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Musicians demand BNP stop selling their songs

Blur and Pink Floyd among artists objecting to songs being on compilation CDs sold to fund party

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 May 2009

Lee Glendinning

Billy Bragg and other British artists want the BNP to stop marketing their music on fundraising CDs. Photograph: Hannah Johnston/Getty Images

Musicians from bands including Blur and Pink Floyd have launched a campaign demanding that the British National party stop selling their music to raise campaign funds.

The BNP is selling folk albums on its website featuring artists who claim they have no control over the fact that the far-right party is using their songs.

The BNP’s commercial partner Excalibur sells compilation CDs with titles including Proud Heritage, Rule Britannia and The White Cliffs of Dover.

An album called West Wind, written by the party leader, Nick Griffin, and featuring songs including Nothing Bloody Works and Colour, is among those being sold. It claims “to incorporate folk and more upbeat tempos to deliver a powerful message of how British people have been dispossessed”.

Billy Bragg, along with Dave Rowntree from Blur and Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, have joined with the Musicians’ Union and Featured Artists’ Coalition in objecting to the BNP’s “politics and morals”.

“In the lead up to the European elections, it has come to our attention that the BNP is selling compilation CDs through its website in order to raise funds for campaigning,” they wrote in a letter published in the Times.

“Many of the musicians featured on these … have no legal right to object to their music being used in this way. We would, on behalf of our joint membership of over 31,000 members, like to have our opposition to the BNP’s politics and morals formally noted.”

Musical performers or composers have little or no ability to prevent retailers selling their work once it is sold by a wholesaler to a particular distributor.

Nigel McCune, a national organiser at the Musicians’ Union, told the Times that musicians needed a safeguard against these sorts of associations.

“There is nothing as it stands to stop the BNP from acting in this way and there is nothing that the performers can do to prevent it. If a moral right came in you would then be able to test how far you could stretch it,” he said.

“Billy Bragg, for example, could find his track New England for sale on a BNP website raising money for something that he has spent his entire musical life campaigning against. We would like to think that there should be a framework in this country sufficient to prevent something like that happening.”

A BNP spokesman said the party had no plans to remove any of the music.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk, 28 May 2009

May 29, 2009
The BNP is facing an inquiry

Mystery of the BNP’s general election war chest

The British National Party is facing an inquiry into its funding after its leader, Nick Griffin, paid a £5,000 political donation into his personal bank account without declaring it.

The party’s finances came under scrutiny yesterday after it declared donations with the Electoral Commission of £21,132 for the first quarter of this year. No donations were declared between March and December last year. It has pledged to spend £500,000 campaigning for next week’s European and local elections alone.

Under Electoral Commission rules, donations in excess of £5,000 to political parties and in excess of £1,000 given to party members to be used for political activity must be declared.

Mr Griffin’s handling of the gift raises questions about BNP efforts to provide anonymity to its supporters.

The BNP has fielded 450 candidates for the local elections and 66 for the European Parliament — at least one for every constituency in the United Kingdom, bar Northern Ireland. The candidates have been backed by a party machine that says it is providing 29 million leaflets and has acquired 50,000 random mobile phone numbers to lobby with text messages.

In its 2007 audited accounts, the party listed a total income of £611,274, including £198,023 from donations. It spent £661,856, leaving it with a deficit of £50,582. Mr Griffin said that nearly £70,000 of income was not included because some records were missing after an internal dispute.

The party has yet to file last year’s accounts but Mr Griffin told The Times that the bulk of the funds for this year’s campaign had been raised from “ordinary Britons” who made small donations.

Mr Griffin admitted that he had paid a £5,000 donation that appeared to be from a political supporter into his own bank account and then transferred the money to a sympathetic political organisation without alerting the authorities.

