BNP MEMBERSHIP LIST PUBLISHED ON-LINE
Many of you will be aware that the entire BNP membership list has been pasted on-line. This gives names, and addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, and even lists hobbies. Activists are clearly marked to distinguish them from paper members. Unfortunately it also includes the ages of young members under eighteen years old.
For several reasons, I will not be permitting any comments on this blog that give a link to this data, nor that quote from it.
Firstly, this information can only be in the public domain through a breach of the data protection act, and I need to protect this web-site from any legal complications.
But more importantly, I have myself had my name and address published on the Stormfront Nazi web-page, and it is an intimidating and disturbing experience. My sympathy for BNP members is very limited, but the left should not stoop to personal intimidation of those we oppose politically.
There is also a very real political problem with any temptation towards vigilante action against BNP supporters. The list shows that BNP members are pretty much ordinary people, many of them living in working class communities; they may have wrong and even dangerous political ideas, but they are still people not monsters. Any attempt to intimidate or harass them will only increase sympathy for them and their ideals among their friends, work-colleagues and neighbours. The sad truth is that some BNP policies are broadly popular with large numbers of working class people, we have to combat those ideas, while accepting that many otherwise decent people currently give half an ear to the BNP.
As it stands, the leak of this information is a devastating blow to the BNP. Many members will be furious, in some cases their work may be jeopardised, in other cases they may feel that they, or their children, have been Put at risk. the left needs to take a responsible stand - let the BNP fight among themselves, but we should in no way encourage any intimidation or harassment of BNP members.
That’s nicely put, Andy.
I haven’t seen the list and am almost completely uninterested in it. The only things that I wouldn’t mind learning are the BNP’s numbers (and how they’re scattered) and whether any famous names are on it - you know, like, er, perhaps I shouldn’t name the people I think have a longing to recreate a Nazi empire, but you see what I mean.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 18 November, 2008 @ 9:26 pm
Completely uninterested in a membership leak of the BNP?
Really?
I’m waiting to see if there are any Police, teachers or persons of authority that are members of the BNP.
Demonstrations can then take place.
MRD
Comment by MRD — 18 November, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
#1 Tawfig Chahbourne… I concur. Andy was right to remove links to the BNP membership list.
Comment by mark anthony france — 18 November, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
I was discussing the other day that the BNP site is one of the top 12,000 sites in the UK, which I thought quite alarming. I haven’t seen the list but I had a telephone call from a friend telling me that a friend (his sister was on the constituency committee of the old Liberal Party with me) was listed there.
I support an open platform for the BNP and I also support the right of their members/supporters (and particularly youth members) to have a right to privacy. I think it will some be forgotten about, maybe a quite day in blogland.
Comment by Michael West — 18 November, 2008 @ 10:29 pm
its our luck and their lose
do you think if the German Red Front had got hold of a list before the rise of Hitler they would not have used it ???
Certainly need to out the teachers, Tories and police officers etc
Maybe only the youth I feel sorry for
but then again ask the young anti fascists beaten up in Blackpool this weekend what they think
Ask the Chelsea head hunters
we are in a war comrades not a liberal debating society and Iam for non violence…but thats why we need to use everything we have
this information is gold
Comment by James — 18 November, 2008 @ 10:37 pm
“My sympathy for BNP members is very limited, but the left should not stoop to personal intimidation of those we oppose politically.”
Well said. This battle will be won on the moral high ground, not by joining them in the gutter.
Comment by Terry — 18 November, 2008 @ 10:40 pm
I get the bit about possible legal problems and the need to protect SU, it’s a fact of life anyone running a website has to deal with but, please, spare us the sanctimonious rubbish about BNP members being “pretty much ordinary people”.
If you are a paid up member of the BNP you are signing up to an organisation that promotes hatred, intolerance and racism, there’s absolutely no room for doubt about that.
Now, anyone want to contribute to a Google map of BNP members addresses ?
Comment by Eddie Truman — 18 November, 2008 @ 10:40 pm
There should of course be no vendettas against individuals. That would be madness. It is, however, a gift in terms of intelligence, as a significant proportion of those on the list are dangerous to the workers movement.
It also shows that there is no concept of honour or loyalty amongst these people that such a thing can be done.
Of course, no one on the ‘far left’ would finger our own people in this way, would they? With one or two exceptions this is not our MO, if you’ll excuse the pun.
Comment by ID — 18 November, 2008 @ 10:45 pm
#8 “It is, however, a gift in terms of intelligence, as a significant proportion of those on the list are dangerous to the workers movement.”
I think it is necessary to be carefull not to incite anyone to commit an offence under the data protection act.
But I am sure that some people will have taken note of the information, and it may help to inform future anti-fascist political campaigns
Comment by Andy Newman — 18 November, 2008 @ 10:51 pm
What sets the BNP apart from other parties, is that it is a racist party. It does not simply propose racist policies: its own membership criteria is racist.
So anybody who joined the party is a racist.
Should ordinary racists be named and shamed. I think not. People - even racists - are entitled to privacy. What matters is what these people do. If they run for Parliament, for example, I don’t think that privacy concerns apply.
I’m pleased that we know that a Green Party PPC is a racist, for example.
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/11/18/black-shirt-brown-shirt-green-shirt/
Derek Wall? Any views?
Remember, this is a party whose idea of campaigning, is to put shit through the letterboxes of the houses of cultural minorities. Many of them - including senior party members - have criminal convictions for crimes of violence and racism, including terrorist offences.
People who joined this party KNEW that this was the sort of party they were joining.
Comment by David T — 18 November, 2008 @ 11:22 pm
DavidT has accidently posted on the wrong site, he meant to post to Harry’s Place where commenter’s think a dose of the BNP is necessary to avoid ‘jihadaggedon’.
Comment by BenP — 18 November, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
“the sad truth is that some BNP policies are broadly popular with large numbers of working class people,”
Andy
Andy,
You can at times be an ignorant fuck, why have you only singled out working class people to tar as BNP supporter, what are you saying, some lower middle class people do not support some of the views the BNP propagates, or those nice English middle class people, you know the types who institutionalized racism in State institutions like the Met. How about the upper middle classes who have to this day institutionalized class prejudice and racism within the British military, how about the Aristocracy, are they free of having nazi dreams; in you dreams apparently so.
So tell me, why slander us workers, the only class that has historically been a bedrock in its opposition to fascism and continues to be up to this day.
Withdraw that vicious slander that large numbers of workers are attracted to nazi ideology, the evidence points completely in the opposite direction. It is bad enough having to put up with bourgeois journalist spouting ignorant shit about us, without getting it from someone who claims to be a socialist.
Yes some workers have voted for the BNP, but they are a tiny, tiny minority overall, which is something you cannot say for the lower middle classes and middle class professionals who supported Hitler, and have always been the bedrock of European fascism The main reason the Fascists have never gained much support in the UK is because their leaders have always thought like you, and wrongly believed workers would give their support en masse to nazis. Like you their perceptions were based on sheer class prejudice, I do not give a shit about them, but it is time you started showing working class people respect.
Comment by Mick Hall — 18 November, 2008 @ 11:34 pm
Firstly, Andy. Almost fair and just comments. My full details are on that list, however am I far from ‘furious’, as are many I have contacted this night and spoke to. Most agree that many will now see that the core of the BNP now are as you put ‘normal’ people. Believe me when I say the rotten of the BNP is being left to rot (And there isn’t a lot left as most of the real hardcore left to the NF in recent years), the future of the BNP is with more moderate youngsters like myself who at the minute use my vote as a spite to the labour/con farce that runs this country so inaptly.
I do hope that no one uses this list in search for violence or other malice reasons and that all political ‘battles’ use only the pen as a weapon.
V - ‘The truth will out’
Comment by V — 18 November, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
If I can get a copy I will anonymise the data and post it on my anti BNP web site.
Comment by Joe Chapman — 18 November, 2008 @ 11:47 pm
Mick #12
Well i have read the list and for my local area, the BNP membership is predominantly from working class estates. Sorry, but it is.
Comment by Andy Newman — 18 November, 2008 @ 11:50 pm
Oh I forgot to add,The membership criteria is selective, just like these are;
Watford Asian Community care, Southwark Black Heritage Organisation,National Association of Nigerian Communities - UK (NANC),National Black Police Association. Are these racist? Of course not, selective and representative.
V - ‘The truth will out’
Comment by V — 18 November, 2008 @ 11:54 pm
Mick,
I’m sure Andy can defend himself (in fact I know he can as we had a to-do ourselves the other week over Sarah Pailn) but I feel you’ve misunderstood him here.
1. There is ample evidence to support Andy’s claim that BNP policies are supported by large numbers of working people. That doesn’t make them genocidal maniacs, but to pretend otherwise is, well, patronising. A lot of my (working class) relatives would support BNP policies on immigration and crime. They vote Labour, but I could imagine them voting BNP if they thought they were in with a chance. The quasi-scientific race nonsense that the BNP goes on about would leave them cold, but they’re disgruntled about everything else.
2. Saying some or even many workers might be racist doesn’t mean that you’re saying that the middle classes aren’t. You’re being silly.
3. He didn’t say that workers were attracted to nazi ideology. He said some were sympathetic to BNP policies, which is a different matter, and one that needs to be understood if the BNP is to be seriously challenged. There is unquestionably a core of the BNP, inlcuding Griffin, whose political bloodlines run back to the national socialism of Arnold Leese, through Jordan, Tyndall, et al. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that BNP policies are solely and obviously nazi.
Comment by Another Dave — 18 November, 2008 @ 11:55 pm
Pandora’s box has been opened. Long live diversity -Pakistan for the Pakistanis, India for the Indians, Britain for the British. Down with the Marxist, Secular NWO 1984 hell hole that benefits none of us free-thinkers and libertarians. VOTE BNP!
Comment by Paul — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:27 am
I agree totally with your post Andy. I have to say that I recognise some very dubious, sick and depraved characters amongst the list. I wouldnt stoop so low as to use the information provided to bully, intimidate and threatenen with the aim to harm, as the BNP and their sick ilk do.
The fact that this list has becaome so available shows what a disorganised bunch of degenerates the BNP are.
Comment by Ian — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:31 am
facist scum bags good they are named and shamed
Comment by andy t — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:44 am
V. You sometimes have to do the leg work to inform your political opinion, which doesn’t just mean reading the BNP website.
For example, whereas it is a stated policy of the BNP to restrict membership to “Indigenous Caucasians” i.e. white’s, the National Black Police Association’s policy states “everyone within policing is eligible to join the NBPA (There is no barrier to membership)”. This is a defensive association part of an organisation found ‘institutionally racist’.
The truth is out there, maybe just not where you think it is.
Comment by BenP — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:49 am
where is the list does anyone have a link i am curious of the enermy which may be living in my neighbourhood
Comment by andyt — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:53 am
@andyt - I think that its been moved from the bloggers pages from what I can gather on another forum. But still very much alive on some of the whistle-blower sites far outside of the jurisdiction of British courts. Some of the list is very surreal - a guy with two 14th century knight’s armour willing to do fetes! Apart from the comments, I can’t see what use the list is. The activists are well known to most of us on the left anyway.
