BNP forges new links with South African ex-pats

Perhaps it is not surprising that, after the UK, the country that provides the largest number of visitors to the British National Party website is South Africa, where there are still many white residents who hanker after the country’s apartheid past.

Many of them may be friends and relations of the growing number of South African BNP members, of whom Arthur Kemp, editor of the BNP website and in charge of the ideological training of the party’s 250 or so elite activists, is the most prominent.

It has clearly not escaped the notice of the BNP leadership that white South Africans who fled black majority rule and now live in the UK are potentially a fertile recruiting ground for the racist party.

Especially of interest to the BNP, which has run several major fundraising campaigns over the past year, are wealthy South African business people and well paid financial services professionals in the City and Canary Wharf, many of whom meet up at the Aardvark pub in Rotherhithe, southeast London. Run until last month by Werner Swanepoel, it boasts “true South African hospitality”, live performances by South African artists and traditional South African food.

It was also the venue in July 2006 for an international meeting of the hardline white separatists of the Orania Movement, an attempt to set up a white homeland in the village of Orania in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. With only around 1,500 residents, the privately owned village is a minuscule shadow of the ambition by Professor Carel Boshoff, a grandson of the architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, to grab a large part of the province for a self-governing Afrikaner homeland at the time of the collapse of the apartheid regime.

Hopeful of rich pickings for the BNP, in both members and financial support, and with one eye on the potential for building a South African resistance against majority rule, Neil McAllister, a South African BNP activist and failed publican now living in Chessington, Surrey, has cultivated a link with Swanepoel. He has been helped in this by Una Rice, a white exile from Zimbabwe, who works hard for the BNP in Barking and Dagenham.

A graduate, Rice, 31, was the victim of a road accident in 1984 which is reported to have left her disabled with brain injuries. She had arrived in the UK two years earlier with her mother. Now living in Barking, east London, she has gone about establishing herself as a political and clerical prop for councillor Bob Bailey, the leader of the BNP group on Barking and Dagenham council, and Richard Barnbrook, a Barking and Dagenham councillor and the BNP’s sole member of the London Assembly.

Last November McAllister and Rice arranged for Bailey and other senior BNP members to go with them to meet Swanepoel at the Aardvark pub, carrying a wad of BNP membership forms, with a view to recruiting South African key players to the party.

McAllister also passed Kemp the names of South African businesses to contact as potential financial backers, a task he will have to fit in between his many speaking engagements at BNP branches around the country, where he eagerly touts his overpriced and tedious books about the history of the white race and the neo-nazi South African AWB paramilitary group.

Despite McAllister’s enthusiasm to sign up South Africans for the BNP, he does not confine his political activities to that party. He was seen toting the South African flag from apartheid days on last November’s National Front Remembrance Sunday march.

Alongside him, waving the flag of the illegal Ian Smith white regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), was Chris Hurst, a university student from Richmond studying at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Hurst was among those invited to go to the Aardvark pub to help McAllister’s BNP recruitment drive.

McAllister and Kemp appear especially keen to enlist young people, such as Hurst and Rachel Hill, a 24-year-old English woman who grew up in South Africa after her parents emigrated there. A British nationalist from an early age, she joined the BNP two years ago after leaving school in Pretoria and returning to the UK. Her eager activism quickly propelled her into party office, as secretary of Melton and Rutland BNP, despite her apparently living in Oxfordshire. She also managed to get her picture onto the front page of issue 101 of Voice of Freedom, the BNP’s monthly newspaper, sitting in the front row at the 2008 BNP conference last November.

Many BNP members have no difficulty accommodating their leaders working in close conjunction with European fascists and nazis, whom they see as allies in a pan-European struggle for the future of the white race, and with US white supremacists who can bring financial support.

They find it harder to swallow Kemp, who now has a big say in the way the BNP is run and a strong influence on its ideology and policy. They will also be worried about the BNP’s growing links with South Africans who threaten to get the party embroiled in what might become a second wave of assassinations and sabotage back in their homeland for very little return for the party here.

The Orania Movement

The Orania Movement’s aim is to set up a self-governing Volkstaat for South Africa’s minority Boer-Afrikaner population. The Afrikaner Freedom Foundation (Avstig), formed by Professor Carel Boshoff (pictured) in the late 1980s, bought the dilapidated village of Orania in 1990, a few months after the repeal of the apartheid laws and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.

Orania, which has around 1,500 inhabitants, is now a self-proclaimed Afrikaner homeland, which follows the strict racial segregation of the apartheid era. Only Afrikaners are welcome and non-white residents are banned. All jobs are filled by Afrikaners. Black people can visit the village but are not welcome.

Around 60 Cape Coloured families who were forced to leave the village in 1991 after Avstig bought it received financial compensation from the South African government in 2006.

Situated in the middle of the Karoo desert in the Northern Cape Province at the border of the Free State, its economy is largely agricultural. In 2004 Orania launched its own currency in an attempt to move further towards self-sufficiency. It also has its own flag, consisting of a small boy pulling up his sleeves against a blue and orange background, traditional Afrikaner colours.

