British Nasty Party

A brave whistleblower warns today how race-hatred is still the lifeblood of the evil BNP - and begs People readers: "Vote for anybody but them this week."

Former BNP candidate Christopher Brennan (left) made his plea as the far-right party try to win support for Thursday's vital Euro and local elections.

Leader Nick Griffin and his henchmen are selling themselves as mainstream moderates. But Chris, 21, declared: "Don't be fooled - they are racist to the core."

Chris was just 18 when he stood as a British National Party candidate in multi-cultural Luton, Beds. He said officials routinely branded black people n*****s. And he claimed they told activists to launch violent attacks on their "enemies".

Chris - who quit the party in disgust in 2007 - said: "I've seen the BNP for what they really are. They are hellbent on destroying all that is good in Britain. No matter what is said in public about not being a racist organisation any longer, those beliefs are still at the core of the organisation. The European elections give them a chance to get a foothold in British politics because people are so incensed by the scandal of MPs' expenses. But they are beyond the pale."

The BNP is fielding 450 candidates for the local elections and 66 for the European Parliament poll.

Convicted

Their campaign is being led by Griffin - convicted in 1998 of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred - and publicity manager Mark Collett. Chris worked alongside both of them during his failed election bid in 2007.

The whistleblower - who joined the BNP as an impressionable 13-year-old - said: "On the outside these men, like many BNP activists, will take the party line of presenting an image of respectability, people the voters can trust. But at secret meetings the talk is of 'breaking the legs of our enemies'."

He went on: "I met Griffin and Collett several times. Griffin congratulated me for standing and told me our country needed 'young blood'. I remember him saying, 'We need to get to the stage when we have 40,000 people to march on to the streets to take our country back from the immigrants'.

"Before my election in 2007, Griffin came to Luton to make speeches where he said the P*kis were to blame for housing shortages in the north. Collett hated black people and made no secret about it - he spoke about n*****s diluting the British race. He and Griffin made it clear how they felt - but made sure they made it clear how we should behave in public for the 'good of the party'."

Chris claimed Collett quoted whole passages from Hitler's book Mein Kampf to a packed meeting in Luton. And he said Collett once told him he idolised the Nazi monster.

Chris revealed: "Collett said he wanted to be just like him - a man of courage and honour is how he put it. He called Mein Kampf his version of the Bible and quoted passages from it, encouraging others to study it."

Chris said party workers were instructed in how to intimidate opponents. He went on: "We were told to find the names and addresses of anyone who campaigned against us. We'd put them under surveillance for several days, photographing them and watching their movements. Some had bricks through their windows and some even had deaththreats and were warned not to carry on. Griffin and Collett knew this was going on - it was talked about openly. In private, the party line is that the ballot is just a stepping stone and after that it will be taken by force."

Chris claimed the party was now being torn apart by jealous rivalries. He said: "Senior figures are at each other's throats, all vying for power and trying to discredit each other."

But he warned the BNP is still a force to be reckoned with at Thursday's polls.

Chris said: "The public may be appalled at MPs' expenses but the reason the BNP is targeting European seats is because of the wages and extortionate expenses members can claim. There's an agreement to claim the highest amount and divide the money between individuals and the party so there is more in the coffers for the next wave of elections. It needs to be stopped - and I hope it is not too late to stop British electors being fooled into voting for them."

He went on: "Having witnessed what I have, no one associated with it is to be trusted and every aspect of the party is devious. Behind the smart suits and the nice smiles are lies and deceit that will threaten our country."

Chris added: "Thousands of people will be thinking the BNP is an alternative to the other parties. But there is a dark side which we have to stop coming to power ever."

Griffin denied all the allegations and branded Chris a Labour mole.

He said: "This man is paid to tell lies about us by an organisation funded by the Labour Party."

He insisted he never said n*****s and only used P*ki to describe a type of street thug not the Muslim community.

And referring to the housing shortage he added: "Why on earth would I blame Pakistanis for a problem caused by Poles, Czechs and Nigerians?" Collett also denied Chris's claims, saying: "He clearly has a personal grievance. It's not what we stand for and the members would not tolerate these claims - they are utterly ludicrous.

"It is a politically motivated stunt on the eve of the elections."

Sunday People

Exposed: ugly face of BNP's leaders

Prominent members of the British National party are today revealed as Nazi-sympathisers and racists with abhorrent views on such diverse issues as teenage violence, David Beckham and even David Cameron's deceased son, Ivan.

The revelations undermine the party's attempts to paint itself in a more moderate light before the local and European elections and threaten to derail the electoral ambitions of its leader, Nick Griffin, who is standing as a prospective MEP.

At a time when BNP activists are claiming a surge in support in the polls, a reflection, they say, of mounting public outrage over MPs' expenses, the party has been keen to portray itself as a viable alternative to mainstream political parties.

The BNP website boasts that money is flooding into its campaign headquarters. Its administration consultant, Jim Dowson, claims the party's call centre alone received just under 12,000 calls in the first 15 minutes following the BNP's first national television broadcast. And in emails to supporters - or "patriots" as the BNP calls them - Griffin claims almost £400,000 has been stumped up by supporters to help fund the party's European election campaign.

It claims the apparent groundswell in support is down to the "British public waking from the long, deep sleep". Much of the BNP's recent success has been down to its ability to shake off the patina of far-right extremism that has alienated most voters since its inception. But this month the veneer slipped when it emerged that a Salford-based BNP candidate in the European elections had set his Facebook status to read "Wogs go home". Eddy O'Sullivan, 49, wrote: "They are nice people - oh yeah - but can they not be nice people in the fucking Congo or... bongo land or whatever?" O'Sullivan, who also joined an internet group called "Fuck Islam", denied that the comments were racist and insisted they were made in private conversations between individuals. "I also may have had a drink at the time," he added.

Amid the furore, the BNP's leaders promised an investigation into O'Sullivan's comments. The party's officials also circulated urgent emails urging its members that "particular care should be taken when making comments on chat forums and other sites such as Facebook. Do not make the mistake of thinking that comments posted on these sites are secret or hidden. Making inappropriate comments on these sites will be regarded as a very serious disciplinary offence. Please ensure that this message is passed quickly to all members in your area and that it is acted upon. We are entering a very critical time in our party's history and cannot afford careless and stupid talk that can undermine the hard work of our activists."

But the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has spent months infiltrating the far right's network of websites and chatrooms and found that many BNP activists share O'Sullivan's views.

They include:

• Jeffrey Marshall, senior organiser for the BNP's London European election campaign. Following the death of David Cameron's disabled son Ivan, Marshall claimed in an internet forum discussion: "We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it."

Later, in response to comments made by others on the site, Marshall is alleged to have written: "There is not a great deal of point in keeping these people alive after all." He said the comments were private and some had been paraphrased and taken out of context. He admitted making the former comment, but said he could not recall making the latter one in an email to the forum, a copy of which is in the Observer's possession.

• Garry Aronsson, Griffin's running mate for the European parliament in the North West, posts an avatar on his personal web page featuring a Nazi SS death's head alongside the statement, "Speak English Or Die!" Aronsson proclaims on the site: "Every time you change your way of life to make immigrants more comfortable you betray OUR future!" He lists his hobbies as "devising slow and terrible ways of paying back the Guardian-reading cunts who have betrayed the British people into poverty and slavery. I AM NOT JOKING."

• Barry Bennett, MEP candidate for the South West, posted several years ago under a pseudonym in a white supremacist forum the bizarre statement that "David Beckham is not white, he's a black man." Bennett, who is half-Jewish according to the BNP's deputy leader, Simon Darby, continued: "Beckham is an insult to Britishness, and I'm glad he's not here." He added: "I know perfectly respectable half-Jews in the BNP... even Hitler had honorary Aryans who were of Jewish descent... so whatever's good enough for Hitler's good enough for me. God rest his soul."

• Russ Green, MEP candidate for the West Midlands, posted recently on Darby's web page: "If we allowed Indians, Africans, etc to join [the BNP], we would become the 'British multi-National party' ... and I really do hope that never happens!" Darby said he echoed Green's sentiments.

• Dave Strickson, a BNP organiser who helps run its eastern region European election campaign, carried on his personal "Thurrock Patriots" blog a recent report of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in east London beneath the words "Another teen stabbed in Coon Town". The site also carried a mock-up racist version of the US dollar entitled "Obama Wog Dollar". Darby said the BNP did not endorse these comments and described them as "beyond the pale".

When confronted in the past about the extreme views of some of its members, the BNP senior hierarchy has often tried to dismiss them as unrepresentative of the party's core membership. But it appears that they run right to the top of the party.

