Gary Dobson launches appeal over conviction for killing Steven [sic] Lawrence
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:19 PM on 30th January 2012
Gary Dobson is to launch an appeal over his conviction for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the Court of Appeal confirmed today
Gary Dobson, one of the two men jailed for the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, has lodged an appeal against conviction, it was confirmed today.
The move was confirmed by the Court of Appeal.
Dobson, 36, was sentenced to at least 15 years and two months at the Old Bailey in January.
It is understood that co-accused David Norris will also seek to appeal, but papers have not yet been lodged at the Court of Appeal.
Norris, 35, was given a minimum of 14 years and three months for the murder, which the trial judge, Mr Justice Treacy, said was a 'terrible and evil crime'.
He urged police not to 'close the file' on catching the rest of the killers after the court heard that a gang of five or six white youths set upon A-level student Stephen in Eltham, south east London, in 1993.
Mr Justice Treacy said the murder was committed 'for no other reason than racial hatred'.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093955/Gary-Dobson-launches-appeal-conviction-killing-Steven-Lawrence.html#ixzz1kyDr9nJi
RESPONSE
As nationalists it is our duty to draw attention to the double standards applied by the Establishment whenever race is involved. An excellent example of these double standards is the way in which the five suspects in the Lawrence case have been unjustly persecuted by the media over the last eighteen years.
So pervasive and sustained has been the vilification of these men (who were denied their right to be regarded as innocent until proven guilty) that it is highly questionable whether it was in fact possible for any of them any longer to have received a fair trial for the alleged murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Not only that, but the necessary protection of the ancient common law of 'no double jeopardy' was abolished and the new 1984 style tyranny was made to apply retrospectively, specifically with a view to continue to try the Eltham Martyrs until a jury produced the desired result. And what was the racial composition of the jury in the latest trial? It has been kept a closely guarded secret by the Establishment. There has been no mention of it in the media that I have been able to locate. I wonder why the Establishment, including the media, want to keep this information from the public.
This case should be a cause celebre for British nationalists everywhere.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Friday, 27 January 2012
Nationalist Unity Meeting
Notice of a meeting of the Centre for Democratic Nationalism (CDN)
Venue: The Salthorn Working Mens' Club, Armitage Road, Oakenshaw, Bradford BD12 7AR
Date: Saturday, 4th February 2012
Time: 2pm - 6pm. The club is open before and after these hours, so if you would like a drink either before or after the meeting (or both!), as well as during the meeting: no problem
Speakers:
Andrew Brons MEP
Peter Rushton
Richard Edmonds
Ken Booth (or another person speaking on behalf of 'NE Patriots')
At least half the meeting will be open for comments/short speeches from the floor - this format worked well at the meeting the other month in Queensborough.
Directions. Approaching Bradford from M62 Westbound, ie from Leeds M1, A1 etc, use exit Junction 26 (called 'Chain Bar'). Take slip road to roundabout. Take 5th exit signposted 'Low Moor Oakenshaw' If you get to M606 slip road you have gone too far and have to go around the roundabout again!
Approaching Bradford from M62 Eastbound ie from Manchester etc use exit Junction 26 (called 'Chain Bar'). Take slip road. After approx 150 yards take left hand slip road off the slip road DO NOT REMAIN ON THE M606 SLIP ROAD WHICH CONTINUES AT HIGH LEVEL. At roundabout take 2nd exit signposted 'Low Moor Oakenshaw' If you get to M606 slip road you have gone too far and have to go around the roundabout again!
On Low Moor Road road runs approx 1/4 mile into Oakenshaw village and bears left by a church - starts running uphill. After approx 1/4 mile, just after a zebra crossing there is a road on left called 'Cross Road' just before a public park. Turn left onto Cross Road, Armitage Road is on left. Look for parking.
No Car? Take train to Bradford Interchange, go into bus station in the same building and board 268 bus (runs every 30 minutes) Ask driver for stop by 'public park in Oakenshaw'. Cross the road. Cross Road is visible at the end of the park. Alternatively phone a taxi - we recommend CJ's 01274 606999/602305 - ask for 'Salthorn Club, Oakenshaw'.
If you arrive at Bradford Forster Square either walk to Bradford Interchange (approx 6 minutes) to get the 268 bus or call CJ's Taxis.
There is additional parking available. Drive a further 200 yards uphill past Cross Road, immediately after hump backed bridge there are two pubs on your right. One is the George. This pub is run by Neil Craig Chairman of the Democratic Nationalists Party. Parking, beer including real ale and also coffee is available.
Food? On the road through Oakenshaw immediately after the left hand bend there is a cafe on your left, Charlie's Cafe open untill Saturday lunchtime with a wide range of food including veggie option. Or drive 100 yards past the George pub there is a fish & chip shop on the right of the road. Open till at least 1.00 - excellent quality.
Venue: The Salthorn Working Mens' Club, Armitage Road, Oakenshaw, Bradford BD12 7AR
Date: Saturday, 4th February 2012
Time: 2pm - 6pm. The club is open before and after these hours, so if you would like a drink either before or after the meeting (or both!), as well as during the meeting: no problem
Speakers:
Andrew Brons MEP
Peter Rushton
Richard Edmonds
Ken Booth (or another person speaking on behalf of 'NE Patriots')
At least half the meeting will be open for comments/short speeches from the floor - this format worked well at the meeting the other month in Queensborough.
Directions. Approaching Bradford from M62 Westbound, ie from Leeds M1, A1 etc, use exit Junction 26 (called 'Chain Bar'). Take slip road to roundabout. Take 5th exit signposted 'Low Moor Oakenshaw' If you get to M606 slip road you have gone too far and have to go around the roundabout again!
Approaching Bradford from M62 Eastbound ie from Manchester etc use exit Junction 26 (called 'Chain Bar'). Take slip road. After approx 150 yards take left hand slip road off the slip road DO NOT REMAIN ON THE M606 SLIP ROAD WHICH CONTINUES AT HIGH LEVEL. At roundabout take 2nd exit signposted 'Low Moor Oakenshaw' If you get to M606 slip road you have gone too far and have to go around the roundabout again!
On Low Moor Road road runs approx 1/4 mile into Oakenshaw village and bears left by a church - starts running uphill. After approx 1/4 mile, just after a zebra crossing there is a road on left called 'Cross Road' just before a public park. Turn left onto Cross Road, Armitage Road is on left. Look for parking.
No Car? Take train to Bradford Interchange, go into bus station in the same building and board 268 bus (runs every 30 minutes) Ask driver for stop by 'public park in Oakenshaw'. Cross the road. Cross Road is visible at the end of the park. Alternatively phone a taxi - we recommend CJ's 01274 606999/602305 - ask for 'Salthorn Club, Oakenshaw'.
If you arrive at Bradford Forster Square either walk to Bradford Interchange (approx 6 minutes) to get the 268 bus or call CJ's Taxis.
There is additional parking available. Drive a further 200 yards uphill past Cross Road, immediately after hump backed bridge there are two pubs on your right. One is the George. This pub is run by Neil Craig Chairman of the Democratic Nationalists Party. Parking, beer including real ale and also coffee is available.
Food? On the road through Oakenshaw immediately after the left hand bend there is a cafe on your left, Charlie's Cafe open untill Saturday lunchtime with a wide range of food including veggie option. Or drive 100 yards past the George pub there is a fish & chip shop on the right of the road. Open till at least 1.00 - excellent quality.
Thursday, 26 January 2012
A leadership of all the talents
"...and some have greatness thrust upon 'em"
Andrew Brons is self-evidently the man to reunite the shattered nationalist movement and to lead it on to the glory it deserves.
No-one else has a record of political activity in the nationalist interest that can remotely compare to his.
Furthermore, Andrew's record, which speaks for itself to anyone not blinded by selfish motives, is one of consistent opposition to fragmentation, the bane of any political movement, and promotion of unity, the key to long term success.
Andrew believes in a collective and democratic form of leadership. A leadership of all the talents. A broad church and big tent policy. A movement, not of petty, squabbling dwarfs but of magnanimous, gentle giants. A movement big enough for all of our people. A movement worthy of the name British.
Who will pledge their support for Andrew?
Andrew Brons is self-evidently the man to reunite the shattered nationalist movement and to lead it on to the glory it deserves.
No-one else has a record of political activity in the nationalist interest that can remotely compare to his.
Furthermore, Andrew's record, which speaks for itself to anyone not blinded by selfish motives, is one of consistent opposition to fragmentation, the bane of any political movement, and promotion of unity, the key to long term success.
Andrew believes in a collective and democratic form of leadership. A leadership of all the talents. A broad church and big tent policy. A movement, not of petty, squabbling dwarfs but of magnanimous, gentle giants. A movement big enough for all of our people. A movement worthy of the name British.
Who will pledge their support for Andrew?
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Don't run away from race
Acknowledgements to the BNP Ideas web site for this splendid comment
Brigadier
says:
January 25, 2012 at 5:43 pm
The British Freedom website says that it's about “space not race” and “culture not colour”.
For me personally, I don’t see how race cannot be an issue for anybody claiming to be a Nationalist. Groups of people create societies which are reflective of them. Nationalists would like to see all such groups survive and our own group advance. It is an understanding that the nation-state is the best form of organisation and that each unique group of people has a fundamental right to live among their own kind and determine their own destiny. It is quite obviously about race, not only space. Race is a fundamentally important issue for Nationalists.
In my humble opinion a party which claims to be Nationalist yet seeks to deny race is either:
1) Dishonest, to the point of presenting a platform that they believe to appear “moderate” and be “easier to sell”, which for their sins makes them much like the old parties in terms of their deceit of the voters.
2) Genuine, in their assertions that race isn’t important, which puts them outside the sphere of Nationalism.
or,
3) Naive, about how the system works. British Freedom website in particular makes reference to “winning media support”. The people who own the media, aside from their Zionist inspired foreign policy clash with Nationalist ideals, tend to be businessmen with companies in any number of nations, and with links to many other businessmen and companies. Nationalism means erecting borders not just to immigration but also economic borders. This will set the alarm bells ringing to any Globalist, Capitalist businessman. (UKIP, with their liberal, open border economic policies receive much fairer treatment as they aren’t a particular threat to the powers that be in terms of stopping multi-national companies from offshoring jobs and such like). These are the reasons for hostile press, not race or immigration.
Media attacks on Nationalist parties as being “too extreme” and somehow distasteful on the race issue are red herrings. You can moderate your immigration policies all you like, if you are a Nationalist you are a problem to them and they won’t ever be in your pocket. The reason race and/or immigration are commonly used is because the people who run the mass media understand that these are issues that the British public have been heavily conditioned on, and are therefore easy to attack us on.
