Following the well documented events of last Saturday, when the BNP were smashed out of Glasgow by a flash mobilisation of anti-fascists, the reverberations on the wider party have not taken long to become clear.

With the national party in disarray over reported financial irregularities and widespread anti-Griffin sentiment, this has been played out in spectacular fashion in Glasgow over recent months, where only a year ago they looked to be on the cusp of a major breakthrough, finishing within a few votes of saving their deposit in the Glasgow North East by-election last November. Earlier this year, three leading Glasgow members, for reasons which never became very clear, then walked out on the party, throwing their general election plans into chaos.

Over the past week, it’s emerged that the BNP in Glasgow have suffered another damaging split, with Walter Hamilton – the party’s organiser in the city until about a month ago – publicly issuing a lengthy diatribe against his replacement as organiser, the one and only ‘Big Joe’ Finnie, a man who SSY have had more than one run-in with over the past year.

In the statement, reproduced in full here, Walter lists off a series of accusations against ‘Big Joe’. It’s unclear where this fits into the wider picture of the BNP civil war; Hamilton is a firm Griffinite, and as for where Finnie stands, the less said the better (if it wasn’t so funny, that is).

BIG JOE FINNIE: "will never be able to lead and will only cause trouble wherever he goes"

The accusations themselves amount to a hilarious tragi-comedic character assassination, involving various anecdotes and stories involving our man Joe. There’s the time he got pissed and ran around Dennistoun shouting about the BNP ‘being worse than the KKK’, or the occasion when he tried to show Nick Griffin his collection of Nazi DVDs (don’t worry, Hamilton helpfully informs us that Griffin, obviously, wasn’t the slightest bit interested, what with him categorically not being a Nazi and that.). Turns out Joe has also been continually trying to make links with the Scottish Defence League – to the extent of issuing press releases claiming that the two organisations are working together. As you might recall, the SDL is supposedly ‘proscribed’ for BNP members, but this new evidence suggests that Joe’s stall in Glasgow on the same day as the SDL’s demo last Saturday perhaps wasn’t as big a coincidence as we first thought.

It also brings to light what anti-fascists have known for ages: that the BNP in central Scotland are a disorganised mess, barely capable of mounting any sort of activity without it descending into farce. Hamilton reveals that since taking over, Joe hasn’t managed to organise any meetings, suggesting that the only thing he has actually arranged was last Saturday’s disastrous stall in the centre of Glasgow, which seems to have brought matters to a head.

Elsewhere, on more, ahem, murkier sections of the internet, Hamilton’s statement ‘exposing’ Finnie has opened the Nazi floodgates on him, with accusations flying about that he’s a “race mixer” with “cravings for some of the creatures of that continent”, meaning Africa where apparently he spent “his time as a young man”. Which is all pretty funny for a massive racist.

So far there’s been no official word from BNP Scotland on any of this. We can only speculate, but presumably all the resources at their disposal are currently preoccupied with pursuing their criminal proceedings against SSY to bother with minor matters like their own party falling to bits. Or they might just be too busy blogging about how they want to give me a good spanking and writing emails ‘to my parents and others’ to alert them of my criminal activities. Boo fucking hoo.

Meanwhile down south, senior party activist and all round idiot Richard Barnbrook was expelled on Monday, following his decision last month to resign the BNP whip on the London Assembly, where he was their sole representative and now sits as an independent. Barnbrook is a figure who’s provided much light relief over the years, from when it came out that he once directed a “gay porn” film, to his dancing skillz ( which I’m very sad to report appear to have been deleted from youtube since the last time I checked. Damn it!)

Where would we be without the BNP?

But don’t speak too soon. A world without the ‘BNP’  as we know it may be about to become reality much sooner than first thought. Following the elections in May, which were disastrous for the BNP with them being wiped out on Barking council among other upsets, and six months fraught by internal strife since then, Nick Griffin has announced that the BNP need to ‘rebrand’ their image. And he wants help from YOU in coming up with a new branding for the party! Because if there’s one thing wrong with the BNP, it’s definitely not the fact that they’re a bunch of fascists, or the endemic corruption, or the party being full of misfits and losers arguing among themselves. The main thing holding the BNP back is their logo, and you can help sort this out! Please email your suggestions and new designs to logo@bnp.org.uk. The closing date for submissions is 28 October, so get moving quickly…. there might not be much of a party left to rebrand if you don’t act quick…

Donna just shat her pants

It’s been a busy week here at SSY towers. Many strange inhabitants of the murkier corners of the internet were so disgusted by our bin raking ways, they were moved to try and track us down and give us death threats, letters to our (commie) parents about how we’re mad commies, and even complaints to our unis about how they are harbouring terrorists!

