Norfolk Unity

A brave whistleblower warns today how race-hatred is still the lifeblood of the evil BNP – and begs People readers: “Vote for anybody but them this week.”

Former BNP candidate Christopher Brennan (left) made his plea as the far-right party try to win support for Thursday’s vital Euro and local elections.

Leader Nick Griffin and his henchmen are selling themselves as mainstream moderates. But Chris, 21, declared: “Don’t be fooled – they are racist to the core.”

Chris was just 18 when he stood as a British National Party candidate in multi-cultural Luton, Beds. He said officials routinely branded black people n*****s. And he claimed they told activists to launch violent attacks on their “enemies”.

Chris – who quit the party in disgust in 2007 – said: “I’ve seen the BNP for what they really are. They are hellbent on destroying all that is good in Britain. No matter what is said in public about not being a racist organisation any longer, those beliefs are still at the core of the organisation. The European elections give them a chance to get a foothold in British politics because people are so incensed by the scandal of MPs’ expenses. But they are beyond the pale.”

The BNP is fielding 450 candidates for the local elections and 66 for the European Parliament poll.

Convicted

Their campaign is being led by Griffin – convicted in 1998 of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred – and publicity manager Mark Collett. Chris worked alongside both of them during his failed election bid in 2007.

The whistleblower – who joined the BNP as an impressionable 13-year-old – said: “On the outside these men, like many BNP activists, will take the party line of presenting an image of respectability, people the voters can trust. But at secret meetings the talk is of ‘breaking the legs of our enemies’.”

He went on: “I met Griffin and Collett several times. Griffin congratulated me for standing and told me our country needed ‘young blood’. I remember him saying, ‘We need to get to the stage when we have 40,000 people to march on to the streets to take our country back from the immigrants’.

“Before my election in 2007, Griffin came to Luton to make speeches where he said the P*kis were to blame for housing shortages in the north. Collett hated black people and made no secret about it – he spoke about n*****s diluting the British race. He and Griffin made it clear how they felt – but made sure they made it clear how we should behave in public for the ‘good of the party’.”

Chris claimed Collett quoted whole passages from Hitler’s book Mein Kampf to a packed meeting in Luton. And he said Collett once told him he idolised the Nazi monster.

Chris revealed: “Collett said he wanted to be just like him – a man of courage and honour is how he put it. He called Mein Kampf his version of the Bible and quoted passages from it, encouraging others to study it.”

Chris said party workers were instructed in how to intimidate opponents. He went on: “We were told to find the names and addresses of anyone who campaigned against us. We’d put them under surveillance for several days, photographing them and watching their movements. Some had bricks through their windows and some even had deaththreats and were warned not to carry on. Griffin and Collett knew this was going on – it was talked about openly. In private, the party line is that the ballot is just a stepping stone and after that it will be taken by force.”

Chris claimed the party was now being torn apart by jealous rivalries. He said: “Senior figures are at each other’s throats, all vying for power and trying to discredit each other.”

But he warned the BNP is still a force to be reckoned with at Thursday’s polls.

Chris said: “The public may be appalled at MPs’ expenses but the reason the BNP is targeting European seats is because of the wages and extortionate expenses members can claim. There’s an agreement to claim the highest amount and divide the money between individuals and the party so there is more in the coffers for the next wave of elections. It needs to be stopped – and I hope it is not too late to stop British electors being fooled into voting for them.”

He went on: “Having witnessed what I have, no one associated with it is to be trusted and every aspect of the party is devious. Behind the smart suits and the nice smiles are lies and deceit that will threaten our country.”

Chris added: “Thousands of people will be thinking the BNP is an alternative to the other parties. But there is a dark side which we have to stop coming to power ever.”

Griffin denied all the allegations and branded Chris a Labour mole.

He said: “This man is paid to tell lies about us by an organisation funded by the Labour Party.”

He insisted he never said n*****s and only used P*ki to describe a type of street thug not the Muslim community.

And referring to the housing shortage he added: “Why on earth would I blame Pakistanis for a problem caused by Poles, Czechs and Nigerians?” Collett also denied Chris’s claims, saying: “He clearly has a personal grievance. It’s not what we stand for and the members would not tolerate these claims – they are utterly ludicrous.