Lee Barnes, the BNP's senior legal officer and one of Griffin's closest allies, has posted a video on his personal blog of a black suspect being beaten by police officers in the US and describes it as "brilliant". Barnes adds: "The beating of Rodney King still makes me laugh."

Barnes told the Observer his comments were "nothing to do with colour" but were merely a reflection of his belief that the police should have more powers to punish perpetrators of crime by "giving them a good thrashing".

But anti-fascist groups said such comments portrayed the BNP in its true light. "This is the face of the modern BNP," said a spokesman for Searchlight. "The comments of Nick Griffin's candidates and officials are sickening beyond belief. They have tried to hide their agenda of racism and hate from the voters, and they have failed."

Separately, concerns exist about the historic links between the BNP and extremist groups. Gary Pudsey, a BNP organiser running the Yorkshire and Humber campaign, was once a regular at National Front meetings. A young Pudsey was also photographed with the late Max Waegg, a Nazi second world war pilot who wrote articles for the white supremacist magazine Spearhead

Martin Page is a BNP treasurer and his wife Kim is a senior fundraiser for the party. Both have been photographed alongside Benny Bullman, the lead singer of Whitelaw, the white supremacist band whose songs include Fetch the Noose, We're Coming for You and For White Pride.

And Dowson, the BNP's senior administrator, who appears on the party's website talking about the success of its call centre's fundraising activities, has also been dogged by allegations that he has enjoyed close relationships with hardline loyalist groups in the past. The 45-year-old has also been the public face of the LifeLeague, the militant anti-abortion group that has hijacked Britain's pro-life debate. He has regularly appeared on television to pronounce terminations a sin and has published the names of abortion clinic staff, placing many in fear for their personal safety.

That the BNP has become a magnet for extreme-right sympathisers is understandable given Griffin's own background. The Cambridge graduate was himself a member of the NF before going on to form the International Third Position, a neo-fascist organisation with links to the Italian far right.

But aware of the party's need to raise funds from middle England, Griffin has repeatedly attempted to portray his party as the "reasonable" face of patriotism in its bid to broaden its appeal. The approach has paid dividends, with the party having gained 55 seats on local councils, including a seat on the Greater London Authority. This June it is contesting every UK seat at the European elections and there have been predictions it could win overall control of Stoke City Council.

Darby, Griffin's deputy and the BNP's spokesman, accused Searchlight of "distorting the BNP's message" in a bid to derail its political ambitions. He accused the organisation of being "merely a front for the Labour party, paid for by National Lottery funds". Darby said: "When you put it in the context of what's been happening at Westminster, a few scribblings on Facebook hardly seems something to get worried about."

Previous convictions

Nick Griffin, convicted of violating section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to incitement to racial hatred. He received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.

Kevin Scott, a BNP supporter and former North East regional organiser, has convictions for assault and threatening behaviour.

Terry Collins, a party member, was jailed for five years after waging a year-long terror campaign against Asian families in Eastbourne.

Joe Owens, a former Merseyside BNP candidate and bodyguard to Nick Griffin, served eight months for sending razor blades to Jewish people and another term for carrying CS gas and knuckledusters.

Colin Smith, former BNP south-east London organiser, has 17 convictions for burglary, theft, stealing cars, possession of drugs and assaulting a police officer.

Tony Lecomber, a former BNP propaganda director, was jailed in 1985 after a nail bomb exploded as he carried it to the Workers' Revolutionary party offices. Jailed again in 1991 for assaulting a Jewish teacher on the Underground.

The Observer

A similar article appears in The News Of The World

BNP leader 'uses black teenager's murder for votes'

The British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, was last night accused of "sickening" exploitation of the memory of a murdered black teenager, Anthony Walker, who was killed in a Liverpool park.

Mr Griffin was accused of besmirching Walker's memory to stoke up votes ahead of the European elections this week. In a broadcast posted on YouTube, he stands at the spot where the 18-year-old was murdered in July 2005, and says the killing has been labelled as racially motivated but that "this is not the case".

"This was made out as a Stephen Lawrence-style cause célèbre," he says. "The truth is, you talk to any one around here, that isn't the case. Everybody says Anthony Walker was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't a racist murder and there's no doubt about that."

He goes on to describe a CCTV camera trained on the park entrance as "ridiculous politically correct expenditure on one murder".

Two cousins, Michael Barton, 17, and Paul Taylor, 20, were jailed for Walker's murder, which the judge described as "a racist attack of a type poisonous to any civilised society".

Walker was waiting at a bus stop with his white girlfriend and a black friend when the pair were subjected to "a torrent of racial abuse", according to police. Although they walked away, they were followed in a car and ambushed. Walker's friend and girlfriend managed to escape, but he was struck with an ice pick that was left embedded in his skull.

Yesterday a spokesman for the anti-racist organisation Searchlight said: "Nick Griffin's sickening attempt to smear the memory of Anthony Walker – an innocent boy killed because of the colour of his skin – for his own political purposes reveals the BNP for what they are: racist thugs."

Independent

Nazi salutes and burning crosses ... now the BNP sets up Scottish youth camps

It's a nightmare political vision: burning crosses, Nazi salutes and extremist indoctrination. This is the dark heart of the British National Party - an organisation now setting up "youth camps" in Scotland.

The controversial far-right training regime was launched last month in Wiltshire and immediately drew comparisons with the Hitler Youth and Islamic jihad boot camps Now, campaign groups fear a return of the fascist and white-supremacist symbolism seen at previous Scottish events. An outdoor event held in Scotland several years ago saw BNP activists joking about concentration camps and burning a wooden cross in an undisclosed Highland location.

Scott McLean - one of the most senior BNP figures in Scotland - was filmed giving a Nazi salute, and other BNP members were recorded shouting "one-two-three-Auschwitz" before grinning activists gave Hitler salutes to the camera. At one point a man was cheered as he threw petrol on to a burning cross towering over a group of initiates.

At the new brand of camps unveiled last month, children as young as 12 are trained in shooting air rifles and in self-defence, and they learn an alternative version of history as sanctioned by party leader Nick Griffin, who has repeatedly claimed that the Holocaust never happened.

In between shooting lessons, children are instructed in the art of making dangerous weapons from everyday objects. "Dutch Arrows" are manufactured from string and sharpened garden canes, and the BNP website reports that one 13-year-old boy was able to launch an arrow more than 150 metres. Police have confirmed that the darts, if used outside the supervised campsite setting, could constitute offensive weapons.

The BNP told the Sunday Herald that it will roll out camps across Scotland within the next year, and adult activists are using social networking sites such as Bebo to recruit youngsters to the BNP's hardline nationalist cause.

BNP youth leader Mike Howson, a former soldier, said: "We eventually plan to have camps in all the regions. We've achieved our targets for youth recruitment in Scotland. We'll be doing camps there within the next 12 months."

The BNP has applied for government funding to pay for the camps, he added, but has so far been unsuccessful in its bid for state cash. Applications are now being made to charities.

Despite its claims to be a mainstream party, the BNP has faced censure in the past for its alignment with European fascist groups and the Nazi overtones of some of its actions.

Publicity material for the camps is designed to appeal to youths by offering a sense of inclusion and strength. An advert on the BNP's Bebo site promotes the organisation as a "big brother" to its young target audience. It boasts: "Only the YBNP and its big brother the BNP can secure a future for the indigenous children of this land."

Though party leaders say the youth camps are about "moral training" and education, they also aim to lure children with the promise of powerful roles within the adult wing of the party. "The youth wing can only get bigger and better, with older members already being fast-tracked into positions within the party," a BNP statement said.

Campaign groups responded furiously to news of the party's planned expansion among Scottish children. A spokesman for anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: "Their attempts to politically indoctrinate Scottish youth with their messages of prejudice and division are sickening. There is no place in Scotland for these camp sites of hate."

The recent surge in BNP youth activity has been driven by a conference of European nationalists earlier this year, which brought extremist groups together to "preserve our shared white European heritage". Skinhead delegates from hard-right Czech and German youth groups joined their hosts from the Swedish National Democratic Youth movement.

Revelations over the training and political schooling of children will come as a blow to the BNP, which is struggling to assert itself as a legitimate political force in Thursday's European elections.

Party leader Griffin was convicted in 1998 of inciting racial hatred. He has also referred to the Holocaust as the Holohoax'. Griffin has long sought to emulate the mainstream success of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the right-wing leader of France's National Front. Despite his ambitions, the BNP has been thwarted in recent years by a string of high-profile scandals and exposés.

Senior officials have been caught on camera making bigoted remarks against non-Christians, non-whites and homosexuals, and the party has failed to find any success outside of a few English heartlands.

A message left on Griffin's mobile phone asking to discuss this article elicited the one-word text message response: "Priceless!"

