slackbastard

More absolutely “fantastic” (Nick Griffin) publicity for the British National Party!

“Fun-loving”, “romantic”, a “good listener” and a former RUC member who loves Thai

On the trail of names on leaked BNP ‘member’ list
Sunday Life (Belfast Telegraph)
November 23, 2008

A pretty blonde mum from Bangor, a lonely heart ex-RUC officer and a former fire chief are among the Northern Ireland people whose names have appeared on a leaked list belonging to the far-right British National Party. Sunday Life has been tracking down some of the 39 local people named on the alleged membership list of around 13,000 people UK wide. The BNP leadership has confirmed the list that has been spread across the internet is largely accurate, but say some non-members names had been added to create mischief. One Northern Ireland man who openly says he’s proud to be a member of the BNP is ex-RUC officer Sandy Alexander from Portstewart. The lonely heart divorcee may support the BNP’s tough anti-immigration policies, but he certainly seems to enjoy the company of foreigners having developed online friendships with a string of Thai beauties on a social network site. Ex-cop Sandy describes himself as “fun-loving”, “romantic” and a “good listener” on his Friendster site where he has posted pictures of himself posing with a machine gun, his sports car and in his old RUC uniform…

Happy Valley Tally Ho Pip Pip

Writer Juanita Carberry’s Right to remain silent
Tim Walker: Edited by Laura Roberts
The Telegraph
November 23, 2008

For many decades, Juanita Carberry kept silent about the confession that Sir Henry “Jock” Delves Broughton allegedly made to her about his murder of Lord Erroll in Kenya’s “Happy Valley”. Now, Mandrake can disclose another secret that she managed to hide: her membership of the British National Party.

“I’ve got a right to belong to any party and I joined the party to sound them out,” says the 82-year-old writer, whose name appears on the BNP membership list leaked on to the internet last week. “I do have some sympathy with them, but have never attended any of their meetings.”

Carberry, whose stepmother, Lady Carberry, was a close friend of Diana Delves Broughton, the wife of Sir Jock and lover of Lord Erroll, adds: “I am certainly not racist. A week before the American election I was going around with an Obama badge. I dispute that he is black, though. He is coloured.”

University of Cambridge upper class twit and BNP Fuehrer bringing racial hatred to The Colonies (like we needed any help)

Racial hatred fears over British visa application
ABC
November 23, 2008

The Federal Opposition says it is seeking a briefing from the Government on a visa application from the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin. Mr Griffin is reported to have accepted an invitation to speak in Australia. His visa application is being opposed by Jewish and Islamic leaders who fear his radical views on Britain’s immigration policy will incite racial hatred. The Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull says the Coalition’s immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone has sought more information from the Government. “Certainly Mr Griffin’s views are completely and utterly abhorrent, absolutely abhorrent and his conduct in the past has, and I have been informed, resulted in him being declined a visa in the past,” he said.

Anyone looking for evidence for the espousal of racial hared could do worse than examine the contents of Australian Protectionist Party (APP) member and webmaster Martin Fletcher’s ‘Downunder Newslinks’ site. (The APP is sponsoring Griffin’s visit.) Along with his provision of a copy of the Muslim Massacre videogame, Martin provides hours of Yanqui infotainment on his ‘news’ site, including documentary videos on Barack Hussein Obama, Holocaust denial, David Duke, Stormfront and dead Nutzi Dr William Pierce (author of The Turner Diaries). Indeed, on Downunder Newslinks, The Turner Diaries, along with The Myth of the Six Million, The International Jew, Did Six Million Really Die? and The Protocols of Zion are all available to help White People interpret the Australian news.

Most recently, the APP has been referred to in connection to the dimwitted patriotik yoof belonging to the ‘Southern Cross Soldiers’. According to Liam Houlihan (Sunday Herald Sun, November 23, 2008) “Videos on their websites glorify the Cronulla riots to a neo-Nazi soundtrack promising ‘race war'”. Videos produced and distributed by guess who? Martin Fletcher and Darrin Hodges of the APP. The soundtrack, incidentally, being provided by Skrewdriver (the World’s No.1 White Supremacist Reich ‘n’ Roll band). In September, neo-Nazis organised gigs in tribute to Ian Stuart Donaldson, the (very dead) lead shouter with Skrewdriver, and co-founder of neo-Nazi muzak network Blood & Honour in Australia (Melbourne) and the UK (Somerset).

