BNP fundraiser alert

The British National Party’s nationwide “Battle of Britain” roadshow will roll up at an 18-bedroom country hotel in Gloucestershire on Sunday 8 March. Nick Griffin, the party leader, is touring the country with an “invited European mystery guest” to launch the BNP’s campaign for the European election.

The event, for which tickets are being sold at £30, promises an “exclusive preview of campaign film and broadcast, Champagne reception, entertainment and light supper”. Many of the party’s wealthier supporters live in the West Country and Griffin hopes the function will raise a large sum towards the campaign to get him a seat in the European Parliament.

As always with the BNP, the venue was supposed to be a well kept secret. People attending have to turn up a rendezvous point and only then are they told the actual location, which is usually quite close so that no one gets lost on the way.

But there are not many hotels that could host such a function near the RV point, the Huntsman pub off junction 14 on the M5 southbound. Three in fact.

A few phone calls quickly established that one had no functions booked for Sunday evening and another had a booking from a commercial wedding organising business. That left the Park Hotel in Falfield, a mile from the RV point.

Owner Lynda Jones told Searchlight that the hotel had a function on Sunday evening but it was definitely not the BNP, whom she would not want in her hotel. Even when we pointed out that the BNP often books venues under other names because many places will not entertain the racist party, she was adamant the booking was not the BNP. Too adamant. She sounded like she had been briefed.

Now the BNP has every right to book a hotel for a fundraising event. Equally, members of the public have a right to express their views, politely, to the owners, Mike and Lynda Jones, about them putting their hotel at the service of the BNP to raise money to promote racism and destroy British society. You can phone them on 01454 260550.

Hope not hate

BNP 'ghetto' plan

The far-right BNP would put children in care into a boarding school and vulnerable families on to a "caravan site" in Barking if it won power.

Labour councillors have attacked the plans for the £20million school, which would also take excluded pupils, as "heartless" and the caravan site for families staying in temporary accommodation as a "ghetto".

Barking and Dagenham's BNP party says the plan would combat "extortionate" fostering charges, adding £6million was spent on keeping 600 families in emergency accommodation.

Labour executive member for children, Cllr Jeanne Alexander, denounced the boarding school plan as "heartless" and a "kick in the teeth of vulnerable people".

Labour executive member for housing, Cllr Liam Smith, said the caravan site idea was reminiscent of 1960s South African policy and called it a "ghetto".

But BNP leader Cllr Bob Bailey denied the temporary "static site" would be a ghetto, adding the boarding school for primary and secondary children would be a "beacon" for other local authorities.

He told the Recorder: "Lot of children are excluded from school and placed with foster parents. They don't necessarily want to be with foster parents. We feel they could be looked after better in a school run by the council and receive proper care."

Both facilities would be built on the Barking Riverside site, currently earmarked for 10,800 homes.

The plans were crushed at Barking and Dagenham Council's budget meeting at Barking Town Hall, Town Square, on Thursday. The Labour majority instead pushed through a four-year £434million capital programme to help tackle the acute primary school crisis in Barking and Dagenham.

Barking and Dagenham Recorder

Anger as BNP leaves calling card at Bristol library Bhangra exhibition

Bristol City Council and the Asian Arts Agency have condemned racially-motivated attacks on an exhibition in the city celebrating 50 years of Bhangra music, culture & style in the UK.

Some of the exhibition materials from 'Soho Road to the Punjab', including a turban, decorative materials and jewellery were taken from a Bhangra dancer figure in the foyer and a BNP card was left behind. The incident was reported to police as theft and a possible racial crime.

Racist comments were also discovered after the incident in the exhibition feedback notebook in Central Library off College Green.

The Soho Road exhibition, which opened on January 19, is one of three exhibitions taking place at Central Library and the Watershed as part of The Bhangra Project, an arts and cultural venture developed by the Asian Arts Agency to celebrate and explore bhangra culture in the UK.

Councillor Gary Hopkins, Cabinet Member for the Environment and Community Safety, said: "I am very disturbed and saddened that a very positive exhibition celebrating the contribution of Asian arts to the UK should be targeted in this way. We take these attacks, which are totally unacceptable, very seriously and they are now in the hands of the police. The massive success of the film 'Slumdog Millionaire' here, and worldwide, shows that culture crosses boundaries and brings people together. I am sure that those responsible for the incidents at the library are very much a small minority and their actions are repugnant to the vast majority of the public."

The exhibition charts Bhangra's movement from Birmingham, where Punjabi nostalgia first fused with Caribbean beats and dance floor styles, throughout the UK and eventually back to the Punjab in India - the original source.

The free exhibitions continues at the Central Library and the Watershed until March 20.

24dash

Paying for incompetence

British National Party members and supporters are getting thoroughly fed up with the stream of begging letters landing on their doormats. Already this year there have been four, all signed by Nick Griffin, the party leader, asking for donations to support this, that or other aspect of the BNP’s “growth” and its European election effort.

The year had barely started when Griffin’s “new year address” landed on hard-pressed supporters’ doormats, with a plea to contribute to the party’s “People’s Defence Fund”. The fund had been set up following the publication on the internet of the BNP members’ list last November, with the aim of raising money to “employ legal experts to defend those of our people suffering hardship, discrimination and persecution in their employment for being members of this party”.

The People’s Defence Fund also had a wider political purpose: to “give a bloody nose to all those little press creeps and the Lab/Tory/Lib Dem sycophants who have built careers on the back of attacking the BNP and our long-suffering people”.

