'Powerful' white supremacist leader shot dead in his home

One of America's most powerful white supremacist leaders has been shot dead in his home, it emerged today.
David Lynch, described as a major figure in America's underground racist movement, was shot along with his 33-year-old pregnant girlfriend in their Sacramento home early Wednesday morning.
It was reported that an 'army' of police bristling with weapons arrested a man at gunpoint outside a petrol station yesterday in connection with the case.

But police today confirmed there were no suspects and no one was being held in connection with the shooting.
The killer is believed to have entered 40-year-old Lynch's Citrus Height house at 4:00 am yesterday, shooting the skin head dead and wounding his girlfriend in the leg.
Police said they found was also found her in the hallway with a gunshot wound to the leg.
She was taken to a hospital and was expected to survive.
A third adult and a teen who were also inside the home at the time were not injured.
Speaking to CBS news, local gang expert Lieutenant Milo Fitch said the American white supremacist movement would be reeling from the death of one of its most powerful leaders.
He said:'Right now he's one of the most well known and influential figures in the white supremacist movement.
'This is a significant event in the white supremacist world - it will send shock waves.

Described as a very powerful and charismatic man, Lynch aimed to stop in fighting among the country's disparate supremacist groups and bring them together.
He was associated with two of the nation's most prominent hate-group leaders, William Pierce of the National Alliance of West Virginia and Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance.

Lynch worked for the American Front, a national body of skinhead groups committed to 'preserving the white race' in America.

Leader: David Lynch was a prominent member of skinhead group American Front
He later became leader of the Sacto Skins, one of the oldest skinhead gangs in the country.
As word of his death spread, tributes to Lynch sprang up on white supremacy websites across the internet.
One such website, White Revolution, had a picture of Lynch with the words 'Hero, Patriot and Friend' written underneath.
On another popular white supremacist message board, one member wrote: 'Farewell Brother. Your name is now etched in the Book Of Martyrs.'
Tellingly, another poster writing under the name ChrisNoble said: 'I hope that that the scum that murdered you is subjected to Skinhead justice in some horrific way. Im just sick over this loss... RIP..'
Another wrote: 'He was an amazing man and left behind too many people.
'His beautiful daughters, fiance and unborn child. Plus countless friends and acquaintances. He was a true friend, if ever there was one.'
According to friends and local police, Lynch saw it as his job to try and unite the different skinhead groups under one banner.
In 2006 Lynch sent Christmas cards with the message, 'Have a very Skinhead Xmas' to hundreds of supremacists around the country.
Pictured on the card was a half-eaten cookie next to a bottle of bourbon, a shot glass etched with a death's head and stockings hung by the chimney with care.
In the fireplace, as if descending from above, were two black combat boots with blood-red laces.
Also in 2006 Lynch led a large skinhead rally in Westwood, California.
Nearly 100 skinheads from gangs in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah joined forces to demand the release of the surviving members of The Order - a 1980s white supremacist gang suspected of involvement in the murder of Jewish talk show host in Denver.

Bill Roper, head of Arkansas-based White Revolution said: 'He was the kind of guy who could and did get along with everyone.'
There are fears his death could lead to violent revenge attacks from other skin head groups.
According to anti-hate body the Anti Defamation League (ADL), Lynch took over leadership of the American Front in 2002.
His greatest achievement, according to the ADL, was to connect with other white supremacist groups across the country.
His reach even extended to Canada.
The ADL said Lynch had been an active in the skinhead movement since the mid-1980s.
He apparently became involved with the American Front while living in Florida in the early 1990s before moving up the ranks to become the Front's 'eastern states chairman'.
It is reported he then moved to Sacramento, California, and became involved with the group’s West Coast activities.
He also allegedly involved himself with other California racist skinhead groups, most notably the Sacto Skins, a Sacramento-based racist skinhead group with a history of violence, as well as the Sacramento chapter of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
On its website the American Front describes itself as 'a collective of highly motivated racialists of European descent, striving to establish an autonomous homeland for American whites, dedicated to securing, advancing, and defending the sacred blood of our glorious ancestors at all costs.'

