Norfolk Unity

A former National Front member’s fairytale marriage to a Waikato woman is over as he ramps up his involvement in the white supremacy movement again.

Kyle Chapman, who vowed to give up his far-right activities when he married devout Mormon Claire Clifford in May, has been linked to the white pride group Right Wing Resistance, which has been patrolling the streets of New Brighton in Christchurch.

Mr Chapman, once convicted of fire-bombing a marae, co-ordinated a gathering at the Wellington Cenotaph this weekend for the far-right’s annual Flag Day observance.

He was among about 30 members of the National Front and Right Wing Resistance who converged on central Wellington. Left-wing counter-demonstrators stayed away this year to avoid giving the marchers a bigger profile.

Mrs Chapman told the Waikato Times today she and Kyle Chapman separated last night because he had refused to maintain his wedding day promises.

“Kyle hasn’t given up things that he said he was going to but that was probably always on the cards because he is so in love with it,” she said.

“Last night I asked him to leave and basically I just said to him ‘if you get involved in that stuff then don’t bother coming back’.”

When contacted by the Waikato Times, Mr Chapman said he no longer spoke to the media.

The Right Wing Resistance, which Mr Chapman has described as the “street arm” of his Nationalist Alliance, says Christchurch is the centre of a “white pride” revival. It now claims to have members in five cities.

Mr Chapman has also been continuing his attempts, announced in January, to found a “European Nationalist land base” in Canterbury and has been appealing for donations.

“We will win the hearts of the people living there bit by bit,” he wrote on a white pride website. “To avoid it becoming [sic] a [sausage] fest we will look at supporting some Eastern Euro like-minded women for the many single men we have.”

In May, the Waikato Times reported how the 38-year-old former leader of the National Front married the former Miss Clifford and moved from Christchurch to live with her on her lifestyle block on the outskirts of Hamilton.

In an exclusive interview on the day of his wedding, Mr Chapman pleaded with people to give him a chance to turn his life around after quitting his roles with the Nationalist Alliance and The Survive Club. He said at the time he “wanted to have a nice peaceful life with Claire”.

Mrs Chapman is pregnant with Mr Chapman’s child but she said she intended to divorce him. The baby is due in February.

“I don’t know about anything he is involved with. I don’t go to the websites or anything. I am not really that way inclined. He just doesn’t get it because he is just so ingrained in his way of thinking.”

“He mis-represented himself to me but in some ways I have learned such a lot and I guess I was naive but I have woken up a lot more through this.”

Mrs Chapman said Mr Chapman no longer lived with her and she understood he was living in Paeroa with a group of followers.

Stuff.co.nz via Fightdemback

Leading British National Party activist David Lucas is charged with explosives and firearm offences after being arrested in Suffolk.

The 49-year-old was arrested in April in Suffolk, before standing as a BNP candidate in the European Elections.

He is due to appear before Bury St Edmunds magistrates in Suffolk on 10 November.

Lucas hit the headlines in 2006 when it was revealed he was sending gallows and £100,000 execution systems to countries such as Zimbabwe.

He said he stopped making them in July 2006 after the export of hangman’s equipment was made illegal by an EU directive.

But the death penalty campaigner still has a gallows complete with noose on show at his farm in Lakenheath, Suffolk, to demonstrate his belief in “law and order”.

Channel Four News

Former residents of a South Wales street have hit out at the BNP for “hijacking” a picture of their VE Day party.

Family members were shocked to see the photograph of the event in Cromwell Street, Merthyr Tydfil, used as a backdrop by the far-right party at an event in Manchester. They have now called on BNP leader Nick Griffin to apologise for using the image and to stop using the picture in publicity.

It is not the first time the BNP has been attacked for using a wartime image. It was previously accused of attempting to “hijack” the reputation of the military by using images of Spitfires and caused outrage by claiming that Winston Churchill would join the British National Party if he were alive today.

The Cromwell Street image appeared in the background when BNP leader Mr Griffin addressed a media conference at a Manchester pub in June, days after he was elected as MEP for the North West of England.