The new year address followed six appeals in 2008 for the “Building to Grow fund”, the London election campaign, to buy the “truth truck”, better known as the lie lorry, and to publish and distribute the outrageously racist Racism Cuts Both Ways pamphlet. Griffin claimed that all these appeals achieved “amazing results”.

Confident that his members and supporters had bottomless purses, Griffin did not even wait until January was out to launch the party’s appeal for funds to fight the European election. Headed “The Battle for Britain Commences”, it waxed lyrical on how winning “just one” seat in the European Parliament “would put us on the world stage and would lead to an avalanche of popular support throughout this country”. Controversially a leaflet with the letter adopted the image of an RAF Spitfire, now revealed to be one flown by the celebrated 303 Squadron of the RAF, made up of Polish airmen rescued from France shortly before the Nazi occupation.

The leaflet invited supporters to attend the party’s “2009 European election campaign nationwide roadshow”, which promised “multi-media sound and vision”, speeches from “Chairman Nick Griffin and invited European mystery guest” as well as Champagne reception, entertainment and light supper, all at a cost of £30. “I guarantee you will never have seen anything like this,” wrote Griffin.

By February the BNP was “struggling due to unprecedented growth”. So many people were “flocking to the BNP” that “we cannot cope”. So “I need you to support the party’s ‘Rapid Expansion Plan’ NOW”, demanded Griffin, followed by three exclamation marks.

The BNP needed to win a seat in the European election but it also had to have a “telecommunications system” and a “central administration office to deal with the current huge increase in enquiries, party membership and organisational growth” and the “40,000 – 75,000” enquiries and membership applications that would result from the distribution of “over 30 million leaflets across the UK” over the next six months.

On and on the six-page letter went, bandying about the word “professional” and claiming that £85,150 was needed to cope with a projected 400% growth in the party’s “database” in the next six months.

And the money was needed quickly: Griffin needed “to put the orders in next week”. There was even a marketing leaflet for the “professional communications system for medium-sized enterprises” that Griffin said he wanted to buy, though nothing about how the BNP’s largely incompetent staff would ever learn how to use it.

One could be forgiven a slight sense of déjà vu. In January 2008 the BNP was proclaiming proudly that its operations had been centralised for the first time in Excalibur’s “brand new ground-floor warehouse” with a “vast array of new equipment” as a result of the “Building to Grow” appeal. What happened to all the equipment after the party was evicted from the Evans Business Centre in Deeside was not revealed.

Hot on the heels of that exuberantly written appeal, full of bold text, underlining and italics, came a more personal and undated letter from Griffin asking supporters to make a standing order of “just £3.00 a week” to “save this country from destruction before it’s too late”.

It was recognition of how our HOPE not hate campaigning was hurting the BNP. “The Labour Party, the liberal media and a whole host of leftist fanatics, led by Searchlight, have now become so concerned about our success, that the latter has employed the services of the WORLD’S TOP campaigning team to prevent us from winning,” wrote Griffin. “Blue State Digital. They’re the team that co-ordinated Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House!

“Your £3 per week can help send Obama’s boys back to Washington with their tails between their legs,” claimed Griffin, after condemning them for being American. Griffin’s own longstanding connections with American nazis are of course quite different.

Those who have responded to these appeals may be regretting it. In January Mark Collett, the BNP’s head of publicity, had to admit responsibility for printing 700,000 “Euro warm up leaflets” without an official imprint, which meant they could not be distributed. We understand that dozens of BNP activists who could have been out canvassing are spending many hours peeling off thousands of tiny stickers to place on the leaflets as straight as they can manage.

HOPE not hate

BNP opposition groups stage pre-election meeting

Anti-racism groups have organised a conference ahead of forthcoming elections.

The North Staffordshire Campaign against Racism and Fascism (NorSCARF) and Unite against Fascism have arranged a meeting at Staffordshire University tomorrow. They aim to raise the profile of groups who are challenging the BNP ahead of forthcoming elections for Staffordshire County Council and the European Parliament.

The conference follows an October meeting at which the agenda of the BNP was discussed and efforts made to rally opposition against the party.

Staffordshire MPs Mark Fisher and David Kidney will both be attending as members of a panel. Stoke-on-Trent Central MP Mr Fisher said: "Everyone in North Staffordshire wants to avoid the European elections in May being dominated by the negative agenda of racist prejudice. We must make sure that the election is fought on the issues that are most important to people – jobs, the economy and housing."

Olwen Hamer, NorSCARF chairman, said: "There can be no place for BNP policies in a civilised society. I hope the electorate in the June elections will make that very clear."

The conference will start with a performance of Night of the Broken Glass, sponsored by the New Vic Theatre, before workshops. There will then be a feedback session and panel discussion.

The conference, in the Ashley Building, Leek Road, Stoke, will take place between 1pm and 6pm. To register, call 07778 913 528.

The Sentinel

BNP scabbed on the miners

British National Party attempts to befriend the mining communities are in sharp contrast to their attitude during the miners' strike. Then, the racist BNP not only refused to back the strike but called for a return to work and even demanded the Army be brought in to deal with the pickets.

Even worse, a former BNP parliamentary candidate in Yorkshire once led a shadowy group that funded scab miners during the 1984 strike. The Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood (pictured) ran Self-Help, a right-wing pressure group dedicated to smashing trade unions. She went on to stand for the BNP in a general election in Dewsbury in the 1990s.

Birdwood was a life-long racist but she was better known for her rabid antisemitism. Her hatred of Jewish people, who she believed were trying to take over the world, got her prosecuted twice. Her far-right politics led her into alliances with Second World War Nazi collaborators, including people who had fought in the SS. The SS was the organisation that ran the concentration and death camps and carried out the worst Nazi atrocities.

