BNP nazi guest barred from UK

A white supremacist friend of Nick Griffin, the British National Party leader, was banned from entering Britain yesterday as he headed to speak at the BNP’s Red White and Blue festival this weekend.

Preston Wiginton (left), one of the world’s most active nazis and antisemites, was refused entry by immigration officers at Heathrow airport under laws to keep out “undesirables”. He was to have been the star overseas guest at the BNP’s tenth RWB festival, which opens today in Derbyshire.

It was Wiginton, 44, who organised Griffin’s anti-Islam tour of three US universities at the end of October 2007. As well as financing the trip, Wiginton appealed to users of the Stormfront nazi internet forum to donate money to Griffin while he was in America.

Wiginton had been unknown in the UK before Griffin’s trip and it was Searchlight that exposed him and revealed his extensive nazi activities and connections. This was no doubt what brought him to the attention of the UK Border Agency.

Shortly after his tour Griffin wrote an open letter to “European Colleagues” endorsing Wiginton’s involvement in organising a march in Moscow at which leading nazis addressed a crowd of fascists giving the Nazi salute while shouting “death to the Jews” and “Pure Russia”.

Griffin praised Wiginton as a “very effective organiser [who], rarely among American nationalists, understands the importance of image and popular acceptability to all nationalist parties”. The letter explained that Wiginton “is very well connected in Russia, with good contacts with various nationalist organisations and elected politicians”. The organisations to which he refers are some of the most racist and murderous neo-nazi groups and skinhead gangs in Russia who have been responsible for dozens of racist murders.

Referring to Wiginton’s role in planning a “major march and rally” in Moscow Griffin continued “the BNP supports this endeavour wholeheartedly and asks all our European comrades to do likewise, hopefully thereby creating the beginnings of an effective cooperation between patriots of both Western and Orthodox Christendom against our common enemies: Mass immigration; radical Islamism; Western liberalism and Wall Street/White House dollar imperialism”. The language is typical of neo-nazis.

Griffin and Wiginton have collaborated for many years. Wiginton spearheaded US support for Griffin during his trial for inciting racial hatred, setting up an online petition calling on the British government to drop the prosecution. Together with Jamie Kelso of Stormfront, he also organised a protest outside the British consulate in Houston, Texas in January 2006.

Wiginton’s connections and activities are wide-ranging. He caused a furore at Texas A&M university some years ago by arranging a series of meetings for Frosty Wooldridge, a prominent opponent of immigration. The two men ran a joint campaign to repeal a 2001 Texas law that allows immigrants to pay the same reduced fees at state universities as Texas residents.

These days Wiginton works with the Texas chapter of the Minuteman Project, a group of would-be vigilantes who take violent exception to Mexican immigrants, or the “mestizo parasite” as he prefers to call them.

Kevin Strom, leader of the neo-nazi National Vanguard (NV), was another associate until his arrest on child pornography charges when Wiginton and Griffin dropped him like a ton of bricks. Wiginton boasts of being friends with perhaps the most famous NV member, April Gaede, mother of the nazi pop twins Prussian Blue. Their act is named after the chemical residue left by Zyklon B, the gas used to murder the Jews in the Nazi death camps.

Wiginton also has close ties to Denis Gerasimov, lead singer of the notorious Russian white power band Kolvorat (Swastika), for whom he wrote a racist ditty on how immigration is diluting the purity of Russia’s “blood” and “soil”.

Despite repeated denials to the contrary Wiginton regularly posts antisemitic vitriol to Stormfront to which he also donates money. A typical posting of his, on 13 July 2007, read: “And the jew – how many nations and economies have they destroyed – yes they were doing this in many centuries ago as well. The jew has infested every nation – there is no where else to go.”

That Griffin should invite this hardline nazi to help celebrate his election to the European Parliament at the BNP annual festival shows yet again that the BNP’s claim to legitimacy is just a pretence and that Griffin has not moved far from his fascist roots.

Searchlight/Hope not hate

A hot August?

In February 2001 senior British National Party officers and activists from the North West gathered in Oldham for a regional conference. The local organiser greeted them with the words “welcome to Oldham, the front line of the race war”.

The words were ominous. By May Oldham was burning after racist provocations and attacks drove a des-pairing Asian community onto the streets to defend itself. Two months later Bradford was ablaze. The scenario was the same: goad and abuse people in the streets, in their homes and shops, and sooner or later they will defend themselves.

Those arrested from the local Asian community were treated harshly and with some haste. Despite the firm evidence of involvement of the BNP and other nazis, racists and football thugs, justice was dealt out to them much later. The convictions upheld what we had been saying all along: a conspiracy involving disparate sections of the far right but led mostly by known BNP activists, who had helped plan and orchestrate the “race war”.

Despite continued pronouncements from Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, about a coming “civil war” (race war), the authorities have been looking in only one direction for terrorist threats. Until last year they failed to wake up to the ample evidence of far-right efforts to set this country ablaze this summer, unchanged by the BNP’s European success.

The BNP’s declared enemies, Muslim communities, are the target. And the BNP has had a growing influence on other far-right extremists who want a war in our streets against not only Muslims but anyone of Asian origin.

Many of those responding to the call of several different groups looking for a fight with Islam are unaware of who is jerking their strings. Unless the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) intervene directly, there is a danger of serious violence spreading across the country this month and beyond.

The accompanying diagram focuses on some of the key groups and players to whom officers of the BNP are offering political and physical assistance. The BNP will not be able to wriggle off the hook, but action after the event is not good enough; prevention is needed.

Two outbreaks of violence in Luton earlier this year wrong-footed the police. The situation was not helped by the failure of the local council to ask for Home Office intervention. As a result the police have stepped up infiltration and disruption of some of the key groups.

The far right were looking for a catalyst for action and found it on 10 March as troops from the Royal Anglian Regiment, known as “The “Poachers”, were to be welcomed home from Afghanistan with a parade through the streets of Luton.

Eight members of a Muslim extremist group, already disowned by the local Muslim community and told to stay away from the Luton mosque, put on an appalling display of hatred towards the troops, calling them child killers and butchers.

It would have been no problem for the large number of police stewarding the local people who had turned out to greet the troops to arrest these fanatics for race hate offences. Instead two people ended up being assaulted by the angry crowd. Only one was one of the Islamists – a former local leader of the fanatical al-Muhajiroun group. The other victim was the former mayor of Luton, a Sikh who was there to greet the troops.

Paul Ray, a Dunstable-based Islamophobe who blogs under the name “Lionheart”, applied for local authority permission to stage a St George’s day parade but was turned down. However he had already attracted the attention of the BNP and a series of anti-Islam groups including the United British Alliance (UBA) and March for England (MFE), both of which had been visible outside the notorious Finsbury Park mosque when Abu Hamza, the terrorist-linked extremist preacher and his followers had seized control.

After Abu Hamza was expelled from the building, he would preach hate to his followers in the street every Friday, until he was imprisoned in May 2004, and the UBA and MFE would turn up to jeer. These encounters were overwhelmingly non-violent, except when the National Front (NF) turned up and were driven away by the UBA and MFE.

The UBA and MFE appeared to draw large numbers of young men including some black people and even a couple of Jewish football supporters from Surrey. Many were former soldiers and former football hooligans. They were frighten-ingly disciplined. Hundreds marched to the Regents Park mosque in that period.

While these largely overlapping groups have kept up an internet presence, it was not until the events of 10 March in Luton that they suddenly reappeared on the streets.

Denied the opportunity to heat things up in the name of St George, Ray was attracting interest from Chris Renton, a BNP activist from Weston-super-Mare, and several other BNP activists from around the country including Marlene Guest from Rotherham, whose main claim to fame is her statement in Sky TV’s BNP Wives programme that some good had come out of the Holocaust in the form of dentistry and plastic surgery.

Tom Holmes, the NF leader, called on his troops to turn out against Islam at the earliest opportunity, which came on Easter Monday, 13 April, when the police decided to stop the progress of an anti-Islam demonstration in Luton.

The police struggled with a large crowd and even the use of horses did not disperse them. They included familiar faces from the pro-nazi football crews from the time when the nazi terror group Combat 18 was active in the 1990s. Only when police reinforcements from London arrived were they able to disperse the demonstrators.

Separate from the MFE and UBA are the English and Welsh Defence League (EWDL) and Casuals United, run by the Welsh football hooligan Jeff Marsh. They all used to work together until recently when Ray turned against Dave Smeeton, leader of the MFE.

