BNP campaign comes off the rails

‘‘We rather it hadn’t happened! ’’ That was the conclusion of Martin Wingfield, editor of the British National Party’s Voice of Freedom monthly, on the MPs’ expenses scandal. He was writing three weeks before polling day amid growing signs that the BNP’s campaign for the European election was falling apart.

MPs’ expenses had come on top of the “economic meltdown, credit crunch, Muslim threat, the loony left, employment, and home repossessions” combined with “a hated government and a mealy-mouthed Tory party” that Griffin claimed in a fundraising appeal in March would create a “perfect political storm” that would “result in this party exploding onto the world stage by taking several seats in the European Parliament”.

Yet even after days of media focus on political sleaze the opinion polls were reporting that the BNP was still only attracting 3-4% of the vote, far short of what it needed to win even one seat in Europe. It was the eurosceptic UK Independence Party to which disillusioned voters were turning.

Wingfield put it down to the “voter volatility” that the expenses scandal had caused. “Without the expenses scandal, the BNP was quietly working towards having three MEPs elected on June 4th,” he wrote. “It would have taken a political earthquake to stop us winning in the North West, Yorkshire and the West Midlands … and now, of course, that is exactly what has happened.”

What had happened was that the BNP had attracted the attention it craved, but the media were not playing ball. Journalists, with a little help from Searchlight, were looking beyond the BNP’s carefully cultivated veneer of respectability and finding the same old fascist party it had always been.

The media did not have to dig far to find the BNP’s racism and shamefulness, which led Richard Pendlebury in the Mail on Sunday to describe it as “a marginal group with a rotten ideological core”. There was the embarrassing Activists’ and Organisers’ Handbook, which found it necessary to tell members not to look and behave like thugs and banned them from setting up local BNP websites and blogs because “they can’t write proper English” and “get carried away promoting cyberspace conspiracy theories which, even if true, strike the public as barking mad”.

Then there was the Language and Discipline Manual, which instructed members not to refer to “Black Britons” and “Asian Britons” because “such persons do not exist”. Exposure forced party bosses quickly to rewrite it.

The media revis-ited other episodes that the BNP would have prefer-red forgotten, such as the participation of its deputy leader, Simon Darby, at a fascist conference in Milan in April, where he was greeted by fascist stiff-right-arm salutes. The BNP’s claim that Private Johnson Beharry did not deserve his Victoria Cross and was only awarded it because he was black came back to haunt the party.

Darby came out with a clumsy attack on the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, describing him as an “ambitious African” and referring to his fellow Ugandans as spear-throwers. The BNP demanded that a banned Ku Klux Klan leader should be allowed to enter Britain, but was less keen on Gurkhas, with Griffin on Radio 5 Live describing them as “mercenaries” and saying, “We don’t think the most overcrowded country in Europe can realistically say, ‘Look, you can all come and all your relatives’.”

It did not help the BNP campaign when Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s most senior elected politician, got an airing for his admission that he had invented three murders in Barking and Dagenham to highlight knife crime, a claim for which he could be suspended from the London Assembly for up to six months.

And Bob Bailey, the BNP’s London organiser, was caught mass mailing implicitly threatening emails to anti-fascists. When challenged he said lamely: “I’m not denying I sent it but I can’t remember”.

There was worse, far worse. The BNP’s main slogan for the campaign is “British jobs for British workers”. It is illustrated ubiquitously by a picture of three white men in hard hats in front of a Union Flag. But they were no British workers.

The BNP had bought the image from a picture agency. The men were American models who posed for a general photo shoot in Portland, Oregon.

Other images on the millions of election leaflets the BNP had printed for distribution by the Royal Mail had also come from agencies. Alongside a white pensioner couple are the words: “We’ve seen how this country has declined under the present government and we’re voting BNP because they will put pensioners before asylum seekers and ensure our future.”

The couple turned out to be the Italian parents of the agency photo-grapher, who were appalled that their picture had been used to spread far-right propaganda. A doctor, a Guardsman and a mother, all quoted supporting the BNP, were no more genuine.

The former Scots Guards NCO Stuart Walker was shocked when the leaflet dropped through his letterbox with his picture and the made-up quote implying he would back the BNP because the party would stop soldiers being “abused” by Muslims. “They are scumbags and I’d never vote for them in a million years,” he told The Sun, adding that when he phoned the BNP to complain he was told to “f*** off”.

The only British voters on the leaflets were the Cass family, who in last year’s local elections appeared on BNP material all around the country pretending to be local voters – everywhere. Deceit is nothing new for the BNP.