Birdwood saw the miners' strike as a communist plot to take over the country and she set out to break it. She felt that Thatcher was too soft on the miners.

Documents obtained by Searchlight reveal how she set about to smash the strike. Soon after the strike started her group tried to prosecute Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader, for sedition, inciting violence and intimidation of working miners. They were even advised by a leading barrister to hire private detectives to spy on the NUM.

Gathering the evidence was a lengthy and costly business. To speed up the process they decided to buy into a small private mine and seek a confrontation with striking miners. Birdwood found many mine owners willing to help.

"So far we have eleven mine owners ready to negotiate," she gleefully told her supporters in July 1984. Once in control of a pit the group were going to take the NUM to court and seize its funds.

Birdwood eventually bought a share in a Durham mine but she was quickly overtaken by events as others had begun legal action to sequestrate the union's funds. That did not stop Birdwood and she went on to back several other legal actions.

"We are promoting and assisting a number of new applications to the courts for further injunctions, including the action by 16 supporters of the National Working Miners' Committee," her group boasted to supporters in December 1984.

This was not the first time Self Help had backed the Working Miners' Committee.

With the strike nearly over she reflected on a job well done. "By backing Silver Birch's Working Miners Committee we have played some part in the court actions against the NUM."

Birdwood also boasted of putting "certain proposals to the Working Miners' Committee which we hope will lead to them taking the necessary legal action with our financial and political support" to remove Scargill from the leadership of the NUM. However, she was always keen for Self-Help's role to be kept secret.

Birdwood's hatred of the NUM was shared by John Tyndall, then the BNP leader. He even suggested bringing in the Army to deal with striking Yorkshire miners. Even Nick Griffin, who was then in the National Front, has proved time and again that he is no friend of the trade unions and the miners in particular.

Twenty-five years on, the memory of the strike still burns strong. The miners were fighting for their jobs, their children and their communities. The BNP is now trying to gain support in the former mining communities but back in 1984, when it really mattered, it was doing everything it could to undermine the strike.

HOPE not hate

Shoes And Nazi Bazookas - The Prehistory Of Adidas And Puma

During World War II, industries big and small all over Germany became part of Hitler's massive war machine. The change even affected the predecessor of footwear legends Adidas and Puma, which - oddly enough - manufactured Germany's version of the bazooka.

When the starting shot rang out, the athletes surged forward. Jesse Owens dug his spikes deep into the racing track of Berlin's Olympic Stadium - and the best sprinter of his day dominated the 100 meters race to win a gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games. America's black superstar took home a total of four gold medals. And each of his victories represented minor triumphs for two German brothers as well - Adolf ("Adi") and Rudolf Dassler - the manufacturers of the sprinting shoes that carried the sprinter of the century from victory to victory.

Of course, success did not come as a total surprise. Herzogenaurach, the Dasslers' home town in Bavaria, has a long tradition as a center for shoe making. In 1922, for example, it boasted 112 shoe makers drawn from a population of 3,500. It was here, in 1924, that Adolf and Rudolf Dassler founded the "Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory" to specialize in athletic shoes. During the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, a German sprinter wearing Dassler spikes took the bronze medal. But it was the legendary shoes of Owens that established the Dasslers' worldwide reputation and laid the foundation for two exceptional careers. After the war, Adi and Rudolf went their separate ways. Each would build up one of West Germany's showpiece sports companies - one Adidas, the other Puma.

The history of the Dasslers - who both joined the Nazi Party in 1933 - wouldn't be complete without one chapter from World War II: In 1944, there was suddenly a spike in the number of Allied tanks being blown apart by German fire. The culprit was the latest anti-tank rocket launcher, nicknamed the "Panzerschreck" ("Tank Terror"). This extremely effective weapon petrified Allied tank crews - and it was manufactured in the same factory that had developed Owens' shoes only eight years earlier.

Welding Replaces Stitching

This little-known excursion into the war industry by the two famous shoemakers was hardly an isolated case. Hitler's regime used many small and medium-sized companies to produce military equipment and armaments. "For the 'total war' proclaimed by Goebbels in early 1943, the Nazis needed a total war economy," explains Lutz Budrass, a business historian at the University of Bochum.

Similar things were happening all across the country - and German industry increasingly resembled one big military machine. The Hugo Boss textile factory, for example, in the southern German town of Metzingen, was also a military supplier. Beginning in late 1944, instead of suits and leather jackets, workers on the production floors of the future fashion czar were making ball bearings. Germany's flagship airline Lufthansa manufactured radar equipment for the Luftwaffe, Germany's air force, and furniture companies made parts for fighter jets like the Heinkel He 162, one of the first military jets in the world. Given the scarcity of metal, the jet was primarily made of wood.

Four years into World War II, not much Olympic glory was left among the shoemakers of Herzogenaurach. The German army was on the retreat on virtually all fronts, bombs were raining down on German cities and resources were running short. December 1943 marked the final blow for the town's shoe production. Hitler's regime ordered a halt to all civilian business operations, and the shoe-making machines in the Dassler Brothers' production hall were replaced with spot-welding equipment for making weapons. Before long, nearly everyone in Herzogenaurach was working for the military. The local lederhosen factory stopped making the traditional Bavarian leather shorts and, instead, started producing bread bags and rucksacks for soldiers. A nearby family business made torpedo parts for the navy.

A Completely Militarized Industrial Landscape

The German army fashioned the Dasslers' Panzerschreck after the American bazooka: a shoulder-fired steel tube; weight 9.3 kilograms (20.5 lbs); length 164 centimeters (5.4 feet); with a range of up to 180 meters (590 feet). A rocket fired from the Panzerschreck could penetrate steel armor 20 centimeters (8 inches) thick.