Daily Mail

EDL graffiti sparks race hate fears in Welwyn Garden City

Race hate thugs are feared to be using an alleyway in Welwyn Garden City as a haunt, after extremist graffiti tags were found daubed on walls.

The alley, at the rear of the row of shops in Woodhall parade is strewn with graffiti, including evidence of support for extremist protest group the English Defence League (EDL), which has been branded a racist organisation.

Martin Smith, a national officer for campaign group Unite Against Fascism, grew up in WGC and slammed the graffiti. He told the Welwyn Hatfield Times: “I have a close affinity with the town. WGC has always been a town where people of different races and faiths live and work side by side. The community has always been united. The last thing the town needs is a racist organisation like the English Defence League coming here to promote racial hatred and violence.”

He called for the ‘tags’ to be scrubbed off immediately and added: “All good people of the town should stand together and say the EDL are not welcome here.”

The area has also become a hub for yobs according to Woodhall traders. A shopkeeper spoke of the menace and called for Pcso patrols to take place in the area at night, not just during the day. The shop owner, who did not wish to be named, said: “You get kids hanging around the alley at the back drinking and smoking. I did tell the Pcsos; they’re here in the day but they’re not at evening time.”

He said problem youths regularly came into his shop and loitered until he tells them to go away. He added: “Then they get around the back [of the shop] and climb onto the roof. I don’t want to lose customers because at evening times they [youngsters] hang around and scare my customers away.”

Another former trader said: “It’s terrible. They are always hanging around and trying to break into the back of the shops.”

Welwyn Hatfield Times

Election results.

The result of the Barnsley By-election should be through in an hour or so and most commentators are predicting the BNP will get between 4 and 6% on a low turnout which would be another fall in their support in what should be a strong area for them.
In the mean time let us savour a council by-election result from Salford which the BNP say is a strong area for them.

Walkden North

Lab 1291, 72.6%
Con 209, 11.7%
EngDem 125, 7.0%
BNP 92, 5.2%
LD 62. 3.5%

And now the Barnsley result.

Lab: 14,724 - 60.8%
UKIP: 2,953 - 12.2%
Cons: 1,999 - 8.3%
BNP: 1,463 - 6.0%
Ind (D): 1,266 - 5.2%
LD: 1,012 - 4.2%
ED: 544 - 2.2%
MRLP: 198 0.8%
Ind (VD): 60 - 0.2%

That's nearly a 3% drop in the BNP's vote since the General Election in a by-election called for because an MP was jailed for fiddling his expenses, in one of the strongest areas of support for the BNP, with one of the few active branches remaining and every possible resource chucked into the campaign and a low turnout.
If only the Truth Truck was running, it could have been so different.

BNP member's pro-Gaddafi Facebook group snares politicians

The Conservative housing minister Grant Schapps, and the shadow libraries minister Goloria de Piero, are both among the almost 700 members of the "Colonel Gaddafi Support Group".

Celebrities including John Cleese, Alan Titchmarsh and the Jewish comedian Sasha Baron Cohen are also falsely listed as backing the embattled Libyan dictator.

On learning he had been added to the group against his wishes, the broadcaster Andrew Neil, wrote on the wall: "How do I get out of this absurd group?

"Why is it possible you can be made a member without permission?"

The group was created by Claire Khaw, a BNP member and self-publicist who frequently aims to generate controversy online.

She yesterday rang BBC Radio 5's Victoria Derbyshire programme to tell the mother of a severely disabled six-year-old that she should have "rejected" her at birth to avoid burdening the taxpayer.

She was able to recruit Mr Neil and others to her pro-Gaddafi group because of a change to Facebook's groups system in October, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg said was "a fundamental shift" in the way people use the site. It now allows anyone on the site to add their "friends" to groups without their approval.

Dr Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute, an economics think tank, was surprised to find he was a member of the Colonel Gaddafi Support Group.

"Like many in public life I am quite generous about who I accept as a friend on Facebook," he said.

"I was astonished my name could be used in this way."

A spokeswoman for Facebook said there is no way for users to prevent themselves being added to groups by friends.

