The twats that are Nick Griffin and the BNP.

[Section_31]

Cracking little read this.

 

New Statesman - Just the sort of place the BNP loves

 

Stoke is a town in decline and it is in declining towns that the far right is taking hold. Daniel Trilling reports from the English Midlands

 

 

‘‘They’re a bunch of robbin’ bastards and I’m not voting for any of them,” spits a passer-by in his fifties, in typically blunt Midlands fashion. Sheltering from the rain in the porch of a defunct Woolworths in Hanley, the main retail district of Stoke-on-Trent, anti-racism campaigners are doggedly trying to convince Saturday morning shoppers to vote in the imminent European elections. They are one of many local groups across the UK taking part in Hope Not Hate, a drive to keep the British National Party from gaining a seat – and several hundred thousand pounds of funding – in the European Parliament on 4 June. Thanks to the unfolding MPs’ expenses scandal in Westminster, the campaigners’ task has just got a lot harder.

 

“This has come at exactly the wrong moment for us – people are now saying they won’t vote at all,” says Olwen Hamer, chair of the North Staffordshire Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, which is run by a handful of committed – and, right now, soaking wet – volunteers. Fringe parties such as the BNP benefit from a low turnout; in the West Midlands region, of which Stoke is a part, the far-right party needs only 11 per cent of the vote to win a seat. Voters, who are lukewarm towards European elections at the best of times, now express an unprecedented anger at the political system.

 

The BNP sees this as an opportunity to expand its support, with a campaign slogan inviting the electorate to “punish the pigs” (an irony, considering the well-documented track record of corruption among the party’s councillors). Its leader, Nick Griffin, may boast about the BNP being about to go mainstream, but in reality it remains tiny, having attracted fewer than 200,000 votes in the 2005 general election. Stoke, however, provides the strongest example of how the party, which is desperate to hide its roots in racist violence and appear respectable, has become adept at exploiting apathy. Nine BNP members sit on the city council; Griffin describes it as his party’s “jewel in the crown”.

 

While the media and politicians have had their eyes trained on Islamic extremism during the past decade, the far right has consolidated its position in local politics. Peter Hain, the former Labour minister and veteran anti-apartheid campaigner, confirms this. “It’s crept up on everybody. It’s been very evident for a number of years that the BNP have got a serious strategy for establishing a platform for racist and fascist politics in suits. People in the mainstream parties, with the odd exception, have tended to be very complacent about that.”

 

Received wisdom says that the BNP does well in deprived former industrial areas, capitalising on the prejudices and frustration of the white working class. Stoke would appear to fit the bill. The city, a conurbation with a population of 250,000, was once supported by ceramics and coal mining (“pots and pits”, as it’s known locally). The pits were killed off in the 1980s – people here still talk about the miners’ strike as if it were yesterday – and the pots have been depleted by overseas competitors. Now, the landscape is dotted with the towers of derelict bottle kilns and factories. Sandy McLatchi, an unemployed pottery worker, tells me that racism is endemic in Stoke, mainly directed against the city’s 9,000 inhabitants of Asian descent, many of whom moved here in the 1960s. “The city is split and completely insular, each town is like a tribe of its own, and the culture lends itself very well to the BNP. They don’t like outsiders here.”

 

The local MP, Mark Fisher, is a rebellious Labour backbencher and former arts minister who has represented Stoke Central since 1983. When we meet, I ask if his constituency has been badly hit by the recession; he half-jokes that it has never recovered from the last one. Unemployment has been high since the 1980s and manufacturing jobs have been replaced by service industry jobs that come and go with the fluctuations of the financial markets.

 

But this tells only part of the story. I suggest voters in towns like Stoke are angry at the expenses scandal not because of the sums involved, but because it is yet more evidence that Westminster politicians think of themselves as a class apart, deserving of a lifestyle comparable to that of bankers and “wealth creators”. He agrees: “We’ve got a new class of politicians who are

 

careerists. MPs are younger now, they come straight from university to being a research assistant to becoming a candidate to becoming an MP. Everyone wants to be a minister.”