Sunday Herald

Let’s give the BNP publicity ... so we can all see what they really are

Here's shameful confession. When the online list of BNP members was published illegally earlier this year I sneaked a look, then went further and performed the postal code search to see who lived near me. Unhappily several did, and there, on the screen, were their names, addresses, home and mobile phone numbers and email addresses. For a split second, only a second I promise, I was tempted to call them and ask them why they had joined. Then sanity returned to remind me that even looking at such a list, thereby breaching these people's privacy, was a low and uncivilised thing to do. Sorry.

But the curiosity has not left me. Why do these people, living in my area of the city, part of the same community and rubbing shoulders with the same people in the street, believe in such an extreme and repugnant set of policies? What horrors are they encountering that have so riled them into hatred? On going about my business, have I somehow failed to spot Hassidic Jews drinking babies' blood in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens, Eastern European plumbers pimping children in the supermarket, Jihadists beheading Alan from the ironmongers for selling un-Islamic curtain hooks, all whilst stepping over the drugged bodies of black youths and publicly copulating gay men? In which parallel universe do my local BNP supporters do their shopping, and what dystopia has so ruined their lives that would make them give their money to Nick Griffin?

A great deal of academic research has helped us trace the rise of the BNP in English regions of high deprivation and racial tension, highlighting the government's failure to address core issues that stoke a sense of grievance and imagined victimhood from the white working class. Such voters tell us, by supporting fascists, that they feel alienated and abandoned. Some of their anxieties may be justified but most of it is poppycock, since the "immigrants" they imagine are here to steal their livelihoods, culture and opportunities are fellow sufferers, feeling just as marginalised and abandoned as they do.

In these areas of tension, BNP voters are unsurprisingly poor, uneducated, frightened, and highly susceptible to coercion from Griffin's Cambridge-educated forked tongue. What, though, is the excuse for my fellow local souls turning to the hard right, including a few whose pleasant sandstone dwellings sit peacefully amongst mature lime trees, and whose worst social assault is a BMW car alarm going off in the night because a well-fed fox has jumped on it? What forms a racist when their lives are under neither economic nor social pressure? Perhaps we are about to find out.

A few weeks ago I wrote that I believed the British are not sufficiently stupid to return a BNP candidate in the forthcoming European elections. Subsequent polling in the last few days appears to be proving me wrong.

Even more worrying is that the party's sights have swivelled away from their tense, English heartlands of racial strife and are looking north.

The British National Party are currently campaigning hard in Scotland, openly declaring on their website and blogs that they hope to build on two things; the MPs' expenses scandal and the rise of Scottish nationalism. The former is an easy target, but the latter marks a sinister distortion.

Last Saturday in Clydebank, a BNP candidate handed out 2000 leaflets. Many people taking them would have of course instantly binned them. Some may have taken the leaflets home to read. Some definitely stopped to speak with the candidate. A few, allegedly, joined up. No-one, however, demonstrated, or set up a stall in opposition.

Reading the subsequent forums on and linked from the party's website makes the blood run cold, even taking into account (judging by The Scotsman's website) that a significant proportion of people who contribute to online forums seem to be fantasists. Several threads celebrated that Scotland was better at "keeping out immigrants" and that we should be proud of the rise again of our national pride.

This was tempered in other threads by equally disquieting posts declaring that the SNP are "after the Islamic vote", citing the contribution to the Scottish Islamic Foundation, and that former nationalists should now switch to the BNP to stop an independent Scotland ruled by sharia.

Despite being an abhorrent, hate-filled slug, Nick Griffin is a clever, highly educated man, and none of this insane warping of the independence debate is by chance. When given only short and rare opportunities to be questioned, such as during an interview on Sky news last week, Griffin comes across as a calm, professional politician. Griffin's views on interracial marriage, enforced repatriation and homosexuality are unlikely to play well to a public looking for fairness, justice and tolerance, hence that side of the BNP is kept markedly quiet, making sure the party's formal policy declarations remain as insubstantial as gossamer.

Hence it's a fair bet that most of the leaflet recipients in Clydebank know virtually nothing of the hidden wish list of the BNP that leaks out in error from time to time.

This is partly because Griffin and his political thugs are given so little chance to be tested, out from under their stone. Question Time last week, focusing on the European elections, included a UKIP member on its panel, but no BNP representative. Why not? Surely even one question from a black person in the audience about not being allowed to marry who they wished, or being exiled to a country they have never visited, would have been enough to rip the paper-thin mask of civility from the BNP's Janus face?

Griffin is sly enough to realise that our independence debate is already highly volatile and emotional, and as such has decided that we are prime targets for creating a new layer of scaremongering and anxiety-driven hate.

Watching BNP footage of Clydebank residents politely receiving leaflets has made me feel stupid for over-estimating our resistance to this vile manipulation. We are all free to vote for the party of our choice, but we must be absolutely sure we know what it stands for. They're not out to make the trains run on time.

Muriel Gray writing in the Scottish Sunday Herald

BNP - the truth about immigration

BNP leader Nick Griffin wants Bolton-born Olympic boxing hero Amir Khan to leave Britain.

Griffin - whose party wants to create 'firm incentives' for non-white Britons to leave their homeland - dismissed claims that the policy would strip the country of talent.

Referring to Khan, he added: "Perhaps we will lose one good boxer but there are more important things."

Khan - who has spoken out against Islamic extremism and walked out behind the Union Flag for his professional debut - was born and raised in Bolton.

His cousin, Saj Mahmood, plays cricket for Lancashire and England.

The 22-year-old boxer once said: "I've always felt completely British. I loved making the British people happy in Athens [where he won Olympic silver], and I still do.

"Those of us from different ethnic backgrounds, like Lewis Hamilton and myself, are carrying the flag for Britain by doing our thing, being ourselves and wanting to become world champions."

His dad, Shah Khan, said: "At the end of the day I think everyone should be treated equally - regardless of the colour of their skin."

The BNP is targeting the north west of England as it seeks to win a seat in the European elections next month.

Griffin - who was convicted in 1998 of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred - is the party's top candidate in our region [the North West].

Manchester Evening News

BNP: Please Stop Making Us Look Stupid

British National Party accused of hostile takeover of trade union

The British National Party has been accused of executing a “hostile takeover” of a trade union that subsequently accepted a £5,000 undeclared donation from Nick Griffin, the leader of the party.

Clive Potter, a founder of Solidarity, the nationalist trade union, told The Times that he and other members of its executive were ousted by allies of Mr Griffin because they wanted to remain independent of the BNP.

In documents to the Certification Office, the regulator of trade unions, former members of the executive claim that the union has been hijacked by “disaffected former officials and an outside political party”.

They said that the union had been subjected to “hostile attacks from unauthorised former officials and outside elements, namely the British National Party”. The split raises questions about Solidarity’s links to the BNP as it has been previously accused of, but has denied, being a front for the party. Many members also belong to the BNP and its president, Adam Walker, is a candidate for the party in the forthcoming European election.

The Times revealed on Thursday that Solidarity was the recipient of a £5,000 donation, originally sent to Mr Griffin, that is under review by the Electoral Commission. Mr Griffin admitted that he did not inform the authorities about the donation, which appeared to be from a political supporter, although he paid it into his own account before transferring it to Solidarity. Donations of more than £1,000 to individual party members must be declared if they are for political use.

Mr Griffin said that he gave the money to the union because the donor wanted to remain anonymous and he believed that he would have had to declare it if passed to the BNP.

Patrick Harrington, general secretary of Solidarity, a former organiser for the National Front and a friend of Mr Griffin, told The Times that the union was completely independent of the BNP. Mr Harrington, who is not a member of the BNP, said that Mr Potter’s accusations should be dismissed as they were from a “disgruntled former official”.

Although the alleged takeover occurred in 2007, it has not been aired publicly. Several disputes from it will be decided in a hearing next month by the Certification Officer.

Mr Potter, a former member of the BNP, told The Times that he helped to set up Solidarity in 2005 as a “mass nationalist trade union” that was to be independent of any political party. “If it isn’t independent then it fails. Unfortunately, as I found out later, Mr Griffin had other ideas,” he said.

After a series of disagreements with Mr Harrington, and following what he claims was interference from Mr Griffin, Mr Potter was ousted in 2007 along with members of the executive who supported him. He will claim that his removal was “unconstitutional”. Mr Harrington denied any impropriety and said that elections to the union’s executive were held properly.As a result of the split, two separate trade unions, both known as Solidarity, have been operating since 2007. One branch, which is run by Mr Harrington and accepted the donation from Mr Griffin, has acted for people who have been dismissed from their jobs because of association with the BNP.

