Having leafleted against the British National Party with Unite Against Fascism during the recent by-election campaign in Hampstead Town, I was pleased to see that the BNP candidate received a derisory 29 votes, a mere 1% of the poll. You might have thought that after this humiliation the BNP would have got the message that they are not welcome in north London, yet they are contesting the Kentish Town by-election on October 30 in another attempt to gain a foothold there.
Since the election of Richard Barnbrook last May we have had direct experience of the BNP on the London Assembly. It would be easy to dismiss Barnbrook as a joke figure, and his rambling, incoherent contributions at Mayor’s Question Time have certainly reduced him to an object of ridicule. However, London Assembly members have also witnessed the poisonous, divisive politics of the BNP at first hand.
In a recent intervention, for example, Barnbrook called for the abolition of the Notting Hill Carnival, one of the most popular annual events in London, which attracted an estimated 2.5 million people this year from across our city’s diverse communities. But what else can you expect from a party whose constitution states that it is “wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples”?
In recent years the BNP has tried to hide its fascist politics from voters and fool them into thinking it is now a more moderate, mainstream party. The skinhead bootboys have been kept out of public view, to be replaced by “respectable” figures in suits. However, the adoption of a more voter-friendly image hasn’t changed the BNP’s fundamental character. In terms of its leadership, core membership, political ideology and ultimate objectives, the BNP remains the racist, fascist organisation it has always been.
One of the leaflets the BNP has been distributing in north London illustrates this point. It features a photograph of a wholesome-looking white family accompanied by the slogan “People like you voting BNP”. The smiling couple in the picture are unlikely to be voting in the Kentish Town by-election as they live in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. But if they were on the electoral register in London NW5 they would undoubtedly give their support to the BNP, because they are two of the party’s longstanding activists – Nick and Suzy Cass.
Both of the Casses appeared earlier this year in the television documentary BNP Wives. In one revealing scene Suzy Cass argued that in order to restore racial purity white people should have more children, while a “birth limit” should be imposed on non-white families. How the latter policy was to be implemented – forcible sterilisation? infanticide? – she didn’t say.
In another scene Nick Cass proudly revealed a “tree of life” tattoo prominently displayed on his right arm. The anti-fascist magazine Searchlight commented:
“This symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide, several of which have adopted it as their logo. Under Hitler it was the symbol of the SS Lebensborn project, which encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with ‘Aryan’ mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans. To white supremacists today the tree of life signifies the future of the ‘white race’. “
Nothing could better demonstrate the BNP’s cynical political methods than this fraudulent attempt to pass off two of its own hardline members as a normal family who just happen to vote BNP.
Resistance to the BNP transcends party politics. Supporters of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party and the Greens, whatever our other political differences, are at one in rejecting the racist ideology of the far right. It is crucial that this anti-fascist majority turns out to vote in Kentish Town on October 30, in order to ensure that the BNP once again receives a percentage of the vote that accurately represents their minuscule support in Camden.
The infliction of another humiliating defeat on the BNP will hopefully discourage them from making any further attempts to import their vile politics into the borough.
Nick Griffin’s efforts to revamp the BNP’s image are going to be rather undermined if the bootboys are pushed into the background only to be replaced as the public face of the party by idiots like Barnbrook.
The BNP candidate in Kentish Town, Edith Crowther, is evidently another member of the party’s fruitcake tendency. She has been dubbed the “BNP’s barking candidate” by Camden Councillor Theo Blackwell, who has reproduced a truly loopy letter from Crowther that appeared in the Camden New Journal a couple of years ago.
It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss such people as harmless eccentrics. As with Barnbrook, Crowther’s general barminess doesn’t prevent her holding some extreme and obnoxious opinions.
The contributions made by Edith Crowther to the online discussion of a Mail on Sunday article by Peter Hitchens defending the Oxford Union’s right to invite Nick Griffin and David Irving to speak illustrates the bigoted views she promotes:
“I used to buy ready-prepared salad nearly every day…. But it has been coming out just how much migrant labour is needed to get that to my table…. the time has come to kick the salad habit.”