Comment by Michael West — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:05 am
INTERESTING THANKS CONCENRED CITIZEN - FUCK THERE ARE LOADS OF THEM IN MY HOME TOWN. ITS NICE TO HAVE AN INTELLECTUAL DEBATE ABOUT IT ALL BUT U KNOW THE FAR RIGHT ARE BIGOTED AND USUALLY QUITE VICIOUS WHEREAS THE LEFT ARE USUALLY MORE PEACELOVING AND THOUGHTFULL ANYONE WHO HAS EVER BEEN ON AN ANTI NAZI DEMO WHEN THE FACISTS HAVE TURNED UP WILL KNOW THEY ARE ROUGH BALD AND LOVE FIGHTING WE ALWAYS COME OFF WORSE SO SUCH TALK IS SILLY. BASICALLT ITS GOOD FROM A PROPOGANDER POINT OF VIEW BUT MAY JUST DRIVE THEM UNDERGROUND BUT THEN ATHAT MAY BE GOOD AS THEY ARE TRYING TO LIGITIMATE THEMSELVES. I WILL SLEEP WELL TONIGHT BROTHERS
Comment by ANDYT — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:35 am
Well said Andy, no one should be unfair to these paid-up members of the British National Party. It would indeed be a tragedy were people to follow those links and … send anti-Nazi literature to these members of a fascist party. I’m sure that only a substantial majority of these BNP members are terrible racists and hardened fascists - as opposed to the broader layer of people who, unfortunately, and for confused reasons, might vote for them or “broadly support” some of their policies.
In short, yes, it would be awful were these Nazi bastards to get any comeuppance off the back of this brilliant leak.
Comment by Ray from The Mary Whitehouse Experience — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:56 am
I’m sure that if the BNP ended up with the SWP or Respect or any other left organisation’s personal details - we’d all be exposed and throughly fucked. I don’t understand how this was leaked and how we can prevent similar things from happening to us??!
But the big question:
Should we respect BNP member’s privacy and not use this list to our advantage? (e.g. outing members to their employers and communities - calling demos etc)
Absoutely not. This is vitally useful in damaging fascism and we should use this as a campaigning tool.
Should we inflict violence on these members?
No and hopefully the fact that we know where they all live will mean they are less likely to attack anyone themselves.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:56 am
From the start I am NOT a member of the BNP.
Most of what has been said above sickens me. Those who want to out the people named on this list would no doubt be outraged if the membership lists of anti comunist groups in China were made public, or lists of names and addresses of non-muslims living in many of the worlds muslim controled nations.
Oh how often I’ve heard the call “Freedom of thought and speach” and “The right to believe in what you want” from the Socialists.
How about releasing details of how people voted at the last elctions? How many of you true reds voted for someother than the Labour party, after all it is the SOCIALIST party ain’t it? Or would that be an invasion or your privacy?
One final thing, have you all forgotten what happened in Germany in the 30’s and 40’s, with those nice SOCIALISTS, the Nazi Party, rounding up the Jews? A lot of the time they used synagogue records that had not been destroyed, to find the jews that had managed to hide the fact they were jews. So should the local Catholic church have made sure that they had gotten hold of those records before they had been destroyed and released them?
Most of the above comments do the Socialist movement little favour!
Comment by Good God — 19 November, 2008 @ 3:04 am
It does not take much to find out where the local Nazis/Klan live.
wherever I’ve lived around the world I’ve worked with anti-racist activists.
Sometimes we have exposed them to their neighbors or fellow workers.
It can be important for people to know who they are working with.
But the Nazis also know where we live. The pigs also know who we are and where we live.
So really what is the point of publishing this list? It really shouldn’t be necessary.
I’m far away, so don’t know all the details of this tactic.
But I know that (in the US) if the Klan do come we say ‘armed self defense is no offense’
Comment by peter hine — 19 November, 2008 @ 3:25 am
To Good God:
The Labour party and the Nazi party are in no way socialist and certainly not the type of socialism we are in favour of. They are about as socialist as a choking Chihuahua. If the owner of a choking Chihuahua wanted to call itself a socialist it may. But it’s still just a dumb animal.
You need to read up a bit more on what socialism is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Btw Andy comment #18 calls for a vote for the BNP. Going to delete that?
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 4:10 am
There is no way sensible people can support breaching privacy and data protection, fundamental principles in a democracy. That is not the way to go. The BNP is a legal political party (whether one likes it or not) and its law-abiding members, irrespective of their views, should be afforded the same legal protections as everyone else. The person who leaked the information was wrong to do so. It’s a very poor precedent: these sort of antics will not actually work in the fight against the BNP anyway.
Comment by Benjamin — 19 November, 2008 @ 4:46 am
It seems to me that those who oppose revealing these fascist, racist and their fellow travellers miss the fundamental point that if they should gain anything more than the foothold that they already do then the “civil liberties” that they defend would be of no consequence. Those on that list are not just working and middle class voters who are registering a protest vote at that which seems beyond their control in terms of their social environments; but those who have gone a step further in actually subscribing to a racist ideology without illusions.
Good God — you really ought to understand the difference between between the racial ideology and social Darwinism of National Socialism and socialists who Hitler’s lynch mobs attacked and murdered before they could gain any sort of power in grass root German society.
I agree with what Futurecast writes in saying that we use this list to our advantage in outing members to their employers and communities. But stopping well short of any inflicting any kind of physical violence on them
Comment by anon — 19 November, 2008 @ 5:27 am
Racists should be outed, there is no place in modern society for this blight. Irrespective of age or gender or social standing or career. The seeds that caused this malignant cancer resulting in the death of millions in Auschwitz and Treblinka in the 2nd world war should never be forgotten. To the politically correct who oppose this view, Chamberlain was the same and see what happened.
Comment by Reltih eth nayra — 19 November, 2008 @ 6:01 am
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7736794.stm
This is on the UK bbc news front page. It seems perfectly reasonable to assume many people will be fired (certainly the BNP policemen). We need to demand that all of those listed who work for public services are sacked and if not that they are at least labeled and it is known by their colleagues they are Nazis. Every businessman, solicitor or whatever in that list should be clearly displayed as members to as many people as possible.
This is a huge blow to fascism in this country. While it is a breach of civil liberties - it is a huge step toward beating racism once and for all.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 6:08 am
Moreover - What right do fascists have to civil liberties, when they seek to remove these on getting in power?
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 6:16 am
Okay, well, if that’s what you want to do: use illegal breaches of data protection to mount campaigns against members of legal political parties, go right ahead. Don’t delude yourself that it will counter racism and the BNP, and don’t delude yourselves that it will expand civil liberties. It will likely have the opposite effect.
No matter what we think of these people’s views, they must be afforded the same basic legal protections as anyone else. That’s pretty basic stuff.
Tell me: how on earth do implement the bans, surveillance, witch hunting and harassment you propose, without creating a police state, or at least a clear augmentation of the power of the coercive state? Count me out of that idea, even if it’s a “nice” state.
Comment by Benjamin — 19 November, 2008 @ 6:40 am
What right do fascists have to civil liberties
If by fascists you mean people with fascist views, they have the same rights to civil liberties as anyone else, if they are law abiding and are part of legal organisations. Even in your wildest fantasies you can’t legislate against people merely holding views, and then have the state designate them as having fewer rights than anyone else. Of course there are laws against inciting violence etc, and there are illegal organisations, but those are separate matters from than just holding views and advancing those views within the law. The BNP is a legal organisation, its members are not necessarily criminals, and it seems to me it should be countered with legal means, not by breaches of data protection etc.
Comment by Benjamin — 19 November, 2008 @ 6:56 am
*Repost: Fixed italics.
Benjamin, you make some interesting responses. But you misunderstand what I am saying:
Tell me: how on earth do implement the bans, surveillance, witch hunting and harassment you propose, without creating a police state, or at least a clear augmentation of the power of the coercive state? Count me out of that idea, even if it’s a “nice” state.
At no point did I call for the state to impose bans, surveillance, witch hunting and harassment. Asking the state to do such things would certainly be a step toward a police state. On that point I totally agree and concur with you.
I am in fact calling for grass roots activists (hopefully based within the working class) to oust, name and shame and call for the BNP members to be sacked (at least from public service positions) etc. Surely calling on ordinary people to peacefully demand this is an entirely different thing?
Secondly:
If by fascists you mean people with fascist views, they have the same rights to civil liberties as anyone else, if they are law abiding and are part of legal organisations. Even in your wildest fantasies you can’t legislate against people merely holding views, and then have the state designate them as having fewer rights than anyone else. Of course there are laws against inciting violence etc, and there are illegal organisations, but those are separate matters from than just holding views and advancing those views within the law. The BNP is a legal organisation, its members are not necessarily criminals, and it seems to me it should be countered with legal means, not by breaches of data protection etc.
In this post you mention legality nearly ten times. But since when did legality mean morally correct or humane?
The BNP is a legal organisation. The invasion of Iraq was later made “legal”. Legality is not the natural order of things. Laws are concepts created (in the most part) by the elite to serve certain interests. They may or may not be fair or righteous.
But as long as we live under a ruthless system, to say something that is legal is therefore justified is non-sequitur.
Again let’s be clear there is a big difference between oppressing fascists with the state and preventing fascists with people power. I’m not calling for fewer civil rights for fascists, but I can’t see how any intelligent socialist would defend them.
Besides the state has not released these names, it was a disgruntled ex-member.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:28 am
Final Re-post:
Benjamin, you make some interesting responses. But you misunderstand what I am saying:
Tell me: how on earth do implement the bans, surveillance, witch hunting and harassment you propose, without creating a police state, or at least a clear augmentation of the power of the coercive state? Count me out of that idea, even if it’s a “nice” state.
At no point did I call for the state to impose bans, surveillance, witch hunting and harassment. Asking the state to do such things would certainly be a step toward a police state. On that point I totally agree and concur with you.
I am in fact calling for grass roots activists (hopefully based within the working class) to oust, name and shame and call for the BNP members to be sacked (at least from public service positions) etc. Surely calling on ordinary people to peacefully demand this is an entirely different thing?
Secondly:
If by fascists you mean people with fascist views, they have the same rights to civil liberties as anyone else, if they are law abiding and are part of legal organisations. Even in your wildest fantasies you can’t legislate against people merely holding views, and then have the state designate them as having fewer rights than anyone else. Of course there are laws against inciting violence etc, and there are illegal organisations, but those are separate matters from than just holding views and advancing those views within the law. The BNP is a legal organisation, its members are not necessarily criminals, and it seems to me it should be countered with legal means, not by breaches of data protection etc.
In this post you mention legality nearly ten times. But since when did legality mean morally correct or humane?
The BNP is a legal organisation. The invasion of Iraq was later made “legal”. Legality is not the natural order of things. Laws are concepts created (in the most part) by the elite to serve certain interests. They may or may not be fair or righteous.
But as long as we live under a ruthless system, to say something that is legal is therefore justified is non-sequitur.
Again let’s be clear there is a big difference between oppressing fascists with the state and preventing fascists with people power. I’m not calling for fewer civil rights for fascists, but I can’t see how any intelligent socialist would defend them.
Besides the state has not released these names, it was a disgruntled ex-member.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:29 am
Damned html tags.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:30 am
I concur with Andy’s sentiments.
Plus, much as I disagree with the BNP’s racially obsessive, anti-immigration stance, and their history of homophobia and anti-semitism, I’d like to sound a note of caution regarding the premature jubilation over the publication of this list.
Whatever people might think about the politics of the BNP or BNP members it is appalling that their confidential membership list has been published in this way.
Some people might think it perfectly acceptable that during the most severe, unfolding recession in decades, BNP members working in teaching, the police, nursing and other areas now face seeing their livelihoods and that of their families put at risk.
I do not. It is like McCarthyism in reverse, and we know what a tumult that era turned out to be.
It would seem more than coincidential that during the biggest economic crisis of capitalism in decades, when socialism and progressive, pro-people movements are in the ascendency, that this list should be leaked at this time. The publication of this list runs the serious risk of provoking a mini-war between the left/far left and far right.
Never forget the words of Jay Gould (known as the ‘Mephistopheles of Wall Street’):
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
Don’t fall into the trap.
Comment by tg — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:48 am
Futurecast
Thanks, an interesting exchange of views. In my view data protection legislation is worthy, and it’s a serious issue when it’s breached. As regards people power, I think the state will inevitably become involved, and I think it’s dubious for anyone to use breaches of data protection and privacy against people in this way, even members of the BNP. It really is opening a can of worms on a slippery slope, and I don’t think it will work anyway.