 

Meanwhile grass-roots support for mainstream parties has declined as ordinary people feel increasingly cut off from politics. This is particularly true in Labour’s case, where membership has plummeted from over 400,000 in 1997 to well under 200,000. The collapse is keenly felt in Stoke, which has been dominated by the Labour Party for decades. Effective opposition from the two other main parties is non-existent – the Conservative party branch is rumoured to have as few as 17 members.

 

Fisher points to two factors that have increased the rate of decay: Margaret Thatcher’s reform of local government, which transferred more power to Westminster, and New Labour’s enthusiasm for elected mayors, which he derides as a Blairite gimmick.

 

“I never felt that Blair had anything except the most superficial media-grabbing interest in elected mayors. He was never interested in local government; he didn’t understand the checks and balances that it requires.”

 

As a result, Stoke has a political culture that wouldn’t look out of place on The Wire. I wanted to speak to the mayor, Mark Meredith, but he has been charged with corruption and is on bail, along with Roger Ibbs, the former leader of the council’s Conservatives, and Mo Chaudry, a swimming pool owner who once appeared on Channel 4’s reality show The Secret Millionaire. On 8 May, the local government minister John Healey intervened with a series of measures intended to repair the “damaged” council.

 

It is in this context that the BNP has stepped in to fill a gap. Its activists have attracted votes in council wards neglected by other parties, in many cases by offering to cut residents’ lawns or collect their rubbish.

 

Alby Walker, the owner of a small joinery firm, and his wife, Ellie, are councillors in the Abbey Green ward of the city and candidates for the European Parliament. The BNP is hoping voters will find them the acceptable face of the far right. Sitting in their shared council office, calmly extolling the virtues of hard work, they could pass for run-of-the-mill Tory councillors, were it not for the wall plastered with far-right propaganda (“People like you – voting BNP”) and anti-Muslim headlines torn from the Sun and Daily Express newspapers.

 

Alby chooses his words carefully (“Oswald Mosley? Who’s that, Daniel?”), insisting that accusations of racism are slurs against the BNP. Ellie is less adept at staying on-message. Last year, interviewed on local television, she described herself as “racialist but not a racist”. Yet even Alby admits that when he first became a councillor, three years ago, “I didn’t fully understand the role. I’d just got the political ideology.”

 

The BNP’s ideology, he insists, is nationalist, rather than racist or fascist. But it is a nationalism based on race – only white people have the right to be British. Any non-whites, even if their families have lived here for generations, “can never be British, they are guests of Britain”.

 

The atmosphere in the wider community is more openly sinister. Mohammed Khan, a taxi driver whose parents migrated from Pakistan in the 1970s, tells me there are parts of the city he won’t visit for fear of being attacked. And the anti-racism campaigners I met speak of a pervasive atmosphere of intimidation. Black-suited bodyguards accompany BNP councillors on election platforms and fraternise with police at demonstrations. An often-used tactic for sowing disharmony is for a BNP activist to turn up at a pub and befriend regulars by talking about football, before moving on to untrue stories about preferential treatment for foreigners.

 

Most worrying is the party’s involvement with education. In May 2001, the BNP distributed a leaflet outside Longton High School, a Stoke comprehensive with a large contingent of Asian pupils, that spoke of a “race war” between children. Challenged by journalists from the local newspaper, Michael Coleman, the BNP’s branch secretary, acknowledged the leaflets were racist. He is now a councillor who sits as chair of the children and young people’s overview and scrutiny committee. Since June 2008, he has also been a governor at Longton High.

 

 

Ivan Hickman, secretary of the Stoke branch of the National Union of Teachers, confirms that the BNP has been making a determined effort to get its members elected to governing bodies of schools in order to look like a respectable political party. And a shortage of ordinary people willing to take up governors’ posts means that there are plenty of opportunities.

 

The evidence from Stoke suggests that the far right is being allowed to wrap its tendrils around the roots of democracy, helped by the collapse of public enthusiasm for its institutions. After 12 years in government, Labour can point to various attempts to promote “community cohesion”. But, says Fisher, these have been largely cosmetic. “We’ve done incredible things in

 

this city. We’ve got 90 new primary schools, a really good Sure Start programme. But that’s not community cohesion. We’ve been good on spending the money, but we’ve been bad at grass-roots politics and empowering people at

 

a local level.”

