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
Police are investigating an attack on the home of another Romanian family in Belfast.
