Kevin Curran, General Secretary of GMB.
“We are committed to making sure that our members are aware of the consequences of BNP activity, both in the local community and more specifically the workplace.”
Sir Bill Connor, General Secretary
of USDAW.
BNP Membership details leaked
Barring the BNP: Amendments to the employment bill
BNP targets young people in hate drive
Britain to name and shame extremists
Parents helped to block terrorist websites
The list
See also
BNP fury as
ENTIRE membership list of
12,000 is leaked
onto internet and party threatens legal action
Michael Lea 18 November 2008
onto internet and party threatens legal action
Michael Lea 18 November 2008
The entire British National Party membership list - including the names of children - has been posted on the internet.
Among more than 10,000 activists listed are a serving police officer, members of the Armed Forces, an actor, leading businessmen and former civil servants. It shows just how deep the message of the far-Right organisation has penetrated the British political psyche. And the leak caused huge alarm in companies and public bodies across the country as they searched the list for employees.
Internet chat sites, meanwhile, were awash with messages from members whose names, addresses, ages and other 'relevant' information had appeared, as they feared for their jobs.
One online comment read: 'I'm on the list, I could be chucked out of the Army. What is going on?' Another blamed BNP leader Nick Griffin.
It said: 'The membership should demand Griffin stand down over this breach. He has put thousands of members at risk, and proved unfit to lead.'
Mr Griffin was last night said to have reported the incident to police, claiming a breach of the Human Rights Act. But Dyfed Powys, which covers Welshpool where the BNP carries out much of its administration, was unable to confirm that a complaint had been made.
The party blamed Left-wing groups who may have infiltrated the organisation for posting the details, which date from late last year. Another theory is that the list was published by disgruntled former employees.
Its publication has been prevented under a High Court injunction obtained in April.
Simon Darby, the BNP's spokesman, said he found out yesterday that the order had been breached and described the posting as 'malevolent and spiteful'. 'This is being done to destabilise the party after a successful conference in Blackpool and before the elections for the European Parliament in June next year,' he said, claiming that mainstream parties feared the BNP's growing support.
The membership list, which was password protected and encrypted, had been stolen from the party, he said. Mr Darby insisted: 'This isn't a question of us mislaying the information, this is theft.
'It is part of a dirty tricks campaign and a desperate move by our political opponents. We are sure no true patriot or nationalist would put the lives of others, including children, at risk.'
He claimed the list contained the names of people who had never been members of the party as well as the names of current and former members.'We are worried because kids' names are on the list. It is not information that should be in the public domain,' he added. 'We are always receiving death threats.'
The BNP discovered the leak after being alerted by members who had started receiving unsolicited mail.
The BNP claims it has more than 100 local and parish councillors, the latest of whom was elected in Boston, Lincolnshire, last week. Race tensions are high in the town as migrants make up a quarter of the population.
The party plans to make a major push to win seats in the elections to the European Parliament next June.
In 2006, it was revealed that Covent Garden ballerina Simone Clarke was a member of the BNP after the party was infiltrated by an undercover journalist.
It was claimed that activists are encouraged to use false names while on party business and instructs them in the use of software to encrypt emails.
Many of its members, however, are far from the stereotype of the British far-Right.
According to reports at the time, one is the American chief executive of a City investment corporation, while another is a servant of the Queen, living at Buckingham Palace.
Labour MPs Margaret Hodge and Jon Cruddas have repeatedly warned of the march of the BNP in East London.
Since 2004, police officers have faced dismissal if found to be members of the BNP.
'This is because such membership would be incompatible with our duty to promote equality under the Race Relations Amendment Act and would damage the confidence of minority communities,' Peter Fahy, of the Association of Chief Police Officers said.
The list shows the BNP has attracted support from all corners of the country and across the social spectrum.
Members include teachers, librarians, solicitors, nurses and linguists.
They list hobbies including landscape painting, hunting, gardening and church singing.
But religion is not confined to the Church of England - at least one member is a Quaker.
And living in Britain isn't a requirement of being a member of the British National Party.
One lives in San Diego in the USA and another in France.
Their surnames range from the solidly English Smith to the exotic Zatyrowski and Zumwalt.
An activist from Stockport in Cheshire in listed as a company director and another from Rubery in Birmingham works as a private investigator.
Other members include a former policeman turned chauffeur driver from Coventry and an ex GMB shop steward from Hornchurch in Essex.
A retired solicitor from Wanstead in London is happy to proof read and edit leaflets and posters.
Another member from Nympsfield in Gloucestershire has a BA in languages and a masters degree in translation.
A businesswoman from North London speaks French and Italian.