Responsibility for actually producing the new weapon lay with the military contractor Schricker & Co., located in the nearby town of Vach. Given the increasingly devastating British and American air raids on German cities, Schricker decided to transfer assembly operations to Herzogenaurach. Freight cars filled with parts for the "Stove Pipe" - as the Panzerschreck was popularly called on account of its simple construction - came to Dassler by rail.

Inside the plant, shoe seamstresses - who had quickly been given makeshift training to work in the armaments industry - welded sights and blast shields onto the pipes. French forced laborers were also on the production line. "The construction of the Panzerschreck was so simple that, given a little practice, even unskilled workers had hardly any problems manufacturing it," one former employee told local historian Manfred Welker. Yet, even with the simple design, German army inspectors still found themselves discarding many of the weapons made by Herzogenaurach's amateurs on account of their flaws. The complicated and dangerous production of the rockets, though, continued to be handled by the professionals in Vach.

An Answer to the Tank, Too Late

On the front, German soldiers eagerly awaited the Dassler weapon. Despite its exceedingly simple design, it was still remarkably effective. "The Panzerschreck represented a quantum leap for the infantry in terms of anti-tank defense," explains Christian Hartmann, a military historian at the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ). "It was the first weapon that German infantrymen fighting on their own could use to destroy tanks from a distance."

In view of the rapidly advancing Allied armies, which were vastly superior in terms of sheer numbers, the Nazis increasingly propagated the idea that anyone could knock out tanks using only the Panzerschreck or its little brother, the single-use "Panzerfaust" ("Tank Fist"). An illustrated field booklet entitled "Der Panzerknacker" ("The Tank Buster"), for example, included awkward rhythms meant to help German soldiers recognize and combat enemy tanks, such as: "Notice first the fine design / sloping armor and curving line / five road wheels, study it well / that's the T-34, and that's how you tell."

Wherever the specially trained "tank-destroying detachments" made an appearance, there was a significant increase in the number of enemy tanks knocked out. In March 1945, there were some 92,000 Panzerschrecks being used on the crumbling fronts, but the weapons had arrived too late to have a major influence on the war's outcome. It wasn't until 1944 that Panzerschrecks and Panzerfausts could be deployed on a large scale, but by then the military's initial good fortune had long since run out. "If large numbers of Panzerschrecks could have been deployed during the Russian campaign in 1941, Moscow would have probably fallen," says Hartmann. As it turned out, the "stove pipe" was just one of many newly developed weapons that, at best, postponed the collapse of the fronts - and thereby only prolonged the horror of the war.

A Stroke of American Luck

The Dasslers' brief career as weapons manufacturers nearly proved their undoing. In April 1945, when the Americans marched into Herzogenaurach, U.S. tanks pulled up in front of the factory. The soldiers were still debating whether they should destroy the building when Adi's wife, Kathe, walked out and charmingly convinced the G.I.s that the company and its employees were only interested in manufacturing sports shoes.

What's more, after the factory was saved, the occupying forces turned out to be a blessing for the two shoemakers. The U.S. Air Force set up its own operations at the former military air base in Herzogenaurach. When the sports-crazy Americans got wind of the fact that the Dassler brothers had produced the shoes that Jesse Owens had run in, they started buying all the products the company could produce. Large orders for footwear for basketball and baseball (and hockey) soon rolled in and gave the company its first boost on the road to becoming a worldwide success story.

The dark chapter as a wartime weapons manufacturer was quickly forgotten at the successor companies, Adidas and Puma. Today, both firms are corporations owned by investors spread across the world. In the quiet community of Herzogenaurach, though, it was a legacy that would be felt for many years to come - and seen, in the pipes put to use all over town as gutters and fence posts rather than as the Panzerschrecks they had originally been meant for.

FIP

BNP use POLISH plane in campaign poster despite plans to ban East European migrants

British National Party chairman Nick Griffin speaks at a fundraiser with the
campaign poster featuring the Polish squadron plane in the background

The British National Party was ridiculed last night for fronting its anti-immigration campaign with a picture of a Polish Spitfire.

Its poster for the European elections, for which its manifesto includes a ban on Eastern European migrant workers, shows the Second World War plane above the slogan ‘Battle for Britain’. But Air Force history experts have identified that the aircraft was actually flown by the RAF’s 303 Squadron – made up of expatriate Poles rescued from France shortly before Nazi occupation.

BNP party chiefs defended their use of the image and insisted they knew all about
the background. But John Hemming, MP for Yardley, Birmingham, ridiculed this claim. He also condemned the far-Right party for using the image of Polish heroism in a campaign that includes stemming immigration from Poland.

He said: ‘The BNP often get confused and this happens because they haven’t done their research. This is just another example of them getting it wrong. They have a policy to send Polish people back to Poland – yet they are fronting their latest campaign using this plane. It is absurd to make claims about Englishness and Britishness fronted by this image. It’s obvious they just picked an image at random and they are really clutching at straws if they say this was deliberate.’

The 303 Squadron was the most effective Polish squadron during the Second World War. During the Battle of Britain Polish pilots shot down 203 Luftwaffe aircraft which stood for 12 per cent of total German losses in the battle.

A Royal Air Force museum spokesman said: ‘The Spitfire in the poster can be identified as belonging to 303 Squadron of the Polish Air Force by the code letters ‘RF’ painted in front of the RAF roundel. 303 Squadron operated Spitfires from Northolt, Kirton- in-Lindsey, Coltishall and other RAF stations in the UK between 1941 and 1945 after flying Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain.’