“It is a politically motivated stunt on the eve of the elections.”

Sunday People

Prominent members of the British National party are today revealed as Nazi-sympathisers and racists with abhorrent views on such diverse issues as teenage violence, David Beckham and even David Cameron’s deceased son, Ivan.

The revelations undermine the party’s attempts to paint itself in a more moderate light before the local and European elections and threaten to derail the electoral ambitions of its leader, Nick Griffin, who is standing as a prospective MEP.

At a time when BNP activists are claiming a surge in support in the polls, a reflection, they say, of mounting public outrage over MPs’ expenses, the party has been keen to portray itself as a viable alternative to mainstream political parties.

The BNP website boasts that money is flooding into its campaign headquarters. Its administration consultant, Jim Dowson, claims the party’s call centre alone received just under 12,000 calls in the first 15 minutes following the BNP’s first national television broadcast. And in emails to supporters – or “patriots” as the BNP calls them – Griffin claims almost £400,000 has been stumped up by supporters to help fund the party’s European election campaign.

It claims the apparent groundswell in support is down to the “British public waking from the long, deep sleep”. Much of the BNP’s recent success has been down to its ability to shake off the patina of far-right extremism that has alienated most voters since its inception. But this month the veneer slipped when it emerged that a Salford-based BNP candidate in the European elections had set his Facebook status to read “Wogs go home”. Eddy O’Sullivan, 49, wrote: “They are nice people – oh yeah – but can they not be nice people in the fucking Congo or… bongo land or whatever?” O’Sullivan, who also joined an internet group called “Fuck Islam”, denied that the comments were racist and insisted they were made in private conversations between individuals. “I also may have had a drink at the time,” he added.

Amid the furore, the BNP’s leaders promised an investigation into O’Sullivan’s comments. The party’s officials also circulated urgent emails urging its members that “particular care should be taken when making comments on chat forums and other sites such as Facebook. Do not make the mistake of thinking that comments posted on these sites are secret or hidden. Making inappropriate comments on these sites will be regarded as a very serious disciplinary offence. Please ensure that this message is passed quickly to all members in your area and that it is acted upon. We are entering a very critical time in our party’s history and cannot afford careless and stupid talk that can undermine the hard work of our activists.”

But the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has spent months infiltrating the far right’s network of websites and chatrooms and found that many BNP activists share O’Sullivan’s views.

They include:

• Jeffrey Marshall, senior organiser for the BNP’s London European election campaign. Following the death of David Cameron’s disabled son Ivan, Marshall claimed in an internet forum discussion: “We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it.”

Later, in response to comments made by others on the site, Marshall is alleged to have written: “There is not a great deal of point in keeping these people alive after all.” He said the comments were private and some had been paraphrased and taken out of context. He admitted making the former comment, but said he could not recall making the latter one in an email to the forum, a copy of which is in the Observer’s possession.

• Garry Aronsson, Griffin’s running mate for the European parliament in the North West, posts an avatar on his personal web page featuring a Nazi SS death’s head alongside the statement, “Speak English Or Die!” Aronsson proclaims on the site: “Every time you change your way of life to make immigrants more comfortable you betray OUR future!” He lists his hobbies as “devising slow and terrible ways of paying back the Guardian-reading cunts who have betrayed the British people into poverty and slavery. I AM NOT JOKING.”

• Barry Bennett, MEP candidate for the South West, posted several years ago under a pseudonym in a white supremacist forum the bizarre statement that “David Beckham is not white, he’s a black man.” Bennett, who is half-Jewish according to the BNP’s deputy leader, Simon Darby, continued: “Beckham is an insult to Britishness, and I’m glad he’s not here.” He added: “I know perfectly respectable half-Jews in the BNP… even Hitler had honorary Aryans who were of Jewish descent… so whatever’s good enough for Hitler’s good enough for me. God rest his soul.”

• Russ Green, MEP candidate for the West Midlands, posted recently on Darby’s web page: “If we allowed Indians, Africans, etc to join [the BNP], we would become the ‘British multi-National party’ … and I really do hope that never happens!” Darby said he echoed Green’s sentiments.

