from post-war Europe. Imagining itself to be fighting communism, the network issued false documents to slip Hitler's helpers to Italy and on to passenger ships departing from Genoa.

One of the first to arrive in Buenos Aires was Pierre Daye, a Belgian collaborator who had been sentenced to death. Unusually, he flew, but the sentiments in his memoirs were doubtless shared by others: "It was with a sense of deliverance, of escape, a veritable joy in the heart, that I boarded the plane that would carry me to South America." As the four-engine Douglas neared sanctuary, he grew giddy. "They may be looking for me in that troubled Europe. But they cannot reach me. I fly far from a world gone mad, towards peace. It's all over. I have escaped. I fly through the blue."

At the same time that Evita was wowing crowds outside the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, her husband was importing Nazis in bulk. Perón authorised Daye to set up the Society in Argentina for the Reception of Europeans in a grand church-owned building. An Argentine-German SS captain, Carlos Fuldner, established a company called Capri that did contract work for Argentina's state water utility and offered a sinecure for the likes of Eichmann.

There may not have been submarines laden with gold nor jungle laboratories making blue-eyed Indians but there was indeed a shadowy network of genocidal murderers in Argentina. It is a stain on the revered founder of Perónism that has been belatedly and grudgingly recognised. In 2005 the government repealed "directive 11", a secret order that prohibited Jews fleeing the Holocaust from entering Argentina in the 1940s. Younger Argentines have been willing to explore this dark side of their history, but for many older Argentines it is too painful. Denial and obstruction endure. Though more helpful to Nazi hunters than before, the government is widely believed to be withholding immigration records that could expose details of the ratline.

That reluctance and the mindset it betrays appears to impel Zuroff's hunt more than the prospect of putting Nazis behind bars. Operation Last Chance was first launched in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in 2002. Five years later, the results seem paltry: three arrest warrants, two extradition requests and five cases that may or may not lead to trials. Now that it has moved to South America and been renamed Operación Ultima Oportunidad, what are its chances?

"The scheme [in the Baltics] has not been as successful as we hoped in the practical sense of achieving convictions," says Zuroff. But it was not just about justice; it was about "the struggle for historical truth". Six decades after a horrified world watched newsreels of walking skeletons and pits of emaciated flesh, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre was concerned that memory was fading and being distorted. The outright denial of Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an extreme case. In Europe it took the form of pinning blame for round-ups, massacres and camps solely on the Germans and denying the often enthusiastic local complicity. In much of the Baltics and eastern Europe that complicity remains taboo, says Zuroff. Hunting Nazis, in other words, is not just about bringing them to justice. It is about fashioning them into tools, educative instruments, to turn back the clock and remind a forgetful world about that sickening feeling in 1945.

That may seem an excessive load to pile on to Aribert Heim, a 93-year-old who has been running for most of his life and apparently wants to spend his twilight years near his daughter. In Mauthausen, he was a 27-year-old junior doctor surrounded by moral chaos. Now he could be a great-grandfather. The wanted poster showing him as he may appear today is hardly sympathetic, but it cannot mask the pathos of somebody so old being prey. If Heim is caught taking fondue at the Alpine plaza overlooking the lake, he will not finish his meal. He will be taken away in handcuffs and almost certainly die in an Argentine or German jail cell.

"The passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrators," says Zuroff. "Killers don't become righteous gentiles when they reach a certain age." For the hunter, those images from Mauthausen, the poison injections, the stopwatch to time the deaths, the tattoo seat covers, the skull - they tumble into the present. They are always present.

Guardian

Hatewatch’s 1st Annual Smackdown Awards

It’s been a heck of a year in the world of hate. As usual, white supremacists and sundry others on the radical right have shot, bludgeoned and maimed their way into police blotters and newspapers across the land. They’ve cursed, defamed and insulted the usual laundry list of their enemies. But for Hatewatch aficionados, that’s all par for the course. After all, just about anyone can do something really ugly or violent if they set their mind to it. That’s why the Hatewatch 1st Annual Year-End Smackdown Awards Committee had such a very tough time. Sifting through huge piles of ne’er-do-well candidates, intrepid committee members sought to go beyond the merely quotidian and reach for the truly extraordinary. Here, with apologies to Keith Olbermann, is our Hatewatch countdown for the very worst of 2007:

10. Grossest Pervert Award

The hands-down winner here is Kevin Alfred Strom, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Vanguard group based in Virginia who saw charges of enticing a 10-year-old girl for sex dropped, only to have the judge announce to the world that there was “overwhelming evidence that [Strom] was sexually drawn to this child.” That, along with Strom’s wife’s testimony about finding her man naked and aroused in front of a computer screen peopled by young girls, isn’t a very hopeful prelude to Strom’s second trial, coming up in February, on possession of child porn charges. Top gross-out moment so far: The revelation that Strom had written a sonnet about marrying the 10-year-old, to be sung to the tune of “Here We Come A-Wassailing.”