 

 

Rather than confront the problem, however, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Hazel Blears, tells me curtly that her government “has always been building strong communities”. By contrast, her Conservative shadow, Paul Goodman, identifies a need to “focus more rigorously on the extremism that underlies violence”.

 

Nor is Blears’s view shared by some of her colleagues. Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP who has made a name for himself by fighting the BNP in his Essex constituency, Dagenham, is adamant that, despite the public’s anger at mainstream politics, the BNP need not profit – but only if politicians acknowledge their mistakes.

 

“Voters have material frustrations around housing and work and take offence that all political parties are preoccupied with Middle England,” he says. “But we are witnessing the biggest anti-fascist mobilisation ever seen – thousands of people are pitching in.

 

 

It’s about not resigning ourselves to accepting that they will win.”

 

Back in Hanley, the sky has cleared a little and the campaigners are attracting a steady stream of people. A youthful organiser of the city’s Gay Pride festival drops by to lend his support. “The BNP try and stop us marching,” he says. “But we take that with a pinch of salt – we don’t care what they think.” Politicians may have written off the city, but its people certainly haven’t. If the left is going to rebuild itself, Stoke-on-Trent wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

[Kevin D]

That all-British hero Nick Griffin has decided not to go to Buckingham palace; he doesn't want to cause the Queen any embarassment. He's so selfless,him.

[halewood pete]

just been reported on the radio that he paid a £5000 donation to his party into his own bank account. im sure under the rules,he did nothing wrong !

[WaltonRed]

I went past a house in Anfield with a St.George in the window and all BNP posters around it.

 

If I was hard, I'd go and knock and kick shit out of whoever lives there.

[RoboRiise]

I went past a house in Anfield with a St.George in the window and all BNP posters around it.

 

If I was hard, I'd go and knock and kick shit out of whoever lives there.

 

 

[YOUTUBE]aY_n2BtvKIE[/YOUTUBE]

 

Give the fascist man a gunshot :whistle:

[britpat]

That was the general gist of a BNP PEB that was televised on ITV at 1830 yesterday, absolute joke.

 

GF legs ruling damn hard on this thread.

The BNP agrees that the Gurkas have a right to stay in this country with there families it is the scrounging non working immigrants that cost the country 7 times the total NHS budget to keep here that they are against and why should either of us work to keep them here, or maybe you are one of them or another scrounger

[britpat]

That was the general gist of a BNP PEB that was televised on ITV at 1830 yesterday, absolute joke.

 

GF legs ruling damn hard on this thread.

The Spitfire shown on the BNP posters is a polish one "thicko",The BNP would welcome the gurkas and families here, the scrounging non working immigrants that cost the country 7 times the total NHS budget to keep here NO kick them out

[Strontium]

The Spitfire shown on the BNP posters is a polish one "thicko",The BNP would welcome the gurkas and families here, the scrounging non working immigrants that cost the country 7 times the total NHS budget to keep here NO kick them out

 

 

First of all, let me congratulate you on working out how to use a keyboard. I know it must be difficult for you, what with walking on your knuckles and all.

 

Secondly, before you idly throw terms like "thicko" at other people, you might want to get your own facts straight. The Spitfire in the BNP's campaign literature was from a squadron with mostly Polish pilots, but that actual plane was flown by Wing Commander Jan Zumbach DFC, who was Swiss.

 

Thirdly, you're fond of labelling immigrants as "scroungers", - I'd sure like to see some evidence of this. As my graphs show, immigrants make a net fiscal contribution to this country that exceeds the contribution of natives:

 

 

 

Fourthly, enjoy your neg.

[Anubis]

The BNP agrees that the Gurkas have a right to stay in this country with there families it is the scrounging non working immigrants that cost the country 7 times the total NHS budget to keep here that they are against and why should either of us work to keep them here, or maybe you are one of them or another scrounger

 

The Spitfire shown on the BNP posters is a polish one "thicko",The BNP would welcome the gurkas and families here, the scrounging non working immigrants that cost the country 7 times the total NHS budget to keep here NO kick them out

 

Than you for your eloquent entry into the debate. Such a clever tactic, to forward your arguments in such a crude and ignorant manner. You've won me over....

[AngryOfTuebrook]

The BNP agrees that the Gurkas have a right to stay in this country with there families it is the scrounging non working immigrants that cost the country 7 times the total NHS budget to keep here that they are against and why should either of us work to keep them here, or maybe you are one of them or another scrounger

Utter shite.