The 1945 picture had been superimposed on a backdrop for Mr Griffin, and emblazoned with BNP and VE DAY.

It wasn’t until after the picture was printed in a national newspaper that people in Merthyr became aware of its use by the party.

Irate former headteacher and ex-serviceman Lyn Perkins was reading the article when he spotted what he thought was a familiar face in the foreground. As he took a closer look he also recognised the street.

Mr Perkins, now 82, had enlisted in the Navy, aged 17, two months before the war ended.

“I suppose there are many people in this photograph still alive and there must be lots of people who, like me, would be incensed that the photograph was used in support of the BNP,” he said. I was looking at it and thought ‘Good gracious. I’m sure I know that girl’ and that’s what made me look at it more closely. I would think most of the people in that photograph would not want to be associated with the BNP. I certainly think there should be an apology from Nick Griffin.”

When Malcolm Sweet, 66, who was at the party as a small boy, saw the representation for the first time he said: “I think it’s a total disgrace that the BNP has done this. I certainly don’t agree with Nick Griffin’s politics. My mother and father are also in the picture but are obscured by him. I’d like to know where they got this.”

Alan George’s mother Phyllis can be seen on the extreme left and sister Brenda is second from left on the left-hand bench.

“I’ve seen the picture used before but I really don’t like this,” said Mr George, 64, who runs an Old Merthyr picture archive website. “I’m pretty much disgusted. I don’t like anything the BNP do or represent. I think an apology is in order. They should not use it as part of any campaign and should withdraw it.”

And sister Brenda Prosser, 68, said: “I find it offensive. The BNP has now hijacked our street party. “I don’t particularly like the idea of being associated even in this way with the BNP. I don’t like their politics.”

But BNP spokesman John Walker defended the use and was adamant the BNP would not apologise for using it.

“This was a grainy black and white photo, which was only partly visible because it was used with logos over it,” he said. “It was a representation of the wartime theme that we used to great effect as part of our European election campaign which we called The Battle for Britain Campaign.

“The BNP was not even in existence when these photographs were taken. So how could there be any suggestion that these people could be associated? How could anyone infer that from a photo taken in 1945?

“Do people expect the BNP to have to try to trace every single person in a grainy old photograph from 1945? It’s a ridiculous proposition and people should just see this for what it was.

“It was a representation of the wartime spirit . It doesn’t imply any of these people would support the BNP 70 years later. Most of the people must be dead to be honest, all the adults would be.

“At the end of the day we are not going to stop using it and not going to apologise. We just see this as another pathetic attack against the BNP.”

Wales Online

Twenty Muslim graves were vandalised in a Manchester cemetery, following a BNP campaign against a local Islamic centre. Vandals targeted the Southern Cemetery on Barlow Moor Road, South Manchester on October 1.

Up to 20 gravestones had been pushed over and a number had broken.

Police said the attack is being treated as racially motivated as only Muslim graves were targeted.

One black marble headstone which reads “A beloved husband and father Abdul Rahman Dar” was dislodged. “I came to visit my father’s grave. I was shocked to find the stone had been pushed over. I cannot understand why people would do such a thing. I am very upset,” Habib Dar told The Muslim News.

In a statement to The Muslim News Det Con Rob Southern said, “This is the worst sort of vandalism imaginable. The graves of your loved ones should be a place where they can rest peacefully and that is absolutely sacrosanct.

“The families of those whose graves have been vandalised will be rightly traumatised and deeply upset. If we do catch the people who committed these atrocious acts, then they should be made to see the grief and pain they have caused.

“Sadly, we are treating this as a hate crime as only the Muslim section of gravestones were attacked. This sort of mindless, racist behaviour must be utterly condemned and I’m sure the whole community will be outraged.”

Unite against Fascism (UAF) believes the attackers were motivated by a British National Party (BNP) campaign against the Dar-ul-Ulum Qadria Jilania Islamic Centre.