• Dave Strickson, a BNP organiser who helps run its eastern region European election campaign, carried on his personal “Thurrock Patriots” blog a recent report of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in east London beneath the words “Another teen stabbed in Coon Town”. The site also carried a mock-up racist version of the US dollar entitled “Obama Wog Dollar”. Darby said the BNP did not endorse these comments and described them as “beyond the pale”.

When confronted in the past about the extreme views of some of its members, the BNP senior hierarchy has often tried to dismiss them as unrepresentative of the party’s core membership. But it appears that they run right to the top of the party.

Lee Barnes, the BNP’s senior legal officer and one of Griffin’s closest allies, has posted a video on his personal blog of a black suspect being beaten by police officers in the US and describes it as “brilliant”. Barnes adds: “The beating of Rodney King still makes me laugh.”

Barnes told the Observer his comments were “nothing to do with colour” but were merely a reflection of his belief that the police should have more powers to punish perpetrators of crime by “giving them a good thrashing”.

But anti-fascist groups said such comments portrayed the BNP in its true light. “This is the face of the modern BNP,” said a spokesman for Searchlight. “The comments of Nick Griffin’s candidates and officials are sickening beyond belief. They have tried to hide their agenda of racism and hate from the voters, and they have failed.”

Separately, concerns exist about the historic links between the BNP and extremist groups. Gary Pudsey, a BNP organiser running the Yorkshire and Humber campaign, was once a regular at National Front meetings. A young Pudsey was also photographed with the late Max Waegg, a Nazi second world war pilot who wrote articles for the white supremacist magazine Spearhead

Martin Page is a BNP treasurer and his wife Kim is a senior fundraiser for the party. Both have been photographed alongside Benny Bullman, the lead singer of Whitelaw, the white supremacist band whose songs include Fetch the Noose, We’re Coming for You and For White Pride.

And Dowson, the BNP’s senior administrator, who appears on the party’s website talking about the success of its call centre’s fundraising activities, has also been dogged by allegations that he has enjoyed close relationships with hardline loyalist groups in the past. The 45-year-old has also been the public face of the LifeLeague, the militant anti-abortion group that has hijacked Britain’s pro-life debate. He has regularly appeared on television to pronounce terminations a sin and has published the names of abortion clinic staff, placing many in fear for their personal safety.

That the BNP has become a magnet for extreme-right sympathisers is understandable given Griffin’s own background. The Cambridge graduate was himself a member of the NF before going on to form the International Third Position, a neo-fascist organisation with links to the Italian far right.

But aware of the party’s need to raise funds from middle England, Griffin has repeatedly attempted to portray his party as the “reasonable” face of patriotism in its bid to broaden its appeal. The approach has paid dividends, with the party having gained 55 seats on local councils, including a seat on the Greater London Authority. This June it is contesting every UK seat at the European elections and there have been predictions it could win overall control of Stoke City Council.

Darby, Griffin’s deputy and the BNP’s spokesman, accused Searchlight of “distorting the BNP’s message” in a bid to derail its political ambitions. He accused the organisation of being “merely a front for the Labour party, paid for by National Lottery funds”. Darby said: “When you put it in the context of what’s been happening at Westminster, a few scribblings on Facebook hardly seems something to get worried about.”

Previous convictions

Nick Griffin, convicted of violating section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to incitement to racial hatred. He received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.

Kevin Scott, a BNP supporter and former North East regional organiser, has convictions for assault and threatening behaviour.

Terry Collins, a party member, was jailed for five years after waging a year-long terror campaign against Asian families in Eastbourne.

Joe Owens, a former Merseyside BNP candidate and bodyguard to Nick Griffin, served eight months for sending razor blades to Jewish people and another term for carrying CS gas and knuckledusters.

Colin Smith, former BNP south-east London organiser, has 17 convictions for burglary, theft, stealing cars, possession of drugs and assaulting a police officer.

Tony Lecomber, a former BNP propaganda director, was jailed in 1985 after a nail bomb exploded as he carried it to the Workers’ Revolutionary party offices. Jailed again in 1991 for assaulting a Jewish teacher on the Underground.

The Observer

A similar article appears in The News Of The World

The British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, was last night accused of “sickening” exploitation of the memory of a murdered black teenager, Anthony Walker, who was killed in a Liverpool park.