The villagers celebrate Afrikaner holidays and do not participate in South African national elections.

The South African government has mostly ignored the Afrikaner enclave, one of only two all-Afrikaner white settlements in the country – the other being Kleinfontein near Pretoria. However there has been some concern that Orania may provide shelter for white supremacist terrorists.

Searchlight

Kemp is given Excalibur as Collett resigns. Just a day in the life of the BNP...

No, he's not gone yet...

The BNP's Advisory Council meeting minutes are far more interesting for what they don't say than for what they do, and January's AC minutes are a good example.

The Advisory Council meets at least three times a year and is the guiding body (it says here) of the party. And who sits on the AC? Everyone who is anyone, of course - or at least, anyone who is anyone in the fantasy world of the BNP. Thus we see the steroid-enhanced Martin Reynolds rubbing chubby shoulders with the idiotic Dave Hannam, while the emphatically lunatic Bob Bailey sits alongside the detestable Mark Collett. And who do we not see at January's meeting? Who is missing from this gathering of the BNP's glitterati, who we would usually expect to spot? Deputy Chairman and National Press Officer Simon Darby, for one. The reptilian Arthur Kemp, for another. And Richard Edmonds.

Edmonds' position of the AC was one of the consolation prizes offered as a sop to the rebellion of last year - clearly intended to pacify those on the harder right of the party who felt that Griffin was leading the party directly into the no-go area of, as it has been labelled, 'Tory nationalism'. For Edmonds is no soft nationalist - he is a fully-fledged neo-nazi, as Denise pointed out in an excellent article pondering Edmonds' placement on the AC back in October.

'A former mathematics teacher, Edmonds has a record that - anywhere beyond the shores of the fawning racist Right - is eminently unenviable. In 1987 Edmonds sustained a conviction for causing damage to a statue erected in honour of Nelson Mandela, and more seriously in 1994 he was convicted for his part in a 1993 racial attack in which a black victim was hit in the face with a glass. Sentenced to six months in gaol, Edmonds was released immediately, having already spent three months on remand.

The BNP's former National Organiser was also a long-time purveyor of Nazi and Holocaust-denial literature, notably Holocaust News, which found a wide circulation among the racist Right in the late 1980s. Edmonds told the BBC Panorama programme that Holocaust News was a "wonderful statement of the truth".

Not long after that, Edmonds told the journalist Duncan Campbell that the BNP was "100% racist". Note that he did not pettifog with the word "racialist" and the often-made inference that a "racialist" merely recognises and respects racial differences, upon which supposed differences the credo of "separate development" (apartheid) is allegedly built. He went directly for the word "racist", with its naked (and only) meaning of one who harbours an unreasoning emotional hatred against those of other races.

Nothing Edmonds has said or done in the intervening years could lead any unbiased observer to believe that the man is not now what he always was - an unrepentant anti-Semite, a racist, a Holocaust denier, and very much a standard-bearer for John Tyndall's brand of National Socialism.'

Missing from the meeting - and with no apologies for absence. Does that mean his job is done and he is no longer on the AC? If you know, let us know.

An anonymous correspondent has been in touch and has mentioned a number of points from the meeting which are worthy of note (and a big thank you to whoever you are). I've highlighted some of these below:

• Student membership accounts for only 0.01% of total membership. So much for the BNP's drive to engage young people.
• A 'properly constructed budget has been drawn up for 2009'. This is something of a surprise as the party has been going for twenty-seven years, ten of those under the authoritarian leadership of Nick Griffin. One would have expected a budget to have been an essential component of running a political party - even one like the BNP - but apparently it hasn't been until now.
• The party is investigating data protection principles – a bit late I would say. Mark Collett is now responsible for Data Collection (including date of birth and telephone number, which might be useful for him).
• All local BNP blogs must change their names and operate instead as a local community website. Use of the BNP logo must be discontinued. They report that it is impossible to control and oversee local websites centrally for legality of content and this measure protects the Party from any potentially costly legal challenges though it seems a tacit admission that the party is unable to control the lunatics in its midst.
• Members and officers whose personal e-mail addresses include ‘bnp’ should remove this reference for security reasons. Any officers who have an @aol address must switch to another service provider since AOL have blocked customers from receiving e-mails from @bnp.org. uk senders. For the first time ever, AOL gets my vote as an ISP with some moral courage.

But the two big items that are just casually mentioned in the AC report are the admission that 700,000 Euro warm up leaflets have been printed without an official imprint, prompting the moronic Collett to offer his resignation (sadly rejected), and the handing over of the tatty Excalibur 'merchandising' arm of the BNP to the ubiquitous Arthur Kemp.