This naivety is the belief that essentially, “the media is by and large run by honest people who don’t like parties like the BNP because they think they’re too hardline on race, therefore if we tone it down a bit, they’ll start being nice to us”. This, of course, is not the case because the people running the mass media really don’t care that much about our ideas on race, other than the fact that big business would find it harder to pick low wage foreign workers to exploit were immigration stopped.
Now I’m sure British Freedom has plenty of good people involved with it who will probably now offer a number of explanations as to why they adopt such a dishonest, naive or honest policy position, depending on your interpretation of it. The above is not to fall out with such people, but is a criticism of the futile tactic of “moderating” so that your policies are acceptable to your enemies, thus allowing them to set your agenda.
Just to add, this debate is about belief and ideology. Please don’t confuse this with advertising and marketing. Of course, our ideas and policies need to be marketed in an effective manner (for example, ‘voluntary repatriation’ is discussed in terms of ‘a solution to our over-population problem’ and so on) but while this is the case, what we are dealing with here is the actual stated ideological belief itself, that race doesn’t matter, that it’s, to paraphrase the British Freedom party website, “not about race”.
Brigadier
says:
January 25, 2012 at 5:43 pm
The British Freedom website says that it's about “space not race” and “culture not colour”.
For me personally, I don’t see how race cannot be an issue for anybody claiming to be a Nationalist. Groups of people create societies which are reflective of them. Nationalists would like to see all such groups survive and our own group advance. It is an understanding that the nation-state is the best form of organisation and that each unique group of people has a fundamental right to live among their own kind and determine their own destiny. It is quite obviously about race, not only space. Race is a fundamentally important issue for Nationalists.
In my humble opinion a party which claims to be Nationalist yet seeks to deny race is either:
1) Dishonest, to the point of presenting a platform that they believe to appear “moderate” and be “easier to sell”, which for their sins makes them much like the old parties in terms of their deceit of the voters.
2) Genuine, in their assertions that race isn’t important, which puts them outside the sphere of Nationalism.
or,
3) Naive, about how the system works. British Freedom website in particular makes reference to “winning media support”. The people who own the media, aside from their Zionist inspired foreign policy clash with Nationalist ideals, tend to be businessmen with companies in any number of nations, and with links to many other businessmen and companies. Nationalism means erecting borders not just to immigration but also economic borders. This will set the alarm bells ringing to any Globalist, Capitalist businessman. (UKIP, with their liberal, open border economic policies receive much fairer treatment as they aren’t a particular threat to the powers that be in terms of stopping multi-national companies from offshoring jobs and such like). These are the reasons for hostile press, not race or immigration.
Media attacks on Nationalist parties as being “too extreme” and somehow distasteful on the race issue are red herrings. You can moderate your immigration policies all you like, if you are a Nationalist you are a problem to them and they won’t ever be in your pocket. The reason race and/or immigration are commonly used is because the people who run the mass media understand that these are issues that the British public have been heavily conditioned on, and are therefore easy to attack us on.
This naivety is the belief that essentially, “the media is by and large run by honest people who don’t like parties like the BNP because they think they’re too hardline on race, therefore if we tone it down a bit, they’ll start being nice to us”. This, of course, is not the case because the people running the mass media really don’t care that much about our ideas on race, other than the fact that big business would find it harder to pick low wage foreign workers to exploit were immigration stopped.
Now I’m sure British Freedom has plenty of good people involved with it who will probably now offer a number of explanations as to why they adopt such a dishonest, naive or honest policy position, depending on your interpretation of it. The above is not to fall out with such people, but is a criticism of the futile tactic of “moderating” so that your policies are acceptable to your enemies, thus allowing them to set your agenda.
Just to add, this debate is about belief and ideology. Please don’t confuse this with advertising and marketing. Of course, our ideas and policies need to be marketed in an effective manner (for example, ‘voluntary repatriation’ is discussed in terms of ‘a solution to our over-population problem’ and so on) but while this is the case, what we are dealing with here is the actual stated ideological belief itself, that race doesn’t matter, that it’s, to paraphrase the British Freedom party website, “not about race”.
We're there because we're there because...
Acknowledgements to the BNP Ideas web site for the following perspicacious comment on its recent article about the role of an MEP
David M
says:
January 24, 2012
An interesting insight into the actual role of an MEP and what goes on in the EU ‘Parliament’. However, I think we may be in danger of losing sight of why we, as British Nationalists, took part in the process of EU electoral politics in the first place. Why did we, in ‘the BNP’, mount a nationwide campaign to get members elected in the eight [sic, twelve] UK regions (as designated by our masters in Brussels)? Because, like it or not, they exist. The EU and its various institutions exist, although we would wish it otherwise because of the diminution of sovereignty that EU membership represents. Until such times as we as a nation can extricate ourselves from the EU, it is a choice between taking what some might regard as a principled stand in completely boycotting EU elections, or recognising that the process presented an unmissable national electoral opportunity for our party to promote itself and its ideology and obtain more coverage even than in a UK General Election! I recall that the first leader of the UKIP, Prof. Alan Sked, was totally opposed to taking part – ‘on principle’ – and thus departed leaving them to it. As we have seen, they progressed from 3 MEP’s in 1999 to 12 in 2004 and 13 in 2009 (coming 3rd overall). Whatever we may think of them, they demonstrated what could be achieved by a ‘third party’ political force on an anti-EU ticket in an election fought on a PR list system (The d’Hondt electoral method). As the article above points out, many of the UKIPPERS have been seemingly ineffective actually ‘doing the job’. From 1999 they have had their problems with splits and MEP resignations, (Holmes, Kilroy, Mote, Sinclaire). None of that has stopped them from being re-elected because in a sense, the election itself is a form of referendum on the EU every five years and just winning a seat means ‘job done’, whatever happens thereafter – until the next Euro election! However, in the meantime, what is important and useful to a party such as UKIP, or the BNP or any future manifestation of a nationalist party, is the status the role brings in the context of national politics and the building and nurturing of that party as a strong and credible entity in the eyes of the electorate, whose support needs to be won over in the much more important struggle for seats at Westminster. If such a party no longer exists (in any meaningful sense), then having seats in Brussels ceases to serve any meaningful purpose. [Emphasis mine].
I am not suggesting that Andrew Brons is not doing his job as an MEP very well. On the contrary. However, at the time of his election he was representing a party that had a relatively strong public profile, that was cohesive and to all intent, was on the “up”.
What I am saying essentially is that the ‘worth’ of having an MEP is now being squandered by the lack of a party for him to represent. Yes, Andrew is certainly true to the principles and beliefs on which he stood for election and bravo to that. It is he who has been betrayed by the Party leader, as indeed we all have. But in 2014 when Andrew’s term ends – and he has said he will retire – what then? Similarly, with all our Councillors (now ‘Ex’ Councillors). No doubt most of them were partly driven by a desire to serve their local community for its own sake, but their over-riding motivation was to be a part of something bigger – a machinery whose principle purpose was to progress and advance the cause of British Nationalism. Without that, the desire to sit on committees discussing drains and cracked pavements was probably less than appealing!
In other articles on this site, Andrew has discussed all the various splinter groups and embryo parties that now exist in the wake of the BNP’s implosion. He has opined that they will all fail and there is no point in adding a further one to their number. Without unity we will fail etc etc. Indeed, but to have a hope of succeeding you have to have some credibility to start with emanating from having the best and most talented people and…. having existing political representation would be something none of the other factions could compete with. The BNP Ideas ‘faction’ [sic, group] (if I can get away with calling it that) have all the best and most talented people and….they have an MEP! Failing to use that advantage in the next 2 1/2 years (until the next Euro election) would in my view be a terrible wasted opportunity. [Emphasis mine].
David M
says:
January 24, 2012
An interesting insight into the actual role of an MEP and what goes on in the EU ‘Parliament’. However, I think we may be in danger of losing sight of why we, as British Nationalists, took part in the process of EU electoral politics in the first place. Why did we, in ‘the BNP’, mount a nationwide campaign to get members elected in the eight [sic, twelve] UK regions (as designated by our masters in Brussels)? Because, like it or not, they exist. The EU and its various institutions exist, although we would wish it otherwise because of the diminution of sovereignty that EU membership represents. Until such times as we as a nation can extricate ourselves from the EU, it is a choice between taking what some might regard as a principled stand in completely boycotting EU elections, or recognising that the process presented an unmissable national electoral opportunity for our party to promote itself and its ideology and obtain more coverage even than in a UK General Election! I recall that the first leader of the UKIP, Prof. Alan Sked, was totally opposed to taking part – ‘on principle’ – and thus departed leaving them to it. As we have seen, they progressed from 3 MEP’s in 1999 to 12 in 2004 and 13 in 2009 (coming 3rd overall). Whatever we may think of them, they demonstrated what could be achieved by a ‘third party’ political force on an anti-EU ticket in an election fought on a PR list system (The d’Hondt electoral method). As the article above points out, many of the UKIPPERS have been seemingly ineffective actually ‘doing the job’. From 1999 they have had their problems with splits and MEP resignations, (Holmes, Kilroy, Mote, Sinclaire). None of that has stopped them from being re-elected because in a sense, the election itself is a form of referendum on the EU every five years and just winning a seat means ‘job done’, whatever happens thereafter – until the next Euro election! However, in the meantime, what is important and useful to a party such as UKIP, or the BNP or any future manifestation of a nationalist party, is the status the role brings in the context of national politics and the building and nurturing of that party as a strong and credible entity in the eyes of the electorate, whose support needs to be won over in the much more important struggle for seats at Westminster. If such a party no longer exists (in any meaningful sense), then having seats in Brussels ceases to serve any meaningful purpose. [Emphasis mine].
I am not suggesting that Andrew Brons is not doing his job as an MEP very well. On the contrary. However, at the time of his election he was representing a party that had a relatively strong public profile, that was cohesive and to all intent, was on the “up”.
What I am saying essentially is that the ‘worth’ of having an MEP is now being squandered by the lack of a party for him to represent. Yes, Andrew is certainly true to the principles and beliefs on which he stood for election and bravo to that. It is he who has been betrayed by the Party leader, as indeed we all have. But in 2014 when Andrew’s term ends – and he has said he will retire – what then? Similarly, with all our Councillors (now ‘Ex’ Councillors). No doubt most of them were partly driven by a desire to serve their local community for its own sake, but their over-riding motivation was to be a part of something bigger – a machinery whose principle purpose was to progress and advance the cause of British Nationalism. Without that, the desire to sit on committees discussing drains and cracked pavements was probably less than appealing!