Mr Potter said that his branch operates on “paper only” as it has no money — its bank account was frozen after the acrimony between the warring factions. He said that as a believer in BNP ideals but an opposer of Mr Griffin, he wanted a return to the “status quo” in leadership of the union.

In the final council by-election before next week’s county and European Parliament polls, the BNP pushed the Conservatives into third place. Labour’s vote held up in North Ormesby and Bramble Farm, Middlesbrough, where the far Right won 19.1 per cent of the vote. That would not be enough for it to win in the North East Euro constituency, which has only three seats. The BNP says its best chance for a European win is in the North West, where Nick Griffin is running. He predicts the party could win up to six seats and claims it is spending £500,000 on a national campaign. The BNP is fielding 450 candidates for the local elections and 66 for the European Parliament, at least one for every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales.

Money talks

— Any trade union that intends to spend money on political objectives must set up a separate political fund. This arose from the Trade Union Act 1913

— Before a political fund can be established, the union must ballot all its members. A simple majority of members is enough to pass the resolution

— The certification officer must approve both the ballot and the political fund rules before they are put to the vote. This ensures that there is a fair voting process

— The political fund can be spent on both affiliated political parties and more general campaigning. Each union publishes accounts of its expenditure to the certification officer. These are available to all members of the union

— Any union member can choose to be exempted from the political fund at any time. There can be no discrimination against members who opt for exemption Unions must review their decisions to have a political fund every ten years. This is done by ballot

Source: Certification Office

The Times

Extremists behind anti-war protest driven off the streets by moderate Muslims

Muslim extremists behind a protest against soldiers on a homecoming parade have been driven off the streets today by members of their own community.

Fights broke out and traffic ground to a halt when moderate Muslims confronted a group of about 12 men who regularly preach from a stall in Bury Park - the heart of Luton's Muslim community.

After Friday prayers, more than 200 members of local mosques turned on the group who sparked outrage in March when they disrupted a parade by the Royal Anglian Regiment through the town centre. They shouted 'baby killers' and 'butchers of Basra' at the returning soldiers as well as brandishing placards against the Iraq war.

But today the extremists were surrounded by a crowd as they began to set up their stall, shouting 'We don't want you here' and 'move on, move on'.

Angry words were exchanged and scuffles broke out between members of both groups, with the extremists shouting 'Shame on you' and 'Get back to your synagogue'. One police officer and two community support officers struggled to hold them apart until more officers arrived.

Buses and cars were unable to move as the crowd spilled into the road.

Farasat Latif, of the Islamic Centre in Luton, which was firebombed after the protest against the soldiers, said moderate members of his community took action because police had failed to move the group on. He said the extremists, who follow the militant group led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, had fuelled feelings against the Muslim community which led to a march last Sunday in Luton which was disrupted by white, right-wing extremists.

Mr Latif said: 'We have been fighting these Muslim extremists for you. They represent nobody but themselves. The community decided to move them on because the police won't. We have asked them, but they did nothing. I don't know if they will be back. We have been the victims twice over - from the stupidity of Muslim extremists who metaphorically pour petrol and fan the flames of the right wing extremists.

'This was a peaceful demonstration and we hope they get the message that the law-abiding community is sick and tired of them.'

No one was arrested during the incident.

A spokeswoman for Bedfordshire Police said: 'We attended the incident, calmed people down and moved them on. No one was arrested and there were no injuries.'

Daily Mail

British National Party begs for money in desperate memos

The British National Party has sent out a series of memos appealing for donations in a move that raises further questions about the finances of the party.

Political organisers as well as its leader, Nick Griffin, have sent “desperate” pleas for relatively small sums of money, despite claims by the BNP that it has £500,000 for the European and county council elections.

Mr Griffin sent an e-mail this week saying that the party needed to raise £5,000 to pay for hardware for its website that it “simply could not afford”.

“I have personally donated £250 to this appeal to set things in motion,” he wrote.

Another memo from Bob Bailey, the London organiser for the party, said that it had been unable to raise enough funds to produce an A4 leaflet. “We desperately need donations no matter how small,” he wrote.

The party has declared donations of £21,132 for the first quarter of this year. Only those of more than £5,000 must be submitted to the Electoral Commission and Mr Griffin said that the remainder of its funding for the campaign came from “ordinary” Britons.

However Searchlight, the organisation that campaigns against the BNP, claimed that the party had exaggerated its resources and was “essentially running a paper campaign”.

The accusation was denied by Mr Griffin, who told The Times: “The leaflets have gone out, the election broadcasts have been made. It’s everywhere. It’s a huge campaign.”

Further questions were raised about the party’s funding after Mr Griffin admitted that he paid a £5,000 political donation into his personal bank account without declaring it.

The Electoral Commission confirmed that it was reviewing the donation, which appeared to come from an elderly woman who wished to remain anonymous. Mr Griffin said that he had passed the money to Solidarity, a trade union, because it would have been declared if given to the party.

The Times

Can the BNP ever lose its racist reputation?

A vandalised British National Party billboard in John Street, Carlisle

Splattered with paint and daubed with the words “Nazi scum”. . . an attack on a British National Party billboard in Carlisle shows emotions are running high ahead of European Parliament and county council elections.

Yet the far-right party, which has condemned the vandalism, insists it has received a positive response from voters across Cumbria as it canvasses for next Thursday’s ballots.

Some remain less enthusiastically inclined towards the BNP though. They are concerned a low turnout or an anti-establishment voting trend – in fury at the Westminster expenses scandal – could play right into the party’s hands and deliver the mass protest vote it has been hoping for. Those worries have triggered a campaign to limit any BNP gains.

Opinions about the BNP have rarely hit the middle ground since its formation in the early 1980s by John Tyndall, a former chairman of the National Front. He was a man photographed in Nazi uniform – without attending fancy dress parties – and who described Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf as his bible.

Other members have also been reported making extreme pro-Nazi, racist or homophobic comments over the years. Mark Collett, the BNP’s director of publicity, was made infamous by the 2002 television documentary Young, Nazi and Proud.

Former deputy leader Tony Lecomber was jailed for possessing explosives in 1985 and again in 1991 for assaulting a Jewish teacher.

Party chairman Nick Griffin, who visited Whitehaven on Saturday, has tried with limited success to rid the party of its racist image. But controversy continues to follow him. He denied the Holocaust ever happened in a party publication in 1996 and received a suspended jail sentence two years later for inciting racial hatred.

Mr Griffin – his party’s lead Euro election candidate for the north west – this week claimed the ‘controlled media’ had resorted to rehashing comments made a decade and a half ago to throw the BNP into a poor light.

“I have gone on record repeatedly as saying such things [Holocaust rejection] were immature politics and all of us have moved on,” he said.

Yet his insistence on having turned a corner has done little to wipe the slate clean of suspicions which still stalk the party. There was outrage last week at the prospect of Mr Griffin attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace. Yesterday he announced he would not be attending the garden party, in order not to embarrass the Queen.

And leading clergymen – including University of Cumbria chancellor Dr John Sentamu – have pleaded with the public not to let the Westminster expenses scandal convert into BNP votes, in protest against the three major parties.

Carlisle Against Racism has been a prominent campaign group against the BNP, which is standing in 42 of the 84 council seats. By the end of this week, it will have distributed 30,000 copies of its anti-BNP leaflets to homes including those in Carlisle, Longtown, Brampton, Penrith, Wigton, Silloth and Alston. Chairman Brent Kennedy believes the newly glossed image of the party – activists wearing suits proffering slick campaign leaflets – could lure many towards an alternative.

“They don’t know about the truth,” he said. “People just see the glossy leaflets – the false image they are physically putting out.”

He and other campaigners have been working to gather support for their work in Carlisle city centre. Mr Kennedy said: “We have had people saying they are going to vote BNP because they are racist. Some are people who are not racist but desperate because of the economic crisis and angry about MPs enriching themselves. On the other hand, a big majority were really supportive. They were thanking us for campaigning against the BNP, which the political parties are not doing.”

The anti-racism activist, who claims he has been attacked and intimidated while carrying out his work, has clear fears should the BNP taste electoral success.

“I’m worried there will be an increase of racist abuse and attacks on people and political opponents of theirs if they get a Euro MP elected. I have already contacted the police about that,” he revealed.

The church has also been drawn into the electioneering arena with Dr Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams urging people to use “great vigilance” when deciding who to vote for. They claimed some parties would exploit the current political situation if elected and said the BNP fostered “fear and division within communities, especially between people of different faiths or racial background”.

“This is not a moment for voting in favour of any political party whose core ideology is about sowing division in our communities and hostility on grounds of race, creed or colour,” they added. “It is an opportunity for renewing the vision of a community united by mutual respect, high ethical standards and the pursuit of justice and peace.”