BNP officials described the conversion of St John the Apostle and Evangelist church in St Johns Road Longsight Manchester into an Islamic centre as the, “Bloodless genocide and ethnic cleansing of the British people and culture.”

The BNP also posted a photograph of a broken Christian headstone on their website and said the, “Christian British graves, the only remnant of the now ethnically cleansed British people in the area, are obviously offensive to the Muslim colonisers, who have brought in the earthmoving machine to smash up the gravestones which are being literally crushed to rubble.”

The local council said the unidentified gravestones, was not part of the graveyard, which has not been used since 1966, but had been moved at some point to form pathways through a church garden, before being covered over.

The developers immediately ordered all work to stop. Council planning officers are now investigating.

The Islamic Centre’s trustee, Arshad Nawaz, said no grave has been intentionally destroyed. He said £50,000 had been spent to repair the church, which had become dilapidated over the years. The graves and gravestones had been “carefully preserved”, he added.

“We have never and will never intentionally disrespect or desecrate any grave regardless of its age and regardless of the caste creed or religion of the deceased.”

Longsight Councillor Maryam Khan said, “It doesn’t matter what religion you are, the dead need to be respected at all costs and my understanding is that that’s exactly what they are doing.

“Now the stones have been uncovered they’ve stopped work to find out what exactly they are. As far as I’m concerned they’ve not acted in any way that should cause offence.”

Muslim News

Two anti-BNP protesters were told they would have their throats ripped out by Rottweilers if they continued to disrupt a fundraising dinner in Ross-on-Wye.

Mother-of-five Antoinette Beizsley, 47, said she was also “pushed hard” by BNP-hired thugs at the town’s Chase Hotel when she and members of her family breached a police line to enter the hotel’s grounds, before being verbally threatened. Antoinette’s aunt Sue Fellows, also received the threat.

Sue, who is a youth worker at Cinderford’s CANDI drop-in centre, said: “They told us if they saw us again they’d open the back of their van and set their Rottweillers on us. They said the dogs would rip our throats out.”

One protester, a 19-year-old from Worcester, was given a fixed penalty notice by police for a minor public order offence. Up to 100 anti-fascist demonstrators – many from Ross-on-Wye and the Forest of Dean – protested as guests of the BNP’s Trafalgar Club arrived for a dinner fundraiser for the extreme right-wing party on Saturday evening. One vehicle was pelted with eggs.

Antoinette, who now lives in Wiltshire, said: “I used to be politically active against fascists a long time ago and Ross is my hometown, so I felt incensed when I discovered BNP members were there. I have always been against bullies, and the BNP are the worst kind.

“With their racist and discriminatory beliefs, I don’t think they should be legal. I was proud to be there demonstrating against neo-Nazis with six members of my family. I was shocked at the behaviour of the security officers.”

Her son Adam is now organising an online campaign on Facebook urging businesses and travel websites to boycott the hotel for hosting the annual dinner.

Sue Fellows said: “I live only a few hundred yards from the Chase Hotel and I’ve used it in the past. It’s shameful that the hotel took the booking, and didn’t even inform its staff or other guests until the last minute. My grandfather fought against the Nazis and Hitler in the Second World War, and now we have fascists on our doorstep. We had to make a stand against them and their hateful beliefs. Britain has always been a multi-racial society and I see nothing wrong with that.”

On Sunday morning BNP leader Nick Griffin was spotted with his entourage taking a pleasure cruise along the Wye at Symonds Yat.

A spokesman for West Mercia police said: “The protest went ahead peacefully and there was no need for any proactive police intervention. Disruption to local residents and visitors was kept to a minimum.”

While a recently leaked BNP members’ list showed the party has just six members within the Forest of Dean constituency (down from nine in 2007), the Hereford constituency, which includes Ross, has its own branch and membership has risen from 15 to 25 within two years. The Hereford branch was set up by a leading BNP member and convicted terrorist Dr Lambertus Nieuwhof, whose company hosts a number of party websites.

Chase Hotel general manager Colin Parcell was unavailable for comment.