In other articles on this site, Andrew has discussed all the various splinter groups and embryo parties that now exist in the wake of the BNP’s implosion. He has opined that they will all fail and there is no point in adding a further one to their number. Without unity we will fail etc etc. Indeed, but to have a hope of succeeding you have to have some credibility to start with emanating from having the best and most talented people and…. having existing political representation would be something none of the other factions could compete with. The BNP Ideas ‘faction’ [sic, group] (if I can get away with calling it that) have all the best and most talented people and….they have an MEP! Failing to use that advantage in the next 2 1/2 years (until the next Euro election) would in my view be a terrible wasted opportunity. [Emphasis mine].
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Muslim threats trump free speech?
Acknowledgements to the web site of the Journal.ie
UCC society withdraws Nick Griffin invite to ‘free speech’ debate
Yesterday, 1:30 PM
A STUDENT SOCIETY in University College Cork has withdrawn its invitation to British National Party leader Nick Griffin to attend a debate there next month.
In a statement this afternoon, the UCC Government and Politics Society said it had withdrawn the invitation as a result of submissions from University staff and Gardaí, who had outlined a “potential threat to the safety and welfare of our students and the general public”.
“The Government and Politics Society fully accept its responsibility to put the welfare of the student body and its members first and are not prepared to compromise them at any cost,” the statement said.
While the society says it remains committed to open debate, and it will still host the planned debate later in the year, the BNP leader and MEP will not be featured a speaker.
Society auditor Ben English told TheJournal.ie that the circumstances of the withdrawal were “unfortunate, but the main thing is that as a student society our main priority is students and their safety.
It wasn’t pressure from the left or anything, it’s not about politics – there are bigger things than politics and student safety is one of them.
The proposed visit had been opposed by a number of political societies on campus, including its branch of the Labour party.
“We hope the society can continue to provide a platform for political debate through the many events we plan to hold this year,” the society’s statement said.
“Whilst we make this decision with regret, we are no longer in a capacity to invite Mr Griffin but now look forward to moving on and hosting many more events for UCC students and the general public in the coming year.”
University authorities had previously pledged security support for the event, but English explained that the threat to student safety from “members of a minority community” meant it was no longer viable. ”You have to know what your costs are,” English said. [Emphasis mine].
A debate on inviting Griffin had been held at the college’s Philosophical Society last week, with a majority of students reportedly backing the plans to invite the BNP leader.
The withdrawal of the invitation marks the second time that an invitation for Griffin to participate in an Irish university debate has been withdrawn this year.
Trinity College’s Philosophical Society had invited him to participate in a debate on immigration in October, but the college and society later withdrew the invite citing ‘safety considerations’.
UCC society withdraws Nick Griffin invite to ‘free speech’ debate
Yesterday, 1:30 PM
A STUDENT SOCIETY in University College Cork has withdrawn its invitation to British National Party leader Nick Griffin to attend a debate there next month.
In a statement this afternoon, the UCC Government and Politics Society said it had withdrawn the invitation as a result of submissions from University staff and Gardaí, who had outlined a “potential threat to the safety and welfare of our students and the general public”.
“The Government and Politics Society fully accept its responsibility to put the welfare of the student body and its members first and are not prepared to compromise them at any cost,” the statement said.
While the society says it remains committed to open debate, and it will still host the planned debate later in the year, the BNP leader and MEP will not be featured a speaker.
Society auditor Ben English told TheJournal.ie that the circumstances of the withdrawal were “unfortunate, but the main thing is that as a student society our main priority is students and their safety.
It wasn’t pressure from the left or anything, it’s not about politics – there are bigger things than politics and student safety is one of them.
The proposed visit had been opposed by a number of political societies on campus, including its branch of the Labour party.
“We hope the society can continue to provide a platform for political debate through the many events we plan to hold this year,” the society’s statement said.
“Whilst we make this decision with regret, we are no longer in a capacity to invite Mr Griffin but now look forward to moving on and hosting many more events for UCC students and the general public in the coming year.”
University authorities had previously pledged security support for the event, but English explained that the threat to student safety from “members of a minority community” meant it was no longer viable. ”You have to know what your costs are,” English said. [Emphasis mine].
A debate on inviting Griffin had been held at the college’s Philosophical Society last week, with a majority of students reportedly backing the plans to invite the BNP leader.
The withdrawal of the invitation marks the second time that an invitation for Griffin to participate in an Irish university debate has been withdrawn this year.
Trinity College’s Philosophical Society had invited him to participate in a debate on immigration in October, but the college and society later withdrew the invite citing ‘safety considerations’.
The view from the Gravy train
The Purpose, Function, Routine and Value of an MEP
Posted by admin02 on 24, January 2012 to the BNP Ideas web site
To many, the role of an MEP is somewhat obscure. What does such an MEP do in Brussels? How does he fight the nation’s corner? How does he represent his constituents? What functions does he attend?
These and allied questions are pertinent because they relate to an MEP’s function and purpose.
It is first necessary to understand the role of the Parliament. In essence the Parliament oversees the legislative proposals that have emanated from the thousands of unelected bureaucrats who run the European Commission. The Parliament scrutinises such legislation via 20 Committees, consisting of MEPs and during Plenary (Parliamentary) sessions.
The committees draw up, amend and adopt legislative proposals and reports. They consider Commission and Council proposals and, where necessary, draw up reports to be presented to the Plenary.
Ordinary legislative procedure gives the same weight to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on such areas as, for example, economic governance, immigration, energy, transport, the environment and consumer protection. The majority of European laws are adopted jointly by the European Parliament and the Council.
The Commission sends its proposals to both Parliament and the Council. They consider and discuss these via two readings. In the event of no agreement being reached, the proposals are brought before a Conciliation Committee comprising an equal number of representatives from the Council and Parliament. Representatives of the Commission also attend these discussions. Once an agreement has been reached, the wording is sent to Parliament and the Council for a third reading, to adopt the legislative text. The final agreement of the two institutions is required for the text to become adopted as a law.
Parliament may still reject the proposed law by a majority of the votes cast. In practice, however, Parliament rarely rejects a proposal and it should be noted that the vast majority of MEPs believe in and enthusiastically support the existence of the European Union, its aims and ambitions.
It should also be noted that something in the order of 75% of the national legislation of the member states originates from the EU.
An MEP’s responsibility encompasses three distinctive spheres:
1 Plenary (Parliament): By far the most strenuous task involves the scrutiny of legislation prior to daily voting at Plenary. Generally, there are two Plenary sessions per month: one at Strasbourg and, usually, a slightly smaller session at Brussels.
Legislative resolutions are normally completed, with their various tabled amendments, a day or so before voting occurs at mid-day.
Debates also occur in advance of voting. An MEP is usually entitled to a one or two minute speech, depending upon whether the speech has been tabled in advance of the debate.
Diligent MEPs and their advisors will take breakfast at 7.30pm and then head for the Parliament, usually not returning to their hotels or rented accommodation until well after 8pm but often considerably later.
A mountain of legislation awaits them: a weekly session in Strasbourg will usually encompass several thousand pages of legislative documents, which must be read, absorbed and understood before a decision on voting intentions can be determined.
Often, over a thousand votes are held at each weekly session. On occasion, over a thousand votes can be held in one daily voting session.
For the most part, Andrew Brons votes against legislation but often there occur occasions when neither a ‘for’ nor an ‘against’ and nor even an ‘abstention’ may simply be determined. Recently, for example, a vote occurred on a trade measure relating to Georgia. Whilst this measure was of benefit to EU manufacturers and EU branded goods, it was deemed to be a measure that facilitated the ultimate ambition of the Europhiles to secure Georgia as another member state within the European Union. We voted against the measure.
Occasionally, too, Andrew Brons supports legislation. A recent example related to a measure designed to reduce the volume and expense of red tape.
Diligence must be done in Plenary. Our MEP’s office keeps a careful note of our Member’s voting record at each session, with the reasons for his decision recorded. On occasion, enquiring constituents have been provided with that record and the reasoning behind it. How a member has voted is also maintained on the public register at the Parliament – unless a show of hands or a simple electronic vote has been employed.
Some MEPs are less diligent than others. The attendance of some MEPs is appalling and their voting intentions are determined by their party whip. It is doubtful whether many MEPs will know for what they have voted, after the event. Without membership of a trans-national grouping (such as the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D Group)), our MEP must carry out his research using his own resources.
The day or so that precedes voting is also an occasion to ‘catch the eye’ of the speaker and contribute to the debate. Our MEP uses these opportunities to inject satire but also philosophical and ideological viewpoints which, often, provide the only fundamental opposition to the thrust of the debate in hand, and within a public forum that may be accessed by the electorate. Andrew Brons’ speeches may be viewed on his Parliamentary website – http://andrewbrons.eu/
2 Committee: Each MEP belongs to one Committee and shadows another, at which he may also vote in the absence of his opposite number on that Committee. The Member may make verbal contributions to both.
Andrew Brons is a full Member of the Constitutional Affairs’ Committee and a shadow Member of the Civil Liberties’ Committee.
The Constitutional Committee is where all new proposals to diminish the sovereignty of nation states are channeled and it is a matter of significance that, until very recently, no Member from Ukip bothered to sit on this most important of all Committees.
The Civil Liberties’ Committee oversees what are deemed to be the liberties of the citizen but such terms must be understood in their widest context. Such liberties often concern those of the minorities imposed upon the majority and rarely the true interests of the latter.
Committee meetings, debates and votes are an ongoing feature of an MEP’s work.
3 Constituency Work: An MEP’s postbag is usually filled with representations from lobby groups, relating to legislation but also from constituents. Most of this is dealt with at the local office of the MEP.
Occasionally, however, delegations visit the MEP in his Parliamentary offices in Strasbourg or Brussels in order to seek assistance. An example, recently, was a delegation from an animal welfare charity, which sought to highlight the mistreatment of dogs on the Continent. Andrew Brons, who is also a dog owner, at once raised the matter in a Parliamentary Question to the Commission.
Occasionally, also, there will be an opportunity to raise constituents’ problems on the floor of the Parliament.
Such matters may be considered to be of questionable merit. On the other hand, they can be well recorded in the literature of the charity concerned.
Gravy Train?
It has long been stated by some that an MEP has boarded an expensive and well-furnished gravy train. Is this statement accurate? The answer is both yes and no.
Many MEPs, including those from a Euro-sceptic UK party, treat the Parliament as though it were a gravy train. Certain of these elements rarely attend and their voting record is poor and sometimes, such is their negligence, they often vote in the opposite direction to that demanded by their Party’s policy.
