The Ego has landed

The following exchange of posts comes from the British Democracy Forum, on 25 July 2011, the day of the BNP leadership election count.

Based upon my reading of a number of his posts, I believe that the poster with the user name Mafeking is a veteran nationalist and an old colleague and friend of the late founder of the British National Party, John Tyndall.  Again, based upon my reading of a number of his posts, I believe the poster with the user name High Road to be Eddy Butler.

I agree with Mafeking's criticism of Butler's call for BNP members not to renew their membership of the party.  As far as I am aware, I was the first, of the erstwhile supporters of Butler's unsuccessful leadership challenge, publicly to distance myself from this advice and to promulgate advice directly to the contrary: that members should renew their membership, as it fell due for renewal. This advice to renew was subsequently also promulgated by the BNP Reform 2011 web site.

Again, as far as I am aware, I was also the first of Butler's erstwhile supporters, publicly to censure him, in writing, over his public promotion of the English Democrats, a rival and civic 'nationalist' political party.  BNP Reform 2011 subsequently issued a statement, drafted by myself, reprehending Butler's misconduct. This misconduct had included the disloyalty of publicly disparaging the prospects of a successful challenge to Griffin's leadership in 2011, and pouring scorn on those of his (Butler's) former supporters who were preparing to mount such a challenge.

I disagree with Mafeking's (and reportedly Lecomber's) opinion that a legal challenge to the unjust suspensions and expulsions which accompanied and followed Butler's leadership challenge would necessarily have helped to oust Griffin.  We have observed Griffin's delaying tactics when faced with litigation, and have noted the latitude he has been allowed by the courts.

I have been asked, since Butler went off the rails following his unjust expulsion from the BNP (he was denied a tribunal to which he was entitled, on the spurious grounds that he had less than two years' continuous membership of the party) whether I now regretted having supported his leadership challenge last year.  My answer was an emphatic "No!"  Despite all his faults and failings (and no-one is free of these) Butler would have been an improvement on Griffin, whose character unfits him for any position of trust whatsoever.

High Road: You obviously don’t know that Butler was expelled by Griffin from the NF in 1986. That Griffin joined with the pro C18 types in the BNP in the mid 1990s and that is one reason why Butler left the BNP in 1996. Butler had a rapprochement with Griffin around 1998 when Griffin professed to agree with his analysis. Butler got back involved and then found Griffin’s [...] and fell out with him again in 2000 and he joined the Freedom Party, only to come back to the BNP in 2003 as he says he felt he had to help with the success the BNP was enjoying then.

Yet an ‘old timer’ like you says:

“Nicholas Griffin - a man seen through by any with eyes to see, but not seen through at all by Mr Butler, not for years, until Nicholas Griffin's malice fell upon his own head.”

And why did Nick Griffin’s malice fall upon Butler’s head?

Could it be because Butler was about to expose Griffin’s financial wrong doings? Or do you have some other explanation that everyone else is ignorant at of?

Take a look at this one example NNF expert:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London_Council_election,_1981

Also Mafeking you demonstrate abject ignorance of the dynamics within the BNP. If Butler had not increased pressure by all the means at his disposal, including telling people not to donate, not to be active not to renew and even by mildly promoting a rival party, do you seriously think that Griffin’s regime would have suffered the constant rate of attrition that it has. People like Kemp and Moffat would still be sucking on Griffin’s teet [sic]. Brons would never have stirred.

That is the simple fact.

Butler was fighting pretty much single handedly and had to do what he could with limited means. Let’s presume for a moment that you are a genuine old time nationalist. What exactly have you ever done to bring down Griffin? Anything at all?

Mafeking: Dear me, Mr Butler, your ego is quite as unable to tolerate criticism as ever it was.

I shall ignore your hagiography of yourself to remind you of previous statements of mine, namely that I (with others) strongly urged John never to admit the likes of Nicholas Griffin in to our party, and that when John appointed Nicholas Griffin to the editorship of Spearhead that was the cause of a sharp breach between us. When Nicholas Griffin's biting of the hand that fed him was revealed, that breach was healed, and - like others - I sank time and a good deal of money in to the effort to see Griffin off.

We were, of course, baulked by those, such as yourself, who, with prior knowledge of Nicholas Griffin's infamous character and history, set about deposing the party's founder in favour of a person you knew very well to be unfitted to the least amount of power, it being a certainty that he would abuse and misuse it - which he promptly did!

I have also told you of how, while you again returned your support to Nicholas Griffin as he and Mr Lecomber sought to expel the party's founder, I again reached for my wallet and made substantial contributions towards underwriting John's legal costs. Did you so much as raise a finger in defence of the founder you so fecklessly betrayed? Not a bit of it.

While it is the case that in the summer of last year you began at last to tell something of the truth of Nicholas Griffin, for some of us, objects of your scorn, it was too little and by far too late, and pre-empted [sic] only when Nicholas Griffin's spite and malice was directed upon yourself. What will never impress is that you knew so much long before this, and acted as Griffin's creature in all you did, yet then affected that you did so with a peg affixed to your nose.

You are to be thanked for the information you have since delivered, but in light of your associations with another political party I and particularly those others who placed trust in you are entitled to pose the question as to whether the interests of that other political party were not, all along, the covert but primary agenda to which you kept.

Your advice, rejected all along by me, that the BNP be abandoned and memberships either resigned or not renewed has proved the most disastrous advice yet given in this entire saga, and handsomely negates any good you may have intended.

Attack me by all means, call me a liar, question my record, pick at a faulty memory, do all that if you must and will, but it will never change the fact that the singular reason why Nicholas Griffin remains Chairman of the BNP today is your failure to lead or encourage in the matter of mounting legal challenges to the expulsions and suspensions (something upon which even Mr Lecomber agreed with myself and others was most urgently necessary), and for giving the worst advice that ever one "nationalist" gave to another.