Rip Van Winkle wakes up

Mr Andrew Brons MEP has just favoured us with another of his, very belated, pronouncements on the state of the British National Party. It seems that it has just dawned on Mr Brons that the right to natural justice and to free speech cannot be optional extras for members of the BNP, to which lip service is paid provided no-one has the temerity to attempt to exercise them, but instead must be at the very heart of the way the party operates, at least if it is to have any hope at all of being regarded by the electorate as a serious contender for office, rather than some kind of bizarre secular cult of Griffin worship.

Am I expressing my concerns well (in your opinion) Mr Brons? Or have I simply (in your opinion) decided I do not like our chairman?

Here's a concern for you, Mr Brons: why have you waited until now to express these thoughts? Why did you not speak up when the esteemed chairman's Stalinist 'reign of terror' began? When Mr Griffin rigged the nomination process for a leadership election, the only democratic means of calling the leadership to account to the members, under the present dictator's charter of a constitution, where were you? Why did you remain silent, Mr Brons? Out of fear? Fear of what? What could the chairman have done to you? Withdrawn the party whip from you in the European 'parliament'? Suspended you from the party? He would have been cutting off his nose to spite his face. He would have had to have been a fool to have done any such thing.

By speaking out and censuring Mr Griffin's insane victimization of his challenger for the leadership, and that challenger's supporters, of whom I am justifiably proud to have been one, you might have halted the trail of destruction, over which you now wring your hands. You personally might have made and been the difference. As well as having the inestimable satisfaction of knowing that you had saved the party from untold misery and misfortune, you would have assured yourself an honourable place in the annals of nationalist history.

Instead you chose to wash your hands of the whole affair. Until very recently, that is. Now it has become clear that the dissidents are no longer a small, weak, and persecuted sect but are, on the contrary the growing wave, soon to be the tsunami, of the future, you wake up with a start, like Rip Van Winkle, look about you, and start to speak sententiously of the need to tolerate dissent, and the rights of the grass-roots.

I could say much more in this vein, but I fear to cause offence. Oh yes, I fear it. You see I know that you believe criticism of leaders should be made in measured terms. Well, as a leader (of sorts) yourself perhaps that should not surprise us too much.

I have, in an earlier article "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" explained to BNP members that, unlike us, our esteemed chairman does not love the BNP. That for him it has only ever represented a source of easy money, and of avoiding having to work for a living. That provided he can cling to its back like a monkey as it shrinks in size with each passing month, he does not care how small it becomes, as he at least remains the all-powerful leader of a party rump and in sole control of its revenue stream, since this is all politics means, or has ever meant to him.

I have gone further and explained to BNP members that Mr Griffin, our esteemed chairman, actually wants any member who is not prepared to bow down and worship his magnificent ineptitude to walk away from the party, and yes, preferably, to join another party, since it is only if his critics walk away rather than stay to fight that he is able to maintain his petty tyranny over the party.

There will be another leadership challenge this year. If it is unsuccessful there will be one next year and the year after that, until we succeed in ousting our esteemed chairman, and returning the BNP to its rightful owners, the members.

Mr Butler has stated on his blog that the party still has approximately 8,500 members, and he says that his sources are good. Very highly placed sources. Sources close to our esteemed chairman. It seems likely that as the fair-weather patriots, and the weaker brethren, bid us adieu, on their way to join the self-parodying, civic 'nationalist', 'English' Democrats, of whom the sadly misguided Mr Butler seems to think so highly, we shall before many more months have elapsed get down to a hard core of a few thousand members who are much more likely to stick with the party through thick and thin. Then the rate of decrease will bottom out, and the membership will stabilize.

I suggest that by the time we have arrived at that point Mr Griffin's supporters will be in a small minority within the party, and that it will finally have dawned upon even the most dog-like of cult followers of our highly esteemed chairman that he has got to go.