For those who wish to enter a merry-go-round of drinks’ parties, cocktail functions, lunches and dinners, the opportunities exist. MEPs are subjected to invitations from hundreds of different lobbying groups and vested interests.
Do Andrew Brons and his staff attend these events? Were they to do so, they would be unable to find the considerable time required to attend to their responsibilities. Throughout the term of office, to date, they have probably briefly attended three drinks’ functions – considerably less than the opportunities that would appertain, often monthly, in the commercial sphere.
A Recognised Public Forum
Membership of the European Parliament brings with it several advantages:
a) Membership of a Parliament and, in our case, election to the highest Parliamentary chamber bar Westminster.
b) The public recognition that the above bestows.
c) Attendant media publicity resulting from the above.
d) Invitations to speak at functions, schools, civic institutions, etc.
e) An ability to represent constituents via a Parliamentary platform and to bring the Council and Commission to account via the spoken word and through the facility of tabling Parliamentary questions.
The single drawback is that high ranking members of the party may be abroad when they are required at home. The answer to this criticism is simple: a deep, broadly based organisation would promote its talent so that the presence of those elected to office – at Council, Westminster or European levels – would not be missed. Until we can find a leader that is not frightened to promote talent and ability, then we shall continue to rely unduly upon that leader and his immediate appointments, however unsuitable they may be for the task in hand.
The Value of Carrying Out the Elected Task
Elected representatives have, unsurprisingly, been elected to carry out the function for which they have been awarded a mandate.
Too often, elected nationalists have failed to perform in their elected capacity. Sometimes they have remained invisible in their council chamber whilst others have failed to attend or serve out their term of office, thereby abandoning their electorates and their own members, who sought and worked for their election.
Such conduct creates an untidy image of irresponsibility and incompetence, which does not go unremarked by the media. Not least, successor candidates have later wondered why they have failed to be elected by unimpressed voters.
Whilst readers of this article will wish to condemn the Liberal Democrats, they have at least gained a reputation as worthy constituency representatives. It is equally important that nationalist members attain the same or a better reputation for competence, hard work and diligence.
When our MEP’s term of office has been completed, his record will be one of the best in the European Parliament. It has already received plaudits from fellow nationalists.
When the opportunity arises to win a seat at Westminster, the accusation that nationalist representatives are unworthy of support because they do not carry out their purpose, hopefully, will hold no water.
The suggestion that an elected representative works too hard at the task for which he has received a mandate is one that would be difficult to make up. Such imbecilic and uninformed opinion descends from those whose stamp, for the most part, has weakened the patriotic cause in the UK. [Emphasis mine].
Posted by admin02 on 24, January 2012 to the BNP Ideas web site
To many, the role of an MEP is somewhat obscure. What does such an MEP do in Brussels? How does he fight the nation’s corner? How does he represent his constituents? What functions does he attend?
These and allied questions are pertinent because they relate to an MEP’s function and purpose.
It is first necessary to understand the role of the Parliament. In essence the Parliament oversees the legislative proposals that have emanated from the thousands of unelected bureaucrats who run the European Commission. The Parliament scrutinises such legislation via 20 Committees, consisting of MEPs and during Plenary (Parliamentary) sessions.
The committees draw up, amend and adopt legislative proposals and reports. They consider Commission and Council proposals and, where necessary, draw up reports to be presented to the Plenary.
Ordinary legislative procedure gives the same weight to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on such areas as, for example, economic governance, immigration, energy, transport, the environment and consumer protection. The majority of European laws are adopted jointly by the European Parliament and the Council.
The Commission sends its proposals to both Parliament and the Council. They consider and discuss these via two readings. In the event of no agreement being reached, the proposals are brought before a Conciliation Committee comprising an equal number of representatives from the Council and Parliament. Representatives of the Commission also attend these discussions. Once an agreement has been reached, the wording is sent to Parliament and the Council for a third reading, to adopt the legislative text. The final agreement of the two institutions is required for the text to become adopted as a law.
Parliament may still reject the proposed law by a majority of the votes cast. In practice, however, Parliament rarely rejects a proposal and it should be noted that the vast majority of MEPs believe in and enthusiastically support the existence of the European Union, its aims and ambitions.
It should also be noted that something in the order of 75% of the national legislation of the member states originates from the EU.
An MEP’s responsibility encompasses three distinctive spheres:
1 Plenary (Parliament): By far the most strenuous task involves the scrutiny of legislation prior to daily voting at Plenary. Generally, there are two Plenary sessions per month: one at Strasbourg and, usually, a slightly smaller session at Brussels.
Legislative resolutions are normally completed, with their various tabled amendments, a day or so before voting occurs at mid-day.
Debates also occur in advance of voting. An MEP is usually entitled to a one or two minute speech, depending upon whether the speech has been tabled in advance of the debate.
Diligent MEPs and their advisors will take breakfast at 7.30pm and then head for the Parliament, usually not returning to their hotels or rented accommodation until well after 8pm but often considerably later.
A mountain of legislation awaits them: a weekly session in Strasbourg will usually encompass several thousand pages of legislative documents, which must be read, absorbed and understood before a decision on voting intentions can be determined.
Often, over a thousand votes are held at each weekly session. On occasion, over a thousand votes can be held in one daily voting session.
For the most part, Andrew Brons votes against legislation but often there occur occasions when neither a ‘for’ nor an ‘against’ and nor even an ‘abstention’ may simply be determined. Recently, for example, a vote occurred on a trade measure relating to Georgia. Whilst this measure was of benefit to EU manufacturers and EU branded goods, it was deemed to be a measure that facilitated the ultimate ambition of the Europhiles to secure Georgia as another member state within the European Union. We voted against the measure.
Occasionally, too, Andrew Brons supports legislation. A recent example related to a measure designed to reduce the volume and expense of red tape.
Diligence must be done in Plenary. Our MEP’s office keeps a careful note of our Member’s voting record at each session, with the reasons for his decision recorded. On occasion, enquiring constituents have been provided with that record and the reasoning behind it. How a member has voted is also maintained on the public register at the Parliament – unless a show of hands or a simple electronic vote has been employed.
Some MEPs are less diligent than others. The attendance of some MEPs is appalling and their voting intentions are determined by their party whip. It is doubtful whether many MEPs will know for what they have voted, after the event. Without membership of a trans-national grouping (such as the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D Group)), our MEP must carry out his research using his own resources.
The day or so that precedes voting is also an occasion to ‘catch the eye’ of the speaker and contribute to the debate. Our MEP uses these opportunities to inject satire but also philosophical and ideological viewpoints which, often, provide the only fundamental opposition to the thrust of the debate in hand, and within a public forum that may be accessed by the electorate. Andrew Brons’ speeches may be viewed on his Parliamentary website – http://andrewbrons.eu/
2 Committee: Each MEP belongs to one Committee and shadows another, at which he may also vote in the absence of his opposite number on that Committee. The Member may make verbal contributions to both.
Andrew Brons is a full Member of the Constitutional Affairs’ Committee and a shadow Member of the Civil Liberties’ Committee.
The Constitutional Committee is where all new proposals to diminish the sovereignty of nation states are channeled and it is a matter of significance that, until very recently, no Member from Ukip bothered to sit on this most important of all Committees.
The Civil Liberties’ Committee oversees what are deemed to be the liberties of the citizen but such terms must be understood in their widest context. Such liberties often concern those of the minorities imposed upon the majority and rarely the true interests of the latter.
Committee meetings, debates and votes are an ongoing feature of an MEP’s work.
3 Constituency Work: An MEP’s postbag is usually filled with representations from lobby groups, relating to legislation but also from constituents. Most of this is dealt with at the local office of the MEP.
Occasionally, however, delegations visit the MEP in his Parliamentary offices in Strasbourg or Brussels in order to seek assistance. An example, recently, was a delegation from an animal welfare charity, which sought to highlight the mistreatment of dogs on the Continent. Andrew Brons, who is also a dog owner, at once raised the matter in a Parliamentary Question to the Commission.
Occasionally, also, there will be an opportunity to raise constituents’ problems on the floor of the Parliament.
Such matters may be considered to be of questionable merit. On the other hand, they can be well recorded in the literature of the charity concerned.
Gravy Train?
It has long been stated by some that an MEP has boarded an expensive and well-furnished gravy train. Is this statement accurate? The answer is both yes and no.
Many MEPs, including those from a Euro-sceptic UK party, treat the Parliament as though it were a gravy train. Certain of these elements rarely attend and their voting record is poor and sometimes, such is their negligence, they often vote in the opposite direction to that demanded by their Party’s policy.
For those who wish to enter a merry-go-round of drinks’ parties, cocktail functions, lunches and dinners, the opportunities exist. MEPs are subjected to invitations from hundreds of different lobbying groups and vested interests.
Do Andrew Brons and his staff attend these events? Were they to do so, they would be unable to find the considerable time required to attend to their responsibilities. Throughout the term of office, to date, they have probably briefly attended three drinks’ functions – considerably less than the opportunities that would appertain, often monthly, in the commercial sphere.
A Recognised Public Forum
Membership of the European Parliament brings with it several advantages:
a) Membership of a Parliament and, in our case, election to the highest Parliamentary chamber bar Westminster.
b) The public recognition that the above bestows.
c) Attendant media publicity resulting from the above.
d) Invitations to speak at functions, schools, civic institutions, etc.
e) An ability to represent constituents via a Parliamentary platform and to bring the Council and Commission to account via the spoken word and through the facility of tabling Parliamentary questions.
The single drawback is that high ranking members of the party may be abroad when they are required at home. The answer to this criticism is simple: a deep, broadly based organisation would promote its talent so that the presence of those elected to office – at Council, Westminster or European levels – would not be missed. Until we can find a leader that is not frightened to promote talent and ability, then we shall continue to rely unduly upon that leader and his immediate appointments, however unsuitable they may be for the task in hand.
The Value of Carrying Out the Elected Task
Elected representatives have, unsurprisingly, been elected to carry out the function for which they have been awarded a mandate.
Too often, elected nationalists have failed to perform in their elected capacity. Sometimes they have remained invisible in their council chamber whilst others have failed to attend or serve out their term of office, thereby abandoning their electorates and their own members, who sought and worked for their election.
Such conduct creates an untidy image of irresponsibility and incompetence, which does not go unremarked by the media. Not least, successor candidates have later wondered why they have failed to be elected by unimpressed voters.
Whilst readers of this article will wish to condemn the Liberal Democrats, they have at least gained a reputation as worthy constituency representatives. It is equally important that nationalist members attain the same or a better reputation for competence, hard work and diligence.
