It has been revealed that the British National Party are using a warehouse in Wales as their campaign headquarters during the run up to next month’s European Parliament election.
Plaid Cymru AM Nerys Evans said: “It is vitally important that everyone who opposes their offensive politics turns out and votes, to send a clear message that the BNP are not welcome here in Wales.”
The warehouse in Welshpool is being used to organise 29 million leaflets before they are distributed across Britain by post.
Under new electoral law, the BNP is entitled to have leaflets delivered free to every home in the UK.
BNP deputy leader and spokesman Simon Darby said: “We are perfectly entitled to have the Royal Mail deliver leaflets for us.”
The anti-fascist organisation Searchlight obtained photographs from inside the warehouse which feature the notorious BNP activist Arthur Kemp, author of the Nazi sympathising book March of the Titans: A History of the White Race.
Emails sent from BNP senior figures to members were also passed onto a local newspaper last week, which included a request for 50 volunteers a day to prepare the leaflets for distribution.
The Welsh Conservatives’ Shadow Social Justice Minister Mark Isherwood said: “I am deeply concerned that Wales is being used as the administrative centre of the BNP’s campaign. While the BNP has been rejected by the electorate at every level of government in Wales, that is no cause for complacency.”
Simon Darby is not surprised at the outcry and is confident the BNP will be successful in the upcoming elections, “As a lawful party which is going to have MEPs elected, it is not surprising that other parties are against us – we are going to be taking jobs off them.”
1. Adam
If the building is attacked at least the police know where to go.
2. Jamie
Bloody BNP coming over here, taking our jobs.
3. mark
has anyone got contact details to help with leafleting?
4. Charles Martel
You can contact the BNP on 02070 783286
5. FrankMcGill
In fairness I think you should be advised that Labour’s leaflets are being distributed from Warsaw, the Conservatives from Bermuda the Lib Dems from San Francisco and UKIP’s from a tent on Rockall.
6. Jamie
Could you point me to a link to support those claims, Frank? (not doubting, just interested)
7. Caroline
Brilliant stuff! Thank God we have the Party of the People fighting the corner of True Englishmen, Irishmen, Scots and Welshmen everywhere.
Labour are now so desperate for voters that they are trying to get Poles to vote for them in the Euros! They have the Communist Searchlight organisation (Hope not Hate is part of that grubby little outfit) doing their dirty work for them, but, even as they spread lies, hatred, division and poison throughout the state-controlled media, so they outrage even more decent British people, giving the BNP the “oxygen of publicity”. This IS the Year of the BNP-have no doubt, people!
8. Caroline
Sorry! Brilliant stuff! Thank God we have the Party of the People fighting the corner of True Englishmen, Irishmen, Scots and Welshmen everywhere. Labour are now so desperate for voters that they are trying to get Poles to vote for them in the Euros! They have the Communist Searchlight organisation (Hope not Hate is part of that grubby little outfit) doing their dirty work for them, but, even as they spread lies, hatred, division and poison throughout the state-controlled media, so they outrage even more decent British people, giving the BNP the oxygen of publicity. This IS the Year of the BNP-have no doubt, people!
9. Jamie
The state-controlled media? Aw, I was beginning to take you seriously…
10. Thomas Carroll
Ah Caroline, the BNP are hardly “fighting the corner” for Irishmen. The word “British” in their name kind gives that away…
I don’t see what Nerys Evans is complaining about though, they have as much as right as any to own a warehouse. It being in Wales makes absolutely no difference to anything. Great way for Welsh politicians to get themselves in the news I suppose.
11. Councillor John Oddy
If there was only one good reason to vote for the BNP it would be because the main parties tell you not to. The main parties have proven themselves not only to be thieves and liars but totally incompetent of organising anything more than how to fiddle the tax-payer through their expenses claims. Good luck to them.
12. David Jones
The LibLabCon parties, Plaid Cymru, and the media, all linked to the Communists at the vile, odious, unelected Searchlight organisation!! Wake up everyone!!
13. martin oddy
Plaid Cymru are yesterdays party along with labour God bless the BNP
14. Andy
“If there was only one good reason to vote for the BNP it would be because the main parties tell you not to…”
That’s a pretty weak campaign slogan though. Maybe then the BNP could ‘sex things up’ by marketing themselves as the forbidden, ‘naughty’ party: ‘The BNP… we’re bad and you like it’
15. Steve Wright
You’d think BNP members would be too busy saving the country to post cliched rhetoric on a University comments page.
