FASCIST FIRE BOMBER OUT ON PAROLE
On Friday I was visited by Julian Corbett, from the Public Protection Department of Wiltshire Police.
He came to ask me what my relationship was with wannabe Nazi terrorist, Mark Bullman (pictured), and to warn me that Bullman is now out of prison, and is looking for me - I have moved address since he went to prison. Bullman had been sentenced to 5 years for racially aggravated arson, but has now been released after two and a half years. (Bullman also goes by the name Mark Bullock)
As I have reported before, in August 2006, BNP supporter, Bullman attempted to burn down the Broad Street mosque in Swindon using a petrol bomb. Mark was the registered fund holder for Wiltshire BNP, and actively campaigned for the party in the 2006 local council elections, just four months before the arson attack. Strangely Mark used to write to me while he was on remand, and even telephoned me from prison - not in a threatening way, but for a friendly chat.
He had left the BNP shortly before the fire bomb attack to form what he called the “1290 sect”, named after the year the Jews were expelled from England, and he wrote to me: “I only attacked the mosque because there is no synagogue in Swindon, and it was close enough for public consumption”. The fuse used for the fire bomb was a rolled up BNP leaflet.
It since transpires that Danny Lake, (former leader of the YBNP and also from Swindon, and who has since been expelled from the BNP), had raised concerns about Bullman with Nick Griffin, but the BNP did not consider Mark Bulman’s mental instablity, propensity to violence and gross anti-Semitism to be a problem. Bullman was supported by Wiltshire organiser, Mike Howson, and Danny Lake claims that Howson encouraged Bullmans’ extremism. Ironically, the main plank of Mike Howson’s campaigning in his native Corsham is “law and order”.
Mark’s letters to me, which I passed on to Searchlight, were filled with a virulent hatred of Jews, mixing up three themes. i) racialised anti-semitism; ii) Christian anti-judaic traditions; and iii) opposition to Israel’s War in the Lebanon, and the occupation of Palestine.
Bullman started ring me regularly late at night sometime during 2005. I decided when Bullman contacted me that it was simply safer to talk to him than snub him, and establish a human relationship, and impress upon him that I was a real person with young children, not just an objectified “enemy”.
I knew that it was him who had fire bombed the mosque as soon as I saw the pictures, because the Swastika daubed on the outside wall was identical to the rather idiosyncratic style that Bullman had used in letters to me. But before I could go to the police I heard that Bullman had already been arrested, indeed he had turned himself in and confessed.
The police decided to contact me after Bullman told his probation officer last week that he had visited my old address, in Avenue Road, where in Bullman’s own words “a communist lived” and Bullman told the probation officer he wanted to apologise to me.
Fair enough, I actually take that at face value. For all his weaknesses Bullman is a troubled and actually quite likable lad. He seems to have always been a bit of a misfit, and found a group of friends who accepted him through football hooliganism and far right politics. It was quite spooky having the police do an audit of the security of my house, and checking out the approaches to it in case they decided I was in serious danger and they had to put me on a rapid response list.
I was actually quite encouraged that they were also assessing the risk to Bullman himself. The bewildered lad has been playing games in his head with his Nazi fantasies, irresponsibly encouraged by BNP activists who exploited him. And his attempts to contact me suggest that he is drawn back to revisiting the same haunts and habits that he was in before his arrest.
Bullman fire bombed a mosque and daubed it with Swastikas. I am prepared to be understanding to Bullman only because I have had personal contact with him, and I have some partial insight into what a troubled and unhappy young man he is; who really needs help and not to be further ostracised and isolated from society. But other people might be less understanding and charitable about what he did than I am.
What really is scandalous is the way the BNP used this young man. They had no problem with exploiting his obvious mental distress, they had no problem with his open support for genocide against the Jews, instead they encouraged him, they used him up and spat him out.
“Do you know the National Front, nurse?” the patient said to me. Big lad, looked like he’d trained hard but run to fat. It was 1979; I was working as a psychiatric nurse, and he was a patient on the “no trouble, nearly ready to leave” ward. Yes, I said, I knew the National Front. “I used to be in the National Front, nurse,” he continued, very much as if he was telling me he used to be in the Boys’ Brigade. “Only they expelled me.” Oh, really? “Yes. The thing was, I thought we should have chambers - you know, gas chambers?”
I never did find out how he’d got from there to the hospital, but I imagine it wasn’t hard. It sounds like the fash are less choosy these days.
Comment by Phil — 22 February, 2009 @ 9:47 am
It is a sad story and I hope this guy can overcome his problems. I flirted with the same poison until the Left taught me to see the world in terms of class instead of race. I probably owe my life to that lesson.
Comment by Me — 22 February, 2009 @ 9:51 am
Andy,
Interesting and sensitive post. Noted: your very real human concern, which no doubt drew you emotionally and politically to the Left.
But remember to take good care. The collective is the safest way for us to tackle these things on the political front. No individual can ’solve it’ for this lad personally, only himself with the correct wisdom of the [overstretched] decent public servants in probation. Take care comrade.
best
Comment by Dem O'Cracy — 22 February, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
It is possible to empathise with a troubled w/c youth, less ans less so as they as grow into a radicalised fash, the fact that he firebombed shows him to be a very dangrouse individual. we can’t individually solve the social problems that exist or resolve the difficult situations people are in. I would steer well clear of him, try to stop him getting your new address, reduce or stop discourage any further phone contact. Have a couple of good mates on speed dial to help deal with him should he turn up unannounced and unwelcome. For the sake of your own and your family’s safety get rid of any idea of ‘reasoning’ with him, or establishing a relationship of any kind.
