Kirklees BNP members defect to English Democrats after comparing Nick Griffin to Robert Mugabe (UK)

Activists in Huddersfield last night announced they have left the British National Party (BNP) – and compared leader Nick Griffin with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.

A group of former Kirklees Council candidates yesterday told the Examiner they had joined the English Democrats because of their “cleaner” image.

Former BNP Colne Valley Parliamentary candidate Barry Fowler and ex-Heckmondwike councillor Roger Roberts issued a statement announcing their breakaway.

They said: “The BNP has been in turmoil for the last 12-plus months with the majority of active members seeking a change of leader and a new cleaner less confrontational approach to getting our ideas across.

“This has been met with contempt by leader Nick Griffin who has gone out of his way to bring the party into disrepute.

“He has suspended some of the best local activists simply for asking legitimate questions over finance.

“The BNP is currently well over £500,000 in debt and its submitted accounts for the last two years have been classed as poor and incomplete by the Electoral Commission.

“We believe it is a member’s right to ask legitimate questions about party finance, yet Mr Griffin has met people’s concerns by suspending and expelling them.

“These are not the actions of a leader of a democratic party, but that of a dictator.

“In Kirklees we have worked very hard to improve our image as a party and dispel any negative stereotypes of the party.

“But the BNP has been held back by Nick Griffin for so long and the new constitution, which could have been written by Mr Mugabe, ensures Mr Griffin will be leader for as long as he chooses.”

The BNP is running just four candidates in this year’s Kirklees Council election – compared with 21 last year.

Rachel Firth, the party’s new organiser in south Kirklees, will stand in Denby Dale.

“In every party you get people disagreeing with things,” she said yesterday.

“Quite a few of our members in south Kirklees have left. People are going their separate ways, and that’s fair enough, but I’m concentrating on the future not the past.”

Mr Fowler and Mr Roberts said most of the party’s top activists in Kirklees will join the English Democrats.

They said: “The majority of ex-candidates and local BNP officials will be taking our ideas, talents and energy into a new party.

“We are working to help establish a new hope for England with a party with a good clean image, good policies and sensible decent people at the heart promoting them.

“The English Democrats are a democratic party, concerned with the way English identity and culture is being eroded.

“But unlike the BNP, which has a terrible image, it has a very clean image and is based on promoting our way of life as opposed to the BNP’s obsession on race.”

Paul McEnhill is the only English Democrat standing in the Kirklees elections on May 5.

The Denby Dale candidate welcomed the ex-BNP members yesterday.

“I’ve met Barry Fowler and Roger Roberts and they seem like decent people,” he said.

“We are a broad church, we have former members from Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberals.”

But Mr McEnhill added: “We won’t just let in any Tom, Dick or Harry in off the street, new members will be vetted extremely well.”

University of Huddersfield politics lecturer Dr Andrew Mycock predicted that former BNP members may have some problems in the English Democrats.

He said yesterday: “In one sense it’s a logical move because the two parties have a very similar position in many areas like Europe and political correctness.

“But the English Democrats have accepted that multi-cultural Britain has some value, a view which the BNP has never held.”

VOTERS in Huddersfield have moved away from the British National Party in the past five years.

The party took one in five votes in the Kirklees Council election of 2006, gaining two seats.

But by last year’s poll the BNP won just 7.6% and lost its only councillor.

Five years ago the party secured 22,914 votes – 18.5% – across the 23 wards of Kirklees.

The party won in Heckmondwike and Dewsbury East, to add to the seat it took at the 2003 Heckmondwike by-election.

The BNP also polled strongly in Mirfield and Cleckheaton.

Robert Walker won 1,100 votes in Golcar, just 300 behind the winning Lib Dem candidate.

The BNP also performed well in the 2007 election, taking 19,891 votes, which equals 16.2%.

The party failed to win any seats that year, but finished a strong second in Dewsbury East and Heckmondwike.

However, the following year the party went into steep decline, taking 15,090 votes – some 12.6% of the total.

David Exley lost his seat in Heckmondwike, finishing nearly 200 votes behind Labour.

A few months later Colin Auty resigned his Dewsbury East seat after a disagreement with party leader Nick Griffin. Labour won the by-election.

Last year the BNP’s support in Kirklees slumped to just 7.6%, with the party’s only remaining councillor Roger Roberts losing his seat in Heckmondwike.

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Benito Mussolini's granddaughter criticises Carla Bruni (Italy)

Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, has lashed out at Carla Bruni-Sarkozy for not persuading France to open its borders to illegal migrants, saying she should receive them in her "chateaux".

Miss Mussolini, 47, a Right-wing MP and former actress and model tore into France's Italian-born first lady for failing to talk her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy into taking in Libyans and Tunisians who have been ariving at the Italian island of Lampedusa by the thousand since January.

Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy should have "protested against the shutting of French borders to illegal immigrants decided by her husband", she is quoted as saying by the Le Figaro newspaper.

Read More Telegraph

Racist ex-soldier who threatened to behead a Muslim a day is jailed (UK)

A racist former soldier who threatened to bomb Glasgow Central Mosque and behead a Muslim every day has been jailed for 12 months.
Neil MacGregor, 38, made the threats in an e-mail and a series of telephone calls to Strathclyde Police, which led to an anti-terrorism operation being launched.

He claimed to be a member of the National Front and said he would execute Muslim on a daily basis unless every mosque in Scotland was closed down.

MacGregor, from Scrimgeour Court, Crieff, claimed he had been upset after watching video footage of someone being beheaded in Iraq on an internet clip.

Fiscal depute John Malpass told Perth Sheriff Court yesterday: "An e-mail was received in which he made numerous threats against Muslim people and demanded the closure of all mosques in Scotland."

MacGregor told police: "As a wee extra, one of our members will donate a Semtex plastic explosive with a box of nails in it, sometime on Friday night at the Central Mosque."

Mr Malpass said: "Because of the nature of the threat, anti-terrorist officers were notified. Enquiries were made in relation to the source of the emails.

"The IP address was identified and traced to the accused's home address. Police attended the Central Mosque and carried out a search which proved negative."

MacGregor then made 999 calls from a public call box during which he claimed to be a member of the National Front and again said there was a bomb at the Central Mosque.

MacGregor was arrested and detained at his former flat in Glasgow and admitted making the threats during a series of contacts with Strathclyde Police between 30 January and 15 February 2007.

He was originally placed on probation for three years, but yesterday he admitted breaching probation.

Solicitor Craig Dewar, defending, said: "He viewed an internet clip of a beheading in Iraq which caused him to react in the manner described. He made threats but had absolutely no intention of carrying out these threats.

"He served in the military for a period of time. He may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"He complied with the order for around a year. He then travelled to London and made no further contact. He was living with his partner in London."

Sheriff Lindsay Foulis, revoking probation and jailing him for a year, said: "In this day and age to carry out the conduct he did in 2007 is an extremely serious matter.

"It was a matter which the authorities, not surprisingly, took very seriously and reacted to in the manner described."

MacGregor, who is originally from Derbyshire, had his sentence for racially breaching the peace backdated to last month when he was arrested.

When MacGregor initially admitted the offence at Glasgow Sheriff Court, his email was read out. In it he said: "I'm a proud racist and National Front member.

News Scotsman

BNP candidate Ann Cooper formerly of TUV (Northern Ireland, UK)

A BNP candidate in the assembly elections is a former member of the Traditional Unionist Voice.

Ann Cooper, who is standing in East Belfast, previously stood for the TUV in last May's Castlereagh by-election. She left the TUV soon after.

She later drew criticism by voicing support for seven Customs and Revenue workers, sacked for deliberately underpaying ethnic minorities.

Tweeting on the case, Ms Cooper said the sacked employees deserved a medal.

BBC News

More 'join BNP in segregated areas' (UK)

Membership of the British National Party (BNP) is higher where whites and non-whites live separately in segregated areas, research has found.

Oxford University academics used the BNP database posted on WikiLeaks that contained 12,000 members' details and then matched them with census data on more than 200,000 neighbourhoods in Britain to make the findings.

Whites are more likely to belong to the BNP in a highly segregated city such as Bradford where just under a quarter (22%) of the population is non-white, compared with a well-integrated area such as Brent in London where more than half (55%) of the population is non-white, they found.

The research discovered that whites are less likely to belong to the BNP where they have a substantial proportion of non-white neighbours.

When the non-white category was divided into ethnic groups, BNP support was higher in towns and cities where British Asians lived rather than Black British. When religion was analysed, BNP membership responded primarily to Muslim communities.

BNP membership was found to be higher in areas with lower education levels and with more self-employed people and small business owners. Membership was also higher where people live in overcrowded housing and rent from private landlords, rather than owning their own properties or living in council houses.

White people were also more likely to belong to the BNP in Labour constituencies, the research claimed. Whites might perceive a political threat from concentrated non-white communities, with Labour being perceived as favouring minorities, the researchers said.

Dr Michael Biggs, a sociologist at the University of Oxford, carried out the research with a graduate student, Steve Knauss.

Dr Biggs suggested that some white people felt threatened by segregated minority communities. Close contact among neighbours, however, broke down racial prejudice.

The research, surprisingly, found that higher unemployment actually reduced the probability of BNP membership. This finding suggested that economic competition is less of a threat than cultural difference when people decided to join the party.

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