He said that he did so because the donor, an elderly North London woman who is a member of the BNP, wished to remain anonymous. He said that he gave the money in February to the nationalist trade union Solidarity, which has strong BNP links, because he believed that it would have had to be declared if he had given the donation to the party. He said that there was “no need” to declare it as the donor had asked him to put the money to “best use”. The commission will review the donation to Mr Griffin after a complaint from the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight.

Details of the transaction emerged as David Cameron, the Tory leader, mounted the most savage attack to date on the BNP by a major political leader. “They dress up in a suit and knock on your door in a nice way but they are still Nazi thugs,” he said.

Meanwhile, bowing to public pressure, Mr Griffin said that he would not attend a summer garden party hosted by the Queen, after anti-racism campaigners claimed that his presence would embarrass the monarchy.

Times Online

May 28, 2009
BNP: A party of convictions
The BNP claims to be the party of law and order but its ranks are full of people with serious criminal records. […] [Also Terrorist Links are listed below]

Here are some of the most recent cases where BNP members have been convicted.

November 2008 Ian Hindle (left) | details |
Jailed for three years for having sex with a child

November 2008 Andrew Wells (right)
Jailed for two years and three months after admitting engaging in sexual activity with a child and engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child.

October 2008 Lockart Kneen | details |
Fined £150 and £115 after being found guilty of two counts of racially and religiously aggravated harrassment for affixing anti-Islamic stickers to packages he sent out in the mail. He ran an operation selling BNP magazines on the Internet and sent out packages with stickers that read “no more mosques.”

October 2008 Martin Glasgow | details |
Chesterfield BNP fundholder Martin Glasgow is jailed for 12 months for a racist assault against an Asian man in June 2006.

October 2008 Anthony Weeks | details |
Darlington BNP member Anthony Weeks is given a ten month jail sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to pay £600 in compensation to his victim and order to do 80 hours community service after admitting racially aggravated assault against an Egyptian customer at his place of work, a local cash and carry. After telling his victim that he was a member of the BNP Weeks then shouted “All you foreigners should not be in my country” before punching him. He was spared jail after his victim spoke up for him. The judge stated that “but for Mr Noaman’s intervention, you would have gone immediately to prison.”

November 2007 Andrew Kendall | details |
BNP supporter Andrew Kendall was given an 18 month conditional discharge and fined £200 for putting up a racially-offensive and threatening poster which showed three black men, the words read “Illegal immigrant murder scum” and contact details for the British National Party.

October 2007 Shaun Jones | details |
Welsh BNP supporter Shaun Jones is given a six month community order for threatening polling booth staff on 4 May 2007 with a stick after being told he was not registered to vote. He ignored advice from staff who gave him a phone number to call to register and instead continued shouting and swearing at them until he was arrested. He was also made to pay £150 costs.

August 2007 Dominic Bugler | details |
Bugler, the BNP candidate for Pelsall ward, Walsall, in the May 2007 elections is arrested and remanded in custody for the possession of an imitation firearm. He is later handed a two-year ASBO earned because he ’caused misery for residents through his violent and drunken behaviour’ and which bans him from parts of Pelsall. The Aldridge and Brownhills Housing Trust won an eviction order against him too but he avoided this by moving of his own accord to a new address. Bugler also appeared in court charge with threatening behaviour towards his wife in late August and agreed to be bound over to keep the peace for 12 months for a sum of £200.

June 2007 Robert Bennett
Robert Bennett, the convicted gang rapist who oversaw the BNP leafletting campaign in Oldham in 2002, is arrested for his part in a assault on his next door neighbour which began when they ask his son David to leave a BBQ after he began using racist language. David attacked his neighbour after refusing to leave . He returned with his father and the pair subsequently attacked both the male and female neighbour. Robert Bennett who admitted affray was sentenced to 150 hours community service and £250 compensation whilst his son, who also pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 250 hours community service and ordered to pay £500 compensation.

May 2007 Jamie Sedgewick | details |
Jamie Sedgewick, a BNP member from Morden is found guilty of screaming racist abuse at an Asian police officer as he was arrested whilst breaking up a fight at the Hideaway Bar, Kingston Road, in March 2006.