Comment by Benjamin — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:54 am
The majority of the BNP are not working class but petit bourgeois.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:56 am
Also while I appreciate the sentiment tg…
I think that no left organisation is interested in “going to war” with the far-right. Or going to war full stop for that matter.
Perhaps the squad gangs of antifa or red action may be interested - although I believe both are banned because they are already in constant “war” against fascists. I would imagine that both organisation’s membership are totally moribund anyway.
I think we should see nothing wrong in campaigning with things like uaf, peacefully and broadly - against the BNP. They are not our brothers and sisters they are a dangerous enemy whom we must oppose in a sensible way. This is a perfectly logical and natural desire.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:04 am
If there is a wasp in the room, I like to know where it’s hiding.
Thanks to this list, my son now knows there is a BNP member living a hundred yards from his mums house and he can take the sensible precaution of avoiding that family.
Comment by RobM — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:31 am
What a silly vcomment from Ray at #24 “indeed be a tragedy were people to follow those links and … send anti-Nazi literature to these members of a fascist party”
If you have been following events you will know that direct mailings of anti-facsist material to BNP members have been happening already, as acknowledged by Nick Griffin on the BNP web page, and the Green Arrow blog.
What is new is that private intelligence has become public, raising the danger of vigillante action.
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:36 am
I find strange that you refer to members of a political party… as ‘the enemy’. I don’t see members of the left as anything such as an enemy, no I see them as a chance to refine my beliefs and perfect my ideals and jump at any chance I see to get into a good old fashioned debate however the debate normally stops when I mention which party I belong to and in return I get crys of Nazi. While no one can deny the pre-99 BNP was undoubtly racist..overly facist and inhertly nazi… in 9 years that has changed, in nine years its membership has changed and in nine more it’ll be diffrent again. As for this silly comment;
The seeds that caused this malignant cancer resulting in the death of millions in Auschwitz and Treblinka in the 2nd world war should never be forgotten.
May I refer to the Ukraine Famine? This phrase would be more literal there. Commusism is just as bad as Nazism and both are terrible ideologies
And to BenP, yet its still selective is it not? Its quite clear the name is a clue. Im more than happy for the right of that to exists, but why is it so wrong (and personally I don’t think there should be a racial profile on membership anymore and this is likely to be debated within years) to represent the majority of this country?
V - ‘The truth will out’
Comment by V — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:43 am
Ray #24: I’d be interested in your answer to the question David T set you in #10, as you’re here, like.
Comment by Alan — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:44 am
46 # - V. Even if you do not describe yourself as a Nazi or fascist. You are a self-labeled nationalist and nationalism for big powerful countries as well as “whites first” when the world already puts powerful countries and whites before others, makes you at the very least a racist and a nationalist.
Chauvinism, nationalism and racism need to be fought even if it claims it is not to fascist (which the BNP clearly is - the documentary “Young Nazi and Proud” showed how many Hitler lovers there are in the BNP well after 1999).
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:59 am
v #46
It is true that there has been some evolution in the BNP membership, but at the heart of the party are still a load of yobs, fascists, football hoodlums and weirdos.
What is more, the BNP simply do tell loads of lies - for example inventing myths about asylum seekers, in order to stoke up racial hatred. And where the BNP have gained a foothold, racial tension has increased.
That is why there is such revulsion, not only from the far left, but also from politicaly non aligned people.
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:08 am
V - Future cast has a point at #48
As long as Mark Collett plays a leading role, how can you seriously expect people to think the BNP is a respectable and normal party?
Comment by Andy Newman — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:10 am
Today is the first time I have visited your site and I have been amazed by the stereotypical views of your contributors about who are nazis racists and mass murderers.
What the bnp stand for is wrong, but there are members of the labour pary I have spoken to who have described people in the same room as good paki lads. When I pointed out how degrading this is he said it was meant as a description not an insult!!
We must also remember genocide is not the sole preserve of the right. Look at what has been done by Stalin, Mao tze Dung and Pol Pot among others to further the socialist cause.
This world would be a much better place if we could stop blindly following leaders and dogma that will at some stage call for a purge bad influences and stop trying to impose our will on others.
Im not a socialist, facist, liberal, tory or anything just someone trying to survive and make sense of a confusing world
Comment by Terry Moon — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:13 am
Good discussion here:
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/11/413164.html
Comment by Tim Savage — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:17 am
Good post(s) Andy. Vigilante action against names on a list is neither desirable or progressive. The list does nor diferentiate between passive political membership and those involved in organised racist action.
The left is composed of both men and women. I wonder how many women on the left support violent vigilante reprisals against political opponents? Macho bollocks and chest-puffing is so 20th century….
Comment by Kevin Williamson — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:20 am
Stalin, Mao tze Dung and Pol Pot were all really right wing imo.
Leaders who introduce authoritarian regimes, where an elite bureaucracy rules over the masses combined with massive economic inequality = is a hallmark of capitalist right wing politics.
They have nothing to do with socialism. Pol Pot for example was a primitivist who wanted to reduce his country to a prehistoric (and primitive) agricultural utopia. There is nothing in any Marxist text advocating that, ever.
Primitivism has more in common with fascism in hunting for the resurrection of a noble past e.g. Mussolini who wanted to rule like the “great rulers of Rome”, the etymology and word fascism comes from the “faces” of former great rulers.
I cannot see how the acts of Stalin, Mao or Pol pot can be described as left wing. These three are as socialist as the democratic republic of congo is “democratic”. Or as “free” as the “free market” etc. etc.
You have to understand history and politics through what people do, not just what they say they are doing.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:23 am
ID: “Of course, no one on the ‘far left’ would finger our own people in this way, would they? With one or two exceptions this is not our MO, if you’ll excuse the pun.”
What are you babbling on about Ian?
Comment by NOIDea — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:34 am
V: But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona.
V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
[carves V into poster on wall]
V: The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
[giggles]
V: Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me
Comment by charlotte badger — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:37 am
It is not very often that I find myself agreeing with you Mr Newman but I do on this one. Most of those posting here have not done the leg work of hoofing it around the estates of Barking, Daganham, Hainault, Epping and all of the other places where the BNP have started to make inroads. If you had it would be obvious that that party is making serious inroads into what was until very recently a solidly Labour area.
Example after example all over the country show that it is the Labour vote that Griffin and co are hacking into. I have said here before that until the section of the left that posts here dumps all of its ideological baggage it is never going to understand what is happening out in the real world of run down council estates in Essex.
I have had a solid two and a half years of leafleting in those areas and the reality is grimly familiar. Shuttered pubs and half vacant parades of shops. Supermarkets a couple of bus rides away on the most expensive public transport in Europe. Houses that have been sold to private landlords that are used to house the overspill homeless of inner London many of whom are from ethnic minorities when local sons and daughters can’t even get on a housing list.
You could go on and on but even though it has all been said before there is section of the left that is stuck in what happened in the 1930s in Germany. The SWP have just published a booklet called “How To Stop The Nazi BNP”. It seems the answer is to wave lollypops and have pop festivals but useful reading in understanding the present situation is to read a couple of books by Trotsky published in the 1930s and one by Phil Piratin published in 1948. If the situation was not so serious it would be laughable!
I agree that there should be no attacks on any individual members of the BNP whose names have appeared on the list. Not only are people going to get themselves banged up it will be counterproductive. I have seen the results of overkill in outer East London elections where the BNP actually became to be seen as the victims of state run campaigns when they were standing up for the rightsof whitepeople. It is possible that this is going to happen with the publication of this list but we will have to wait and see.
There are two arguments to be taken into consideration when considering whether a persons employment should depend on their membership of a political party. My own view is that the BNP has to be defeated politically and banning it or sacking people from their jobs is actually counter productive.
It is also something that can be used against the left as we must not forget that a lot of people out there want to abolish Parliament, institute a one party Marxist state and then kill or imprison political opponents. It would seem to me that some or all of that would bar a person from certain kinds of employment.
It is reverse of Macarthyism and the 1970s ban on Communist Party members from having state jobs in West Germany. It was also something that was practised in the former workers paradises of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as I seem to recall.
I don’t think that any moral justification can be made for banning a person from employment because of their political opinions or membership of a political party. As to whether this can be done legally is another matter. It would be necessary to use one of the many Race Equality Acts but these in themselves are a part of the reason why the BNP is where it is.
For thirty years the Commission for Racial Equality, now thankfully dead and gone, persecuted white people and invented racism. Its word was holy writ, once the race Inquisition/Gestapo was on your case you were guilty. This spawned a whole industry of hustlers like Lee Jasper and his dozens of front groups all shouting “racist” with their hands in the public purse. We have con men like Simon Wooley of Operation Black Vote being handed hundreds of thousands of pounds Harriet Harman to demand all black lists for every elected post in the country.
Is it any wonder that the BNP is doing so well. If not for its own incompetence and the movement against it could have several thousand councillors and not a hundred. And while the PC professional white haters were fuelling the BNP what were the left doing? Joining in the chorus screaming racism of the institutional/unconscious/unwitting kinds and going back to the 1930s for models of how to deal with the suited and booted fascism that we are dealing with today.
Comment by terryfitz — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:56 am
“It is also something that can be used against the left as we must not forget that a lot of people out there want to abolish Parliament, institute a one party Marxist state and then kill or imprison political opponents. It would seem to me that some or all of that would bar a person from certain kinds of employment.”
The number of Stalinists/Maoists still in Britain cannot be over a hundred or a few hundred. That is not a lot of people.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:04 am
Andy re: #15,
I’ve looked through the list for our local area as well and I’m not sure the vast majority are from “working-class estates.” There is a fair spread across local postcodes and quite a number from middle-income areas. Of course there are variations in income/wealth within postcodes as well so its hard to come to hard and fast conclusions about class membership without visiting each individual house - which I shan’t be doing by the way!
Comment by Jools — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:26 am
As far as I was aware the BNP were predominantly receiving lower-middle class votes. E.G. The posher areas in NE London got a really high turnout in May. Lenin’s tomb has some reports on this if you look on the ‘Bnp’ section.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:30 am
>>“It is also something that can be used against the left as we must not forget that a lot of people out there want to abolish Parliament, institute a one party Marxist state and then kill or imprison political opponents. It would seem to me that some or all of that would bar a person from certain kinds of employment.”
The number of Stalinists/Maoists still in Britain cannot be over a hundred or a few hundred. That is not a lot of people.>>
How about all the Trots?
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:32 am
And what if this list revealed BNP members in particularly sensitive jobs like healthcare. Why don’t we ask black people, Moslems, Jews or anyone with a ‘foreign’ accent how they’d feel about being looked after by someone in the BNP? That’s the bottom line. So all the moralisers on this thread ought to think again. There’s a big difference between someone who votes BNP in elections because they’re pissed off about housing etc and someone who actually joins the BNP - they would have had to have lived on Mars over the past few years not to realise what the BNP stand for. They’re a racist party led by fascists. I’m not arguing this list should be used to physically intimidate people but if BNP members in potentially sensitive jobs gotthe boot? Boo-fucking-hoo.
Comment by Doug — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:35 am
Best way to move forward…let the matter rest. Too often the media (and us) give too many words to the BNP.
The BNP must be ignored in all public spheres, and should only be defeated come elections. Everytime we speak of the BNP we mention their anti-immigration, anti-EU, and closet racist tendencies (despite the explicit policies in their manifestos). Nick Griffin has welcomed the publication, everytime the BNP is mentioned in the news, every interview the media has with a member of the BNP, goes further to make the BNP a household name. Then when people recieve BNP literature they don’t too easily dismiss such.
May I suggest that we drop the case about who their members may be. I am sure that those members belonging in what ever professions will get whats coming to them. Maybe we should let the State deal with this one.
Comment by Luke — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:54 am
“the BNP actually became to be seen as the victims of state run campaigns when they were standing up for the rightsof whitepeople”
“For thirty years the Commission for Racial Equality, now thankfully dead and gone, persecuted white people and invented racism.”