Collett's cock-up will cost the party a fair amount of cash and goodwill as the party is offering branches (or units as it so kindly refers to them) free stickers to be adhered to the offending leaflets and a third of the money they paid back by way of compensation. Had an independent printer made the same mistake, he would have been expected to cover the cost of his error out of his own pocket. It'll be interesting to see whether Collett has to cough up or whether the party (and thus its members) take the financial hit. Personally, I'd've sacked the useless bastard for this, his umpteenth mistake. In any case, the party now has a 'National Proofreader and Marketing Consultant' who, along with the Chairman and National Elections Officer, will peruse all publications to ensure that Collett actually does what he's meant to do.

With regard to Kemp and Excalibur, the AC report has this to say;

'The Excalibur merchandising operation will now be run privately by Arthur Kemp under an annually renewable license from the Party. This is a saving to the Party in terms of storage costs and postage. Arthur will continue to work on the website, write the Party’s Education and Training manuals and will be overseeing Radio RWB.'

As our correspondent puts it, 'So much for all the lies in November about moving to bigger premises etc – is this the start of the end for Excalibur and Mr. Kemp?' Not too sure about the latter point but it certainly seems like the Excalibur operation is considerably smaller than party members and the outside world have been led to believe.

A number of questions immediately arise (though I'm sure our readers can think of a few more).

• Were the members ever consulted about this disposal of their assets? After all, they paid for Excalibur and have subsidised its existence up to now.
• Has Kemp paid anything for this 'licence' to run Excalibur as his private company? If so, how much?
• Why has Kemp been effectively given Excalibur anyway? Why not put it out to closed tender - restricted to party members?
• If it is now run by him as a private concern, one assumes Kemp will keep any profits that might be made - if so, how much will that cost the party/members per annum in lost revenue?
• If it is (as we suspect) loss-making, who will pick up the tab?

There's a whole host of questions that need to be answered regarding this highly dubious transaction - though the membership of the BNP will not be encouraged to ask them. They already paid for one company - Great White Records - which ended up being privately owned by the arch-twat Dave Hannam, and they pay Mark Collett for running a design company with a single client (the BNP) as a highly profitable and guaranteed business, and now it looks like they are to subsidise Kemp's own business (albeit on a annually renewable licence). None of this might actually be corrupt but it certainly stinks.

It really is time that the BNP membership woke up and realised that it's been taken for a very long and very expensive ride.

Labour sees off BNP's 'British jobs for British workers' by-election challenge

Labour won a council by-election after fighting off a strong challenge from the BNP campaigning for "British jobs for British workers".

The far-right party was beaten into second place last night with 889 votes behind Labour on 1,379 votes in the Newton Hyde ward by-election for a seat on Tameside Council in Greater Manchester. The Tories came in third with 485 votes on a turnout of 32%.

Both Labour and the BNP had campaigned hard over the last month, but last night Labour increased its majority over the BNP in the ward since the last local elections in May.

James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Minister and MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, accompanied successful Labour candidate Phillip Fitzpatrick to the count at Dukinfield Town Hall. Mr Purnell, who helped launch Labour's campaign, said: "I think it 's a victory for hope and solidarity over people who want to bring division and hatred."

Mr Fitzpatrick said: "I am absolutely delighted. The people of Newton have voted for a Labour candidate because they don't want the BNP. They are not wanted."

In last May`s local elections in the Newton ward, the BNP polled 846 votes, just 278 votes behind Labour on 1124, on a 33.3% turnout. But with the recession biting and the BNP campaigning on a "British jobs for British workers" ticket, the poll was expected to be close. A BNP victory would have given the party its first foothold in Greater Manchester.

Hyde is predominantly white and working class with a tradition of large manufacturing firms based in the area. It also has a small Asian community.

The local campaign saw Hyde`s church leaders issuing a joint statement telling people to vote for parties that "do not foster fear and hatred". Unions and anti-fascist groups also ran campaigns with a message to "Keep the BNP out."

Rosalind Gauci, the BNP candidate said: "I don't think it has been a fair election, I don't think it has been a clean one. They should not have used USDAW and Searchlight, the extreme left of Labour. They have tried to kill us off."

The BNP last gained a council seat on November 13 last year in the Fenside ward of Boston Borough Council. And last month it narrowly missed winning a seat by just eight votes in the East Wickham ward of Bexley Borough, south east London.

The by-election in Hyde followed the death of Labour councillor Margaret Oldham last month.

The other candidates and their results were; Peter Ball-Foster (Liberal Democrats), 172, Angela McManus (UK Independence Party), 33, Nigel Rolland (Green Party), 69, and John Welsh (Conservative), 485.

24dash

Hunt for most-wanted Nazi war criminal ends in Egypt

Son says 'Doctor Death' died in 1992 after search tracks down SS fugitive to Cairo hotel

The hunt for the world's most-wanted Nazi war criminal, Aribert Heim, appeared to have come to an end today with reports suggesting that he died in Cairo almost 17 years ago, after converting to Islam. According to new evidence published today, Heim, known as "Doctor Death" for the atrocities he committed against Jews as a physician at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps, spent the last decade of his life living in Egypt after reinventing himself as an apparently kindly old man called Uncle Tarek, who played ping-pong with local children.