March 2007 David Copeland | details |
The Appeal Court increases David Copeland’s sentence to a minimum of 50 years. The London nail bomber, who had been an active member of the BNP, had originally been sentenced to a minimum term of 30 years for the three bombs he set off in 1999 which killed three people and injured 139 others.

February 2007 John Laidlaw | details |
John Laidlaw is sentenced to life after going on a shooting spree in north London in May 2006. He shot Abu Kamara in Upper Street before accidentally shooting Emma Sheridan at Finsbury Park Tube station, as he aimed at a second man. Laidlaw had a string of previous convictions starting at the age of 14. They included property damage, public order offences and 16 counts of theft and possession of knives. He also carried out seven armed street muggings and had been in and out of jail several times. In October 2004 he attacked a black motorist, hurling racist abuse at him. A police report written after Laidlaw was arrested for the attack said he behaved violently in front of officers and was “foaming at the mouth”. “In the presence and hearing of the black female gaoler the defendant made racist comments and remarks, stating he was a member of the BNP and that he hated all black people,” the document says. He also said he was going to “kill all black people”. He was convicted of racially aggravated actual bodily harm and using racist language.

February 2007 Robert Cottage | details |
Robert Cottage, a BNP member and former council election candidate, pleads guilty to possessing explosives. He denies, however, as does his co-defendant David Jackson, conspiracy to cause an explosion. The jury are unable to agree a verdict. A retrial will take place in July.

January 2007 David Enderby | details |
David Enderby, a BNP councillor in Redditch, is found guilty of assault on three members of his estranged wife’s family. He is fined £100 for each assault and ordered to pay £100 costs. His wife later told the local newspaper that he had a history of domestic violence.

January 2007 Mark Bulman | details |
Mark Bulman was jailed for five years for setting fire to Swindon’s Broad Street mosque. He used a BNP leaflet as a fuse for his petrol bomb.

December 2006 Richard Mulhall | details |
Richard Mulhall, the BNP’s council group leader in Calderdale, was sentenced to do 200 hours of unpaid work on four counts of benefit fraud. Branding him “thoroughly dishonest”, Recorder Felicity Davies said he only escaped jail because relevant legislation was not yet in force when he committed the offences. He was also ordered to pay £2,000 costs and to repay £603.18 in jobseekers’ allowance. He had already repaid the housing benefit and council tax benefit. A jury had found him guilty in October of falsely claiming a total of £3,002.95 in benefits by concealing the fact that his partner was working.

November 2006 Darren Francis
BNP member Darren Francis is given a five-year restraining order after being found guilty of harassing Sally Keeble, the MP for Northampton North.

September 2006 Robert McGlynn | details |
Robert McGlynn, a Swansea BNP activist, is fined £200 plus £200 costs for shouting racist abuse at an Asian woman. He was convicted on evidence from a passer-by. He later loses his appeal against conviction and is ordered to pay a further £140 in costs.

July 2006 Allen Boyce
The former National Front Remembrance Day parade bugler Allen Boyce, 73, now a BNP supporter, receives a two-year suspended sentence for giving bomb-making instructions to Terry Collins, a BNP member, who was sentenced to five years in 2005 for conducting a racist hate campaign against the Asian community in Eastbourne.

May 2006 Angela Clarke
A former BNP councillor Angela Clarke is fined £200 for resisting arrest during a fracas.

May 2006 Kevin Hughes
Kevin Hughes, who acted as election agent for the BNP Redditch councillor David Enderby in May 2006, is sentenced to 30 months in prison for assaulting an Iraqi asylum seeker. The sentence is later reduced to two years on appeal.

March 2006 Luke Smith
A former BNP Burnley councillor Luke Smith is imprisoned for 11 months for violent disorder, and a further six months for other violent offences. He is also banned from football matches for six years. Smith was expelled from the BNP in 2003 following an assault on a BNP organiser.