Did you actually lift these quotes from BNP propaganda or are they all your own work?
Comment by Mike v2.0 — 19 November, 2008 @ 11:19 am
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20081118214827111
Comment by Mr Nobody — 19 November, 2008 @ 11:39 am
the whole story should also be a reminder for us to be cautious with our own membership records, etc. neither the bourgeois state, nor the fascists or the employers’ associations should ever get them … some of the smaller leftist organisations and unions in Germany destroyed their membership records or brought them to safe places abroad before or around the time when the nazis came to power in 1933 (one good example is the resistance group of railway workers aligned to the ITF around Hans Jahn who managed to destroy 17.000 membership records of the railway workers union which caused great problems for the nazis for tracking down the illegal network of railway workers); but the Nazis were able to make large and unfortunately very succesful inroads against the illegal KPD because they were able to confiscate more or less all of their central records in February/March 1933 … these records also contained a large chunk of “intelligence” about trotskyists, brandlerites and other oppositional communists who were prepared much better for illegality and whose structures often were less known by nazis and the political police
Comment by Entdinglichung — 19 November, 2008 @ 11:45 am
well i think we can safely assume that virtually everyone on the list - and i have seen it as it is now widely available - hates black people, gay people, trade unionists, catholics and jews to name but a few. So i will have no sympathy for any of them if they now experience some of the hatred they have been visiting on others they consider ‘inferior’ for years!!!!!
i think that guy who talked about fascist heads and pavements had it about right!!!!!!
Comment by leigh richards — 19 November, 2008 @ 11:56 am
#63 Doug… There are many people in particularly sensitive jobs who exercise power over vulnerable people in a way that is oppressive…. this is acutally the norm in British society in a culture of competitiveness and blame, individualism and fear, consumerism and corruption.
Any ordindary person is likely to encounter judgemental behaviour that undermines their human rights and usually they feel powerless to confront the bullies….
Behaviour that mimics the classic psychological profile of ‘facsism’ is actually common in many workplaces.
Just ask the natural father of Baby P. in Haringey what he thinks of Nurses, Doctors, Social Workers, Police Child Protection Officers, Housing Support Workers, Health Visitors and their respective managers who conspired to prevent him accessing his child…. All these professionals, continued to return Baby P into the ‘care’ of a man who was ‘obsessed with knifes and nazi’s’ and with a history of ‘torturing animals’ [BBC Panorama 17-11-08] who alongside another ‘lodger’ and the mother brutalised Baby P.
I doubt whether anyone connected to the Baby P. case was a member of the BNP…
I am infavour of re-training, re-educating and if their is evidence disciplining upto and including dismissal anyone [whatever their professed politcal views, opinions or membership of a political party may be] who fails to implement the code of ethics of their profession in daily practice or who fails to provide equal treatment for vulnerable people under their care.
I am not infavour of targeting, victimising or driving out BNP members from there jobs solely on the basis of their membership of the BNP.
Many of the people who have been attracted towards the BNP include people who are angry at some of the features of society in the UK that mimic an Orwellian nightmare of bureaucracy and bullshit that under New Labour has distorted the movements for social liberation of the 70’s into what is percieved to be state endorsed political correctness that has no connection with many peoples lived experience.
Socialists who carry a vision of a new world in their hearts and try to bring that into reality need to challenge oppression and defend the vulnerable by encouraging the self activity of people who have been exculded, marginalised and driven into the gutter by a society broken by capital.
The real ‘fascists’ just like the torturers of Baby P. are adept and hiding and deflecting the blame onto others. Some of these are in the BNP most are not. We should focus on what people ‘do’ and challenge them when they manipulate, decieve, lie and oppress. We should not victimise people for what they ‘think’ but seek to engage them while we can.
Comment by abu jamal — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
I’m sure that if the BNP ended up with the SWP or Respect or any other left organisation’s personal details - we’d all be exposed and throughly fucked.
Redwatch. Fascists taking pictures of leftists and supposed leftists, then putting them up on their pathetic website. People have been beaten up because their name or picture was up on redwatch.
Comment by Martin Wisse — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
http://spod.cx/bnp_members_list.shtml
Comment by David T — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:21 pm
Somebody has - anonymously - put the addresses into google maps, and has also produced a “heat map”
http://spod.cx/bnp_members_list.shtml
Comment by David T — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:22 pm
Jason Orange!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by David T — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:48 pm
TEN THOUSAND PLUS ON THE MEMBERSHIP THIS IS ALL PROPAGANDA
Bit like the SWP saying they have still got over 10 thousand members
73 And what does a dog do? Biter>
Comment by Confused — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
Thank you Andy and Futurecast for replies,
Of course, Futurecast I’m a nationalist this is not in question, what is are the frequency used and often abused statements of fascist and nazi, Hitler’s nationalism would be best described as purely Imperialism. What are my main qualms with this country? It strives to put others before those who have made this country and I include the first post-45 immigrants who helped rebuild this country after a terrible war against the very thing you purpose we are, Nazism (Lets be clear, Fascism, Nazism and Nationalism are all different things and operate of many different levels). What we have today is a government that is held unaccountable for its actions (Iraq war as just one example) and that strives to break apart the traditions of this very nation and its culture.
As for that silly young boy Mark, he is a disgrace and have no idea why he is still active within the BNP. Anyone that tells me they look back at Nazism with a “certain nostalgia” is in my mind not politically developed enough and socially unstable. The trouble is we have many youngster come to us, and they think they must be racist and know about Hitler because this is what the media tells them and that they must question the Holocaust, to me, its makes no difference if a single person of Jewish faith died in Hitlers hell holes or a billion, one is too many. My own grandfather was held at Stalag XXIB.
What I desire most is change, the BNP purpose a government that can be held accountable at every level for all its actions.
What this country needs is to strengthen bonds between the cultures already here, its far to late to reverse that and any talk of ‘voluntary’ resettlement is poppycock. If your a legal British citizen, then I count you as a brother as long as you hold true the values that Britions must have.
As for am I personally racist? My boss is ‘of African descent’ and he of course knows I vote BNP, and we often go out for a drinks and socialise, we get on perfectly fine and agree a lot of the state of the UK and he is pound for pound as British as I’m minus the heritage. He of course has his own heritage separate to mine these are the only two things we can’t share. I’ll never be African, He’ll never be truely British.
This is not politically correct but then its factual, although does this change anything? Not really.. but why should we ignore the fact, lets embrace it!Black history month, Great stuff. What would be wrong with a White history month?
Also, any BNP member found to even peek at the that hideous site Redwatch, is more than grounds for dismissal. BNP members are taught to despise the politicians, not people.
V - “The truth will out”.
Comment by V — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
O,,,
could be a Christian name or a Welsh surname
Comment by Anonymous — 19 November, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
see also http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/7998
Comment by Entdinglichung — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:00 pm
V is that for Vile”you sicko
Are you posting while you suppose to be working.
YOUR BOSS is a better man than you would ever strive to be for a man to employ you AND KNOW YOU VOTE BNP and allow himself to go out and socialise with you I fully commend his tolerance to your vile ways.
If he wasn’t the man he was and was more like your sort of sicko fiends’ you would not have a job.
Comment by s — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
Would the unions have to intervene if sackings of active BNP members were to occur?
Comment by Confused — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
A Talksport DJ has been sacked for being a member of a vicious racist extremist party!!!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1087101/Radio-DJ-fired-BNP-teachers-police-lawyers-exposed-membership-list-leak.html
(Not George Galloway)
Comment by David T — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
Awa an bile year heid. V . bet yer arse is hinging oot yer troosers and yer heid buttons up the back
Comment by optimistic Larry Nugent — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
Abu Jamal
How naive you are. BNP members in sensitive jobs are likely to be as vindictive as they think they can get away with e.g. in the health service, being slightly less sensitive than usual in taking off a bandage, taking a bit longer in giving the foreigner his/her pain killers. And what if it’s a policeman - do you think he’s more likely to break up or join in (or even start) giving a black person a beating in a cell? The fewer people like that are in a position of power, the better, ethical or not. So spare us the bleeding heart liberalism - save your sympathy for people who really deserve it.
Comment by Doug — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
What’s a friend of Sharon?
How many letters in each name?
Comment by Fubs — 19 November, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
Once again there is no attempt to deal with the arguments that I have put forward. When is someone going to face reality and all of you to get out of yur littleghetto and join us real people on the streets in action against the BNP. Get out of your comfort zone and get real.
Comment by terryfitz — 19 November, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
#81 Doug… This is not about bleeding heart liberalism…. I have worked in the NHS and as a student nurse in Bradford I frequently encountered the deeply racist and judgemental attitudes of other nurses… which did frequently impact on the care they provided to patients…. as far as I know they weren’t in the BNP.
There are a lot of demoralised, lazy vindictive, politically backward people in this society …. they often are in positions of power… some of them identify themselves as ’socialists’.
I accept all you and as someone who has been on the recieving end of vicious beatings from organised facsists on several occassions then I understand in a visceral way exactly the ‘terror’ this can provoke.
Nevertheless and not withstanding this…. the contribution from young BNP activists like ‘V’ who has posted here … needs to be understood.
My wife joined the BNP on line in 2005… she resigned in 2006.
She is one of the most compasionate, empathetic and non-judgemental human beings I have met… thousands of ordinary ‘white’ working class people began to gravitate towards the BNP during New Labour’s reign.
Treating these people as the enemy to be witchunted is not a viable tactic and will be very counterproductive.
People should be held accountable for what they do or omitt to do in the context of their employment… BNP membership may dispose people to do bad things at work… but as I have evidenced else where….appalling things happen like the totally avoidable death of Baby P. and no one is accountable.
I would rather there be a discussion on the threat of ‘facsism’ in this society that didn’t focus soley on the BNP…or seek to brand its members as the sole repository of hideous forms of behaviour.
Comment by abu jamal — 19 November, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
How about a boycott of all the BNP business addresses listed?
I have no qualms at the outing of BNP members -play with fire and you get what you deserve
BNP cannot call the firebrigade now to douse the fire
Chris
Comment by Chris — 19 November, 2008 @ 3:42 pm
It is a telling indictment of people of the dubious ‘left’ political bent that there is so much glee over the potential problems that this list may ostensibly create for members of a legal political party: politically motivated employment terminations, harassment and maybe, as has been suggested in many a place, much more sinister activities.
These actions are the very hallmark of tyranny and the antithesis of civilised, healthy countries. In essence, the actions of the so-called fascists that the ‘left’ so often invoke.
It is utterly irrelevant whether or not the ‘left’ agree with or even despise another’s political beliefs or principles, to take such pleasure from the fact that potential repercussions may occur for the exercise of political freedom is to reveal the true malicious and anti-freedom position that the ‘left’ occupy in this country.
True fascists with red jackets.
Comment by TS — 19 November, 2008 @ 3:45 pm
http://localgibson.com/
Comment by Karen Elliot — 19 November, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
aka http://localgibson.com/bnp/
Comment by Karen Elliot — 19 November, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
To terryfizz
Some of us were doing what you claim to be doing now thirty years ago, so get off your high horse.
I would remind people too that then, the NF had a strong activist base with around 20,000 members and weekly sales of the NF news in every major city of the UK. They were also marching on the streets. Their satellites, including the British Movement, were physically attacking people with impunity. In the city where I lived it was very difficult to hold a meeting without it being attacked by these thugs. Intimidation and fear was rife.
Not as many fascist councillors of course then, but most of the present BNP council seats have been won more, or less by default (low turnouts, unchallenged parish councils) and due to the perception by many people of being ‘betrayed’ by the Labour party both nationally and locally. It’s time the Labour party membership returned to their campaigning roots.
Comment by Theo Saurus — 19 November, 2008 @ 5:13 pm
“It is like McCarthyism in reverse”
Indeed… just as an airplane is like plummeting out of the sky to your death - in reverse.