"We would always encourage people to only be friends with people you actually know," she said.

"When a friend adds you to a group, you'll get a notification right away and you can leave a group anytime."

In response to criticism from people she co-opted into her pro-Gaddafi group, Ms Khaw wrote: "I have just had enough with the IDIOTS here who can't even think themselves out of a ----ing paper bag.

"On the TOP RIGHT HAND corner of your screen is a button that you can click. It says LEAVE GROUP. Those who don't want to be here, click on that and ---- off."

There are long-established links between the Libyan regime and Britain's far-right. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, then a member of the National Front, visited Tripoli in 1986 as a guest of Gaddafi to ask for funds.

Facebook said its groups policy is designed to be "similar to being involved in an email chain". In October, Michael Arrington, the founder of the technology blog Techcrunch, used the new system to sign up Mr Zuckerberg - who had accepted him as a friend - to a group promoting paedophilia.

Daily Telegraph

EDIT This is an interesting read about Claire on Ben Woodmans blog

Fascist group’s secret Irish bank account

The BNP is funnelling all its cash through a secret Northern Ireland bank account, we can reveal.

And we can further reveal the party – which has debts of around £500,000 – is busy setting up phoney groups to channel money and assets through in case the party folds under the financial strain. The party’s ‘Doomsday Scenario’ is also hiding money from an ever-growing list of disgruntled creditors.

A Sunday World investigation has found the race hate party – run by convicted racist Nick Griffin – is putting all its money through an account with the Bank of Ireland. However the Sunday World understands the bank doesn’t know because the account is in the name of an accountant based on the outskirts of Belfast.

Bank chiefs at the bank are believed to be looking into the claims although publicly they told the Sunday World they couldn’t comment on an individual’s account.

Meanwhile there have been rumblings that the party is using the vast sums both their MEPs are getting from the Brussels gravy train to prop up the BNP. Leader Griffin and former NF pal Andrew Brons won seats at the European Parliament last year. The election success has brought hundreds of thousands of pounds into the BNP coffers.

An MEP is entitled to a monthly salary of €4299 plus a staggering €304 ‘subsistence’ allowance for every day they attend which they aren’t required to show any receipts for. And that doesn’t include the €19,709 which they receive every month which is designed for staffing costs. Yet last year Nick Griffin was forced to send out a grovelling begging letter to all BNP members saying the party needed donations or else it would fold.

“The BNP are totally insolvent with debts of around £500,000 yet they continue to trade incurring more debts and seriously damaging many small unsuspecting British and Irish businesses,” said a source.

“They are unable to pay the few remaining employees not shunted onto the European parliament payroll. Of the 23 employees they have 17 of them are being paid with European money. Griffin and Co have also left the staff recently paid off in Belfast and Nuneaton with not even the back wages they are entitled due – the only thing propping up the rotten edifice is the European Parliament payroll money.

“This huge pot of cash is strictly and legally only to be used to pay for European staff exclusively. Around 75% of all BNP staff are on the EU payroll, even though they work primarily for the BNP itself.”

And he says the BNP had great difficulty getting any bank to open an account on their behalf.

“No bank wanted to touch the BNP so they managed to set it up through a local accountant. He then doles the money out to the party people and nobody is any the wiser. This £40-50 grand per month is all that is keeping the BNP and Griffin afloat. The accountant was originally blamed by Griffin for the financial problems which beset the party even though it had nothing to do with him.

Sunday World by Steven Moore

The BNP's Irish problem

When Patrick Harrington and Nick Griffin ran the 1980s National Front there were quite a few immediate and striking anomalies. The old “Butcher’s Apron”, the Union Jack, was one of the first things to go as their revolutionary zeal took an uncontrollable hold over the shrinking organisation. The national flag was left to the “reactionaries” who broke away from them – the likes of Martin Wingfield, who now works for the Griffin’s BNP, and Andrew Brons, who represents the party as an MEP. Griffin and Harrington referred to their brand of the NF as the “radicals”.