Below: One of dozens of racist cartoons promoted by and available on Martin Fletcher’s website. The cartoons were originally produced by Tom Metzger’s US-based neo-Nazi organisation ‘White Aryan Resistance’. “In 1988, Tom and John Metzger sent their best White Aryan Resistance (WAR) recruiter to organize a Portland bonehead gang. After being trained in WAR’s methods, the gang killed an Ethiopian student. Tom Metzger praised the boneheads for doing their “civic duty.” SPLC attorneys filed a civil suit, Berhanu v. Metzger, asserting the Metzgers and WAR were as responsible for the killing as the Portland boneheads. In October 1990, a jury agreed and awarded $12.5 million in damages to the family of the victim, Mulugeta Seraw. In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Metzger’s appeal, allowing SPLC attorneys to begin distributing funds from the sale of WAR’s assets. The principal beneficiary is Seraw’s son, Henok, who receives monthly payments from WAR’s bank account.”

See also : Evil paedos are secret BNP thugs!!!1!! | Uncle Adolf is Not. Happy. Nick. | (November 23, 2008) | BNP : Roly Poly Fish Heads | BNP vs. 4chan | The Good Ship BNP is a Leaky Vessel | (November 20, 2008) | Scrutinising the religious and political right (Alan Matheson) (November 8, 2008) | Oh, Darrin! (September 30, 2008) | (Protect Australia from) Bloody Muslims! (September 27, 2008) | Nick Griffin Down Under? (September 22, 2008) | Nick Griffin Bound for Botany Bay? (September 11, 2008) | “What’s a Stormfront?” Darrin Hodges in The Canberra Times (August 6, 2008)

Hiding in the bushes?

Who would be part of the BNP? “The British National Party’s leaked membership list was supposedly full of middle-class professionals. So where were they during its annual festival, asks Anna van Praagh” (Anna van Praagh and Patrick Sawer, The Daily Telegraph, November 22, 2008): “In the same week that the list was leaked online – reportedly by an aggrieved party activist – two BNP members from Blackburn, both of whose names appear in the document, were jailed for a total of five years and three months for sexual activity with under-age girls. Ian Hindle, 32, and Andrew Wells, 49, plied two 14-year-olds with alcohol before taking advantage of them, Preston Crown Court heard.”

Pictures of Billy

Pictures of BNP members on web, Mark Stead, The Press, November 22, 2008: “PICTURES of British National Party members in York whose names and addresses were revealed on a leaked list of its supporters have been posted on the internet. The furious far-right organisation has branded the move “irresponsible and criminal” as police continue to investigate how the information – which also included phone numbers, e-mail addresses and, in some cases, occupations – was made public…”

Fascist police!

BNP members held over leafleting, BBC, November 22, 2008: “Twelve British National Party (BNP) members have been arrested on suspicion of distributing racist material in Liverpool city centre…”

Evil paedos are secret BNP thugs!!!1!!

SICK! Wells took snaps of depravity
SHAMED! Hindle had sex with child
LEADER! Griffin

“Their sentences came as the Metropolitan Police in London suspended four employees who were on the BNP list leaked on the internet. They are a PC, a special constable, a police community support officer and a civilian staff member…”

~ Ryan Sabey! News of the World, November 23, 2008

Best of the Politics Blogs

What’s been happening in the political blogosphere

Frothing extremists
Paul Evans
New Statesman
November 21, 2008

The leaked BNP membership list has preoccupied the blogosphere this week. Paul Evans gives us his regular round-up

Leaky

What has 410 misses, 2 captains and a professor? Sound like a bad joke? Well no, actually, it’s the BNP membership list.

Not for the first time, a story that started on the blogs soon found its way on the front pages, as the far-right party’s entire membership was published online. It was ever-vigilant Lancaster UAF that alerted the blogosphere, dryly noting:

“Curiously, there are quite a number of BNP members abroad, presumably ex-pats or those working abroad temporarily…Isn’t the BNP opposed to foreign workers? I’m sure it was last time I looked.”

The Register and Harry’s Place were soon all over the story like a rash. On Liberal Conspiracy Unity allowed himself a moment’s schadenfreude, observing that:

“There are very few things in life that contain quite as much entertainment value as a good old falling out amongst the far-right but this time out they’ve really surpassed themselves”.