The odious Nazi turd Griffin told the BBC that the Gurkhas are just mercenaries and he proposed increasing their pension and keeping them in Nepal. When this was criticised by the media, the best that the Fascists could do was to issue a statement saying that they don't have an official position on the Gurkhas' claim to UK residency.

 

The rest of your post is equally baseless, dishonest and hate-filled.

 

If "britpat" is supposed to stand for "British Patriot" may I refer you to the 6th June thread. There you'll find real British patriots fighting to keep our country free from Nazi poison.

[dennis tooth]

Welcome Britpat. Someone who talks sense like we have been waiting for, they don't like it up em, do they old boy?

[Ben]

A few words about one of the BNP's odious little turds, Mark Collett.

 

I went to school with him in Loughborough (for those that don't know a small town very close to Leicester and Nottingham (which are 2 towns with a very high percentage of ethnic minorities especially Indian and Pakistani, I have read that Leicester is now over 50% ethnic minorities)). The school was a good grammar school and with a large catchment area and had a lot of asian pupils. Mark was quite inteligent but he wasn't a particularly popular kid. He wasn't a twisted loner plotting the downfall of his class mates either and I did have a number of normal conversations with him. He wasn't really bullied although he recieved a lot of stick for being a bit of a dick. I don't ever remember anything racist or race related in any incident involving him, but I do remember him being left 5 feet off the ground duct taped to a tree for an entire afternoon by a group of older kids.

 

Anyway at school he was a bit of a prick. I left school went to college and university where I bumped into a few old school mates who told to me watch a documentary on our old school chum. It was the Channel 4 documentary about him, when he was secret filmed saying some of the quotes mention in a previous thread.

 

So what was the chrysalis that helped a bit of a dickhead caterpillar metamorphose into an obnoxious racist homophobic vile scum of a butterfly that is polluting minds with his poisonous ranting?

 

Leeds University.

 

The moral of the story is don't go to Leeds.

 

Actually it's not, the point is that intelligent people can be warped by their peers or environment and become convinced that what they previously knew as true is now wrong and vice versa. There are intelligent and manipulative peope within the BNP and this is why they must not be given any respect they must be ridiculed at all oppourtunities and every opportunity must be taken to expose what they say as nonsense and them as fools for believing.

[SpeedyG]

A few words about one of the BNP's odious little turds, Mark Collett.

 

I went to school with him in Loughborough (for those that don't know a small town very close to Leicester and Nottingham (which are 2 towns with a very high percentage of ethnic minorities especially Indian and Pakistani, I have read that Leicester is now over 50% ethnic minorities)). The school was a good grammar school and with a large catchment area and had a lot of asian pupils. Mark was quite inteligent but he wasn't a particularly popular kid. He wasn't a twisted loner plotting the downfall of his class mates either and I did have a number of normal conversations with him. He wasn't really bullied although he recieved a lot of stick for being a bit of a dick. I don't ever remember anything racist or race related in any incident involving him, but I do remember him being left 5 feet off the ground duct taped to a tree for an entire afternoon by a group of older kids.

 

Anyway at school he was a bit of a prick. I left school went to college and university where I bumped into a few old school mates who told to me watch a documentary on our old school chum. It was the Channel 4 documentary about him, when he was secret filmed saying some of the quotes mention in a previous thread.

 

So what was the chrysalis that helped a bit of a dickhead caterpillar metamorphose into an obnoxious racist homophobic vile scum of a butterfly that is polluting minds with his poisonous ranting?

 

Leeds University.

 

The moral of the story is don't go to Leeds.

 

Actually it's not, the point is that intelligent people can be warped by their peers or environment and become convinced that what they previously knew as true is now wrong and vice versa. There are intelligent and manipulative peope within the BNP and this is why they must not be given any respect they must be ridiculed at all oppourtunities and every opportunity must be taken to expose what they say as nonsense and them as fools for believing.

 

I saw that documentary, it was quite funny. But a couple of points.

 

1/ Mark Collet is not intelligent.

2/ Ridiculing people is only going to fortify them in their beliefs. You'll probably make them more zealous.

