The extraordinary collection of individuals standing for the British National Party in the London Assembly elections can be revealed today.

One candidate, Nick Eriksen, was sacked this month after the Evening Standard reported that he had described rape as a “myth” and said that “some women are like gongs – they need to be struck regularly”.

Now further investigations by the Standard show that the far-Right party’s 10-strong list of candidates includes:

Chris Forster, a psychic who, according to his website, specialises in the “use of the crystal ball, clairvoyance and mediumship” to “develop opportunities” for businesses and individuals. He promotes himself as “the only qualified internal auditor and accountant working full-time as a psychic”.

Roberta Woods, who was recently employed in an important branch of the legal system, despite a conviction for contempt of court. During her attachment to the Legal Services Commission, which distributes legal aid, she complained the legal aid budget was going to too many “aliens”.

Lawrence Rustem, a man of mixed race allowed into the BNP because, in the words of one of his fellow candidates, he is “only half a wog”.

John Clarke, who was reported to police by a London council after setting up a front address and falsifying his nomination papers to stand in the last borough elections.

Richard Barnbrook, also the BNP’s mayoral candidate, who directed a gay porn film, HMS Discovery.

The party has high hopes of winning at least one – and possibly two – of the 11 Assembly seats elected under a London-wide system of proportional representation on 1 May.

The party scored 4.7 per cent in the last Assembly elections in 2004 and needs around five per cent for one seat this time or eight per cent for two.

However, revelations about its candidates’ backgrounds will undoubtedly damage the BNP’s cause. Gerry Gable, publisher of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said: “If it wasn’t so serious, it would be absolutely hilarious. The candidate list includes lawbreakers, cranks and failed business people and is thus wholly representative of the BNP nationally.”

Ms Woods, from Eltham, was convicted of contempt of court in 2004 after walking off a jury in the middle of a trial, claiming she had “lost faith” in British justice. Despite this, she was employed this year by the Legal Services Commission.

In a letter published in last month’s issue of the BNP magazine Identity, she said: “My previous assignment at UBS [the City bank] shocked me when I found myself surrounded by ‘aliens’.

The same was true at my Legal Services Commission assignment [and] reflects the real level of ‘immigrant saturation’ in the capital.”

Ms Woods wrote that while working at the commission she objected to legal aid payments to solicitors handling immigration and asylum cases. She added: “Why should ‘aliens’ who have contributed nothing to this country have recourse to this fund? I can hardly bear to go about my business in London these days, it feels like a living nightmare.”

A spokesman for the commission said: “Roberta Woods worked here for a brief period in a junior role. She was employed through an agency and we do not require agency staff to undergo a criminal record check. This policy is under review.” Ms Woods refused to comment except to say: “Contempt of court is not a criminal conviction.”

The BNP’s website describes Mr Forster, 51, from Richmond, as an “events organiser”.

But the website for his company, Psychic Events, says he “unlocks the power of the mind” and helps people by the “use of cards, crystal ball, psychometry, clairvoyance and mediumship to identify with important events and stages in their past and present and to develop opportunities and clearer vision for the fulfilment of their future”.

It continues: “Chris’s speciality is remote viewing of people, property or businesses, i.e. to accurately analyse at a distance.”

Mr Forster is also described as “the regular tarot and crystal ball reader on Sky TV’s Mystic Challenge”, a game show where three mystics try to divine a secret about a hidden mystery guest.

When contacted by the Standard, Mr Forster said: “Oh dear, oh dear. I wondered how long it would be before that came out.” He added: “If I wanted to predict what would happen on 1 May it would be a gut feeling. I’m not going to use the tarot cards and crystal ball.”

Mr Rustem, a BNP councillor in Barking, is half-Turkish and was born Timucin Rustem.

His membership has been a sore point for BNP hardliners such as Paul Golding, the then editor of Identity, who was expelled from the party after physically attacking Mr Rustem. Julian Leppert, another BNP Assembly candidate and the party’s 2004 candidate for Mayor, said Mr Rustem was “okay” because he was only “half-wog”.

Mr Rustem insisted to the Standard that Mr Leppert was “joking” and said: “I’m in the BNP because I’m standing up for what I believe in. My political history is something that serves the party.”

Mr Clarke sought election as a BNP candidate in Merton in 2006 but used a false address on his nomination papers to get round the rule that council candidates must live or work in the borough. As his current biography on the BNP website confirms, he actually lives in Croydon.

After the Standard exposed the front address used by Mr Clarke, as well as another BNP candidate and the BNP supporter who actually lived there, Merton council called the police. Asked why the BNP was claiming three men and their families lived in the twobedroom maisonette, a party spokesman said: “People live in all sorts of ways these days.”

