[Background here]

A potential BNP applicant has a screening interview with a BNP spokesman over some ironically non-indigenous tea and samosas.

Applicant: “So, how long have you guys been here ?”

BNP spokesman: “‘Guys’ is a foreign American term representing an alien culture and we’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t pollute Britain’s traditional culture and values by using such genocidal words. But to answer your question, we’ve been here since the end of the last Ice Age.”

Applicant: “When was that ?”

BNP: “17,000 years ago.”

Applicant: “The Ice Age actually ended 12-13,000 years ago.”

BNP: “That’s what I said.”

Applicant: “No you didn’t.”

In an amusing judgement today, a court ruled that the BNP was still discriminating against ethnic minorities who wish to join the BNP after their new rules were rejected:

[The BNP] said members had to sign up to maintaining the “integrity of the indigenous British” and be interviewed for up to two hours by BNP officials.

So to join the BNP you have to agree to have two party members (perhaps Lee John Barnes and a mystery guest) come round and grill you. I can imagine it now:

White bigot 1: “Are you a racist?”

Non-white bigot: “Yes I’m a racist.”

White bigot 2: “Are you sure you are a racist?”

Non-white bigot: “Bugger off whitey.”

White bigot 2 (turns to white bigot 1) “Does that mean we can let him join?”

…

And so on.

The Maurice Smith Review, charged with carrying out ‘a full and detailed review of the provisions which prevent the promotion of racism in schools’  has reported back to Government and it’s findings have been accepted by Ed Balls in full.  Apparently the review was so full and detailed that the investigations  included a meeting with a National Front press officer, as reported by the Daily Mail. 

The DCSF press release * about the report outlines six recommendations made by Smith including monitoring by Ofsted and annual Government review states:

The current safeguards in place to protect children and young people in maintained schools from discrimination or political indoctrination include:

- a requirement for schools to have equal opportunities policies
- a duty to promote racial equality
- a statutory duty to promote community cohesion
- a duty on governing bodies, head teachers and local authorities to forbid the teaching of partisan political activities
- disciplinary powers of the GTCE

  Maurice Smith adds:

Although police and prison officers are banned, to ban more than half a million teachers – or six million public servants – from joining a legitimate organisation would take this to a different scale of magnitude. Additionally, there is no consensus on this matter, and no agreement on where to ‘draw the line’. [my emphasis] (more…)

The BNP’s regressive racist ideology is already well-known; however, they also claim an explicitly religious justification for their beliefs and actions. In fact, during a European Parliament debate in January 2010 about the Haiti earthquake, Nick Griffin himself actually started quoting from the Bible in order to justify his argument that absolutely no humanitarian aid should be given to the victims of the disaster because it had occurred in “somebody else’s backyard”.

Irrespective of their claims to speak for “Christian Britain”, the BNP has been heavily condemned and explicitly rejected by both the Church of England and the Methodist Church. The BNP’s racism and divisive tactics have also recently been jointly condemned by Christian, Sikh, Muslim and Jewish faith leaders in Stoke-on-Trent, one of the BNP’s major target areas, and the individuals concerned have signed a formal pledge of unity.

A bit late, but here are the farcical scenes from the BNP’s membership meeting, which voted to change the rules to allow non-whites to join in order to head off a possible prosecution by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The spat has already cost the BNP more than £100,000.

The meeting saw a journalist manhandled out of the meeting (despite being invited), which Nick Griffin hailed as an example that the BNP hadn’t gone soft (perhaps in response to renewed pressure from the National Front and disgruntled BNP members).

Recently the Guardian interviewed the BNP’s Sikh, Rajinder Singh. Reading through the interview is both depressing and hilarious (at times).

Mr. Singh confesses to only put the turban on for the media, not because he feels it has any importance:

It feels strange to hear these words from a man in a turban, but Singh ­admits he’s only wearing it for my ­benefit. He’s not a religious man and is clean shaven, but he wore a turban the first time he ever had “media exposure” – on BNPTV, the party’s online ­channel – and has decided to do so whenever speaking to the media because “the message carries more weight” coming from a turban-wearing Sikh.

The there is this bit:

He’s been to several party meetings and says he never feels awkward in their company. “They treat me normally,” he insists. “I feel at home.” I ask if he thinks many BNP members can tell the difference between Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. “They might think of me as a Paki,” he replies. “I’ve had people shout ‘Paki Go Home!’ when I walk down the street. But that speaks much about the ‘Paki’ reputation – it’s a negative reaction to Pakistan.”