On 24 May the EWDL produced a bigger turnout with football hooligan support for a march that had been given the green light by Luton Council and the Bedfordshire Police. The result was a disgrace as Islamophobes, hooligans and fascists broke away from the local marchers and tried to storm the Muslim area of Luton. Shops and cars were damaged and 150 young Muslims prepared to fight to safeguard their homes and families. It was beginning ominously to look like the fascists were achieving their aim of a repeat of the Oldham and Bradford riots.

In the run-up to 24 May Luton mosque had been the target of an arson attack.

At this point these various groups decided to spread their message of hate to other parts of the country.

Now there were signs that police infiltration was succeeding. A call to march through central London evaporated after intelligence was passed to the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist command SO15. Then a mysterious figure called Dave Shaw called for EWDL supporters to gather at a Wetherspoon’s pub near Trafalgar Square on 27 June to go on to an activity outside the East London mosque in Whitechapel. Only a few turned up to be greeted by a large police presence and no sign of Shaw.

The EWDL began to realise it was a police sting operation and most of them decided to go drinking in Convent Garden instead. The police told the rest they could go to Whitechapel but only with a massive escort. Reports suggest that only eight to ten made it and were filmed, photographed, shoved around and told to behave on the tube journey.

The following weekend, on 4 July, the EWDL picketed a “Life under the Shari’ah” Islamic road show in Wood Green, north London, organised by the Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary, to find the police clamping down on both them and the Islamists.

On the same day the EWDL staged a voluble protest in Birmingham’s Bull Ring “against muslim extremists that interrupted a British soldier’s funeral”. Again prompt police action prevented any real trouble.

One of the nazis present was Mike Heaton, “Wigan Mike”, the violent leader of the small but crazy British Freedom Fighters, not deterred by being charged with racial hatred after his arrest outside the BNP victory rally in Blackpool in June.

The Islamophobes intend to return to Birmingham for a “march against sharia law” on 8 August. The date was fixed for before the start of the Midlands football season. Luton Town plays its first match on that day but the demonstration starts at 6pm, giving fans plenty of time to get there.

Interest in going to Birmingham may be growing. One Luton Town supporter noted that the EWDL had recently changed its booking from a 25-seat to a 52-seat bus. One nazi noted how it was the eighth day of the eighth month which, for nazis, translates as the eighth letter of the alphabet: “HH” or “Heil Hitler”.

Three whites from the extreme left in Birmingham have tried to recruit and incite Muslim teenagers to respond by taking to the streets with racially abusive language and slogans. Perhaps two political extremes are seeking confrontation in the city.

Now Martyn Page, the Hitler-saluting treasurer of the BNP’s Broxtowe group, is organising forces intent on setting the country ablaze, offering to bring in some heavy lads from his area. The target is Luton and the date is 30 August.

Searchlight

The Way Forward

With the BNP winning two seats in the European Parliament Nick Lowles looks at where the anti-BNP campaign goes from here

There are three clear facts that need to be remembered at the outset of this article. The first is that the British National Party has won two seats in the European Parliament. This provides it with the platform, financial clout and semi-respectability from which it hopes to build future success at a local and even parliamentary level over the coming year. Secondly, their election is a game changer. Debates around no platform, access to the media and political representation will change whether we like it or not and we will need to adapt accordingly. Finally, and in terms of this article probably most importantly, anti-fascism can be successful particularly if it becomes more organised. While I will argue that only by addressing the public policy issues that give rise to the BNP and challenging the racism at the core of its support can the far right be properly defeated, anti-fascism, particularly at a local level, can halt and even reverse its growth.

It is also important to dispel two widely (though separately) held assumptions. Firstly, this is not the protest vote against mainstream parties and useless locally elected representatives that many politicians would like us to believe. It is an increasingly hard and loyal vote which is based on political and economic insecurities and moulded by deep-rooted racial prejudice. This in turn is linked with a second myth, that the way to beat the BNP is simply to tack left and offer more socialistic policies. While this might peel off some BNP supporters who feel economically marginalised, it will not in itself address the strongly held racist views of many BNP voters.

As the YouGov poll (see below) clearly shows, the racism of many BNP voters goes well beyond simple opposition to current immigration and eastern European migrant workers which one might expect if their support for the BNP was prompted simply by economic insecurity. Belief in the intellectual superiority of white people over non-whites, the view of nearly half of BNP voters that black and Asian people can never be British, the almost universal dislike of even moderate Islam and the contempt and suspicion many of their voters have towards a liberal and multicultural society show how hardline much of the BNP support is and how it will take more than a more progressive economic policy to win them back fully.

More importantly, and regularly overlooked by politicians, activists and commentators alike, are issues around identity. As I have discussed before, the BNP is emerging as the voice of a forgotten working class, which increasingly feels left behind and ignored by mainstream society. As the YouGov research confirms, the majority of BNP voters feel that the Labour Party, for many their traditional political home, has moved away from them and is now dominated by a middle-class London elite who care more for Middle England and the interests of minority groups than for them.

Class politics exists but not as we once knew it. The Labour Party, in line with many other centre-left parties across western European and Scandinavia, draws the bulk of its support from the middle class, public sector workers and minority communities, especially in the big cities. The BNP, on the other hand, is the voice of a section of the white working class, particularly in those areas of traditional industry that have experienced the greatest economic and social upheaval over the past twenty years.

Most of the local authorities with the biggest BNP vote are in areas once dominated by the car, steel, coal or ceramic industries. All have gone, and those people able to leave have left. While some new jobs have replaced those lost, the work is generally lower skilled, short-term and further away from their home. In addition to economic difficulties the identity of the areas has collapsed, leaving behind a confused, resentful and alienated minority. This is the cultural war that the BNP has cleverly exploited, particularly by tapping in to people’s paranoia that outside forces are deliberately conspiring against them and giving preferential treatment to others (viewed by most BNP voters as undeserving).

However, all is not lost. While the BNP vote edged up it did not make the sweeping gains it and others predicted. The vast majority of voters still reject the BNP and many of those equally disillusioned with the political process did not vote BNP but stayed at home.

Addressing the widespread economic insecurities, solving the democratic deficit and forging new progressive identities requires public policy changes that are beyond the remit of the HOPE not hate campaign and anti-fascism generally. We can mobilise the anti-BNP vote and even sometimes suppress the pro-BNP vote but we cannot build houses and reduce waiting lists; we cannot prevent undercutting of wages and the abuse of migrant workers. Local anti-fascist movements cannot get resources into communities, often the poorest, dealing with extraordinary levels of migration.

That is the job of politicians and political parties. It is their failure currently to do so that is resulting in the increasing tribalism of local politics along racial and religious lines.

Making a difference

What we can do, however, is make a difference on the ground. And we do. Results in several local authority areas in the European elections showed the BNP vote (both actual and share of the vote) down compared to 2004. Among these areas were Burnley, Pendle and Oldham in the North West, Bradford and Kirklees in West Yorkshire, and Sandwell and Dudley in the West Midlands.

A common factor in all these areas has been the intensity of local anti-BNP campaigns, which has been all year round and not just a leaflet at an election.

And this sets the model for the year ahead. We will go into the 2010 local elections with an emboldened and financially secure BNP and we believe the number of council wards at risk is now over 150 across the country. The BNP’s main target will be Barking and Dagenham where it will be looking to take control of the council.

To fight the BNP effectively we must move away from city and town centre events to focusing on the very communities where the BNP is drawing its support. We need to return to localised leaflets and newsletters, tapping into the local identities of neighbourhoods and addressing local issues to undermine the BNP’s message of hate.

Smaller, local events are more important than one-off larger ones. The recent anti-racist carnival in Stoke-on-Trent might have been attended by 15,000 people but was it really the best use of £300,000? Even the carnival the year before, in Hackney, might have been attracted 60,000, but what impact does it have on the London hotspots such as Barking and Dagenham and Havering?

The effort required to put on and build such an event drains and diverts activism away from local campaigning, which will be the priority in 2010. Of course in the ideal world we would like both big national events and smaller local events, but where funds and activism are limited this is not possible.

A proper local strategy requires us to localise our campaigning. What works in one area will not work in another. Talking to principally Conservative voters requires a quite different leaflet to what would be put out in a traditionally Labour area. Localising our approach allows us to deal with local issues and also to target our message depending on what we are trying to achieve. And mobilising the anti-BNP vote is sometimes quite different from trying to suppress the BNP vote.

That is why the HOPE not hate campaign will be encouraging and supporting local groups to begin their own local anti-BNP newsletters. We hope that by starting this summer and focusing on the key wards for 2010 the newsletters will become a crucial tool to defeating the BNP at the ballot box.