A quick recap: last weekend SSY were among the many different protesters (various different socialists, anarchists, trade unionists and random members of the public) who were disgusted to see the fascist BNP attempting their first street activity in over a year in Glasgow city centre. The 7 hate-mongers were quickly outnumbered by hundreds of normal, sensible individuals who don’t blame immigrants for everything wrong with their own lives. Embarrassed, the racists were quickly forced to retreat under the protection of the police. In their rush to run away, they abandoned their banner on the street, which was then put in a bin.

Going by the motto of ‘waste not, want not’, some SSY members decided to rescue this fine piece of fascist art from the bin, and take it away for our own amusement. We’d like all our fascist friends reading this to please note that THERE IS NO SUCH CRIME AS BIN RAKING. That is why, despite what you have been claiming over the past few days, none of us have been contacted by the police, because we didn’t in fact steal your banner, unless a bin is capable of ownership.

Many hours of laughing at idiots later, this led to this picture being taken. The far right were completely humiliated by their own inability to mobilise on anything like the scale the (still relatively weak) left can, and the fact that ordinary people in Glasgow will take time out of their busy Saturday to tell them in no uncertain terms what utter twats they think they are. Now it was even worse: the banner that they left behind was in the hands of the very people who had earlier forced them to run away.

The crazy bullies, well used to blaming their own failures on others, were quick to lash out. Across the far right internet, different factions of fascists tried desperately to blame each other for who’s fault it was they’d been collectively humiliated (and which of them weren’t proper racists because they were “race mixers” willing to shag non-whites). As you can see here, some of them can’t quite decide if they hate us or fancy us. Here we reproduce a selection of the highlights of their various imaginative insults (all spelling mistakes were in the originals!):

THE MARXIST EDUCATIONAL CIRCUS

“Agitated commie tit”

“products of the Marxist educational circus”

“i expect they are buying supplys of nappies and plastic bedsheets incase they have a accident during a nightmare.”

“insecure fairies just dying to conform to the status quo.”

“These people are a cancer in our society”

“Sqeal like a piggy boy.”

“Those two guys look like the under-the-thumb sort that do the big hero act to try and impress the girls, and hopefully get into their pants. They probably do all the housework as well! (Instead of a 50/50 split, which is what I have.)”

“you can bet your bottom dollar that the males involved, which will be most of them, if they aren’t gay, are self hating apologists for their own gender, who consider themselves to be male feminists, or manginas.”

“I mean for someone who will never have a girlfreind and likes singing gay disco and has the features of a rat with lepracy, he should really should be locked in a cellar for the rest of his life or stuck on a sex offeneders wing with the rest of his marxist bum chums..”

“What i find funny is the girls, they hardly look like the typical Marx Theoreticians. So pathetic how they go along with what their androgynous girlfriend does.”

“I quite fancy the girl on the left. Nice legs.”

“a rather cute kiss curl hairstyle”

“Oh dear, I wonder if he is very scared tonight, and nights to come? I bet his teddy is being hugged like it has never been hugged before.” [Antifascist commie scum responds: "They're way off the mark about me squeezing my teddy extra tight. Teddy is getting the normal amount of snuggles."]

WHAT DID YOU DO TO PROTEST THIS OUTRAGE?!?!?!111?!

“The scum bag leftys in this video make me feel sick, I dont see them protesting against the black police association or the black nurses association , where were they at the MOBO awards or when Islam4UK wanted to march through wootton bassett ? why is it that the words ‘white’, ‘British’ and ‘English’ are treated with total disrespect when everyone else can have representatives.”

For the past week there’s been a fairly unrelenting torrent of insults and death threats of which this is just a selection. Gutted at their own patheticness, they’ve been desperate to make us feel terrified at their hateful violence filled internet vitriol. They’ve been really keen to prove to us that they KNOW ALL ABOUT US, WHO WE ARE, WHERE WE LIVE ETC. ETC.