February 2006 Stephen Bailey
Stephen Bailey, a Lincoln BNP activist, is convicted of 35 charges of criminal damage and 19 of arson. He set fire to sheds, litter bins and a car and is believed to have vandalised more than 80 cars by slashing tyres and damaging bodywork. Bailey was arrested after police seized computer equipment and documents from his home.

November 2005 Roderick Rowley
Roderick Rowley, a former BNP candidate in Coventry, is imprisoned for 15 months after admitting 14 charges of making, distributing or possessing obscene images of children. He is also ordered to register as a sex offender for ten years.

May 2005 Karl Hanson
Karl Hanson is fined £400 for possessing heroin and crack cocaine. News of his arrest broke a few days before the May 2005 local elections in which he was a BNP candidate in Huddersfield.

April 2005 John Cope
John Cope, a Cheshunt BNP member and election candidate, is fined £750 and ordered to pay £104 costs for harassing an anti-racist campaigner.

March 2005 Terry Collins
Terry Collins, a BNP member, is sentenced to five years in prison for a year-long campaign of terror against Asian families in Eastbourne. He claims the BNP “brainwashed” him. Collins, a former Territorial Army soldier, admitted charges of arson, racially aggravated harassment and criminal damage. He also admitted the possession of bullets found in his home and asked for 11 further offences of racially aggravated criminal damage to be taken into account.

Terrorist Links

The conviction of ROBERT COTTAGE for possession of explosives has once again highlighted the link between BNP members and racial violence and terrorism. While the BNP moved quickly to distance itself from the actions of a man who stood in three local elections as a BNP candidate, he joins a growing list of BNP members who have engaged in some form of terrorist or murderous behaviour. Read more.
- DAVID COPELAND – London nail bomber David Copeland brought havoc to London when he set off three nail bombs in 1999. He was a BNP member and activist in East London. He told police when questioned that he wanted to ignite a race war in Britain so that the white population would vote for a BNP government. Read more
- TONY LECOMBER – Nick Griffin’s chief lieutenant Tony Lecomber was convicted and imprisoned for three years for five offences under the Explosives Act after he tried to blow up the offices of a political party. Police found hand grenades and detonators at his home. Despite this the BNP kept him on its payroll for over ten years. He was eventually forced out of his job after he approached Joe Owens to kill a leading politician.
- ALLEN BOYCE and TERRY COLLINS In July 2006 Allen Boyce, a BNP supporter, received a two-year suspended sentence for providing Terry Collins, a BNP activist, with bomb making instructions. Collins himself was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in 2005 for conducting a racist terror campaign against the Asian community in Eastbourne. Read more
- MARK BULLMAN – arsonist Mark Bulman, a BNP activist, was jailed for five years in January after trying to set fire to Swindon’s Broad Street mosque. He used a BNP leaflet as a fuse for his petrol bomb. Read more
- JOE OWENS – gangland hitman For three years until summer 2004 Joe Owens acted as the personal bodyguard to Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, as well as being the Merseyside organiser of the BNP. However, Owens was also known locally as a gangland hitman, whom police had linked to several underworld murders.
Left to right: Mark Bulman, Allen Boyce, Joe Owens , Tony Lecomber (image David Hoffman)

Hope Not Hate
May 27, 2009
Churchill’s grandson branded the BNP’s action as ‘offensive and disgusting’

Churchill’s grandson slams BNP image

Sir Winston Churchill’s grandson has described as “offensive and disgusting” a decision by the BNP to use his image in a party election broadcast.

Pictures of Britain’s wartime leader feature alongside archive footage from the Second World War in the British National Party’s broadcast, to be aired on Tuesday night.

BNP chairman Nick Griffin can be seen adopting part of Churchill’s famous “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech to promote his own manifesto.