BNP spokesman Simon Darby said: ‘The 2009 election campaign poster features a spitfire plane and represents the Battle of Britain. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Polish squadron plane at all. It’s a symbol of Britain’s struggle at the moment. Using that plane doesn’t go against our policies. It’s not a question of disliking the Polish people – it’s just a question of economics.’

The poster is being used by the BNP to promote its election campaign in general and specifically a series of black tie dinner events with leader Nick Griffin as the speaker. In 1998 he was found guilty of inciting race hatred at Harrow Crown Court for denying that the Holocaust took place.

The campaign has already seen the threat of legal action from Dame Vera Lynn over their use of her song White Cliffs of Dover on a BNP album of Second World War songs.

Daily Mail

BNP MEPs would not serve full term

A British National Party Member of the European Parliament would have to stand down after four years of the five-year term and hand the seat to the second person on the BNP candidates’ list, the BNP has said. The requirement, revealed at a meeting of the party’s Advisory Council on 25 January as its candidate selection process was getting under way, shows that the BNP does not take the role of an MEP seriously.

It is unclear whether Nick Griffin, the party leader, would also have to comply with this rule in the event of his election in the North West, where he heads the BNP candidates’ list.

MEPs play an important role in the European legislative process, and thereby in the creation of national legislation in the 27 member states of the European Union. They have an important say on European Commission directives and regulations, international treaties and legislation on many issues, such as the free movement of workers, the internal market and consumer protection.

The European Parliament also shares equal responsibility with the Council of Ministers for the EU budget and exercises supervision over the Commission and management of EU policies.

BNP members elected to a local council commonly take months if not years to understand their function. Learning the ropes in Strasbourg and Brussels would be far harder. The party’s insistence that its MEPs should stand down just at the point they have a chance of actually doing something is bizarre.

The idea that this allows the second person on the list “to gain experience” before the next European election is nonsense. Would the originally elected MEP then not stand again or does the BNP realistically think it will get two MEPs elected in any region in five years’ time?

The truth is that the BNP has no interest in taking part in EU government. All it really wants is the salary and expenses that come with an MEP’s job and the opportunity to further its alliances with extreme-right parties in other EU states. MEPs will have to give 10% of their salary to their party region and “submit their expense claims for full Party audit” – presumably to make sure they claim enough for the party’s benefit.

The Advisory Council, which meets only every three or four months, also decided to appoint an “inner cabinet” to oversee the election campaign. Its members are most of the party’s main national officers together with “Midas Consultant” Jim Dowson, the man responsible for the party’s fundraising over the past year and providing management training for party officers in sunny Valencia.

Dowson’s contribution to the election campaign seems to consist largely of copying Searchlight’s HOPE not hate campaign, though not very well. Several recent BNP campaign initiatives, such as sending out regular campaign emails and encouraging supporters to sign up as activists, are poorly executed copies of HOPE not hate tactics.

But it would be wrong to underestimate Dowson. His fundraising campaign has brought in more money than the BNP has ever enjoyed and it expects to have a turnover of £1 million this year, according to the AC minutes.

Another member of the “inner cabinet” is Mark Collett, the head of publicity. Collett should have received a severe dressing down for wasting a large chunk of Dowson’s money when he printed 700,000 “Euro warm up leaflets” without an official imprint, which meant they could not be distributed. But “golden boy” Collett can do no wrong in the eyes of the party leadership. He apologised and offered his resignation, which naturally was refused. “You stupid boy!” as Captain Mainwaring might have said.

BNP units were offered new leaflets with the imprint or a 33% discount on the illegal one plus free “overlay stickers” containing the imprint. BNP groups around the country are no doubt busy organising “sticker parties”, probably in pubs, at which activists will take time out from campaigning and peel off thousands of small stickers to place on the leaflets. Voters will be able to spot the leaflets done later in the evening by the wonky stickers and beer stains.

Although the party leadership acted quickly when the imprint’s absence was spotted and told units not to distribute the leaflets, some may have got out. York BNP held a day of action in Ryedale in January and distributed an anti-EU leaflet, which it reproduced on its blog. Strangely the part of the leaflet where the imprint should be was cut away, making it impossible to see whether it was there or not.

HOPE not hate

Recession swings politics right

The threat of political nationalism as a result of the economic crisis

Last month The Economist warned that the world recession was leading to a new wave of economic nationalism. It claimed that countries were rejecting global solutions and free trade, and turning inwards, trying to protect their own financial systems, markets and jobs. The USA had initially inserted a “Buy America” clause into its stimulus package, the French and British governments were trying to force banks to lend to the home markets, which in turn would result in the repatriation of cash, and the Chinese were accused of manipulating their currency for their own economic interests.

The article warned that the mistakes of the 1930s could potentially be made again. “Economic nationalism – the urge to keep jobs and capital at home – is both turning the economic crisis into a political one and threatening the world with depression,” the magazine noted.

“If it is not buried again forthwith, the consequences will be dire.”

But political nationalism is already emerging as a consequence of our economic downturn. Thousands of people, backed by the majority of the public and large swathes of the national press, backed construction workers in the power industry who protested against foreign labour.

The dispute flared up in response to the use of foreign labour on construction projects at oil refineries and power stations. What began at Lindsay Oil Refinery soon spread to almost 20 other plants where similar issues had emerged.

The unions were quick to distance themselves from a nationalist approach. “We are not against Italian or Spanish workers working over here but we just want a level playing field,” said Dave Smeeton, a Unite branch secretary at Staythorpe power station. “We actually want to work alongside them, just as we work in Spain and Italy. But we are not being given the chance.”

