When party members pass damaging documents to “the enemy”, you can be sure there is something seriously wrong in the British National Party.
Over the past two months Searchlight has been inundated with information from inside the BNP which paints a very different picture from the one proffered by the party leadership. Instead of the public image of remorseless advance, the BNP is beset with internal problems, poor morale and a leadership that is becoming increasingly detached from many of the party’s key organisers.
What marks this present crisis out compared to previous internal disputes are the people who are becoming alienated from the BNP leader. We are no longer talking about the old Tyndallites – supporters of Nick Griffin’s rival and former BNP leader John Tyndall – whom Griffin happily dismisses as “vermin”, but about some of the more able organisers and party staff who have until recently been close to the party leader.
This group includes Sadie Graham, Chris Beverley, Ian Dawson and Steve Blake. The latest problems come on top of the departure of several other leading BNP officers and local organisers, including Scott McLean, Jonathan Bowden and Stuart Russell.
There is a variety of reasons for the growing frictions inside the BNP, though most are the product of poor morale and a sense of drift. Despite its public bravado, the BNP has not been having a good time of late. The 2006 election results certainly did not live up to expectations, recruitment continues to be like trying to fill a bath with the plug out, with too few members renewing, and the party has clear financial problems.
Three distinct groups seem to have emerged at the heart of the BNP. Firstly there are the “über-nationalists”, many of whom have not actually joined the BNP but currently have the ear of Nick Griffin.
Then there is the brat pack, made up of Mark Collett, head of publicity, party treasurer John Walker, his deputy David Hannam, head of security Martin Reynolds and Bradford councillor Paul Cromie. They have formed a laddish sect within the party but many others consider them not particularly able.
Finally, there are the party apparatchiks, or “Young Turks”, the more able organisers who have emerged in prominent positions and formed a tight bond over the past two years. They include Graham, Beverley, Dawson, Blake and Kenny Smith. They are the super-activists who are driving the party forward on the ground.
It is they who appear to have become most disillusioned with the direction of the party and the political judgement of Griffin himself. While they are at present staying loyal to the party some of them are prioritising local activity over national work.
In late September Dawson wrote a long letter to Griffin resigning from his post as head of group support. He had become disillusioned with the way the party was being run, and in particular the strong but highly damaging influence of Collett, Walker and Hannam.
“I have to work on a daily basis with Treasury, specifically Dave Hannam,” he explained. “Add this to the fact that Hannam, Walker and Collett have their own little clique which will stop at nothing to undermine, antagonise and mock decent nationalists, then something has to give.”
Dawson directs particular venom at Hannam, of whom he has nothing positive to say. He voices his frustration that his repeated criticisms of Hannam have fallen on deaf ears. He dismisses the notion that the party accounts were late (again) because of overwork and even questions the legitimacy of the party finances. He claims that the local bank balances are often wrong and rarely up to date, standing orders are processed very late, cheques are not cashed and new party units have to wait “an infuriatingly long time” for treasury packs.
“I don’t know what more I have to do or say to get through the point that Dave is completely incompetent,” he adds. “I would have replaced him ages ago, in a diplomatic way of course, yet as his face fits he is still on board, despite constant lies and incompetence. Just how bad do people have to be to do their job, and how many lies do they have to tell to cover it up, before they are sacked?”
Collett also comes in for intense criticism. “Mark Collett is without doubt the most deceitful, devious, arrogant, spiteful, greedy moron that I have ever come across. He is not a nationalist, plain and simple. Playing gangster rap music while hurling personal insults at hard working nationalists is about as low as it gets. What on earth is he doing in the Party? Yet not just that, what on earth is he doing as a national officer?”
Dawson is not alone in his disenchantment with the direction of the party and open hatred towards Collett and his group. Beverley recently resigned from the Advisory Council and his position running Excalibur, the party’s merchandising operation, to concentrate on his job as a local councillor.
Graham, the BNP’s group development officer, received a disciplinary letter from Griffin complaining that she was meddling in affairs outside her role. Apparently he backed down, admitting that he had not read an email from her. When word leaked out of Graham’s unhappiness, Griffin was forced onto the defensive, declaring on the BNP website on 3 October that she remains “firmly in place”.
Collett and Walker also appear to have acted as a catalyst for the resignation of Stuart Russell as the party’s press officer and the expulsion of the party’s recent Sedgefield by-election candidate Andrew Spence. Russell’s wife, Wendy, had been on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse and the final straw was when Arthur Kemp, Griffin’s new ideological enforcer, allegedly told him he was a useless fat old f***er who should just go away.
And although McLean cited the exigencies of business and family life when he resigned as the BNP’s deputy chairman, some say the real reason is that Griffin prevented him, in his capacity as head of the party’s disciplinary committee, from dealing with Collett.