BNP supporters in Cumbria are undoubtedly in a minority. But in the European elections – where a proportional representation voting system is used to ensure the number of MPs from each political party reflects the share of votes they received regionally – that could be enough to secure a seat. That is a factor which has mobilised trade unions. The Public and Commercial Services Union has launched a Make Your Vote Count campaign, backed by the Northern TUC, and will be in Carlisle on Saturday. May 30.

Regional co-ordinator Gordon Rowntree said: “Because the European elections use proportional representation there is a fear there. In the north west Nick Griffin could be elected. That’s why we’re working to get turnout higher because that would help the other political parties.”

Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s Cumbrian organiser, maintains his party has moved on and away from the racism linked to it in its early days. He said: “All of the opposition or people who would tar us with the same brush are using things from decades ago. It’s not relevant to the party today.”

The activist, who said his chairman did not encounter any aggression in Whitehaven on Saturday and criticised senior churchmen for their comments, vehemently denied his party was racist.

“It’s not racist, fascist or Nazi, as left-wing extremists dub us. I don’t think the majority of people think that now. What we’ve got are left-wing extremists, as I would call them, peddling this kind of rubbish,” he added.

Mr Jefferson also denied activists used any intimidation and said: “If anyone is telling you that, I would like them to tell me. It should be reported to police. This will not be tolerated. That’s not how we go about things. We are a political party.”

He described the vandal attacks on the poster in Caldewgate, Carlisle, as “nasty”.

Polling stations will be open between 7am and 10pm on Thursday, June 4. Cumbria County Council ballot papers will be counted the following day. The European count will be delayed until other countries have voted on June 6 and 7.

News and Star

British Extremists Recruiting South Africans

The British National Party, a neofascist group that has advocated expelling non-white immigrants, is actively recruiting white South African expatriates with ties to white supremacist groups, according to a report in the British antifascist magazine Searchlight.

"It has clearly not escaped the notice of the BNP leadership that white South Africans who fled black majority rule and now live in the U.K. are potentially a fertile recruiting ground for the racist party," Searchlight reported this February.

South African BNP member Neil McAllister has been networking through a popular pub in London to recruit young South African ex-pats and enlist older South African businessmen as financial backers, the magazine said.

The most prominent South African member of the BNP is Arthur Kemp, a well-known BNP speaker who since 2007 has been in charge of training more than 200 of the party's top activists. Kemp, who arrived in England 13 years ago, is the author of March of the Titans: A History of the White Race. He also wrote a fawning history of AWB, a paramilitary South African neo-Nazi group.

Kemp runs the BNP's website with technical support from another South African, Lambertus "Bep" Nieuwhof. Both men have unsavory pasts in their home country. In the 1980s, Kemp, a former sergeant in the South African Security Police during apartheid, helped draw up a list of anti-apartheid leaders that may have been used in the assassination of an African National Congress leader in 1993. Nieuwhof played a more direct role in a terror campaign as one of three men who tried to set off a bomb in a recently integrated South African school. The bomb failed to explode, and Nieuwhof was caught and sentenced to a year in prison.

Kemp has contacts in the American radical right as well, and spent a good deal of time working with the West Virginia-based National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group, in 2006 and 2007.

SPLCentre Intelligence Report

BNP candidate withdraws after party officials tamper with election statement.

Don't vote for me, says BNP candidate

A BNP candidate has tried to pull out of next week’s local elections because she “doesn’t want people thinking I’m racist” – and is now asking Worcester people NOT to vote for her.

Corinne Tovey-Jones told your Worcester News she wants to withdraw her candidacy for the far-right British National Party in next Thursday’sWorcestershire County Council elections, but has discovered it is now too late to have her name taken off the ballot papers.

Mrs Tovey-Jones, who is standing in Nunnery division in Worcester, said she had been convinced to stand for the BNP by a neighbour after her husband was made redundant.

But she decided she wanted to pull out of the poll this week after comments from family and friends.

She said: “I don’t want people thinking I’m racist when I’m not. My sister’s married to an Italian – how could I be? My mum and dad are religious – they don’t need the upset.”

Mrs Tovey-Jones, who could not remember who the BNP’s national leader was while speaking to your Worcester News, said things came to a head when we printed her candidate statement on Monday as part of our election coverage.

She said the statement she submitted to the party – extolling her own “Christian values” – had been rewritten by BNP officials to include comments about the “anti-social behaviour” of “an unruly minority”.

She said: “I read nothing I said. I come from a Christian family, with church values. I’ve had a couple of comments off my father. His friends had seen it. A lot of people link them with the National Front – though they’re not.”

The BNP was formed in 1982 after splits in the racist National Front movement. It now claims to have forgone all links.

But Mrs Tovey-Jones, who lives in Dines Green, Worcester, said: “I had other people say to me, ‘you know what they’re about?’ I don’t want the hassle. I haven’t got a racist bone in my body.”

Asked how she got involved with the extremist party – of which she is a member – she said: “My neighbour is very involved in it, and my husband was made redundant after 10 years and they say things like you can’t get a job at the moment, they’re just taking Polish people.”

Worcester City Council solicitor Doreen Porter – who is helping organise the election – said that with ballot papers printed and postal votes already being returned, candidates cannot now formally pull out.

She said: “There’s no procedure for withdrawing once the statement of candidates is published.”

A spokesperson for the BNP said: “We will speak to Corinne to find out what her position is before we give any statement.”

Berrow's Worcester Journal



COMMENT: Shabby way for BNP to treat voters

This newspaper prides itself on its political independence. We do our best to report the political scene in and around Worcester in a balanced way.

We offer our opinion on political issues based not on party prejudice like the national media but on what we believe to be best for our readers.

Today, however, we question whether the way in which one particular party chooses its candidates for next week’s county council elections is in the best interests of the electorate.

Voters in Worcester’s Nunnery ward, as we reveal today, face the farcical situation of being able to vote next Thursday for a candidate who does not want any votes.

Corinne Tovey-Jones was standing for the extremist British National Party. Now she is not because she fears people will think she is a racist.

Imagine that. People thinking a BNP candidate might be a racist. Whatever next?

Mrs Tovey-Jones’ candidate statement was printed in this newspaper on Monday along with her rivals for the Nunnery seat at County Hall. But she says it was not her statement, which talked about her “Christian values”, and had been changed completely by BNP officials.

Now she wants nothing to do with the election, particularly after negative comments from family and friends. It is too late, though, to delete her name from the ballot paper.

What a shabby way for the BNP to treat the voters of Nunnery ward – putting up a candidate who clearly has little or no idea about the policies of the party she was representing and who does not even know the name of its leader.

At least people in the ward do not have to worry about wasting their vote now.

Berrow's Worcester Journal

Mystery of the BNP's general election war chest

The British National Party is facing an inquiry into its funding after its leader, Nick Griffin, paid a £5,000 political donation into his personal bank account without declaring it.

The party’s finances came under scrutiny yesterday after it declared donations with the Electoral Commission of £21,132 for the first quarter of this year. No donations were declared between March and December last year. It has pledged to spend £500,000 campaigning for next week’s European and local elections alone.

Under Electoral Commission rules, donations in excess of £5,000 to political parties and in excess of £1,000 given to party members to be used for political activity must be declared.

Mr Griffin’s handling of the gift raises questions about BNP efforts to provide anonymity to its supporters.

The BNP has fielded 450 candidates for the local elections and 66 for the European Parliament — at least one for every constituency in the United Kingdom, bar Northern Ireland. The candidates have been backed by a party machine that says it is providing 29 million leaflets and has acquired 50,000 random mobile phone numbers to lobby with text messages.

In its 2007 audited accounts, the party listed a total income of £611,274, including £198,023 from donations. It spent £661,856, leaving it with a deficit of £50,582. Mr Griffin said that nearly £70,000 of income was not included because some records were missing after an internal dispute.

The party has yet to file last year’s accounts but Mr Griffin told The Times that the bulk of the funds for this year’s campaign had been raised from “ordinary Britons” who made small donations.

Mr Griffin admitted that he had paid a £5,000 donation that appeared to be from a political supporter into his own bank account and then transferred the money to a sympathetic political organisation without alerting the authorities.

He said that he did so because the donor, an elderly North London woman who is a member of the BNP, wished to remain anonymous. He said that he gave the money in February to the nationalist trade union Solidarity, which has strong BNP links, because he believed that it would have had to be declared if he had given the donation to the party. He said that there was “no need” to declare it as the donor had asked him to put the money to “best use”. The commission will review the donation to Mr Griffin after a complaint from the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight.

Details of the transaction emerged as David Cameron, the Tory leader, mounted the most savage attack to date on the BNP by a major political leader. “They dress up in a suit and knock on your door in a nice way but they are still Nazi thugs,” he said.