Dave was one of 50 people who had gathered outside the power station last month in protest at the use of exclusively foreign labour on a new power station being built.

For Dave and others at the protest this is a problem that has been brewing for some time. They say European workers have been here for a while, often on worse pay and conditions, but this changed over time as they interacted with unionised British workers. They say that the decision to refuse to employ any British workers can only be because hiring from abroad is cheaper (i.e. they are cutting corners on pay and conditions) and/or so they can’t interact with British workers who might be able to unionise them.

With many workers using Gordon Brown’s slogan of British jobs for British workers against him, the BNP saw an opportunity. It quickly produced downloadable leaflets, a Wildcats website and short online videos explaining how this was the consequence of membership of the EU, mass immigration and a Labour government that no longer cared about the white working class.

There was little sign however that the BNP made any impact amongst the protesters. At Lindsay Oil Refinery BNP members from Wakefield tried to leaflet the pickets but were quickly told they were not welcome. There was a similar hostile reaction to the BNP at Staythorpe.

While the BNP appears to have made little headway in winning support from union activists it is bound to be more successful among the wider population. Recent council by-elections have shown a surge in support for the BNP, helped in no small part by a daily diet of incendiary headlines from the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Star.

The BNP won a council by-election in Swanley well ahead of the other candidates and it is now predicting successes in the European election.

European unrest

Britain is not alone in experiencing unrest. In France, more than one million people marched for jobs and wages, while 350,000 marched in Dublin. Riot police were used in Greece to quell protests by farmers demanding more assistance, and in Bulgaria windows were smashed and shops attacked after demonstrations calling for economic and social reform. Latvian farmers blocked roads in the capital and laid siege to the Agricultural Ministry, while in Lithuania 80 people were arrested and 20 injured after protesters pelted the parliament building in anger over spending cuts. In Russia there have been demonstrations in almost every city against the government’s handling of the economic crisis.

And the situation is only likely to get worse as the recession deepens and economic insecurity grows. This will play out differently in each country but nationalism is likely to be a major winner.

Britain has escaped the rise in the far right that has been experienced by many other western European countries over the past decade, but this could well change this summer. The BNP poses a serious threat in three regions in the European election and a more moderate threat in a further three. The nationalist tone under which the elections will be contested, again fuelled by Eurosceptic media, will benefit the BNP.

In countries such as France the leftwing parties will attract a substantial proportion of the disgruntled working-class vote, but in Britain, without such an option, the BNP could benefit by positioning itself to the left of Labour on some issues and to the right of the Conservatives on others.

“The BNP has been steadily growing over the last few years during a period of benign economic conditions,” Jon Cruddas MP noted recently. “Now the economy is going into recession we are really going to face some problems.”

The question is how we respond to these threats. Part of the answer will be to challenge the nationalist responses to the recession, particularly exploding the myth of the British jobs for British workers approach. The slogan might be a catchy sound bite but it is no political solution. Over 300 of the largest 800 companies in the UK are foreign owned and hundreds of thousands of other UK jobs are reliant on foreign contracts.

If the BNP and the rightwing media support a British jobs for British workers approach then they must logically support a US jobs for US workers line, even if that means companies such as Rolls Royce and British Aerospace lose contracts to US firms.

It is also vital that we stand up for the rights of migrant workers and prevent one group being pitted against another. What is needed is to improve workers’ rights and conditions throughout Europe, including full rights for temporary and agency workers and paying the right rate for the job in the country where the work is undertaken. By doing this we can reduce the exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers, reduce the likelihood of unscrupulous employers using foreign workers to undercut their UK counterparts and so hopefully reduce the friction between groups of workers.

We must also stand in defence of immigration, particularly at a time when immigrants are under such attack. Just as we should remember the contribution foreign-born workers have made to the UK economy we should also think about the 5.5 million Britons who work and live abroad.

Can you imagine the nationalist outrage from the BNP and rightwing press if hundreds of thousands of British migrant workers working across Europe or in the Middle East were ordered out?

It is this sort of hypocrisy that needs to be exposed.

The BNP also needs to be taken on politically, not just morally. Over recent weeks Searchlight has been approached by representatives of all three major political parties wanting to know our assessment of the BNP threat and how they can get involved in the campaign against them. Our answer to them all has been simple. Bland and empty rhetoric about BNP extremism is at best ineffectual and at worst counter-productive. A political party needs to say more than don’t vote BNP because they racist – it needs to offer a political reason why people should vote for it rather than the BNP.

Simply moralising, particularly at a time of such economic problems, will be seen as political bankruptcy.

Over the next year we are likely to see growing social unrest. Unless the political parties, the trade unions and anti-fascists develop a more combative approach to dealing with the BNP – based on issues – then we are going to face a really difficult time. The Economist warned of a return to the failed protectionist remedies of the 1930s. We should equally be very wary of a retreat into political nationalism.

Searchlight

Row over Burnley flyposting promoting BNP

A cash row has erupted over an ‘unpaid bill for fly-posting’ between Burnley’s ruling Liberal Democrats and the British National Party.

Council leader Coun Gordon Birtwistle, at a full council meeting, blasted the BNP for a series of stickers and posters which were plastered over bus shelters and walls around the May 2008 elections. He said that the BNP party, which has four representatives on Burnley council, has still not offered to pay for cleaning up the fly-posting. But BNP chiefs said there was no evidence the posters or promotional material was connected with official party sources.

Coun Birtwistle made his accusation shortly after the BNP made budget submissions at the full council meeting. He said: “I am surprised that the BNP have come into this chamber to present a budget, particularly anything to do with spending on Street Scene.”