So far it appears that Griffin is refusing to act against the Collett axis. Why, we don’t know, but Dawson’s claim that Collett has threatened to turn Queen’s evidence against Griffin if he is ditched is illuminating.
There is also increasing resentment from many establishment organisers towards the growing influence of the über-nationalists, the new kids on the block who have emerged as Griffin’s inner circle. They are increasingly influencing the direction of the party despite many of them being outside the party.
There is growing frustration that Griffin and his close entourage are ignoring party structures. The failure to hold regular meetings of the Advisory Council, supposedly the leadership body of the BNP, is further evidence that Griffin is building his own separate operation.
Many of the “Young Turks” have a longstanding dislike of Lee Barnes, particularly Blake. It recently flared up again on the BNP forum, the internal discussion board for BNP members. Replying to a posting on Barnes’s blog last month, which continued a highly abusive and personal attack on Sharon Ebanks, the party’s former Birmingham organiser who left to form the New Nationalist Party which folded last month, Blake wrote: “What purpose does the dissemination of this unattributed and unsubstantiated gossip serve?
“This is totally unfounded nonsense and just the kind of rubbish our mortal enemies want us to distribute in order to bring about doubts, suspicions and weaken morale.”
Barnes had dismissed “nationalist” opponents of the BNP as, “The retarded wing of pseudo-British Nationalism …”, calling Ebanks a “demented harridan” and her followers a “little clique of simpering scumbag accomplices”.
If the BNP were a normal political party, there would have been universal outrage at one of the leader’s inner circle writing such words and Griffin would have been forced to dump him. But the BNP is not, so Griffin continues to heap praise on Barnes’s warped blog.
The mistrust appears to be mutual. The Collett gang has little time for the “Young Turks” and does what it can to undermine them and blame them for its own shortcomings. Collett and his clique are also becoming increasingly outspoken about what they perceive is favouritism from the Graham faction to some branches and councillors over people close to Collett.
Likewise, the über-nationalists, who appear to enjoy acting as “advisers” rather than doing any real work on the ground, seem to have little time for many of the party’s organisers. The dismissive way in which they acted towards Russell is symptomatic of their overall approach.
Cass: pushed or jumped?
Over the summer, Nick Cass either stepped down or was sacked as party manager. According to some reports he was sacked minutes before an Advisory Council meeting in Wales after a string of blunders for which he was blamed.
Cass posted a denial of this version of events on various rightwing websites, insisting that he chose to resign and was offered another job in the party but declined, in favour of spending more time with his family. It is not clear whether this is the truth or Cass simply remaining loyal to Griffin, with whom he has been closely associated for many years. Dawson’s resignation letter certainly supports the former account. Criticising the party’s management style, Dawson comments: “Not telling people two minutes before a meeting that they have been replaced, e.g. the recent case involving Nick Cass”.
Either way, the result is that Cass is no longer on the party books and is concentrating on his local branch. Dawson and Beverley have followed suit, with Beverley not only giving up Excalibur but also stepping down from the Advisory Council.
Avoiding the issues
Griffin is trying to rectify some of the internal problems. He has established a three-person Central Management Team of “volunteer long-standing party activists” to help run the party. Tony Brewer, Michaela Mackenzie and Mark Clutterbuck will supposedly bring “decades of business management experience” to handling “internal staff management affairs”.
But while the intention may be commendable, Mackenzie is yet another person at the centre of the party’s internal disputes.
Griffin’s response to the current disquiet is true to form. He is letting his supporters make highly personal and abusive attacks on individuals, or at least not reining them in. Griffin could have dealt quickly and firmly with the supporter who virtually accused the BNP’s former education officer, Jonathan Bowden, of being a paedophile, but he did not. He could have told his attack dogs to stop abusing Stuart and Wendy Russell, but he did not.
Rather, he has joined in. In the immediate aftermath of his victory in the party leadership election in July he dismissed those who backed the rival candidate as “vermin”. Again, if Griffin had been leading a normal political party he would have been forced to resign or at least apologise publicly for such an outburst.
But this is history repeating itself. During the 1980s Griffin played a major factional role in the destruction of the National Front. He was behind many of the personal and political attacks on his group’s internal rivals and this contributed to the party’s virtual collapse.
The manner in which Solidarity, the BNP’s trade union front, is run, and the way Griffin is silencing through expulsion anyone who criticises his line, show that he has learnt nothing from the past. Passing the blame and refusing to accept responsibility for his own failures is another of Griffin’s traits.
It is also clear that at the moment Griffin does not want to, or feels he cannot, move against Collett et al. Until he faces up to the Collett problem there is little chance of an end to the increasingly damaging disputes in the BNP.
Dawson spells out the point in his resignation letter. “The party is in danger of fragmenting. … There are so many good people in the party that are being sidelined and have not been listened to. People are sick and tired of seeing the odious clique of Hannam, Walker and specifically Collett get away with things time and again.”