The competition in this category, it should be pointed out, was fierce. Warren Jeffs, the polygamous leader of a racist Mormon offshoot sect, was convicted on two counts of rape as an accomplice for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old cousin. Tony Alamo, leader of an anti-Catholic and anti-gay cult, was accused of taking child brides. And David Lane, 69, a white supremacist movement icon in prison for his role in a 1984 assassination, had this to say about the blonde, 14-year-old Gaede girls who make up the neo-Nazi Prussian Blue singing duo: “When the girls were little, they were like daughters or something. Now that they are grown women, and being a natural male, it’s… well, you know what I’m trying to say.” Yes, sadly, we do.

9. Most Gullible Broadcaster Award

Who can forget Bill O’Reilly, host of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” and his June 21 segment, “Violent Lesbian Gangs a Growing Problem”? In this piece of addled fiction, O’Reilly and “Fox News crime analyst” Rod Wheeler contended that “a national underground network” of lesbian gangs, armed with pink pistols, was “terrorizing America,” in part by raping middle school girls with sex toys purchased on the Internet. As it turned out, the report was entirely false, as the Intelligence Report revealed. The next day, Wheeler issued a statement saying that he had only “inadvertently stated” that the lesbians carried pink pistols, that he hadn’t meant to say there were 150 lesbian gangs in the Washington, D.C., area, that he hadn’t meant to say there was a “national epidemic” of lesbian gangs, and that he hadn’t meant to defame the Pink Pistols, a lesbian gun-rights group. Glad we got that straight!

8. Most Obnoxious Extremist Award

Although there was considerable support for the candidacy of Fred Phelps, the Godhatesfags.com website proprietor who likes to picket the funerals of soldiers, Virginia neo-Nazi Bill White won in a squeaker. The former left-wing anarchist and one-time correspondent for the Russian Communist Party’s Pravda newspaper spent the year issuing racist insults, not-so-veiled threats and attacks on reporters. He posted the home addresses of a long list of his enemies — from a Miami Herald columnist to journalists from his hometown newspaper to the editor of this blog — but also defamed large numbers of fellow racists. The rabid dog in White may have come out most clearly in his call to white supremacists to crash the wedding of the niece of a newspaper official to “annoy this Jew-loving piece of shit.”

7. Weirdest Political Alliance Award

The honors here go to Kirkpatrick Sale, director of the New York-based Middlebury Institute, dedicated to secessionism. Known for decades as a left-wing intellectual, Sale last year buddied up to the white supremacist League of the South (LOS) — a group that opposes racial intermarriage, defends segregation, and calls for a return to “European cultural hegemony” in the South — to the point of actually co-sponsoring the Oct. 3-4 Second North American Secessionist Convention in Tennessee with the LOS. Now, the left-right love affair promoted by Sale has turned positively torrid, with a “North-South Secession Summit” planned for January. Attending will be top officials of the Middlebury Institute, LOS, the Southern National Congress, and the Second Vermont Republic, to seek “the peaceful dissolution” of the United States.

6. Stupidest Conspiracy Theory Award

You know it can’t be good when the John Birch Society, the rabidly anti-Communist group that called President Eisenhower a commie, teams up with Jerome Corsi, the man who orchestrated the Swift-boating of John Kerry. Corsi and the JBS are the prime promoters of a nativist conspiracy theory that claims Mexico, Canada and the United States are secretly planning a merger that would result in something called the “North American Union” (NAU). They insist that a 2005 tri-national agreement called the Security and Prosperity Partnership — a series of working groups to study cooperation in transportation, energy, aviation and the environment — is the leading edge of the conspiracy that may, in Corsi’s words, end in “an executive branch coup d’etat.” This would be merely an exercise in the ridiculous were it not for the fact that public figures from CNN anchor Lou Dobbs to U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) to nativist leader Jim Gilchrist keep plugging it. Thanks to them and their ilk, the houses of representatives of 18 states have now passed resolutions opposing the much-feared NAU — an entity that does not exist and has never been planned.