While serving with the SS, he was accused of injecting petrol into his victims' hearts, removing organs from healthy patients and decorating his desk with the skulls of prisoners he killed.

Heim was the prime target of Operation: Last Chance, the campaign by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre to track down the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust. After 240 leads, which mainly focused on south America, Heim appears to have been tracked down to a hotel in Cairo. His son, Ruediger Heim, has admitted for the first time that his father died of cancer on 10 August 1992, after watching the Barcelona Olympics on TV. He said he was with his father when he died.

An investigation by the New York Times and the German broadcaster ZDF discovered a briefcase belonging to Heim which included his passport, bank details, and newspaper clippings of reports of efforts to track him down and his trial in absentia. It also included letters protesting his innocence and accusing Simon Wiesenthal of inventing Heim's atrocities.

ZDF reported that Heim was buried in a cemetery for the poor in Cairo, where graves are reused after several years "so that the chance of finding remains is unlikely".

According to friends in Egypt, the doctor who had applied himself so vigorously to butchering and torturing his victims in the name of medicine had asked for his own body to be donated to medical research at his death. According to ZDF, his wish was not granted for religious reasons.

Today, the Wiesenthal Centre said that while there was "no doubt" that Heim had lived in Egypt, it had not been established that he had died there.

"What is not clear, what is missing from the presentation by ZDF and the New York Times, is the conclusive proof he indeed died in Egypt in 1992," Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the centre, told Reuters. "There's no grave, there's no body. We can't do any DNA testing."

Zuroff also pointed out that Ruediger Heim had previously said that the only contact he had had since his father went into hiding in 1962 were two notes, and that he had no idea if he was alive or dead.

"Ruediger has been lying," Zuroff told the Associated Press. "Either he is lying now or he was lying before, and he has a vested interest in this so anything he says has to be taken with a certain amount of scepticism and suspicion and the most important thing is missing: the body."

If it turns out to be true, however, Zuroff said that "the German police have a very important investigation on their hands in terms of prosecuting people who helped Heim escape justice". Ruediger Heim refused to comment when contacted at his home by the Associated Press.

Born on 28 June 1914, in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was annexed by Germany. He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941. He was held by the Americans after the war but released before the true extent of his crimes had become clear. He kept a low profile for the next two decades, even avoiding being photographed in the team picture of the ice hockey club he played for.

In 1961, German authorities were alerted that Heim was living in Baden-Baden and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him, apparently after he had been tipped off. Heim fled through France and Spain before crossing into Morocco, and eventually settling in Egypt, ZDF and the New York Times reported, citing Ruediger Heim.

He lived in Cairo, under the name Tarek Hussein Farid, at the Kasr el Madina hotel for the 10 years leading up to his death, the report said. Mahmoud Doma, whose father owned the hotel, said Heim was known as Uncle Tarek, and that he played table tennis with him on the roof of the hotel. He said he bought sweets for children in the neighbourhood. Heim converted to Islam and worshipped at Cairo's famous al-Azhar mosque, the New York Times said.

Ruediger Heim told ZDF that he first visited his father in 1976, organising the trip through his aunt and arranging to meet with him in a hotel.

"He recognised me right away," Heim recalled. "It was a meeting of worlds. I was there for 14 days."

But, he said, he did not talk with his father about the allegations against him, largely because he said he was not fully aware of them himself.

"I didn't ask him: 'How many people did you kill?' because I didn't know. I didn't know any concrete details," he told ZDF. "Later, on other visits, I got to know his life better."

Guardian

Sticky: Barnbrook to speak at the Royal

This is a sticky post. Newer posts appear below this one.

News again reaches us that The Royal Public House in Heckmondwike intends to hold a BNP meeting.

This follows the aborted meeting that the BNP intended to hold there back in November last year where the intended guest of honour was Richard Edmonds the former deputy leader of the party under the John Tyndall regime.

The Edmonds meeting was cancelled due to a massive response by anti fascists who telephoned The Royal and registered their disgust at the BNP being allowed to meet on their premises. The cancellation of the meeting led to the sacking of the then North Kirklees organiser Ian Roper. However, it seems that the BNP and The Royal have decided to give it another go.

David Exley the new North Kirklees organiser has arranged a meeting to take place in The Royal on Thursday 5th February and the guest of honour this time is to be Richard Barnbrook, Barking councillor and the BNP’s only representative on the GLA.

The meeting which is due to start at 8pm is to be held at The Royal Hotel public house which is located on High Street Heckmondwike WF16 0AL

Once again as The Royal is a Free House we are asking people to ring the pub itself and POLITELY lodge their complaint with the management.

The Royal Hotel's telephone number is 01924 403265

Labour rebels warn Brown he risks boosting far-right groups

Gordon Brown last night faced a growing Labour revolt over his handling of the wildcat strikes, which MPs warned could fuel far-right groups such as the British National party.