Comment by Karen Elliot — 19 November, 2008 @ 5:13 pm
More on Socialist Unity, the working classes and the BNP here,
http://www.organizedrage.com/2008/11/open-letter-to-socialist-unity-e-list.html
Comment by baslamak — 19 November, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
“So tell me, why only slander us workers, the only class that has historically been a bedrock in its opposition to fascism and continues to be up to this day.”
Baslamak - working class people may have been the only force that opposed facsism with any self-belief in the 1930s but the above is only part of the truth.
In Germany between 1933 and 1939 the majority of the German working class - with some brave exceptions it is true - capitulated to fascism and became complicit.
Apart from Wilhelm Reich in 1933, or the likes of Maurice Brinton in the early 1970s, few on the left have tried to understand why this happenened. The pyschology of fascism, and its appeal among a section of working class people, is too often ignored in favour of economistic interpretaions.
Perhaps it would expose too many deficiencies on the left if the attraction to authoritarianism, and to authoritarian father figures, was examined in any psychological depth.
Comment by Kevin Williamson — 19 November, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
“In a statement on the party’s website, Mr Griffin said he had lodged a complaint with Dyfed-Powys Police on the grounds that the publication breached human rights and data protection laws.
He told the BBC’s Today programme the party would be using the Human Rights Act to try to protect the identities of its members, despite the BNP being against the European legislation.”
Isn’t that typical, BNP to use the HRA that they want to abolish. I’m really pleased these monsters have been exposed. I’m glad they will be lying in bed at night quaking and wondering if they’ll get jumped in the street. Let them have a dose of what it’s like to be black, asian or gay living in fear where ever these monsters roam.
Having said that, individual vigilantism and squadism isn’t the answer to stopping the nazi’s. But at least these scumbags won’t sleep easy for a change.
Comment by Ray — 19 November, 2008 @ 5:58 pm
Well the notion of ‘complicity’ is a rather loose one. We do know quite a lot about the way in which the Nazies always remained wary of those sections of the workforce which were traditionally unionized (thus it was only very late in the war that they dared institute the economic cutbacks which were de rigour in most countries during the war). The Nazi hierachy never had any trust at all in these sections of the working class.
However we are discussing the present, and I have to admit that I found this quote from a BNP member highly amusing (as well as rather telling about the real balence of forces in relationship to this question):
Hundreds of members had received threatening calls in the last 24 hours since the list was leaked, leader Mr Griffin claimed.
‘We’re sure that this is a left-wing trick by the unions and the Labour Party” he goes on to complain about the sheer volume of abusive calls recieved by people on that list. I don’t think it is orchestrated. I think its the gut reaction of many more people then ever are likely to join the BNP.
Comment by johng — 19 November, 2008 @ 6:04 pm
Kevin:
In Germany between 1933 and 1939 the majority of the German working class - with some brave exceptions it is true - capitulated to fascism and became complicit.
Reply:
Rather simplistic this, and an insult to the thousands of men and women who fought the Nazis in every town and every city throughout the 1920s and early 1930s and who were either wiped out, forced underground, or disappeared into the bowels of Nazi concentration camps, originally designed as part of the Nazi’s priority upon coming to power of smashing Communism and the trade unions.
We’ve been fortunate in this country of never having had to face the monster of Fascism coming to power. Therefore it’s easy to throw around words like ‘complicit’ without any understanding of what it is to know that a knock on the door at five in the morning isn’t going to be the milkman.
Conjunctural factors were responsible for the Nazis taking power in Germany, chief among of which was the financial support given the Nazis by the German industrial class, or Junkers, the German ruling class embracing Hitler as a counterweight to the rise of Communism, and ex and current officers within the military whose sense of shame at being defeated in the First World War Hitler was able to direct towards a perceived enemy within.
The German working class filled the ranks of the German military during the Second World War, having been conscripted, but in the critical years of the 1920s and early 1930s when the Nazis rose to power, they put up a courageous struggle. The relative passivity of their leaders, the mistakes of the Comintern vis-a-vis the struggle against Fascism, this has more to do with the defeat of the German working class than any wholesale capitulation.
As for the BNP, the amazing thing is that despite seven years of the govt and large sections of the media demonising Muslims, immigrants, gays, etc., they still only have 13,000 members. This speaks volumes for the integration of immigrants and Muslims into our society, along with the success of the left in resisting the BNP up and down the country.
Comment by John Wight — 19 November, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
- The BNP obviously have included expired members and some people who have just been in contact with them.
Part of me (the anarco-squadist bit) finds this funny, but I think Andy in the original article takes a sensible line.
Comment by Green Socialist — 19 November, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
#93 Kevin Williamson…. your comments about Reich and Brinton [Chris Pallis] are important…in the period that is opening up we need to apply the largely forgotten insights of Reich into the mass psychology of facsism… and the insights of Brinton [perhaps best explained in an old book of his “irrationality in politics”.
I suspect that the ‘Organised Rage’ of David Hall and the Vendetta of the BNP activist ‘v’ who posted early in this thread are not that different in origin… and this comment is not meant to be derogatory to either of them.
#96 John Wright.. The BNP has a resonance far beyond it’s paper membership of 13,000… we must not forget that in the GLA London Elections the BNP gained a seat and despite his high profile and a spirited campaign George Galloway did not.
In England the left is much more marginalised than the BNP…
Looking through the list…. I was able to identify about 15 BNP members in my constituency…. I am the only member of a left organisation [respect] and to the best of my knowledge none of the other forces on the left… from the LRC in the Labour Party through CPB and the SWP they have any members in my area. after two years here I haven’t even been able to find a member of the Green Party.
Of course If all these membership lists were in the public domain I could be sure.
In an era where atomisation and fragementation of the hopes and aspirations of millions makes public campaigning political activity an alien concept for most people… they feel powerless. A large protest vote [for those that bother to vote] against establishment parties is bound to emerge at the polls and aided by this recent publicity the BNP is far better placed to pick up the expressions of protest than the left in England. The only vehicle’s the left has with a prospect of an electoral profile RESPECT and the Green Party…
I feel that you [whatever the history of scottish disputes between you and Kevin are] should pay attention to Kevins reference to Wihelm Reich as should every anti facsist.
Comment by abu jamal — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:11 pm
s, Sick and vile? For that I love diversity more than you can possibly imagine? That I love visiting other peoples cultures and learning about their history. What about understanding the simple simple obvious fact that we as humans are different, not superior or inferior simply different. If the world for example was all one colour, we all spoke with a South-London accent and all wore adidas tracksuits, all had black hair and brown eyes. The world would be a very dull place is that a hard concept to grasp?
As with my boss, who laughed at your reply s and agree replying ‘Of course I’m a better man, I’m your boss’ and also credited you as being inertly stupid. There is no reason a legal British citizen can’t be as British as me. . Yet, we can’t change our heritage, its important. Its how we as a single human being among billions got here. Its something special and unique to yourself. Hes proud of his African decent, as much as I’m proud of my British heritage.
If I move to Chinese, do I become Chinese? No I don’t, and a simple test of this would be to take five white males, with the same hair, eye colour and height as me and then add ‘Mr Yen’ who was born in London to second generation Chinese immigrants and ask people which one of us is ‘Chinese’.
Who would they choose and why would they choose him? Think.. I wont tell you.
Comment by V — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:23 pm
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=116138443765768018948.00045c04064d8905e0963
This is a user created map with the listings being put on for the North of England, eventually I think they’ll put them all on. If you’re interested - put up the addresses of the ones in your town too. We have a right to know if we are living next to violent fascists.
Comment by Pride — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
#99 ‘v’ … when did you join the BNP, and what motivated that decision? I am genuinely interested…wouldn’t you prefer to be in an organisation where your mate and boss could both be confortable in?? Are you still in the BNP?…
Comment by abu jamal — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:45 pm
#99 ‘v’…. oh yes and is your pen name from the V for Vendetta… ace film… but I liked the original graphic novel better.
Comment by abu jamal — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
Abu #98
Fascism in Germany did not appear out of thin air. The mass torchlit rallies were the culmination of a process that took over a decade to reach the point where the psychological factor swept the nation and led Germany on the inexorable path it subsequently took to the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War.
What matters most to any human being is their own survival and that of their families. In conditions of extreme economic crisis, such as existed across Europe after the First World War, people followed those who could provide answers to the pressing problem of filling their bellies. This resulted in a struggle between two contending ideologies - Communism and Fascism. In Russia the Bolsheviks and Communism won out against weaker elements on the Left and Fascist elements allied to assorted Monarchists and Consititutionalists. In Germany the Fascists won. The subjective factor was key in both.
The psychology of Fascism lay upon a foundation of economic prosperity. A desperate people allied themselves to the ideology that proved itself capable of solving the nation’s economic problems and the social convulsion that resulted, offering them hope, pride, and an enemy to blame for the nation’s plight. This came after the ‘leadership’ of the German working class capitulated. The workers themselves were prepared to fight, they wanted to fight, but in the end they were defeated. The Bolsheviks offered the Russian working class the same hope, only with an ideology of internationalism and class solidarity rather than nationalism and racial superiority. Again though their victory was hard fought and came at great sacrifice. I disagree with the view that a distinct psychology unique to Fascism exists apart from the material conditions from which it emerges.
As to the UK left, it is in utter disarray and has been since a coup inside the Labour Party dislocated and disorientated the working class. Most don’t bother to vote, you’re right, but most haven’t moved their support to the BNP either. Not that we can ever be complacent, and I know that in this Scotland can’t be compared to England, but 2 million people of every ethnicity, religion, and background on the streets of London in 2003 over an imminent attack on a country whose inhabitants have brown skin is I feel a more accurate barometer of public consciousness than the election of a BNP councillor onto the GLA.
Comment by John Wight — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
The majority of the BNP are not working class but petit bourgeois.
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 7:56 am
The majority of the SWP are not working class but petit bourgeois.
(Plus one aristo.)
Comment by Another Dave — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
You are all a bunch of liberal idiots. You can sit there at your computers all night quoting the data protection act, but im going to go and cabbage some fascists.
Comment by Anonymous — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:23 pm
I have entirely the same view on V for Vendetta and it is indeed after the character. I joined the BNP in early 2006, my main reasons at the time we’re for more or less the anti-eu movement. UKIP is and never will be nothing of a threat. I was invited by a BNP member who took me along to a branch meeting, slightly less professional back then and I’ve seen the party progress much in two years. Expected to it to be a slagging fest, maybe even a swastika or two to be frank I had no idea what I’d see. When I went there, I met a elderly couple, a few family men and a student. We spent an hour talking, generally nattering about the country and drinking tea. Discussing leafleting and other such stuff. Now the core of the BNP are quite distanced from ‘the main’ party people. Local branches are rather self run and get on with it in our own way. Eventually any nagging ‘hate’ I had for any such person vanished, and was redirected at the politicians who had caused what I see as a most dear threat to Britain and her way of life. As I said before, as the BNP grows it will level out, eventually I’d like to see it where the libdems are today, not too much influence directly but to be able to nag away*, there are some core policies that alot of members actually don’t agree on. I feel its my responsibility to not only stand for Britain but to make sure those who stand with me, arn’t as claimed, Facist and racist of which I have no time for and I’ve yet to meet either one who hasn’t changed since becoming active within the BNP(and yes I went to the last RWB, and theirs a a lot of difference between racism and political correctness. )
* An example of this is the work of Richard Barnbrook who is doing an excellent job in Londons GLA.
I believe I’m far more effective at removing any racist views of people than any chanting of “Smash the BNP”, which makes me laugh to hear.
My boss knows fully my views, and that I have no intention of advotacting ‘throwing’ out of any legal British citizen. UAF should be more worried about the current Labour goverment, they are getting far to authoritarian for my liking. Of course we’ll never see eye to eye politically, yet I fail to see why we can’t exist socially together and as before keep political battles political. My political thinking doesn’t for a second effect any judgement of anything I do socially or commercially.
