Vote No To The BNP

A MAN has been cautioned after signatures on the nomination forms of a defeated BNP candidate in the General Election were found to have been forged.

South Wales Police received a number of complaints from members of the public concerned that their details had been used on Richard Barnes’ nomination form.

Mr Barnes stood for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney in the recent election, but received only 1,173 votes.

Before a prospective candidate is allowed to stand, he or she must obtain 10 signatures: a proposer, a seconder and those who signed the nomination papers.

Police investigated the claims and as a result a 30-year-old man was arrested and later cautioned for tampering with ballot nomination papers after he was found to be responsible for forging signatures.

A South Wales Police spokesman said: “Mr Barnes was unaware of the actions and the man was cautioned on May 16.”

Ronald Fealey, of Penydarren, was one of those who had his name used to forge a signature.

He said: “Someone told me my name was on the nomination form and I thought they were taking the Mick about it.

“My son downloaded the nomination form and there my name was. I reported it to the returning officer and they informed the police.

“I don’t know why my name was chosen, it possibly could have been out of a hat for all I know.”

Katy Meredith, of Church Street, Penydarren, was also a victim of the deception. She did not sign the nomination papers and said she did not vote BNP.

The Echo contacted the BNP but received no response.

Merthyr Tydfil Council was unable to help the Echo contact Richard Barnes, but did say: “Fraudulently signing election nomination papers is a criminal offence.

“Therefore, when Merthyr council was officially made aware that there was a potential issue with one of the candidates’ nomination papers the week after the election, the matter was referred directly to South Wales Police for investigation. Merthyr council has no further role.”

From Wales Online

An email sent out from the British National Party (BNP) Finance Officer David Hannam has sparked a chain of anger amongst local party organisers, the email asks for all deposits the BNP managed to save during the 2010 General Election to be paid payable to the British National Party and sent to BNP Central Office, the email reads as follows:

Dear Party Officer,

I am writing to you just to remind all areas who stood candidates in the General Election that all saved deposits retained must be banked
promptly or sent to the treasury office at:

Po Box xxxxxx

When collecting your saved deposits, if the council ask who the cheque should be made payable to, please ensure that the cheque is made payable to ‘British National Party’.

In the next few days treasury will be contacting all the areas who saved their deposit.
Any queries regarding this please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours sincerely.

David Hannam
01xxxxxx xxxxxx

The reasons this email seems to have provoked anger amongst the party grass routes is a simple one, much of the funding for the BNP Election Campaigns was raised locally by local party officers and members, and didn’t come from the parties central office. And in a number of cases was funded by the candidate themselves either with their own money or by way of loans, of which according to many of the far-right forms and BNP supporting websites was done on the understanding that should the candidate achieve the 5% vote share required to keep the deposit that the £500 would go back to the candidate, the person the loan was from or the local party funds.

The email above clearly shows the BNP Finance Officer is wanting all these monies to be sent to the central office, with no indication as to whether any individuals will get the money back, or whether the local party unit will get those valuable funds returned to their local party.

Many of the membership are also venting their anger at the announcement that the parties annual Red White and Blue (RWB) weekend for 2010 has been canceled in favour of holding regional events, which according to Leicestershire BNP have to be contracted out to an “Events Organiser” rather than organised by party members and officials as all the previous RWB events have been.

The is also no mention as to whether they have a particular “Events” company that must be used, with many members speculating that a further email will be sent out instructing them to use a set “Events Company” who they say will be a company either controlled by or having some involvement with Jim Dowson the parties fundraiser who seems to have his hands in just about every corner of the BNP and its money dealings.

It seems the internal operations of the BNP are far from stable, this latest behest is only serving to anger the grass roots supporters of the BNP,

A BNP thug who ran for council has been given a year’s community service for assaulting two female pacifist campaigners.

David Clarke, who got 518 votes when he stood in Heathfield for this year’s local elections, was sentenced on four counts of assaulting anti-racism campaigners.

Clarke, of Dunley Drive, New Addington, pushed and shoved Lorna Nelson-Homian, James Cox, Nigel Green and Silvia Beckett in two separate attacks last May outside East Croydon train station.

Croydon Magistrates’ Court handed the 41-year-old a 12-month community order last week and ordered him to pay costs of £650.

Clarke denied attacking the Hope Not Hate campaigners but was found guilty on April 30.

Giving evidence in relation to the first incident on May 27, campaigner Nigel Green said: “I saw him [Clarke] walking towards me.

“He was walking right towards me and I could see there would be problems. I decided to stop and put the leaflets behind my back.