What replaced the Union Jack on the front of their monthly bore sheet, National Front News, was pictures of black folk they liked, Muslims even. They even began quoting from and selling copies of Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book, not long after the Libyans had fired shots from the window of their People’s Bureau and killed a British police woman.

And the more people complained, the more extreme the NF seemed to become. This was their new party: the mysticism of Catholic fascism, the adulation of bizarre ranting eastern European fascists, and a Pol Pot like obsession with taking the party back to year zero.

Ireland, however, was their main problem. While the NF’s Ulster organiser was jailed for his part in the firebombing of the homes of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers in protests over the Anglo Irish agreement, the inner circle of the party was toying with Catholicism at the same time as vying for the affections of the major benefactor of the IRA, Colonel Gaddafi.

Harrington was always Griffin’s younger, more “radical” offsider. Despite being part of a “collective leadership” it was Griffin and Harrington who took the reins and led the party into ideological wilderness and oblivion. It was Harrington who obligingly photographed Griffin standing adoringly under a huge portrait of Colonel Gaddafi on their visit to Tripoli. It was Harrington, who often made much of his Irish roots, who shocked the traditionally loyalist NF by refusing to condemn the IRA in a television exposé of the NF’s activities in 1988. Not only did it anger the NF’s already fractured membership, it led the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Ireland’s largest paramilitary group, to demand that the party leave Northern Ireland and later to write in its monthly publication Ulster, “The NF are wankers”.

Harrington and Griffin parted company in early 1990. Their NF “Political Soldiers” group gave up marching on an empty stomach. It had been bled dry of members and cash for some time.

After taking control of the BNP in 1999, Griffin never mentioned Ireland. The party was growing; it and its membership were firmly, if not violently, loyalist. Evidence of this was apparent when its Liverpool branch put an Irish tricolour on its banner in 2007 and a near riot ensued. By 2008 Griffin was the leader of a rapidly expanding party capable of sending shockwaves through the political establishment. He even engaged a hardline Protestant to set up and run a party call centre in Northern Ireland staffed only by Protestants.

The party has occasionally made noises at election times about inviting the Republic of Ireland to step back into union with Britain if the BNP came to power, but that is not a very likely or realistic scenario, given that Griffin’s daughter was in a loyalist “Kick the Pope” band until she fled Northern Ireland last year when her father fell out with the “super-Prod” fan of loyalist paramilitaries, Jim Dowson.

As the BNP entered a steep decline following last year’s general election, out of the shadows stepped Harrington again, not quite as fresh-faced as when he last took centre stage in the 1980s, but still not as bloated as Griffin has become since taking over the BNP. Harrington had been running his own minor organisation, Third Way, and a political party, the National Liberal Party, which is supposedly a rival party to the BNP.

One of Harrington’s first acts was to stage a bitter fallout with the officers of the BNP’s fake trade union Solidarity, where with Griffin’s approval Harrington ousted its founder and installed himself as General Secretary.

His next major falling out was with – you guessed it – Dowson. It seems that Harrington has been representing the Belfast call centre staff against Dowson while simultaneously representing the party in negotiations with the same staff, some of whom have still not been paid monies owed since before Christmas.

Harrington’s other area of interest is the BNP’s faux civil rights organisation, “Civil Liberty”. It sounds like a legitimate civil rights organisation – and preposterously describes the well known human rights organisation Liberty as its sister group – but it tends to crawl out from under its stone only when there is a white person (usually a racist) in trouble with the law. So we hardly fell off our seats when last week “Civil Liberty” offered its support to the former IRA man Gerry McGeough who was jailed for the attempted murder of a part-time Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier and full-time postman in 1981.

While on the run from British and Irish authorities (which included a daring escape from custody), McGeough went to America where he arranged for arms, missiles and ammunition to be sent to the IRA in Northern Ireland. He also attempted to claim political asylum in Sweden and served eight years in Germany awaiting trial for an attack on a British Army barracks there.

McGeough sat on the executive of the IRA’s political wing until 2003 when he attempted a takeover of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the largely moribund marching organisation (seen as the Catholic equivalent of the Orange Order), airing his extreme anti-gay and right wing views.