The recent BBC Daily Politics interview of BNP deputy leader Simon Darby, drew attention to the enormous gulf between the massive support for the BNP's policies, and the level of support the party receives at the polls. Mr Darby struggled manfully with this question, suggesting unconvincingly that it could be explained by the media's demonization of the party's policies, and studiously avoiding the real answer: that the electorate will not have our esteemed chairman at any price. Well, who can blame them?

For anyone but a Griffin cultist, however, this is highly encouraging. Once the esteemed one is ousted, the party's prospects look bright indeed. Even the party's debts begin to look more manageable against a backdrop of large and growing electoral support.

What kind of leader should we have to replace Mr Griffin? Well, of course, one important qualification is that he should be of a democratic, rather than a dictatorial temperament. Another, and related, qualification is that he should be a genuine team player, rather than a prima donna. Above all he should be trustworthy, a man of honour and integrity.

The party has many able men and women with these good qualities, and more.

The party's turbulent adolescence is now almost behind it. Soon it will come of age.

Mr Brons' article now follows.

Keeping Our Membership – Saving The Party

At the last General Election, we had a party membership of fourteen thousand members, of which perhaps a thousand or more were regular activists of some sort or another. Those figures were sufficient to enable us to run a credible campaign as a serious minor party. We contested 339 seats (just ahead of the Green Party) and our average vote per contested seat was just ahead of UKIP and nearly double that of the Green Party. We could not have fought such a campaign with significantly fewer members or significantly fewer activists. I warned members of this at the counting of nominations in August.

Since then I have always tried to encourage members to renew and discourage members from leaving - whether to join other genuine but tiny nationalist parties or multi-racialist civic nationalist parties or simply to drop out of politics. It has been an uphill struggle because of the level of discontent, especially among activists.

Some of that discontent (about the General Election result) was unwarranted, whilst some (about the need for greater financial accountability and constitutional reform) was (in my opinion) justified. Some concerns were expressed reasonably, whilst others were expressed less well. Some people simply decided that they did not like our Chairman. I did not share their antipathy but their attitude did not concern me greatly.

Political parties are not mutual admiration societies and nor should they be. We have to work with people, we do not much like, in politics as in our ordinary places of work.

When I tried to keep people within the Party, I thought that I was doing something that was self-evidently for its benefit. There could be no argument about whether or not I was doing the right thing. I was clearly wrong.

A member of the Yorkshire Surveillance Squad told one of our key organisers that it did not matter if we lost five hundred members out of every thousand, as long as the remaining five hundred were loyal (to the Chairman remaining Chairman). When I heard this, I presumed that he was speaking on his own account or that he was expressing his own opinion in exaggerated terms. I was wrong yet again. One of our assistants, in Strasbourg, informed our Chairman that the Kirklees (Huddersfield & Dewsbury) Branch had defected to the multi-racial English Democratic Party and suggested that we should reveal the appalling truth about the EDP. “No,” he said, “Not yet. There are others I would like to get out of the Party too. I want them to join the EDP and get rid of them all”. It would appear that the Yorkshire Surveillance Squad member was speaking His Master’s Voice. This disastrous policy must be reversed. Members must be encouraged to stay and they, in turn, must exercise their judgement by rejecting safety valve parties like the EDP, which has been described as UKIP without that party’s electoral success.

It would seem that we all have a lot of growing up to do. Members and leaderships of other parties do not behave like this. Leaders who lose substantial support try to satisfy the demands of the disaffected. Members who dislike current leaders stay within their parties. Attending meetings of dissentient members is not a disciplinary offence in other parties. Criticisms are made of leaders in other parties but they are made in measured terms.

We must turn our Party into one that is tolerant of dissent and open to free discussion. We must turn it into a democratic model that we can follow, if we should ever be entrusted with power. We must treat each other with respect and tolerance to demonstrate how we would manage the state if we were ever given the opportunity. If we behave like hyenas with PMT and run our Party as though it were Enver Hoxha’s Albania, we should not blame the British people for failing to elect us.