Comment by V — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
Fuck me you’re hard. Can I lick your biceps?
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
#103 … John Wright.. Yes I understand what you are saying. The paralysis of the left in England bears little relationship to what is occuring in Scotland…
During the 2 day public sector workers dispute in July… I attended a picket line… at a local school. To be honest it was not a show of confidence or strenght but a tentative and weak uncertain protest by an entirely female group of 12 support staff in a school with a notorious reputation for an indicisive mangament bullying its staff and it’s students…. At one point a group of about 15 mainly male students [basically a group of the most disadvantaged and excluded students in the school] came towards the picketline… clearly to offer support and to tentatively join the rebellion. They were in no uncertain terms told to ‘go away’ by a panicy Union Rep already unerved and uncertain about what and why they were on strike.
Well thanks to the release of BNP membership details I know that one of the rebellious kids Dad is a member. I suspect that when he told his dad about his attempt to support a strike a rather negative balance sheet would have been drawn up.
John ‘V’ the BNP member who has posted earlier has stated his opposition to New Labour in terms of opposition to the War on Iraq…. his personal positions appear not to be racist and his ‘nationalism’ far less strident than many of your Scottish comrades.
I bet ‘V’ is quite a radical chappie… why doesn’t he participate in the ‘left’. Why does he associate with the ‘right’….
The great anti war demo…. was over 5 years ago…. the demobilisation and demoralisation of people has been profound…. a suprising 68% record opposition to the war in Afghanistan in opinion polls yet this opposition is entirely passive.
Comment by abu jamal — 19 November, 2008 @ 8:40 pm
#104 Wow, “Another Dave”, that was funny. You clearly have a strong grasp of Marxist terminology and are using it well to further the cause of the working class with your insightful comments.
Comment by Ray from The Mary Whitehouse Experience — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
“As soon as the scales fall from the eyes of international Jewry with regard to the racist and fascist ideology that is Zionism, the world will begin to emerge from the iron heel of war and brutality in the Middle East.”
Comment by Redbrownred — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
108. Yeah Ray. Like many others here, I just love chucking that term ‘petit-bourgeois’ about whenever I smell something funny. It saves me a hell of a lot of time having to work out what actually might be going on in the real world …
Comment by Another Dave — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:47 pm
Did anyone see that idiot from Searchlight on Channel 4 talking about the right to privacy of BNP members, some anti fascist strategy. And for those deluded idiots that think the BNP is shy about using vilence against their political opponenents you should check out Simon Darby’s veiled threats to the ex members who leaked this membership list.
Comment by thedigger — 19 November, 2008 @ 9:54 pm
Just to pull something in from another thread, the Socialist Party is supporting Jerry Hicks for General Sec of Amicus - http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/6635
Comment by Left LOLternative — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:25 pm
“…they still only have 13,000 members…”
If that’s subs paying numbers then I’d reckon that’s larger than the entire organised left in the UK outside of the Labour Party.
The publication of the list is *marvellous* news. Now, localised racist attacks are likely to be met with, er, an “imaginative,” response.
The fascist likes and needs cover. Especially, while they’re attempting a reach for Strasser-esque populism. The list publication and the numerous sites now covering it (thanks Karen) is, essentially, the “Web 2.0″ equivalent of picketing their meetings.
It forces them out, and puts a break on recruitment. All good things…
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:29 pm
#111… thedigger… I didn’t see the person from Searchlight… but what I can see clearly is the posturing of anti-facsist apparently spoiling for a fight. Speaking as someone who had my home invaded by two extremely ‘hard’ NF thugs who had ‘miraculously’ escaped from a Detention Centre…. being beaten naked with broom stays and then suffering the indignity of being photographed ,again naked, by members of the West Mercia Constabulary who could barely conceal their merriment… then I actually value the my privacy and safety of my home.
I suspect that of the 13,000 names on the list only a few hundred have ever committed or even contemplated extreme violence.
If anyone can identify BNP members who have been committed such violence then contact the police. The vast bulk of police officers and the police as an institution are not the same as they were in the late 1970’s when I had salt rubbed into my wounds by West Mercia Officers.
There may well come a time in this land where we do have to confront a real organised and violent facsist movement and we will have to be prepared for armed self defence of our communities and homes. That time is not now.
If people have vendettas to carry out….. well… I say stop talking about it on line and get on with it. But remember that you will bear the full weight of responsibilty for your actions.
I remember well a ’story’ about a committed anti facsist activist in Dewsbury West Yorkshire…. he gathered intelligence… and decisively acted… him and two other mates broke into a house and terrorised the occupants… It was only 10 minutes into the frenzy that he realised the ‘intelligence’ was faulty…
Of course some in the BNP are furious with the ‘members’ or ‘ex members’ who have leaked the membership details …. others may be looking forward to a few threatening phone calls so they can tell their neighbours and friends how undemocractic the ‘left’ is… others may well be even more frightened and insecure than they were when their ‘insecurity’ led them to join the BNP in the first place.
Some BNP parents will be concerned that their kids will get targeted at school…
As the father of a mixed race son…. I have checked the list to see if any of his teachers are in the BNP… thankfully there are none.
However, consider this….some of my sons teachers are smug, self satisfied, arrogant, insensitive, incompetant and brutal…. you don’t have to be a member of the BNP to be a bastard.
Comment by mark anthony france — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:31 pm
The list’s publication is an effective choke chain on them, and will be for quite a while…
I think that if parents discover BNP members in their kids’ school staff room they have every right to expect the left to support them in getting them out.
Students have every right not to be taught by fascists.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:39 pm
Hard to believe that Mark France the former super revolutionary yoof wants to rely on the police.
On Monday in Brum we saw the police clearing anti fascists out of the way, arresting two, so the BNP could demontrate. Yes the police have changed, at least one of the officers in full riot gear was female and black.
No wonder that Mark has ended up in Respect, and fuliminates against people who still hold to the revolutionary socialist ides he once so arrogantly professed.
Comment by thedigger — 19 November, 2008 @ 10:53 pm
#115… BatterseaPowerStation….If a teacher is exposed as a member of the BNP… well let the students and other staff challenge them… confront them… There is no need to engage in a process of kicking them out of their jobs unless of course there is ‘evidence’ that they have treated people unfairly, have failed to implement the spirit of the ‘Every Child Matters’ Agenda… and targeted vulnerable students or acted as ‘bullies’…. The only problem with this is that this approach is that 1000’s of teachers outside of the ranks of the BNP are clearly demoralised, undermined and tempted by reactionary sentiments. 1000’s of teachers not in the BNP contribute to ‘fucking up’ kids… and intimidating their colleagues.
I agree students have every right not to be taught by fascists…..
I remember in the early 1980’s I was leafleting a school for Youth CND and got an amazingly enthusiastic response from the kids…. especially the black kids in the school… Then they started to moan about one teacher in particular who they considered a ‘complete and utter wanker’….. that teacher was a leading member of a far left organisation and a delegate to the trades council.
Comment by mark anthony france — 19 November, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
#116 thedigger…. sorry for any misunderstandings… I had no idea that there was any confrontation in Brum involving the BNP and black police officers… and I am sorry that some people in Brum were under the impression that I am some sort of ’super revolutionary’….. I am on the dole in a small house in a small town 13 miles South West of Brum…. my contacts with what is happening is pretty much limited to my immediate neighbours a few contacts on my limited ‘pay as you go’ phone to RESPECT members in south Birmingham… and of course ‘virtual struggle’ on this site.
I welcome any reports from you about what is going on… please educate me.
I think in any confrontation the most dignified and determined response should always be shown… if violence happens then it would be brilliant if an collective prepared and decisively response leads to immediate victory. However, in my experience of numerous violent confrontations with fascists….with the exception of my first on the streets of Lewisham in August 1977, the fascists have always come out on top… Either because they have a de facto alliance with the ‘armed bodies of men who consititute the state’ or because they are just much better at violence than lefties.
In this context it is perhaps wise to seek to avoid ‘violent confrontations’.
As for the police…. well did you speek to the black officer?
In all institutions of civil society in England there is a struggle for hegemony going on. Briefly, in the British Army there was signs of a nascent rebellion against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…. the temporary successes of Military Families Against the War was a reflection of this. Today the Warmongers are on the offensive… with military parades through the streets of Shrewsbury, Belfast and Colchester…no….. and i repeat no lefties organised opposition to the military parades in Shrewsbury and Colchester.
If in Brum some comrades confront the BNP on the streets why were they met with an aggressive police response when just a few weeks ago in Manchester the BNP were prevented from doing public paper sales without a police response?
I am not being judgemental here just trying to contribute to a debate about tactics.
Comment by mark anthony france — 19 November, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
Mark not surprised that you have little informatiom about the protest in Brum Monday as hardly any Bitmingham Respect members were there. A little unfortunate as Griffin and about 50 supporters were there to demonstrate outside a hearing of the General Teachers Council over a BNP teacher that faces being struck off after being sacked for using a school laptop for racist material.
Respect will have a chance to redeem themselves as the hearing will continue again in the New Year and perhaps they will be part of a wider mobilisation.
I don’t fetishise violent confrontations with the BNP or police, in this instance it was an unprovoked assault by the police to clear away anri fascists who had arrived at least an hour before the first BNP members arrived.
I do think there is a place for confrontation but I think it is more about the balance of forces and certainly on Monday they were not favourable to the anti fascists. Birmingham has a long history of confronting the right and I was present at a number of successful mass protests in the 70’s including Winson Green Prison when Robert Relf was jailed, Boulton Rd School during by election, West Beomwich and the infamous battle of Digbeth when then NF had a conference.
Yes I know you are no longer a revolutionaty I read your posts. I was just joshing you about your youth.
As regards the black female officer did not think someone thrusting their riot shield in my face was much of a basis for a interlectual debate and talking through a visor in a heaving crowd is quite difficult, though one or two protestors made a few barbed comments. Perhaps if Gramsci had been there it would have helped.
Comment by thedigger — 20 November, 2008 @ 12:59 am
#119… thedigger…Good to make your aquaintance again comrade! And thank you very much for the report from the front line. I got to Winson Green in the aftermath of the Robert Relf demo with a mate from Rubery..[we missed the action but saw the detritus]… and I remember the Boulton Road School and West Bromwich Demo’s [we seemed to march for miles on the west brom one]… As for the Digbeth one …. against the YNF meeting in the civic hall… I remember working full time in the 2 weeks running up to the demo mobilising for it…[when I should have been at school]… We share a common experience….[back then] maybe things have diverged since…. but I look forward to a rendevous in the near future. My main concern is to encourage comrades to think and act ’strategically’… As for whether i am a ‘revolutionary’… we will see.
I am smiling and will go to bed contented.
Comment by mark anthony france — 20 November, 2008 @ 1:17 am
As someone who appears on the Red Watch site, with a comment urging people to provide details of my whereabouts etc. I find the wishy washy liberalism of Andy and others a bit hard to take.
Yes legal problems I understand, though I am happy for anyone without a copy of said list to e-mail me off line.
However these people make a habit of publishing names and addresses and photos of the Left. A young user at the unemployed centre (now dead I’m afraid) who veered between the Left and BNP, told me he had been taken in a car around to photograph the houses of people on the left including me. Because of obvious security worries I’d never given him my address yet he described it to a tee. Now why would the BNP have visited my house I wonder?
Fascism is a curse, an evil that should be rooted out. Anything that helps with this task is to be welcomed. The leaking of said list should be used to the maximum NOT to attack individual fascists but to isolate these bastards and yes to get them sacked where possible.
As for Data Protection Act - well it doesn’t apply to the State does it? The Police keep DNA samples of people convicted of no offence, the State does its best to lose the information it does have or to misuse the NHS Spine that noone consented to. Law legitimates that which is. The DPA is toothless and only liberal leftists are mesmerised by it.