The protests have touched a nerve in the labour movement. The strikers' appropriation of Mr Brown's slogan of "British jobs for British workers" has been hailed by the BNP as a victory for its brand of nationalism.

Union leaders sought to distance the walkouts from the far right yesterday, saying the construction workers were shunning BNP support. "The unofficial action taking place across the UK is not about race or immigration," said Derek Simpson, joint leader of Unite. "It's about class. It's about employers who exploit workers regardless of their nationality."

But Labour MPs warned that ministers' apparent dismissal of fears about jobs going to overseas workers risked exacerbating a wider failure to address concerns of the white working class.

They highlighted Peter Mandelson's exhortation in the Lords to "keep focusing not on the politics of xenophobia but the economics of this recession".

Jon Cruddas, the unofficial leader of the Labour left MPs, warned: "If we're simply caricaturing this [dispute] as being about protectionism and xenophobia, we're completely ignoring some material issues in this and, in doing so, we hand over what this is about to more pernicious forces."

Mr Cruddas told the FT: "Trite comments about protectionism or xenophobia do not address the whole question of equality [for British workers] before the law. If the Labour party can't grasp this and articulate that, then other forces will."

The motion "deplores" the use of foreign workers and calls for additional power stations to be "built by companies employing primarily British labour". Political opponents have attacked Mr Brown for indulging in populist "British jobs" rhetoric.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, last week accused the prime minister of championing globalisation on one hand while "on the other, he borrows this slogan from the BNP".

But some Labour MPs believe the problem lies less in the slogan than in the fact that the government has not implemented it. "Failure to deliver British jobs to British workers could wipe Labour out," said Frank Field, the maverick former minister. Labour must get a grip now, otherwise their actions will feed the BNP."

Mr Field's warning reflects a party concern that the government's failure to engage with the poorest white voters is creating a vacuum for the far-right to fill. Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, last year urged the Labour party to "recognise that where the BNP wins votes, it is often a result of local political failure".

MPs fear that European elections in June could hand the BNP its first seat in the European Parliament, potentially from a region including Ms Blears's constituency.

But polling experts caution that such fears should be seen in the context of the fringe parties' failure to make inroads into mainstream politics. John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said that the BNP and UK Independent Party have been "there for . . years but it's not obvious that their position now is any stronger than it has been before".

FT

One Flew Over The Pig Farm: the BNP and us in 2008 - July

Even the meanest of the BNP's councillors conform to the party's petty racisms, as was shown in early July when Simon Deacon, a Markyate Parish Councillor and former leading National Front activist, voted against the council's Equal Opportunities Policy, describing it as a waste of time. No great surprise there.

Another non-surprise, was the complete collapse of Colin Auty's leadership challenge: Auty didn't even manage to get the required number of nominating signatures for the challenge to go ahead.

Griffin, clearly nervous of Auty's popularity (not something that the pig farmer has ever experienced), enlisted the help of the big battalions in the dubious forms of fruitcake Lee Barnes and 'election guru' Eddie Butler, both of whom wrote possibly illegal letters to the entire membership warning it to avoid Auty like the plague, Butler referring to Auty as a 'joke candidate' while Barnes stated that anyone who supported the challenge would be 'tried for conspiracy and treason'. Such power.

Meanwhile, Dicky Barnbrook, who takes his politics very seriously indeed, learns to ride a bike with fruit on it...

Dukinfield Labour councillor John Taylor apparently earned the ire of the BNP's Andrew Gatward, the party's West Lindsey organiser, and promptly found himself on Redwatch complete with death threat.

'Congratulations, you're on Redwatch. I am going to take you out. Six .22 rounds in the back of your head should do the trick. I would bring my .38 special but it makes one hell of a mess. I'll be seeing you.'

Whether it was Gatward who put Taylor on Redwatch is impossible to know but the fact that the former writes the occasional hate mail to the latter should give us a clue. As should Hexapla's article about the bizarre and violent fantasy world that Andrew Gatward seems to inhabit.

July saw us asking questions about how closely Nick Griffin and the BNP were working with Patrick Harrington and his micro-party, the National Liberal Party. Certainly there's a strongly incestuous relationship between them which becomes even more intimately entangled when the BNP's fake union Solidarity, its fake PR company Accentuate and Third Way are factored in. More investigation needed, if anyone wants to take it on board.

To no-one's surprise at all, Dewsbury East's BNP councillor Colin Auty quit the party (and eventually his seat) after his failure to get a leadership challenge going, moaning about the lack of democracy in the BNP. Odd how it hadn't bothered him up to this point. His campaign manager Roger Robertson also bit the dust, though in his case he was expelled for bringing the party into disrepute by setting up the challenge to the leadership and having the audacity to talk to the press. Bringing the BNP into disrepute? You couldn't make this stuff up, could you.