In other words, “my mates are racist towards me but its my own fault for being brown.”

This video contains strong, racist language btw.

Lancaster Unity reports:

EDL say they support British laws and that they’re not racist or connected to the BNP, but after the EDL demo in Stoke on 23 Jan 2010, EDL supporters “dispersed” into side-streets to break windows and attack cars owned by Stoke residents. EDL co-founder and convicted knife criminal Jeff Marsh filmed the police ID-ing him by name (0:02 “Jeff Marsh, turn round and go back”) and then filmed EDL supporters chanting “BNP, BNP, BNP” (0:26).

Police then chased the EDL into a nearby park where EDL accused police officers of being “Paki loving bastards” (0:35), “Fucking cunts”, and one officer of being a “wanker” and “Fucking paki lover”

Funny that – they claim only to be against Muslim extremists, like a lot of other internet warriors. Not the same as what comes out of their mouths though.

Terence Gavan, a ‘former’ (his current status is unclear) gold member of the BNP has been sentenced to eleven years in prison after pleading guilty in late November. Mr. Gavan was found to have:

12 firearms and 54 improvised explosive devices, which included nail bombs and a booby-trapped cigarette packet, at the home Gavan shared with his mother.

The BNP called his sentence “correct”, although refused to clarify his membership status. Given that senior figures in the BNP have recently praised violence and not been reprimanded, it is unclear how genuine their statements are.

Hope Not Hate have sent out this strategy briefing regarding the BNP:

The BNP is likely to contest over 200 parliamentary seats in the General Election and up to 1,000 council seats. The main threat is in Barking & Dagenham, where they could take overall control of the council, and Stoke-on-Trent, where they could become the largest single party – and we fear that Nick Griffin could win the parliamentary seat in Barking.

The HOPE not hate campaign has identified 102 council wards in 31 local authority areas that are at risk from the BNP. Just over half of these risk wards are in just 10 local authority areas. The concentration is even starker when one counts the most at risk wards. All but three of the 25 most at risk wards fall in 10 local authority areas, as do 38 of the 50 most at risk wards.

The high risk local authorities, where the BNP pose a threat in multiple wards, are Barking & Dagenham, Stoke-on-Trent, Thurrock , Nuneaton, Sandwell, Amber Valley, Burnley, Barnsley, Rotherham and Leeds. But there are other areas, such as Wigan, Tameside and Bexley, where the BNP will be pushing strongly for the first time.

Edmund Standing reports that Lee John Barnes, The BNP’s legal director, has called the attack on the migrant centre in Calais an “act of National Liberation.” This isn’t the first time that he called for or praised violent activity, and his comments continue to remind us about the true nature of the BNP.

A reader at the Lancaster Unity blog writes:

The base polling figures for the minor parties run UKIP 4%, Greens 3% and BNP 2%. Of course, when you get down to figures like this there is a significant margin of error. The number of people responding is low, and the risk of sampling error is high, but the basic message is simple. None of these parties have any sort of widespread, national support in the context of a general election.

He then breaks down the polling numbers to point out that not only does support for the BNP remain very low, it is lowest among older people who are more likely to vote. The whole post is worth reading. He summarises:

None of this polling means that we can relax, or that we can ignore the danger of BNP progress at the general election. But what it does mean is that despite the election of two MEPs, despite Question Time, despite all the boasting, despite the lies and distortions in the popular press playing to the BNP agenda; despite all this the BNP have failed to make any significant progress in winning the hearts, minds and – especially – votes of the vast majority of the British people.

Exactly. While we continue to cover BNP related news on this blog, I’m always wary of falling for the media narrative that the BNP is some massive organisation on the brink of massive electoral victory. The media like that for two reasons: first because it’s exciting, and second because it then allows them to claim that to beat the BNP, people’s views on immigration (meaning their own views on immigration) must be heard. In other words most of the media use the BNP to push their own bigoted views on immigrants.

I think a few more things need to be stated for the record in relation to Rajinder Singh [the Sikh who is supporting the BNP]. While his reaction is understandable from a “flawed human nature” perspective, considering the apparent loss of his father during Partition, it isn’t justifiable, either from a general moral perspective or indeed from a specifically Sikh perspective. Let me give an example of another Sikh who suffered immense personal tragedy at the hands of Muslims, in some cases explicitly claiming to be acting in the name of Islam.

From this Harry’s Place thread (the highlights):

Lee John Barnes (legal director of the BNP): Fuck off Graham you PAEDO.