Except. They don’t. Their intelligence gathering is more inept than the Chuckle Brothers at any one of their many jobs. Although they’ve managed to gather a few basic details about some SSY members that are freely available online (such as the shocking revelation that, like 21 million other people in the UK, some of them HAVE FACEBOOKS?!?!), they’ve been far outweighed by the stuff they got so spectacularly wrong.

Let’s start with the most obvious clunker. The Nicola poster on the wall. Have a think guys. How many people you know have a MASSIVE FUCKING POSTER OF THEIR NAME ON THEIR BEDROOM WALL? Maybe that’s the kind of thing egostical Nazis are into, but normal people just don’t do it. We’re giving you a headstart here. It’s Nicola from Girls Aloud. None of us are called Nicola.

Then there’s all the fantasy “zoom in and enhance” action. One far right CSI fan commented that he’d “heard it’s possible to get software to remove the black bars.” No, it’s really really not. They also claimed they were going to zoom and enhance the badge hanging off the cupboard, the one that reveals our ID that we’d stupidly left in the picture. We’ll save you the bother. This, of course, reveals the identity of a notable SSY member who goes by the name of “The Worker’s Beer Company is a Fundraising Arm of the TUC” (we just call her WorkBeer for short.)

And let’s not forget about all their bullshit claims, such as they’d heard someone had turned police informant (bullshit), people had deleted their Facebooks (also bullshit), that loads of our “so-called friends have been grassing us in” (total fantasy), and that we were getting chucked out of uni (there’s absolutely nothing in the course requirements of any of my modules about not taking BNP banners out of bins.)

The BNP table is under his fist

To help you out, we’ve put together some handy biographies of our key members:

Liam Turnip, AKA, Liam ‘Iron Man’ Turdbit, AKA Captain Radical, AKA the long streak of piss, AKA the rat with leprosy, AKA Liam Touch My Willy Wallace, AKA Longshanks.

He may go by many names but there’s no mistaking the long man. You can tell wherever he goes by the trail of watches he leaves behind him as they slip off his slender wrists. Fascists everywhere just can’t resist his androgynous cute kiss curls.

Liam grew up on the multicultural hell of Arran, where he ran the island’s second most successful dancehall and bhangra night. However, this was only to appeal to the local crowd as his true musical love is, of course, gay disco. Since moving to the mainland his attempts to get a degree have been hampered by his non stop terrorism.

Nicola Roberts grew up in Runcorn, Cheshire. She has one sister, Frankie, and two brothers, Harrison and Clayton. She holds family values close to her heart, which was revealed in a documentary following the members of Girls Aloud SSY for six months.

Roberts stated: “For years I felt like the ugly one in Girls Aloud SSY.  I was tall, skinny, with red hair and the whitest skin you’ve ever seen -- standing next to four of the most gorgeous terrorists in Britain.” She added that she felt much better about her appearance once she realised that SSY is a refuge for ginger fantasists.

Nicola sometimes forgets what her own name is, so has this handy reminder poster on her wall

Apart from her hectic schedule of anti fascism, Nicola has managed to perform on some of the greatest socialist hits of recent years, such as ‘Sound of the Untermensch,’ ‘Something Kind of Jew,’ and ‘You Can’t Mistake My Ideology’.

And of course, let’s not forget Donna, who TOTALLY EXISTS AND IS NOT A PSEUDONYM. We all realise that, just as you’ve claimed in banned comments, you know Donna’s real name, where she lives and the fact the she is very much real. Unfortunately, she can’t remember who she is since Dr Who had to wipe her memory.

Of course, all joking aside, death threats, even if they do emanate from pathetic internet warrior losers, have to be taken seriously. On the private SDL section of the EDL forums (which we, being slightly better at internet spying than you, can read no bother) there’d been folk talking about coming to the Glasgow SSY AGM last Thursday to “put the boot into these faggots.”

Given that the night before 20-30 EDL thugs tried to attack a socialist meeting on Tyneside, we had to take this at least a bit seriously as an attack on our right to meet and organise. So we responded appropriately, and with less than a day’s notice we put out the call to socialists and anti-fascists to come down to the venue to show solidarity and help defend us. The resulting mobilisation was inspirational. Over 60 people from all kinds of political backgrounds came down. Many would disagree on a lot of our politics, but we were united in our desire to defend each other in the face of mindlessly violent knobheads.

Of course, we got no trouble. Nobody we saw did look like the SDL or their other fascist chums. But if they did send anyone along for a look, they’ll have got the message. Anti fascists in Glasgow are organised and militant and prepared to stand up for each other. And there are many many more of us than you.