And there is nothing that geeks love more than a huge pile of data from which to fashion novel visualisations – and so the BNP membership list proved a real treat. An interesting “heat map” indicating areas of support for the far right party was generated by Ben Charlton of spod.cx.

Frothing rage was the order of the day on nationalist blogs and message boards, where activists got itchy over the prospect of losing their jobs.

They were right to be concerned, because within a day TalkSport DJ Rod Lucas had been sacked. Lucas offers his explanation here. David Semple was delighted by the prospect of weeding out far right activists.

“Now it’s time to take this list of BNP members and their professions and use it to expunge BNP members from public services, where they are meant to be ready to serve all colours equally,” he argued.

With Nick Griffin reduced to invoking the same Human Rights Act that he professes to abhor, to protect member privacy, these are indeed curious times.

Nick Griffin on Adolf Hitler: “Yes, Adolf went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem that the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image.”

On Mein Kampf: “At 13, I read Mein Kampf, making notes in the margins… I remember thinking, are the Jews really that bad? The chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation there are some really useful ideas there.”

Adolf Hitler on Nick Griffin:

The BNP next door
Jon Henley
The Guardian
November 22, 2008

Ex-squaddies, accountants, engineers – the leaked BNP membership list is a snapshot of far-right Britain, and a chance to find out whether its supporters live on your street…

It’s a fascinating document. Row after row of names, addresses, telephone numbers, emails. Column upon column of personal, professional and biographical detail – career, education, family, hobbies. Here are 12,801 of our fellow citizens, their lives laid bare in this remarkable respect: we now know that they are, were once, or have at some time expressed an interest in becoming members of the organisation that calls itself “the foremost patriotic political party in Great Britain”.

When I say “we”, of course, I mean anyone with an internet connection and some time to spare. Nearly 13,000 individual records – 11,211 of them in England and Wales, the remainder in Scotland or abroad, from Alicante to California – is a lot of information. But it comes in a spreadsheet, which means it’s searchable and (sort of) analysable.

And what emerges from a few hours spent with the membership list of the British National Party that was posted on the net this week is a picture as alarming as it is, strangely, reassuring. It is a picture of a certain kind of England. At times, it’s depressing. At others, it’s frankly hilarious.

“Member describes himself as witch: potential embarrassment if active,” reads a worried note appended to the record of one Wiltshire supporter. “Will not be renewing,” laments another: “Objects to being told he shouldn’t wear a bomber jacket.” I’m also fond of: “Hobbies: letter-writing to local/national papers,” “Retired shoe-shop manager: model figure collector (mostly medieval)”, and “Retired local government officer. Static caravan on east coast”.

Your first instinct, naturally, is to check if you know anyone. I didn’t, as far as I could see: no one in the small Middlesex village where I grew up (though four in Pinner, where I was born), and only three in the district of west London where I now live. Colleagues have pored in amazement over the records for their home towns. “I would never have thought it,” said one friend, from Ripon in North Yorkshire. “It’s a prosperous middle-class market town, and there are are nine BNP voters there. Look! Two there; I know that street.” A university friend said she had discovered to her not-altogether-immense surprise that her parents’ next-door neighbours in Windsor were members. “Crusty,” she said. “And very cheap sherry at Christmas.”

The geographical stats are interesting, up to a point. Lancashire is our proud nation’s farthest-right county by a bootlace, with 861 names on the list. West Yorkshire comes a close second, with 858. Yorkshire as a whole has more than 1,600 BNP supporters, including 263 in Leeds, 164 in Kirklees, 190 in Bradford and more than 100 each in Barnsley, Sheffield and Wakefield. Essex is up there with 670-odd members, including 73 in Barking and Dagenham, and the West Midlands has more than 580, including 187 in Birmingham.

But there are some surprises. Six members in Maidenhead? Fifteen in Bognor Regis? Thirty-eight in Bournemouth, 13 in that haven of lefty London-fleers, Brighton? There are six in High Wycombe, 22 in Cambridge, five in Oxford, three in Chelsea, eight in Cheltenham, 11 in Chichester, two in Henley-on-Thames, seven in Hemel Hempstead and, weirdly, 192 in Surrey.

Is this scary? Well, it looks as if it’s a myth that the BNP fares best in areas of high immigration: according to one report that cross-matched the list with data from the Office for National Statistics, only 5% of BNP members live in areas classified as having high Asian populations, and 2% in areas with big Afro-Caribbean communities. Some 18% of the party’s support comes from traditionally working-class white areas. Twenty-two percent of BNP members may live in deprived parts of England and Wales, but 16% live in the wealthiest.