Lee John Barnes: Fuck off Edmund [Standing] you Zionist rent boy.

Graham: You just can’t get the Aryan supermen these days can you?

Lee John Barnes: Funny that – your mother never said that when I was slipping her a length last night.

Graham: Hmm she’s been dead a year.

Wonderful.

Hope not Hate/Searchlight reports that Terence Gavan, a BNP member, has pleaded guilty to twenty two charges, including multiple firearms and explosive offences. His arsenal consisted of:

54 nail and ball-bearing bombs between May 1999 and May this year. He also manufactured shotguns, pen guns and pistols at his home in Batley, West Yorkshire. Gavan was also found in possession of ammunition, a manual on boobytraps, an improvised munitions handbook and a copy of the Anarchists’ Cookbook.

As Hope not Hate point out, the BNP are likely to deny that Terence Gavan was ever a member. However, Hope not Hate has established that not only was he a member, but that he held gold membership (which amusingly gives one no more rights than ordinary BNP membership, but costs twice as much and in return you get a nifty gold BNP badge- which is probably made in China).

(Via Harry’s Place)

The BNP’s forays into Europe have not been universally successful. Despite recently taking two seats in the European Parliament, their jaunts across to the continent have tended more towards farce than success. In the past we have been treated to Richard Barnbrook’s quasi-fictional account of his German adventure, and the Eurofascists who refused to work with the BNP.

Now Nick Griffin has got himself in trouble again after a far-right meeting in Spain was attacked by another far-right group, the Patriotic Socialist Movement, who were angry after not being allowed to enter the building:

A rally attended by Nick Griffin MEP got ugly as Spanish police detained 28 members of a neo-fascist party who tried to disrupt an event held by a rival extremist group attended by British National Party leader at a Madrid hotel.

Those arrested were all members of Spain’s ultra-nationalist Patriotic Socialist Movement and they were arrested after they attacked doormen at the hotel who were trying to prevent them from entering. Four people were lightly injured in the scuffle but did not require medical care, a police spokesman said.

This isn’t surprising at all is it?

An elderly Sikh who describes Islam as a “beast” and once provided a character reference for Nick Griffin during his racial hatred trial is set to become the British National Party’s first non-white member.

Rajinder Singh, an anti-Islam activist in his late seventies who blames Muslims for the death of his father during the Partition of India in 1947, has been sympathetic towards Britain’s far-right party for much of the past decade even though he currently remains barred from becoming a member because of the colour of his skin.
…
Mr Singh and another Sikh from Slough who goes by the pseudonym Ammo Singh have previously co-operated with the BNP and have been used by the party’s leadership to try to woo Asian supporters, particularly Hindus and Sikhs living in areas where tensions with Muslims run high. The party has had little success, however, with all mainstream Sikh and Hindu groups widely condemning the BNP.

I thought the old man had said he previously appeared on the BNP political broadcast because he was tricked? Doesnt seem like that here. This isn’t that big a story because we knew such bigots existed among Sikhs/Hindus (as they do with Muslims). But it is an interesting development…
[hat-tip: several readers sent in the link]

David Blackburn writes for the Spectator’s CoffeeHouse blog that the BNP is, No longer a racist party, but a party of racists, in response to the news that BNP membership looks to vote overwhelmingly in favour of allowing non-whites to join the party.
David is highly confused. This is because he says:

The Spectator has maintained that the party’s domestic policies are inspired by racial supremacist ideology and that its economic policies are like Dagenham – that is, three stops beyond Barking.

Yes, I’ll agree with that. The party’s domestic policies are indeed inspired by a racial supremacist ideology. Which is why people should avoid following those policies right? Except, he does on to say centrist parties “must engage with (and I mean engage with, not shout down)” BNP policies. What a muddle. ‘Engage’ is a mealy-mouthed word that usually means ‘follow’.

Earlier this year Tim Montgomerie at ConHome said:

but I do think part of any anti-BNP strategy means addressing popular concerns about immigration, access to housing and championing people’s patriotic instincts… while ALWAYS attacking their racism.

I’m going to start a regular series tackling and breaking down myths relating to the BNP and the far-right in the UK.

One commonly repeated myth is that BNP voters are ex-Labour voters. This leads to several assertions that fit the writer’s prejudices but have little basis in fact or evidence. Such as:

- Therefore this shows Labour has abandoned working-class whites over their undying love for the fascist threat of ‘multiculti-nazism’.

- This shows the BNP is left-wing conspiracy because Hitler liked the term ‘National Socialism’ etc etc.

