Steve Batkin (far-right) with his neo-Nazi friends
Steve Batkin, the controversial BNP councillor and school governor in Stoke, has defended his partaking in a neo-Nazi ceremony next to a memorial to those who died during the World Wars by saying that his former friends were “genuine patriots” but whose strategy was “wrong”.
In an exclusive interview with Phil Gregory from “Pits n Pots”, an excellent local blog based in Stoke, Batkin responded to Nothing British’s expose of him just before the General Election by saying:
“The people in the photograph, although they are genuine patriotic people, I believe their strategy is wrong”
Bizarrely, Batkin chose to justify the men’s unpatriotic behaviour by saying he didn’t think they, who according to Batkin were members of Blood and Honour, saw it as a Nazi salute, adding he believed they regarded it as a “Fascist salute” instead.
When asked how voters would feel about the disrespectful photo, given that hundreds of thousands of Britons lost their lives during the Second World War fighting the Nazis and the fascists, he simply said he thought people “won’t be very happy about it”.
When quizzed as to why he had appeared in the photograph at all (at the time Batkin was campaigning to become the BNP’s first elected councillor in Stoke), he said:
“It was a risk, which has certainly backfired on me”.
Batkin also gave listeners an insight into his revisionist views on the Holocaust. He said:
” I’ve always believed about 300,000 people died in the Jewish holocaust, not 6 million … there’s no way , there was that many Jews in Europe at that time who could have sustained that amount of Deaths.”
Batkin serves as a School Governor in two Stoke on Trent Schools, Edensor Technical College and Mitchel High School. A representative from Edensor College has now called on Batkin to resign his governorship and position on the council.
Michael Coleman the BNP’s leader in Stoke has said he won’t fire Batkin because the photo’s were taken a long time ago. Perhaps they will reconsider this now that he has failed to provide a sufficient defence for his actions and has shown his true beliefs on the Holocaust.
Batkin is up for re-election in Stoke next year.
Maurice Cousins
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