The Forester

Nick Griffin could face a fresh challenge as leader of the BNP after his performance on Question Time.

His critics within the party say he “fluffed” the chance to make the case for nationalism to the British people. They are set to hold a meeting in a plot to topple him. “We are determined to get rid of him,” a BNP member told the Standard.

However, the location and timing of the gathering are being kept secret because of fears that Mr Griffin could seek to have members who attend expelled from the far-Right party. But it is understood to be being organised by people linked to the Reform Group of the BNP. They are said to be backing a new governing structure for the party, by a committee, possibly chaired by Chris Jackson.

A number have posted damning comments on fascist websites. One told the Standard: “A lot of people will still not know what nationalism is about. From that point of view he fluffed it.”

Nearly a third of 100 people surveyed on Stormfront, a white extremist website, called on Mr Griffin to stand down after his BBC performance.

London Evening Standard

British National Party leader Nick Griffin was met with protests when he appeared at a radio station in Hamilton.

The far-right politician was pelted with eggs (video here) as he made his way to the station’s studios.

Around 40 demonstrators heckled him as he arrived for a morning phone-in on the L107 station less than a week after his controversial appearance on the BBC’s Question Time.

L107 programme director Derek McIntyre defended the decision to have the BNP leader on but admitted it was “commercial suicide”. He said: “We have received 50 emails this morning from people withdrawing their support for the station and two or three advertisers have said they are pulling out.”

Strathclyde Police said three arrests were made at the protest.

A man aged 19 was arrested for breach of the peace and a 42-year-old woman was also held for breach of the peace and resisting arrest.

Another man was arrested for a racist breach of the peace, police said.

STV

The public is more balanced about the British National Party than Peter Hain and other alarmists. Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time last Thursday has had no effect on the BNP’s rating. There is a big difference between public anxieties that the BNP seeks to exploit and voters’ willingness to back the party.

Two polls since Question Time show no evidence of any BNP bounce. Its support remains in the recent 2 to 3 per cent range: and between 1.5 and 3 per cent over the past year according to Populus. (These ratings are below those recorded by the Greens and the UK Independence Party.) Small fluctuations at this low level do not mean anything because of the margin of error. Moreover, the number having a positive impression of the BNP has fallen from 11 to 9 per cent since June.

Anthony Wells, of UK Polling Report website, concludes: “Despite all the hoo-ha and protests, despite the millions of people who watched Question Time, it doesn’t seem to have made any significant difference to how the public view them, or how likely they are to support them (at least, not yet).”

Not yet is an important caveat. The alarmists have focused on last Saturday’s YouGov poll in the Telegraph identifying 15 per cent who say it was possible that they would vote BNP in a future local, general or European election, and the 7 per cent who say they would “definitely or probably” consider doing so. But the same poll showed BNP support still at just 3 per cent.

An analysis on the Political Betting website of a mass of polling data shows that two thirds of BNP supporters did not vote for any of the big three parties in 2005, and most did not vote at all. Only a fifth are former Labour voters. Overall, they are more likely to be working class than other parties’ voters. The BNP’s real success is in mobilising previous non-voters.

This is not, however, an argument for complacency. There are high levels of support for issues championed by the BNP. An ICM poll for the News of the World had two thirds believing that recent immigrants get more favourable housing and state benefits compared with “Brits”. Three fifths say mainstream parties have “no credible policies” on immigration but only 44 per cent agree that the white working classes have been abandoned by the mainstream parties, with 52 per cent disagreeing.

The BNP matters because it articulates and distorts the fears of the disaffected about being squeezed out of public services. The party will probably win votes in a few areas but it is not a serious electoral threat nationally.

Times Online

Gordon Brown said housing was ‘one of the great causes of our time’ but no radical measures have been implemented since he took charge, says Peter Hetherington

Calling into a northern watering hole over the weekend, a world away from a metropolitan media-political-cultural elite, the talk – briefly, maybe inevitably – focussed on the issue of the day. Waving a copy of the Sun, one youngish regular railed against a “liberal-left establishment” out to humiliate Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, before qualifying his political standpoint with the all-too-predictable: “I don’t like everything he says, but he has some good points and he’s right when he talks about an ‘indigenous population’ under threat.”