With the advent of peace talks and cease-fires, McGeough decided he would rather “save Ireland from sodomy” and launched a monthly magazine called The Hibernian, dedicated to “Faith, Family and Country”. Traditionally, the AOH was seen as a rival cultural organisation to Sinn Fein.

In an interview published in Searchlight in 2006, McGeough said: “Sinn Fein has been heavily infiltrated by homosexual activists and British double agents in recent years. A lot of republicans can’t fathom the liberal values of the leadership. They do not understand why they are pursuing a liberal British agenda. Immigration is a massive concern and there are a lot of people who are not happy with the level of immigration.”

Having fallen foul of Sinn Fein, McGeough was considered persona non grata by the Republican movement, even being labelled as a “fascist” on a web forum used by supporters of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), the political wing of the rival Irish National Liberation Army. But as the British far right has often found, there remain rather extreme pits of “traditional” Catholicism in the republic, where people with like-minded fears and hatreds can come together on mutual issues. Even the hardline loyalist Dowson, who as good as owned the BNP for a couple of relatively lucrative years, has found tapping into the Republic’s Catholic conservatism financially beneficial.

McGeough might have been an outcast, but he was by no means alone in his religious extremism.

In March 2007 McGeough stood for election against a Sinn Fein candidate as an Independent Republican in Fermanagh. He was arrested for the attempted murder, some 30 years after event, while leaving the polling station and had since then been living under various forms of incarceration and house arrest.

Last month McGeough was convicted for that attempted murder. For loyalists and Unionists, the community in Northern Ireland in which the BNP puts so much faith, the now-disbanded UDR was a much revered local almost totally Protestant regiment. To Irish nationalists and republicans, it was an imperialist and sectarian force that colluded with loyalist murder squads.

Although McGeough attracted some sympathy from the Republican movement for his actions at the height of the IRA’s campaign in Britain, Northern Ireland and mainland Europe, few have much time for his views on Ireland today or his extreme (“traditionalist”) Catholicism. He is likely to serve only two years under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Last week “Civil Liberty” broke its recent silence to pay homage to McGeough. Lauding McGeough and The Hibernian for covering issues and themes “long abandoned by Sinn Fein and other leftist Irish Republican organisations such as opposition to abortion and homosexuality, scepticism about multiculturalism and mass immigration into Ireland”, it went on to praise McGeough for “criticism of the international banking system” (this normally refers to Jews) and articles about “English Catholic writers, GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, who helped develop and make popular distributist ideas in the first half of the twentieth century across the British Isles”.

Yes, it seems as if McGeough had a reading list in later years not too dissimilar to the one the Griffin-Harrington NF recommended to supporters, and indeed that Harrington himself recommends to this day. According to “Civil Liberty”, McGeough’s case has been “followed by radical nationalists across the British Isles with varying degrees of sympathy”.

This sort of language has set the BNP ablaze with innuendo and accusation. Just who are these “radical nationalists” who have such varying degrees of sympathy with McGeough? Many point the finger at Harrington, who has launched a myriad of legal letters and challenges in recent months to stop publication of a “private” photograph of himself proudly posing in front of a commemoration to the fallen members of “D Company, 2nd Battalion of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA”.

BNP members and supporters are furious and the BNP section of the “British Democracy Forum” is alight with accusations, recriminations and the airing of old suspicions and hatreds directed at Harrington and the IRA in general. It seems that the memories and the hatreds of the NF’s past leader remain as current and virile as ever. Some are even threatening to picket any meeting that he addresses or attends.

Following a newspaper report in Ireland about the BNP’s sympathy for McGeough, the BNP’s Ulster organiser has gone to hysterical lengths to laugh it off. Describing the story as “desperation”, Steven Moore realises that the BNP could be treading on some very sensitive toes if Griffin and Harrington decide to take the revolutionary garden path once more. Having helped organise a BNP “cultural event” in the loyalist heartland of East Belfast for Griffin last week, the last thing Moore wants is for what is left of the disillusioned paramilitaries in the area to turn their benign interest into a burning dislike for the party.