16. Truthteller
Would that be the same Searchlight whose leader, Gerry Gable, is a convicted burglar who once stood for election as a communist party candidate.
The same searchlight whose leader was described in an article by the Observer as “a conspiracy theorist who could spot Nazi architecture in a kindergarten sandpit”.
Searchlight and the money grabbing parasites in Westminster, who use the information it supplies to attack the BNP, deserve each other.
17. Steve Wright
...rearrange the words as you see fit: kettle, black, calling, pot, the.
18. Tony
Nerys Evans AM is quite right to be concerned, in the last general election the BNP stood gang rapists as candidates in some seats only removing them when they were exposed (in 2002, the Sunday Mirror carried a feature that a leading organiser for the BNP in Oldham was a convicted gang rapist).
The BNP are a violent Nazi organisation who would like to turn Britain into something resembling Apartheid South Africa at best or Nazi Germany at worse.
Indeed, the biggest seizure of explosives and terrorist weapons in British history was when police raided the houses of 2 BNP members who were stockpiling for ‘race war’.
They are led by Nick Griffin, a convicted criminal who when he is not doing meetings for the KKK likes to deny the holocaust. In 1998, the sick scumbag Griffin declared he was,
’ well aware that orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into soup and lampshades. I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria’
In 2002, the BNPs then youth leader Mark Collett was filmed by Channel 4 declaring his admiration for hitler and sentiments like the following:
‘I’d never say this on camera, the Jews have been thrown out of every country including England. It’s not just persecution. There’s no smoke without fire.’
Other leading BNP members have convictions for racist assaults and unpleasant things like sending razor blades to Jewish people in the post.
Before 7/7, the last terrorist attack in London was the bombing of a Soho Gay Bar by Dave Copeland, a BNP member.
Another side of the BNPs violence is shown in leading London member (and onetime second candidate on their list in the London Assembly elections) Nick Eriksen who defended raping women thus:
‘I’ve never understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth machine into believing that rape is such a serious crime … Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal. To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that forcefeeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched. The demonisation of rape is all part of the feminazi desire to obtain power and mastery over men. Men who go along with the rape myth are either morons or traitors.”
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-23470426-details/Women+more+troubled+by+bag+theft+than+rape,+BNP+candidate+claims/article.do
Just a quick snapshot of what kind of people get involved in the BNP:
In 2007, BNP Parliamentary candidate for Hull Brian Wainwright was found guilty after a campaign of hate mail against the local mosque, a Muslim councillor and a local anti-fascist activist. A letter in which he claimed, “Muslim blood will be spilt” included ‘SS’ scull and cross bones imagery. Another letter was sent to a local anti-fascist activist threatening that Combat 18 (the Nazi terrorist organisation who take there name from Hitler’s initials) would visit.
In the same week a BNP activist in Swindon Mark Bulman (who has used the pseudonym Bullock) was sentenced to five years after attempting to firebomb a local mosque using a BNP leaflet as a fuse. He also daubed swastikas and racist graffiti on local shops and businesses that he believed to be ‘ethnic’.
In June 2006 BNP councillor Brian Turner was found guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence. He escaped a jail sentence and was instead ordered to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work in the community. Turner has previous convictions of common assault and police assault after he was convicted of beating up his wife Melanie Turner.
In 2004, a BNP Local election candidate told the BBC that he would like to shoot ‘Paki’s’ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/police-investigate-bnp-documentary-over-violence-claim-553351.html
19. tim
why is this even worth mentioning? I will remind everyone that people are entitled to express their views, and this is reflected by who is elected. I thought the Gair Rhydd was supposed to be indepenant? Ok, so you haven’t actually given any opinion on them, but the very fact the article has been written implies otherwise.
Anyway, they are a valid political party. Would this article have been wrote if the warehouse was in England but the leaflets were still delivered to Wales?
@ Tony, you can find all kinds of negative things about any politcal party, but i will not deny the fact that the BNP does seem to have quite alot more.
20. Tony
So if a group of paedophiles put together a political party, perhaps not openly stating their views, but saying perhaps that they wanted to abolish the age of consent, support childrens sexual rights, you would just say ‘they are a valid political party’ ‘everyone is entitled to express their views’ or if a party of rapists stood etc. etc.
So why is a party that wants violence towards minorities tolerated? They want to deny freedom of speech to friends of mine just because they are black or gay.