When our MEP’s term of office has been completed, his record will be one of the best in the European Parliament. It has already received plaudits from fellow nationalists.
When the opportunity arises to win a seat at Westminster, the accusation that nationalist representatives are unworthy of support because they do not carry out their purpose, hopefully, will hold no water.
The suggestion that an elected representative works too hard at the task for which he has received a mandate is one that would be difficult to make up. Such imbecilic and uninformed opinion descends from those whose stamp, for the most part, has weakened the patriotic cause in the UK. [Emphasis mine].
Monday, 23 January 2012
Saturday, 21 January 2012
Marine = Marianne
Marine Le Pen: A Fatal Attraction?
Arnaud Bevilacqua
Posted on 20 January 2012 to the Huffington Post web site
Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front (FN) the French far-right [sic] party, is getting nearly 20 percent of votes in recent polls. These incredible scores were never achieved even by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who got as far as the second round in the 2002 presidential election. Three months into French presidential elections, his daughter is a serious threat to Nicolas Sarkozy the outgoing president. But how could a woman, who came into politics in the wake of her father, who has extreme right wing views [sic] and no ministerial experience, become so popular? Since she succeeded Jean-Marie Le Pen in January 2011, the iconic figure of the French far-right for more than 50 years, Marine Le Pen has become a key personality in French political life. To her political opponents, she is turning out to be an even more formidable candidate than her father, often equated with "evil incarnate."
Marine Le Pen doesn't provoke the same rejection as her father. She presents a much more pleasant face of the extreme right. She is blonde, a mother of three children and divorced twice. She does not hesitate to play up her femininity to mark her difference with her father. Modern Marine Le Pen, 43 years-old, is in tune with the times. She arouses more sympathy among the French electorate than the more sulphurous and older Jean-Marie Le Pen. He was certainly charismatic but he kept a distance from his activists. By contrast his daughter has succeeded in creating a familiarity with her supporters who call her "Marine" to show she is one of them.
Marine, the president of the National Front also distances herself from some of her father's more extremist views. She hasn't repeated the outrageous statements on the Second World War which her father was prone to make. She doesn't speak of the gas chambers as a "detail" but on the contrary she states unambiguously that "the camps were the height of barbarity" and prefers to glorify "the resistance of 1940." The president of the FN has been trying to downplay the extremist side of her party and make it more respectable. Activists with shaven heads, those who support violence or those who are nostalgic for Marechal Philippe Petain's Vichy regime between 1940 and 1944 are invited to be "discreet."
But it's what she has to say on the economic crisis that is really attracting people. She has added a social dimension to the usual National Front project. Many working class French, especially those disorientated by globalization and relocation are lured by her simplistic answers. She advocates getting out of the European Union and returning to the old national currency, the franc. To fight against the closure of factories, Marine Le Pen has a radical solution: protectionism. "Our country," she says using frightening rhetoric, "is in the process of underdevelopment, of Third Worldization."
The vast majority of economists are agreed that the solutions advocated by Marine Le Pen would be a severe blow to French finances. But Le Pen prospers on a climate of mistrust surrounding the French political class. Many voters have given up on the main parties. Many have the feeling of being forgotten. Most of them believed in Nicolas Sarkozy's promises of reform. But he has failed to improve their lives. Marine Le Pen attracts those who no longer believe in politics and want to send an alarm signal. Most surprising is she even wins over former voters from the left or far left who no longer feel represented. [Emphasis mine].
Of course Marine Le Pen is also pushing those old themes which her father exploited so successfully: The fight against immigration illegal and legal and defence of national identity. She has also added inflammatory views on Islam, comparing street prayers to an "occupying army." "There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers, but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents," she said. She doesn't hesitate to use fear or inflame a problem which concerns a minority. She presents French suburbs as war zones. "The situation is dramatic in the suburbs. There are almost tribal areas like in Pakistan where it is necessary to protect buses by cavalry to cross neighborhoods. And tomorrow, what we will do? Will we bring out the tanks?" she said. This outrageous language has been resonating with French people who feel frightened by social change and who feel ignored by current politicians. She has been playing on their longing for a closed society, the France of the past.
So Marine Le Pen is a very dangerous candidate, less repulsive than her father, but with the same ideas. She could get to the second round of the presidential election. The other candidates and above all Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, the two main candidates should not underrate the "Le Pen phenomenon." They should not think that French voters who vote for her are all racists and xenophobes. On the contrary the politicians need to listen and to respond to the voter's anxieties. Otherwise Marine Le Pen will continue to rise in the polls and will draw more disillusioned voters to her. And one day the far-right [sic] may run France.
Arnaud Bevilacqua
Posted on 20 January 2012 to the Huffington Post web site
Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front (FN) the French far-right [sic] party, is getting nearly 20 percent of votes in recent polls. These incredible scores were never achieved even by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who got as far as the second round in the 2002 presidential election. Three months into French presidential elections, his daughter is a serious threat to Nicolas Sarkozy the outgoing president. But how could a woman, who came into politics in the wake of her father, who has extreme right wing views [sic] and no ministerial experience, become so popular? Since she succeeded Jean-Marie Le Pen in January 2011, the iconic figure of the French far-right for more than 50 years, Marine Le Pen has become a key personality in French political life. To her political opponents, she is turning out to be an even more formidable candidate than her father, often equated with "evil incarnate."
Marine Le Pen doesn't provoke the same rejection as her father. She presents a much more pleasant face of the extreme right. She is blonde, a mother of three children and divorced twice. She does not hesitate to play up her femininity to mark her difference with her father. Modern Marine Le Pen, 43 years-old, is in tune with the times. She arouses more sympathy among the French electorate than the more sulphurous and older Jean-Marie Le Pen. He was certainly charismatic but he kept a distance from his activists. By contrast his daughter has succeeded in creating a familiarity with her supporters who call her "Marine" to show she is one of them.
Marine, the president of the National Front also distances herself from some of her father's more extremist views. She hasn't repeated the outrageous statements on the Second World War which her father was prone to make. She doesn't speak of the gas chambers as a "detail" but on the contrary she states unambiguously that "the camps were the height of barbarity" and prefers to glorify "the resistance of 1940." The president of the FN has been trying to downplay the extremist side of her party and make it more respectable. Activists with shaven heads, those who support violence or those who are nostalgic for Marechal Philippe Petain's Vichy regime between 1940 and 1944 are invited to be "discreet."
But it's what she has to say on the economic crisis that is really attracting people. She has added a social dimension to the usual National Front project. Many working class French, especially those disorientated by globalization and relocation are lured by her simplistic answers. She advocates getting out of the European Union and returning to the old national currency, the franc. To fight against the closure of factories, Marine Le Pen has a radical solution: protectionism. "Our country," she says using frightening rhetoric, "is in the process of underdevelopment, of Third Worldization."
The vast majority of economists are agreed that the solutions advocated by Marine Le Pen would be a severe blow to French finances. But Le Pen prospers on a climate of mistrust surrounding the French political class. Many voters have given up on the main parties. Many have the feeling of being forgotten. Most of them believed in Nicolas Sarkozy's promises of reform. But he has failed to improve their lives. Marine Le Pen attracts those who no longer believe in politics and want to send an alarm signal. Most surprising is she even wins over former voters from the left or far left who no longer feel represented. [Emphasis mine].
Of course Marine Le Pen is also pushing those old themes which her father exploited so successfully: The fight against immigration illegal and legal and defence of national identity. She has also added inflammatory views on Islam, comparing street prayers to an "occupying army." "There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers, but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents," she said. She doesn't hesitate to use fear or inflame a problem which concerns a minority. She presents French suburbs as war zones. "The situation is dramatic in the suburbs. There are almost tribal areas like in Pakistan where it is necessary to protect buses by cavalry to cross neighborhoods. And tomorrow, what we will do? Will we bring out the tanks?" she said. This outrageous language has been resonating with French people who feel frightened by social change and who feel ignored by current politicians. She has been playing on their longing for a closed society, the France of the past.
So Marine Le Pen is a very dangerous candidate, less repulsive than her father, but with the same ideas. She could get to the second round of the presidential election. The other candidates and above all Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, the two main candidates should not underrate the "Le Pen phenomenon." They should not think that French voters who vote for her are all racists and xenophobes. On the contrary the politicians need to listen and to respond to the voter's anxieties. Otherwise Marine Le Pen will continue to rise in the polls and will draw more disillusioned voters to her. And one day the far-right [sic] may run France.
Be not afraid of greatness...
Andrew Brons
From Wikipedia
Andrew Henry William Brons (born 3 June 1947, London) is a British politician. Long active in nationalist politics in Britain, he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber for the British National Party (BNP) at the 2009 European Parliament election. He was previously the leader of the National Front during the 1980s.
Family background and early life
Brons was born in Hackney, East London, spending his early childhood in Sidcup, on the outskirts of London, before his family moved to Harrogate when he was 11. He attended at Harrogate Grammar School until the age of 16, when he left to join the civil service, where he remained for 16 months before following part-time A Levels in law and economics at Harrogate College. He studied politics at the University of York, graduating in 1970.[2]
After graduation, Brons started work as a lecturer at Harrogate College in 1970, continuing to work there until 2005, lecturing in A Level Law and Government and Politics.[3] He has two daughters.[2]
Political career
EARLY ACTIVITY
Andrew Brons began his political career in 1964 when, aged seventeen, he joined the National Socialist Movement (NSM),[4] a neo-nazi organisation founded on Adolf Hitler's birthday by Colin Jordan. In 1980, Searchlight published two letters Brons had written in 1965 to Colin Jordan's wife, in which he firstly reported meeting an NSM member who "mentioned such activities as bombing synagogues", stating in response to this that: "On this subject I have a dual view, in that while I realise that he is well intentioned, I feel that our public image may suffer considerable damage as a result of these activities. I am however open to correction on this point.";[5][6] the second letter requested materials such as a swastika, a copy of the Horst Wessel Lied, and posters and stickers in furtherance of Brons' goal of forming a local NSM group.[7] Questioned about his membership of the NSM in 2009, Brons said "People do silly things when they are 17. Peter Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League but we don't continue to call him a communist."[8] Brons was forced to return to the issue in March 2011 when - on the BBC's 'The Daily Politics' program - Dominic Carman, the Liberal Democrat candidate for the 2011 Barnsley Central by-election, called Brons, in his absence, a "Nazi and an admirer of Adolf Hitler"[9]. In response Brons released a statement on his website, stating:
"It is on record that I was a member of the National Socialist Movement between the ages of seventeen and eighteen. I am now sixty-three, nearly sixty four - forty six years ago, nearly half a century! From the age of eighteen, I have been a committed supporter of Parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. The parties of which I have been a member, since then, have all been committed to democracy. Many Labour politicians have been members of the Communist Party in their teens, twenties and even thirties. Dennis Healey was a member of the Communist Party at the height of the Stalinist purges. Would anybody be allowed to call Mr. Healey an avowed Communist and admirer of Joseph Stalin?"[10]
NATIONAL FRONT
In 1965, Brons joined John Bean's British National Party (not the same as the current incarnation), which later merged with the League of Empire Loyalists to form the National Front (NF) in 1967.[11] Brons was voted onto the National Front's national directorate in 1974, and "as the NF's education officer, he hosted seminars on racial nationalism and tried to give its racism a more 'scientific' basis."[12]
Brons contested Harrogate for the National Front in both 1974 general elections, polling 1,186 votes (2.3%) in February and 1,030 (2.3%) in October. When Labour's Roy Jenkins resigned his parliamentary seat on appointment as European Commission President in early 1977,[13] Brons contested the Birmingham Stechford by-election for the National Front.[14] He polled 2955 votes (8.2%), forcing the Liberal candidate into fourth place, and helping his stature to grow within the party.