Mr Griffin was accused of besmirching Walker’s memory to stoke up votes ahead of the European elections this week. In a broadcast posted on YouTube, he stands at the spot where the 18-year-old was murdered in July 2005, and says the killing has been labelled as racially motivated but that “this is not the case”.

“This was made out as a Stephen Lawrence-style cause célèbre,” he says. “The truth is, you talk to any one around here, that isn’t the case. Everybody says Anthony Walker was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t a racist murder and there’s no doubt about that.”

He goes on to describe a CCTV camera trained on the park entrance as “ridiculous politically correct expenditure on one murder”.

Two cousins, Michael Barton, 17, and Paul Taylor, 20, were jailed for Walker’s murder, which the judge described as “a racist attack of a type poisonous to any civilised society”.

Walker was waiting at a bus stop with his white girlfriend and a black friend when the pair were subjected to “a torrent of racial abuse”, according to police. Although they walked away, they were followed in a car and ambushed. Walker’s friend and girlfriend managed to escape, but he was struck with an ice pick that was left embedded in his skull.

Yesterday a spokesman for the anti-racist organisation Searchlight said: “Nick Griffin’s sickening attempt to smear the memory of Anthony Walker – an innocent boy killed because of the colour of his skin – for his own political purposes reveals the BNP for what they are: racist thugs.”

Independent

It’s a nightmare political vision: burning crosses, Nazi salutes and extremist indoctrination. This is the dark heart of the British National Party – an organisation now setting up “youth camps” in Scotland.

The controversial far-right training regime was launched last month in Wiltshire and immediately drew comparisons with the Hitler Youth and Islamic jihad boot camps Now, campaign groups fear a return of the fascist and white-supremacist symbolism seen at previous Scottish events. An outdoor event held in Scotland several years ago saw BNP activists joking about concentration camps and burning a wooden cross in an undisclosed Highland location.

Scott McLean – one of the most senior BNP figures in Scotland – was filmed giving a Nazi salute, and other BNP members were recorded shouting “one-two-three-Auschwitz” before grinning activists gave Hitler salutes to the camera. At one point a man was cheered as he threw petrol on to a burning cross towering over a group of initiates.

At the new brand of camps unveiled last month, children as young as 12 are trained in shooting air rifles and in self-defence, and they learn an alternative version of history as sanctioned by party leader Nick Griffin, who has repeatedly claimed that the Holocaust never happened.

In between shooting lessons, children are instructed in the art of making dangerous weapons from everyday objects. “Dutch Arrows” are manufactured from string and sharpened garden canes, and the BNP website reports that one 13-year-old boy was able to launch an arrow more than 150 metres. Police have confirmed that the darts, if used outside the supervised campsite setting, could constitute offensive weapons.

The BNP told the Sunday Herald that it will roll out camps across Scotland within the next year, and adult activists are using social networking sites such as Bebo to recruit youngsters to the BNP’s hardline nationalist cause.

BNP youth leader Mike Howson, a former soldier, said: “We eventually plan to have camps in all the regions. We’ve achieved our targets for youth recruitment in Scotland. We’ll be doing camps there within the next 12 months.”

The BNP has applied for government funding to pay for the camps, he added, but has so far been unsuccessful in its bid for state cash. Applications are now being made to charities.

Despite its claims to be a mainstream party, the BNP has faced censure in the past for its alignment with European fascist groups and the Nazi overtones of some of its actions.

Publicity material for the camps is designed to appeal to youths by offering a sense of inclusion and strength. An advert on the BNP’s Bebo site promotes the organisation as a “big brother” to its young target audience. It boasts: “Only the YBNP and its big brother the BNP can secure a future for the indigenous children of this land.”

Though party leaders say the youth camps are about “moral training” and education, they also aim to lure children with the promise of powerful roles within the adult wing of the party. “The youth wing can only get bigger and better, with older members already being fast-tracked into positions within the party,” a BNP statement said.

Campaign groups responded furiously to news of the party’s planned expansion among Scottish children. A spokesman for anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: “Their attempts to politically indoctrinate Scottish youth with their messages of prejudice and division are sickening. There is no place in Scotland for these camp sites of hate.”

The recent surge in BNP youth activity has been driven by a conference of European nationalists earlier this year, which brought extremist groups together to “preserve our shared white European heritage”. Skinhead delegates from hard-right Czech and German youth groups joined their hosts from the Swedish National Democratic Youth movement.

