BNP targets children as recruits for party's youth wing

YBNP annual training camp 2008 - Mirror story
Inside the tent adorned with the Union Jack and St George’s flag, Peter and Anthony are on a recruiting drive.

They hand out leaflets telling potential converts that their organisation is not racist, merely “helping to resist the racist colonisation of Britain”.

Their table is scattered with postcards of young, white women draped in the Union Jack, holding placards with the reminder that “nationalism is for girls too”. The pair tell The Times that the British National Party is great for the country and that they are proud to support it.

However, they are unable to articulate why they are attracted to the far-right party, and they squirm in their seats when asked about their understanding of issues such as racism, nationalism and discrimination. They may be simply too young to appreciate such concepts: Anthony is 14 and Peter just 12 years old.

Nevertheless, the pair spent the weekend recruiting for the youth wing of the BNP at the party’s annual gathering in Derbyshire, which attracted several hundred families.

Peter, whose mother brought him to the event, said: “Young BNP is just about making sure that we are going to have a good place in the normal BNP when we’re older, and that’s what we want. It’s cool, we play lots of sports and stuff.” Several events at the Red, White and Blue Festival, which was picketed by protesters, were geared towards youth in what anti-fascist groups said was “disturbing indoctrination” and an attempt to create a new generation of nationalist sympathisers.

Young children’s faces were painted with the Union Jack and many sported BNP T-shirts and fake tattoos of crusaders and the St George’s flag. They were encouraged to throw wet sponges at a man in the stocks, who was dressed in Islamic clothing and wearing an Osama bin Laden mask.

Even infants were exposed to the nationalist cause, with toys and blow-up furniture in the children’s tent being decorated with the Union Jack.

Simon Darby, the deputy leader of the BNP, told The Times that the younger generation was “very important” for the future of the party. “We don’t think short-term, we think long-term,” he said.

Mr Darby denied that the party was indoctrinating youth: “We’re just pointing out another side of things — that it isn’t a good idea to completely destroy our own culture. We are making sure they know that white people aren’t inferior, because that’s what they are being taught in schools.”

However, anti-fascist groups whose blockade of the event, near Denby, resulted in 19 arrests after clashes with police, said that the BNP’s approach was “very dangerous”. Weyman Bennett, joint national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said that the BNP was actively trying to recruit the young in a new drive because so many of its members were from older generations. “It’s really dangerous. They are trying to normalise their politics among young children. It is very concerning — do we really want this to be going on in our playgrounds?”

Alongside Peter and Anthony, Tristan Simekins, 18, had travelled from Corsham, Wiltshire, to recruit for the BNP’s student wing.

His leaflets explained that the movement provided advice to young people on dealing with “anti-white discrimination”. He said: “My problem is with the indoctrination of Islam. I admit not all Muslims are evil, but I feel Islam is.”

Times Online

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

Mein youth kampf

BNP target kids in weekend training sessions

The BNP is setting up a BRIT-LER YOUTH to indoctrinate children, we can reveal.

Party chiefs are trawling internet chatrooms to lure kids as young as 13 to weekend camps where they will be taught SHOOTING, self-defence and nationalist ideology. And some aged EIGHT are being targeted by a new British National Party comic. It features a venom-spouting racist puppet called Billy Brit. who praises Enoch Powell's infamous Rivers Of Blood speech.

Last night a spokesman for anti-racist group Searchlight stormed: "This is sickening. Every parent should be warned that it could be your children these extremists are after."

Top of the far-right party's sinister new recruitment drive is their version of the HITLER YOUTH. Members start off as "junior patriots" at 13 and are given ID cards, a newsletter and a training book with lessons in "ethno nationalism".

Drills

They are invited to the BNP's annual youth camp and two training camps where they have to keep records of their improvement in shooting, self defence, flag drills and ideology. They must carry out between four and eight hours of "political activism" a month. "Patriots" must attend all three events to become leaders of the Young BNP.

The camps are held over weekends in the countryside. The last one was held in Derbyshire. Similar camps run by Germany's far-right group, the Youth Faithful To The Homeland, were recently outlawed for trying to indoctrinate kids with Nazi ideology.

But BNP leader Nick Griffin is determined to lure even younger children to his party's beliefs-with a puppet and a comic called The Comet aimed at children from the age of eight. The sinister "Billy Brit" is already featured on the BNP website where he reads his "educational poems".

In one called Heroes he praises MP Enoch Powell for his infamous speech about immigration in 1968. Racist Billy rants: "He gave a speech called Rivers Of Blood and never gave up the fight. Enoch Powell spoke for me. And Enoch Powell was white." Youngsters are sent signed photos of Billy.

