Screen grab taken from BNP web site on 29th March 2010

Just got off the phone with the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Electoral Commission to clear up some of the confusion surrounding the BNP’s membership arrangements.

The BNP were told by Judge Paul Collins to:

1. Remove any controversial clauses that directly discriminated against non-whites from joining the party and indirectly by compelling its members to subscribe to their racist political purposes and objectives.

2. Publish the most up to date constitution (i.e. that satisfied the EHRC and complied with the court’s order) on its web site.

On March 14th Griffin declared his party was back in business because he had complied with court’s order by removing the controversial clauses.

But what about the constitution bit?

After looking on the BNP’s website, we have been unable to find the new constitution.

BNP.org.uk says that the disputed 11th constitution, which effectively states that party membership is closed to non-whites, was declared invalid after the party’s membership voted it out on February 14th 2010. It then says it was supposed to publish the newly amended constitution “shortly after the court hearing with the Equalities Commission on March 9th.” At the point of writing today’s date is the 29th March, 2010 some twenty days after the BNP said it would publish the new constitution – so why is the old 11th constitution still listed on the party’s web site?

Maurice Cousins

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Nick Cohen, Observer columnist and author of What’s Left, has written a very interesting piece in Standpoint magazine on the far-left, far-right and Islamism.

There are no frontier posts on the Left of politics, no pale to go beyond. You can move further and further away from the centre, move so far, in fact, that you turn the circle and join the fascists and it still doesn’t matter. Whatever you do, your “leftist” credentials will protect you from criticism, as surely as a Foreign Office passport protected British colonists in the age of empire.

The borders of politics’ right flank are better policed. When David Cameron allied himself with nativist Polish and Latvian parties which were not fascist but possessors of Eastern Europe’s traditional difficulties with Jews, liberal journalists, your correspondent included, pounded him. If he had gone further and spoken at a conference that featured prominent neo-Nazis, we would have destroyed him. Honourable critics would not say that Cameron was a neo-Nazi. We would allege instead that he was indifferent to racial conspiracy theories, misogyny and homophobia and the damage they wrought — a self-interested, small-minded politician who could not see that some ideologies were so poisonous that society must confront and quarantine them. Think what you will about Cameron, but he is never going to go that far. One of the most cheering developments in British politics has been the emergence of conservative anti-fascism in Britain led by Nothing British about the BNP and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Conservatives and liberals alike police the pale of right-wing politics while the Left remains an unguarded land wide open to invasion.

You can read more by clicking here

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Robert Grierson has sought to spin the whole “BNP barrister” affair by saying he is living proof of how his party is not “a party of skinheads and knuckle-draggers.” Self-evidently he is not a street thug with a long history of neo-Nazism.

But does this mean that the BNP has successfully managed to purge itself of weirdos, racists and extremists?

It’s a mixed result.

On a national level the BNP says that it is not racist, but admits it is anti-immigration. But the problem for the BNP is that it is not simply an “anti-immigrant” party like UKIP, it is a racial hygienist party.

Griffin’s second most important message for the 2010 general election, after Afghanistan, is to talk about “immigrant colonisation” and the ”cultural genocide” of Britain. Locally the party’s website says that Birmingham’s “ethnically British” population is being “cleansed”.

The party spreads its messages of hate by dispatching entrenched Holocaust revisionists and sectarians. In February 2010 Arthur Kemp, foreign affairs spokesman, spoke at a South Birmingham BNP meeting. Kemp, who is a South African immigrant himself, told his audience:

“The Africans objected to being colonised by Europeans, and this objection is accepted worldwide as correct and just.

“But if Africans objected to being colonised by Europeans, then Europeans have the same right to object to being colonised by Africa or the Third World, which is exactly what is happening with current Third World immigration levels into Britain and all western nations”.

“[The BNP] is an anti-colonial party and let us here tonight in Birmingham launch our anti-colonial struggle.”

And local officials and activists?

Tanya Jane Lumby, who announced Grierson’s candidature, is the East Midlands organiser. Her husband is also heavily involved as an organiser.

Lumby was recently listed on the EHRC’s submission as one of three senior BNP officials including Nick Griffin and Simon Darby when court proceedings were brought against the extremist party.

She is a Facebook “fan” of Soldiers off the Street, the BNP linked veterans organisation run by former Welsh organiser Bill Murray. Murray is also listed as being a “friend”.

However, her Facebook “friends” are a little more disturbing. She is associated with a number of high-profile, next generation white nationalist extremists including Mark Collett and Chris Beverley.

But it is local activists who best exemplify the half-hearted reforms implemented by Griffin.

In September 2009 it was reported that Mike Bell, a Midlands BNP activist, and a number of other local members attended “Fest der Volker”, neo-Nazi festival and rock concert. The festival is organised by Germany’s NPD and contains a large number of members of Blood and Honour. Swedish ultra-nationalists spoke about the preservation of the white race and the threat of European Muslims.

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