Anti fascists stand united against the SDL's internet bullshit

BNP members Mark McGarry (centre with camera) & Joseph Finnie (far-right)

Saturday 18 September saw a hugely successful day of anti-fascist direct action against the racist thugs of the BNP and the Scottish Defence League – both of whom attempted to carry out public activity in Glasgow on the day.

September 18 was originally the day the SDL were planning to hold a march from Blytheswood Square to the Cenotaph in George Square. With this route being denied by the council – who offered them a static protest instead – the SDL announced that the march was cancelled and re-applied for one in the east end of the city in November.

In light of the events of last weekend, however, when the EDL descended on Oldham in a secret ‘flash mob’ protest, local anti-fascists began to suspect that something similar could be afoot in Glasgow. This was compounded when both the main SDL forum was taken offline, and their facebook page announced that they would be holding a ’social gathering’ in a city centre pub on the day. Acting on these fears, activists from the Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance decided to keep an eye on the city centre over the course of the day, posting scouts at different locations where it was believed the SDL might show up.

However, it soon turned out that the SDL were not the only group of far-right thugs in town that day. At 1pm, a number of BNP activists were spotted in George Square, setting up a stall and posing for photos with their ‘Support our Troops’ banner. They left soon after, but quickly set up again on Buchanan Street. Anti-fascists from across the city quickly mobilised, and by 1.30 there was a small gathering around the stall, preventing the BNP from engaging with the public. Ten minutes later, a larger group of anti-fascist arrived. Within seconds, the stall was smashed up and the BNP material was scattered and destroyed. The 5-6 BNP members were forced to stand  beside the ruins of their stall waiting for the police to show up, which they did – about 15 minutes later.  After a humiliating  half hour of being chanted at by a now large group of passers-by and anti-fascists, the BNP were driven away in a police van for their own safety. A total victory for anti-fascists and, judging from the response from the public, a reaffirmation that Glasgow will not stand for the bigotry and racism of the BNP. This was the first BNP activity in the city centre for almost a year, and apparently the ‘launch of their new campaign’. We don’t think they’ll be back any time soon.

But believe it or not, this was just the beginning of a day of successful direct action against fascism. At 3pm, members of the Scottish Defence League began gathering in The Goose pub on Union Street, next to Central Station. Upon being approached by anti-fascists, they informed them that they’d be going to George Square at 5.30pm, apparently with the intention of assembling at the Cenotaph. Clearly, they were after a confrontation – regardless, though, this doesn’t change the issue at hand: fascist gatherings need to be opposed.

By 5.30pm, small groups of anti-fascists and local youth were assembled around the square. When the 15 or so SDL supporters showed up, a brief confrontation ensued. The crowd of around 100 anti-racists ensured that the SDL did not reach the Cenotaph, while a few fists were thrown in both directions, although it’s understood that no anti-fascists suffered injuries. A large number of police then stepped in and pushed the SDL to one corner of the square, where they were held for a period then removed. The BBC are reporting that a 14 year old was arrested – as far as we know this was for punching an SDL member in the face. One SDL supporter was also lifted for  a ‘racist breach of the peace’.

Overall, a massive victory for anti-fascists: two groups of racists  thrown off the streets. We didn’t rely on the police, and we didn’t rely on the council or Home Secretary to ban them either. The numbers of anti-fascists weren’t massive, but were swelled by passers by and young people who didn’t want the SDL or the BNP on our streets either. A reassuring confirmation that Glasgow is not a safe space for fascists to engage in public activity.

Anti-democracy COMMUNIST FASCIST REDS set about the BNP

The captured spoils of war!

Comments on this article are now closed because all fascists are boring.

Since 2001 the BNP have made steady inroads into British politics, gradually building up a significant base in local councils, and expanding slowly but surely into other arenas – winning a seat on the Greater London Assembly and their highpoint last year, winning 2 seats in the European Parliament. It’s almost been a grudging acceptance by some people on the Left that the BNP’s growth could at best only be slowed in the short term, due to their high profile and the constant anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment in the British press. So it’s not surprising a lot of folk looked with dread to what was going to happen in Barking and Dagenham, the BNP’s stronghold.