Professor Roger Eatwell of the University of Bath, who has written extensively on the BNP, sounds a cautionary note: from his first look at the list, he says, “many BNP activists don’t actually appear to be members”. And in any case, “members and activists are not the same as voters”. That’s obviously true, and the list is clearly an incomplete picture of BNP support. But in its fabulous welter of detail, you can almost see some of those who feature on it.

In Surrey, for instance, is a “retired accountant. Fellow of Inst of Chartered Accountants/Management Accountants. MA (Oxon). Hobbies: military history, ethnology/anthropology, carpentry/cabinet-making. Ex-serviceman & TA Capt. Former district councillor. Letter writer”. Somewhere in Middlesex is a “chartered mechanical engineer. MD of high-pressure water pump firm. Hobbies: flying, fullsize & model aircraft. Restoration of ‘O’ & ‘I’ gauge trains. Caravanning, walking”. Can’t you just picture them? Or how about, in Sussex, a “retired antique dealer. Owner: tourist attraction abroad. Former racing driver. Hobbies: competition shooting, sword collector. Author.” Or in Gloucestershire: “Business owner (antiquities). Public speaker. Has two suits of 14th- & 15th-century armour and can joust for rallies.”

There are some common strands. One is the retired (or semi-retired, or nearly-retired) middle-to-upper-middle businessman who would probably never recognise himself (or his wife, who is often a member too) as racist, but who obviously believes, as they say, that the country’s going to the dogs. Very often, their hobbies include “collecting WW2 memorabilia (British)” or “restoring classic vehicles (owns WW2 jeep)”.

Then there’s the ex-servicemen, of whom there are more than 100, former policemen, and Territorial Army. These may be self-employed, perhaps in building, or security. How about: “HM Forces (3 tours NI). Rhodesian Security Forces. Freelance security: Africa/South America/Europe. Hobbies: military history”?

Several proclaim Christian faith: “Retired labourer. Committed evangelical Christian, attends Bible studies/prayer meetings”. Elsewhere is “retired chiropodist. Devout Christian lay preacher (non-conformist churches: Baptist, United Reformed, Presbyterian etc). Scottish country dancing”, and “HND Chemistry. Hobbies: gym training, martial arts. Member of the Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church”.

There are only three listed taxi drivers, but there are plenty of builders and plasterers, IT workers – many eager to help: in Buckinghamshire is a “Classics BA (Hons). IT & PC skills (may be able to donate 2nd-hand PCs)” – and 38 HGV licence-holders. In Scotland, there’s a driving instructor – “(discount for BNP members)”. There is, generally, an obsession with further educational qualifications. Some, you feel, may have lost their way somewhere: “Mental health professional, specialism in mental health law, also retired university lecturer (plant sciences). BSc. Phd”. Others are myth-seekers: “Window cleaner. Former pig farmer. Pagan prison chaplain. Hobbies: growing mistletoe, rune-making (wood)”; “Active Odinist/member of pagan organisations.” A student is “willing to give talks on medieval/dark age subjects” and “interested in … setting up a British pagan group”.

And there are, of course, the serious headbangers: BNP leader Nick Griffin may boast that this list proves his members are not “skinhead oiks”, but there are still martial arts fanatics, people suspended for “inappropriate tattoos” and at least seven email addresses incorporating the number 88, which is neo-Nazi code for HH, or Heil Hitler. Other email addresses are lordhawhaw, saxondelight, darkenedangel and napalmdeath. Someone gives his pastime as “World War II reenactment”.

Eatwell recognises these almost comforting stereotypes as “pretty much spot-on. Among BNP activists, there is certainly an older group. There are also a lot of ex-military people, and former National Front types of a more thuggish, even Nazi persuasion. A recent poll showed fully a third of BNP support to be middle-class, although the really big concentration is C2 – solid, respectable working-class.”

But there’s a worrying new element that doesn’t show up on the list at all, Eatwell warns. “Young people are coming in who had no political commitment before. They don’t see themselves as racist, and they’re not thuggish. They’re there for what they see as moral reasons: maybe because their grandad was let down by the NHS. And remember, by far the biggest issue among BNP voters, besides immigration, is simply pessimism. Pessimism’s rocketing right now. They’re the ones to watch.”