Naturally, I felt outraged, uncomfortable and, yes, deeply disturbed by this seeming intrusion into the semi-rural calm of one of my favourite places – the incident won’t leave me!

Now my concern has turned to anger and despair. That’s not only directed at a public broadcaster giving an avowedly racist party the screen-time it craves, but also at a governing party which – with some notable exceptions – has publicly sought to distance itself from a core-constituency which once sustained it.

Until recently, it was deemed both unfashionable and near-racist, by that metropolitan elite, to raise the issue of the white working class, particularly as a marginalised minority. True, in areas where the BNP has made alarming progress, Labour MPs such as Jon Cruddas, the member for Dagenham (majority: 7,600), have been warning their party that its obsession with the perceived centre ground of middle-England, and its seeming indifference to core supporters, will have profound repercussions for both Labour and the country.

Sadly, the response has been as predictable as it is dangerous: namely that Labour has to be far more pro-active in explaining how policies since 1997 have helped what we can call a ‘minority’ group. It’s true that measures, such as the monumental £19bn ‘decent homes’ drive to improve the quality of public housing, mark one of this government’s great achievements, but more is needed.

Apart from Cruddas, precious few Labour MPs from areas once called the party’s heartlands, such as north east England, have made the plight of the old working class, their sons and daughters – too often now consigned either to the dole queue or ‘worklessness’ and, hence, outside official statistics – a political crusade.

And this at a time when youth unemployment is the highest since records began.

Sadly, this ineffectual group of MPs itself is marginalised, and rarely taken seriously by the party leadership (when Tony Blair was prime minister; who would have guessed that he represented the former mining seat of Sedgefield, Co Durham, which had one of the highest ‘workless’ levels in the country?)

The party was content to publicly ignore its core vote while others exploited such indifference.

What to do? We need a re-energised urban policy, similar to the response which greeted the inner-city disturbances of the early 90s. Michael (now Lord) Heseltine made Liverpool his priority after the Toxteth riots. It was no passing whim, Heseltine became the ultimate activist minister.

Although Brown labelled housing “one of the great causes of our time” when he became prime minister over two years’ ago no big hitter emerged to thrust this area to the top of the political agenda. And sadly, he did not extend this to the wider challenges of urban England, and our marginalised post-industrial communities.

Someone needs to grasp this issue, with the same urgency that Heseltine did. To make waves in Whitehall, and create (or propose, in the case of the Tories) a new department for urban affairs, embracing housing and related social and economic issues. That means, for a start, consigning the Department for Communities and Local Government to history, with its remnants going to a new department for constitutional affairs, dedicated to re-invigorating local democracy.

Will it happen? Sadly, perhaps not. But with recession biting deep into the fabric of society, particularly its marginalised communities, and the threat of disorder – God forbid – never far from the surface, those pretending to run the country, metropolitan elite and all, can no longer afford to agonise on the sidelines.

The Guardian

Office chief James Dowson sent this pic of himself with a shotgun to ex-employee after a dispute

THIS is gun-toting BNP fundraiser Rev James Dowson calmly walking down the street with his toddler son and wife – and a shotgun!

The crazed anti-abortion nutter, who has a list of convictions including possessing a weapon, sent the phone photo to a former employee after they fell out over a computer which holds the entire BNP membership database. The Scottish ‘businessman’, who has loyalist links and lives in Ballygowan, runs the right wing BNP’s national nerve centre in east Belfast under the cover name Adlorries.

But the entire operation was thrown into chaos recently after his right-hand woman quit her job of running the office and took a computer which contained the BNP membership list.

Today the former employee lifts the lid on life working for 44-year-old Jim Dowson and the BNP in Belfast.