Dawson might have decided to resign of his own accord but in his letter he was articulating the views of the “Young Turks”.
What Griffin has done, and again this is true to form, is to shout conspiracy. Nothing pleases the BNP activist more than to believe that the political establishment is so scared of its potential that it will stop at nothing to undermine the advance of the BNP. In recent years we have heard claims that the UK Independence Party was established just to provide a respectable but ineffective home for British nationalists, that Labour opted for all-postal elections in 2004 in the north of England just to prevent the BNP from winning more council seats and that any internal criticism of Griffin, including Chris Jackson’s challenge to his leadership, is all part of a cunning plot by the security services to derail the BNP juggernaut.
Indeed, Griffin devoted four pages in a recent issue of Identity, the BNP’s magazine, to claim that the internal rumblings were simply another frantic state plot. He even claims that the writer of this article is a well-known nazi, although this is slightly undermined by his attack dogs on the internet who have insisted that Nick Lowles does not exist but is in fact Gerry Gable!
Crisis, what crisis?
Do the BNP’s internal wranglings really matter? Well actually yes. Despite what Griffin and his apologists claim, the BNP is in crisis. While it is true that the BNP is more popular than any previous British fascist organisation, in many areas its support has begun to plateau or fall. This trend began in the 2004 local elections but gathered momentum this May.
What is worse for the BNP is that many of the areas where its fortunes are ebbing, for the moment at least, are in their traditional heartlands: Oldham, Bradford, Kirklees, Calderdale, Sandwell and Dudley to name but a few. The BNP’s share of the vote was considerably lower this May compared to previous elections, especially in its key target wards.
This is having a knock-on effect on BNP branches. Oldham and Blackburn have virtually collapsed. Bradford and Burnley have suffered huge splits and the loss of two councillors in Sandwell has rocked and perhaps terminally damaged local fortunes. The BNP may be emerging in new areas, such as the East Midlands, and remains strong in others, such as Stoke-on-Trent, outer east London and Thurrock, but it is unlikely to win seats elsewhere.
The internal problems within the BNP stem partly from poor leadership but also from declining morale. A run of good election results and a new wave of recruitment could quickly turn the party’s fortunes around. Anti-fascists must step up work ahead of next year’s local elections to ensure that the ructions within the party continue.
On their way out
Several key people have left the BNP or resigned from their positions over the past three months.
Scott McLean (Deputy Chairman)
Left to concentrate on his business, but had become increasingly disillusioned with the party.
Jonathan Bowden (Educational Officer)
Resigned after a Griffin supporter publicly accused him of being a paedophile.
Nick Cass (Party Manager)
Resigned but was blamed for some of the internal problems in the party.
Stuart Russell (Press Officer)
Resigned after verbal exchanges with Mark Collett and Arthur Kemp.
Ian Dawson (Head of Group Support)
Resigned in exasperation after Griffin’s failure to deal with Mark Collett and Dave Hannam.
Ian Leadbitter (Sunderland organiser)
Resigned after falling out with other BNP members.
Walter Hamilton (Glasgow organiser)
Resigned to concentrate on business commitments.
Simon Smith (Black Country organiser)
Left the BNP over financial mismanagement.
Clive Potter (President of Solidarity)
Expelled from BNP after refusing to toe the Griffin line in Solidarity.
Personality clashes
A growing number of personality clashes are emerging in the BNP which threaten the party’s effectiveness.
David Shapcott v Sharon Wilkinson (Burnley)
Many people in Burnley BNP have little time for “Shoulders” Shapcott, the local organiser. Sharon Wilkinson is furious that Shapcott grabbed the glory over their High Court battle to win a recount after disputing the result of last May’s election in Rosegrove with Lowerhouse ward after he contributed nothing to the action.
Paul Cromie v James Lewthwaite (Bradford)
Bradford BNP is increasingly demoralised after it failed to build on its 2004 momentum. A major split has emerged between local chairman Paul Cromie and former councillor James Lewthwaite, to the point that Cromie is contemplating disciplining his former colleague for hampering the party’s recent election campaign.
Michaela Mackenzie v Robert Baggs (South West region)
Baggs has become increasingly frustrated at the growing prominence of Bristol-based Mackenzie and now he suspects her of being a Searchlight informer. Relations between the two have been bad for several years, after Baggs spurned her advances.
Mark Collett v Chris Beverley (Leeds)
The two former university colleagues have increasingly gone their separate ways in recent times. It is claimed that Collett deliberately failed to promote Excalibur in Identity, when Beverley ran the BNP’s merchandising operation. For his part, Beverley is dismissive of Collett’s abilities.
This article is the complete BNP in Crisis article from Stop the BNP and can be downloaded from here.