LEADERSHIP
Following the poor showing by the National Front in the 1979 general election, and John Tyndall's subsequent departure, Brons became chairman of the NF in 1980[12] and in doing so broke with his former mentor. Brons, though, led the NF in name only. Initially Martin Webster, its National Activities Organiser, exerted the most influence, before the Political Soldier wing of the party became more important. Brons tended to support the Flag Group although he lost influence to Ian Anderson and faded from his leading position. Nevertheless, Brons had links to the Political Soldier wing and is credited with having introduced the concept of distributism into the party, which formed a central part of the new ideology of the NF.[15] Brons co-edited the NF journal New Nation, with Richard Verrall, the author of a work of holocaust denial, Did Six Million Really Die?[12]
Brons edited the National Front's June 1983 general election manifesto, which "called for a global apartheid to prevent the extinction of whites everywhere."[16] The manifesto declared that "The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities."[16]
On at least two occasions in the early 1980s Brons' political activism caused difficulties for his employer: on 24 June 1981, more than 500 student and Anti-Nazi League campaigners marched through Harrogate, taking over the college building where Brons was teaching; six protesters were arrested.[17] In February 1982, more than 300 protesters clashed with 100 National Front supporters outside Brons' classroom in central Harrogate, and in the process two students were stabbed and six people arrested.[18]
Subsequently in October 1983, Brons called upon the Principal of Harrogate College as a character witness,[3] when Brons was convicted by magistrates of using insulting words and behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace and fined £50.[19] Brons had been leading a group leafleting in Leeds city centre. A shop assistant reported that the group had been shouting "National Front" and making clenched fist salutes, while an unnamed policeman is supposed to have heard "white power" and "death to Jews".[20] When a police officer of Malaysian origin asked the group to disperse, the policeman said that Brons replied: "I am aware of my legal rights. Inferior beings like you probably do not appreciate the principle of free speech."[21] An allegation which Brons has always denied.[22] His appeal to Leeds Crown Court was unsuccessful.[20]
Although Brons continued as a leading member and even wrote a number of articles for the Political Soldier-supporting Nationalism Today, he was generally opposed to the positions of the 'official' National Front and resigned from the party chairmanship in November 1984.[23][24] Brons left the 'official' party altogether in 1986 but, unlike Webster who had been expelled in 1984, became involved with the Flag Group, an NF Fronde.[25] It was Brons who, in 1987, approached Tyndall with a view to an electoral alliance between the Flag Group and the modern British National Party, but the proposed deal fell through and was repudiated by Martin Wingfield in The Flag newspaper.[26]
BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY
After leaving the 'official' National Front in 1986, Brons dedicated himself chiefly to the duties of his appointment as Lecturer at Harrogate College, which he held until his retirement in 2005.[20] However, he maintained his membership of the National Front (as the Flag Group became known after the 'official' party was dissolved in 1989) until 1999. On his retirement in 2005, Brons joined the BNP.[8][27] He subsequently wrote at least two articles for the BNP's official magazine Identity.[28]
Brons had a "tentative agreement" to return to work at Harrogate College in September 2009;[3] he had however been selected as BNP lead candidate for the European Elections 2009 in the Yorkshire and the Humber constituency,[27] and upon becoming the BNP's first ever MEP he declined the College's offer.
He stood as a parliamentary candidate for the Keighley constituency in the 2010 general election.[29][30] He came fourth in the election with 1,962 votes.[30]
In August 2010 Brons and fellow members of the BNP Policy Committee were asked by the Chairman and Advisory Council to carry out a consultation of members about possible changes to the party's constitution,[31] with particular reference to two areas, governance of the party nationally and the rules for internal elections. On 8 November, his findings were published online.[32]
At the end of May 2011, Brons announced that he was seeking nomination for the leadership of the British National Party. Following constitutional changes rushed through a General Members' Meeting (GMM) by party leader Nick Griffin, a leadership election was held at the end of July. Brons was narrowly defeated, receiving 1,148 votes to Griffin's 1,157 [33][34]
MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT FOR YORKSHIRE AND THE HUMBER
On entering the European Parliament Brons and his fellow BNP MEP Nick Griffin have been heavily critical of any legislation current and pending which has been designed to reduce the national sovereignty and independence of member states or has had a negative impact upon Britain and the British People as a consequence. A member of the Constitutional Affairs Committee[35] and a substitute for the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee[36] Brons has, up to 1 December 2010, made seventy-eight speeches in plenary sessions.[37] He has also submitted twenty-seven written questions to the Parliament.[38]
COMMITTEE ON CROATIA
On entering the European Parliament Brons was designated to the Delegation to the EU-Croatia Joint Parliamentary Committee[39] this being a joint delegation to create dialogue with the Croatian Parliament as a candidate country. On 29/30 March 2010 the delegation along with Brons met in Zagreb,[40] Brons spoke in the Croatian Parliament on the state of play of the accession negotiations and EU-Croatia relations in the presence of representatives of the Croatian Government. He went on to say:
"I am sometimes seen as somebody who exaggerates when I say that Croatia is about to surrender its independence so I shall let the Croatian people make that judgment. Unfortunately, they have not yet been consulted directly. I just hope that that consultation will be carried out freely and fairly. However, I note that the rules for referendums in the Constitution, the goal posts if you like, are being changed to facilitate a 'Yes vote'."
Although having, made a direct speech as a warning to the Croatian Parliament, Brons ended with an abstention in voting to continue negotiations. He justified this by stating:
"I should like my abstention to be placed on record. I shall not vote against Croatia's accession because that might imply that I have some right to act on behalf of Croatian opponents of accession, when I clearly have no such right. The Croatian people must decide for themselves. Furthermore, It might imply that I am somehow hostile to Croatia, when I am emphatically not hostile."
The remaining members of the Committee voted unanimously in favour.
On 30 November 2010, Brons again spoke of the negative impact that EU accession would have on the Croatian People, this time in the European Parliament. He used the opportunity to express his concerns over the double standards of the EU in relation to the Lisbon Treaty; he also questioned member states governments' and media impartiality regarding the EU Question,[41] saying:
"The referendum on accession must be free, fair and final. The debate must be conducted with full participation and media coverage for both sides of the debate. I do not want to prejudge the Croatian media but our experience in the UK in 1975 was that there was complete media support for EEC membership and a deluge of propaganda in favour of (continued) membership."
REFERENCES
1.^ a b Daily Telegraph, 9 June 2009, European elections 2009: BNP Andrew Brons profile
2.^ a b "Andrew Brons MEP
Biography". Andrewbrons.eu. http://andrewbrons.eu/biography/. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
3.^ a b c Fiona Hamilton, "Anti-BNP movement split over tactics after Nick Griffin egg protest", The Times 13 June 2009
4.^ Lazenby, Peter (June 8, 2009). "BNP wins Yorkshire Euro seat". Yorkshire Post. http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/BNP-wins-Yorkshire-Euro-seat.5343062.jp. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
5.^ "The Front enters the Brons Age: Searchlight puts Brons in Perspective". Searchlight Magazine. http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=301. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
6.^ Duncan Campbell, "Andrew Brons: the genteel face of neo-fascism", The Guardian, 8 June 2009
7.^ Britten, Nick (2009-06-09). "European elections 2009: BNP Andrew Brons profile". London: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/5478006/European-elections-2009-BNP-Andrew-Brons-profile.html. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
8.^ a b Jerome Taylor, "Andrew Brons: The quiet academic with a 'silly' teenage Nazi past", The Independent, 9 June 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
9.^ "Lib Dem by-election loser Dominic Carman's attack on Barnsley". BBC. 9 March 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12690419.
10.^ Brons, Andrew (Thu, 10/03/2011). "Statement from Andrew Brons MEP". www.andrewbronsmep.eu. http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/statement-andrew-brons-mep.
11.^ S. Taylor, The National Front in English Politics, London: Macmillan, 1982, p. 62.
12.^ a b c Duncan Campbell, 'Andrew Brons, the genteel face of neo-fascism', The Guardian 8 June 2009
13.^ "1977: Jenkins quits Commons for Brussels". BBC News. 3 January 1977. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/3/newsid_3287000/3287511.stm.
14.^ 1977 By Election Results at by-elections.co.uk, accesssed 18 December 2011
15.^ N. Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p.33
16.^ a b Jamie Doward, "Racist rants of elected BNP man, Andrew Brons, revealed", The Observer, 14 June 2009
17.^ "Beating the Brons Brigade". Searchlight Magazine. http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=299. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
18.^ "EXPOSED: BNP man's past - Harrogate Today". Harrogateadvertiser.net. http://www.harrogateadvertiser.net/harrogatenews/EXPOSED-BNP-man39s-past-.5362613.jp. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
19.^ Duncan Campbell, "The genteel face of British neo-fascism", The Guardian, page 7, 9 June 2009
20.^ a b c Smithard, Tom (June 3, 2009). "Controversy over abuse conviction of BNP candidate". Yorkshire Post. http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Controversy-over-abuse-conviction-of.5329019.jp. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
21.^ Private Eye #1238, 12 June 2009
22.^ Duncan Campbell (8 June 2009). "Andrew Brons: the genteel face of neo-fascism". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/08/european-elections-bnp. Retrieved 2010-03-26.
