Griffinwatch III
Article published: Monday, December 27th 2010
Cracks are spreading through the far right, with Nick Griffin backing off from standing in the Oldham by-election as the BNP totters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Nick Griffin first announced on 14 December his plans to run for Phil Woolas’s old seat in Oldham East and Saddleworth. The by-election itself had been prompted by Woolas’s expulsion from both Parliament and the Labour Party, after the courts found the former immigration minister had falsely smeared his Liberal Democratic opponent as receiving support from Islamic extremists.
Confusion erupted soon after when the BNP leader, who is also one of five MEPs for the North West, suddenly changed his mind and backed Griffin-loyalist Derek Adams for the seat instead. Allegations of infighting and incompetence have accompanied the abrupt turn-around, with reports the next day that senior BNP figure Andrew Brons MEP had been campaigning with local activist Anita Corbett, who had previously been expelled from the BNP, under the impression that she was the candidate.
Rumours spread by dissatisfied BNP members have since circulated that Corbett’s loyalty could not be relied upon by Griffin, who has faced several threats to his leadership in recent months. Former elections manager Eddy Butler, expelled in October following the failure of his own leadership bid, alleged that local activists were furious after first Griffin and then the Manchester-based Adams had been parachuted in over the wishes of the local Oldham branch.
If so it would not be the first time the neo-fascist party has shot itself in the foot with internal squabbles, with the previous election campaign marked by splits, expulsions and resignations as the party’s central leadership repeatedly overruled the wishes of local race-baiters. A wretched performance in the general election followed, with Griffin himself finishing a poor third in the East London constituency of Barking in May, which had briefly been considered a stronghold for the far right. Voters hammered yet more nails into the party’s coffin by evicting every BNP councillor in Barking and Dagenham and turfing out all but two of the 28 councillors the party had up for re-election across the country.
More revelations of a party in crisis have been coming thick and fast, with the Daily Mirror recently reporting that the BNP are £700,000 in debt and that Griffin as party leader could be personally liable if the party goes bankrupt. Both British and European electoral law disqualifies anyone under a bankruptcy restrictions order from becoming an MP or MEP.
These difficulties are unlikely to end soon. On 14 December fundraising watchdog the Electoral Commission ruled the BNP had broken the law by failing to keep a proper record of its financial backers. Despite this the party will not face sanctions as the law at the time did not allow any penalty to be imposed on a registered treasurer who breached the rules. Peter Wardle, chief executive of the commission, labelled the situation “frustrating” and pointedly noted that rules brought in after 1 December this year bestows new powers to penalise any future breaches.
To deepen the crisis anti-fascist magazine Searchlight recently reported the exit from the party of James Dowson, a businessman and anti-abortion activist with alleged links to loyalist Michael Stone, who organised the BNP’s fundraising operations through a call centre based in Belfast. Adding to the party’s woes a court ruling on 21 December ordered Griffin and senior BNP figure Simon Darby to pay £85,000 in legal fees and compensation to four former BNP employees for unfair dismissal. Perhaps the most crushing blow to the party’s finances in the electoral aftermath was laid by Marmite, which forced the BNP to pay an estimated claim of up to £170,000 to its parent company Unilever following the unauthorised use of its brand in an ill-advised election broadcast.
Faced with this Griffin might be keen to cling onto his €91,983 salary from the European Parliament in Stasbourg. It is difficult to see how he earns his keep as much of his parliamentary activity appears rather strange, with Griffin decrying mild attempts to tackle climate change as a plot by “One World Government conspirators” and the “green industrial complex.” He’s also fond of raising regular conspiracy theory fodder such as the Bilderberg Group and David Rockefeller, as well as perhaps more rational concerns (given the BNP’s recent history with financial watchdogs) about the EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF.
It is hard to resist the conclusion Strasbourg is simply a place for Griffin to pursue ideological vendettas,with repeated attempts to pester the EU about possible Maoist sympathies held by former Prime Minister of Portugal and current President of the European Commission José Barroso. The obsession appears to be based on Barroso’s past history as a leader of dissident group against the right-wing dictatorship of Portugal in the early 1970’s.
One aspect of the EU Griffin is keener on is the chance to cosy up to fellow far-right parties across Europe, getting close to organisations such as France’s National Front and Hungary’s Jobbik. A prior attempt at forming a coalition imploded in 2007 less than a year after it was formed due to the inability of assorted racists from a range of different countries to refrain from hating one another long enough to co-operate. Its successor, the catchily-titled Alliance of European Nationalist Movements, has so far been unable to scrounge together enough votes to form an official bloc.
Nevertheless Griffin has wangled his way into playing the statesman by becoming vice-chair of the group which, together with continuing infighting within the BNP and his stated desire to step down as BNP chief in 2013 to focus on re-election, suggests he might not consider the perks of an MEP so onerous after all when he’s the beneficiary.
In the meantime his party continues to grope its way from one disaster to the next during his European misadventures. In an apparent attempt to patch up the BNP’s problems through the time-honoured tactic of scapegoating, Griffin promised “increased militancy” at the BNP’s conference in mid December and told followers that the BNP would “physically defend” homecoming British soldiers from “Islamic extremists.”
Griffin himself has had little problem with “Islamic extremists” in the past. During his stint as leader of first the National Front (NF) and then a subsequent micro-party with the grandiose title of International Third Position in the 1980s his organisation attempted to make links with Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocratic regime in Iran and received funds from the more secular dictator Colonel Gaddafi. In addition to the classically fascist rejection of science and reason in favour of a ‘spiritual’ nationalist fervour against both the USA and USSR, with Griffin declaring himself an “eco-pagan” during this period, the self-styled revolutionary nationalists of the NF also particularly admired the anti-semitism and rejection of democracy by the two despots.
However the extremists Griffin appears to have in mind is the small group led by Anjem Choudary, a tiresome Ilford-based Islamist who regularly calls for the imposition of religious law in the UK. Despite Choudary’s rather small following he maintains a high media profile by staging notorious publicity stunts such as burning poppies on Armistice Day. He is unlikely to be considered such a physical threat that British soldiers would require the BNP to defend them.
Nevertheless, an ongoing moral panic in the last decade has made Islam an easy target, with Muslims the victims of 44 per cent of lethal hate crimes since the murder of Stephen Lawrence according to a study by the Institute for Race Relations. It’s an opportunity the BNP are taking advantage of, with threats of “demonstrations” against newly-built mosques. If a failing and divided far right continues to focus its attentions on ‘demonstrations’ against minorities as a way of concealing its weaknesses, attempts to sneak into Parliament are not the only form of fascist politics we shall be seeing on our streets.
Richard Goulding
More: Manchester, Opinion
Comments
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‘Allegations of infighting and incompetence’
‘If so it would not be the first time the neo-fascist party has shot itself in the foot with internal squabbles’
‘the BNP are … in debt’
‘splits, expulsions and resignations’
Richard, you are in danger of making the BNP seem like a mainstream political party!
‘finishing a poor third’
Comment by simon on December 28, 2010 at 12:43 am
The comments are closed.