Racists and anti-semites Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle are convicted of publishing racially inflammatory material on a website. Both face further charges though mid-July saw them in the news again, this time for not turning up in court. It emerged that the pair had run off to the US, seeking political asylum across the pond.

An old friend reappears in court (albeit briefly), to answer a charge of attacking a pub landlord. Football hooligan, violent thug and former Burnley BNP councillor Luke Smith, hits the news again by doing what he does best - creating havoc. A couple of days later, Smith is found dead, having hanged himself.

Clive Jefferson, who desperately wants to run the BNP's security because he's a tough guy, brought some of his more idiotic pals down from Cumbria to Lancaster just to irritate shoppers by illegally setting up a stall in Market Square and getting in everyone's way. After a kicked-over table, numerous leaflets covered in spilled fizzy and a very noisy spontaneous demo, Jefferson and his morons buggered off - though not before the police nicked him for driving around in a car with an illegal numberplate (for which he was done the statutory £80).

Drifting towards the end of July and we see Nick Griffin writing to the December rebels trying to get them to back off from the forthcoming court case. In his letter, Griffin appears to libel the rebel's barrister Adrian Davies in a number of ways - though Mr Davies doesn't seem too keen to take the pig farmer to court on his own behalf. What Griffin is trying to avoid, of course, is showing the world that he can no longer afford to pay for decent legal representation and may have instead to rely on his own quick wits and those of the party's legal lunatic Lee Barnes. Gawd, I almost feel sorry for him. But not quite.

Too late to make any difference and presumably in angry response to Griffin's letter, Sadie Graham suddenly pops her head over the parapet to declare that

'I truly believe that there has never been a political leader in this country so hated by his own people.'

Her statement, posted on the Voice of Challenge blog, rips into Griffin, calling him a liar and a coward, but the overall effect is that it is too little, too late. Had she issued such a statement six months before, she would have got a massive and positive response. In fact, it comes across as the death knell of the rebellion - which in fact it turns out to be.

Yet another financial scandal within the BNP is uncovered by Searchlight - this one centering on the much-vaunted 'Truth Truck' or Lie Lorry. BNP members were asked to donate towards the purchase of a brand new advertising vehicle, effectively a mobile hoarding, which would help spread the BNP's lies even further. Members were asked to donate a staggering £40,000 to this appeal and many responded though BNP members on its own forum sounded a note of caution, wondering what had happened to the battle bus, a similar idea that was used to obtain donations a few years back.

Eventually, it was discovered that the BNP had conned its membership - again - and that the truck was actually being shared between the UK LifeLeague, an anti-abortion outfit based in Belfast, and the party.

We'll let the late Luke Smith round off July. His funeral seems to have followed the pattern of his life, being marred by vandalism and violence. Around forty drunken so-called 'mourners' were dispersed by police after they were found hurling bricks off a bridge on to a road below, presumably in tribute to Smith being a well-known thug and hooligan throughout his life.

Steve Smith, uncle of Luke, former member of the BNP and now leader of the utterly insignificant England First Party, said of his nephew;

'He was a lovely, lovely lad who, like a lot of people, was just too sensitive to exist in what is effectively an extremely cruel world...'

Whatever.

British Wildcats Exposed

[Ministry of Truth] reveals that the operator of the British Wildcats website, which featured on tonight’s Newsnight, is actually BNP ‘web guru’, Simon Bennett.

Infantile buffoon Simon Bennett and friends

Bennett, who lives in Cornwall and is listed on the leaked BNP membership list as an activist, also operates a number of other BNP front websites, including those of the ‘Association of British Ex-Servicemen’, the BNP’s fake ex-forces organisation and that of its religious front operation, the ‘Christian Council of Britain’. He is also the designer/webmaster behind the website of BNP London Assembly member, Richard Barnbrook, and the BNP’s main national website.

The proof?

A WHOIS search on britishwildcats.com gives an IP address of 87.117.239.65 and DNS records hosted by nameservers registered to copperflash.com.

Bennett is the owner of copperflash.com, which he registered under his real name, giving the domain name, simonbennett.co.uk as its administrative contact, leading us back to Bennett’s personal site - www.simonbennett.co.uk - and to his ‘featured sites’, including Barnbrook’s and those of ABEX, CCOB, The ‘National Liberal Party’ (yep, another fascist front) and the BNP’s ‘Great White Records’.

Of these sites, all but the ABEX and Great White Records sites operate from the same reseller account and IP address - 87.117.239.65 - the same IP address and account as the British Wildcats site.

And, to clinch the deal, the BNP’s own national website, which credits Bennett as its designer, operates from the same hosting service/account, albeit under its own IP address of 87.117.239.66, just one address away from that of Bennett’s site, Barnbrook’s site and the British Wildcats site.

All of which confirms this to be an official/semi-offical BNP front operation.

Ministry of Truth

BNP attempts to infiltrate wildcat strikes

Warnings are being sounded about far-right involvement in the Lindsey wildcat strike over foreign workers, with the deputy leader of the British National party telling politics.co.uk: "We'll be the last people there."