Mr Barnbrook told the Standard: “HMS Discovery was a film dealing with sexuality; it was not porn. What you write about the BNP in the media makes no difference. We will get one, possibly two, seats on the Assembly.”

Asked if Mr Forster had ever foreseen a time in his crystal ball when Britain had no ethnic minorities, he said: “No, I don’t think so. He’s married to a Chinese woman.”

Evening Standard

You have to hand it to Google Ads – they can’t be accused of discriminating. Visitors to GreenArrow.com, the bloggers’ forum for the far-right British National Party, have been surprised in recent days to discover a series of full-colour banner ads for minority dating agencies.

Inter-Racial Romances.com and Muslima – “a truly Muslim marriage and matrimonial service” – are both being plugged on the BNP forum – despite the party’s strong line against inter-racial marriage.

Google Ads evidently decided that because of the multiple uses of words such as Muslim and Arab the site was ‘relevant’ to its clients’ interests.

“I thought I was on the wrong forum,” wrote one visitor. Another, Sarah, Maid of Albion, wrote: “I do find it rather offensive given that the picture clearly shows an Asian man and a Caucasian woman.”

The First Post

Vidal Sassoon, the hairdresser, has recounted his early days as a foot-soldier for an underground anti-fascist group dedicated to wiping out Sir Oswald Mosley’s far-Right movement after the Second World War.

Holocaust train overcomes Berlin station ban Sassoon was a teenage member of the 43 Group, an organisation formed in 1946 by Jewish ex-servicemen who returned from the frontline only to discover that Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists and an admirer of Adolf Hitler, was spreading his message of hatred on the streets of London. Vidal Sassoon, seen here cutting Mary Quants hair, fought pitched battles with fascists as a teenager The story is told in a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Archive Hour: A Rage In Dalston, to be broadcast on Saturday, April 19, at 8pm. Mosley and his wife, Diana, one of the Mitford sisters, were interned during the war and released in 1943. His supporters continued to regard him as a hero and urged him to resume his political activities after the war, holding a series of public meetings in his name at which they spouted anti-Semitic propaganda. The 43 Group was dedicated to breaking up meetings of these “Mosleyites”, through violent means if necessary, and a 17-year-old Sassoon was an enthusiastic street-fighter. The hairdresser, now 80, grew up in the East End and was a trainee at a London salon when he joined up. He told the programme how he once turned up to work with a black eye after a night of fighting. “I’ll never forget one morning I walked in and I had a hell of a bruise – it had been a difficult night the night before – and a client said to me, ‘Good God, Vidal, what happened to your face?’ And I said, ‘Oh, nothing, madam, I just fell over a hairpin’.” Sassoon said of his fellow 43 Group members: “I was 17, these were all ex-servicemen at least five or six years older than me, and many of them won medals. I was a private.” Armed with knives and razor blades, the group fought pitched battles with Mosley supporters – many confrontations taking place in Ridley Road, Hackney, east London, which had a large Jewish community. The group disbanded in 1950. The Telegraph

As usual with any report coming from the BNP – whether it’s from current or former members – it’s difficult (and sometimes nigh on impossible) to separate the truth from the complete fantasy.

The bizarre Manchester High Court case is an illustration of this. On the one hand we have the leader and deputy leader of the BNP and on the other we have a smattering of six of the most popular and prominent rebel members of the BNP. Who do we believe?

None of them actually. But for your edification (and only because we believe this is closer to the truth than Nick Griffin could get in several lifetimes) we present the report from the Voice of Change website – edited only to insert a pound sign where the VoC idiots couldn’t manage it and a slight change to the layout to make the article easier to read.

“Party finances dealt blow from Griffin’s gamble

The current BNP leader, Nick Griffin may well have been awarded a boxing blue 25 years old from his Cambridge alma mater but the former Downing College southpaw was on the ropes yesterday at Manchester High Court. Although he was not counted out, his vexatious case against the so called “Young Turks”, who had throughout 2007 raised serious misgivings about the way the BNP was being managed, was knocked into reality by the ruling of the Judge.

The six defendants were Steve Blake, former Party web editor, Ian Dawson, former Head of Group Support, Cllr. Sadie Graham, former Head of Group Development, Matt Single, former Security Training Officer, Kenny Smith, former Head of Party Administration and Nicholla Smith, former head of Excalibur merchandising.