5. Most Annoying Snot-Nosed College Kid Award

Kyle Bristow was irritating enough way back in 2006, when the soon-to-be leader of Young Americans for Freedom at Michigan State University posted his 13-point agenda, including elimination from student government of virtually every non-white, non-heterosexual and non-Christian group. He ratcheted it up with a “Straight Power” demonstration featuring “End Faggotry” and “Go Back in the Closet” signs. From there, Bristow and his MSU-YAF degenerated into “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” contests, a “Koran Desecration” competition, and even, last September, an attack on a new Latino studies doctoral program under this headline: “MSU Offers Doctorate in Savagery.” Bristow went on to invite such speakers to MSU as Nick Griffin, head of the racist British National Party and a long-time Holocaust denier. All of this was bad enough on its own. Truly appalling, however, were the accolades Bristow received from mainstream politicians including Michigan GOP boss Saul Anuzis, who, shortly after the Southern Poverty Law Center named MSU-YAF a hate group, had this to say: “This [Bristow] is exactly the kind of young kid we want out there.”

4. Unlikeliest White Supremacist Award

Our old nemesis, H.K. Edgerton, was in our hometown of Montgomery, Ala., back in November, and it reminded all of us just how nutty he really is. Edgerton, faithful readers of the Intelligence Report will remember, is a lonely black man in the overwhelmingly white — and white supremacist — neo-Confederate movement. As he made clear in an interview with Hatewatch, H.K. hasn’t dropped any of his strange ideas about slavery, the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan and related topics. A sampling: Before the slaves were freed, “Black folks and white folks were family. …White people and slaves saw each other on the streets and they tipped their hats to each other.” Slaves “were given a new pair of pants and a new pair of shoes every day” and “had the same medical facilities that the white man had.” The Klan was “just protecting the people — all the people, black and white.” If you really believe that, H.K., we suggest you skip straight down this list to award No. 1 and join up.

3. Weakest Relationship With Reality Award

The Southern Poverty Law Center last year engaged in a sort of epic battle with Lou Dobbs, the CNN host who has probably done more to defame immigrants than any other public figure in contemporary America. The struggle was epitomized by a debate over Dobbs’ claim that the United States had experienced a surge of 7,000 new cases of leprosy in a recent three-year period, due at least in part to immigrants. In a seemingly endless series of debates, interviews and on his own show, Dobbs stuck to his guns, despite crystal-clear government statistics that pegged the number of new cases for the years in question at 398. The whole sorry affair was dramatized best in a comment Dobbs made to Lesley Stahl of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which first pointed out Dobbs’ error in a profile of the broadcaster that aired last May. Said Dobbs: “If we reported it, it’s a fact.” Stahl asked how Dobbs could guarantee that. “Because I’m the managing editor, and that’s how we do business.” Ah, NOW we understand.

2. Creepiest Psychotherapist Award

Richard Cohen won this one by acclamation, but it didn’t become official until we convinced our own CEO — Richard Cohen — that we weren’t talking about him. The Cohen in question describes himself as “ex-gay” and conducts controversial “healing touch” therapy that involves men striving to rid themselves of their homosexuality cradling and rocking other men in their arms. This technique was demonstrated by the licensed psychotherapist on Paula Zahn’s CNN show, an appearance that also included Cohen’s excited demonstration of “bioenergetics,” which involves beating on chairs with tennis rackets while shouting, “Mom, why did you do this to me?” The CNN appearance was almost universally described as a disaster, and Cohen’s name promptly disappeared from several “ex-gay” websites.

1. Most Surprising ‘Hate’ Group Award

For the better part of 142 years, the Ku Klux Klan has been the most infamous racist group in America, leading a campaign of terror that involved murders, lynchings, rapes, castrations, bombings, church arsons, and any number of other horrors. But now comes the Alabama Christian Klan, “The Voice of the New Civil Rights Era,” with a Web page that currently features an approving photo of Birmingham’s black mayor and a banner announcing an upcoming Klan rally in rather unusual (for the Klan) terms: “Birmingham At a Crossroads: Can We Come Together?” This is followed by the announcement of a “diligent campaign” to get other Klan groups to abandon their racism and shun any “acts of disrespect to any community.” The man behind the group, Trussville, Ala., resident Ken Mier, already has taken credit for the decision by another Klan group to cancel a rally last November, saying in an E-mail to Hatewatch that he considered this “a victory for the Christian residence [sic] of Alabama.” Way to go, Ken!

