Butler is 'Griffin Lite'

The following is a copy of an official British National Party e-mail which was sent out to the party's members by Mr Butler, in his capacity as Griffin's obedient stooge.  The letter disparages a BNP councillor, Colin Auty, and his supporters, who were attempting to collect the required number of one hundred nominating signatures, from 'eligible to vote' members, for a leadership challenge in 2008. 

It was an absolute disgrace for Butler to abuse his senior position within the BNP in order to attempt to head off a constitutional challenge to Griffin's leadership in this way.  It was obviously done with Griffin's connivance, if not on his explicit instructions, but in any political party with the slightest pretensions to internal democracy it would have resulted in Butler's immediate dismissal from his positions within the party.

Butler should not have been surprised (though he was) when the Frankenstein's Monster, Griffin, whom he did more than most to help create, finally turned on him as well.

In a sense there is a certain poetic justice about what happened to Butler.  This political illiterate was largely the author of his own misfortune.  However, far more serious for nationalism: Butler helped to bring about the tragedy that was Griffin's exploitation of a party of more than ten thousand members for purely personal aggrandizement.  How does Butler sleep at night?  As well as Griffin, no doubt.

Statement on the so-called Leadership challenge

FROM: Edward. Butler. TO: elections@bnp.org.uk  Monday, 12 May 2008, 18:09

Anyone in the Party who has more than five years continuous membership has the Right to stand for the leadership of the Party. The only limit to the exercising of this Right is that in the case of officers ten nomination signatures of members of two years standing must be obtained and for non officers a hundred signatures are required. This is to ensure that frivolous candidates do not stand.

Q:  And who is to decide who is to be classified as a "frivolous" candidate?  A:  The incumbent, or one of his creatures, like Butler.

As I said this is a Right that members have. And it is an important Right – it is a declaration of our Parties [sic] openness and commitment to democracy.  This is priceless!  What hypocrisy!  However with Rights come responsibilities and duties. A Right without a duty is an abomination in any society. It is a recipe for chaos. Indeed in our modern society it is the incessant claiming of Rights by groups that shown [sic] no sense of duty or responsibility that is one of the key components of the undermining of the civic order of our country.

So in the instance of standing for leadership of the Party, the Party as a whole should expect anyone who has the temerity to wish to stand for leadership only to uphold their Right to do so after that person had carefully weighed their duty to the cause and the Party and their fellow members. We as members should expect that a candidate would only put themselves forward if they were of sufficient stature and ability to potentially be able to lead the Party if they were to win. Otherwise why would someone wish to challenge for the leadership? To expose wrongdoing at the top of the party, perhaps. It is a duty of other members not to sign the nomination papers of any potential candidate unless they seriously think that that person is a viable and serious leadership contender. That is the whole point of the requirement for signatories.  With which you are illegitimately tampering.

A leadership challenge is not an excuse to air grievances. Grievances like being sacked from one's senior positions in the party in disgrace, perhaps. It is not there for disgruntled people to act out their personal bitterness about things – no matter how ‘justified’ they may think their grievances are. It is an abuse of the process to misuse it in that way. It is an abuse of their Constitutional Right.

And that is precisely what we are seeing this year. We are seeing a candidate pushed forward by people who themselves admit, has absolutely no chance of winning, and admit would never be up to the job of chairman anyway and they admit that the sole reason they are doing it is to air their own personal grievances. Can this be true? In other words their sole aim is to raise issues which have already been fully aired and which could be raised at a variety of different forums (Mr Griffin's door is always open, isn't it Eddy?) such as the Summer School (where there is always a session for all participants where they can bring up matters they are unhappy about) or the Annual Conference.  At which one may expect to receive a fair hearing - I don't think.

What is the likely outcome of this leadership challenge? The challengers (there may in fact be two!) will be comprehensively defeated.  What is Griffin frightened of then, Eddy?  The leadership challenge process as it currently stands in the Constitution will be brought into disrepute. There will be pressure, perhaps unstoppable pressure, to change the rules so that leadership challenges can only take place every four years.