Conservative MP for Mid-Sussex, Nicholas Soames, hit out at the appropriation of his grandfather’s image and said he had tried to get the Electoral Commission to ban its use by the BNP.

Mr Soames said: “My views are that they have behaved in a disgusting manner. They should not take my grandfather’s name in vain. He would have been appalled by their views and the way they claim to represent the wartime generation. It’s nonsense. Were it possible to take action, we would. We find it offensive and disgusting.”

In a magazine called The Rune published in 1995 and edited by Mr Griffin an article appears to praise the exploits of the SS during the Second World War.

It says: “The tales of Waffen SS courage and sacrifices are almost limitless.”

It adds: “In an unbiased assessment of war crimes, however, the Waffen SS were undoubtedly no worse than the troops of other nations – countless Allied war crimes are simply not publicised.”

A year later, Mr Griffin picketed Coventry Cathedral to hand out leaflets referring to the “mass murder” during the Allied bombing of Dresden.

BNP deputy chairman Simon Darby has refuted suggestions Mr Griffin supported the actions of the Waffen SS. Referring to his party’s election broadcast, he said: “There is a substantial amount of Churchillian rhetoric in it.”

Guardian

May 26, 2009
BNP and Terrorism Link

Robert Cottage, 49, of Colne, Lancashire.

A former British National Party candidate who amassed a stash of explosive chemicals in anticipation of a future civil war was jailed today for two and a half years.

Robert Cottage, 49, was cleared after two trials of conspiracy to cause explosions. He earlier pleaded guilty to possessing the chemicals.

Police discovered a large stockpile of chemicals and food at his home in Colne, Lancashire, last September.

Officers mounted the operation after Cottage’s wife told a social worker she was concerned about the substances, and about her husband’s belief that immigrants were swamping Britain, which he feared was on the brink of civil war.

Cottage appeared at Manchester’s crown square court to be sentenced in relation to the charge of possession.

Cottage’s barrister, Alistair Webster QC, said his client admitted having bought the potassium nitrate and sulphur and planning to manufacture gunpowder but said he would have used the chemicals only to create “thunder flash”-style bangers to scare off intruders.

The judge, Mrs Justice Swift, labelled Cottage’s actions “criminal and potentially dangerous”.

She noted that the pre-sentence report said Cottage held “overvalued ideas” but said the risk of his committing further offences was low.

“It is important to understand that Cottage’s intention was that if he ever had to use the thunder flashes, it was only for the purpose of deterrence,” she said.

“The pre-sentence report says Cottage continues to hold views that veer towards the apocalyptic. The risk of further offending of the same type is low but it cannot be ruled out.”

A second man, David Jackson, a 62-year-old dentist, was also charged with conspiracy to cause explosions but was cleared after the jury twice failed to reach verdicts.

Mrs Justice Swift said there was no evidence the chemicals’ packaging had been opened or that Cottage had attempted to make gunpowder.

Cottage, of Talbot Street, has already served 10 and a half months in jail and is likely to be freed within six months.

Guardian

May 23, 2009
BNP and Greek Connection Unleashed

By Kevin Widdop, 12/04/2009

THIS chilling picture shows BNP deputy leader Simon Darby being given a NAZI SALUTE at a fascist rally.

Three extremists flashed the banned Hitler-style sign to the British far-right boss outside the event in Italy.

Our exclusive snap fuels fears of danger ahead as the British National Party gains popularity in the recession.

Darby, leading a drive for seats at the European Parliament elections in June, was following Stratos Karanikolau, from the Greek nationalist Proti Grammi (Front Line) party.

They were joined by MEPs Roberto Fiore, a convicted terrorist, and Holocaust denier Bruno Gollnisch at the 400-strong meeting in Milan.

Last night Labour MP Jon Cruddas said: “This shows the BNP are a gang of thugs parading as politicians.”

POLITICAL LINE-UP: Gollnisch, Fiore, Karanikolau and Darby

News Of the World

May 22, 2009