A district nurse from Bideford in Devon is listed as enjoying 'walking, knitting and helping people in need.'
At least one serving police officer is on the membership list, along with several retired officers.
It also includes16 servicemen, including a Royal Marines Commando. Among the 68 members listed as former servicmen are one Chelsea Pensioner, three Paras, three Guards and two Royal Marines.
Another is listed as a Church of England vicar.
Other members are identified as practicing pagans and one male member is listed as 'witch'.
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Barring the
BNP: Amendments to the employment bill are vital in
empowering trade unions to keep fascists out of their ranks
Tony Woodley November 3 2008
Tony Woodley November 3 2008
Tomorrow, MPs have the chance to strike a blow for social justice and represent society's abhorrence of racism and fascism. Amendments to the employment bill are coming before the Commons to restore to trade unions some of the rights lost during the long years of the Thatcher-neoliberal consensus (remember that?).
The central amendment, backed by the trade union group of MPs and the campaigning anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, seeks to reverse a decision in the Lords that restricts the right of unions to exclude or expel active fascists from our ranks.
The European court of human rights has found that the 1992 Tory trade union and labour relations act is in violation of the right to freedom of association under the European convention on human rights. Workers should be free to join a trade union without sanction, and so too should the trade union be free to choose its own members.
This amendment is vital if unions are to be able to exclude British National Party activists and other active racists from membership. As the economy slides into recession, experience teaches us that racists will most likely step up their activities and try and blame social problems on migrants or black people generally.
Trade unions are a bulwark against this poison. Our aim is to fight for social justice for all working people in unity. We will resist any effort to set workers against each other.
That is why active support for fascists and racists is, and should be, incompatible with trade union membership. Trade unions should be free to use their own democratic procedures, without state interference, to control the right to membership. Amendment NC6 will simply repeal Section 174 of the 1992 act, giving trade unions back their right to act against active racists and ensuring that UK law is in compliance with European standards.
Other amendments are scarcely less important if the industrial relations playing field is at long last to have a semblance of balance. Currently, the duties placed on trade unions to provide employers with notice of ballots and industrial action place are onerous, costly and excessively complicated. They expose unions to applications for injunctions by employers to prevent industrial action taking place, even where a clear majority have voted to support the action. A new clause will introduce greater fairness by cutting the "red tape" that unions face. Employers would be required to supply trade unions with information they need to comply with notice and balloting requirements.
All workers should also be protected from suffering detriment or being sued as a result of their taking part in industrial action, other than appropriate deductions from the worker's wages. A further amendment will mean that all workers have the right to take official industrial action free from the fear of dismissal or victimisation.
The International Labour Organisation has repeatedly found that UK law is in breach of international human rights treaties by failing to provide this protection. The effect of one amendment would be to establish that dismissals made in anticipation of, during or after lawful industrial action would be void unless the employer can show that the reason for the dismissal was unconnected.
Regulation currently bars employment agencies from supplying agency workers to carry out duties normally performed by a worker undertaking lawful strike action. A loophole in the law, however, means that this duty does not apply if the agency does not know that the agency worker is replacing a worker taking industrial action. A further amendment would close this loophole.
These are all modest measures, which perhaps, now that the days of deregulation as a panacea are past, MPs can finally adopt.
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It will be “the biggest and most ambitious strategy that this Party has ever undertaken,” promised a British National Party fundraising letter in September. The “Racism Cuts Both Ways” initiative will detail “the crimes against our people – rape, murder and discrimination”.
The conspiracy nuts of the BNP have long claimed that, in the words of party leader Nick Griffin, “the political elite, the media, the police and the courts are covering up an epidemic of racist violence against the long suffering indigenous people of this country”.
For the past two years the BNP has been putting together a list of “the forgotten victims”, researched by Alan Newark, a former left-wing Scottish journalist who defected to the far right many years ago. In an attempt to give the project authority Tony Shell, a “professional systems analyst” and the BNP’s Plymouth organiser, has written two reports “analysing” crime figures to prove the BNP’s thesis. There are lies, damned lies and statistics, and the BNP knows how to use all three.
Now their work has been distilled into a 12-page full colour brochure that will be sent in the first instance to MPs, members of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, London Assembly and House of Lords, and journalists.
The BNP admits that most of them will bin it. It is intended as a provocation, “priming the fuses for our main attack”, the direct mailing of it to “large numbers of 18-year-olds, personally”.
The BNP claims to be targeting 18-year-olds because, “not only are these new voters with no loyalties to the old parties, but reaching out to so many young people will send the opposition frantic and guarantee publicity that will magnify our efforts tenfold”.