Meanwhile, bowing to public pressure, Mr Griffin said that he would not attend a summer garden party hosted by the Queen, after anti-racism campaigners claimed that his presence would embarrass the monarchy.

The Times



BNP leader: I’m happy to break race laws

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, has told members in an online broadcast that he has no problem with breaking race laws.

In a recording that was broadcast on a BNP blog late on Tuesday night, and was later placed on the party’s website, Mr Griffin said: “As you know, we don’t break the law. We never have, we never will, you know, on financial things. Don’t mind breaking the odd race law, or being accused of it, you know, inadvertently.”

Mr Griffin was convicted in 1998 of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred and his party is often accused of racism, in part because of its whites-only membership policy. His latest comments were condemned last night by anti-racism groups.

A spokeswoman for Searchlight, which campaigns against fascism, said: “It’s disgusting after a man has been convicted of a hate crime to treat it so lightly. But it’s not surprising, knowing his history.”

In the same broadcast, Mr Griffin revealed that he had paid a £5,000 donation into his own bank account and later transferred it to Solidarity, a trade union with BNP links. He told The Times yesterday that it was appropriate not to have declared the money. Donations to individual party members over £1,000 must be declared if they are for political use.

Mr Griffin said: “If it can’t be received by the party but it’s been given for general purpose, it can be used for a general purpose which is non-party political.”

However, he said that he did not clarify the donor’s intention for the money and a contradictory posting on the BNP’s website said that the donor had wanted it to go to the party.

In a second contradiction, Mr Griffin said that he was suspicious that the donation was a sting operation by either The Times or The Sunday Times but had kept the money anyway because it was not “particularly attractive” to give it away.

His accusation is denied by both newspapers.

Mr Griffin passed the money to Solidarity, which has denied being a front for the BNP but which acts for people who have been dismissed from their jobs because of their association with the party.

Speaking to The Times yesterday he said: “Defending our members is as much a part of our political work as getting people elected.”

In light of the revelations, MPs called for a “forensic investigation” into the BNP’s practices concerning its donations. Martin Salter, a Labour MP, said: “Transparency in party political funding is not only essential, it’s now a legal requirement.”

The BNP is spending an unprecedented amount in its campaign to win European seats on June 4, but it declared only £21,132 in donations in the first quarter of this year.

The Electoral Commission revealed yesterday that it forfeited a further £4,100 from four donors because they were not permissible — usually either people not registered to vote in Britain or foreign residents.A group of musicians, including members of Blur and Pink Floyd, are demanding the right to prevent the BNP from using their work or selling it for profit. The party sells a selection of folk albums on its website.

In a letter to The Times today, members of the Featured Artists’ Coalition and the Musicians’ Union say: “It has come to our attention that the BNP is selling compilation CDs . . . to raise funds. Many musicians featured on these . . . have no legal right to object to their music being used in this way.”

The Times

BNP are 'Nazi thugs' - Cameron

David Cameron has launched a scathing attack on the British National Party, calling them "Nazi thugs" and a "bunch of fascists".

The Tory leader admitted that many people will be angry at the main two parties over the MPs' expenses scandal, but urged them not to react by voting for the BNP.

Fielding questions from the public at an agricultural show, he said: "If you vote for the BNP you are voting for a bunch of fascists who want to divide this country over the issues of race and the colour of skin."

His response turned to anger when a member of the audience at the Bath and West Show in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, argued that the BNP "have a point when it comes to immigration". Cameron told him: "Go and have a look at what the BNP have said. Do not be naive about what these people stand for. They dress up in a suit and knock on your door in a nice way but they are still Nazi thugs".

He told the audience: "There is a proper national debate that we should have about immigration. I want us to limit the number of people coming to Britain, but do not believe that the way to beat the BNP is to half agree with them. These people are not pleasant people."

ITN

BNP DDoS 'mega-assault' not actually mega in the least

It was eight, no ten really big lads that jumped me

A supposedly massive denial of service attack against the British National Party website has been exposed as a gross exaggeration.

The assault, which began on Friday, was described by the party in an email appeal for funds as the "largest cyber attack in recorded history" and comparable only to a 2001 assault against Microsoft*. Nick Griffin, leader of the controversial far-right political party, asked the party's supporters to stump up the £5,000 urgently needed to purchase hardware and servers supposedly needed to keep the site up and running.

Griffin's email appeal claims that the assault came from "eastern Europe and Russia" and that Clear Channel, a firm supplying Euro election billboard advertising services to the BNP, is also under attack and contemplating legal action.

However, Clear Channel, after checking with its US-based techies, said that it was not under any kind of cyber-attack, much less on the phone to its lawyers.

To confirm - we have had no attack and we have filed no lawsuits," a spokeswoman told El Reg. "The BNP booked a small poster campaign in the run up to the European Elections."

Clear Channel has a policy of carrying advertising "from all the legal political parties, without bias or favour, and regardless of the company’s own views, as long as the advertising is legal and clearly branded for the relevant party".

A BNP spokesman politely told us on Tuesday morning that he was too busy helping to run its Euro election campaign to bother about technology. He said IT guys were too busy reconfiguring servers to speak and had nothing to say about Clear Channel's response that its site was not under attack.

Security firms contacted by El Reg said that a botnet hosted in Romania was firing off attack traffic at the BNP's website, but were unable to confirm the size of the assault. Jose Nazario, manager of security research at anti-DDoS technology firm Arbor Networks, confirmed there was a DDoS attack but wasn't able to gauge its size.

The site's been moving around some in the past few days. here's some recent history, my guess is they're trying to fight the ddos:
bnp.org.uk | 87.117.239.66 | Thu, 01 May 2008 02:50:40 UTC | Sat, 23 May 2009 23:26:39 UTC bnp.org.uk | 87.117.239.84 | Sun, 24 May 2009 20:51:57 UTC | Sun, 24 May 2009 20:51:59 UTC

That .66 IP has come under a SYN flood from at least one botnet. in this case the botnet was hosted in Romanian IP space.

I have no data on the attack's magnitude (BPS, requests per second, etc). but so far everything is consistent with a legitimate attack.

A technically knowledgeable person at the hosting firm managing the site approached El Reg, and on condition of anonymity agreed to explain what had happened.

"There was some attack traffic against the BNP website on Sunday or Monday," our source told us. "But it was hardly noticeable except that one server was taken offline. It's not one to write home about.

"The attack traffic was around 600Mbps, a volume that hardly hits our radar."

We understand that a letter advising the BNP that the hosting package it had signed on for when it moved its servers a few days ago is "not suitable" is in the post.

"Given the content they host, and the volume of traffic, the party needs a package that includes DDoS protection. This will cost a lot more than £5,000," our source explained, adding that no extra servers or any other hardware had been added to the BNP's website since the attacks began late last week.

We understand that the matter of whether the BNP's website breaks the hosting firm's terms and conditions is under review.

Independent sources at web metrics firm Netcraft confirmed that the BNP's website has recently moved hosting provider and changed configuration, moving from Apache to nginx. Its stats on the BNP's website can be found here.

So the BNP's site did experience a minor attack, but the suggestion that it was under the biggest cyberassault ever are pure hype, possibly geared towards reinforcing a siege mentality that encourages supporters into throwing more money at the controversial party.

Arbor's Nazario added that a large attack on the scale claimed would get noticed more widely.

I love how the BNP is claiming this is the largest attack the internet has ever seen. Far from it. While I don't have exact numbers, the absence of alerts on too many other ISPs that serve as their upstream suggests it's not. The botnet behind the attacks isn't super massive, either.

It's either a lie or ill-informed for them to be saying it's the largest attack.

Bootnote

*The supposed DDoS attack against Microsoft is, incidentally, something we're unable to find any reports about. The most prominent DDoS attack around that time was Mafiaboy's assault on eBay, Amazon et al, in September 2000.

The Register

Universal Human Rights? BNP Says No!

If you tell a lie big enough...

A British National Party claim on Monday that the police are investigating Searchlight for attacking a commercial company’s website is a lie of which Joseph Goebbels would be proud and further evidence of how the party’s election campaign is falling apart.

The BNP website went down for several hours over the holiday weekend. On Sunday evening the party claimed it had suffered a “massive Denial of Service Attack … emanating from Eastern Europe and Russia”.

The statement, which appeared on the blog of Simon Darby, the BNP’s deputy leader, continued: “On Friday the servers of Clear Channel, part of a huge conglomerate that provides billboard advertising, suffered a similar attack. Their IT professionals tracked the criminal activity back to a notorious ‘anti-fascist’ organisation.