To begin to undermine local BNP support we also have to build alliances within the community. Local anti-BNP groups need to be accepted and even respected. Every community has key movers and shakers and spending a bit of time cultivating relationships with these people will open new opportunities, allow our message to be widened considerably, potentially increase our activist base and give us a regular flow of information to rebut BNP myths and lies.

We also need to be cleverer in how we present our arguments. The YouGov survey shows the complete lack of respect BNP voters have towards authority – way beyond those of other parties. That means dogmatic or one dimensional arguments on anti-fascist leaflets are likely to fail.

We have to recognise that we might not always be the best messenger to get over an argument. One of the most successful leaflets we have ever produced was in Halifax where we got quotes from local doctors and pensioners to dismiss BNP claims that asylum seekers were forcing old people off GP lists and causing hospital operations to be cancelled. The strength of getting other people to speak up for us, particularly those respected by local people, is also evident from the survey. Local GPs, at 82%, came out as the most trusted professionals among BNP voters.

A new reality

We also have to accept that the political landscape has shifted. Searchlight comes from a proud tradition of No Platform, a belief that fascism should not be allowed to air its politics of hate publicly. We have always opposed legitimising fascism through public debate and where fascists try to incite hatred within communities through provocative marches and actions, we have backed mobilisations against them.

While I still adhere to this in principle I also believe that we have to accept a new reality. Firstly the BNP has MEPs and whether we like it or not Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons will appear more regularly on television. No platform agreements between political parties were already breaking down before the election, with only Labour holding to them, and this process is likely to quicken now.

Likewise, we also have to change our tactics on the streets. The hammer attack on a BNP activist in Leigh, Greater Manchester, in March was an unmitigated disaster. When we learnt about the BNP’s intention to hold a fundraising event in a local nightclub we got almost 5,000 people, including 400 from the local area, to sign an open letter from a local vicar calling for the event to be cancelled. Our pressure proved successful but what should have been a great media story, showing the strength of people power against the BNP, became three days of appallingly negative local headlines after an anti-fascist struck a BNP member in the head with a hammer.

Our response to any BNP activity is a tactical issue. Just as we always consider what is possible, so we have to think about the possible outcomes. With large chunks of local people supporting the BNP something that gives the party media sympathy is often counter-productive. In a 24-hour-communica-tions world every small event that in the past would have gone unreported can be headline news on television, the radio and on the internet within minutes.

With the BNP leaders far more politically savvy than in the past it is not difficult for them to spin a story to their advantage.

There is also a need for an honest debate about the use of rallies, marches and pickets. While one could argue that it is important continually to oppose the BNP gaining any legitimacy, such protests are increasingly ineffective and, probably more importantly, a distraction from the real work required in the communities.

The reality is that most people other than a few highly motivated activists will not come out on a regular basis. Continually chasing the BNP uses up their time when there is more serious but perhaps less glamorous work to be done in local communities. Again, people might say that we should do both. That may be the ideal but it is not the reality and choices have to be made. We have to prioritise our agenda rather than continually react to the BNP’s. Obviously there will be times when mobilisations are important but this cannot be a distraction from the real work at hand.

Moving forward

Over the next few months our priority is to build anti-fascist groups in every community in the country. Over 115,000 people have engaged in some activity for the HOPE not hate campaign. That’s an incredible one in 470 adults in Britain. Over 80,000 people have signed our “Not in my name” petition since the election, of which over 60,000 were completely new to us.

This shows the level of anger at the BNP success, but now we need to harness it in a positive and constructive way that helps us build the necessary networks that can defeat the BNP in the community.

Our initial job is to turn our online supporters into activists on the ground. Hopefully some will emerge as local organisers, committed to the localised strategy ahead. Old hands must be encouraged to support new organisers and we will be providing an organising and leadership programme in every region of the country.

A series of one-day training events will be held to give key activists from local groups the basics in running a local campaign group, working in a target ward and building alliances within the community.

From there a handful of the most enthusiastic local organisers will be invited to a three-day residential programme, to be held in the late autumn, where they will develop leadership and organisational skills.

Developing a pool of local organisers is the way to ensure good quality campaigns. Whatever the enthusiasm of local activists a lack of organising skills and the ability to localise campaigns effectively will result in continued reliance on national help, which in turn reduces the effectiveness of a local campaign.

To support local groups, particularly in the run-up to next year’s local and probable general election, the HOPE not hate campaign will be seeking to put trained organisers on the ground in each region of the country.

The work of local groups will be further supported by an even bigger online effort than we achieved this year. Through online telephone canvassing, supporters across the country will be able to help in our key battlegrounds from their front rooms. Matching groups and activists in one part of country where there is no BNP threat to an area where there is one can help us raise money for local material.

Remaining focused

The BNP success has led some to argue that we need to politicise anti-fascism, even to offer a political alternative to the BNP. While there are clearly public policy failings and a democratic deficit, it is not our job to fill this void. We must leave that to the political parties, old or new.

We are about defeating the BNP, both by turning out those voters totally opposed to their racist politics and by dispelling myths and challenging the assumptions and ignorance that give rise to BNP support.

We have a big job to do but it can be done. The work on anti-BNP campaigns in East Lancashire, Oldham, the Black Country and West Yorkshire is testament to that.

However, for us to defeat the BNP over the coming year requires hard work, building local broad-based coalitions, adapting to the new realities and being a little bit smarter than we have been before. Get these components right and we can hold the BNP at bay.

A hard and alienated vote

Who votes BNP and why

A new survey into the attitudes of BNP voters has produced some startling revelations. Unsurprisingly BNP voters are overwhelmingly opposed to immigration and asylum seekers but a sizeable number also share the BNP’s hardline attitudes about citizenship and racial superiority.

It shows that BNP voters are predominantly working class, drawn from former Labour-voting households and feel more insecure about their economic prospects.

Conducted by YouGov from 29 May to 4 June, the survey questioned 985 BNP voters as part of a much bigger study of the political views of 32,268 people.

The study tells us that men are twice as likely to support the BNP as women, 44% of BNP voters are aged 35 to 54 and 61% are drawn from the social groups C2DE. One third of BNP voters read The Sun or the Daily Star, whereas only 13% read the Daily Mirror and those reading The Guardian and The Independent are statistically insignificant. One fifth claim to be members of trade unions or trade associations and 36% identify themselves as skilled or semi-skilled manual workers.

On one level the report tells us little new. More BNP supporters regard immigration as one of the key issues facing the country at the moment – 87% compared to 49% among all voters. Again unsurprisingly, 94% of BNP supporters believed that all further immigration should be halted. This compares with 87% of UK Independence Party voters, 68% of Conservative voters, 46% of Labour voters, 43% of Lib Dem voters and even 37% of Green voters.

Only 4% of BNP voters believed that recent immigration had benefited the country.

What is more startling is the strength of the racial attitudes of many BNP voters. In a result that gives the lie to the BNP vote simply being a protest, 44% (compared to 12% of all voters) disagreed with the statement: “non-white British citizens who were born in this country are just as ‘British’ as white citizens born in this country”.

Among BNP voters 21% strongly disagreed with the statement compared to just 1% of Greens and Lib Dems and 2% of Labour and 3% of Conservative voters.

More disturbingly, 31% of BNP voters believed there was a difference in intelligence between the average black Briton and the average white Briton.

Although only 2% of BNP voters deny that six million Jews, Gypsies and others died in the Holocaust, a further 18% accept that the Holocaust occurred but believe it has been exaggerated.

It is clear that the BNP receives support primarily on issues of race, immigration and identity but there is also a clear link with economic insecurity. Several of the questions probed respondents’ views on their current and future economic prospects. BNP voters repeatedly had the most gloomy outlook.

When asked whether they were satisfied that they had enough money to live on comfortably, 74% of BNP voters said no, compared to just 43% of Labour and 50% of Conservative voters.

On whether they were confident that their family would have the opportunities to prosper in the years ahead, 75% of BNP voters said no compared to just 35% of Labour voters.

Over half of BNP voters felt the financial situation of their house- hold would worsen over the next 12 months. In contrast only 29% of Labour voters agreed and 27% thought it would get better.

Again, more BNP voters thought someone in their family would lose their job in the current recession than supporters of other parties.

One of the most startling results was the response to the statement that “there is a major international conspiracy led by Jews and Communists to undermine traditional Christian values in Britain and other western countries”. Amazingly one third of BNP voters completely or partially agreed.

However, the significance of this response actually lies in the feeling of victimisation felt by many BNP supporters and cleverly exploited by the BNP itself. The view that they are losing out because of the conscious action of others is widespread among BNP supporters and it comes out clearly in this survey. Over three quarters of BNP voters believed that white people suffered unfair discrimination whereas only 3% thought Muslims did. Nine out of ten BNP supporters felt that councils allowed immigrant families to jump housing queues.