Revelations over the training and political schooling of children will come as a blow to the BNP, which is struggling to assert itself as a legitimate political force in Thursday’s European elections.

Party leader Griffin was convicted in 1998 of inciting racial hatred. He has also referred to the Holocaust as the Holohoax’. Griffin has long sought to emulate the mainstream success of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the right-wing leader of France’s National Front. Despite his ambitions, the BNP has been thwarted in recent years by a string of high-profile scandals and exposés.

Senior officials have been caught on camera making bigoted remarks against non-Christians, non-whites and homosexuals, and the party has failed to find any success outside of a few English heartlands.

A message left on Griffin’s mobile phone asking to discuss this article elicited the one-word text message response: “Priceless!”

Sunday Herald

Here’s shameful confession. When the online list of BNP members was published illegally earlier this year I sneaked a look, then went further and performed the postal code search to see who lived near me. Unhappily several did, and there, on the screen, were their names, addresses, home and mobile phone numbers and email addresses. For a split second, only a second I promise, I was tempted to call them and ask them why they had joined. Then sanity returned to remind me that even looking at such a list, thereby breaching these people’s privacy, was a low and uncivilised thing to do. Sorry.

But the curiosity has not left me. Why do these people, living in my area of the city, part of the same community and rubbing shoulders with the same people in the street, believe in such an extreme and repugnant set of policies? What horrors are they encountering that have so riled them into hatred? On going about my business, have I somehow failed to spot Hassidic Jews drinking babies’ blood in Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens, Eastern European plumbers pimping children in the supermarket, Jihadists beheading Alan from the ironmongers for selling un-Islamic curtain hooks, all whilst stepping over the drugged bodies of black youths and publicly copulating gay men? In which parallel universe do my local BNP supporters do their shopping, and what dystopia has so ruined their lives that would make them give their money to Nick Griffin?

A great deal of academic research has helped us trace the rise of the BNP in English regions of high deprivation and racial tension, highlighting the government’s failure to address core issues that stoke a sense of grievance and imagined victimhood from the white working class. Such voters tell us, by supporting fascists, that they feel alienated and abandoned. Some of their anxieties may be justified but most of it is poppycock, since the “immigrants” they imagine are here to steal their livelihoods, culture and opportunities are fellow sufferers, feeling just as marginalised and abandoned as they do.

In these areas of tension, BNP voters are unsurprisingly poor, uneducated, frightened, and highly susceptible to coercion from Griffin’s Cambridge-educated forked tongue. What, though, is the excuse for my fellow local souls turning to the hard right, including a few whose pleasant sandstone dwellings sit peacefully amongst mature lime trees, and whose worst social assault is a BMW car alarm going off in the night because a well-fed fox has jumped on it? What forms a racist when their lives are under neither economic nor social pressure? Perhaps we are about to find out.

A few weeks ago I wrote that I believed the British are not sufficiently stupid to return a BNP candidate in the forthcoming European elections. Subsequent polling in the last few days appears to be proving me wrong.

Even more worrying is that the party’s sights have swivelled away from their tense, English heartlands of racial strife and are looking north.

The British National Party are currently campaigning hard in Scotland, openly declaring on their website and blogs that they hope to build on two things; the MPs’ expenses scandal and the rise of Scottish nationalism. The former is an easy target, but the latter marks a sinister distortion.

Last Saturday in Clydebank, a BNP candidate handed out 2000 leaflets. Many people taking them would have of course instantly binned them. Some may have taken the leaflets home to read. Some definitely stopped to speak with the candidate. A few, allegedly, joined up. No-one, however, demonstrated, or set up a stall in opposition.

Reading the subsequent forums on and linked from the party’s website makes the blood run cold, even taking into account (judging by The Scotsman’s website) that a significant proportion of people who contribute to online forums seem to be fantasists. Several threads celebrated that Scotland was better at “keeping out immigrants” and that we should be proud of the rise again of our national pride.

This was tempered in other threads by equally disquieting posts declaring that the SNP are “after the Islamic vote”, citing the contribution to the Scottish Islamic Foundation, and that former nationalists should now switch to the BNP to stop an independent Scotland ruled by sharia.