It is understandable that Searchlight, which is hand in glove with the Special Branch & MI5, those lovers of privacy, should be up in arms. It rather takes away their reason for existing!
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 20 November, 2008 @ 1:17 am
Why are these filthy nazi’s (#122) being allowed to peddle their hate on a so-called “left” blog? Whatever happened to no platform for fascists? They show absolutely no contrition and are proudly boasting about their holocaust loving party. Ban them.
Comment by Ray — 20 November, 2008 @ 4:26 am
Yeah Andy. I thought you were a supporter of No-Platform for Fascists?? You’re giving many of them one right here.
Comment by Futurecast — 20 November, 2008 @ 6:53 am
I agree, fascist and racist goons. Ban them please. I visit here to understand the world better and not to be subjected to their semi literate bile.
Comment by anon — 20 November, 2008 @ 7:42 am
#123
“h Andy. I thought you were a supporter of No-Platform for Fascists?? “
Really? what gave you that idea?
I am a critical supporter of No Platform, but it is a tactic not a principle. If No Platform is hindering the struggle against fascist ideas we should be flexible.
Comment by Andy Newman — 20 November, 2008 @ 8:08 am
Are terryfitz and ‘v’ one of the same person? Their style of writing seems to oddly similar to me.
Comment by Alf G — 20 November, 2008 @ 8:23 am
Are terryfitz and ‘v’ one of the same person?
No.
Whatever Terry Fitz’s idiosyncrasies, he is not a supporter of the BNP
Comment by Andy Newman — 20 November, 2008 @ 8:29 am
Andy, please delete comment #18 calling for a vote for the BNP. It is still up and it’s not right to air that “Britain for the British” drivel on Socialist Unity.
No platform for fascists.
Comment by little black sister — 20 November, 2008 @ 9:05 am
http://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/7975/Massive_rise_in_racist_attacks.html
I draw you attention to this article, in brief
Massive rise in racist attacks
EXTREME Scottish nationalism is being suggested as a possible reason for a 72.9 per cent rise in racist incidents in Inverness this year.
English people are bearing the brunt of racially aggravated crimes, including serious and minor assaults, with Polish migrants also being targeted, according to new figures released by Northern Constabulary.
Inverness South councillor Jim Crawford believes a combination of lack of education and publicity of the SNP’s pro-independence stance may be fuelling anti-English feeling.
Should the socialists be hounding the SNP and demanding that people in Scotland do not vote for this political party?
Comment by tally — 20 November, 2008 @ 9:37 am
Being a little concerned with the published list that it might lead to people getting cabbage’s as they say I decided to do what every good citizen should do and check it out.
Myself I was against the lists of peodophiles being published as there was sure to be repercussions whenever anything like this hits the media. but this is a whole different ballgame,
Firstly I ran quickly down the list of names and groups of families and there it was lol in black and white a woman who I sat on a resident involvement group with.
This woman ‘now I should have realised there was something about her that was not just right she bowled into the meetings with total arrogance stating on several occasions that she had the capalibility of checking people out? she worked for some kind of credit reference agency linked to bailiffs. When she first met me she said that we should meet up after the meetings fora drink or a bite to eat,
Her opinion changed when she was told by one of the council staff that iI was a Respect Member,
She was always making opinions about the area that she bought her right to buy and thought she was one of the gentry with her attitude of she was above all on the panel.
What amazes me is that she joined the panel on the recommendations of the lead member of housing.
She at one stage made an official complaint against me saying that I was insensitive to her situation of not being able to have children!.
This was totally unfounded my only comment towards her was that we need more resources for children and was trying to get the funding for youth provision in the local area she made an high objection saying that children are the responsibility of the parents and how they should not have them if they could not provide she went on and on and my comment to her was I take it you haven’t got children .
After being the chair of the panel for several years all the council staff sided with her and requested that I owed her an apology. I did say to her that I was sorry that she took offence to what I said.
A few months later the panel was dramatically closed down and I was asked to politely go in theory we were sacked the BNP supporter did not attend that meeting bu.
I would love now to see the faces of all those council workers that viewed her as an asset to the panel especially the ones that thought she was there friends
by the way there was only three from the twelve staff that appeared to be white British!
Comment by Carole S — 20 November, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
V maybe the only bnp member posting, but i bet others are reading. So do not ban him. The No platform position sets back the struggle against fascist ideas, allowing them to raise the issue of ‘freedom of speech’ which they do time after time, and they are correct on this. Sinn Fein was banned from the airwaves, as the struggle deepens we will find that the ruling class will use the tools we hand them to silence us. Allowing the police, state, to control, ban, demo’s, pickets etc, allways hurts the workers movement more the fascists. Mobilise to oppose them, politically close down the space, like cable st and Lewisham let our numbers stop thier parades.
No Platform is counterproductive as a strategy, we need to win the people who listen to the bnp, and physically confront thier organisers, but NP ends up relying on the state, or a few ‘hardcore antifa’ chasing a few fash around the streets, useless!
Comment by Anonymous — 20 November, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
in fact as part of mobilising against the bnp, perhaps Andy it is a good time for a debate on the No Platform position? on a seperate thread?
Comment by non-partisan — 20 November, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
#130…very interesting points Carole… especially amusing is the thought of black council staff backing the BNP member against the RESPECT member!
how is polling day going in Mile End East… bet you are exhausted?
Comment by mark anthony france — 20 November, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
#132… non partisan… I think a clarification on ‘no platform’ is definitely needed….. especially when some people do seem to be advocating a witchunt of BNP members from there jobs and even suggesting violent attacks on their homes as part of some legitimate ‘no platform’ tactic.
Tactic is what it is and not a principle….. In manchester BNP were effectively ‘no platformed’ and prevented from doing paper sales… by a rapid and decisive unified and determined response by the local left… In B’ham on monday night I have heard quite ugly reports of clashes between erstwhile anti facsists and the police over demands to sack a BNP teacher that led to BNP outnumbering anti-facsists outside a tribunal hearing. I don’t know the details but it would help clarify matters if a debate about No Platform were to occur.
Earlier some people were demanding that ‘V’ the BNP member be ‘no platformed’… yet he seemed to me to be more rational and less intimidating than other who frequently post here.
Jaw Jaw is Better than War War!
Comment by mark anthony france — 20 November, 2008 @ 2:18 pm
#132
“Andy it is a good time for a debate on the No Platform position? on a seperate thread?”
Good idea. I will attend to it soon.
Comment by Andy Newman — 20 November, 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Well i’m delighted. This will set them back years. One wounders how membership renewals will go, not to mention future recruitment drives.
The ironies of ironies. The leak seems to have come about through their own internal squabbles. They have done it to themselves. They themselves have used the publishing the names of addresses of people who oppose them in the past as a way of intimidating people. Have a nice long sip of your own medicine.
I agree that any vigilante action taken against them would be counter productive. But anti racist parties outside their places would nice.
O word of warning for anyone thinking of buying a place. You might want to check that the place is not on this list.
That said, i’m sure you could acquire it for a serious knock down price even by the standards of the housing market slump were in.
Comment by Carra — 20 November, 2008 @ 2:44 pm
I’m just astounded that people are tying themselves up into moralistic knots over this issue. It’s quite simple. Fascists have been stupid enough to reveal themselves; the Left should take every advantage of this. Some people on this list would have been complaining of the ill manners of those not holding the door open for Adolf as he left the Bürgerbräukeller.
Comment by Dustin the Turkey — 20 November, 2008 @ 4:41 pm
Mr Newman you are deleting, you have either removed or not put up a post of mine in the last hour or so.
Comment by terryfitz — 20 November, 2008 @ 4:45 pm
“I’m just astounded that people are tying themselves up into moralistic knots over this issue. It’s quite simple. Fascists have been stupid enough to reveal themselves; the Left should take every advantage of this. Some people on this list would have been complaining of the ill manners of those not holding the door open for Adolf as he left the Bürgerbräukeller.”
I agree, these BNP monsters sit around laughing about the Holocaust and plotting how they will “cleanse” society of people they consider undesirable. That’s why we can’t let them spread their murderous, lying politics. No platform for Nazi’s stops them in their tracks.
This list means we can get them sacked from public services and kick them out of our unions that the BNP want to abolish.
Comment by Ray — 20 November, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
“I agree, these BNP monsters sit around laughing about the Holocaust and plotting how they will “cleanse” society of people they consider undesirable.
BNP Monsters? bit like the Sun here aren’t you?
I think that fascist is a bit more accurate and also a pretty heavy charge and wake up call for a casual voter.
“That’s why we can’t let them spread their murderous, lying politics. No platform for Nazi’s stops them in their tracks.”
Does it? How so? How has No platform stopped them growing over the past 5 years?
“This list means we can get them sacked from public services and kick them out of our unions that the BNP want to abolish.”
WE? We can get them saked? who is the we? workers and management join together to sack someone, not for anything they have done at work, but for ideas they have?
Are really that stupid that you can’t see what a precedent this sets?
what about when the SUN/STar have another camapiagn
against ‘reds’ in industry calling for them to be sacked? does your position today nmake this easier to defeat?
Comment by Anonymous — 20 November, 2008 @ 5:32 pm
I will not stoop so low as to take vigilante action, not my style. However I am a person who as a child witnessed faeces thrown at my home front door and through the letterbox, my mother threatened with a knife, my father beaten up by two strange men, threats of petrol bombing, ‘NF’ daubed in paint where we couldn’t miss seeing it, having chips thrown on the ground in front of me by a full grown man, crushed underfoot and him telling me, ‘Eat up Paki, there’s your dinner, put, put, ding, ding, say it, say put, put, ding, ding’, trying to protect my younger brother and sister from bricks thrown through our bedroom window while sleeping at night, being picked on at school by other kids, being shouted at and humiliated by a teacher in nursery school for the ’sin’ of being bi-lingual and using it, constantly moving around from building to building and being told that this would be my last home and living in the shabbiest, poorest, unfit, unhealthy, unsafe housing, being patronised, being exoticised, being exploited, seeing my father work for 14 to 16 hours a day in a factory for 26 years despite having 30 years of experience working in a trade, seeing my mother’s university teaching degree wasted because of ignorant people, my mother subject to institutionalised rape in the form of immigration’s ‘virginity tests’, our spirituality denigrated in public, not being allowed to cook using garlic and onions in my landlord’s house, people refusing to eat with me as I eat with my hands. And then, to top it all off, me who has lived a whole life straddling more than two starkly different cultures being taught to suck eggs by a Government that is suddenly the expert on ‘community cohesion and integration’ which by, the practice of stinks to me like nothing more than an older term that is now less fashionable, ‘assimmilation’…..and I could go on and on and on.
But no, no viligante action, no time or energy to waste on that, too busy making up lost, precious time, too busy creating love, joy and building the capacity and strength of others who like me witnessed and were, still are subjected to this abuse of human rights.
But also, I don’t forget, I don’t forget one thing and I have nearly 4 decades of blinding, furious rage to give back to the first person that even tries to give me shit. And now, I have a list.
Comment by G — 21 November, 2008 @ 12:09 am
Andy, it’s very sweet that you have taken such a stand on behalf of BNP members’ right to hold their membership without public scrutiny. I’m sure they are very grateful. Might have been a little less cloying if you had simply not published the list and said nothing, rather than making such a public show though, eh?
Comment by Voltaire's Priest — 21 November, 2008 @ 12:23 am
The publishing of the list is interesting for it allows to see which communities are targetted by the BNP with success and its up to others to target those communities with a pregressive alternative form of politics.
Comment by Jim McLean — 21 November, 2008 @ 12:24 am
Post #29
“The Labour party and the Nazi party are in no way socialist and certainly not the type of socialism we are in favour of. They are about as socialist as a choking Chihuahua. If the owner of a choking Chihuahua wanted to call itself a socialist it may. But it’s still just a dumb animal.