It’s where the BNP’s leader Nick Griffin was standing against New Labour hack Margaret Hodge – who gave the BNP ammunition with her comments on housing – and it’s also where the BNP were the official opposition on the council. They had a real chance of both taking Hodge’s seat and taking control of the council – the BNP were throwing the kitchen sink at Barking, and telling their members and supporters they were on the verge of a breakthrough.

Instead they were annihilated – to the surprise of BNP supporters and antifascists alike. They lost all their council seats in Barking and Dagenham – Labour now hold all 51 council seats. Griffin’s vote was also down from 2005. He came nowhere close to challenging Hodge, and finished third behind the Tories. In his speech conceding defeat, Griffin said that they had lost the battle for Barking, and that the area was “colonised”

The BNP’s misfortunes weren’t limited to Barking and Dagenham – they lost councillors all across the country, and are down from 45 councillors to 19 (though English council elections don’t happen all at once, they have other councillors who weren’t up for election).

This result might seem surprising given the BNP got their best result, in terms of votes a couple of nights ago – over half a million. But we don’t know how much of this increase is due to the BNP’s ability to field many more candidates than they were able to in 2005. For example the BNP vote in Scotland in 2005 was only 1,590 but jumped up to almost 9000. On the face of it this looks like a fantastic boost for them, but in reality it is largely due to being able to increase the number of seats they can stand in. They only stood in 2 in 2005 (Glasgow Central and Glasgow North East), in 2010 they stood in 13.

The only direct comparison we can make then, is the vote in Glasgow Central and Glasgow North East – and in both seats, the BNP vote was down from 2005. It’s particularly surprising in the North East, where there’s a lot of concern about immigration and asylum seekers and the BNP nearly held on to their deposit in the by-election last year.

These results couldn’t come at a worse time for Griffin, who has already had to deal with internal difficulties in the BNP – like Mark Collet allegedly trying to kill him, mutiny in the Scottish BNP, their website owner walking off, as well as other discontent around Jim Dowson’s practical ownership of the party. The BNP’s electoral meltdown will inflame the anti-Griffin opposition in the BNP, who may now feel that Griffin’s holocaust denying past is baggage that the BNP can no longer carry, and a new leader more in line with the image of the “new” BNP must be found.

The smarter BNP activists will be asking why their vote collapsed. The reality is that across the UK people who were willing to vote BNP as a protest vote in elections were Labour were certain to win will no longer do so under threat of a Tory Government. From Glasgow North East, to Stoke, to Barking, traditional Labour areas are prepared to hold their nose and vote for Labour to defy the Tories.

Setbacks for the BNP of course aren’t solely attributable to the threat of a Tory Government – it’s likely that thousands of voters would have gone to the polls to vote in fear of what a BNP council would look like, and would have probably chosen Labour as the far lesser evil.

The setbacks for the BNP shouldn’t make us complacent though – the BNP’s ideas still have an an echo among hundreds of thousands of people, and relying on a Tory Government to scare people into voting Labour to keep the BNP out is no long term strategy. If people won’t cast protest votes for the BNP out of fear of the Tories, they won’t cast protest votes for the Left or the Greens. If Labour don’t stand up to the Tories the BNP could posture themselves as the real party against cuts, for British Jobs for British Workers etc.

This shouldn’t mean we don’t celebrate though – it’s squeaky bum time for Griffin and co, whose seats in the European Parliament now look a lot more fragile than before. If the Tories do take power, they may do to the BNP what Thatcher did to the NF – steal their rhetoric on immigration, and steal their votes. And in Scotland they will have a very interesting time upholding “British” identity if the union foists upon us a Tory Government we didn’t vote for.

"I just voted . . EVERYWHERE!"

The polls have closed. The votes are in. Now it’s time to bring us the results of Britain’s most important election that isn’t decided by phoning a premium rate number.

All the papers are projecting an SSP landslide in every seat we’re standing in, but we’re trying to keep our feet on the ground.

What does excite us more than Nick Clegg feels about having sex with his 31st woman is the fact that this will be the first ever UK general election to be LIVEBLOGGED in Leftfield. We’ve got two different teams bringing you live updates, one in the count in Glasgow with Socialist candidate and SSY member James Nesbitt, and one with the SSY blog newsroom bringing you updates from around the UK (as they come on the telly.)

Will David Cameron get to piss on the ashes of Broken Britain? Will Gordon Brown continue to do that weird thing with his jaw in the middle of sentences from 10 Downing Street? Or will Nick Clegg get to bring us his brand of “new” politics by returning the Whig party of Pitt the Elder to power?