The pictures were not the only lies. The leaflet outlined three key BNP pledges. One was to oppose “the dangerous drive … to give 80 million low-wage, Muslim Turks the right to swamp Britain”. But the population of Turkey is only just over 75 million and growing slowly, and they are by no means all low-waged.

No wonder many Royal Mail staff refused to deliver the BNP leaflets.

The British workers’ image has been plastered over the side of the BNP’s “truth truck”, better known as the lie lorry, a white Iveco advertising vehicle with Northern Irish registration plates. It toured the country during the campaign, though remarkably almost all the many pictures that appeared on BNP websites showed it cruising empty streets.

The BNP claimed to have bought the “truth truck” last year after a successful appeal to supporters to raise the £26,550 needed. In his 2009 New Year address, Griffin wrote, “your cash allowed the party to buy our very own state of the art advertising lorry and roll out the first of many nationwide Truth Truck Tours”.

It turned out to be another deception. Mark Croucher, a UKIP activist and freelance journalist, had obtained a county court judgment for several thousand pounds against the BNP for infringement of copyright for using one of his photographs without permission. When bailiffs tried to enforce the judgment by seizing the vehicle the BNP’s solicitors responded that: “the goods referred to are registered in the name of another person who … has no connection with the judgement debtors”.

The BNP’s campaign has run into other money troubles. In March the party started appealing for the £395,000 needed centrally to fight the European election. It included £210,000 to print 29 million leaflets, though this was not entirely honest as each region was also expected to raise the money itself for its own leaflets. It was because London region was unable to raise enough that it only had the A5 version of the BNP leaflet, according to Bailey.

There was also £25,000 for billboard advertising during the final two and a half weeks of the campaign and an-other £25,000 for newspaper adverts, including the online adverts that have appeared, though not for long, on local newspaper websites. All feature the stock American “British workers” picture.

A thermometer-style graphic on the BNP website showed rapid progress up to a bit over £325,000 and there it stuck. A succession of increasingly desperate campaign emails to supporters pleaded for donations to raise the final £90,000.

But the party could not leap the final hurdle. On 11 May David Hannam, the BNP deputy treasurer, passed on a letter from Griffin to branch fund-holders (the BNP term for treasurers) asking them to make all surplus funds available to Central Office “ASAP”. “Work with me on this it really is all hands on deck!” the letter ended.

On 18 May another campaign email appealed for the final £35,393, although the thermometer graphic, no longer on the BNP site’s home page, still showed a shortfall nearer to £60,000.

The BNP claims to be receiving 100 enquiries a day at its new call centre, the fruit of its “rapid expansion plan”, which Griffin claims raised £85,000 to equip four new party offices across the country. At its campaign launch in Grays the BNP proudly showed a film of its new staff hard at work in near identical surroundings. A sceptic might wonder whether was the same office filmed from different angles.

Amid all the bad publicity surrounding the BNP, the party grabbed the chance to crow after The Sun printed a story about a damaging BNP local leaflet that attacked the Gurkhas. The BNP said the leaflet was a forgery, The Sun took the story off its website and Griffin lied blatantly that he had always supported the Gurkhas. Had a maverick BNP supporter decided to set his very own Reichstag fire to kick new life into a faltering campaign?

The latest BNP begging letter implored: “It is crucial that we win a seat”. It was a far cry from the “six or seven” seats the party thought possible when Griffin appealed for funds in March. His desperation was palpable, as was his very personal interest in the outcome. “If you want to see me elected on June 4th … Help me now!” he wrote in a postscript.

The BNP has poured everything into this campaign. Griffin’s emails repeat the mantra, “We won’t get a second chance! It’s now or never”, and he is probably right. If the BNP cannot make it in the present political and economic climate, it never will.

Sonia Gable writing in Searchlight

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

The BNP's bad news week

Any pretence that the British National Party is anything other than a pale copy of the Nazi party it strenuously claims not to be ended with the pre-ordained expulsion of Roger Robertson (previous post), campaign manager for Councillor Colin Auty's doomed leadership bid.

Reflecting the attitude of the BNP to all normal concepts of justice, Robertson was told by the party that he would be expelled even before the rigged disciplinary tribunal set up to "try" him had met. He told the Hampshire Fleet News: "I’d already received an email previous to the tribunal saying I was going to be expelled from the party. The interesting thing is that I don’t feel at all disappointed that I’ve been expelled. The fact is that myself and many other like-minded people are being let down by the leader [Nick Griffin] and his sycophant coterie. He surrounds himself with yes men and people who simply obey his orders."