He can’t be trusted, and he might try to apologise etc, as means of getting ‘in with you’ for what ultimate reason who knows, but steer well clear!
Comment by non-partisan — 22 February, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
Evidently, the guy has issues (I can’t say whether he is “troubled”), but that is not to say he has shown any signs of having been “rehabilitated” or is showing regret. Given the prison system, he may have come out worse than when he went in. What is his state of mind?
Is he trying to befriend you because he’s offended you in the past and is showing remorse? Or is he trying to befriend you for far more sinister reasons. So what interests me at this stage is the police reaction. Are the police offering protection? That’s the least they could do for you. And what of the Jewish and Muslim communities?
The truly awful thing about the whole thing is the conduct of the BNP. Even more worrying is how much closer to the “mainstream” they have branded themselves. I know a few people who have said that if they stand in their constituecy ward or seeat that they will vote for them because, so I have been told, they seem to be the only organised political party “who care about people like me”. Moreover, these people *don’t* believe the BNP is racist, let alone neo-Nazi. Now, that is frightening.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 22 February, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
Since getting online about 15 months ago and coming across SU site roughly 1yr ago your site makes aserious contribution to the British left and is both informative and entertaining and at times has a level of debate equal to anything on the left,so you be careful with this character:we need your work!!
Comment by exconstructionmilitant — 22 February, 2009 @ 5:41 pm
The ex-far right - just like the ex-far left - is a large group. Over the years tens of thousands have passed through the old NF and now the BNP. Most of them are probably now relatively harmless. Whether that is true in this particular case, I wouldn’t know. But the fact that this guy wants to talk is probably a good sign - if Andy’s nerves can bear it…
Comment by Francis King — 22 February, 2009 @ 7:46 pm
I would be very cautious about fraternising with him and it might be safer to wish him good luck but he blunt that there’s little you can do etc. I had a not unsimilar relationship with an ex-BNP kid some years ago (now dead from heroin overdose) and in the end we had to ban him from the unemployed centre.
The problem is that you cannot take him at face value and with a family you mustn’t take risks.
good luck
Tony
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 22 February, 2009 @ 11:33 pm
Sorry to re-state, but the last post is really helpful Andy.
This is about boundaries. A lot of us work with deep human distress etc when we are out at work. I meet deeply disturbed people on a quite frequent basis. I give my best, every time, to their position etc.
But I couldn’t operate in any ’shape or form’, on their behalf, if they knew my home address…
Many years ago I worked in a dubiously boundaried night shelter. I shudder at how irresponsible the project was, exposing young ‘good faith’ kids like myself [early 1990s]. We need to take care of ourselves, there’s nothing wrong with that, not at all.
So take care and bow out, if that’s your hunch on this Andy.
best
Comment by Dem O'Cracy — 22 February, 2009 @ 11:54 pm
this post typifies all that is good about SU posts
lack of rants, doctrine etc
just a wish to move forward the no sectarian (majority) Left
Comment by Terry — 23 February, 2009 @ 9:57 am
Thanks for the good wishes from people here.
To reassure thos eof you who think I might be niave enough to give the guy my new address - I have no intention of doing so!
Comment by Andy Newman — 23 February, 2009 @ 10:03 am
#3 Noted: your very real human concern, which no doubt drew you emotionally and politically to the Left.
His utter naivity, more like.
#2: I flirted with the same poison until the Left taught me to see the world in terms of class instead of race.
When someone teaches you not to see the world in terms of hate, you might even stop being a red fascist.
Comment by Reality Check — 23 February, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
‘Red fascist’! Prick.
Comment by Doug — 24 February, 2009 @ 10:09 am
I think Andy’s post showed that he isn’t daft enough to give this guy his address, but does show what a nice man Andy is, I think I would have been much less forgiving, particuarly if I felt my kids were at risk. It is hard to deal with Nazi’s as human beings, which of course they are, just very damaged humans.
Comment by Anonymous — 24 February, 2009 @ 10:51 am
“Red fascist” was a popular term in the USA during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s. It was meant to bridge the rather swift transition from the USSR being a wartime ally to becoming the Next Threat.
Comment by Faust — 24 February, 2009 @ 12:29 pm
It’s rather strange when you come into contact with Fascists. You expect them to be wearing an SS uniform and throwing out race hatred and anti-semitism. But when you meet them they don’t have the devil horns, and Nazi attire. Sometimes they really are just sad misguided people.
There’s a lad at my university whose politics, if not Fascist, are defeinately very close to them. He’s against trade unionism, immigration and to a certain extent, even against democracy. But he doesn’t seem to know why he’s against them. But the strangest and most uncomfortable thing of all…he’s a nice guy!
Over the next 3 or 4 years I’m detirmined to work on him, set him straight on a few things. But this guy you’re dealing with Andy…sounds like he’s best left to the professionals!
Comment by Mc Nally — 24 February, 2009 @ 2:46 pm