This feeling of victimisation coupled with a widespread belief that the Labour Party, which most once supported, at best no longer cares about them and at worst conspires against them makes these voters susceptible to the BNP’s big lie. It is hardly a surprise then that so many people in Barking and Dagenham were happy to believe the Africans for Essex myth.

Think of the balance of forces. On one side you have the Labour Party (which 57% of BNP voters think no longer cares about them), politicians (who 78% of BNP voters think are corrupt), senior officers in the council (who only 1% of BNP voters trust a great deal) and immigrants (who 87% of BNP supporters think are a problem and only 4% believe contribute anything positive). Then you have the BNP, the anti-establishment party speaking up for the forgotten white working class.

This survey is both predictable and disturbing. While immigration remains the dominant issue for BNP voters it is clear that they more than any other group feel economically insecure and politically abandoned. What is shocking is the depth of their racism and the alienation from mainstream politics. Support for the BNP goes far beyond being a protest, as some politicians would have us believe, and the racist attitudes will not disappear simply by improving economic conditions.

We should be under no illusion that a long and hard struggle lies ahead.

What do you think?

We are opening up the August issue of Searchlight to find out your views on the way forward. Please restrict articles to 500 words and get them to me nick@stopthebnp.org.uk by 10 July. (Please note that space is limited and we cannot guarantee to publish every article.)

Nick Lowles, Searchlight

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

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

BNP leader Nick Griffin says postmen should be sacked for not deilvering his leaflets

BNP demands sack for defiant posties

BNP leader Nick Griffin has said postmen who refuse to deliver his election leaflets should be sacked.

In a message on the far-right party's website, Griffin urged supporters to complain to Royal Mail if they do not receive a leaflet.

He branded posties who won't distribute BNP propaganda as "antidemocratic idiots". Communication Workers Union officials in Bristol have backed Royal Mail staff in the West Country who have refused to put the leaflets through letterboxes.

Griffin told supporters to "catch these anti-democratic idiots and get them sacked". His comments have since been removed from the BNP website.

Last night a spokesman for antiracist organisation Searchlight said: "The BNP are trying to bully postmen into delivering hate-filled propaganda. It should be a matter of individual conscience for each postal worker whether they deliver the BNP's message of fear and racism or not."

Pete Doherty is to headline the Mirror's Love Music Hate Racism festival. The festival, at Stoke City FC's stadium, is on Saturday, May 30.

Today the Mirror's Hope Not Hate bus will be in Spennymoor, Co Durham, at 11am, then Ferryhill from 12.30pm. On Sunday we will be at Grey's Monument in Newcastle from noon.

Mirror

Lumley: BNP sickos slur hero Gurkha

Angry Joanna Lumley last night blasted a British National Party leaflet targeting a heroic Gurkha recently killed in action.

The Ab Fab star branded as “disgusting” the racist party’s use of a picture of Corporal Kumar Pun* with a cross through it. Thousands of the hate-filled leaflets also demand: “Stop this illegal Gurkha immigration.”

They were issued by teacher Adam Walker, a BNP candidate in next month’s European elections. His party warns of “Gurkha ghettos” if the Nepalese fighters win the right to settle here.

Joanna, 63, said: “The use of a brave British Army Gurkha’s photograph as part of their political campaign is disgusting, especially as he has not yet been buried. A vote for the BNP is a vote against all Gurkhas, against honour, sacrifice, duty and courage.”

Joanna yelled their war cry “Ayo Gorkhali” — “The Gurkhas are coming — outside the House of Commons last month after MPs backed her bid to let all Gurkhas who served in the British Army live here. Ministers ruled last week that Corporal Kumar’s widow and two daughters can stay in Britain. But in his leaflet for the European elections, Mr Walker, of Durham, uses scare tactics to demand they are sent packing.

It reads: “The Government would allow over half a million Gurkhas into this country. This will swamp our local housing and the NHS as most Gurkhas are elderly. They would contribute nothing.”

Last night a spokesman for the anti-racist group Searchlight said: “For the BNP to slur the memory of a serviceman who has laid down his life for his country is sick beyond belief.”

Sedgefield Labour MP Phil Wilson added: “This leaflet just shows what the BNP stand for. I was shocked. I didn’t think that even this party would go that far. It’s an absolute disgrace.

Gordon Brown has promised to review Gurkhas’ rights after a campaign led by Joanna, whose father fought with the brigade. About 36,000 have been denied UK residency despite being prepared to die for the country.

BNP leader Nick Griffin warned of “Gurkha ghettos” and vowed to remove all non-serving Gurkhas.

Technology teacher Mr Walker, 39, left Houghton Kepier Sports College in Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, in 2007. He is being investigated over claims he used a school laptop in lessons to contribute racist views to online chats.

Sun

* Cpl Kumar, 31, was blown up ten days ago alongside three British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Great day in Great Yarmouth for HOPE not hate

Linda Jack, John Valentine, Richard Howitt MEP and Cllr Rupert Read pose at the meeting point

HOPE not hate came to Great Yarmouth on Saturday the 9th for the largest anti-fascist activity seen in the town for 30 years.

Organised and supported by Great Yarmouth and District Trades Union Council, campaigners distributed nearly 5000 pieces of HOPE not hate and other anti-fascist literature and spoke to large numbers of people - in fact the HOPE not hate campaigners went about their task with such professionalism that a four hour event became a two hour event when our stock of leaflets ran out.

Groups of HOPE not hate canvassers were spread all over the Market Place, Market Gates, King Street and Theatre Plain, and later joined up for a moving leaflet/canvass of Regent Road, returning to Theatre Plain and disbanding there.

The BBC's Politics Show filmed and interviewed participants for most of the two hours. Their journalist told us he thought 45 people had attended, but with campaigners arriving and leaving throughout the two hours it was hard to tell.

Euro candidates Richard Howitt MEP, James Valentine (both Labour), and Cllr Rupert Read (Green) and various Borough councillors all lent their enthusiastic support.

Part of the UNITE contingent in Theatre Plain, others in background

We're pleased to report that the majority of those taking part came from the Great Yarmouth area, but others came from Norwich, East Dereham, Beccles and Luton (thanks Geoff Webb of the PCS union - a man for whom the loudhailer was invented). Of the organisations invited only the Conservative Party (presumably immune to the BNP) failed to send representatives. The Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Greens, various trade unions, church groups and concerned individuals put aside their differences and stood united in the two aims of bringing the truth of the fascist BNP to the people of Great Yarmouth and persuading them that not to vote was as good as voting BNP.

We think we succeeded. Every canvasser had a crib sheet that illustrated the not-so-hidden Nazism of the BNP using freely available photographs and their own words (thanks, Tyndall, Tommy Williams, Darby et al). Showing that to would-be BNP voters conned into believing that the BNP is made up of people "just like you" worked wonders and we can happily report that we've cost the BNP quite a number of votes.

The one thing we weren't very good at was taking photos - our excuse is that we were too busy getting the message out! However, we know that others took snaps of the proceedings (so send them in when you're read this) and we'll put up some stills from The Politics Show coverage when that becomes available.

Thanks to everybody who gave their time and effort on Saturday - you did Great Yarmouth proud!

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

May 9th - Great Yarmouth Mass Canvass

Saturday, May 9th

Dear Visitor,

The purpose of this message is to alert you to the very real possibility of the British National Party gaining seats on both Norfolk County Council and in the European Parliament in the forthcoming combined County Council/Euro elections.

We believe you will agree with us that such an eventuality will shame Norfolk and lead to a deterioration in community relations.

THE LOCAL THREAT

Prior to the 2007 local elections the BNP presence in Norfolk was tiny but since then its membership numbers have increased dramatically. There is now a significant BNP presence in Great Yarmouth, Norwich and King's Lynn, and the party has taken pains to transform the local organisation into a viable electoral machine. BNP leaders Nick Griffin, Arthur Kemp and experienced elections organiser Eddy Butler have taken a special interest in Norfolk BNP and each of them has made repeated visits to the county to motivate and train their members.

As a result the BNP has announced that it intends to stand a full slate of candidates in the Euro elections and that a "significant number" of candidates will seek election to Norfolk County Council.

Please don't be under any illusions. The BNP means business and on current form has every chance of success in Norfolk.

In 2007 the BNP stood two candidates in West Norfolk's North Lynn ward. Between them they took 34% of the vote and one candidate narrowly missed election. It's important to note that this was the first time the BNP stood in this ward and that the party undertook no canvassing. It does not intend to make the same mistake twice.