It is understood that the rival NF’s current leaders in Northern Ireland have photocopies of the article in the Irish press and are avidly distributing it to shocked BNP members there as they prepare to step up their activities.

To date neither the BNP nor Harrington has responded publicly, though we understand certain old enemies of Harrington high up in the BNP have been taking very long and deep breaths. Last night Harrington was asking for details of the moderator of the British Democracy Forum, no doubt so he could send him a legal letter to stop the appearance of further pictures of Harrington’s escapades in Belfast.

Civil liberty ended its article on McGeough by expressing its support for the “ethnic identity of the respective nations of the British Isles submerged for far too long under the dead hand of the British state”.

And one senior BNP official even turned up to a meeting of Irish Republicans in London last month to commemorate the Hunger Strikers.

No wonder the “loyalist” BNP is wriggling in silence.

Thanks to Matthew Collins at HOPE not hate / Searchlight

BNP member Paul Golding resigns as councillor for St Mary’s ward of Swanley

BNP member Paul Golding has resigned as a councillor for the St Mary’s ward of Swanley.

Mr Golding, who was the only British National Party councillor in the south east of England, resigned from Sevenoaks District Council with immediate effect on Monday.

The 29-year-old was elected in February 2009, winning the seat from Labour with 76 more votes than his closest rival.

During his time as councillor he was accused of “doing nothing” for the area by St Mary’s residents.

Mr Golding was one of two councillors for the St Mary’s ward, and his vacated seat will be contested at the District Council elections on May 5.

News Shopper

EDL rally planned for Rochdale

The English Defence League (EDL) has planned a rally to take place in Rochdale on Saturday (5 March 2011).

The rally is due to take place between 12.00pm and 3.00pm outside Rochdale Town Hall.

A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police confirmed that the force have had notification of the rally from the English Defence League. Details of the rally were posted on the EDL forum. The post reads: “We will be meeting at the train station between 12.00 – 1.00pm. From there we will make our way up to a public house in the town centre. At 2.00pm we will make our way over to our demo point at the Town Hall.”

A poster detailing the information and reason for the rally reads: “The English Defence League is to hold a demonstration in the town of Rochdale to highlight the peoples concerns over the grooming culture amongst the Islamic communities. Recent investigations by [Greater] Manchester Police has led to a number of arrests of Asian men and the former Home Secretary Jack Straw finally bringing this issue to [the] attention of the media and public.”

Rochdale Online understands there will be counter demonstrations from the Islamic Defence League and Unite Against Fascism. A group named ‘Stop the racist EDL coming to Rochdale’ has also been formed.

Greater Manchester Police and Rochdale Borough Council have promised statements but these had not arrived at the time of publication.

Rochdale Online

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Is it the end of the bad old days for the Daily Express and Daily Star?

With increasing cross-promotion within his group, Richard Desmond can no longer pander solely to little Englanders.

Richard Desmond's empire is a curious thing: on the one hand you have newspapers that worry about immigration and have strayed into toxic territory by giving positive coverage to the English Defence League; on the other, you have magazines like OK!, so fluffy and inoffensive that turning the pages is like being pelted with Care Bears.

Perhaps it's with one eye on detoxifying his newspaper brands that Desmond has branched out with the Health Lottery, a fundraising enterprise which aims to give £50million a year to health charities. With 20.5p per £1 ticket going to those charities (compared with 28p per £1 for the National Lottery), the scheme will have to sell 243million units a year to hit that goal - but with so many promotional outlets available to market the new game, don't write it off. We'll be seeing the Health Lottery on Channel 5, and reading about it in the Express, the Star and OK! Magazine - something to look forward to for us all, there.

Described as "an exciting new lottery" by the Daily Express and as "Northern and Shell's exciting new brand" by Channel 5's Kate Walsh at the press conference, the Health Lottery is a laudable venture. Even those of us who aren't Desmond's biggest fans should wish it well - not just because of the charity element but because, perhaps, it marks a turning point for his newspapers.