You need to read up a bit more on what socialism is:
Comment by Futurecast — 19 November, 2008 @ 4:10 am”
Futurecast, I think you need to learn a few facts yourself:
1 The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party
2 On 27th February 1900, representatives of all the socialist groups in Britain (the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society, met with trade union leaders at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, London. After a debate the 129 delegates decided to pass Hardie’s motion to establish “a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour.” To make this possible the Conference established a Labour Representation Committee (LRC). This committee included two members from the Independent Labour Party, two from the Social Democratic Federation, one member of the Fabian Society, and seven trade unionists.
I think the above qualifies both entities as socialist.
Comment by Good God — 21 November, 2008 @ 3:26 am
#138
Terry, yes I deleted a comment from you that used gratuitously offensive language.
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 November, 2008 @ 7:07 am
Whereas I agree with Andy that we wouldn’t have a campaign involving the sort of antics that Fathers for Justice did by climbing on the roofs of BNP members and frightening their families, you cannot treat BNP membership as a ‘private’ affair as you would with someone who is a floating voter between Labour and Lib Dems, for example.
They are fascists through and through and aalthough many have joined their ranks as they follow the ‘patriotic’ agenda and reflect the usual disillusion with social democracy, no chances can be taken - for the simple reason that millions stand to die.
I’ve no doubt that they have lay members who do not read Mein Kempf, who would have supported Churchill against Hitler etc. However, the leadership around Griffin are holocaust deniers. Why would anyone deny the holocaust unless they would wish to repeat it? Holocaust denial is a coded message for justifying Hitler’s ethnic & LGBT cleansing.
They have no right to be treated as ordinary citizens any more than paedophiles and murderers. Get this wrong and you allow them respectability al a UKIP, for example
No platform doesn’t mean going around beating up every BNP leafletter. It does mean campaigning to make sure they have no voice in any forum - by election or on the media. This is life or death for millions, so put away any ‘free speech’ models - think about the consequences of them having a voice.
Comment by Stuart G — 21 November, 2008 @ 7:36 am
Stuart G,
I for one ‘questioned’ the Holocaust not long after I left school and much before I was involved with the BNP. My reasoning wasn’t to ‘justify’ anything Hitler did, as I’ve stated before I have no time for Nazi appeasers no my research stemmed from the Palestine/Israel history I had studied. To me many questions arose the around the creation of the state of Israel, and to me it all seemed to convenient, with regards to events much earlier than the holocaust such as the Balfour declaration. The result was a confirmation in what I thought, Hitler had planned and succeeded to exterminate a number of groups including members of the Jewish faith and as a direct knock-on merely provided what was needed for the state of Israel to be created. I don’t believe there was any real malice in the publication of holocaust following the war, it was simply used effectively against the leading Nazi’s and found the number of six million a good all round estimation of the number of Jewish people who died during the war. Lets be clear, if any ‘Neo-Nazi’ organization rose to power in Europe again, it would be knocked out before it could touch a single human being.
You have to remember, after WW1. The powers of Europe faded, no one wanted another war and so no one prepared for another war. When Hitler rose to power the leaders of Europe instead of punish him begged and appeased him, they did all in their power to avoid war untill the famous declartion of Germany, “We no longer demand anything, we want war.” When war came to Europe once more, we were not prepared.
Yet remember most of all what caused this…Europe took away Germanys ‘voice’ and in-return Europe fell. Keep the political war going and stop a real one, this is a simple fact of history. Deny one side the ability to ‘be’ and they’ll retaliate in the only way left…through force. We can’t have this happen simply because you think silencing those who do not agree with you will make them go away. It only worked in Soviet Russia after those who were against Communism were permanently silenced by death! Then do you say? Kill all the ‘fascist!’ ? Kill the capitalist? Who then is a threat to millions?
Comment by V — 21 November, 2008 @ 7:21 pm
Sturat G, “This is life or death for millions, so put away any ‘free speech’ models - think about the consequences of them having a voice.”
Well, I suspect this argument could be deployed against most mainstream, academic economists. Their theories have certainly spelt death and privation for millions. Of course, conservatives will make precisely the same argument against the left: millions have died under Mao/Stalin and others, so think about the potential consequences of giving Leninists a voice.
We should hang on to ‘free speech’ models for rather obvious reasons.
Comment by Sergioleonine — 21 November, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
146* it is not the consequence of them having a voice- it is our failure to defeat them that opens the door to the horror, giving validity to the right of governments to ban, sack, censor, or make illegal what people argue will not help us defeat them.
Comment by Anonymous — 21 November, 2008 @ 11:53 pm
146* it is not the consequence of them having a voice- it is our failure to defeat them that opens the door to the horror, giving validity to the right of governments to ban, sack, censor, or make illegal what people argue will not help us defeat them.
Comment by non partisan — 21 November, 2008 @ 11:54 pm
The rise of the BNP in UK politics in recent years represents a sea change in British politics that concerns many, myself included.
It is concerning that the BNP has grown in the way it has, and so many people out there are still wedded to racist ideas, when ancestrally speaking, all of us are related to one another, black and white alike. We are all brothers and sisters of the human race.
But the plain and simple fact remains the world is going through a period of economic crisis without precedent and increasing - and very justified - industrial discontent, when both the far left AND far right are on the rise.
There are forces out there - particularly amongst the capitalist ruling class who see accelerating climate change looming on the horizon, global economic collapse and the foundation stones of their empire and control crumbling - that would be only too happy to see both camps fighting amongst themselves.
The list has clearly become an overnight national obsession. I hope I’m wrong, clearly in terms of historic timescales we’re not there yet, but I think the publication of this list could potentially end up fomenting an unprecedented period of unrest between the far left and the far right. Look at the rise of Mosley, the Battle of Cable Street. These all took place at the height of the last great recession.
Today, while of course we have relative peace among Christian communities and for Judaism, we have the appalling rise of Islamophobia, and intolerance of even peace-loving people amongst the Muslim community.
At a time when the basic tenets, the building blocks of western civilisation are in flux, promoting pogroms or pseudo pogroms against any community, whoever they are, however morally reprehensible people decide to judge them, is a path to barbarianism.
Never forget that promoting a fair and just re-ordering of society - and plenty for the people and not profit for the few - is the supreme and utmost priority.
Comment by tg — 22 November, 2008 @ 10:47 am
Good God - I hesitate to spell out the bleeding obvious but putting the word ‘National’ in front of ‘Socialist’ is a qualification which inverts the whole meaning of ‘Socialist’.
Unfortunately you’ve got a few much smarter people running your show but sometimes you people amaze me by just how thick you are if you think that’s a killer argument.
Comment by M — 22 November, 2008 @ 11:04 am
i want their address because i want these people hurt
Comment by G — 22 November, 2008 @ 11:47 am
Turns out a painter and decorator from Larkhall is pissed to discover that he is on the list:
Hitler’s BNP membership gets leaked
Comment by Darren — 22 November, 2008 @ 3:09 pm
There are more of them than there are lefties. I would have thought that was a rather sobering fact. I am of course assuming the SWP does not have 10,000 members, or anything like it.
Comment by Cynical observer — 22 November, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
Perhaps the most amusing member of the list is a former policman who now lectures on human rights and data protection!
Could this be where the Canadian Human rights commission found its inspiration..?
Comment by Sergioleonine — 23 November, 2008 @ 12:34 am
“152 Good God - I hesitate to spell out the bleeding obvious but putting the word ‘National’ in front of ‘Socialist’ is a qualification which inverts the whole meaning of ‘Socialist’.
Unfortunately you’ve got a few much smarter people running your show but sometimes you people amaze me by just how thick you are if you think that’s a killer argument.
Comment by M — 22 November, 2008 @ 11:04 am”
And by “you people” you mean what?
Could it be that as I’m 72yo and German by birth and was living in Germany during the Nazi era, that I might know a little more about it than you?
Or would you prefer that I was like the fredom loving, peacefull socialist who made the post 153 ” i want their address because i want these people hurt”?
I wonder what decent people would think of the majority of the posts above if they were printed in the national press? And NO I am not a member of the BNP. Although there are some things they say I agree with, there are many things they say I disagree with.
Comment by Good God — 25 November, 2008 @ 12:53 am
read Trotsky on the Nazis and see which camp you fall into. i can see all of the tendencies present in post WW1 Germany at play above.
ultimately unless the BNP is kept marginal by the anti-nazi activists in the communities, colleges, workplaces etc. then you have to face the fact that they may well become a physical social force to be reckoned with. now may not be the time for extreme actions against BNP members but we should shed bizarre notions of their right to equality as a legitimate political party.
they are Nazis. organisationally they must be kept down. if they become a threat they must be snuffed out. for the squeamish i would merely ask you to look at Hitler’s Germany. what a gloriously tolerant bunch they were, eh?
Comment by fishingrhod — 27 November, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
BNP exercise their politics on the street, and that is where they can be fought. You cannot stop a physical threat with ideas, and it is exactly this kind of moral superiority amongst the left that allowed the rise of fascism in germany.
The only reason it stopped over here was because socialists took the fight to the street against mosley at cable street.
This list should be used for as aggressive and vindictive a campaign as possible. Only fear will stop the fear spreaders. But don’t take my word for it:
But don’t take my word for it.
“Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if in the days when we were small and weak, our opponents had…smashed with the utmost determination the nucleus of our new movement.” Adolf Hitler
Comment by Stu — 27 November, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
“Believe me when I say the rotten of the BNP is being left to rot (And there isn’t a lot left as most of the real hardcore left to the NF in recent years)” - V if by “rotten” you mean those who are outspoken in their racism and fascism then you may have a point. However, if you are trying to claim that The BNP is in someway retract anything to do with racism and fascism you are completely wrong. Yes, Nick Griffin has tried to distance himself and his party (which he is effectively dictator of) from blatent outspoken racism and fascism but at the same time he is himself a convicted racist, has claimed that the holocaust was fabricated by the Jews, regularly meets with outspoken and influencial fascists from all over the world, is a friend of the Ku Klux Klan amongst many other things. Your comment is akin to someone coming along and stating they support a children’s organisation run by Gary Glitter because it’s OK because Gary’s distancing himself from molesting children now. Yet here you are putting your complete trust in a convicted racist who is leader of an organisation that was set up by a man who wanted to send people to the gas chambers for being non-white or homosexual. What I’m hoping you have been fooled by (because the alternative is that you are liar) is Nick Griffin’s special brand of spin/marketing. When Tyndall was leader of the party The BNP was much more outspoken about itself and its beliefs. That didn’t gain any votes though as it was too blatent. So when Griffin (the ex law student) took over he set about re-wording everything and changing the image of the party. Instead of making blatent direct racist policies he changed the wording so that the policies don’t appear on the face of it to be racist, however, on studying the detail it fairly obvious that the policies still amount to the same thing, racial separation, racial purity for the UK. Essentially what I’m saying that there is a difference between Tyndall BNP and Griffin BNP, that difference is only in methodology though, the ideology is the same, the methodology is different. So, these “rotten” ones are simply the Tyndallites, those who don’t agree with Nick Griffin’s methodology, they don’t like the spin so they left the party and went back to those parties such as the BPP and NF who remain outspoken but because of it they are less popular to the mainstream electorate. This of course also gives modern BNP supporters a get out clause because they can claim that they were simply duped by The BNP. Ignorance is no real excuse though, it’s not like the BNP changed its name and completely hid its identity, it’s not a con, people don’t have to look hard to find out what the BNP is really about. So take a look around, engage your brain, if at the end of your research you still think The BNP is OK then you deserve all the crap you get for it. The BNP is a disgusting, devious, organisation.
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Comment by Whistle Blower Legislation — 13 March, 2010 @ 9:48 am
Rita Barnard an x-pat from south africa is a supporter of the bnp shame on her we do not want these people in England, they should be socialy shunned
Comment by butch — 14 March, 2010 @ 1:10 am
wheres the list man i cant find it
Comment by jhon — 22 March, 2010 @ 11:22 am