Which particular colour will the bucket of shit we’re going to get served be? There’s only one way to find out, or one decent way at least, which is to keep refreshing this site obsessively all night. It begins . . .

Read the rest of this entry »

Yay! Election! Which shade of shite will you choose?

- Not the BNP, who were yesterday confronted by Asian constituents in east London.  The BNP candidate, Bill Bailey, was whisked away and avoided arrest after PUNCHING an 18 year old to the ground, and then kicking the boy as he lay on the ground.
Nick Griffin spoke on the incident, saying that the fight was the result of a “campaign of hatred and dehumanisation against any group of people, in this case us”.
Riiight. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Nick.

 - Not UKIP, whose former leader Nigel Farrage was yesterday injured after his private jet crashed in Northhamptonshire. Wait, did I say private jet? It was actually an oldskool biplane. Which just goes to show how outdated and oldfashioned UKIP are. Maybe the gods of wind and weather and airplane pilots were tryin to tell you something, Nigel…

Keep checking throughout the day – SSY will be bringing you all the news and gossip about the good guys AND the wanks, all day and night!

The Institute for Public Policy Research  have been analysing support for the BNP and trying to determine what causes communities to turn towards the far-right. You can see their findings here.

The BNP would have us believe they are supported by people whose communities are over-run with immigrants and asylum seekers. But they’re lying. The more immigrants living in your community, the less likely you are to vote BNP.

Our findings suggest that areas that have higher levels of recent immigration than others are not more likely to vote for the BNP. In fact, the more immigration an area has experienced, the lower its support for the far right. Rather, the evidence points to political and socio-economic exclusion as drivers of BNP support.

We therefore urge mainstream politicians to strongly resist the notion that people have been driven into the arms of the BNP by the harm immigration is causing to their communities. Instead, they must focus on building strong communities and strong education systems, and on rebuilding trust and confidence in democratic politics, so that marginalised people do not feeling so disconnected. This should allow them to both better serve the interests of these communities, and undercut support for the BNP.

We couldn’t agree more.

This just goes to show that anti-immigrant feeling is not rooted in reality, but is shaped by the racism of the policians and the media. People who actually live next to immigrants know that they are no more evil than any other part of society.

Following Labour candidate Anas Sarwar agreeing to boycott the BNP, the SNP candidate has also confirmed he will not share a platform with them either.

In response to my Letter to SNP and Labour candidates, Osama Saeed commented:

Thank you for your email. I have always refused to share a platform
with the BNP. Fro example, there was a proposed debate last year with
them that I was invited to, but I made clear I and the SNP would not
be represented and it was then cancelled.

Also today, I was invited to attend a PCS hustings event on Wednesday in the City Halls. I spoke to Cheryl Gedling, who is Parliamentary, Campaigns, Media and Research Officer for the civil servants’ union. When I stated that we had a policy of not sharing a platform with the BNP, I was reassured to hear that PCS would never invite a fascist onto their platform. Good to hear the anti-nazi spirit of the trade union movement is still alive and kicking.

Hopefully this is part of a new consensus across society that the BNP are not a legitimate political party. They are a threat to public safety for anyone who doesn’t fit their idea of ‘British’ and they are a  menace to democracy.

Allowing them access to the open debates which would not exist if they were in power is wrong. What we are witnessing now is positive actions to stop their growth, in stark contrast to the dangerous laissez-faire attitude adopted by some in civil society, e.g. the BBC’s error in allowing them a space on Question Time.

The BNP’s campaign in Glasgow Central is now looking more and more shambolic, with them selecting a candidate who does not even live in Scotland!

Fingers crossed that with continued anti-fascist action, the BNP’s attempts to cause divisions in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-coloured Glasgow Central will be a miserable failure.

The people united will never be defeated!

Last night myself and half-a-dozen members of SSY were in Townhead to deliver leaflets, spreading the SSP’s message: Rage against unemployment, poverty and war. It’s the type of area where you can see the need for investment in jobs, pensions and services, not the cuts and austerity promised by New Labour.

While out and about we bumped into Labour candidate Anas Sarwar. Clearly impressed with the size and youthfulness of the SSP crew, he commented “now that’s a team”. He is astute like that. It was an ideal opportunity to dig him up about not replying to the email I sent him over a week ago, in which I challenged him to make a pledge to refuse to share a platform with the BNP.