23.^ N. Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p. 35
24.^ "Terrified Brons quits as Front chairman". Searchlight Magazine. http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=298. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
25.^ N. Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p37
26.^ N. Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp36-8
27.^ a b "Andrew Brons". British National Party. March 4, 2009. http://bnp.org.uk/2009/03/andrew-brons/. Retrieved 2009-06-08. [dead link]
28.^ See, for example, "Something New to Worry Liberals", Identity, November 2007 and "The Elusive Causes of Gun & Knife Crime", Identity, October 2008
29.^ "Andrew stands for the British National Party in Keighley
Andrew Brons MEP". Andrewbrons.eu. 2010-04-16. http://andrewbrons.eu/2010/04/16/andrew-stands-for-the-british-national-party-in-keighley/. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
30.^ a b c "UK > England > Yorkshire & the Humber > Keithley". Election 2010 (BBC). 7 May 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/constituency/c39.stm. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
31.^ http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/andrew-brons-invited-carry-out-consultation-membership-about-constitutional-changes
32.^ British National Party Constitutional Consultation.
33.^ "Nick Griffin re-elected BNP leader ahead of Andrew Brons". BBC News. 25 July 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14286110.
34.^ BNP Bear Fight, Searchlight magazine, August 2011.
35.^ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/homeCom.do?language=EN&body=AFCO
36.^ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/homeCom.do?language=EN&body=LIBE
37.^ Parliamentref>http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sidesSearch/search.do?type=CRE&term=7&author=96749&language=EN&startValue=0
38.^ ,http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sidesSearch/search.do?type=QP&language=EN&term=7&author=96749
39.^ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/delegations/homeDel.do?language=EN&body=D-HR
40.^ http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/andrew-part-delegation-visiting-croatia
41.^ http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/leave-debate-croats
42.^ European Election 2009: Yorkshire and Humber, news.bbc.co.uk, 2009-06-08, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/elections/euro/09/html/ukregion_38.stm, retrieved 2010-03-10
From Wikipedia
Andrew Henry William Brons (born 3 June 1947, London) is a British politician. Long active in nationalist politics in Britain, he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber for the British National Party (BNP) at the 2009 European Parliament election. He was previously the leader of the National Front during the 1980s.
Family background and early life
Brons was born in Hackney, East London, spending his early childhood in Sidcup, on the outskirts of London, before his family moved to Harrogate when he was 11. He attended at Harrogate Grammar School until the age of 16, when he left to join the civil service, where he remained for 16 months before following part-time A Levels in law and economics at Harrogate College. He studied politics at the University of York, graduating in 1970.[2]
After graduation, Brons started work as a lecturer at Harrogate College in 1970, continuing to work there until 2005, lecturing in A Level Law and Government and Politics.[3] He has two daughters.[2]
Political career
EARLY ACTIVITY
Andrew Brons began his political career in 1964 when, aged seventeen, he joined the National Socialist Movement (NSM),[4] a neo-nazi organisation founded on Adolf Hitler's birthday by Colin Jordan. In 1980, Searchlight published two letters Brons had written in 1965 to Colin Jordan's wife, in which he firstly reported meeting an NSM member who "mentioned such activities as bombing synagogues", stating in response to this that: "On this subject I have a dual view, in that while I realise that he is well intentioned, I feel that our public image may suffer considerable damage as a result of these activities. I am however open to correction on this point.";[5][6] the second letter requested materials such as a swastika, a copy of the Horst Wessel Lied, and posters and stickers in furtherance of Brons' goal of forming a local NSM group.[7] Questioned about his membership of the NSM in 2009, Brons said "People do silly things when they are 17. Peter Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League but we don't continue to call him a communist."[8] Brons was forced to return to the issue in March 2011 when - on the BBC's 'The Daily Politics' program - Dominic Carman, the Liberal Democrat candidate for the 2011 Barnsley Central by-election, called Brons, in his absence, a "Nazi and an admirer of Adolf Hitler"[9]. In response Brons released a statement on his website, stating:
"It is on record that I was a member of the National Socialist Movement between the ages of seventeen and eighteen. I am now sixty-three, nearly sixty four - forty six years ago, nearly half a century! From the age of eighteen, I have been a committed supporter of Parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. The parties of which I have been a member, since then, have all been committed to democracy. Many Labour politicians have been members of the Communist Party in their teens, twenties and even thirties. Dennis Healey was a member of the Communist Party at the height of the Stalinist purges. Would anybody be allowed to call Mr. Healey an avowed Communist and admirer of Joseph Stalin?"[10]
NATIONAL FRONT
In 1965, Brons joined John Bean's British National Party (not the same as the current incarnation), which later merged with the League of Empire Loyalists to form the National Front (NF) in 1967.[11] Brons was voted onto the National Front's national directorate in 1974, and "as the NF's education officer, he hosted seminars on racial nationalism and tried to give its racism a more 'scientific' basis."[12]
Brons contested Harrogate for the National Front in both 1974 general elections, polling 1,186 votes (2.3%) in February and 1,030 (2.3%) in October. When Labour's Roy Jenkins resigned his parliamentary seat on appointment as European Commission President in early 1977,[13] Brons contested the Birmingham Stechford by-election for the National Front.[14] He polled 2955 votes (8.2%), forcing the Liberal candidate into fourth place, and helping his stature to grow within the party.
LEADERSHIP
Following the poor showing by the National Front in the 1979 general election, and John Tyndall's subsequent departure, Brons became chairman of the NF in 1980[12] and in doing so broke with his former mentor. Brons, though, led the NF in name only. Initially Martin Webster, its National Activities Organiser, exerted the most influence, before the Political Soldier wing of the party became more important. Brons tended to support the Flag Group although he lost influence to Ian Anderson and faded from his leading position. Nevertheless, Brons had links to the Political Soldier wing and is credited with having introduced the concept of distributism into the party, which formed a central part of the new ideology of the NF.[15] Brons co-edited the NF journal New Nation, with Richard Verrall, the author of a work of holocaust denial, Did Six Million Really Die?[12]
Brons edited the National Front's June 1983 general election manifesto, which "called for a global apartheid to prevent the extinction of whites everywhere."[16] The manifesto declared that "The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities."[16]
On at least two occasions in the early 1980s Brons' political activism caused difficulties for his employer: on 24 June 1981, more than 500 student and Anti-Nazi League campaigners marched through Harrogate, taking over the college building where Brons was teaching; six protesters were arrested.[17] In February 1982, more than 300 protesters clashed with 100 National Front supporters outside Brons' classroom in central Harrogate, and in the process two students were stabbed and six people arrested.[18]
Subsequently in October 1983, Brons called upon the Principal of Harrogate College as a character witness,[3] when Brons was convicted by magistrates of using insulting words and behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace and fined £50.[19] Brons had been leading a group leafleting in Leeds city centre. A shop assistant reported that the group had been shouting "National Front" and making clenched fist salutes, while an unnamed policeman is supposed to have heard "white power" and "death to Jews".[20] When a police officer of Malaysian origin asked the group to disperse, the policeman said that Brons replied: "I am aware of my legal rights. Inferior beings like you probably do not appreciate the principle of free speech."[21] An allegation which Brons has always denied.[22] His appeal to Leeds Crown Court was unsuccessful.[20]
Although Brons continued as a leading member and even wrote a number of articles for the Political Soldier-supporting Nationalism Today, he was generally opposed to the positions of the 'official' National Front and resigned from the party chairmanship in November 1984.[23][24] Brons left the 'official' party altogether in 1986 but, unlike Webster who had been expelled in 1984, became involved with the Flag Group, an NF Fronde.[25] It was Brons who, in 1987, approached Tyndall with a view to an electoral alliance between the Flag Group and the modern British National Party, but the proposed deal fell through and was repudiated by Martin Wingfield in The Flag newspaper.[26]
BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY
After leaving the 'official' National Front in 1986, Brons dedicated himself chiefly to the duties of his appointment as Lecturer at Harrogate College, which he held until his retirement in 2005.[20] However, he maintained his membership of the National Front (as the Flag Group became known after the 'official' party was dissolved in 1989) until 1999. On his retirement in 2005, Brons joined the BNP.[8][27] He subsequently wrote at least two articles for the BNP's official magazine Identity.[28]
Brons had a "tentative agreement" to return to work at Harrogate College in September 2009;[3] he had however been selected as BNP lead candidate for the European Elections 2009 in the Yorkshire and the Humber constituency,[27] and upon becoming the BNP's first ever MEP he declined the College's offer.
He stood as a parliamentary candidate for the Keighley constituency in the 2010 general election.[29][30] He came fourth in the election with 1,962 votes.[30]
In August 2010 Brons and fellow members of the BNP Policy Committee were asked by the Chairman and Advisory Council to carry out a consultation of members about possible changes to the party's constitution,[31] with particular reference to two areas, governance of the party nationally and the rules for internal elections. On 8 November, his findings were published online.[32]
At the end of May 2011, Brons announced that he was seeking nomination for the leadership of the British National Party. Following constitutional changes rushed through a General Members' Meeting (GMM) by party leader Nick Griffin, a leadership election was held at the end of July. Brons was narrowly defeated, receiving 1,148 votes to Griffin's 1,157 [33][34]
MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT FOR YORKSHIRE AND THE HUMBER
On entering the European Parliament Brons and his fellow BNP MEP Nick Griffin have been heavily critical of any legislation current and pending which has been designed to reduce the national sovereignty and independence of member states or has had a negative impact upon Britain and the British People as a consequence. A member of the Constitutional Affairs Committee[35] and a substitute for the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee[36] Brons has, up to 1 December 2010, made seventy-eight speeches in plenary sessions.[37] He has also submitted twenty-seven written questions to the Parliament.[38]
COMMITTEE ON CROATIA
On entering the European Parliament Brons was designated to the Delegation to the EU-Croatia Joint Parliamentary Committee[39] this being a joint delegation to create dialogue with the Croatian Parliament as a candidate country. On 29/30 March 2010 the delegation along with Brons met in Zagreb,[40] Brons spoke in the Croatian Parliament on the state of play of the accession negotiations and EU-Croatia relations in the presence of representatives of the Croatian Government. He went on to say:
"I am sometimes seen as somebody who exaggerates when I say that Croatia is about to surrender its independence so I shall let the Croatian people make that judgment. Unfortunately, they have not yet been consulted directly. I just hope that that consultation will be carried out freely and fairly. However, I note that the rules for referendums in the Constitution, the goal posts if you like, are being changed to facilitate a 'Yes vote'."
Although having, made a direct speech as a warning to the Croatian Parliament, Brons ended with an abstention in voting to continue negotiations. He justified this by stating:
"I should like my abstention to be placed on record. I shall not vote against Croatia's accession because that might imply that I have some right to act on behalf of Croatian opponents of accession, when I clearly have no such right. The Croatian people must decide for themselves. Furthermore, It might imply that I am somehow hostile to Croatia, when I am emphatically not hostile."