Hatewatch

Welham Green by-election: BNP fails to impress

It is the election nobody wanted - except for the BNP.

Exploiting an anomaly that allows just two registered voters to demand a by-election in a vacant borough/district council seat (even a lowly parish council requires ten), the opportunist British National Party has been crowing for some time over its "success" in forcing Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council to hold an election for a vacancy in Welham Green ward - an election the Borough Council claimed would be costly and pointless, since the seat must be fought again in May.

The vacancy came about when one of two sitting Conservative councillors resigned after facing allegations of possessing child pornography, allegations repeated by many foot-soldiers of the BNP's online keyboard army as if they were court-tested fact. Given the allegations currently swirling around two leading members of the BNP, this is dangerous territory for them to venture into.

Welham Green is a village lying just to the south of Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Sometimes (to much local resentment) known as North Mymms, the place is prime commuter country, comfortably well-off and with house prices to match. Its main claim to fame seems to be an occasion in 1784, when Vincenzo Lunardi, undertaking the first ever balloon flight over England, touched down at Welham Green to let off his airsick cat.

Welham Green and Welwyn and Hatfield district generally being low on crime and scarcely touched by immigration, the make-it-up-as-you-go-along BNP urgently needed an issue and decided, against all the known evidence, that crime in the area was rising - a lie that did not especially please Hertfordshire Police, as we reported here.

This can hardly have done the BNP any favours, but then nor can a BNP-forced by-election fought over the Christmas and New Year holiday period have greatly pleased the council-tax payers of Welham Green, who cannot have welcomed the sight of BNP canvassers on their doorsteps in the midst of the festivities.

The first inkling that the previously disinterested BNP had an interest in calling a by-election for Welham Green came on this forum from the poster "clarebear", posing as somebody concerned with "democracy". The mask soon slipped as "clarebear" replied thus to a suspicious contributor: "I would have thought that anyone who subscribes to the activities and publications put out by the Far left extreamist organisation Searchlight (which you seem to be promoting in your avatar) would understand how the democratic process is so important in defeating the slide towards facism and that any attempt to deny the electorate their right to an election is just that" (authentic BNP spelling preserved).

Soon after the penny drops that "clarebear" is not only BNP, but is almost certainly the BNP's candidate, Mark Fuller - who, despite his alleged concern for "democracy" and the greater good of Welham Green gives an address in Welwyn Garden City.

Apart from this attention-seeking intervention, the BNP has little history in Welwyn and Hatfield, and did not contest any seats in the May local elections, when sixteen council places were fought.

Welwyn and Hatfield Borough Council is divided into 17 wards electing 48 councillors. The council has a virtually unassailable Conservative majority, the Tories currently having 34 seats (+ 1 vacancy), Labour 10 and the Liberal Democrats 3. In May 2007 the Conservatives gained two seats from Labour and ousted the sole Green representative, while the Liberal Democrats remained unchanged. In May 2008 all 48 seats will be up for election due to boundary alterations.

Welham Green was last fought in 2006, with this result (percentages in brackets):

Con 707 (66.64)
Lab 198 (18.66)
LibDem 156 (14.70)

As "clarebear"/Fuller intimates on the forum linked to above, the BNP clearly hopes to exploit the scandal surrounding Welham Green's resigned councillor, and is perhaps hoping that a Christmas/New Year election will see a dire turnout work to its advantage.

We think otherwise. We believe that in forcing this unecessary by-election the BNP has shot itself in the foot, but given that this is new BNP ground, and that Labour has little chance of denting the Tory majority, the racist party might expect to gain votes from both. In solidly Tory seats it is usually the Liberal Democrats who benefit from Conservative strife, and as the LibDems have mounted an especially active campaign, they have the most to gain in Welham Green.

We have been unable to glean any exact indication of the BNP's expectations, but their trolls doing the rounds of the forums seem to be pitching a good second place as the likely outcome, which suggests a 20%+ target as they must know they need better than Labour's 18.66% to come anywhere near to even a bad second place.