 

Has anyone asked why people are voting BNP? Forget all the Daily Mail shite, forget all the it's because their thick stuff. What's the real reason?

 

Disenfranchisement? Do they feel their values are ignored? Is it an economic thing?

 

I've known lots of "racists" and when it comes right down to it, beyond the hard core, they were just looking for scapegoats for other problems they faced. Once those problems were addressed they weren't "racist" anymore.

 

The dialogue seems to be stuck in the knuckledragger mode though and there aren't any solutions there.

[Ben]

I saw that documentary, it was quite funny. But a couple of points.

 

1/ Mark Collet is not intelligent.

2/ Ridiculing people is only going to fortify them in their beliefs. You'll probably make them more zealous.

 

Has anyone asked why people are voting BNP? Forget all the Daily Mail shite, forget all the it's because their thick stuff. What's the real reason?

 

Disenfranchisement? Do they feel their values are ignored? Is it an economic thing?

 

I've known lots of "racists" and when it comes right down to it, beyond the hard core, they were just looking for scapegoats for other problems they faced. Once those problems were addressed they weren't "racist" anymore.

 

The dialogue seems to be stuck in the knuckledragger mode though and there aren't any solutions there.

 

I will correct myself, Collett was an intelligent person now he is a cockroach.

 

By ridiculing I mean we need to expose them in open forums, on newsnight or question time. Let them have their platform for speech and let their arguments be exposed for the nonsense they are.

 

The reason they are gaining in popularity is because of the economic crisis and the state of things in England. People are trying to understand why after years of prosperity all of a sudden things are difficult. Whilst Labour and Conservative poiticians are swindling the tax payers out of money for moat cleaning services the BNP are offering an alternative that some people are starting to believe.

 

The fact is that with the current political landscape there will always be periods of boom and bust and during the bust periods the extremist will gain in popularity and creedence. What makes the BNP dangerous is their campaigns of hate and violence and intimidation against their detractors.

 

There is a website called "Redwatch" (I think) where addresses and family details of journalists who oppose and speak out against them are published and BNP/redwatch members are encouraged to abuse and intimidate these people.

 

The best way to undermine them and discredit them though is a mystery, there will always be extremists but they currently have too much poitical power for my liking.

[britpat]

Thank you for pointing out the details of the spitfire that I did already know, no racist party would use this on there leaflets.

The welfare system of this country was designed to help all British people, no matter what colour of there skin or original nationality out in hard times and not for immigrants to come into this country to use and abuse.

Why do you think they are queuing up around Calias to come into this country and do not want to stay in France it seems to me you would let them all in.

Thank you also for your graph, there are also figures that do not support this but we will go by your graph.

Think how better it would look if all the scrounging immigrants who have no intention of working with there families and kids were taken out of your graph.

I don’t think there is any political party that the ordinary man in the street agrees with every policy, to me the BNP ticks more boxes than the other parties and not just on immigration

[dennis tooth]

Riiighht.

[Strontium]

Thank you for pointing out the details of the spitfire that I did already know, no racist party would use this on there leaflets.

 

 

Er, but a racist party did use this on their leaflets. Not the brightest spark, are you?

 

it seems to me you would let them all in.

 

 

It's not feasible to let everyone who wants to come here into the country. Why would anyone want to "let them all in"?

 

Thank you also for your graph, there are also figures that do not support this but we will go by your graph.

 

 

Oh, no, let's see your figures that do not support this, please.

 

I don’t think there is any political party that the ordinary man in the street agrees with every policy, to me the BNP ticks more boxes than the other parties and not just on immigration

 

 

What are these ticked boxes? You want to kick black people out of the country too? You want to minimise gay rights?

[tokyojoe]

Thank you for pointing out the details of the spitfire that I did already know, no racist party would use this on there leaflets.

The welfare system of this country was designed to help all British people, no matter what colour of there skin or original nationality out in hard times and not for immigrants to come into this country to use and abuse.

Why do you think they are queuing up around Calias to come into this country and do not want to stay in France it seems to me you would let them all in.

Thank you also for your graph, there are also figures that do not support this but we will go by your graph.

Think how better it would look if all the scrounging immigrants who have no intention of working with there families and kids were taken out of your graph.