To his credit, he categorically stated that he would not share a platform with a representative of a racist, neo-fascist organisation. Well done.

I sent the same email to Osama Saeed, the SNP candidate. Unfortunately he is yet to respond.

Feel free to get in touch with him to ask for a straight reply to a simple question. Email him at blog@osamasaeed.org

No platform for the nazi BNP!

After facing “treason” only a few weeks ago in Scotland, the BNP have had to carry out another purge within their own ranks. This time its against a far more senior member, making far more serious threats to the party leadership. The BNP have expelled 3 of their leading members, including their head of publicity, Mark Collett. Alongside Collett, two other leading BNP members have been given the heave – the party’s election organiser Eddy Butler and manager Emma Colgate. Collett is the best known of the 3 – he stood trial with Griffin a few years ago when both were charged with incitement to racial hatred, and was the subject of a documentary “Young, Nazi and Proud”.

Collett has not only been expelled, but been referred to the police for allegedly plotting to kill both Griffin and the party’s chief fundraiser and virtual owner Jim Dowson. Collett’s expulsion from the party could possibly generate discontent among some of the party’s members. Despite their electoral success there has always been a minority of BNP members in opposition to Griffin; for being a “zionist”, whitewashing any references to Nazism and his dictatorial control of the party. Despite these concerns Griffin’s expulsion of Collett is unlikely to do much damage to his standing. Collett’s appearance on the “Young, Nazi and Proud” documentary did damage to the BNP’s modernisation plans, as he was caught attacking the Jews, Churchill and the Royal Family. Griffin himself described Collett as a “pig ignorant man”, who he frequently had to berate.

More damaging to the BNP will be the expulsion of Eddy Butler. Despite not being as well known as Collett, Butler was far more valuable and useful to the party. It was Butler who began the process of turning the BNP away from street violence and on to campaigning for “Rights for Whites” in areas were there was division between white and asian residents over access to social housing. This modernisation succeeded with the BNP gaining its first councillor on the Isle of Dogs.

With the BNP at the height of its powers why are any of its members disenchanted with the party? Some might be disillusioned with the vote to accept non-white members, others may always have opposed Griffin’s modernisation plans, and wanted a return to street violence. More likely in my opinion, the discontent comes from how the party itself is run – as a virtual dictatorship of two individuals, Nick Griffin and Jim Dowson.

As party chairman Griffin has been able to enforce decisions on the party against sections of the memberships will – such as taking cash off other party regions to fund his election campaign. He has also claimed £200k in expenses from the European Parliament, despite standing on a platform of “Punish the Pigs”. These actions may have led Collett and others in the BNP to mobilise against their party’s leadership.

The other “co-owner” of the BNP is anti-abortion activist and loyalist Jim Dowson. Dowson came to prominence as the director of “Precious Life” an extreme anti-abortion group that was disowned by other anti-abortionists in the Catholic Church due to its sending of death threats to pro-choice MP’s. Dowson also has also been involved with loyalist flute bands, one of which was named after loyalist gunman Michael Stone.

Dowson joined the BNP in 2007 and since then has provided important resources into the party through a variety of companies he directs, such as election leaflets, offices and its infamous “Truth truck”. Dowson has also recruited staff to man the BNP’s call centre in Belfast. Northern Ireland is thought of a “sanctuary” by the BNP leadership, a base for them to open permanent facilites like call centres which they could not do in the UK.

At present there is no evidence of a serious split in the BNP against Griffin and Dowson’s leadership. Most of the party supports the electoral focus and is resigned to accepting black and asian members of the party given the alternative is bankruptcy. What does remain however is a disproportionate amount of personal control of the party in Dowson’s hands, and of political control in Griffin’s. Despite the BNP’s success a minority of members on far-right forums and blogs have correctly identified Griffin as one of their limiting factors. Despite his efforts to modernise the party and his success in doing so Griffin cannot excise his own past in denying the Holocaust, attacking Jews and his conviction for racial hatred.

If the BNP are going to become a far-right party on the scale of the NF in France or the Lega Nord in Italy more baggage must be dumped – specifically the BNP’s image as a racist party with a neo-Nazi past. Griffin may have to be dumped to achieve that goal, and with the power he and Dowson have in the party, that could lead to a very vicious and bloody fight indeed.