“This organisation was protesting at the decision by Clear Channel to allow the BNP to display advertising in support of our European Election Campaign.” The statement claimed that Clear Channel’s lawyers were issuing writs against “the perpetrators” that would involve “the possibility of potential criminal charges including racketeering”.

A further statement on Monday claimed that the “Counter Terrorism Unit at Scotland Yard” was investigating the attack on the BNP website and that Searchlight “is now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police for a similar attack on the servers of Clear Channel”.

Clear Channel denied the BNP’s claims. A spokeswoman for the company told a Searchlight researcher: “I’ve checked with our IT department and we haven’t experienced any denial of service”.

Last week Searchlight asked people to email Clear Channel to protest against its decision to display BNP posters and over 5,300 people responded. So far Clear Channel is standing by its policy of allowing all political parties to advertise at the market rate though the company “does not support them in any way”.

The BNP knows well the difference between a denial of service attack on a website and an email protest campaign. Paul Golding, who runs the BNP’s “Operation Fightback”, has himself often asked supporters to email media outlets that have run anti-BNP stories and anyone else who has upset the fascist party.

We can only assume that the BNP has realised just how hard it is being hit by the constant exposés of its fascism and lies in the media and is desperately trying to divert attention from its difficulties by throwing out wild accusations against its opponents.

Last week the BNP placed on its website an interview with Helen Forster, a party member, that Golding recorded after her conviction for racist intimidation was exposed in the Daily Mirror. Although she had told the Mirror reporter that she was “still in the BNP”, she lied blatantly to Golding that she had never joined the party. The BNP then falsely claimed it had taken the “Daily Mirror’s scalp”. Promised writs from the BNP’s fake “lawyer”, Lee Barnes, failed to materialise.

Searchlight awaits Clear Channel’s writs and Metropolitan Police enquiries about a fictitious attack on Clear Channel’s website with bated breath. The BNP should remember that wasting police time is a serious criminal offence.

Meanwhile, whatever the real reason for the absence of the BNP’s website over the weekend, Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, could not let it pass without grabbing another opportunity to milk his supporters for money. Claiming ludicrously that the BNP had suffered the “largest cyber attack in recorded history”, he explained that they had been “forced to hire a Cyber Defence expert” and “need to invest in additional hardware and servers”. The items had to be paid for immediately, but “every penny we possess is allocated to the Euro Election Campaign”.

The party therefore desperately needed £5,000, so much so that Griffin had “personally donated £250 to this appeal to set things in motion”, no doubt yet another of the lies that seem to trip so easily from his mouth.

Hope not hate

The billboard that died of shame

The BNP's Thurrock billboard in happier times

Oh dear. Never mind.

Anti-BNP protest at Bath election meeting

Angry demonstrators chanting ‘Nazi scum, get off our streets’ formed a human barricade to try to prevent a meeting taking place in Bath last night at which the British National Party was due to speak.

Around 100 protesters - including supporters of Unite Against Fascism and the Bath Activist Network - blocked the entrance to the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute building in Queen Square to show their anger at the BNP having been invited to take part in a cross-party debate.

The BRLSI had called an election hustings meeting where it invited all 17 parties fighting in the south west region in the forthcoming EU elections to take part. Once the BNP had agreed to do so, several of the other parties pulled out and a demonstration was arranged to express anger at the BNP’s inclusion in the debate.

Three of the candidates - including the BNP’s Jeremy Wotherspoon - managed to get into the meeting before the protesters barricaded the entrance, leaving a number of supporters of all parties and members of the general public stuck outside the building. The barricade stayed in place for more than an hour ,before the police moved in and began carrying away the 20 or so protesters who had sat down on the steps and refused to move.

The meeting then went ahead - but only four speakers from the smaller political groupings took part with no-one on the panel from the main parties including Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, UKIP or The Green Party.

After the meeting the convener of the BRSLI's economics group, Rodney Tye, admitted it has been a tough decision to carry on the debate after the protest but he felt it has been right to do so.

“We gave a lot of thought in advance about whether to invite all of the candidates as we knew it may be an issue but we still felt it was the right thing to ask everyone as they all had a right to be heard. We felt - rather like the BBC who have allowed all parties to have election broadcasts - that it was the correct decision to give everyone the chance to speak.”

A number of candidates in the EU elections, which take place on June 4, attended the event but refused to enter the building and share a platform with the British National Party .

Ricky Knight, the lead candidate for the Green Party in the south west, said: “The BNP should not be accommodated or accepted within the norms of democratic debate. The BNP have only one issue and that is to keep immigrants out."

Also attending, but refusing to join the debate was Glyn Ford, a Labour MEP and a long term campaigner against right wing extremists. He said that the BNP was ‘beyond the pale’ and he commended the protestors for their vocal opposition.

Liberal Democrat MEP Graham Watson was also present but did not take part in the final debate. He said the BNP’s policies were ‘repugnant‘.

One of the protesters - John, from the Bath Activists Network - said he was very encouraged by the large turnout of people protesting against the BNP. “People talk about the right to freedom of speech but is not unequivocal. It must come with some responsibility and the BNP lose this right to free speech by having their specific racial views “.

Inside the meeting itself - attended by only about 50 people - one of the candidates who had walked past the protestors, Michael Turner of the English Democrats Party, said the fact that the meeting took place at all was a positive thing. “The candidates who have come through that protest have shown that democracy will always win,“ he said.

Mr Turner’s party along with The Pro-Democracy Libertas.eu Party and The Christian Party were the only ones to address the meeting - along with the BNP itself.

Mr Wotherspoon denied the claims made by the protesters that he was a racist* and said his party was just standing up for British people. “In recent weeks, I have shaken hands with Negroes, Muslims, Arabs - even my dentist is Egyptian. I am not a racialist. The BNP just puts the British people first and foremost.”

The meeting, however, ended as it beg an - on a discordant note.

The BNP candidate verbally attacked Mr Turner for refusing to shake his hand. The BNP supporters in the room called this ‘shameful; but Mr Turner said he was merely exercising his English right to ‘freedom of choice’.

All the protesters had left by the time the meeting broke up.

This is Bath

*Link to image of Wotherspoon calling for "an urgent repatriation programme" during his time in the National Front.

BNP tries to extort 20k from Christian Party

Short and sweet this.

The Christian Party has 300 billboards across London with the strap-line “Put your cross by The Cross not the swastika”.

They've already been vandalised by BNP cretins, but now the BNP's barking mad "legal department" has told the Christian Party to cough up £20,000 for using its logo.

Rev George Hargreaves, leader of the Christian Party, commented “Having examined their racist policies, I would not give tuppence for using the BNP logo.”

Whining BNP members complained they're not Nazis, but see the post below this for the truth of that.

Our advice to the Rev. Hargreaves isn't very Christian but it is to the point.

Tell them to fuck off.

"People like you" (if you happen to be a Nazi)

Simon Deacon – BNP Candidate for Hertfordshire Bridgewater – Wants an All-White Britain

Deacon (on left, facing camera, against police van.) Seig Heiler is Stuart Hollingsworth – convicted for damaging the Steven Lawrence memorial in 1998 and sentenced to three months in prison.

On his election to the Markyate parish council in 2007, Deacon told the St Albans Observer (25.4.07): "England was a white country – we think it should be returned to that."

Shelley Rose – BNP Candidate for Dunstable Northfields – Uses Language of Race Hate

Shelley Rose (centre) flanked by BNP leader Nick Griffin and Young BNP activist Mark Collet.

Collet appeared in the 2002 Channel Four documentary "Young, Nazi and Proud." He is quoted as saying "Hitler will live forever; and maybe I will."

In 1998, Griffin was convicted of inciting racial hatred for publishing material that denied the Holocaust.

On 27th November 2008 Rose – worker at a Luton furniture company - showed that she was capable of spreading similar lies. On Facebook, when describing why she was boycotting Tescos (once owned by Jewish people) she said:

"They want to take over the world, all the other shops even supermarkets seem to have some regard for local produce and the country. Tesco's are on their own agenda. They will destroy all business around them, unless people refuse to shop there. I would rather put myself out and pay a bit more at a smaller local shop, than line the pockets of the kikes that run Tesco."

Chris Mitchell – Young BNP Organiser from Leighton Buzzard

Chris Mitchell (left) has for a number of years been the Young BNP organiser for Bedfordshire Hailing from Leighton Buzzard, Mitchell was heavily involved in the 2007 BNP Luton Borough Council election campaign. Here we picture him on holiday in the Mediterranean showing his true colours.

With thanks to Three Counties Unity

Family of Winston Churchill slams BNP over far-right party's attempt to hijack wartime leader's legacy

Relatives of Sir Winston Churchill have denounced as ‘monstrous’ an attempt by BNP leader Nick Griffin to cloak himself in the mantle of Britain's greatest wartime leader.