I would not normally comment on a leadership election. It should normally be up to the membership to make their own minds up without non-participants trying to influence the process. Influence it in favour of the incumbent: your master, Griffin.

But the backers of this ridiculous bid should reconsider their aimless tactic. People should refuse to sign the nomination papers. It is a distraction and a waste of time and effort and it will end up almost certainly with the constitution changed in a way that destroys the important Right of the possibility of a yearly election. Standing a no-hoper is stupid, mindless and fatally undermines our Constitution.  No, it is a letter such as this that is fatally undermining our constitution.  It is a pitiful and moronic – a bankrupt tactic by people who can only be described as having gone giddy to the extent that they are now without the imagination to think how they can raise issues in a legitimate way. [Emphasis mine, AE].

This election, if it goes ahead, should be carried out in the most rapid manner possible with zero publicity allowed for the joke candidate ('free and fair' then, in the finest Soviet tradition) (who may in other circumstances be described as a decent and 'nice' bloke etc) and the least disruption to our continued efforts. That is the best way to minimise the harmful effects. [Emphasis mine, AE].

Eddy Butler
National Elections Officer
Eastern Regional Organiser

[END]

No leadership election was actually held in 2008.  Cllr Auty and his team, who were trying to collect the one hundred nominations, failed to collect the required number, though not by many.  Their failure was largely due to Butler's unconstitutional, unfair and undemocratic interference in the nominations' process, creating a climate of fear within the party, on behalf of the increasingly tyrannical Griffin.

It was this climate of fear of repercussions that subsequently, two years later, in 2010, helped to prevent Butler and his team from collecting the very much larger number of nominations (viz, 840) that was then needed for Butler's own leadership challenge.  As they say, "What goes around, comes around".

Despite the fact that Griffin had not faced a leadership election in 2008, he nevertheless still sought to alter the BNP constitution in his own favour, as the incumbent, by attempting to persuade an Emergency General Meeting (EGM), held in the latter half of 2008, to abolish the members' theoretical right of annual challenge.  This was exactly what Butler had warned might happen, if there were to have been a leadership election in 2008.    

Meeting stiff opposition, principally organized by Richard Edmonds, Mike Easter and Chris Jackson, to his proposed power grab, Griffin withdrew at the EGM itself his proposal for the abolition of the members' annual right of challenge for the leadership.  However, the nominations' threshold for triggering a leadership election was converted into a requirement for the nominating signatures of five per cent of members with at least two years' continuous membership of the party.  This change, from an absolute number (viz, 100) to a relative number, (ie, a percentage), in theory would permit a corrupt leadership to pluck from thin air any figure they chose as the nominations' threshold for a future leadership election.

This repressive measure was misrepresented to the unsuspecting members in attendance at the EGM as a practicable compromise with Griffin's burgeoning megalomania.  It was proposed by Arthur Kemp, following consultation with Griffin and supported by Eddy Butler and a greater than two-thirds' majority at the meeting.  It was one more milestone on the long road to the BNP's very own Munich.  It was one more doomed attempt to appease the appetite for power of a voracious beast.

I now quote from an article by Butler entitled The Blame Game, which was published on his blog in the latter half of 2010, in which Butler confesses to his complicity in the creation of the Griffin tyranny that has wrecked and ruined our BNP.

"This whole series of events is even more despicable since, just a month before, (on 14 February 2010) I had helped steer his (ie, Griffin's) dictator’s charter of a constitution through an EGM.  Being purged was your reward.  I will freely admit I was one of the handful of people who were fully aware of the more reprehensible sections which drastically increased Nick Griffin’s personal power, such as the increase in nominations required to stand as Chairman."  It's a great pity you did not draw these "reprehensible sections" of the proposed new constitution to the attention of the meeting, in that case.  As chairman of the EGM it was your duty to do so.