Yes, you can find out all kinds of negative things about any party.
But what we are talking about is QUALITATIVELY different – for example, candidates and leaders who celebrate Adolf Hitler, think that rape is not a serious crime, think that the holocaust didn’t happen, have convictions for gang rape, common assault etc.
We are talking about a party led by a holocaust denier who speaks on platforms along with leading members of the KKK!!!
On the subject of the BNPs headquarters in Wales, a far right South African white supremacist linked to the murder of ANC leader Chris Hani was recently pictured in Wales at the building preparing the BNPs election leaflets. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/08/bnp-nick-griffin-arthur-kemp
21. Rhys
Tony, you can start a political party for anything dude, to make drugs legal, to stand for the white middle class or for the racists.
“If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all.” Noam Chomsky
And since when did it become such big crime against humanity to deny that the holocaust happened? how do you even know that the holocaust even happen? how do you know that the schools wheren’t just liying to you?
If you are agianst the Bnp then don’t vote for them simple. just dont take thier rights away
22. Adam Troth
Wasn’t there a hilarious episode of South Park parodying the notion of a politically organised paedophile group or something?
While I don’t go as far as to say that free speech should be completely absolute (because any form of freedom is only meaningful because of its constraints), it should certainly be a lot freer than is currently the case.
As for the Holocaust, I certainly don’t think that denying it happened should be a crime. For a start, it just creates very distasteful martyrs for the free speech cause, and gives them a stupid amount of free publicity.
However, whether or not Holocaust denial is a viable position to hold based on historical evidence, it almost certainly is not. As the vast majority of historical evidence suggests that the Holocaust was a brutal masterpiece of industrialised mass murder and ethnic cleansing, surely we should simply mock and laugh at those who deny it? They are quite clearly cretins who deserve to be in the same box as the Creationists and the Flat Earth theorists. Of course, let them speak, because this way people can see what fools they are.
23. neil
And Yer Labour MP’s are down the pub helping each other with their expenses claims.
24. Thomas Whitehurst
I assume Tony wasn’t plucking the idea of a paedophile political party out of the air. Does anyone else remember the Dutch political party that openly embraced paedophilia, wanted to legalise bestiality and reduce the age of consent to 12? Legal proceedings were undertaken to determine the legality of this party and ruled as follows:
“It is not illegal to try democratically to change the system – which is what these people are trying to do,”
“They are exercising their freedoms of speech and association, and as such cannot be banned by the state.”
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/07/dutch_court_oks.html
The parallels between this party (PNVD) and the BNP are many. Both hold views that the vast majority of the population (including me!) find disgusting. Both probably contain members who are convicted of crimes and continue to break the law. However, neither party officially advocates violence, crime or hatred as a tool for furthering its aims.
Opposition to the BNP should be a huge motivation for young people to participate in politics. The most effective way to beat the BNP is to deliver thumping defeat after thumping defeat at the ballot box. Let their views be heard in all their idiocy and then resoundingly rejected.
25. Joe
It seems that there is a large deal of agreement here… 1. The BNP are probably not factually correct or indeed the nicest people in the world. However, 2. The most effective way to defeat them as idiots is through discussion, debate, rehortic and not voting for them. 3. It is probably rather hypocirtical for a state to ban them from being a party considering the place that we hold for freedom of speech within society. “We believe that all views are equally valid, apart from those views we disagree with quite alot.” 4. If this is the case and we are going to accept them into the policitcal system then on the same principal it must be on an equal basis to all other parties. 5. In the end the criminal action is either actually doing things that are a crime (violence and such like) or in some instances insiting things that are crimes. 6. The perpetuation of the popularity of the BNP is largely a kickback rejection of the mainstream political parties that exist. If the government were having a more significant effect on issues such as mass poverty then far less people would be searching for a scapegoat and an alternative that is offered by the BNP. 7. Furthermore, these views will exist, purely by the rejection of these individuals from the political process will not stop their views from being expressed it will just mean that they no-longer have to conform to the rules that are placed upon all political groups as they get pushed underground. and finally 8. In 2007/8/9 NUS introduced and re-affirmed a policy of no-platform for the BNP, however, this has had very little effect on their popularity with wider society, if anything it has left university students more succeptable to the arguments as they break out of their nice safe university ‘bubble’. Is this really an effective and sustainable way of dealing with them?
26. paul
what has happend,?i thought we were supposed to have free speech in this country.