More BNP background
Here is a list of criminal convictions of prominent BNP members (see preceding post). It comes from Black Country Boy, where it it apparently does not have a permanent link address, which is why I'm reproducing it here. (One should note that Tyndall, referred to below, is actually no longer a BNP member, for example, if I'm not mistaken. Still, the general impression seems fairly clear.)
Who says today's politicians lack convictions. The
British National Party is
brimming with them -- all of a criminal nature. "The BNP will crack down on crime
and restore public safety and confidence," its website states. But despite claiming
to be a party of law and order, the BNP is home to criminals, racist thugs and
football hooligans. The ranks of the criminals extend to the very highest level
of the party.
Nick Griffin (Party Chairman) Received a two-year suspended sentence in April 1998 for inciting racial hatred. His magazine The Rune carried obscene anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial material as well as crude racism.
Tony Lecomber (Group Development Officer). In 1985 he was convicted on five counts for offences under the Explosives Act, including possession of homemade hand-grenades and electronic timing devices. Sentenced to three-years imprisonment. In 1991 he was sentenced to another three years imprisonment for unlawful wounding for his part in an attack on a Jewish schoolteacher whom he caught trying to peel off a BNP sticker at an underground station. He has a total of 12 convictions.
Colin Smith (South East London organiser). Has amassed a total of 17 convictions for burglary, theft, stealing cars, possession of drugs and assaulting a police officer.
John Tyndall (founder of the BNP). Six convictions. In 1962 he was jailed for organising a paramilitary organisation. Four years later, he was again sent to prison for possession of a loaded gun. In 1986, he was convicted for incitement to racial hatred under the Public Order Act and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.
Warren Bennett (Chief Steward). Supposed to keep order in the party yet has convictions for football hooliganism. In 1998, he was deported from France with over 50 other Scottish hooligans, including several BNP members.
Steve Belshaw (East Midlands BNP organiser). Was convicted in 1994 for assaulting a lawyer in his home-town of Mansfield. At the time, Belshaw combined his BNP membership with Combat 18 activity.
Kevin Scott (North East Regional Organiser). Was convicted in 1993 for hurling a glass at a black customer in a pub.
Alan Gould (Waltham Forest Organiser). Was convicted in 2000 for racially abusing people in a local pub. He told the court that it was the drink getting the better of him.
Robert Bennett. A leading activist in Oldham BNP during the 2002 elections campaign, Bennett has served five years in prison for the gang rape of a woman. He has also served seven years for armed robbery and has over 30 convictions in total.
Mick Treacy. The Oldham organiser has five convictions for violence, theft, and handling stolen goods
Darren Dobson. Found guilty of racially aggravated assault at Oldham magistrates in November 2001. Fined 300 [pounds]. Connected to football hooligans in the Oldham area, and has links to the nazi terror group Combat 18
Darren Hoy. April 2002, the BNP supporter was sent to prison for 3 months for racially abusing people as they left an anti-fascist rally in Oldham.
In spite of this imposing list, when pressed by the BBC Panorama team in September 2001 on the convictions of its leading members, party leader Nick Griffin just lied. He claimed Tony Lecomber, his deputy merely had a conviction for handling fireworks. He also claimed that party chief steward Warren Bennett had a minor conviction "some 15 years ago" but had not been in trouble since. The truth is that Bennett has been named in the Scottish press for violence as recently as 2002. Griffin also tried to claim that Colin Smith had no convictions.
Update (05/29): See also 'Senior BNP official suggested assassinating prominent politicians' (Sunday Herald, Scotland).
Update #2 (06/06): Here is an impressive investigation by the blogger Ministry of Truth into the real beliefs of one BNP councillor, who it seems has been posting under an alias at the neo-Nazi site Stormfront. (See also subsequent posts at Ministry of Truth. Ministry has a somewhat alarming home page, and I'm not sure about his own politics, as I didn't go through his other material.)
Update #3 (06/08): BNP leader Nick Griffin gets kid glove treatment from Srdja Trifkovic in a Chronicles interview which is nevertheless worth reading, if only because it demonstrates that Griffin is very smart.