There is also a website for Young Supporters with quizzes, games and events. It includes the BNP demand for an official White History month.

Comic

They even have kids posing in BNP T-shirts on their merchandise site and are selling Enoch Powell T-shirts emblazoned with his face on the front alongside the Union Jack.

The Comet comic is sent out to kids between the ages of eight and 12. It says it is delivered to "all you eight to 12-year-olds out there who love your country, Great Britain. Yes that's Great as in Grrrrrrrreat!!! With the British National Party it can become great again."

It tells kids: "Your job is to find out the truth about what's going on in the world (and of all the political parties in this country, the only one you can count on to tell you the truth is the British National Party)."

The party is also targeting children's chatrooms on the internet as part of its campaign to lure youngsters. Anonymous BNP chiefs befriend unwitting users on sites like Bebo. They operate under the user name "Young Brit". The sinister strategy has led to a flood of complaints.

One youngster on the site wrote in reply: "What a sad and pathetic life you lead." Another branded Young Brit a "perv."

The revelation comes after the News of the World exposed BNP plans to use internet blogs to spread damaging stories about rivals.

Labour fears the BNP is stronger than ever and could win seven seats in June's Euro elections.

News of the World

They want your kids!

The BNP launched its British Nationalist Youth Movement website yesterday.

A carbon copy of the main BNP website, it's allegedly run by the YBNP and the Student BNP - allegedly, because everything about it seems very adult to us.

Like the main BNP website, the origins of the Wordpress template being used have been completely obliterated, a check on both sites' source code showing that all mention of Masterplan, who created it, has been removed. So not so much as a thanks to the chappie who laboured long and hard on his blogging opus magnus.

Maybe that's because Masterplan is located in India, and the person behind it is one of those Asiatics the BNP hates so much and it wouldn't do to let the world know it.

The funny thing is that the Masterplan template is actually very nice, but the BNP have managed to screw it up by making their customisations almost unnavigable.

But let's get to the heart of the BNYM site...

Decked out with lots of piccies of pretty young girls, the site even has a child protection policy, which states that the responsibility of BNP adults is to ensure:

• their behaviour is appropriate at all times
• they observe the rules established for the safety and security of young people
• they follow the procedures following suspicion, disclosure or allegation of child abuse
• they recognise the position of trust in which they have been placed; and
• in every respect, the relationships they form with young people on their care are appropriate

Now that's really good coming from the party of Mark Collett and Dave Hannam. Really good coming from the party whose "Security Department", allegedly catching that pair in a compromising situation (as they say) with two underage girls in a Blackpool hotel room, kept quiet about the whole affair.

The rest of the website is the usual BNP ethnic-bashing, and there's an attempt to smear London Metropolitan University on the grounds that an alleged Muslim extremist had been a student there. There's even the outright lie that white students have been bullied and expelled because of their ethnicity:

It has been alleged that white ethnic minority students (yes that’s indigenous British and English students) have been bullied and even expelled because of their ethnicity. Anyone with information about about anti-white violence or intimidation can contact the Student BNP via this website in the strictest confidence.

And somebody (maybe me) will contact the LMA in the strictest confidence to point them in the direction of the BNP's libel.

An "Adventure Training" weekend is planned: "Wednesday 13th to Wednesday 20th August 2008. Training and development camp. Places are limited to ten young people and two adults per region."

Note that there's nothing there about enhanced disclosure being applied to those running the weekend, or the two adults per region allowed on the trip.

"BNP Student News" points to a blurb for the BNP's Great White Records: "Part of the BNYM aim is to promote indigenous talent. We start this by promoting a new telent recently signed up to Great White Records." (As always, we preserve BNP spelling and syntax.)

In "School Watch" there's an article titled "The Betrayal of British Children", which is just an attack on the Drove Primary School, Swindon, for saying it is what it is - multi-cultural! Having claimed that the education system "continues to fail", the writer then demonstrates the fact: "Its enough to make you weep Of course they are missing the point. There should be one language spoken and one culture celebrated in the school, and that is British and English" (sic).

The "news" on the website so far is the normal BNP fare of alleged racist attacks against whites, and the only "Letter to the Editor" at the time of writing is quite clearly the work of a very adult hand.

The "Jokes" section then takes the rise out of 90% of the BNP's membership, with a series of "Chav" jokes posted by somebody rejoicing in the name "Youth Officer".

All in all the BNYM offering simply apes the main BNP site. It's a site designed to inculcate and spread hate among the young, and it doesn't have any other purpose.

We'll be keeping a close eye on this, because spreading hate at any time is a serious criminal offence - and spreading it among the young and vulnerable is the most despicable offence of all.