Street Scene is the council’s initiative to tackle issues such as fly tipping, graffiti, dog fouling, littering and fly posting.

Coun Birtwistle said: “The BNP have not paid a bill of £600 for fly-posting at the last election. They have waited for council tax payers to pick up the bill. Which is why I am not interested in anything they have to say here tonight.”

But later Coun Sharon Wilkinson, BNP leader in Burnley, said: “There is no evidence of us fly-posting. They are trying to say that someone from the BNP put up these posters but they are just guessing. If they had any evidence by now then they would have prosecuted us. But I have said to (council chief executive and returning officer) Steve Rumbelow you do not have anything to prove it was us. Obviously someone has put these posters up but they were freely available on a website at the time.”

A Burnley council spokesman confirmed that a request had been made to the BNP for an £810 contribution to cleaning up the posters and stickers, following the election.

Burnley Citizen

Arrested developments

Burned in Broxtowe

For all the crowing over the BNP's recent run of good local by-election results of late you could be forgiven for thinking that Gordon Brown was preparing to surrender his premiership to Nick Griffin some time towards the end of next week.

Now you and I know that reality and the BNP aren't exactly bosom buddies, and so none of us were surprised that when Paul Golding took Swanley (Sevenoaks) for the racist party the effect on the membership wasn't too different to that of their having taken a collective LSD trip. Suddenly everything and everything was possible - providing you ignored the awkwardly bad results obtained in Bilton Harrogate and Downham Lewisham on the same night.

However, as the cliché goes, a week is a long time in politics.

Out in the East Midlands - scene of many a BNP triumph - the party stood in a by-election for Broxtowe Council's Conservative-held Greasley (Giltbrook & Newthorpe) ward on Thursday, making little secret of their vaulting expectations: to come second, and a good second at that, capitalising on Labour difficulties to push them into third place.

Complacency is never a virtue in politics, and unpleasant things tend to happen to political parties suffering from the affliction.

The BNP's online army left off attacking "anti-British traitor" and "old hag" Vera Lynn and eagerly awaited the Greasley result, drinks at the ready, fingers poised to tap out paeans of praise for another job well done by the unstoppable BNP, onwards and upwards, Rule Nickannia and all that - then got the discomfiting news that their candidate had come third, and a bad third at that.

In fact, it was even worse than the BNP expected.

"The BNP need a 13% vote share across the East Midlands on June 4th to get that MEP, and in Broxtowe our candidate Wayne Shelbourn and his team managed to reach that target by the skin of their teeth," writes a ruffled Martin Wingfield on the BNP website - managing somehow to avoid telling his troops that the BNP did not "reach that target", they sank to it, losing 4% of their vote (with averaging - this is a multi-member ward) while the Labour vote rose by almost the same proportion.

All too predictably when the BNP encounters electoral setbacks it grumpily looks around to give somebody a poke in the eye, and the recipient is usually the UKIP. "The night was another disaster for UKIP with their candidate receiving a derisory 31 votes, just 1.4%," says Wingfield.

It wasn't exactly a night of glory for the BNP either, was it Martin? The truth is the BNP were badly burned in Broxtowe, and if a fall in votes is what Wingfield considers to be "reaching targets" then we wish him and the BNP every success in achieving them.

Failure fails

If I just say "Patrick Harrington" and "Solidarity" could you please get over your laughter as quickly as possible and return your attention to me?

Better now? Then I'll begin.

First of all, let's take a glimpse at the one big fighting union in action (and, just for once we don't mind linking to a fascist video): click here.

I don't know about you, but - including the cameraman - I make that four people doing their best to endanger the jobs of the employees at that Total station (but what else would you expect from a fascist "trade union"?).

And that seems to be the sum total (sorry) of the militant fighting brotherhood's contribution to the fight to secure British jobs for British workers.

Last year the one big union skulked around the backstreets of Birmingham, where a whole 27 of them decided that "together we are strong" and held their AGM under tight security at a hotel specially conned for the purpose. At that time Patrick Harrington claimed 211 members for his toy union, but as the union's murky accounts were later forced to admit, the membership then was a miserable 124.

Despite the public availability of its accounts, Harrington repeated the 211 claim at the union's most recent badly-attended AGM in Spennymoor (February 21st), adding that membership had risen to 436 - which (on the dubious assumption that it's even in the same room as the truth) is a fair way short of the 500 target our favourite fantasist set for the end of 2008

Basically the never-knowingly successful Harrington was admitting to another failure in a political life characterised by nothing else. Despite Harrington and the BNP pumping the cases of the Walker brothers and the leaked BNP membership list for all they were worth the BNP membership at large has still refused to entrust either their employment prospects or their cash into the hands of the bogus "trade union".

So it was that a tiny band of brothers gathered together in Spennymoor last week to hold their grand AGM, there to hatch mighty plans and, oh! to excuse themselves for being "caught on the hop" by the recent wildcat strikes, despite the strikes going on for a considerable time. Harrington and company must have been on some hop to have missed that particular boat, but never mind - Harrington set matters right by getting out his customary thundering declamation on the issue through the useless Accentuate PR company. It's buried somewhere on the Solidarity website, if you can be bothered to look.

Newsnight couldn't.

Nut nicked, Bigot blethers, Nutzi nauseates

For some time we've been expecting the arrest of a certain Mr Philip Bryant, proprietor of the demented racist mind behind the BNP-supporting Battle for Britain blog. It took longer than expected, but we suppose the police have bigger fish to fry - and others of Bryant's ilk to investigate...

