Tag: Andrew Brons

  • RACIST RANTS OF ELECTED BNP MAN, ANDREW BRONS, REVEALED

    RACIST RANTS OF ELECTED BNP MAN, ANDREW BRONS, REVEALED

    Jamie Doward, home affairs editor

    The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009

    Yorkshire MEP Andrew Brons drew up some of the National Front’s most inflammatory policies

    British National party MEP Andrew Brons. Photograph: BNP/PA
    British National party MEP Andrew Brons. Photograph: BNP/PA

    One of the British National party’s first MEPs’ attempts to play down his past links to the extreme right as “silly” teenage posturing are today exposed as a sham after it emerged that for many years he played a crucial role in shaping the National Front’s most overtly racist policies.

    In 1983, when he was in his late twenties, Andrew Brons edited the National Front’s general election manifesto that called for a global apartheid to prevent the “extinction” of whites everywhere.

    The Let Britain Live! manifesto was prepared by the party’s policy department, chaired by Brons. It outlined a series of hugely controversial positions, crystallised in one of its opening statements: “The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities.”

    The manifesto claimed the UK had been “swamped” by “racially incompatible Afro-Asians” and that “Black muggings of White people, especially elderly ladies, occurs regularly”.

    It continued: “The eruptions in Bristol in 1980 and Brixton in 1981 were just two examples of the ‘cultural enrichment’ promised to us by the multiracialists.” And it claimed: “We believe the gradual dismantlement of the Apartheid system over the last 17 years to be retrograde … The alternative to Apartheid, multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the White man.”

    Brons was also an enthusiastic contributor in the 1970s and 1980s to Spearhead, a far-right magazine considered so extreme even the BNP tried to distance itself from it. In two lengthy polemics for the magazine, Brons outlined the supposed importance of nationalism and interpreted genetic studies to suggest Europeans had a “greater cognitive ability” than non-whites. He attacked the influence of “people of Jewish ethnic origin” and peddled the myth that a number of predominantly Zionist organisations were controlling the world.

    The now retired college lecturer wrote: “One ethnic, national and religious group whose power and influence has undoubtedly increased has been the Jews. It can be no mere coincidence that the number of people of Jewish ethnic origin to be found in internationalist and multiracialist schools of thought and organisations of action is out of all proportion to their numbers in the population.”

    Brons, who was elected as the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber this month, has tried to distance himself from his National Front days. “People do silly things when they are 17,” he said recently. “Peter Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League but we don’t continue to call him a communist.”

    But his critics say his relationship with the National Front was more than a youthful dalliance and question the extent to which he has left his past behind. A 1980 edition of National Front News, the party newspaper, carried an article about Brons saying he was prepared to go to jail for his beliefs. It noted that Brons refused a “Negro reporter permission to attend two National Front ticket-only meetings” and explains that Brons, then 29, has “campaigned against Coloured Immigration since he was a teenager” – suggesting his extremist views have been a feature as much of his adult as his teenage life.

    Brons seized the NF chairmanship in 1980 when John Tyndall quit to form the BNP. In 1984 Brons was convicted of using insulting behaviour towards an ethnic-minority police officer and left the party, citing family problems.

    At the National Front, Brons was a close ally of Richard Verrall, the author of the Holocaust-denial tract Did Six Million Really Die?, who was vice-chairman. In 1981, while Brons was chairman, the NF endorsed We are National Front, a pamphlet carrying an introduction from Verrall. It had photographs of Brons and Verrall as well as a picture of a gorilla and a black man stating: “These two creatures look the same, don’t they?”

    Anti-racism and Jewish support groups yesterday described Brons’s failure to condemn his past activities as disturbing. “From a young man until well into his middle age, Andrew Brons was very much involved in a series of viciously antisemitic and racist far-right movements,” said a spokesman for the Community Security Trust, which monitors attacks on the UK’s Jewish community. “It’s hard to believe he has undergone a serious conversion since then.”

    Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, said Brons was influential in shaping the NF and it was important that those voting for him should be aware of his past views. “The fact that Brons is an intellectual fascist and bigot rather than an ignorant fascist and bigot cuts little ice,” a spokesman said. “We are unimpressed by his claims that his prejudice was a result of youthful exuberance.”

    Attempts to contact Brons through the BNP were unsuccessful.

    Source:  www.guardian.co.uk, June 14th, 2009

  • BNP wins two seats in Europe

    BNP wins two seats in Europe

    Party chairman Nick Griffin was elected an MEP in the northwest of England region with eight percent of the vote, hours after Andrew Brons won the BNP’s first ever European seat in the nearby Yorkshire and the Humber region.

    Griffin had earlier hailed Brons’ win — with almost 10 percent of the vote — as “a huge breakthrough” for his party, and used the victory to reiterate his party’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance.

    He denied his party was racist, but said: “We do say this country is full up. The key thing is to shut the door.”

    Griffin told Sky News television: “This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome, because Islam and Christianity, Islam and democracy, Islam and women’s rights do not mix.

    “That’s a simple fact that the elites of Europe are going to have to get their heads round and deal with over the next few years.”