Actual evidence
In this article on Political Betting, the writer goes through polling and demographic evidence to ask ‘Where BNP votes were coming from’.

He concludes:

Far from BNP voters being similar to Labour voters and drawn from the same demographic sectors, the data shows that BNP voters are much more likely to be C2DE than any of the three main parties.

What’s the profile then of BNP voters from this brief analysis? We get a picture of a man or woman, most likely C2DE, who didn’t vote at the 2005 election (though if they did vote they were most likely to have supported Labour). It appears therefore that rather than the BNP tapping into disaffected Labour votes, they have actually managed to mobilise a previously non-participating part of the electorate and persuaded them to go out and cast ballots.

In other words they are disaffected voters who have not shown a preference for any party for several elections.

The small percentage of people who do vote BNP are broadly from poorer backgrounds. Historically, this demographic has always had lower voting percentages and so it isn’t very surprising they’re politically apathetic.

Those are target voters for the Labour party, but not excluded from the Conservatives given that Cameron declared his party would be the party to help the poor. But the idea these people now voting BNP were abandoned by Labour is not borne out by voting records. It could still true to say that Labour has abandoned many working class voters who traditionally voted Labour – but that largely does not apply for BNP supporters.

Last week the Telegraph ran a big story about how a senior Tony Blair speech-writer had admitted that immigrants were being allowed to come into the country to rub the right’s face in diversity and multiculturalism. Outrage! Shock! Hysteria! Naturally the Daily Mail and other newpapers with an axe to grind followed.

I thought: these writers can’t be this stupid surely? One guy thinks the Tony Blair administration didn’t really care that much for right-wing hysteria about multiculturalism and it is being played up as a massive plot. But no, people really are that willing to swallow such tripe. Now the guy at centre of the story has written this:

As a ministerial speechwriter in a former career, in 2000 I penned a key speech for the then immigration minister Barbara Roche, which mooted changes to make it easier for skilled workers to come to the UK.
…
Multiculturalism was not the primary point of the report or the speech. The main goal was to allow in more migrant workers at a point when – hard as it is to imagine now – the booming economy was running up against skills shortages.

But my sense from several discussions was there was also a subsidiary political purpose to it – boosting diversity and undermining the Right’s opposition to multiculturalism. I was not comfortable with that. But it wasn’t the main point at issue.

Somehow this has become distorted by excitable Right-wing newspaper columnists into being a “plot” to make Britain multicultural. There was no plot. … What’s more, both were robust on immigration when they needed to be: Straw had driven through a tough Immigration and Asylum Act in 1999 and Roche had braved particularly cruel flak from the Left over asylum seekers.
…
Perhaps the lesson of this row is just how hard it still is to have any sensible debate about immigration. The Right see plots everywhere and will hyperventilate at the drop of a chapati: to judge by some of the rubbish published in the past few days, it’s frankly not hard to see why ministers were nervous.

To read something sensible by a right-winger on immigration, which is highly rare, this blog post by Alex Massie on Sunday does a good job (via Hopi Sen).

99% of commentary otherwise written by right-wingers is absolute drivel. As Anton Vowl showed this weekend – there is a lot of condemnation of the BNP on the right while simultaneously pushing their agenda. Meanwhile, they love pretending that if no one listens to them then BNP support will go through the roof, without any evidence.

Everybody’s favourite BNP blogger, Lee John Barnes LLB (Hons.), has been featured in the Sunday Express after the paper picked up threats made to David T of Harry’s Place. Lee John Barnes, the BNP’s legal director, said:

When Mr Toube, one of Britain’s most prominent Jews, told Mr Barnes, 43, not to get “too smug”, the BNP man replied: “That’s fine. Just remember though, ‘You will reap what you sow’. “The way you treat us now is how we shall treat you in the future. The example you set us is the example we will follow when we are in power…

“The many different pressure points are beginning to converge towards a ‘tipping point’, a moment of political equilibrium when revolutionary social and political change occurs.” He added: “Best you show us some respect, some day you will want us to respect you.”

This seemed quite mild to me compared to some of the things Lee John Barnes (LJB) says when commenting on Pickled Politics. LJB is unrepentent, apart from claiming that he didn’t mean the comment to be a specifically anti-Jewish threat, a claim then nullified by his subsequent words:

How effective was Question Time at hurting the BNP? I would say somewhat. It went better than it might have done, but worse than it should have done. Here’s how I thought each of the panellists did:

Chris Huhne (5.5/10): Fairly anonymous, and struggled when confronted with Nick Griffin’s assertion about Liberal Democrat support for free movement to Britain from Eastern and Central Europe. One or two good points.