Update #4 (06/11): (a) From the "Keighley" video of a Nick Griffin speech against Islam, available from the BNP site: Griffin anticipates that once the BNP wins power at Westminster,
...then we make the laws, then we control the television and the newspapers, and we can make sure that what has been happening in Keighley is on television, in documentaries, night after night after night after night, until the British people really realise the evil of what these people have done to our country, until they say right, now we really are going to sort it out.
(I may have mistranscribed a word or two.)
(b) I just came across what is presumably the original source for the list of BNP convictions above, at the site of the British anti-BNP group Searchlight. This is a left-wing outfit with "alleged links with the British security forces", according to a disputed Wikipedia article. I have not verified the information on this list from other sources. (In the comment section at the end of the Chronicles interview linked to in Update 3 above, Frank B. Lee points out a discrepancy between the Sunday Herald and Searchlight(?) descriptions of Tony Lecomber's conviction for assaulting a Jewish sticker-peeler. Searchlight says he was taking down a "BNP sticker", the Sunday Herald says it was "Neo-Nazi stickers". One does not expect the mainstream media consistently to draw fine distinctions between the BNP and neo-Nazis, and one should regard media reports with this in mind. The Searchlight version, which I suppose reflects somewhat less badly on Lecomber, sounds more plausible to me.)
Next post on the BNP ("The BNP and a controlled media", 06/15).
Labels: BNP
posted by Mr. Spog | 3:03 a.m.
5 Comments:
Excellent blog.
Interesting that you refer to articles you have read in the Daily Mail. Over here in the UK, the Mail is generally regarded as the worst example of the much despised British tabloid press. It has a pretty ropey history too...
In 1924 the Daily Mail published the forged Zinoviev Letter which indicated that British Communists were planning violent Revolution. It was widely believed that this was a significant factor in the defeat of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party in the 1924 general election, held four days later.
For a time in the early 1930s Rothermere and the Mail were sympathetic to some degree with Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Rothermere wrote an article, Hurrah for the Blackshirts, in January 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine", though after the violence of the 1934 Olympia meeting involving the BUF the Mail withdrew its support.
The paper also published articles lamenting the number of German Jews entering Britain as refugees after the rise of Nazism.
Rothermere and the Mail supported Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, particularly during the events leading up to the Munich Agreement. However, after the Nazi invasion of Prague in 1939, the Mail changed position and urged Chamberlain to prepare for war, not least, perhaps, because on account of its stance it had been threatened with closure by the British Government. Up to this point, The Daily Mail had been the only British newspaper to consistently support the German National Socialist Party.
On a more contemporary note, the Mail (or the "Daily Heil", "Daily Wail" and the "Daily Hate") continues to stoke hatred against so called 'minority groups': gays, lesbians, blacks, women, muslims, refugees, asylum seekers, environmentalists, socialists etc.
For a more balanced and reliable persepective on UK news and politics visit The Guardian or The Times websites:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Thanks, BCB
At one time I read the Guardian, but since then I've moved to the right and the Guardian has gone further left. In conservative circles it has the reputation of being utterly unreliable. To take one example, all the papers reported the so-called "Jenin massacre" a few years ago, but the Guardian was, I think, the only one which refused to retract the story when it became clear that it was Palestinian propaganda. It has employed at least one Islamic extremist as a writer. I believe he wrote about the 7/7 London mass murder as an example of Muslim "exuberance" shortly before he was fired. As Damian Penny (leading light of the Newfblogosphere) has pointed out, their cartoonist also appears to be a psychopath.
The Daily Mail home page does not look very impressive, but I like Melanie Phillips (another former left-winger), for example.
In our strange time the "quality" papers are not always more reliable than the "yellow press". Trust nobody, read widely and critically.
I'm glad to have seen your post. I didn't realize that the BNP guys had form like this.
Still, when Britain's jellyfish "respectable" parties refuse to even talk about the downside of multi-culturalism and immigration, and that in another generation or two Anglo-Saxon Britain will be a minority at the rate things are going, it leaves the field to outfits like the BNP.
I didn't see V for Vendetta, so the references were mystifying. (Your artwork is a little unusual as well.)...Keep up the good work, or the good parts of the work, or whatever.
Tony lecomber and warren bennet (and i think some others on the list) are no longer in the party. Its getting better and better. We are cleaning up our act (ive been in a year) and the policies are the best out there in most areas.
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