    The result is a vindication of efforts by Griffin, who was educated at the prestigious Cambridge University, to recast the party since taking over in 1999, emphasising its grassroots activism over extreme-right ideology.

    Amid concerns about soaring unemployment and a deep recession and in particular the demise of the country’s manufacturing base, the BNP has pledged British jobs for British workers.

    It is opposed to European integration and wants to pull Britain out of the European Union and halt all immigration to the country.

    In recent weeks it has also capitalised on public anger over the row over lawmakers’ expenses, which has severely damaged the reputation of parliament and the mainstream Labour and Conservative parties.

    Health minister Andrew Burnham described the BNP’s first MEP victory as a “sad moment, and following Griffin’s success in the northwest, local Labour MP Tony Lloyd said he was ashamed at how some people had voted.

    “I am genuinely not just disappointed, I think it is a matter of shame, this country has a deserved reputation for a tolerant society,” said Lloyd, the Labour MP for Manchester Central.

    “Their (the BNP) vision for Britain is a nightmare for Britain. I think many people will wake up with some sense of shame.”

    Government ministers and the Conservative party had sought to remind voters of the BNP’s policies, which include calls for the immediate halt to all immigration to Britain and the “voluntary resettlement” of all immigrants.

    Source: www.google.com, 08.06.2009

    [2]

    Sarkozy: “Islamization is Inevitable”

    There is nothing new here. We knew what Sarkozy’s vision of the future was: an “Islam of France”, “métissage” between races and ethnic groups, dissolution of nationalist, regional, and ethnic identities, subjugation to Brussels, openness to socialism, and a Turkey as closely aligned with Europe as possible, etc…

    But it’s always sobering to hear it again, from one who knows Sarkozy personally. Philippe de Villiers was interviewed by the weekly Famille Chrétienne. The Catholic blogLe Salon Beige relates part of the interview:

    Why are you so focused on the theme of Turkey and Islamization?

    – Quite simply because we will see the first transformations of churches into mosques in the coming three years. At any rate, that is what Nicolas Sarkozy told me.

    When?

    – I had an in depth discussion with him at Elysée at the end of last year. He said to me: “You have intuition, I have the figures. And your intuition is confirmed by my figures. The Islamization of Europe is inevitable.” Careful: it’s a process that will not occur overnight, but will take decades.

    Why does this issue appear to be of central importance to you?

    – Most politicians have a comforting ignorance of what Islam is and propose transforming Europe into a supermarket of competing religions. Unaware that Islam is not only a religion since, by melding the temporal and the spiritual, it imposes a law. But behind this comforting ignorance of politicians, there are those who know. (…) The reality is that we are headed for a criss-cross [chassé-croisé] with, on one side, Europe and its en masse abortions, its promotion of gay marriage, and on the other, immigration en masse (…)

    Chassé-croisé” is virtually impossible to translate. Originally a choreographic term, it usually refers to a crowded movement in one direction that passes but never encounters a crowded movement in another direction. Sometimes it is just kept as is in English.

    Aren’t you exaggerating the dimensions of the phenomenon?

    – No. The crux of the issue is simple: Europe is refusing its own demographic future. And it is working with a fearsome weapon towards this end, written into the Charter of fundamental rights appended to the treaty of Lisbon: the promotion of gay marriage. This in turn is accomplished through the principle of non-discrimination and the disassociation of marriage from the sex of the spouses (which appears in article 7 of the Charter of fundamental rights). In reality, there are two weapons being used by European leaders to kill Europe demographically: the promotion of gay marriage and en masse abortions. And a third: the recourse to immigration that is 80% Islamic in order to replace the people who are no longer there (…)

    As usual there are LSB readers who question Villiers’ sincerity and motives. But this time, there are also many who applaud his courage. He is certainly putting more muscle into his words on the eve of the election.

    A spokesman for Elysée protested saying: “Philippe de Villiers is not the spokesman for Elysée. He makes multiple declarations on this topic, declarations that obviously need to be regarded with caution.”

    Source: www.brusselsjournal.com, 06-06-2009

  • Controversy over abuse conviction of BNP candidate

    Controversy over abuse conviction of BNP candidate

    By Tom Smithard

    The lead BNP candidate for Yorkshire in tomorrow’s European elections was once convicted of abusive chanting that included calling a ethnic minority police officer an “inferior being”, it can be revealed.

    Andrew Brons was fined £50 by Leeds magistrates in 1984 for using insulting words and behaviour after a confrontation with police when he was leader of the far-right group the National Front.The 61-year-old, who was 37 at the time, was also found guilty of acting in a manner calculated to blemish the peace.

    Mr Brons, then a politics lecturer at Harrogate College, was leading a group of supporters leafleting in Leeds city centre in October 1983. A shop assistant heard them shouting “National Front” and saw clenched-fist salutes, while a policeman heard other slogans including “white power” and “death to Jews”.

    PC John Raj, the area’s community constable and of Malaysian-origin, told the group to disperse after elderly shoppers voiced their fears. But when he asked Mr Brons to leave, the politician said: “I am aware of my legal rights. Inferior beings like yourself probably do not appreciate the principle of free speech.”

