BNP parasites

[mickyv]

It's obviously wrong & potentially very dangerous for people's details to be up on the Net; just funny that there isn't the same outrage that other people's details (incl. photos)have been plastered for years on Extreme Right Wing Sites such as RedWatch, etc.

[Colston]

Wikileaks servers are currently overloaded by extreme popularity...

[luke]

this is just breaking at the moment so there isn't much info yet ...

[faceless]

Oh those poor little BNP'ers - being targetted in their own communities... why can't they just be left alone to spout fear and hate in peace?

[Colston]

I must admit I was interested enough to download the list and check my neighbours and friends and family...

None present thankfully.

[nekokate]

Yeah, I also downloaded it just to make sure my dad wasn't on there...

[luke]

[faceless]

'they'll be sending me dogshit in the post!'

haha - cracker

[faceless]

Racist' leaflets: 12 held

Twelve men have been arrested on suspicion of distributing racist material in a city centre, police said. The men were held after distributing leaflets in the Whitechapel area of Liverpool and taken to Merseyside police stations for questioning.

A police source said the arrests are linked to the British National Party. A spokesman for the Blackpool and Oldham BNP branches said 12 members were held.

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Nick Griffin stood in Oldham at the last election... I'm sure he's nothing to do with any racism though, oh no...never!

[faceless]

Why we need to undermine BNP's appeal
26th November 2008
Adam Trimingham
The Argus (Brighton)

One of my childhood friends in the 1950s was a burly boy called Martin Webster, taller and broader than me despite being almost a year younger. He lived five doors away and came from a close Catholic family. He was bright, boisterous and confident. There was no hint of what was to come as we played in the parks and derelict bombed areas of west London.

We lost touch for a while and the next time I saw him I was a reporter on the local paper in Kensington. Webster was running the office of a far right party in Notting Hill, sitting below a huge picture of Hitler. Later he hit the national headlines by attacking the Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyattta who was on a visit to London. He brought the old man to the ground outside the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. Their picture was in all the papers.

Webster then reorganised the far right so that most of its disparate elements joined one party called the National Front. During the 1970s the Front started to win council seats in some areas and do well in by-elections. He continued to court controversy, notably when reported as saying the Front was building a well-oiled Nazi machine in this country.

I continued to see Webster occasionally even after I had settled in Brighton because his parents had also moved to Sussex. He was always friendly and spoke nostalgically about our games together as kids.

There were huge demonstrations against the Front from anti-fascist groups, proving that the only thing uniting the far left is a loathing of the far right. I remember one in Brighton when hundreds of left-wing activists turned out to disrupt a Front rally staged by just two tiny and understandably nervous skinheads who did not look much of a threat to anyone.

For a few years the Front appeared to be a serious party in the same way as its counterpart still is today in France. There were plenty of people who wanted to see it banned. But the Front was bedevilled by rows of the kind that invariably affect extremist organisations and these were complicated by allegations concerning Webster’s alleged homosexuality.

Eventually the party slowly collapsed and as far as I am aware Martin Webster is an old age pensioner living in obscurity. I doubt if many people these days even know who he is – or was. I mention this because there are uncanny parallels between Webster and Nick Griffin, current leader of the British National Party.

Both are bright men, in marked contrast to the image of the typical far right supporter. Both have charisma, although they are not conventionally handsome. Griffin has copied Webster in making the main far right party populist – also capable of winning local elections and saving deposits in national ones.

Some people have been shocked at how well the BNP has fared, particularly in poor parts of Britain where living conditions leave a lot to be desired and where there are large numbers of immigrants. There has also been surprise over a list leaked last week of the BNP’s membership, showing that its supporters include teachers and at least one serving police officer. But parties from political extremes tend to do well in deprived areas when they put forward plausible policies on issues largely ignored by mainstream movements.

The maverick George Galloway won an east London seat at the last general election for his left-wing party Respect and immediately after the Second World War there were two Communist MPs in Parliament. As for the BNP membership, it is mainly white and working class as might be expected. But Nick Griffin’s message is capable of converting a few other people as well and we should not be amazed at that.

Sussex has always attracted the far right. I remember meeting one of Webster’s associates, a strange, driven man called Denis Pirie, for an interview for The Argus. John Tyndall, who vied with Webster for leadership of the Front, lived in Hove, not far from his fiery father-in-law Charles Parker. A family called Hancock ran far right organisations including a printing press in Brighton’s Kemp Town, while another prominent Front activist, Martin Wingfield, was based in Worthing.

But they have received remarkably little electoral support here, their successes being confined to the odd parish council seat. They have frequently failed to gain the number of votes they might reasonably have expected even when people vote for them by mistake. When Wingfield stood in Worthing at the 1983 election, he polled just 0.5 per cent of the total vote.

The only far right leader in Britain to have ever been a major political figure was Sir Oswald Mosley and that was largely through conventional activities before he became a Fascist. Mosley was a leading member of both the Conservative and Labour parties in the 1920s. Had he stuck with either, he could conceivably have been prime minister. Handsome, bright and with an almost unmatched talent for oratory, Mosley made the mistake of thinking he could win a moderate nation round to his brand of extremism.

I had to report his speeches many times in his later years and they always included disgusting, disgraceful anti-racial diatribes. From being one of Britain’s bright young men and a war hero, he became deservedly reviled by everyone except a few hundred spotty acolytes. Despite the sound of the speeches (he spoke in rolling Hitlerian cadences) and the undoubted magnetism of the man, he persistently fared poorly in elections.

The BNP will continue to score the occasional electoral success. It will gain some seats under most forms of proportional representation should they become popular. But it will only do well in deprived areas, underlining the need to tackle poverty. Its success also emphasises the need to have open, but nonracist, debates about the effects of high levels of immigration in these areas and any problems they may cause.

Banning the BNP would only make martyrs out of people like Nick Griffin who would undoubtedly be clever enough to exploit it. Staging rallies against them would have much the same effect. Many people may find the BNP regrettable but it takes part in the democratic process and there are laws in place should any member make unacceptable statements.

Eventually the BNP will split and splinter, as its many predecessors, including the National Front, have done in the past. I predict that by the time Nick Griffin becomes a pensioner in 2024 he will be forgotten in much the same way as Martin Webster is today.

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Quite a good article, but to suggest that the only thing which brings together the left is to protest against the far-right is just nonsense. Nuclear weapons, foreign wars, health and education, social inclusion, the list goes on.

[Brown Sauce]

[seshme]

[nekokate]

[seshme]

Only one who was stupid enough to put his occupation.

How stupid is that?

[luke]