The far-right British National Party’s election broadcast, which is screened nationwide this evening, features Mr Griffin quoting from one of Churchill’s most famous speeches. The BNP chief uses the broadcast to argue that modern Britain, with its record of welcoming immigrants, has betrayed the ‘the blood, sweat, toil and tears’ of those who fought for freedom in the Second World War.

The advert, which features footage of Sir Winston and British war graves, provoked fury from descendants of Churchill, who have tried to ban the BNP from appropriating his image. Tory MP Nicholas Soames, Sir Winston’s grandson, revealed yesterday that he has tried and failed to get election watchdogs to ban the BNP from using Churchill as a vote winner.

Mr Griffin was also accused of ‘sickening hypocrisy’ after it emerged that he once praised the 'limitless courage and sacrifice', of Hitler’s SS, and described the RAF’s bombing of Dresden as 'mass murder'.

Mr Soames told the Mail he has consulted lawyers and tried to get the Electoral Commission to step in and stop the BNP, but confessed he had been rebuffed. He said he has received ‘hundreds of letters’ from his grandfather’s generation distressed that the far right group is ‘abusing their memory’ and implying that Sir Winston would have backed the BNP’s racist cause.

‘It’s a monstrous thing to do. Most sensible people will be disgusted by the BNP’s use of Churchill’s face and imagery purporting to claim that my grandfather would have supported their policies. ‘It is such a disgusting and outrageous suggestion. They have no right to use Churchill’s face in this way. It causes tremendous offence to people of the wartime generation.

‘They were a generous generation. They weren’t a mean-spirited generation. It is deeply offensive to his family and if the law were different we would take steps to stop it. To suggest that he would have supported something as wicked as the BNP is beyond the pale.’

Newly uncovered copies of ‘The Rune’, a white supremacist magazine edited by Mr Griffin in the late 1990s, show that far from respecting Britain’s war effort in the 1940s he was a fan of the SS units that committed countless war crimes against the allies.

Mr Griffin published one article stating: ‘The tales of Waffen SS courage and sacrifices are almost limitless.’

Another piece claimed: ‘In an unbiased assessment of war-crimes, the Waffen SS were undoubtedly no worse than the troops of other nations – countless Allied war crimes are simply not publicised.’ In 1996 he organised a demonstration on the steps of Coventry Cathedral in which he claimed RAF pilots who bombed Dresden in World War Two were guilty of ‘mass murder’.

According to Griffin, the leaflets were written by 'veteran German patriot', Manfred Roeder, who fought for Hitler in the defence of Berlin in 1945 then founded a neo-Nazi organisation in the 1980s that was classified as a terrorist group by German authorities after it launched attacks against buildings housing asylum seekers.

A spokesman for the anti-fascist campaign group Searchlight said: ‘Griffin’s hypocrisy is sickening. This man is on record as praising the SS and accusing RAF pilots of committing mass murder. For him to evoke the memory of fallen British serviceman to further his campaign of division and hate is beyond belief.’

Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, where the BNP hope to make gains, said: ‘This exposes the fact that Nick Griffin is on record praising the SS and attacking the RAF. It’s only because there is an election on that he’s pretending to be a supporter of the Armed Forces. People will see through the sham.’

Daily Mail

Whodunnit?

According to itself the BNP's website has been hit by the "biggest Denial of Service attack ever", but, as we'll see, not everybody is convinced that the party of American construction workers, Italian grandmas, Polish Spitfire squadrons and Helen Colclough is being completely upfront.

The site disappeared from the internet yesterday evening, after apparently experiencing problems the day before, leading a hysterical Simon Darby to post:

The main BNP website is currently down due to a massive Denial of Service Attack. The site was attacked last night, at one point dealing with 28 million hits, but we managed to block out the traffic which was emanating from Eastern Europe and Russia.

The size of the assault today is unparalleled and there is no doubt that whoever has organised this has had to pay out a serious amount of money to the criminal underworld.

On Friday the servers of Clear Channel, part of a huge conglomerate that provides billboard advertising, suffered a similar attack. Their IT professionals tracked the criminal activity back to a notorious "anti-fascist" organisation openly aligned to the Labour Party and supported by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. This organisation was protesting at the decision by Clear Channel to allow the BNP to display advertising in support of our European Election Campaign.

As a consequence of the criminal actions against Clear Channel we understand that their legal team is currently in the process of issuing writs against the perpetrators which as well as civil actions will involve the possibility of potential criminal charges including racketeering.

I'll keep you all informed about the above.

Now would-be rubber magnate Darby is supposed to be some kind of IT guru and knows as well as we do that DoS attacks don't happen because somebody paid "a serious amount of money to the criminal underworld". They usually happen when a Billy No Mates geek gets a bee in his bonnet, and they're virtually untraceable because Billy No Mates is activating armies of sleeping "zombies" which live on thousands of innocent PCs. The "zombies" flood the target server with so many requests that it can't cope and goes down. That's the simple explanation, but for more read this.

Naturally, Darby can't resist hyping the scale of the "attack". It's "the biggest... ever" and "unparalleled" - in his own mind. A simple web search finds far worse examples.

Equally naturally keyboard warrior Paul Morris, aka Green Arrow, can't wait to get in on the act and manages to out-pompous even himself:

the British National Party membership is made up of the best of the True British people. They do not whine when bombs fall around their heads, they do not flinch when their ammunition is gone and the fight is desperate, they fix bayonets and stand firm.

Somebody should tell the Welsh Windbag to get a grip. This is a DoS attack (allegedly) not Rorke's Drift, and the internet is chock-a-block with examples of the BNP membership "standing firm" by whinging and whining about how hard done to they are on almost every newspaper website and blog in the world.

Anyway, back to Darby.

Now if Clear Channel, the people who brought you the BNP billboards, was under attack on Friday then it wasn't obvious to us, since we accessed the site a number of times throughout Friday and Saturday. And we've yet to hear news of writs and legal actions against a "notorious 'anti-fascist' organisation" issued on behalf of Clear Channel.

Why is Darby so coy that he won't name the organisation "openly aligned to the Labour Party"? Could it be that he's afraid the (real) writs might start flying in the other direction?

We'd also like to hear Darby's explanation of how Clear Channel's IT professionals allegedly managed to track down the source of the attack in a few hours, when such investigations take anybody else, including the police, weeks and sometimes months of painstaking research to solve.

So whodunnit?

Out in Nutziland the theories are coming thick and fast. One nemotode thinks the outage was planned to co-incide with the Archbishop of Canterbury's attack on the BNP, while another agrees: "That is disgusting. Typical of the Reds!" The same microbrain, hearing that the "attack" originated in Russia then ventures: "Russia eh? Maybe some Labour MPs are paying some old commie friends to do some dirty work." Another casts his net more widely: "...why does Lancaster Unity, Hope Not Hate and Denise Garside, Ketlan Ossowski and others come to mind?" (because you're an idiot, A1?)

It would be nice to believe that somewhere in a Siberian bunker there's a man in a wheelchair, a scar on his face and a cat on his lap, spluttering maniacally as he switches the BNP on and off, but there might just be a simpler explanation.

Even in Nutziland several remarked that they'd heard the BNP's servers were due for an upgrade, but a friend of ours posts this:

>>>
...using IPLocator at http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/ip-address-locator.php for the ip address the www.bnp.org.uk had last night (87.117.239.66) I got the following back:

Your IP Address: 87.117.239.66
IP Address Hostname: 87.117.239.66
IP Country: United Kingdom
IP Country Code: GBR
IP Continent: Europe
IP Region: Windsor and Maidenhead
Guessed City: Maidenhead
IP Latitude: 51.5167
IP Longitude: -0.7
ISP Provider: B&P Interative Ltd

This morning however the address seems to be:

Your IP Address: 95.154.192.19
IP Address Hostname: maidenhead-1.wnm.uk.cluster.bnp.org.uk
IP Country: United Kingdom
IP Country Code: GBR
IP Continent: Europe
IP Region: Windsor and Maidenhead
Guessed City: Maidenhead
IP Latitude: 51.5167
IP Longitude: -0.7
ISP Provider: RapidSwitch Ltd

Having offered serveral un-substaniated possible reasons I wonder now whether it is simply the case that they have exceeded the throughput for their hosting package and have had to move to another provider.
...
It will take awhile for a DNS change to propergate so they could appear to be offline for awhile it will depend on how often your isp's dns is updated.

The story of DoS is I would allege a sham and the cover story for the move - and maybe, I mean hopefully their backups are crap and their expertise in re-creating the site is inadequate.
>>>

So then, are we (and the BNP membership) being treated to another hefty dose of BNP BS?

Watch this space, comrades.