Bonnie Greer (7/10): Much better than expected. Rambled a bit at times, but landed some useful blows onto Mr. Griffin. Different approach (the more chummy approach) seemed to throw him off his stride.

Baroness Warsi (8.5/10): Had a wonderful moment during the programme when she acknowledged that not all the people who voted for the BNP did so out of racism. Talked about tackling issues like depravation and the pace of change in order to draw people away from the BNP and back to the mainstream parties. Just the sort of thing wavering BNP supporters needed to hear, especially from a non-white Muslim politician who is likely to be in charge of aspects of this in a year’s time. Even if you didn’t agree with everything she said, this was a powerful pronouncement. Took a bit of time to get going, and should have asked a few more probing questions.

Jack Straw (2/10): Worse than useless in many ways. Started off relatively well (the first minute or so), but then ruined it by failing to actually press the BNP on anything much. It got worse when his answer about whether or not immigration management in the last ten years has helped the BNP turned to waffle. Just the sort of thing to drive people into the arms of the BNP. Failed to ask penetrating questions of the BNP. Arguably his own populist attacks on Muslims in the past limited his effectiveness.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, if that were possible even more. The BNP website has an angry editorial today hitting back at the British generals who distanced themselves from the BNP. This is how the BNP editorial starts off:

Those Tory generals who today attacked the British National Party should remember that at the Nuremburg Trials, the politicians and generals accused of waging illegal aggressive wars were all charged — and hanged — together.

Is that a coded threat or explicit threat? Either way it sounds very very ominous. I bet the BNP will either change that or take it down very soon.

Story also now on: Liberal Conspiracy, Political Scrapbook, Left Foot Forward and LabourList

update: according to Sunder on Twitter, Nick Griffin is trying the it was a joke innit bruv! defence.

Thanks to lax EU rules, which allow MEPs to employ various people and claim large sums of money, Nick Griffin has now managed to put his bodyguard on the public payroll:

“A dozen senior figures from the party make up a BNP entourage of publicly funded assistants. As MEPs, Griffin and Andrew Brons are entitled to claim a combined £382,000 a year to pay for their colleagues’ salaries.

Martin Reynolds, a 20-stone bodybuilder who is head of security and Griffin’s bodyguard, said he “honestly didn’t know” why he was justified in being paid by the taxpayer.”

This is in no way illegal, as MEPs are given significant autonomy when it comes to choosing their staff. Occasional investigations are launched into MEPs’ expenses, but the findings aren’t usually made public, unless they are leaked, which is difficult to do (recommended reading).

Nick Griffin is to ask the BNP to change its constitution so that non-whites can join the party. This is in order to nullify a challenge from the Equality and Human Rights Commission about its whites-only membership rules.

The whole exercise seems rather pointless. Are there legions of ethnic minorities waiting to join the ranks of the BNP? People who miss the good old days of being called a ‘Paki’ and who aren’t talented enough to get on Strictly Come Dancing? Perhaps every adult member of an ethnic minority should sign up as a BNP member (which would make them a majority of BNP members), and then vote in a non-white person as head of the BNP.

Here it is: Sayeeda Warsi, Jack Straw, Chris Huhne, Bonnie Greer and Nick Griffin. What absolute bollocks. I like Sayeeda Warsi and out of all those I think she’s the only good choice (working class, northern). Nick Griffin in all likelihood will run rings around the rest and this whole debate is going to be a farce. Bonnie Greer is, as Gary Dunion rightly said, wooly and middle class and she’s not even a Brit!! Shocking.

Update: several people on Twitter have pointed out that Griffin is middle-class and Oxbridge educated, and therefore cannot seek to represent working class people. This isn’t a strong argument.

The right has always been populated by elites claiming to represent the hard-working people while simultaneously screwing them over. The ‘elitist’ claim was commonly used by Republicans against Obama even though he had come from humbler origins than most of them. But the point is whether the constituency believes that person. The working class people driven to support the BNP obviously believe it stands up for the working class – so you have to take that seriously.

Secondly, middle class people generally hate cheap populism and the use of emotion to make political points. They prefer ‘rational argument’. Fuck that. The way to destroy the BNP is through emotional narratives and populism. That’s the language they can’t fight against. By that I mean the way you frame your arguments has to be different and populist.

I would have replaced Bonnie Greer with Shaun Bailey – a much more credible voice against Griffin.