The interlocutory hearing on the ninth floor of the modern new glass and steel cube in the heart of Manchester centred around three issues following the issue of Court proceedings by the two claimants, Nick Griffin and Simon Darby in March 2008:

• The jurisdiction of the English Courts to hear the case brought by the claimants against Kenny and Nicholla Smith regarding chattels alleged to be in their possession but owned by the British National Party.
• The jurisdiction of the English Courts to hear the case brought by the claimants against Kenny Smith relating to monies held in bank accounts in Scotland.
• The jurisdiction of the English Courts to hear the case brought by the claimants against Kenny Smith et al relating to an alleged breach of duties of confidence.

Just two weeks ago, the deputy leader (Mr. Darby) broadcast on his bird watching blog a conversation where Mr. Griffin misleads the blog’s thoroughly decent listeners by admitting:

‘…I think that certainly our counsel were fairly amazed and the judge didn’t seem over-impressed when Davies [defendant's counsel] got up and was saying that under the terms of the Act of Union, one of the provisions in that is that an English court doesn’t have jurisdiction in Scotland. Now obviously one knows they have a different legal system there, that’s fair enough, but the idea that that could be used to prevent an action against a group of defendants when the action is about the same issue, when a couple of those defendants are in Scotland, is really stretching the point.

We could bring a separate action in Scotland, but that, of course, doubles the costs. Now, if that was allowed, what it would mean is a matter of public policy if it was allowed, is that can you imagine any smallish business, any charity, any political party or association, anyone at all, could simply say because of that risk we can’t employ someone from north of the border, and conversely, any Scottish business, charity or whatever is going to say well because of the rift the other way round, we can’t employ anyone from south of the border.

It would drive a huge wedge in the fundamental economic unity of the British Isles, and it would lead to enormous discrimination against Scots in England, and against people in Scotland being employed in England and vice versa. It would be astounding if that was allowed, to be honest. But Mr Davies is arguing, and what his clients may not realise, is that every hour he takes up arguing on that point, if it’s knocked out the costs of that will go directly against them, basically no questions asked. So, it’s a very reckless game I think.’

Kapow

The would-be bruiser was a loser on this point. In contrast to Griffin’s imagined economic destruction of crossborder Anglo-Scottish trade it took His Honour Judge Pelling several hours of learned discourse and deliberation to rule on the following:

• The English courts have no jurisdiction over chattels held by a Scots defendant (i.e. Kenny and/or Nicholla Smith) domiciled in Scotland where those chattels are located in Scotland.
• The English courts have no jurisdiction over monies held in bank accounts located in branches of multinational banks such as Lloyds-TSB or Scottish incorporated banks such as the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
• The English courts do however have jurisdiction over the defendant Kenny Smith regarding the alleged breach of duty of confidence because the action was brought jointly against English defendants.

It was 2:1 to the defendants and their counsel on this point. In short, Griffin’s legal team bungled by failing to observe the special relationship of the Scottish legal system. The Judge ruled that each party (claimant and defendant) should pay their own costs of the day’s proceedings. BNP donors may be dismayed and disgusted to learn that the claimant’s counsel told the Judge that the cost so far to the BNP membership is the princely sum of £30,000 [Oddly, exactly the equivalent of 1000 membership fees]. Court proceedings are in the public domain and that figure from the claimant’s counsel can readily be verified.

It was also a politically damaging decision as it exposes the claimant’s fundamental lack of understanding of the make up of the governance of Great Britain, an issue of key importance to any ambitious leader of the foremost British Nationalist party.

Goodwill

In a display of goodwill which one can only expect to come from decent and honourable British nationalists the two Scottish defendants, Nicholla and Kenny Smith freely offered to the Court that to spare the leadership any further embarrassment and further legal actions in Scotland, which the Party could ill afford, the chattels claimed by Mr. Griffin could be uplifted at a mutually convenient time. A date and time has been agreed and the chattels will be collected.

Likewise two of the other defendants offered up chattels in their possession, including offering items that the bungling claimants had either overlooked or failed to account for. The duty of care that the claimants have over assets purchased using BNP donors’ money has been exposed in this case to be, at the very least found wanting, at worst a complete and incompetent mess.

In a reciprocal arrangement, items of personal property unlawfully removed during a raid in December 2007 by BNP security personnel from the house of former Group Development Officer, Cllr Sadie Graham have also begun to be returned.

Round Two

Round One has ended with a massive blow to the Party finances, coming at a very bad time in the run up to the all important London Assembly elections and donors are right to express criticism of the Leader’s misguided and vexatious course of action.

The bad news for everyone concerned is that yesterday’s proceedings were not the end of the matter. Round two of Griffin’s petulant action against former officers of the Party is due to take place at some point in the near future and centres around the alleged breach of confidence by some or all of the defendants. The charges are vigourously denied by the defendants but the matter is sub judice so that is all that can be said on the matter.