In 2006 the National Front's Tom Holmes took 24.9% of the vote in Great Yarmouth's Nelson Ward - the highest National Front vote ever. Had the BNP fought this ward with its less extreme image, better resources, election experience and larger membership there is every prospect that a BNP councillor would now be sitting on the Borough Council.

Across the country the loss of votes to the BNP is affecting all the mainstream political parties. In recent local by-elections "paper" BNP candidates have been taking anything between 10%-20% of the vote. As we write, a by-election in Manchester's Moston ward has produced a BNP vote of 23.3%, much of it gained at the expense of both Labour and the Conservatives. The BNP fought no discernable campaign in Moston. And last month the BNP gained a councillor in Swanley ward (Sevenoaks) - the first time it had ever stood in the ward.

The pace and scale of the BNP's electoral growth has been alarming. The party now poses a threat in Norfolk that any person who believes in democracy and good community relations can no longer ignore. And that includes you!

THE EURO THREAT

The BNP is desperate to gain MEPs in the forthcoming Euro elections. To that end it is mounting its biggest and most professional election campaign ever. In the Eastern Region the party hopes to scrape together enough rag tag and bobtail votes to take it past the 10% required to gain one MEP.

On current form that is not only possible but likely - unless we work together to stop them.

The BNP intends to tithe the salaries of its MEPs and will expect them to claim full expenses, which will then be channelled back into the party. For the first time in its history the party will have access to funding on a scale previously unheard of, with which it intends to "professionalise" itself and to establish itself as a permanent, growing and influential presence on the political stage.

It is vital that all who value democracy and freedom and who wish to keep racist politics out of Norfolk come together and rise to the BNP's challenge.

To that end the non-party politcal HOPE not hate campaign is organising a number of high profile events in Norfolk.

The first of these will take place in Great Yarmouth on Saturday, May 9th.

A DAY FOR HOPE NOT HATE IN GREAT YARMOUTH

We are inviting MPs, MEPs, councillors and members of ALL mainstream political parties, members of Church and other religious groups, community organisations, trade unions and members of the public to sink their differences for just FOUR HOURS on May 9th and to join together in a show of unity aimed at raising awareness of the true nature of the BNP and of increasing voter turnout - the best chance we have of defeating the British National Party.

Our activity will take the form of a mass moving canvass and literature distribution session, starting in the Market Place, moving down Regent Road to the Britannia Pier, then reversing the route. The idea is to engage directly with members of the public. The local Press and TV news will be on hand to interview participants.

Non-party political literature devised by HOPE not hate will be made freely available to all participants courtesy of Great Yarmouth and District Trades Council. We regret that we will be unable to cover any personal expenses incurred.

We strongly urge you to get involved in the campaign to halt the BNP by donating FOUR HOURS of your free time on May 9th - four hours to stop the BNP shaming Norfolk and the East of England!

Please reply to this email as soon as possible - and please pass it on to other interested parties!

Your participation is vital!

Meeting point: Corner of Market Gates/Market Place, Great Yarmouth
Date: Saturday May 9th
Time: 10.00 a.m.
Duration: 10.00 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
Organised by: HOPE not hate, supported by Great Yarmouth and District Trades Council
Contact: AD Stewart (07880 686634) L Sutton (07935 722892)
Email: norfolk@unitywebring.com
Webpage: http://unitywebring.com/hopenothate/

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/

Issued on behalf of Great Yarmouth and District Trades Council.

BNP exploit public's fury at politicians

It's lunchtime in the Ace of Diamonds, and it could be any working man's pub in Britain: darts trophies, Guinness on tap, Queen's "We Are the Champions" on the jukebox and a landlord indignant about the Gurkhas. "You have got people there who have, as far as I'm concerned, an absolute right to stay in this country," says Derek Adams. "They've served this country in the armed forces and they're told they can't stay here! It's absolutely outrageous."

But this is no ordinary pub, and Adams is no ordinary landlord. He is a British National Party activist. And when a Labour government is tacking to the right of the BNP over an immigration decision, there is either something very wrong in Downing Street or something very complex happening in politics.

Adams stood as a BNP candidate last month in council byelections in Moston, a rundown district of north Manchester. It was the first time the party had contested the ward and it came second to Labour.

But when the north-west region votes in next month's European elections, the BNP doesn't need to win: under a system using proportional representation, its candidate and chairman Nick Griffin needs just 8% of the vote - fractionally more than its 6.5% last time - to secure a historic first European parliament seat for the British far right.

On a low turnout, that means about 80,000 votes - a hundred times what Adams got in Moston - across a vast area from rural Cumbria to the Mersey, from Manchester to the Lancashire mill towns. If they string together enough Mostons, enough pockets of anger and fear, the BNP can make a giant leap.

This is the story of a battle, far from the infighting at Westminster, over who stands for modern Britain on the international stage.

Adams's views are mostly predictable: Britain has been "flooded with mass immigration", the police hamstrung by political correctness, schoolchildren held back by foreigners who don't speak English. We have "imported an awful lot" of crime via immigrants, he says.

The familiar BNP posters promising "British jobs for British workers" now include a dig at Gordon Brown's use of the phrase, pledging "when we say it, we mean it!" - although how exactly they mean it is vague. Adams cannot explain how immigrants would be denied jobs except by "pulling out of the EU".

But what is new is the billboard by the pub featuring two besuited pigs fighting over a pile of cash. The "punish the pigs" advert reflects the risk that the party benefiting when mainstream politicians squabble over expenses, and when public trust melts away, is the one outside the system. As Hazel Blears, communities secretary and a Salford MP, puts it: "The BNP have got into 'anti-politics', which taps into a very resonant public mood."

That mood, coupled with recession, gives the BNP an unprecedented opportunity next month for a victory that would transform its finances and public standing. It would also tell black and Asian Britons that a sizeable minority of their north-western neighbours do not want them here. That, says Manchester's Labour council leader Richard Leese, makes him "sick to my stomach".

What Westminster does now can help to defuse this bomb or detonate it. Which explains why many Labour MPs now want Brown to turn things around - or stand aside for someone who can.

Brown's triumphant G20 meeting was supposed to be the springboard for a comeback in June's local and European elections. Yet, four weeks later, disaster piles on disaster - the humiliating retreat over expenses, defeat over the Gurkhas, growing doubts over the budget.

Unhappy MPs are now huddling in corners at Westminster. Steven Byers, who broke ranks to urge the scrapping of ID cards, has been spotted chatting to Siobhan McDonagh, a ringleader of last autumn's failed coup against Brown; Charles Clarke, who says he is "ashamed" of his party, is omnipresent. Today the unease spreads to the cabinet.

A bad election result, says one ex-minister, will be "our last chance to draw breath" and change leaders before the general election: tearoom talk is of stalking horses. "I have been approached by several colleagues," says one MP. "The message is not to go public until after the June elections, but then we should act and have a plan in place."

John McDonnell, the backbencher who challenged Brown for the leadership in 2007, said the party was in a "truly depressing" state: "You can't move in the Commons for plots with people thinking what to do after the June elections."

But even he thinks that while there may be another attempted coup, it might not work. The more likely scenarios are either a cabinet delegation to tell Brown he has lost the country's confidence and should go - making way for Alan Johnson or Jack Straw - or Brown himself, more improbably, deciding to quit.

"Brown has never taken on a fight unless he was certain he was going to win. It is not how he behaves," says one Scottish former minister. "He would hate losing to [David] Cameron, all the more because he has no respect for Cameron."

For now, Johnson remains preoccupied by swine flu - although his failure to answer the Times directly yesterday about whether he might rise to the party's hour of need will be noted. Some rebel MPs even argue for Brown to stay and be roundly defeated: "What would be awful would be for Brown to go and then for a caretaker to fare no better. Then the Brownites would say 'we would have turned it around'."

At Labour's grassroots, exasperation with Westminster is palpable. Theresa Griffin, one of Labour's north-west MEPs, says that when she heard about the smear emails sent by Damian McBride "I thought, 'well that's immediately lost me 2,000 votes'". She struggles to defend MPs' expenses on the stump to people earning the minimum wage.

Lucy Powell, Labour's candidate for the target parliamentary seat of Manchester Withington, says the best thing the government could do for her would be to tackle mistrust, plus "trying to get a bit more of a grip on how we are communicating things. We are getting absolutely trounced in the media".

Even John Prescott, who spent Friday in Liverpool defending Brown for "getting the big questions right" while being heckled over expenses, admits the message needs sharpening. His four-day tour of the north, taking to his soapbox to defend Labour in town squares, seems born of frustration at the government's failure to stand its ground.