I don’t think there is any political party that the ordinary man in the street agrees with every policy, to me the BNP ticks more boxes than the other parties and not just on immigration

 

So you've no problem with 'British People' leaving school at 15, living on welfare, breeding like rabbits, fuelling the crime rate and adding to all the other social problems in this country?

[dennis tooth]

Wacks don't need facts.

[Anubis]

Bitpart, you've chosen the wrong forum to come on. Try a Milwall forum. You'll be better received.

[dennis tooth]

He's already made a freind in Stronts.

 

About britpat

Biography

hard working brit

Location

liverpool

[britpat]

now that is racist

[britpat]

Now you are coming round to my way of thinking tokyojoe I do not agree with "british people" leaving school at 15 and claiming benefits etc but you must look after your own first

[Guest davelfc]

They’re taking our Spitfires!

This has already seen the threat of legal action from Dame Vera Lynn, as the BNP are marketing an album of Second World War classic songs, including “White Cliffs of Dover”. Much of the national press has covered this story, and a little more research has revealed the album also includes contributions from the once famous black singer “Hutch”, Leslie Hutchinson, plus the composer Irving Berlin, bandleaders Bert Ambrose and Joe Loss and comedian Bud Flanagan, who were all Jewish. A rather more multicultural mix than Mr Griffin and his chums might have realised.

 

Something a bit closer to us in R J Mitchell’s old home town is their use of a Second World War Spitfire as the main image for the campaign. I’m sure that a lot of us, even people who aren’t usually given to having a go at the BNP, might think that this was overstepping the mark, hijacking such an iconic image for party political purposes.

 

The Spitfire picture – “Romeo Foxtrot Delta” – is the one on the BNP website.

 

It’s identifiable from its “RF” marking as belonging to 303 Squadron. And guess what? 303 was a Polish squadron!

 

It seems that none of the “patriots” at the BNP obviously know or care enough about the history of the Battle of Britain, despite all their enthusiastic flag waving, to get this detail right. Whereas I, a female of the left-wing political tradition, spotted it as soon as I got hold of a colour version of the picture.

We even know which Polish pilot flew this plane: Squadron Leader Jan Zumbach. Here he is in 1942.

 

Now I don’t know about you, but that seems to be an odd choice for the party currently circulating local election materials damning the present Government for opening “the doors of Britain to the hudled (sic) masses of Eastern Europe”.

 

Still, it’s an easy mistake to make. After all, if they just picked a random photo of a Battle of Britain plane, they would have had about a 1 in 5 chance of picking a “non-Brit”.

 

During the Battle of Britain the Poles shot down 203 Luftwaffe aircraft which stood for 12% of total German losses in this battle, punching well above their weight in numbers, though credit where it’s due – the highest scoring individual “ace” was a Czech, Sgt Josef František!

 

According to the website of the Battle of Britain Historical society, aircrew came from the following countries:

Great Britain - 2,340, Australia - 32 , Barbados – 1, Belgium – 28, Canada – 112, Czechoslovakia – 89, France – 13, Ireland – 10, Jamaica – 1, Newfoundland – 1, New Zealand – 127, Poland – 145, Rhodesia – 3, South Africa – 25, United States – 9.

 

So it’s probably just as well that when the Nazis invaded their home countries, those guys from France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Poland didn’t take the BNP’s advice to refugees and asylum-seekers and just go to the nearest safe country, which could well have been have be neutral Switzerland or Sweden.

 

And that was just the situation in 1940 – before the end of the war “our” planes were piloted by airmen from many other nations, including India (including modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh) and Sierra Leone.

 

But though we might laugh at this gaff, this is a serious matter. Let’s remember what this image is being used to promote – the BNP’s European election campaign, and specifically a series of “black tie” dinner events with BNP leader Nick Griffin as the speaker.

 

That’s the same Nick Griffin who in 1998 was found guilty of inciting race hatred at Harrow Crown Court for denying that the Holocaust ever took place.

 

Remember that, when you see the BNP daring to try and bask in the glory of “the Few”.

 

Pits’n'Pots - The Radical Press » They’re taking our Spitfires! - [Contributed Article]

[WaltonRed]

I despise that shower of ignorant fuckers.

 

I'd ban them and have them all in a Gulag in Scotland by the end of the day.