    Since being chosen as the BNP’s lead candidate in this week’s elections, Mr Brons has attempted to skirt over his controversial past. He denied the allegations at the time and last night continued to claim he had not made any abusive statements.

    But Mr Raj’s evidence was accepted over that of Mr Brons by both Leeds magistrates and a Leeds Crown Court judge who heard an appeal.

    Last night Mr Brons said: “I would not have said anything that would have jeopardised my employment at Harrogate College, which lasted from 1970 to 2005. “I categorically denied the allegations at the time which were clearly absurd.”

    But Denis MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham and author of a recent book on anti-semitism, said: “How much more proof is needed of the Nazi antecedents of the BNP?

    “The obsession of BNP candidates with Jews and the denial of the Holocaust should not be rewarded on Thursday.”

    Source: www.yorkshirepost.co.uk, 03 June 2009

  • BNP wins first ever seat on European parliament

    BNP wins first ever seat on European parliament

    EU elections: Nick Griffin prevented from reaching Manchester count by demonstrators as far-right party wins seat in Yorkshire and Humber

    Martin Wainwright and agencies

    protesters-prevent-bnp
    Protesters prevent BNP leader Nick Griffin from entering Manchester town hall for the European parliament election results for the North West tonight. Photograph: Manchester Evening News

    The British National party tonight won a seat on the European parliament for the first time in its history after receiving 120,139 votes in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

    Andrew Brons took a seat from Labour with almost 10% of the vote in the region, up by 2% on the last election.

    Andy Burnham, the health secretary, said the result was a “sad moment for British politics”.

    William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, who is from south Yorkshire, said the party had taken votes from Labour.

    The BNP won one of six seats in the region while Labour lost one of the two seats it held at the last election.

    The BNP achieved 16% of the vote in Barnsley, nearly 12% in Doncaster and 15% in Rotherham – all Labour strongholds.

    Brons said after the count: “The onslaught against us has been more than against any other party in recent times, but somehow we’ve overcome it. Despite the lies, despite the money, despite the misrepresentation, we’ve been able to win through.”

    His victory followed particularly dramatic rises in the BNP vote in old Labour heartlands such as Barnsley, where it went from 8% to 17%, while Labour’s fell from 45% to 25%.

    Brons retired last year as a politics and government teacher at Harrogate College, and re-entered active politics. He stood five times for the National Front in the 1970s after a brief spell as its leader, which ended in internal quarrels. He joined the British National Socialist party as a teenager.

    Welcoming Brons’ election, Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, said: “We’re here to look after our people because no one else is.” He added that feelings were particularly strong in Yorkshire. “This is ordinary decent people in Yorkshire kicking back against racism, because racism in this country is now directed overwhelmingly against people who look like me.”

    He said that immigration had become harmful to Britain, particularly with the spread of radical Islam. “Take Bradford – it isn’t immigration that’s happening there, it’s colonialism,” he said.

    In Manchester, protesters prevented Griffin from reaching the European elections count for the constituency where he is standing: the North West.

    Griffin finally reached Manchester town hall in a police van after his vehicle and bodyguards were pelted with eggs by a noisy group who yelled: “Fascist scum.”

    His party was struggling against a strong showing by the United Kingdom Independence party and the Greens in its attempt to secure the figure of around 8.5% that would win one of the region’s eight seats.

    At 10.30pm, declarations from around one-fifth of the North West’s 39 counting district left Griffin, who tops the party’s list for the region, just over a percentage point short.

    The tally gave the Conservatives 112,710 – 25% of the vote – putting them on course for three seats.

    Labour were running second, with 99,555 votes and many traditional strongholds still to declare, and the likelihood of two seats.

    Ukip was close behind, with 68,340, and the Liberal Democrats had 60,315, guaranteeing the parties a seat each.

    The BNP were on 39,352 and the Greens 36,260, leaving the battle for the eighth seat between either of them and Ukip.

    “It’s on a knife-edge here in the North West,” Griffin said.

    “We are on tenterhooks, but we’ve done well in Liverpool and over in Yorkshire, especially in Barnsley.”

    Turnout in the North West was 31.9%, with the biggest population centres of Manchester and Liverpool well down at 24% and 27% respectively.

    More people voted in smaller areas targeted by the BNP, including Burnley – where the party won a Lancashire county council seat last week – but other parties benefited.

    In both Burnley and its second target area, Pendle, in the Lancashire Pennines, the BNP was pushed into fifth place behind the Liberal Democrats, Labour, the Conservatives and Ukip.

    But it pushed the Liberals into third place in Hyndburn and Blackpool and only dropped below 1,000 votes in a handful of the counting areas.

    Earlier, Griffin had suggested that his party might pick up two North West seats, with its candidates polling an average of 13.1% in last week’s county council elections.

    The Liberal Democrats’ lone MEP for the North West, Chris Davies, warned against counting the BNP out of the running.

    The BNP polled 6.4% in the North West at the last European elections, in 2004, but the threshold has risen since then with the loss of one MEP.

    European Union expansion has reduced the region’s tally of seats from nine – made up, for the last term, of four Conservatives, three Labour, one Liberal Democrat and one Ukip.

    Source: guardian.co.uk, 7 June 2009