So for now the divide is not between rival candidates but between those - like Prescott, Alistair Campbell, Blears and David Blunkett - launching their own last fight for survival and those apparently giving up. But simply blaming a floundering government for the resurgent BNP is to misread the runes. As Labour's deputy leader on Manchester council, Jim Battle, points out, while the Labour vote dipped last month in Moston, it was the Conservative vote that collapsed: the BNP now seems to be attracting working-class Tories. Which makes them Cameron's problem too.

The anonymous Manchester blogger, the Moston Martyr, divides local opinion. Some suspect him of having links to the BNP; he insists he is just an angry ex-Labour voter. But the video he uploaded to YouTube last summer has had a dramatic impact. The camera pans slowly down streets of boarded-up homes and shops, their windows shuttered blankly in steel: a community where nobody lives, much of it since demolished under slum clearance.

It is a lament for a lost way of life, what its author - speaking on condition of anonymity - remembers as a thriving community where people looked out for each other. Nostalgia is a rightwing staple, but he insists his memories are not rose-tinted: "It was always a rough working-class area. But you knew who the baddies were and most people were decent."

His film attacks a council which, he argues, thought regeneration meant building a "shiny new leisure centre", but failed to stop housing being snapped up cheaply by private landlords and rented out to problem tenants. Those residents who could get out, he says, sold their houses for as little as £3,000.

But the way his film brackets together asylum seekers with "druggies and antisocial families", while dwelling on shots of young black men on street corners, was a godsend to the BNP. He reflects, at the least, an intimate understanding of what drove their supporters.

The Moston Martyr says he made the film because nobody was listening: "How can speaking up for a working-class community that has been displaced by socialists be fascist? The Africans coming into Moston are for the most part decent, hard-working people. I've got no qualms about that. What I have got qualms about is the powers that be have not listened to local people, just decided that Moston can be an African area."

He says he would rather spoil a ballot paper than vote BNP "because I like to think I've a bit of intelligence" but can understand why others do: "The chattering classes get upset - they've not had to live with the changes."

Yet things in Moston are not so simple. The blogger himself says the serious downward spiral started three years ago, but that the immigrants began coming a decade ago: and he admits the traditionally white Irish area was probably "in decline" then. Nor are the class issues straightforward. Research suggests the BNP attracts not the poorest, but those struggling just above them: owner-occupiers, not council tenants. Labour research shows the groups likeliest to vote BNP are southern "white van men" - skilled manual workers - and northern "Coronation Street couples" in terraced houses, not tower blocks.

Manchester councillors have attacked the Moston Martyr's "skewed" film. But some Labour politicians concede the millions spent regenerating inner cities were not always well targeted. "What we have failed to do is regenerate the people," says Joe Anderson, leader of the Labour group on Liverpool council.

Blears argues politicians must combat the BNP's new brand of practical politics - they now campaign on issues such as broken lifts in sheltered housing, taking up grievances unsolved by mainstream councillors - by diligently pursuing casework. The Tories, meanwhile, have appointed a full-time anti-BNP official: young "Cameroons" are now volunteering for the anti-fascist group Searchlight in recognition of the changing threat.

But while debate continues over the causes of BNP support, the mainstream parties have more urgent battles to fight.

Down at the end of Liverpool's Northumberland Street, the grey waters of the Mersey sparkle in the evening light as local councillor Joe Hanson argues patiently on the doorstep with a man who wants Brown removed "for someone with good social ideas". Hanson ducks this one and suggests that not voting Labour in June is as good as voting BNP. "I see your point," the man sighs. "What's the alternative?"

On this largely white Liverpool estate Labour is still broadly welcome. Critically, the only people mentioning the BNP here are the canvassers. "The BNP are standing and we really need you to vote Labour," Theresa Griffin says, on doorstep after doorstep. Such tactics would backfire in some areas, she says, but in others - even where unemployment is high, as it is here - the revulsion the BNP still creates can work to Labour's advantage.

She says activist numbers are up: even party workers loath to defend their government will turn out to fight the far right. Which matters, because the key tactic for all mainstream parties is maximising turnout. In a proportional voting system, the actual number of voters the BNP needs rises sharply the more voters go to the polls. Hence the message from Searchlight and from Hope Not Hate - a coalition of churches, gay groups, trade unions and celebrities - is just to vote: vote for anyone but the BNP.

And it is not just about targeting inner cities. The genteel south Manchester suburb of Didsbury is stuffed with what the software on Labour computers labels "Mosaic E" voters. "Guardian readers, basically," explains Lucy Powell, whose prospective seat covers the area.

Typically public sector workers, they hated the Iraq war - helping to swing the seat to the Liberal Democrats in 2005. They will be heavily targeted next month because they are naturally inclined to vote, but may not see the need. The message will be that under PR, every vote counts, so the liberal middle classes must do their bit. "Every vote cast here is one more vote the BNP have got to get from somewhere else," says Powell.

Nonetheless, the fear is that principles will be forgotten in the rush to protest. Which is why mainstream politicians are turning to outsiders such as the comedian Eddie Izzard, who hosted a gig in Manchester last week for Hope Not Hate. The elections would be held two days before the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Izzard told the crowd: "This is our D-day. I am going to be there on the Normandy beaches with the veterans: that was when our boys and our women went in to fight the fascists. Now the fascists are trying to get elected. We have six weeks until D-day."

There are signs that BNP support is shallow, lacking resources and manpower. Leaked BNP documents obtained by Searchlight show it has already scaled back its ambitions to focus on two regions, the north-west and the west Midlands, where it has made much of the killing of a BNP activist by his Asian neighbour in Stoke.

Nonetheless, 4 June remains not just D-day for Brown. It may also be D-day for deciding what kind of society Britain will become. For once, a cross in a ballot box really could change history. And not voting might mean living with the consequences.

The far right's changing face

- The original British National party emerged during the second world war as an offshoot of the British Union of Fascists, but later changed its name. A second version appeared in 1960 before merging with the National Front. The current BNP emerged from the breakaway New National Front in the 1980s under former NF chairman John Tyndall.

- Nick Griffin the current leader, took over in 1999 and began repositioning the party by toning down its more extremist public statements. Breakthroughs at council level followed three years later when it gained three seats in Burnley. In 2006, Griffin was acquitted on charges of stirring up racial hatred after being caught on camera accusing Muslims of turning Britain into a "multiracial hellhole".

- Under Griffin, members have been instructed to cover tattoos before canvassing and dress smartly. Bulletins issued to supporters ahead of this June's elections instruct organisers to observe "a period of zero tolerance towards any member making careless extremist remarks" to prevent "adverse publicity".

- The BNP'S biggest breakthrough at these elections has come from using new media - blogging, YouTube, Twittering and social networking sites such as Facebook - to get around "no platform" policies observed by the traditional media and civil society, designed to deny it the oxygen of publicity. It calls on members "to spread the truth of who we are", and to use proper spelling and grammar.

- At its electoral peak in 2007, the party held 47 council seats nationwide after doubling its gains in the 2006 local elections. It has since slipped back due to a series of resignations and expulsions but it still has a London Assembly member, Richard Barnbrook, left. The party still struggles to compete in terms of manpower and resources with mainstream parties in larger-scale elections.

The Guardian via UTV

Ex-BNP member speaks out - "Just tell them to fuck off"

BNP organisers gather for Easter bash

A little bird dropped the notice below in our laps – not one of the birds that Simon Darby, deputy leader of the BNP and the party’s press officer, is forever watching, even when he is in London acting as part-time personal assistant to Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s solitary London Assembly member.

Darby, as we reported here on 5 April, has just come back from a trip to meet fascists and nazis in Italy. According to the BNP’s website he called for increased cooperation with European nationalist groups at “a conference attended by over 400 people in Rome”, which was rather odd as the fascist Forza Nuova rally Darby attended was in Milan. Darby is the lead BNP candidate in the West Midlands. If he and any of his geographically challenged BNP colleagues in other regions get elected to the European Parliament in June, they may well fail even to find their way to the Parliament’s offices in Strasbourg and Brussels.

But back to the regional council meeting, held the day before Easter Sunday, when even BNP organisers might prefer to spend the time with their families. Perhaps they need an extra incentive to attend. Possible Darby, keen to repay Butler, the BNP’s national organiser and elections expert, for all his hard work, brought back some Italian Easter eggs to give to the first arrivals at the redirection point at Birchanger Green services on the M11.

Here is the letter from Eddy Butler, complete with grammatical errors:

Dear All

We are holding a vital regional council meeting on saturday 11th april.