Despite being an abhorrent, hate-filled slug, Nick Griffin is a clever, highly educated man, and none of this insane warping of the independence debate is by chance. When given only short and rare opportunities to be questioned, such as during an interview on Sky news last week, Griffin comes across as a calm, professional politician. Griffin’s views on interracial marriage, enforced repatriation and homosexuality are unlikely to play well to a public looking for fairness, justice and tolerance, hence that side of the BNP is kept markedly quiet, making sure the party’s formal policy declarations remain as insubstantial as gossamer.

Hence it’s a fair bet that most of the leaflet recipients in Clydebank know virtually nothing of the hidden wish list of the BNP that leaks out in error from time to time.

This is partly because Griffin and his political thugs are given so little chance to be tested, out from under their stone. Question Time last week, focusing on the European elections, included a UKIP member on its panel, but no BNP representative. Why not? Surely even one question from a black person in the audience about not being allowed to marry who they wished, or being exiled to a country they have never visited, would have been enough to rip the paper-thin mask of civility from the BNP’s Janus face?

Griffin is sly enough to realise that our independence debate is already highly volatile and emotional, and as such has decided that we are prime targets for creating a new layer of scaremongering and anxiety-driven hate.

Watching BNP footage of Clydebank residents politely receiving leaflets has made me feel stupid for over-estimating our resistance to this vile manipulation. We are all free to vote for the party of our choice, but we must be absolutely sure we know what it stands for. They’re not out to make the trains run on time.

Muriel Gray writing in the Scottish Sunday Herald

BNP leader Nick Griffin wants Bolton-born Olympic boxing hero Amir Khan to leave Britain.

Griffin – whose party wants to create ‘firm incentives’ for non-white Britons to leave their homeland – dismissed claims that the policy would strip the country of talent.

Referring to Khan, he added: “Perhaps we will lose one good boxer but there are more important things.”

Khan – who has spoken out against Islamic extremism and walked out behind the Union Flag for his professional debut – was born and raised in Bolton.

His cousin, Saj Mahmood, plays cricket for Lancashire and England.

The 22-year-old boxer once said: “I’ve always felt completely British. I loved making the British people happy in Athens [where he won Olympic silver], and I still do.

“Those of us from different ethnic backgrounds, like Lewis Hamilton and myself, are carrying the flag for Britain by doing our thing, being ourselves and wanting to become world champions.”

His dad, Shah Khan, said: “At the end of the day I think everyone should be treated equally – regardless of the colour of their skin.”

The BNP is targeting the north west of England as it seeks to win a seat in the European elections next month.

Griffin – who was convicted in 1998 of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred – is the party’s top candidate in our region [the North West].

Manchester Evening News

The British National Party has been accused of executing a “hostile takeover” of a trade union that subsequently accepted a £5,000 undeclared donation from Nick Griffin, the leader of the party.

Clive Potter, a founder of Solidarity, the nationalist trade union, told The Times that he and other members of its executive were ousted by allies of Mr Griffin because they wanted to remain independent of the BNP.

In documents to the Certification Office, the regulator of trade unions, former members of the executive claim that the union has been hijacked by “disaffected former officials and an outside political party”.

They said that the union had been subjected to “hostile attacks from unauthorised former officials and outside elements, namely the British National Party”. The split raises questions about Solidarity’s links to the BNP as it has been previously accused of, but has denied, being a front for the party. Many members also belong to the BNP and its president, Adam Walker, is a candidate for the party in the forthcoming European election.

The Times revealed on Thursday that Solidarity was the recipient of a £5,000 donation, originally sent to Mr Griffin, that is under review by the Electoral Commission. Mr Griffin admitted that he did not inform the authorities about the donation, which appeared to be from a political supporter, although he paid it into his own account before transferring it to Solidarity. Donations of more than £1,000 to individual party members must be declared if they are for political use.

Mr Griffin said that he gave the money to the union because the donor wanted to remain anonymous and he believed that he would have had to declare it if passed to the BNP.

Patrick Harrington, general secretary of Solidarity, a former organiser for the National Front and a friend of Mr Griffin, told The Times that the union was completely independent of the BNP. Mr Harrington, who is not a member of the BNP, said that Mr Potter’s accusations should be dismissed as they were from a “disgruntled former official”.