With such a generous venture in the pipeline, Desmond moved to distance his publications from the EDL - and the Daily Staron Sunday at the weekend even took a potshot at the little Englanders, showing a "chilling photo" of EDLers with guns (or replica guns) in their hands, highlighting racist chants and mentioning a "sick Nazi salute". Getting readers by confirming people's prejudices about immigration is one thing; seeming to give tacit support to a polarising organisation like the EDL is quite another.

The closer Desmond brings his brands together - and the cross-promotion shows no sign of letting up right now - the less spiky the likes of the Star and Express will have to become. That might erode a little of the character of the newspapers, but it might chip away at their nastier side, too. Headlines like BBC PUTS MUSLIMS BEFORE YOU or THEY'VE STOLEN ALL OUR JOBS don't sit nicely alongside the cheerful, breezy tone of OK! magazine or the mass appeal of Channel 5's shows like Home and Away.

Pandering to little Englanders every now and again might have done a good job in retaining a few hardcore readers for the Express and the Star, but that kind of tactic might become a hindrance when you're trying to make those readers hop over to OK, or get OK readers to hop over to the Express, or Channel 5 viewers to buy your newspapers as well.

Here's wishing the Health Lottery well, then. It could raise a lot of money for charity, and it could mark the end of the bad old days for the Express and the Star. It may seem unlikely, but I'll take a gamble...

New Statesman

Galliano sacked over racist rant

Shamed designer John Galliano has been sacked by fashion giant Christian Dior — after Oscar winner Natalie Portman today declared she was appalled at his racist rants.

Natalie — who is the face of a perfume made by Dior — slammed Galliano and said she would have nothing more to do with him. The Israeli-born beauty, 29, spoke out after we revealed shocking footage of Galliano declaring his love of Hitler and suggesting two women should be GASSED.

Christian Dior Chief Executive Sidney Toledano today said in a statement: "I very firmly condemn what was said by John Galliano, which totally contradicts the values which have always been defended by Christian Dior."

Galliano was suspended by the label last week after he was arrested for allegedly launching a vicious verbal attack on two people at the same Paris cafe where the video was filmed. The footage showed him directing vile abuse at two French and Italian customers. He told them: "People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed. I love Hitler."

A woman is then heard asking him if he had a problem. He added: "With you. You're ugly."

Asked where he was from, he said: "Your arsehole."

Natalie — who won best actress at the Academy Awards for Black Swan — said in a statement: "I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano's comments that surfaced today. In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr Galliano in any way. I hope at the very least, these terrible comments remind us to reflect and act upon combating these still-existing prejudices that are the opposite of all that is beautiful."

Last Thursday Galliano allegedly insulted Geraldine Bloch, 35, and threatened to kill her pal Philippe Virgitti, 41, in La Perle Bar.

Galliano, 50, turned up at a police station in the French capital today to deny all the charges against him and declared: "I'm no racist."

Ms Bloch has told cops he called her a "dirty Jew face".

None of those allegedly targeted by Galliano is Jewish.

Galliano, who was brought up in South London, has launched a counter-claim for defamation against Miss Bloch and Mr Virgitti.

A Paris detective said of the case: "The accused has insisted that he is not a racist, and certainly not anti-Semitic. On the contrary, he is taking legal action against his accusers."

Galliano's lawyer, Stephane Zerbib, has insisted the video has no value and that Galliano has never been anti-Semitic while working at Dior.

Sun

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Bradford response to English Defence League is role model for UK

Flashback to the police handling of the EDL protest in Bradford

A film of Bradford’s highly-praised response to the extremist English Defence League invasion last summer is to travel the country as a teaching tool on how to deal with Far Right factions.

Yesterday more than 100 people including civic, policing and community leaders in the city met at the National Media Museum to watch the first public screening of it.

The half-hour documentary, made by racial justice group JUST West Yorkshire and commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, will now be made available to other cities and towns across the country to help plan robust strategies should they face similar situations.

The film, called When Hate Came To Town, which includes interviews with EDL supporters as well as those opposed to them, was being shown at the first of a series of seminars being organised by Bradford Resource Centre to get the city’s public and leaders talking about issues affecting them.