“But he gestured for me to give him a leaflet and he basically snatched them out of my hand. They were thrown down on the street and that was quite a shock to me.

“Then he sort of pushed me and grabbed my arm and twirled me around. I was very shaken because I had done nothing to provoke him.”

Prosecutor Daniel Irving told the court how after the first assault Clarke left, only to return to repeatedly shove Ms Beckett to get to Mr Green.

The court heard Clarke almost knocked the woman off her feet.

Mr Irving told the court that when Clarke spotted other Hope Not Hate campaigners two days later he screamed at them: “F****** scumbags, filth on our streets, taking all our jobs.”

Then Clarke again snatched leaflets, threw them on the floor and shoved Ms Nelson-Homian and Mr Cox.

Nick Griffin British National Party (BNP) Leader and MEP has told a party conference that he intends to stand down as party Chairman in 2013, (from the BNP website):

Nick Griffin MEP announced his intention to step down as leader by the end of 2013 to concentrate on his re-election campaign to the European Parliament.

Mr Griffin made his leadership decision announcement at the end of the first day of the proceedings.

“By then I would have been leader of the BNP for 15 years and that is long enough,” Mr Griffin said.

“It will be time to make way for a younger person who does not have any baggage which can be used against the party.”

Mr Griffin said the timing of his move was predicated by his desire to bring about what he called the putting into place of the last “building blocks” of the BNP’s administrative and political machine.

“This is going to take at least 18 months to implement and after that I intend to hand the party over to someone who will be able to drive support up to where it can be a serious contender for power,” he said.

Although this may placate certain elements of the party, in particular those who have been making the calls for Griffin to go ever louder since the crushing defeat the BNP took during the 2010 General Election and Local Council elections, I don’t see it being enough to quash the demands for financial transparency and total reform of the party.

One would also question why 2013 ? after all that’s another three years of the Nick Griffin image constantly associated with the party that already has what can only be described as a ‘neo-Nazi and Racist’ party which Nick Griffin has been at pains to get rid of for over 10 years, without any real degree of success.

Surely Nick Griffin has all but taken the BNP as far as he possible can, and currently one of it’s biggest blocks to gaining any ground in mainstream politics is Nick Griffin himself. Another questionable aspect of standing down in 2013 has to be, why so long? in the statement on the BNP website Nick Griffin claims it will take 18 months to complete the modernisation of the party machine, so the question has to be why hang on after that point?.

From an anti-BNP perspective Nick Griffin holding on as long as possible can only be a good thing, after all it’s the image of Nick Griffin that keeps the BNP back, it’s his own history that really stops the BNP making any further gains, which has been evidenced recently with the catastrophic failure of the 2010 Elections.

The BNP have been slipping backwards since the European Parliament Election in 2009 where the BNP gained two MEPs on a smaller share of the vote than they took in the previous EU Elections. They have failed to gain any further council seats since the 2009 EU Elections, which ended in the 2010 Elections with the BNP taking something of a hammering coming out of the elections with around 15 elected councillors left, a well over 50% loss of elected positions for the party.

The BNP need a radical overhaul if they are to achieve any kind of electoral success in the coming years, just changing tactics to copy the Labour Party machine isn’t going to do it, it really isn’t how they campaign it’s the image the party has that has to be changed, and frankly that is going to be one of the hardest jobs to do.

If we look at some of the names at the top of the BNP pile there really doesn’t seem to be many candidates that could even attempt to change the image of the BNP, unless some new blood arrives that hasn’t been in the front line of Nationalism, someone that no one has heard of, and someone who has the guts to strip the BNP apart from the top down, getting rid of everyone that could possibly have ANY past history that could be used against the party.

And from what I have seen there isn’t anyone currently within the BNP, or on the fringes that has any chance of making a big enough impact on the BNP image, even less so if that person is only going to be given the short period of 2 years to get the job done from when Griffin steps down in 2013 and the next General Election in 2015.

Bob “it’s all a conspiracy” Bailey has resigned as head of London BNP after losing his seat and getting arrested for assault. According to to a statement by London BNP, Bob stood down in order to:

“concentrate on clearing his name following unfounded allegations of assault during the recent London Elections”

Before claiming that:

“Bob leaves London BNP in good shape”

Under his leadership the BNP lost every single seat they held in the capital. These included his own and the council seat of the BNP’s only London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook. Barnbrook has so far failed to mention this defeat, although he does admit that:

“We didn’t do nearly as well as we’d hoped.”

However, all is not lost. As he puts it on his blog:

“the result, disappointing as it was, doesn’t actually change anything”

Oh dear. I think we’re stuck in the first stage of grief here Richard.

Source: Tory Troll