Meet at 12.30 at birchanger green services on the M11 (the stanstead airport and bishops stortford turnoff)

This is short notice but we have vital things to discuss before the elections get under way in earnest and this is the only free date. Every unit must be represented.

Eddy butler

Eastern regional organiser

HOPE not hate

An open letter from Nick Lowles - Give one hour to stop the BNP!

Dear reader,

I am writing this open letter to you because I need your help. With the European election only a few weeks away it is absolutely vital that we all do what we can to stop the BNP from winning seats in the European Parliament. A significant BNP victory would herald the era of four-party politics and the BNP, with its leaders who peddle race hate, division and fear, would become a lasting national threat, and one that will play out in the ballot box and in our communities.

But they need not win. This election is being contested under proportional representation and so every vote counts. It is also a turnout election so we need everyone who opposes the BNP’s politics of hate to vote and convince others around them to vote.

This month Searchlight is launching its “Donate an hour” initiative. We are asking all our readers and supporters to give us a minimum of one hour to help us stop the BNP. Towards the end of this letter I will give you five ways you can help stop the BNP.

We are facing the biggest political challenge to date but if everyone who opposes the BNP’s message of hate does something then we can stop them.

The BNP threat

The threat from the British National Party in the forthcoming European election is very real. With just a small increase in the share of the vote the party secured at the last European election in 2004, the BNP could win three or more seats. Let there be no misunderstanding, a substantial breakthrough in the European election would change the British political landscape for years to come.

And it would change for the worse.

Each MEP is entitled to around £250,000 a year for staff and office support. Rather than benefiting voters in the region, the BNP would employ organisers to push its racist agenda in local and national elections.

That’s exactly what it has done in London, where its representative on the London Assembly employs two people, the party’s deputy leader, Simon Darby, who lives in Wales, and its Essex organiser Emma Colgate, who lives in Thurrock.

More importantly, a significant BNP breakthrough would fundamentally change the BNP’s fortunes and our ability to stop them. They would achieve a respectability and credibility that they can now only dream of. They would become regular fixtures on news programmes and we would no longer be able to pressurise the authorities to stop their activities.

As MEPs, they would be able to intervene on any issue and in any community they wish. We only have to look back to Oldham a few years ago to see how this can play out on the streets, winding up communities and pitting neighbour against neighbour. Increased tensions, fears and violence will likely follow.

Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, needs to increase his 2004 vote in the North West from 6.4% to just 8.5%. Simon Darby only has to increase the BNP’s 7.5% vote in 2004 to 10.5% to take a seat in the West Midlands. And Andrew Brons requires his share of the vote to grow from 8% to 10.5% to take a seat in Yorkshire and The Humber.

The BNP even pose a threat in the East Midlands and London. They need to double their 6.5% vote in the East Midlands but with 26% of the electorate having voted for the UK Independence Party in 2004, which is now a mere shadow of its former self, this is not unfeasible. The BNP might only have polled 5.3% in London in last year’s London Assembly election but this could easily rise to the necessary 8.5% if inner London, which came out strongly for Ken Livingstone and Labour 12 months ago, remains at home this time.

Turnout will be a major factor.

Few people appear interested in the European election. A poll taken towards the end of last year found only 3% even knew that there was an election this year at all. Most people who are interested probably dislike the EU all the same.

In 2004 the BNP was prevented from winning through a high turnout, caused largely by all-out elections in the Metropolitan authorities in the North and West Midlands on the same day, and a huge vote for the UKIP. Neither of these factors are likely to benefit us this time. With no local elections in the urban areas of the North West, Yorkshire and The Humber and the West Midlands, turnout is likely to plummet.

In 1999, when the European elections was held without other elections at the same time, turnout nationally was just 23%. It was even worse in the North West, where the biggest BNP risk is. Twelve of the 20 local authorities with the lowest turnout were in Greater Manchester and Merseyside, with just 13% of people voting in Liverpool.

If there is anything like a repeat of this turnout then we have little hope of stopping the BNP. One trade unionist in Burnley put it very succinctly at a recent meeting. If only one million of the five million registered voters in the North West bother to vote then Nick Griffin will only need 90,000 votes to get elected. And they will certainly get this.

If two million people bother to vote, achieving a 40% turnout, then the BNP will need 180,000 votes. Suddenly it becomes more difficult for them. If there is a 50% turnout then the BNP will need 225,000, which surely is beyond their reach.

Turnout is absolutely crucial. In a short election campaign we will try to depress the BNP vote but that is far more difficult, and time consuming, than turning out our anti-BNP vote. And this has to be our crucial task. A turnout of less than 30% and it will be virtually impossible to stop the BNP from winning seats.

Mobilising

It is against this backdrop that the HOPE not hate campaign is being organised. It will be our biggest and most sophisticated campaign to date. During May we are organising days of action and mass leafleting all across the country. So far we have activities organised in over 70 local authority areas, with more to be confirmed. Some will be small events, with just a handful of people, but others will mobilise hundreds. There is now a competition between Manchester and Liverpool for who can put more people on the street on 16 May. Wigan has set itself a target of delivering 50,000 newspapers and Barking and Dagenham is aiming for more than 250 people to take part in its day of action.

However, we also recognise that we alone cannot defeat the BNP. The HOPE not hate campaign is working with a number of partners who have their own networks, among them trade unions and faith groups. If the trade unions can increase polling day turnout among their 750,000 members in the North West they can really influence the outcome. If these trade unionists can persuade their partners to vote, that will push up the turnout even further.

We are working with all the main trade unions, often customising specific literature with messages that are pertinent to their members.

Faith groups will be crucial. They have a credibility and authority in many of the communities where local politicians have disengaged. In Greater Manchester alone, the Anglican Church has over 500 full-time employees and a similar number of part-time workers, and the church as a whole has the largest community outreach project in the country. Give these people the arguments and tools to take the message to their congregations and we are really beginning to motor.

The Jewish community is already organising. In parts of north London turnout among Jewish voters in 2008 was almost 80%, largely mobilised based on the desire to defeat the BNP. A similar campaign in Manchester and Leeds is being organised and will obviously boost our vote.

High stakes

The stakes have never been higher. I’m presuming that you, as a reader of Searchlight, share my opposition to the BNP and its politics of hate. But now I must ask you to do a little bit more. If we are to defeat the BNP then we must all play a role, and we must do it now.

We have to say to ourselves, and our friends: If not me, who? If not now, when?

This is why I am asking you to donate a minimum one hour to fight the BNP. That’s my ask to you and I hope it will be your ask to your friends and family.

Many of you could probably donate far more than an hour to the campaign, but even if it is only one hour it can make a difference.

One hour is enough time to deliver 150-200 leaflets or newspapers. It is enough time to address a union branch meeting or send an email to all your friends and family explaining why you are voting in this election and to urge them to do the same.

If we all gave just one hour then we can do an enormous amount. If every Searchlight reader delivered at least 150-200 leaflets then over a million could be distributed. This could be doubled if we all found one other person to do it as well. This would be multiplied several times over if the 22,000 on our growing HOPE not hate email list also committed an hour.

And if everyone donated just two hours during May then really anything is possible.

We are building something very special this year at the HOPE not hate campaign. We are combining traditional anti-fascist campaigning with community organising. We are using new technology to bring in tens of thousands of new activists into the campaign in a way that the political parties cannot. We are doing all this because the threat is so real.

I hope you will give me the hour and in the process play your part in the HOPE not hate campaign. Please don’t wake up on 5 June thinking there was one more thing you could have done.

Yours in solidarity

Nick Lowles

Please get involved by visiting http://www.hopenothate.org.uk

Searchlight

Former BNP member warns party is focusing on Wales

A former British National Party insider who is now a campaigner with anti-fascist group Searchlight has warned that the party is intent on making Wales one of its strongest areas.

Matthew Collins, who was in Cardiff to address a fringe meeting at the Plaid Cymru conference, said leading figures in the party were convinced the would drive disenchanted working class communities into the BNP’s arms.

The far-right party has recently increased its activity in several parts of Wales, notably in Carmarthenshire, where it now has a community councillor.

Mr Collins, 37, became involved with the BNP in South London when he was 15. He was quickly promoted within the inner circle of activists and became privy to many of the party’s secrets. After a violent attack by BNP sympathisers on a group of protesters, Mr Collins became disillusioned and decided to contact Searchlight. For three years he passed information to Searchlight, including details of planned activities by BNP members and the breakaway group Combat 18, whose founder and former leader Charlie Sargent is serving a life sentence for murder. Two TV exposes were made based on his disclosures.