Bradford South Divisional Commander, Chief Superintendent Alison Rose, a speaker at the meeting, said it was important Bradford people were being given the opportunity to talk about what happened.

Even before the DVD was produced, other police forces across the country were set to follow the city’s example for planning operations ahead of potentially-volatile events, and the Home Office had requested detailed feedback from West Yorkshire Police to uphold as “best practice”.

Telegraph and Argus

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Insecurity is fuel for the far right's hate

English Defence League members demonstrated in Bolton's Victoria Square at a
Unite Against Fascism rally in 2010. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Britain has resisted the far right but studies suggest cuts will harden attitudes. All parties need to rethink

A century of democratic politics teaches that economics and identity are the two most compelling calls to action. Their interplay can produce a dangerous brew. As Britain contemplates a parliament of austerity, we need to understand what makes for the politics of division, and fight it.

Compared to some other European countries, we in the UK can consider ourselves relatively lucky in our experience of extremist politics. There have been hard-fought battles. But serious extremist parties have not got a grip. However, research published...on behalf of the Searchlight Educational Trust shows how people can become lured towards more aggressive forms of identity politics. It shows we can't complacently assume we are exceptional in the European context. We are not.

Searchlight has been at the forefront of beating back the National Front and the BNP since the 1970s. But if the emotional extremism of the far right we have so far seen blends into something more calculating and more credible, then this run of marginalised extremism may become more difficult to sustain.

Groups like the BNP, the English Defence League and Islam4UK are only ever likely to appeal to a small minority: their violent rhetoric, aggression and warped politics provide the source of their downfall. But we should not understate their impact locally in creating a climate of division, fear and hatred. We have seen this in Leicester, Bradford, Barking and Dagenham, and Luton; areas where the pride and security of the industrial age has been replaced by a casualised economics of the rapidly shifting global age, and which have had high levels of immigration. That is why we need to build the resilience of local communities to reject the politics of hatred. A common life forged between different cultures with the same anxieties, hopes and pride is the most effective backstop against extremism.

We need a demanding pluralism with a common core of shared values. And what's more, people believe that such local community building is an effective bulwark against discord.

The Searchlight research has broken down attitudes to race, identity, immigration and nation into six groups. On the left are "confident multiculturals" and "mainstream liberals", comprising 24% of the population. On the far right sit "latent hostiles" and "active enmity" (totalling 23%), who share antagonistic attitudes to others and differ only in the degree of their antipathy and tolerance of extremism.

The centre of British politics are the "identity ambivalents" and "cultural integrationists". Cultural integrationists accept diversity as long as there is an integrated national culture, the rule of law, and respect for authority. This is the group to which David Cameron's call for a "muscular liberalism" is targeted. They are a quarter of the population. But the real swing voters are identity ambivalents (28%): economically insecure, worried about their local community, feeling threatened but open-minded and accepting of diversity – as long as their security is not threatened. So they feel more wage and job pressure from immigration, are anxious about their family's financial future, but are, for example, much less likely to think "Muslims create problems in the UK" than cultural integrationists.

Labour's vote is more weighted towards this group than any other. More black and ethnic minority voters are to be found here, and almost half of people who don't identify with a party are also identity ambivalent. And this is why the economics of austerity and fiscal consolidation is so dangerous. A long period of low wages, casualisation of work, unemployment, higher prices, fiscal cuts (many are receiving tax credits), and VAT and fuel duty increases will refract into greater identity anxiety.

Cameron's "muscular liberalism" has little to offer in giving identity ambivalents the greater sense of security they crave. The risk is that significant numbers in this group leapfrog to latent hostility or active enmity.

If Conservative rhetoric and coalition economics are an insufficient response, then what of Labour? This group is vital territory for Labour. Identity and economics are bound tightly together. A convincing economic response is necessary but not sufficient. An authentic sense of identity is just as important. Labour's politics must be suffused with both cultural understanding and meaning and a pragmatic economic mission.

Otherwise, the as yet unformed and unidentified party of English or British nationalism could begin to fill the space. The political mainstream needs more convincing responses – and fast.

David Miliband at Comment is free