Hard working BNP members who make donations to the party expect the money to be used to push the Party forward at elections and to develop the internal infrastructure. They have every right to have misgivings about Mr. Griffin’s plan to seemingly drag the Party’s finances into the red on the back of a personal vendetta against former Party officials. Such a course of destructive action is even more extraordinary in the light of the very real damage to the Party as a result of the joint BBC-Labour Party infiltration of branches in West Yorkshire which led to the Secret Agent programme culminating in two free speech trials. No action was ever taken by Griffin against the infiltrators and their collaborators.

Whether Mr. Griffin will bounce back or be flat on his back on the canvass depends on at least another day in a civil court room in Manchester.”

Lancaster Unity

At Llangefni County Court, Circuit Judge Dafydd Lloyd Hughes upheld an application by Conwy County Borough Council for the order against Llysfaen community councillor Patrick Pattison. Now the former BNP member – he claims he resigned from the party last month but party officials say he was sacked – could face a bill for up to £8,000 as costs were awarded against him.

The decision follows a two-day hearing in February. During the hearing police officers and council staff told how Mr Pattison, 55, accused them of being paid “backhanders”, dominated meetings in an aggressive manner and lodged formal complaints against them.

His main target was Karen Casada, the council’s housing manager on the Peulwys Estate, who eventually had to go off sick for a few months because of the stress he put her under.

Granting the injunction, which will be in place for nine months, the Judge said some of Mr Pattison’s behaviour went beyond the “rough and tumble” that might be expected. And his conduct towards Mrs Casada amounted to bullying. Under the terms of the injunction he must not use threatening words or language towards the council’s housing staff or anyone working for the council’s housing department.

Mr Pattison, of Berth y Glyd Road, Llysfaen, admitted he spoke his mind and often raised his voice when he thought people were not doing their job. But he denied threatening or bullying anyone.

“If people get stroppy with me I get stroppy with them,” he said.

Daily Post

AN award-winning pub has been pictured on a BNP leaflet prompting an angry response from its landlady.

Margaret Orman, who is landlady at the family-run Whitmore Arms in Orsett, was livid when a copy of the leaflet came through the pub door.

The leaflet entitled Orsett Patriot’ shows the British National Party candidate for Orsett, Derek Beackon, standing outside the pub.

Mrs Orman, 64, said: “It’s making us look like we’re supporting what they are doing and we certainly don’t.

“I wouldn’t let any political party use my business to advertise. What are our customers going to think.

“That man (Derek Beackon) hasn’t even had the courtesy to walk through the door and introduce himself.”

Mrs Orman has branded the leaflet as “cheap” publicity and said she wouldn’t let any political party associate itself with the Whitmore Arms.

She said: “I’m so angry. We’ve got a very successful business and it’s like they are trying to jump on the bandwagon.

“Of all the places they could have taken a picture of why here?

“They should not use a commercial business of any description and advertise their political views.

Margaret is planning to pin the leaflet, which was distributed throughout Orsett, on the front of the pub with a line through it and a notice saying the Whitmore Arms does not support the BNP.

Derek Beackon, who came to national prominence in 1993 when he became the BNP’s first ever councillor, winning a by-election in Tower Hamlets, said: “It’s just a local landmark that everyone knows. You can have your photo taken anywhere.

“However, looking back on it i’m not surprised she is upset.

“It’s her livelihood and I can understand that she doesn’t want to be associated with us.

“We were not trying to say she or the pub is associated with the BNP.”

Thurrock Gazette

This Saturday as the clock strikes 1pm the BNP will launch their national and London election campaigns and the party’s manifesto in the less than salubrious meeting room at the Eastbrook public house in Rainham Road, Dagenham.

Journalists who have nothing better to do are being corralled at noon at the Dagenham Civic Centre and transferred to the venue by road.

The new BNP London organiser, Cllr Rob Bailey, has issued his first set of commands, something he is used to doing as a former Royal Marine. He has just replaced Nick Eriksen in the post after Eriksen’s sick views on rape came to light, knocking him off the BNP’s London Assembly candidates’ list and allowing Bailey a leg up into his job and a higher place on the BNP’s London Assembly slate.

Party leaders and candidates from London and around the country will also be present. The knuckle-draggers have been told to meet up outside Dagenham East tube station wearing their best togs.

We hear there is fear that violence will break out as the local football team, Dagenham and Redbridge, are playing at home within spitting distance of the Eastbrook pub. The locals might well frown on the sight of a hundred wife beaters, village idiots and overpaid steroid-driven BNP minders descending on Dagenham.

We heard last night that the BNP mad bomber Tony Lecomber is pretty choked off as he has not been given a formal position in the party for which he is doing so much in the election campaigning in Epping and Loughton.

Stop the BNP