“This country contains those who love it, and those who do not and never will…. I think probably we all know, or know of, more than one immigrant who has genuinely fallen in love with this country, and behaves accordingly. This only makes the millions who have not, and have hearts of stone, even more glaringly obvious…. They just can’t love this country, how could they?”
Thanks, Anon, for publicising further some of my contributions to the world wide web cacophony. I have a Diploma in Modern Classical Arabic Translation, so I have met a lot of Muslims in my time. Real Muslims, who live in Muslim countries and fight against their own westernised governments for an Islamic state. An Islamic state as laid out in the Koran and Hadith – not the savage and weird variations that have grown up in recent times. Such a state would be strict but merciful, and true Muslim culture would flourish as it did in the Golden Age of Islam before the rules were relaxed too much and everything became a bit decadent. As an Arabist I know there aren’t any Muslims in the West, because it is worse than 36 fornications to touch a penny of any money derived from interest, and you will go straight to hell when you die if you are that hypocritical. All money in the West is derived from interest by now – watch The Ascent Of Money on Channel 4 for when it all started. I realised long ago that the BNP is the British equivalent of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whom I admire and respect and who have great courage. That is why I joined. Hamas etc. are not expats of course, except those who are in forced temporary exile and have no intention of abandoning their country for long. I do not know why expats (British ones included) are so arrogant about their host country. Some sort of natural human inhibition seems to get lost when you are not at home, it seems.
By the way, my letter to the CNJ wasn’t barking – it predicted the current collapse of the financial system, that’s all. In 2006. But prophets are often written off as mad, aren’t they? – including one of the greatest, Muhammad peace and praise be upon him.
“I realised long ago that the BNP is the British equivalent of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whom I admire and who have great courage. That is why I joined the BNP.”
Is this woman for real? Does she really have such a minimal grasp of the political character of the party she’s joined?
BNP leader Nick Griffin has stated emphatically: “To even hint of making common cause with Islam – or put ourselves in a position when opponents can suggest to the masses that this is the case – is political insanity.”
And in an article written during Israel’s war against Lebanon, another leading figure in the BNP, Lee Barnes, outlined his party’s attitude towards Israel’s Islamist opponents:
“As a nationalist, I can say that I support Israel 100 per cent in their dispute with Hezbollah. In fact, I hope they wipe Hezbollah off the Lebanese map and bomb them until they leave large greasy craters in the cities where their Islamic extremist cantons of terror once stood.”
What must BNP members make of all this? An admirer of Islamist organisations the BNP defines as terrorist was allowed to represent the BNP in a council by-election. It beggars belief. Didn’t Griffin or Richard Barnbrook think to investigate her political views before they allowed her to stand as a candidate?
As the loss of their party’s entire membership list demonstrates, there is evidently no limit to the stupidity of the BNP leadership.
It is grotesque hypocrisy for a member of the Labour Party to accuse the BNP of racism. The Labour party are responsible for tens of thousands of Muslim deaths in Iraq (killed on the basis of doctored intelligence reports and a pack of lies). In contrast, the BNP always opposed the war. Muslims killed by Labour: ten (or hundreds) of thousands. Muslims killed by the BNP: NONE.
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Edith Crowther is a candidate for the BNP, a party with a long history of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and links to violent extremists. While the BNP has attempted to rebrand itself as a respectable patriotic party that respects Jews and supports Israel’s right to exist, the fact that the party is happy to field a candidate who praises Islamist terrorists for their ‘great courage’ in attacking Israel speaks volumes about the superficiality of that rebranding.
You are a joke Edith!!!!!
The poor voting figures in the broadland area for Edith Crowther(BNP) said it all, you are not wanted in the area with your facist and hatred propoganda. In fact it was the poorest show of all the BNP candidates in the Norfolk region, glad you lost your deposit! Please take you views elsewhere, to somewhere where people might listen perhaps, stay out of Norfolk and in particular Broadland. Edith you are an emabarssement to Britain and the British people.
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