Trade unionists and anti-fascist activists have been alerted to the growing BNP presence around the picket line. The strike spread across the country yesterday, with heavy snow doing nothing to stop over 300 people gathering around the site as the sun rose.

"We'll be there for the foreseeable future," Simon Darby, deputy leader of the BNP, confirmed to politics.co.uk. "We'll be the last people there."

He continued: "Unfortunately Labour have sent in the Socialist Workers party storm troopers who have been aggressive against our people. Police were supportive of us, but the left got rather aggressive. The police said 'we can't guarantee your safety'. The last thing we want is clashes with the left on TV."

That particular event carried a different interpretation from anti-fascist organisation Searchlight. A spokesman told politics.co.uk: "The local trade union people have gone to the police and said we don't want these people anywhere near the picket line. They've got nothing to do with the dispute. The police said to the BNP 'if you bring your truck to the picket line we'll do something about it'. They were forced to move to about half a mile away."

Yesterday the party started handing out leaflets about the strike.

"It's all over the place," the spokesman said. "It has lots of typos but the basic reason it doesn't make any sense is that they don't understand what the trade unions are about."

The Socialist party, which has members on the strike committee, is also handing out a leaflet tomorrow, but one targeted at the Italian workers brought in to work. Written in Italian, the leaflet says Italian workers have more in common with their British counterparts than Italian management.

The BNP, which is at the site in its 'truth truck' (nicknamed the 'liars' lorry' by anti-fascist activists), are understood to be using a BNP-based union called Solidarity' to become involved in the strike, which expanded to include Sellafield nuclear power plant workers yesterday. Solidarity is a registered trade union formed in 2006. Its last returns to the certification office said it had only 100 members, although that number has almost certainly risen slightly since then. It does not have a certificate of independence, meaning it can't represent members at tribunals or in court and employers are under no obligation to recognise it.

The party has dedicated large sections of their website to the strike, with photos of Italian workers showing cameramen the V-sign displayed prominently beneath the slogan: "British job s for British workers – When we say it we mean it."

The response of the unions to a BNP infiltration has been mixed. A spokesman for the GMB union told politics.co.uk "We held mass meeting with our members. We recommended our members go back to work. They decided not to take our advice. You're talking to me about something that's not our responsibility."

But a political officer for the union took a different stance, telling politics.co.uk: "We want to make sure the BNP don't hijack this to peddle their hate. This is not a dispute concerning immigration or asylum seekers. It's completely different to that. I've not heard people say they can see a lot of BNP activity at the moment although I acknowledge there is some."

He added: "We'll make sure that members and people on picket lines are alerted to the fact they will be about and they will try to recruit. We need to be smart enough to know they will be there and act against it."

Police plans to bus in the Italian and Portuguese workers today are being treated as a statement of intent by strikers, with many saying it is reminiscent of the miners' strike in the 1980s.

View London

BNP stands accused over leaflet drops

Far-right activists have been accused of “political intimidation” after encouraging neighbours to confront a prominent anti-racist campaigner in his own home.

About 20 members of the newly-formed far right group Wirral British National Party dropped 2,500 leaflets in Wallasey close to Merseyside Trade Union Congress leader Alec McFadden’s home. The leaflets urge people to confront Mr McFadden [left] at his home and the maildrop coincided with him being in Liverpool at the front of an anti-racism rally. The only people at home were Mr McFadden’s two teenage daughters, who have been brought up in the Jewish faith.

Mr McFadden said: “They knew that I was leading the march, so they chose the moment to give these leaflets out, also knowing I’m a single parent with two teenage daughters.”

Mr McFadden was repeatedly stabbed to the face and torso in front of his now 16-year-old daughter, on the doorstep of his home in May, 2006. He believes the assailant was a fascist sympathiser and has had to alter his day-to-day life to ward off future attacks by such “radical thugs”.

Police have had to intervene after a neo-Nazi website featured pictures of Mr McFadden and he received death threats.

This weekend, Chief Supt Steve Ashley said the force was aware that leaflets were distributed in an area of Wallasey on Saturday. He said: “The content is being reviewed to determine if any criminal offence has been committed, and police patrols have been stepped up in the area.”

The latest pressure being applied on the trade union leader comes as the issue of “jobs from British workers” dominates many of the national papers.

Wirral BNP literature says: “Instead of defending British Workers, McFadden was holding an anti-racism/anti-BNP march in Liverpool while workers were being made redundant.”

They accuse him of being unpatriotic and allowing jobs to fall into the hand of immigrants while British people lose out in the current economic downturn. But Mr McFadden emphatically denies this. He said: “In January and February, 2008, I did the first case in Britain for young men when Polish workers were brought in on half the wages of British workers. I won the case, earning them thousands of pounds.

“I stand up for the fair treatment of workers, whoever they are. There is no excuse for what has been going on. My children shouldn’t have to face intimidation for any reason. My daughters were very upset when they heard about this.”