Welwyn and Hatfield BC Welham Green ward result:

Con 539 (40.68)
LibDem 484 (36.53)
BNP 214 (16.15)
Lab 88 (6.64)

Turnout 46.6

The Tories duly suffered for the allegations against their former councillor, and as we expected it was the Liberal Democrats who benefitted most - though the size of the swing in their favour comes as a surprise even to us (as does the size of the turnout on such a dismally cold day). The squeeze on Labour seems to have come mostly from the LibDems but partially from the BNP, which clearly drew off some disaffected Tory voters.

We know that the BNP went to great lengths to mobilise its vote in what it (and, admittedly, just about everybody else) predicted would be a low-turnout election, which suggests that 16% is towards the higher end of what the party can expect in Welham Green and places like it when the mainstream parties take the BNP threat seriously and motivate voters to block its progress. In this case the hard work was done by the Liberal Democrats, but the local Tories cannot be faulted for never disguising their distaste for the BNP.

This by-election did not go quite according to plan for the BNP. It loudly sought the credit for calling it, believed it could cash in by myth-making about crime, and thought it could make capital on the back of as yet unproven allegations against the former sitting councillor.

It was wrong.

That, however, should not blind us to the fact that had this by-election not been so hard-fought between the Tories and the LibDems, producing an extra 264 voters over the 2006 turnout, then the BNP would almost certainly have bettered 20%.

Vigilance remains the watchword.

New List of Regional BNP Organisers Announced

Announced earlier on the the BNP website. The list is:-

• Scotland - Gary Raikes (Acting)
• Ulster - Kieran Dinsmore
• Wales - Brian Mahoney
• North East - Ken Booth
• North West - Nick Griffin (Acting)
• Yorkshire - Adrian Marsden
• West Midlands - Simon Darby
• Eastern - Eddy Butler
• London - Nick Erickson
• South East - Andy McBride
• Mid-West - Mike Howson
• South West - Peter Mullins

There's a few names on the list that I'm not familiar with so if anybody has any factual info on the above I will post it on this thread.

Interesting to see that Griffin is the North West organiser after the local party voted for somebody else. A great show of democracy in action from the BNP as usual.

Interesting that in my region they have chosen Adrian Marsden as the organiser. This is a man with strong connections to Combat 18. He has several convictions for Threatening Behaviour and is on the list of Crap Councillors after attending three council meetings in six months. He is also widely suspected of passing photos on to Redwatch and is a former member of International Third Position

The Mark Collett/Dave Hannam underage girls saga gets murkier as story unfolds

A poster to the BNP-dissident blog Enough is Enough has recounted the story of the alleged visit of the two underage girls to the New Kimberley Hotel in Blackpool at the BNP's 2006 'conference'.

This story, whose repercussions are only just beginning to develop, has taken its time emerging but now starts to take on more credibility as the animosity between the rebels and the Griffinite BNP membership forces the disclosure of information that was hitherto kept quiet 'for the sake of the party'.

The latest disclosure was a response to a post by Chris Hill, Lancaster's very own dissident BNP member (who you'll recall announced his support for the rebels, promptly backed down when told off then got his courage back and supported them again) who stated;

'I believe [Collett's] story that he chatted up a girl in a disco who looked 18, and then took her back to his hotel room. His offence was to bring a guest back to the conference hotel room, nothing else! He was quite rightly given a final warning for that, which meant the next incident should have been automatic expulsion. But that’s just one of many problems with this whole Collett thing, it seems the rules don’t apply to him, he’s untouchable. Mark Collett is a nasty megalomaniac, but he’s not a sex offender.'

The response, posted by someone calling themselves 'i was there', was clear.

'With all due respect Chris you were not in the hotel bar when Collett and Hannam came in with the 14 and 15 year old girls and I was and so was Kenny Smith and several others. We all could tell they were underage as soon as they walked through led by Collett and many of us said as much to each other including the barman.

When the girls came back down complaining about the demands for sex it was even more obvious they were children and it was Kenny Smith who persuaded them not to go to the press with the mobile phone footage and promised them that Collett and Hannam would be disciplined by the party.

One of the girls bluetoothed the footage to Kenny and I believe he gave it to security (pos. Martin Reynolds) the next morning.

If Kenny hadn't persuaded them and their mother - who arrived later with a security guy - out of going to the press Collett and Hannam would have had to be expelled, but such a media furore would also have been very damaging for the party.'

There are so many questions that arise from this brief statement that it might be better to tabulate them properly.