Before getting to the heart of the matter, let's acquaint ourselves with a small selection of some of Bryant's more eloquent outpourings as made to the Norfolk Unity blog:

I think you have a thing for asian women dont you lardside,are you munching the rug of that asian girl who GA [Green Arrow] didnt like? i can remember her name but i am sure you know it.

Muslims are attacking decent people everywhere, will you guys be defending decent people, or will you be sucking Muslim cock? Let me guess! Muslim cock must be plated in gold, coz you greedy bastards can't get enough of it. You are the SHITE of the earth, and one day we will bring you to justice. We will bring you disgusting creatures to book...and that's what frightens you!

I have snap shots of your silly anti-white site. Take your Marxist bile elsewhere... Seriously, I'm recording everything you sick bastards do

POST MY F**KING NAME AND ADDRESS! PHIL BRYANT 32 FAIRMILE AVENUE STREATHAM, LONDON, SW16 6AG.WASSUP, CAT GOT YOUR UNWASHED TONGUE?

Well, there are a lot more and a lot worse, but you get the picture.

Until 7.50 am on Thursday the strangely un-sectioned Bryant appears to have laboured under the delusion that he could transmit any offensive message he wished across the internet without consequence to himself - like many racists he nurses an immutable belief that it is his perfect right to say whatever he likes about whoever he likes in terms as abominable as he likes. It's about free speech, after all - or so the racists tell us.

Barking and Dagenham councillor Shaun Carroll disagreed when he became subject to Bryant's warped ideas of free speech in a threatening email from the bilious blogger, wherein Bryant accused a staggered Cllr. Carroll of being a "pervert" and a "kiddie fiddler". Cllr. Carroll duly reported the matter to the police and the long awaited knock on Bryant's door came on Thursday morning, whereupon Bryant was transported across London to Dagenham police station, there to face the music.

According to Bryant's account, he told the police that he did not believe he had committed an offence (nor, for the matter of that, did he believe it should be an offence), and after chewing it over for some time the police decided not to charge Bryant provided he accepted an adult caution.

Bryant accepted the caution because he "wouldn't have a leg to stand on" had the case gone to court, and aware that he was adding to an existing a criminal record - "numerous minor offences" as he puts it, though he does not state what these offences were.

He then says that following his caution he was led into the presence of two Scotland Yard officers, who were eager for a friendly chat concerning his online habits:

The strangest question they asked me was whether I knew the Green Arrow personally! I find this strange because the first thing I do on my computer every morning is to visit the BNP website followed by the Green Arrow blog. Have the police been spying on my surfing habits!!!!

Well of course they have! Where else were they going to collect evidence against him? Bryant has been complaining for some time about interference with his internet connection, seeming to believe that little green men have been crawling around in his hard drive - in fact data collection for police evidence can be performed either at his local BT exchange or through his ISP, and if he's using a wireless connection it's even easier than that, as the net-savvy will know.

Mention of Paul Morris, the Nantyglo Nazi, aka Green Arrow, gave the police-hating BNP blogging bigot a welcome chance to puff out his chest and bask in his own boundless self-importance, utterly insensible to his own overblown pomposity (which may or may not be the reason Morris found his marital status recently reverting to that of "single").

Windier than a Chicago gale (and clearly with the wind up him), Morris fearlessly tells the Special Branch spooks who allegedly catalogue his every move and note down every last click of his mouse button:

If you have any "new" questions for me, come and get me. You know where I am. You have had a file on me now for over thirty years and you should know that, as one of your men said to me over a year ago, "In all that time, you have never dropped the flag" and I never will.

There he goes again - pretending to have a fascist history we all know to be a figment of his imagination. And how about that quote: "In all that time, you have never dropped the flag"? Of course he hasn't - he would have had to have been carrying it in the first place. But to us the quote sounds more like Paul Morris saying what Paul Morris would most like to hear than anything likely to have left the lips of a policeman. A little like:

But I will not, cannot, stand by and let the patriots of the BNP fight my battles for me like many choose to do. I will take my place in the Shieldwall until we have taken Our Country back or I am dead.

Providing the shieldwall is safely located in cyberspace we have no doubt whatsoever that Morris can be relied upon to fight to the last megabyte of his hard-disk's capabilities.

It's all a far cry from Redwatch-admirer Morris's "I could be killed" whining when Norfolk Unity paid him back in his own coin by publishing his name and other details, which this unmanly coward was desperate to keep secret while simultaneously (and amateurishly) attempting to discover the personal details of such as yours truly.

And finally, another pro-BNP blogger desperate to keep his (or maybe her?) identity secret is the pond life behind the "Britain Awake" site. Responding to the death of little Ivan Cameron this nauseating Nutzi posts:

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Enemies of the Britain Awake blog like to term us as vile neo-Nazi's with a pathological hatred of the disabled. Which couldn't be further from the truth, but we're not prepared to argue the toss right now!

Which brings us on to our next subject, the waste of flesh & blood that was 'ivan cameron', this piece of shit should have been drowned at birth!

Sorry if people find this offensive, but we find evil bastard David Cameron's cruel manipulation of a spastic child for political gain offensive!

You can't even describe 'ivan cameron' as a person, it was merely a pawn in David Camerons quest for power.

So we have no qualms whatsoever in saying:

GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH!!!

Call us cruel and heartless if you like, but when this c*nt becomes PM and makes our lives even more miserable you'll all be laughing at his defective sperm!

Let's hope Cameron has had the snip, we don't want him firing out any more rubbish like 'ivan'

PS. What kind of name is 'ivan' anyway?!

You can almost smell the gas from here.