The online Get Hampshire website, reporting the story of local man Robertson's expulsion, included quotes from a widely circulated email believed by many to have been authored by the BNP's anti-semitic dope-smoking "legal advisor" Lee Barnes, which said: "Anyone who has already signed or is thinking of signing the nomination forms for Colin Auty will be suspended from party membership pending an internal disciplinary tribunal where members will be tried for conspiracy and treason. Those found guilty will be expelled from the party and proscribed for life."

As this fits in perfectly with public statements previously made by both Nick Griffin and Lee Barnes few saw any reason to doubt the email's authenticity, but Barnes - a known liar and manufacturer of numerous libels - sought to deny that the words were his, and threatened Get Hampshire with a libel suit if the statements attributed to him remained.

The threat was made by email and was as hollow as a previous threat made against the author of this article and the Lancaster Unity website, but Get Hampshire caved in and removed the entire article - giving Barnes one of the few (and undeserved) victories he has ever enjoyed.

In the meantime, Barnes was on the Nazi Stormfront in his Walk Towards The Light persona, saying: "Trying to get members to break away and form a splinter party, will get anyone kicked out of any political party."

As Robertson had not attempted to do this, and as he was never charged with doing so, Barnes was, as usual, lying - and rather confirming suspicions that he was indeed the author of the disputed email.

In the same Stormfront thread, Griffin mouthpiece Purging The Droid promised a purge of Griffin's opponents to come: "Leave the door open on your way out Mr. Todger [Robertson], there are others following not far behind you."

Robertson's expulsion was quickly followed by Colin Auty's resignation from the BNP and the announcement that he is to stand down as a Kirklees councillor.

From the moment Auty's intention to stand against Griffin for the BNP leadership was announced the Griffinite party machine swung into action to demean and belittle one of its most prominent councillors, and made barely veiled threats against those - such as Roger Robertson - who supported the challenge. "One official described me as a joke candidate," Auty told the Yorkshire Post. "It might sound funny coming from a BNP member, but I believe in democracy. The process was certainly not democratic."

The only real surprise is that Auty took so long to make the discovery.

It is evident that the BNP leadership, though loathing Auty, feared the damage he could do as a loose cannon outside the party, and it appears that last minute attempts were made to keep him on board, not least by Freedom editor Martin Wingfield.

Inexplicably, Wingfield opened a blog post with a nonsensical piece on how he sat down on Wednesday night with a glass of wine and listened to part-time musician Auty's racist "Savile Town" song three or four times. "Colin Auty is a brilliant nationalist musician and, as someone else in the business of winning people over to our cause, I know just what a potent message there is in his songs. Great stuff Colin, well done."

The cooing and billing had little effect, as by then Auty had made his decision.

Martin Wingfield is the author of the most meaningless spin-phrase ever invented by the Griffinites. "The BNP's quiet revolution" handily damps down electoral expectations while simultaneously conning BNP members into believing they are enjoying steady success, when, as the last round of local elections clearly indicated, the BNP enjoyed stagnation, steep reverse and very little by way of success.

Last Thursday's local by-election results were so appalling for the BNP that Wingfield could barely bring himself to comment on them, instead focussing on a short article appearing in the obscure Wiltshire Gazette & Herald newspaper, "Voters turn out in force to reject BNP", which was, according to Wingfield, a "shocking piece of journalism".

Not quite as shocking as the loss of one third of the BNP's vote in Wigan West, the loss of half of its vote in Kirklees Dalton, or the derisory 37 votes (1.4%) "achieved" by the party in Redbridge Cranbrook.

Cranbrook candidate Anthony Young whined afterwards, "If you were to ask me why we bothered to fight this time round I would have to reply that trying to understand what my party's leadership is thinking is like trying to read the mind of God", which drew the comment from BNP deputy-leader Simon Darby, "I would suggest that he won't be standing again."

Always quick to attribute the BNP's alleged successes to the leadership of Nick Griffin, the Griffinite cheerleaders were - as ever when bad news hits the party - notably reticent in coupling his name with these disasters.

In the space of a single week, then, the British National Party had a kangaroo court expel a well-known member on utterly bogus charges, seen one of its best-known councillors leave the party, and watched its vote plummet in the three by-elections it fought. Its only "victory" was that of the demented Lee Barnes in having a barely-read internet story taken down from a website.

Such is the BNP's "quiet revolution". Such is success, Nick Griffin style.