• Why didn't Kenny Smith and the other witnesses report this alleged crime when it happened?
• If Smith and co 'could tell they were underage as soon as they walked through led by Collett', why weren't they stopped immediately?
• If the barman at Blackpool's New Kimberley Hotel could tell that the two girls were underage, why didn't he report these activities to the police?
• Matt Single, formerly one of the BNP's security team, has admitted that he knew about this incident when it happened. Why didn't he report it?
  
• Why did Kenny Smith persuade the girls and a parent of one of them not to go to the police with the mobile phone footage of the alleged incident?
• If Kenny Smith sent the mobile phone footage to Martin Reynolds, the BNP's pervert Head of Security, who was it who then sent it both to us and the Blackpool Gazette?
• What kind of political party would rather hide alleged child abuse than cause any harm to itself?

There are a lot of questions still to be answered about this incident and there will probably never be a definitive answer that will satisfy everybody but there is just one more question that we feel should get a reasonable response, even if nothing else comes to light.

• Why has Mark Collett never even been questioned by the police about these allegations?

We are assured by our correspondents, who know the nazi-loving Mark Collett rather better than we do, that Collett has never been approached by the police; nor does he expect to be. If that's truly the case, we wonder why?

Conference: Stop the BNP’s Red, White and Blue Festival 2008

Why this conference?

In October Nottinghamshire Stop the BNP showed that it is possible to stop the British National Party. We prevented a meeting taking place in Kimberley where BNP leader Nick Griffin had come to speak. This was only the beginning.

This conference is the beginning of our campaign to prevent them organising their 'Red White and Blue' festival in the East Midlands. It is also intended to build stronger links and more support in the community and trade unions for ongoing work to undermine the BNP wherever they show their faces.

We know that the BNP view the East Midlands as a potentially fertile recruitment ground, and have been encouraged by the election of a handful of seats on local councils in the region.

In August 2007, the BNP held their 'Red, White and Blue Festival' near the Derbyshire village of Denby less than 10 miles from both Nottingham and Derby. The BNP plan to hold their festival on the same site in 2008. We believe that if the BNP are allowed to hold this event, it will allow them to make a further step in claiming legitimisation of their party—a party populated and led by fascists and held together by race hate.

It will also build the confidence of racists and fascists who will try to intimidate and undermine local communities.

Since the 2007 BNP 'Festival', anti-racists, trade unionists and other campaigners in the area have re-organised. Our mobilisation on the streets in Kimberley, Notts in October stopped the BNP meeting with BNP leader Nick Griffin. In November anti-fascist activists blocked Griffin and Holocaust-denier David Irving speaking at Oxford University.

They must be stopped from using the East Midlands as a base to organise their spreading of race hate and intimidation.

This conference marks the beginning of our campaign to stop them. Come and join us.

Download the conference leaflet by clicking here. To book and for more information, please contact NottmStopBNP@yahoo.co.uk

The curious case of Councillor Chris

Critics are calling for the resignation of Tamworth councillor Chris Cooke – who despite holding the Glascote seat as an independent, recently issued a leaflet supporting a BNP candidate in a by-election.

Cooke has been interesting anti-fascist researchers for some time after posting right wing comments on local newspaper websites.

He also has a link to the BNP on his website, arguing that the party is the victim of “smears, lies and disinformation.”

During a by-election in the in Castle Ward in November, Cooke then leapt to the defence of the far-right party’s candidate Lynne Smith, who had been targeted by the Unite Against Fascism pressure group.

UAF were encouraging people to turn out and vote to defeat the BNP – a campaign that was ultimately successful as the party trailed in third (with Labour snatching the seat from the Tories by just six votes).

In the run up to voting, Cooke – who had no direct interest in the election - took exception to what he regarded as interference by outsiders. So, in support of Lynne Smith, he distributed a defence of the BNP to 1,000 homes and attempted to rubbish the UAF.

That’s provoked a lively correspondence in the Tamworth Herald, with the Conservative Andrew James calling on Cooke to resign and stand under his “true colours”.

Cooke admits, “I did help the BNP's Lynne Smith in her recent by-election campaign. I know Lynne as a long standing and respected Tamworth resident.

“Three years or more ago I thought much the same as anybody else about the BNP - nasty, racist, fascist thugs.

“Therefore it was a shock to me to find a couple of people I respected as sincere and intellectual telling me that they were BNP members.”

But he insists that he won’t resign and stand for them in a by-election, insisting that after spells in the SDP and UKIP, he has “had enough” of political parties.

(To see more about the debate check out Chris Cooke’s website here).

The Stirrer.