She reveals how:

• Dowson sent her the photo of himself with a shotgun and threatened other members of her family with the UVF.
• The rabid nutter flew into a rage after a Belfast recruitment sent two Asian men and two gay people to work in the Dundonald office.
• Dowson runs a string of charities from the Belfast base and collects donations for doing nothing and.
• BNP members have been conned into buying a lifetime membership which comes with a £100 watch – which is actually only worth £19.99.

It comes in the week when a fresh leaked list of alleged BNP members appeared on the internet and convicted race-hate leader Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on the BBC’s Question Time.

Threat

Following a dispute with Dowson the former employee, who can’t be identified, says she kept a computer belonging to the BNP because he refused to pay her substantial wages she claims she was owed.

Dowson then sent her this picture of himself, armed with a shotgun. “I took that as a threat – why else would he send someone he was in dispute with such a photo?” says the former BNP officer manager.

“I worked for them at their office in Dundonald for the last eight months because it was a job and I needed the work, plus it paid well. At the start it was just like organising any other office but recently he wanted me to get more involved in the political side of things and I ended up working more for the BNP directly.

“But it got too difficult because I hate what the BNP stand for, plus I live with my partner in a republican area.

“I’m not scared of Dowson though – he’s a wannabe hardman and I think he’s full of sh**.”

Dowson, who once told the Sunday World he would never “get into bed” with the BNP, has a string of convictions including breach of the peace in 1986, possession of a weapon and breach of the peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992.

He also has close links with loyalist groups here and has produced flute band tapes which glorify UFF mass killer Michael Stone.

Following our expose of his secret BNP office back in June, Dowson told UTV that he hated the BNP and only ran their call centre on pure business grounds.

However we can reveal that Dowson is a fully paid up ‘life’ member.

The former employee says Dowson once flew off the handle after a Belfast recruitment agency sent gays and Asians to work in the BNP office.

“He went mental when these two Asian fellas arrived to work for us. I asked them did they realise who they would be working for and they said they didn’t care, so long as they got paid.

“Then they sent us a man and a woman who were quite obviously gay and he had them chucked out before they even got an interview.

“I left in the middle of September and he told me to keep the computer in exchange for the wages he owed. But things turned nasty when my sister, who also worked there, left but before she did she changed all the passwords on the computers. My sister only did it because they treated her like a dogsbody.

Nasty

“Jim then demanded the computer back and started to get nasty. We argued for about two days over the phone about it and then on Saturday I got the picture of him with his wife and son and a shotgun.

“He then called the cops to my house and had me arrested for theft. The cops are raging because he told them a load of nonsense about there being cops’ and top judges’ personal details being on the computer just to get them to arrest me.”

She says Jim idolises leader Nick Griffin and loves the BNP.

“Jim went nuts after the Sunday World story in June and pulled us all in to a meeting. He banned mobile phones in the office and he installed cameras everywhere. But so many people have left he only had one call centre salesperson left. Jim is terrified that the place is going to fold because the business has dried up.

“During my time we brought in 4,000 new members but he can’t get past 13,000 members.

---

---

RACIST GETS INVITE TO ULSTER

by John Cassidy

HARDLINE loyalists are to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin to address supporters in Ulster.

A fascist group based in Mid-Ulster have been in contact with the BNP’s head office in London. It followed his appearance on the BBC1 Question Time show on Thursday which was watched by a record 8 million viewers.

The hardline loyalists want the MEP and one of his right wing councillors to come to the province in the New Year to host a question and answer session.

Speak

Said a source: “Loyalists are fed up that their local unionist politicians who don’t speak up for them. We want Ulster to remain British. We don’t foreigners coming and taking our jobs and our homes.

“We want a councillor to stand in next year’s elections as mid Ulster has a large foreign national population. We will give him a warn welcome because we believe he speaks up for the loyalist people of Ulster.’’

Nick Griffin is no stranger to Ulster and has a long association with hardline loyalist groups over his opposition to Sinn Fein and the IRA.

Five years ago, the Sunday World revealed how Griffin held a series of meetings with neo Nazis groups at a Belfast hotel. He also met a number of senior UVF figures who were Ulster cheerleaders for the BNP.

Sunday World