When he came under suspicion, Mr Collins fled to Australia for 10 years. He kept up his campaigning, exposing financial irregularities that led to far-right politician Pauline Hanson being jailed. He returned to Britain in 2003.

Yesterday he said: “The BNP has a great interest in Wales. Nick Griffin, the leader, and Simon Darby [leading member and spokesman] live here. It’s something to do with the Welsh history of dissent, which they think they can tap into, and the fact there are a lot of poor working class communities where they hope to increase support in the recession.

“I get the feeling people in Wales are a bit complacent about the BNP. While I don’t think they have a chance of winning a seat in Wales at the European Parliament election in June or at the general election, they will definitely challenge for a regional seat at the next Assembly election.”

Wales Online

Named and shamed: BNP squirms under the spotlight

As the British National Party was preparing for the official launch of its campaign to get Nick Griffin elected to the European Parliament, the wheels were about to come off the party’s wagon big time.

The BNP had ended its annual conference in Blackpool on 15-16 November bemoaning the “deliberate media blackout” of the event. But Nick Griffin, the party leader, was hoping for publicity for the announcement the following Tuesday that he would head the BNP list for the European elections in the North West, where it has a realistic chance of winning a seat.

But Griffin’s campaign launch was completely overshadowed by the discovery that a list of BNP “members” had been posted on an internet blogsite. It included home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and interesting notes about their jobs, hobbies, whether they were activists or party donors and concerns about individuals who might prove an embarrassment to the party, including a prominent activist with unspecified convictions.

It unleashed a media feeding frenzy. The national papers and radio and television stations pored over the names searching for minor celebrities, service personnel, teachers, doctors and anyone else who might spark a “shock horror” reaction in readers. There were former members of all the three main political parties, which was no great surprise. Two members of Queen Elizabeth’s staff were said to be on the list, though one turned out to be retired and the other said he had never actually joined.

And that was the problem. The list contained 12,801 names compared to the BNP’s current membership of around 9,300, down from 9,784 at the end of 2007. So there were at least 3,500 who were lapsed members or people who had merely shown some interest.

Several newspapers produced maps and all kinds of statistical analysis. Local papers counted all the members in their readership area. But it meant little because the list was unreliable.

The names appeared largely to date from late 2007 with a few more recent additions. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, seized on the date to blame a “former head of administration of the party”, who had kept a “membership and skills list”. This was Kenny Smith, one of the leaders of last winter’s unsuccessful internal rebellion in the BNP.

Since then, Smith has become a convenient scapegoat. When the BNP’s 2007 accounts embarrassingly failed to pass audit, Griffin wrote, “Accurate accounting for this year is problematic owing to the point-blank refusal of the former head of Administration to account for large amounts of expenditure”. Smith was also blamed for failings with the 2006 accounts and their lateness, which resulted in a fine.

Smith strenuously denied leaking the list and grabbed another chance to hit out at Griffin. “Whatever the reasons for the publication of the list, ordinary BNP members should not have to suffer because of the crass incompetence, flawed personality and arrogance of the Party Leader.”

It does seem unlikely that Smith and his supporters were responsible for the publication of the list, in contravention of a court injunction and legal proce-edings by the BNP which have already cost them money. The BNP has never been very good at data security and such lists were undoubtedly held and circulated by several senior members. It is not the first time such a list has leaked, though never before in such spectacular form.

A more likely explanation is that it has come from a senior BNP member with a more recent grudge against the party. There are plenty of possibilities. Griffin runs his party in an autocratic manner and stamps firmly on any dissent. The annual party conference debates motions supposedly put forward by the party’s regions, but in fact selected by its central Advisory Council. Although it is possible to force a leadership election, every obstacle is put in the way of a challenger. And although the party website allows comments, only those supporting the party’s line are posted and anyone expressing hostile sentiments has their website registration cancelled.

Whoever did it, Griffin had to act fast to save his embattled party. A few members insisted that the leak only confirmed their allegiance, many others were worried. Police officers are prohibited from BNP membership and joining the party could constitute gross misconduct leading to dismissal. Officers have already been suspended and several police services are combing the list carefully.

Others too feared for their jobs. It is interesting to consider why someone in a sensitive position, perhaps working in teaching, local government, the civil service or the NHS, should join a party that they clearly realise is so disreputable that it would cause them to be ostracised.

Here the BNP apparently scored a bit of a coup. “One of this country’s top employment law firms … has offered pro bono – free – representation to any person who is threatened by their employers as a result of the ‘leaked membership list’ smear,” announced the party website. The firm was not named. Solicitors often work pro bono, partly mindful of the good publicity this generates, but these solicitors must have realised that helping the BNP for free was more shameful than charitable.

In reality it would be difficult to sack an employee with more than a year’s service simply for belonging to the BNP unless the employer can show that membership is incompatible with the individual’s job or has a negative impact on colleagues, customers and the local community, and that there is a clear policy spelling this out. It was under this principle that Serco dismissed the former BNP councillor Arthur Redfearn from his job as a driver transporting vulnerable adults and children to schools and day centres, a decision upheld by the Appeal Court.

Protection of the law was not enough for the BNP’s self-styled “legal eagle”, however. Writing on his blog the day the story broke, Lee Barnes advised: “For those people who have been named on the list all you need to do is deny you are a member if asked. Your employer cannot ascertain whether you are actually a real member of the BNP, and we will confirm that you are not a member if you ask us.” In other words the BNP was prepared to back up its members’ lies with more of its own.

The BNP also played the victim card as hard as it could. There were ridiculous accusations from Griffin and Simon Darby, the party’s deputy leader and press officer, that “call centres” were being used to make threatening phone calls to BNP members. The media sought out members who expressed fears that they or their families would be attacked.

We would condemn absolutely anyone who thinks the way to fight the BNP is by physical attacks on individuals or their property. But history shows it is the racists who call for violence against opponents. The vicious hate website Redwatch posts photographs and personal details of hundreds of people, many supplied by BNP organisers and activists, as a way of intimidating their political opponents. Some have had threatening phone calls and abusive letters as a result. Others have been attacked. They include two teachers whose car was firebombed outside their home in Leeds in a case of mistaken identity, and Alec McFadden, president of Merseyside Trades Council, who two years ago was confronted on his doorstep by a man wielding a knife and slashed repeatedly across his face in front of his two young daughters.

Indeed Darby’s initial reaction to the publication of the list appeared to be a threat of violence. If the culprit was found, Darby declared, “it will turn out to be one of the most foolish things they have done in their life” and “I wouldn’t be sleeping very well tonight”. Griffin had to leap in to explain that Darby was only threatening legal action with a potential prison sentence.

Griffin, a conspiracy theorist par excellence, claimed the list had been leaked to coincide with a hearing of the General Teaching Council (GTC), which he expected would stop a BNP member from working as a teacher. “Had that been the result,” Griffin wrote, “the verdict would have been a big news story, which would have set things up perfectly for the follow-up publicity storm about thousands of BNP members being ‘exposed’ which would have broken over the rest of the week.”

In the event the GTC postponed the hearing, but the publicity storm happened anyway and Griffin worked desperately on spinning it in the BNP’s favour. “Nothing could show better just how frightened the liberal ‘elite’ now are of our coming breakthrough,” declared Griffin in an “urgent message” two days after the story broke.

“The publicity about the high quality of our membership has massively improved our image,” he claimed. “The whole affair has blown up in the faces of the plotters and the anti-British traitors. The public are more eager for our message than ever, and many of our new website visitors will keep coming back, become committed nationalists, and join our ranks.”

“High quality” would not describe the two men sentenced in Blackburn at the end of the week for sexual activity with 14-year-old girls. Ian Richard Hindle, 32, and Andrew Paul Wells, 49, had exploited the girls’ vulnerability, police said, welcoming the total of five years and three months imprisonment the pair received. Their BNP connection did not emerge in court or in a local newspaper report, but both their names can be found on the list. Wells is also a convicted football hooligan and has acted as a bodyguard to Griffin. (See pages 18-19 for more details of criminals and extremists in the BNP.)

The BNP may gain a few members out of the thousands who visited its website, assuming they accept Griffin’s assurances that the party’s “investment in new technology and procedures” will stop any more leaks. What the party finds hard is keeping members. Less than 40% of members renew after the first year, the party itself admits.

We have been contacted by people on the list who say they joined but quickly became disillusioned when they found out the truth, which is that the BNP is still a racist party infested with thugs and Holocaust deniers. The presence of a few managers, IT professionals and ex-servicemen will not change that, just like two years ago when it was revealed that a principal dancer with the English National Ballet was a BNP member, despite the BNP milking the connection for all it was worth.

© Searchlight Magazine 2008