A neighbour and the National Union of Journalists leader in Merseyside, Mike Studley, said the incident was “an appalling act of political intimidation.”

Liverpool Daily Post

Far right tries to hijack dispute

Striking energy workers were last night warned to be vigilant against far right groups looking to hijack their protest.

The TUC issued the advice after evidence came to light that groups such as the British National Party had approached unemployed construction workers protesting against a contract awarded to an Italian firm. But Scottish union representatives insisted the campaign was a fight for jobs rather than an attack on the foreign workers.

Contract workers across the UK are demonstrating against the practice by foreign companies of undercutting British firms by bidding for contracts below agreed prices. The protest originated at the Lindsey Oil Refinery, in North Lincolnshire, on Wednesday after a major contract was awarded to Italian firm IREM, which plans to staff the job with Italian and Portuguese workers.

Some unemployed workers took the opportunity to challenge Prime Minister Gordon Brown's 2007 promise of "British jobs for British workers".

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber spoke out against attempts to hijack the action, after evidence emerged that activists from the BNP and other far-right factions attempted to influence strikers around the country. He said: "Unions are clear that the anger should be directed at employers, not the Italian workers. No doubt some of the more distasteful elements in our towns and cities will try to use the fears of workers to stir up hatred and xenophobia.

"But I am confident that union members will direct their anger at the employers who have caused this dispute with their apparent attempt to undercut the wages, conditions and union representation of existing staff."

Bobby Buirds is regional officer for Unite trade union in Grangemouth, where some workers have staged wildcat strikes in sympathy with the Lindsey workers. He said: "The argument is not against foreign workers, it's against foreign companies discriminating against British labour. This is a fight for work. It is not a racist argument at all."

Writing on the BNP website, Nick Griffin said that Unite's claims that this was not a racist issue were "ridiculous".

The Scotsman

Now we know who to send the *** to; police probe Jo Brand's anti-BNP joke

Comedienne Jo Brand is at the centre of a police investigation over quips she made on the comedy programme that temporarily replaced Jonathan Ross’s TV chat show. A senior producer on the Friday night Live At The Apollo show has been questioned by the Metropolitan Police about the incident.

Ironically, the six-show series only hit the airwaves as a ‘fill-in’ while Ross served his suspension after the fallout over the lewd messages he and Russell Brand left on the answering machine of Andrew Sachs.

The remarks by Jo Brand concerned the leaking of the British National Party’s membership list. Brand, 51 – who is a staunch Labour Party supporter – joked that as a result of the list becoming public knowledge on the internet, she now knew the addresses where to send the ‘poo’ through the post.

The details of almost 13,000 BNP members were leaked last November – including those of teachers, solicitors, church ministers and even a doctor and a serving policeman. Their names, addresses and phone numbers were published, exposing many to the risk of vilification, disciplinary action and dismissal from their jobs.

Brand’s routine was a hit with the live audience, who laughed and cheered at her remarks. However, the joke, which was broadcast on the late-night BBC1 show from Hammersmith Apollo on January 16, offended members of the BNP. The following day, Simon Darby, the BNP’s deputy leader, made an official complaint to Hammersmith police alleging that Brand’s comment had been an act of incitement to cause racial harassment.

A police spokesman last night confirmed: ‘We have received a complaint and officers will be reviewing the programme to see if any offences have occurred.’

But a senior police source said: ‘It is an absurd case and very unlikely to get to court. A lot of police time and money appears to have been wasted investigating what for all intents and purposes is just a TV show joke.’

The offending remarks by Brand have been posted online on YouTube. She is seen telling the audience: ‘Let’s start with some important political news. Did you hear this, right, that BNP members and supporters have had their names and addresses published on the internet, hurrah! Now we know who to send the poo to!’

Further complaints from the BNP followed, to the BBC and the police, and a formal review was launched two weeks ago – at an estimated cost of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer.

Officers spoke with the show’s producer about the programme’s content but did not arrest or formally caution him. Miss Brand is believed to have told officers, through her producer: ‘It was just a joke!’

A file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) last week to determine if there is enough evidence for a successful prosecution to be made against Miss Brand or the BBC. A decision will be made by the CPS in the next few days. But a police source said: ‘The chances of this going further are very remote. The idea that the BNP are claiming they are the victim of a race offence is mildly amusing, to say the least.’

Jo Brand’s agent, Vivienne Clore, said: ‘I have spoken to Jo and she thought all this had gone away. She is co-operating with any investigation.’

The Live At The Apollo series was brought in by the BBC as one of the programmes to replace Ross’s Friday night chat show.

Last night the BNP’s Simon Darby said: ‘The BNP is technically an ethnic group and, under Section 26 of the Race Relations Act, we would suggest there are grounds that an offence of incitement to commit racial harassment has been committed.’

A BBC spokesman said last night: ‘We do not comment on police matters. However, we believe the audience would have understood the satirical nature of the remarks.’

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