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
Showing posts with label Arthur Kemp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arthur Kemp. Show all posts
10 May 2009
Senior Labour MP accuses BBC of 'whitewash' over coverage of BNP rise to power
BBC bosses are under fire for going soft on the far right British National Party.
News chiefs at the corporation were accused of a ‘whitewash’ for delaying an investigation into the extremist views of the BNP until after the European elections next month. The poll on June 4th could see the neo-fascist group gain British seats in the Brussels Parliament for the first time.
Campaigners and MPs said that politically correct liberals at the BBC are ‘being played like fools’ for treating the BNP like ‘any other political party’. The party’s leader Nick Griffin has already been offered a one to one chat with the BBC interviewer Andrew Marr if his party acquires its first MEP.
The anti-fascist campaign group Searchlight called for an explanation of the BBC’s decision to postpone the broadcast of an investigation into a senior British National Party activist with links to the South African security services. The shelved investigation, being produced by BBC Wales, features Arthur Kemp, the South African head of BNP election distribution, who was arrested following the murder of anti-apartheid activist Chris Hani, in 1993.
Although subsequently released, Kemp admitted producing a list of names of prominent ANC activists that was found at the home of one of Hani’s killers.
Searchlight is also angry that a Newsnight report titled ‘the rising power of the BNP’ broadcast last week concluded: ‘It looks like a more moderate BNP courting voters this spring.’ The programme failed to mention that Clive Jefferson one of the BNP activists it interviewed was arrested two years ago for an alleged public order offence, following a complaint from a member of the public that he had been threatening and abusive whilst distributing BNP literature.
A second BNP figure featured in the report, Martin Wingfield, was arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned in 1985 under the Race Relations Act, following distribution of racist literature. His criminal record was not mentioned either and BNP Deputy Leader Simon Darby advised his members to watch the broadcast, claiming it was, ‘not a bad piece overall’.
Senior Labour MP Jon Cruddas has written to Helen Boaden, the director of BBC News to call for a change of tack, after it also emerged that BNP spokesman have also been interviewed by a BBC camera crew for a second Newsnight piece on ‘British Jobs For British Workers’, a phrase used by Gordon Brown but now appropriated as the BNP’s election slogan.
He wrote: ‘It seems to me that there is total confusion within the BBC regarding editorial policy towards the British National Party. Membership of the BNP is proscribed in a number of public sector organisations, such as the Police and the Prison Service. It is not, ‘just another political party’.
‘There is no attempt to scrutinise the BNP on their extremist policy platform, their membership, their links to other extremist organisations, or their extremist philosophy.’
Mr Cruddas said: ‘Their activists are featured, but not challenged. Issues favourable to their agenda are analysed on national news and current affairs outlets. Invitations are extended to their spokesman indicating they are to be treated as if they are a mainstream political party. And programmes which expose their extremist and racist agenda are shelved. It is imperative that common sense and clarity are brought to the Corporation’s editorial policy towards this neo-Fascist organisation.’
A Searchlight spokesman added: ‘The BBC are being played like fools by the BNP. The Newsnight broadcast was a whitewash, and now they’re axing programmes because of pressure from Nick Griffin and his thugs.
'If the BBC want to cover the BNP that’s fine, but they have to challenge them and properly expose their agenda of prejudice and hate.’
Daily Mail
News chiefs at the corporation were accused of a ‘whitewash’ for delaying an investigation into the extremist views of the BNP until after the European elections next month. The poll on June 4th could see the neo-fascist group gain British seats in the Brussels Parliament for the first time.
Campaigners and MPs said that politically correct liberals at the BBC are ‘being played like fools’ for treating the BNP like ‘any other political party’. The party’s leader Nick Griffin has already been offered a one to one chat with the BBC interviewer Andrew Marr if his party acquires its first MEP.
The anti-fascist campaign group Searchlight called for an explanation of the BBC’s decision to postpone the broadcast of an investigation into a senior British National Party activist with links to the South African security services. The shelved investigation, being produced by BBC Wales, features Arthur Kemp, the South African head of BNP election distribution, who was arrested following the murder of anti-apartheid activist Chris Hani, in 1993.
Although subsequently released, Kemp admitted producing a list of names of prominent ANC activists that was found at the home of one of Hani’s killers.
Searchlight is also angry that a Newsnight report titled ‘the rising power of the BNP’ broadcast last week concluded: ‘It looks like a more moderate BNP courting voters this spring.’ The programme failed to mention that Clive Jefferson one of the BNP activists it interviewed was arrested two years ago for an alleged public order offence, following a complaint from a member of the public that he had been threatening and abusive whilst distributing BNP literature.
A second BNP figure featured in the report, Martin Wingfield, was arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned in 1985 under the Race Relations Act, following distribution of racist literature. His criminal record was not mentioned either and BNP Deputy Leader Simon Darby advised his members to watch the broadcast, claiming it was, ‘not a bad piece overall’.
Senior Labour MP Jon Cruddas has written to Helen Boaden, the director of BBC News to call for a change of tack, after it also emerged that BNP spokesman have also been interviewed by a BBC camera crew for a second Newsnight piece on ‘British Jobs For British Workers’, a phrase used by Gordon Brown but now appropriated as the BNP’s election slogan.
He wrote: ‘It seems to me that there is total confusion within the BBC regarding editorial policy towards the British National Party. Membership of the BNP is proscribed in a number of public sector organisations, such as the Police and the Prison Service. It is not, ‘just another political party’.
‘There is no attempt to scrutinise the BNP on their extremist policy platform, their membership, their links to other extremist organisations, or their extremist philosophy.’
Mr Cruddas said: ‘Their activists are featured, but not challenged. Issues favourable to their agenda are analysed on national news and current affairs outlets. Invitations are extended to their spokesman indicating they are to be treated as if they are a mainstream political party. And programmes which expose their extremist and racist agenda are shelved. It is imperative that common sense and clarity are brought to the Corporation’s editorial policy towards this neo-Fascist organisation.’
A Searchlight spokesman added: ‘The BBC are being played like fools by the BNP. The Newsnight broadcast was a whitewash, and now they’re axing programmes because of pressure from Nick Griffin and his thugs.
'If the BBC want to cover the BNP that’s fine, but they have to challenge them and properly expose their agenda of prejudice and hate.’
Daily Mail
24 February 2009
BNP selling Irish Republican Music
Given the BNP's longstanding antipathy to Irish republicanism, and to the IRA in particular, it is surprising to see them selling a CD (Cu Chulainn - Over an Hour of Irish Folk) featuring 'Back Home in Derry', by Bobby Sands.
The CD also includes 'The Fields of Athenry', 'The Foggy Dew', about the Easter Rising, and 'Only Our Rivers Run Free'.
Another CD, A Feast of Irish Folk, includes 'Grace', about the marriage immediately before execution of Joseph Plunkett, after the Easter Rising, and 'Gallipoli', lamenting the death of an Irishman fighting for England. Hardly the sort of ballads you'd associate with the BNP!
Curiously, the BNP don't stock CDs of loyalist music - there's not a rendition of 'The Sash' or 'The Famine Song' to be bought.
We wonder what BNP supporters, more associated with chants of 'no surrender to the IRA' than singing 'The Soldier's Song', will make of this. Excalibur manager Arthur Kemp may face some awkward questions in the weeks ahead.
Antifa
28 November 2008
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