Hungarian Guard members marching

Jobbik, the Hungarian fascist party with close links to Nick Griffin MEP, have responded to Nothing British via its English website.

Jobbik deny that money was raised for the Hungarian Guard and that no member who was present at the session was wearing jeans with Nazi insignia sewn onto the back. 

A local journalist for the Camden News Journal who was present at Jobbik’s pub meeting has also given his take on Sunday’s events. Tom Foot reports that the meeting was used to raise money for the New Hungarian Guard. 

Foot also writes that the Gloucester Arms’ landlord, John Coyne, has said: “They are not National Front or anything like that. They are just Hungarians doing their stuff. They put their flag up and sing their anthem.”

Unfortunately, Jobbik are not just ordinary Hungarians. The Hungarian Guard, the para-military wing of the extremist party, is an organisation that is proscribed by Hungarian courts after it ruled that past marches have fuelled ethnic tensions and led to a disruption of public order. Many of Jobbik’s leaders regularly incite hostility towards Hungary’s vulnerable minorities. Sunday’s meeting did little to dispel their neo-fascist reputation.   

Meanwhile, the Jewish Chronicle have reported that Great Ormond Street Hospital, who the British-Jobbik Association claim to have made a £230 dontation too, are yet to recieve any money from the organisation. 

Great Ormond have yet to receive any money

A hospital spokesman said: “If we were to become aware of such a donation, we would investigate carefully and judge on the principles given above.”

For further information on Jobbik please see our dossier.

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Gloucester Arms pub Kentish Town

Sunday 6th December 2009 - Forty-five Hungarian fascist sympathisers met at a Kentish Town pub to raise funds for Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, and to participate in a Q&A on nationalist issues like the threat of Israelis buying Hungarian property and the problem of gypsies.

The Hungarian courts have already made it clear that they find the values of Jobbik’s militia to be inimical to those of ordinary Hungarians (for the Nothing British Information Note on Jobbik, click here).

We see no reason why this sort of meeting should go unchallenged in the UK.

Sunday’s event was organised by The British-Jobbik Society and was hosted by Zoltan Fuzessy, Jobbik’s UK-based former webmaster and current Vice-President of Foreign Affairs. Fuzessy is, according to the invitation to Sunday’s meeting,  Chief of Staff to Csanad Szegedi MEP, a militia commander in the Hungarian Guard, a Hungarian supremacist, a gypsy-baiter and a Israel-hater. Outside there was a 10-person anti-fascist demonstration.

Zoltan Fuzessy has met with Nick Griffin

The whole day was reminiscent of an expats’ meeting to moan about how the “Old Country” was going to the dogs and mutterings about those they held responsible (Israel, gypsies, socialists, etc).

The crowd was a mixed bunch. From well-spoken tweed-wearing aspiring town squires who claim to work in the City to construction workers such as (in one case) fire alarm engineers and the like. Some of the tough-looking blokes wore neo-Nazi insignia and Swastikas sewn onto their clothing. They all seemed passionate supporters for Jobbik, the Hungarian neo-fascist organisation with close ties to Nick Griffin MEP.

Most alarming is the Society’s apparent role as a revenue-raising outfit for Jobbik’s banned militia, the Hungarian Guard.

Nothing British has an undercover recording of the event which includes a financial collection request for the Hungarian by Fuzessy – click here to listen (it’s in Hungarian but being translated and transcribed). Following Fuzessy’s appeal, a red bucket with a sticker of the Jobbik logo and the Hungarian shield was placed on a table by the Hungarian in a tweed suit and most people contributed.

Nothing illegal happened, but the tone and content of Sunday’s meeting did little to dispel suggestions that the Hungarian Guard is not the sort of organisation that we want to see holding fund-raisers in the British suburbs. 

The contribution of Hungarians to London life, particularly our cultural life, is well-known and much-appreciated, from the food of Egon Ronay, to the music of Bela Bartok and the buildings of Erno Goldfinger.

However, it is fair to expect anyone who lives and works in Britain to subscribe to some simple values. This point is well made in the Home Office’s introduction to visitors, “there is a general principle that all people should respect the law and the rights of others.” Whereas the Hungarian Guard is an organisation that is proscribed by Hungarian courts after it ruled that past marches have fuelled ethnic tensions and led to a disruption of public order.

The British-Jobbik Society disputed The Times’ coverage on Jobbik. You can read their statement on their website.

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