Although the alleged takeover occurred in 2007, it has not been aired publicly. Several disputes from it will be decided in a hearing next month by the Certification Officer.

Mr Potter, a former member of the BNP, told The Times that he helped to set up Solidarity in 2005 as a “mass nationalist trade union” that was to be independent of any political party. “If it isn’t independent then it fails. Unfortunately, as I found out later, Mr Griffin had other ideas,” he said.

After a series of disagreements with Mr Harrington, and following what he claims was interference from Mr Griffin, Mr Potter was ousted in 2007 along with members of the executive who supported him. He will claim that his removal was “unconstitutional”. Mr Harrington denied any impropriety and said that elections to the union’s executive were held properly.As a result of the split, two separate trade unions, both known as Solidarity, have been operating since 2007. One branch, which is run by Mr Harrington and accepted the donation from Mr Griffin, has acted for people who have been dismissed from their jobs because of association with the BNP.

Mr Potter said that his branch operates on “paper only” as it has no money — its bank account was frozen after the acrimony between the warring factions. He said that as a believer in BNP ideals but an opposer of Mr Griffin, he wanted a return to the “status quo” in leadership of the union.

In the final council by-election before next week’s county and European Parliament polls, the BNP pushed the Conservatives into third place. Labour’s vote held up in North Ormesby and Bramble Farm, Middlesbrough, where the far Right won 19.1 per cent of the vote. That would not be enough for it to win in the North East Euro constituency, which has only three seats. The BNP says its best chance for a European win is in the North West, where Nick Griffin is running. He predicts the party could win up to six seats and claims it is spending £500,000 on a national campaign. The BNP is fielding 450 candidates for the local elections and 66 for the European Parliament, at least one for every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales.

Money talks

— Any trade union that intends to spend money on political objectives must set up a separate political fund. This arose from the Trade Union Act 1913

— Before a political fund can be established, the union must ballot all its members. A simple majority of members is enough to pass the resolution

— The certification officer must approve both the ballot and the political fund rules before they are put to the vote. This ensures that there is a fair voting process

— The political fund can be spent on both affiliated political parties and more general campaigning. Each union publishes accounts of its expenditure to the certification officer. These are available to all members of the union

— Any union member can choose to be exempted from the political fund at any time. There can be no discrimination against members who opt for exemption Unions must review their decisions to have a political fund every ten years. This is done by ballot

Source: Certification Office

The Times

Muslim extremists behind a protest against soldiers on a homecoming parade have been driven off the streets today by members of their own community.

Fights broke out and traffic ground to a halt when moderate Muslims confronted a group of about 12 men who regularly preach from a stall in Bury Park – the heart of Luton’s Muslim community.

After Friday prayers, more than 200 members of local mosques turned on the group who sparked outrage in March when they disrupted a parade by the Royal Anglian Regiment through the town centre. They shouted ‘baby killers’ and ‘butchers of Basra’ at the returning soldiers as well as brandishing placards against the Iraq war.

But today the extremists were surrounded by a crowd as they began to set up their stall, shouting ‘We don’t want you here’ and ‘move on, move on’.

Angry words were exchanged and scuffles broke out between members of both groups, with the extremists shouting ‘Shame on you’ and ‘Get back to your synagogue’. One police officer and two community support officers struggled to hold them apart until more officers arrived.

Buses and cars were unable to move as the crowd spilled into the road.

Farasat Latif, of the Islamic Centre in Luton, which was firebombed after the protest against the soldiers, said moderate members of his community took action because police had failed to move the group on. He said the extremists, who follow the militant group led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, had fuelled feelings against the Muslim community which led to a march last Sunday in Luton which was disrupted by white, right-wing extremists.

Mr Latif said: ‘We have been fighting these Muslim extremists for you. They represent nobody but themselves. The community decided to move them on because the police won’t. We have asked them, but they did nothing. I don’t know if they will be back. We have been the victims twice over – from the stupidity of Muslim extremists who metaphorically pour petrol and fan the flames of the right wing extremists.

‘This was a peaceful demonstration and we hope they get the message that the law-abiding community is sick and tired of them.’

No one was arrested during the incident.

A spokeswoman for Bedfordshire Police said: ‘We attended the incident, calmed people down and moved them on. No one was arrested and there were no injuries.’

Daily Mail

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