The fundraising appeal aims to raise £78,750 to finance the campaign, including £22,000 to print an initial 200,000 brochures and £45,000 for postage. With this they intend to mail out 10,000 brochures to “each key town and city in every one of the BNP’s 12 regions”.
Postage of £45,000 would only pay for around 120,000 brochures sent out individually. But the campaign will also be promoted by a “nationwide Truth Tour” using the “truth truck”, better known as the lie lorry, acquired after the party’s last big fundraising effort. It will start in Scotland and work its way south over one month, presumably at the same time as pushing “white history month”, which the BNP launched on 1 November.
The brochures will be distributed in schools where the BNP has enough activists, Simon Darby, the BNP’s press officer, told a journalist. Most school students are under 18, suggesting that the BNP will be very happy to hand it out to younger, less politically experienced, teenagers who might be more easily taken in by the glossy but viciously hate-filled publication.
The brochure is at pains to claim that the “injustices” inflicted on the “majority community” are “in no way the fault of immigrants themselves”, but caused by “the attitude of the ruling political elite”. But articles on “racist murder” and rape impart the opposite message. The page about “racist grooming” is especially disgraceful and clearly intended to incite race hate.
“All ethnic groups contain paedophiles” it states, “… But in most communities these sickos operate alone, ashamed of what they do. One community, however, is different. Wherever there are large numbers of young Muslim men, groups of them team up to lure girls – often as young as twelve or thirteen – into a nightmare world of sexual abuse, rape, beatings, drug addiction and prostitution. Some of these perverts are recently arrived ‘asylum seekers’, others come from settled immigrant communities and were born in Britain.
“But what all the Muslim sex gangs have in common – on top of their religion, with its low status for women – is that they never target girls from their own community. The vast majority of the victims are white, although Sikh, Hindu and West Indian girls are also targeted.” Note the attempt to show that the BNP has sympathy with BME communities that it perceives as more accepted by its target white audience.
Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, the largest UK teachers’ union, told Searchlight:
“Action must be taken to prevent the BNP peddling this vile propaganda which, as always, is designed to promote division and intolerance.
“The fact that they are planning to ambush children, young people and parents at school gates demonstrates that there is no level to which they are not prepared to sink to peddle their hateful message.
“This demonstrates that the NASUWT was absolutely right to press the Government to include the activities of the BNP and far right in the guidance it has issued recently to schools on tackling extremism and that the Department for Children, Schools and Families was right to do so.”
“The NASUWT will expect the Government to scrutinise any report the BNP produces and seek to bring the full weight of the law to bear to prevent its distribution and prosecute those involved in its production.”
Griffin, who is a bit of a Johnny-come-lately in the BNP, may have overlooked what happened before when BNP activists tried to distribute literature at school gates. Staff called the police who moved them on. After pressure from the NUT they were charged and in due course found guilty.
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Britain is to take tough new measures to keep suspected hate preachers and extremists out of the country.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says coming to Britain is a privilege that will not be extended to individuals who abuse British standards and values.
After the London transport bombings in 2005 there was an acceptance by all political parties that Britain had been far too lenient in letting radical preachers base themselves in the country.
Since then the Government has toughened its immigration procedures and banned 230 people from entering Britain because they preach hate.
Now the Government wants to go a step further by actually naming and shaming the extremists which it says are unfit to enter Britain.
Ms Smith says the new rules will make exclusion the norm for alleged extremists.
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Software to help parents and schools block access to terrorist websites amid concerns over youngsters' access to them.
Technology that allows computers to restrict access, similar to blocks on paedophile and pornographic websites, will be available to download in the Home Office-led initiative.
Private companies have developed software that will block known websites or look for typical extremist language based on information from the security services.
The Home Office insisted it is not in the wake of new intelligence but admitted there are ongoing concerns about easy access to sites that try to recruit youngsters or spout hatred.
The filtering technology is being aimed at parents, schools, businesses.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "Stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists is the major long-term challenge we face. I want to give parents and guardians the power to decide what content is downloaded on their computers at home, which is why we have worked hard to develop these tools with various software companies.
"Building on the work we have done around child protection on the Internet, this software is a significant step in making the Internet a safer place for vulnerable people and these tools will also offer our schools, colleges and businesses further safety nets."
Tom Newton, of Leeds-based filtering specialist Smoothwall, one of the companies that has developed such software, said it will be constantly updated based on alerts or information from the Home Office.
The List - as a zipped (835KB) Windows Excell file
See also
Nowhere else to go
BNP Scotland invite to UKIP
Notable Names from Britain’s far Right
The Strange Death of Labour England?
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