The remaining members of the Committee voted unanimously in favour.
On 30 November 2010, Brons again spoke of the negative impact that EU accession would have on the Croatian People, this time in the European Parliament. He used the opportunity to express his concerns over the double standards of the EU in relation to the Lisbon Treaty; he also questioned member states governments' and media impartiality regarding the EU Question,[41] saying:
"The referendum on accession must be free, fair and final. The debate must be conducted with full participation and media coverage for both sides of the debate. I do not want to prejudge the Croatian media but our experience in the UK in 1975 was that there was complete media support for EEC membership and a deluge of propaganda in favour of (continued) membership."
REFERENCES
1.^ a b Daily Telegraph, 9 June 2009, European elections 2009: BNP Andrew Brons profile
2.^ a b "Andrew Brons MEP
Biography". Andrewbrons.eu. http://andrewbrons.eu/biography/. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
3.^ a b c Fiona Hamilton, "Anti-BNP movement split over tactics after Nick Griffin egg protest", The Times 13 June 2009
4.^ Lazenby, Peter (June 8, 2009). "BNP wins Yorkshire Euro seat". Yorkshire Post. http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/BNP-wins-Yorkshire-Euro-seat.5343062.jp. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
5.^ "The Front enters the Brons Age: Searchlight puts Brons in Perspective". Searchlight Magazine. http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=301. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
6.^ Duncan Campbell, "Andrew Brons: the genteel face of neo-fascism", The Guardian, 8 June 2009
7.^ Britten, Nick (2009-06-09). "European elections 2009: BNP Andrew Brons profile". London: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/5478006/European-elections-2009-BNP-Andrew-Brons-profile.html. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
8.^ a b Jerome Taylor, "Andrew Brons: The quiet academic with a 'silly' teenage Nazi past", The Independent, 9 June 2009. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
9.^ "Lib Dem by-election loser Dominic Carman's attack on Barnsley". BBC. 9 March 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12690419.
10.^ Brons, Andrew (Thu, 10/03/2011). "Statement from Andrew Brons MEP". www.andrewbronsmep.eu. http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/statement-andrew-brons-mep.
11.^ S. Taylor, The National Front in English Politics, London: Macmillan, 1982, p. 62.
12.^ a b c Duncan Campbell, 'Andrew Brons, the genteel face of neo-fascism', The Guardian 8 June 2009
13.^ "1977: Jenkins quits Commons for Brussels". BBC News. 3 January 1977. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/3/newsid_3287000/3287511.stm.
14.^ 1977 By Election Results at by-elections.co.uk, accesssed 18 December 2011
15.^ N. Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p.33
16.^ a b Jamie Doward, "Racist rants of elected BNP man, Andrew Brons, revealed", The Observer, 14 June 2009
17.^ "Beating the Brons Brigade". Searchlight Magazine. http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=299. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
18.^ "EXPOSED: BNP man's past - Harrogate Today". Harrogateadvertiser.net. http://www.harrogateadvertiser.net/harrogatenews/EXPOSED-BNP-man39s-past-.5362613.jp. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
19.^ Duncan Campbell, "The genteel face of British neo-fascism", The Guardian, page 7, 9 June 2009
20.^ a b c Smithard, Tom (June 3, 2009). "Controversy over abuse conviction of BNP candidate". Yorkshire Post. http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Controversy-over-abuse-conviction-of.5329019.jp. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
21.^ Private Eye #1238, 12 June 2009
22.^ Duncan Campbell (8 June 2009). "Andrew Brons: the genteel face of neo-fascism". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/08/european-elections-bnp. Retrieved 2010-03-26.
23.^ N. Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p. 35
24.^ "Terrified Brons quits as Front chairman". Searchlight Magazine. http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=298. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
25.^ N. Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p37
26.^ N. Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp36-8
27.^ a b "Andrew Brons". British National Party. March 4, 2009. http://bnp.org.uk/2009/03/andrew-brons/. Retrieved 2009-06-08. [dead link]
28.^ See, for example, "Something New to Worry Liberals", Identity, November 2007 and "The Elusive Causes of Gun & Knife Crime", Identity, October 2008
29.^ "Andrew stands for the British National Party in Keighley
Andrew Brons MEP". Andrewbrons.eu. 2010-04-16. http://andrewbrons.eu/2010/04/16/andrew-stands-for-the-british-national-party-in-keighley/. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
30.^ a b c "UK > England > Yorkshire & the Humber > Keithley". Election 2010 (BBC). 7 May 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/constituency/c39.stm. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
31.^ http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/andrew-brons-invited-carry-out-consultation-membership-about-constitutional-changes
32.^ British National Party Constitutional Consultation.
33.^ "Nick Griffin re-elected BNP leader ahead of Andrew Brons". BBC News. 25 July 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14286110.
34.^ BNP Bear Fight, Searchlight magazine, August 2011.
35.^ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/homeCom.do?language=EN&body=AFCO
36.^ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/homeCom.do?language=EN&body=LIBE
37.^ Parliamentref>http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sidesSearch/search.do?type=CRE&term=7&author=96749&language=EN&startValue=0
38.^ ,http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sidesSearch/search.do?type=QP&language=EN&term=7&author=96749
39.^ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/delegations/homeDel.do?language=EN&body=D-HR
40.^ http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/andrew-part-delegation-visiting-croatia
41.^ http://www.andrewbronsmep.eu/?q=content/leave-debate-croats
42.^ European Election 2009: Yorkshire and Humber, news.bbc.co.uk, 2009-06-08, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/elections/euro/09/html/ukregion_38.stm, retrieved 2010-03-10
Friday, 20 January 2012
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Marquess of Queensberry Rules, OK?
A good clean fight?
Acknowledgements to the BNP Ideas web site
The Attitude of BNP Factions towards Each Other
Posted by admin02 on 18 January, 2012
By Andrew Brons
It is well known that different cohorts of former activists have gone in different directions (the British Freedom Party, the English Democrats, Britain First/the National People’s Party, the National Front, the Democratic Nationalists, the Freedom Democrats and perhaps others) and each faction, as you would expect, disapproves of the chosen destination of each of the others.
Whilst we should not be sparing in our criticism of the parties or the decisions of with which we disapprove, there are good reasons for stopping short of universal character assassination of all of the individuals with whom we differ.
The only certainty that emerges from all of the mess in which the Nationalist Movement is currently wallowing, is that the vast majority of the activists that we had in 2010 must return to work under one party roof or the Nationalist Movement will fail for all time. Let there be no doubt about that. Any friction that will inhibit people from working with each other must be avoided.
Of course, it is tempting for people to agree with all of the aforesaid and conclude that everybody else must come to his or her senses and join them in whichever party they have chosen.
Indeed, I have been lobbied to form yet another break-away party, which everybody will want to join because of my overwhelming charisma, film star good looks and oratorical skills. The idea that my personal magnetism might be less than completely effective does not occur to them. The conclusion that I would simply have created a seventh (or is that eighth) faction fighting for a seventh or should that be an eighth fraction of the BNP has, so far, eluded them.
The need for an umbrella organisation that former BNP activists might join, without giving up their newly-found membership of their chosen party, is simply too difficult for some to grasp. Whilst the creation or membership of yet another micro-party doomed to failure, is seen as decisive, a serious and reasoned attempt to seek unification as a pre-condition, is derided as dithering and weakness. The problem with some sections of the Nationalist Movement is that thought and reason are seen as objects of suspicion and perhaps evidence of weakness or even effeminacy.
I have recently been criticised for working too hard to advance the Nationalist cause in the European Parliament and seeking to establish that Nationalists elected to public office are worthy of being elected and are capable of performing in that role. Nationalists are frequently criticised by our opponents for failing to speak, failing to attend and resigning before the end of their elected term. Naming names would serve no purpose and would only inhibit future co-operation.
When I was interviewed to be a candidate for the British National Party, I was asked by a member of the panel (who was not a member of the Party) whether I would, if elected, serve my full elected term. I promised that I would. I was not asked if I would attend regularly and contribute to debates but I took that as read. I was certainly not asked, by any of the panel, to give a pledge that I would attend only a couple of meetings and then absent myself, so that I could flee to an island retreat.
I was not asked to assure the panel members that I would help the Party to fragment by helping the leadership to drive activists out of the Party or by seeking membership of one of the nomadic groups to flee from its clutches.
I have been described as somebody whose previous political activity was restricted to “a brief stint in the 1980s when I was involved in the internal splits in the NF”. My first serious political activity was in 1965, with John Bean’s British National Party and then (when that Party merged with the League of Empire Loyalists in 1967) with the National Front until that Party changed its name to the National Democratic Party in 1995. I was on the National Directorate of the NF from 1974 until 1988. I remained a member of that Party until about 1999. I joined the BNP in 2005. People who remember me from my activity in the 1960s, 70s and 80s will remember that I always tried to prevent splits; I did not cause any.
I do not know how precisely the problems of the Nationalist Movement will be resolved but I do know that unity of our 2010 activists is a pre-condition for that resolution. It will be necessary for all or most of our 2010 activists eventually to find a home in the same party. I do not know whether that will be within an existing party or a new one. My ideal was that unity could have been achieved within the British National Party but the chances of that solution are receding quickly.
I do not know for certain which people will be the leading lights of a unified party. Indeed, it would be wrong to prejudge the will of the future membership. It is the duty of all of us to carry out the roles, however small, that are allotted to us; it is not our job to appoint ourselves to lead imaginary parties.
Unprovoked, vicious and groundless attacks, such as the recent one that was launched against one of my colleagues, are not part of the solution; they are the heart of the problem. People who are motivated by personal hatreds and class resentments have no part to play in the battle for our Nation.
COMMENTS
doc savage
says:
January 18, 2012 at 10:47 pm
It is clear that what Andrew is saying here is the only truly sensible way forward. I myself have dipped a toe into at least 2 of the small newly formed BNP splinter parties. And have subsequently seen the folly first hand of this way forward. The arguements don’t end, the respective ego’s battle like ferrets in a sack. All trying to out-do one another.
We have a far bigger fight to attend to. Our cause is all that matters, our nation and our people are where our energies should be directed.
If we choose ever more splintering and disintergration then the only winners are our liberal, socialist enemies.
It’s time to choose a united front for once and this is that oppotunity.
New Leadership's response to Andrew Brons' article
First of all, it's good to see that the rumours of the demise of BNP Ideas were greatly exaggerated. To all the doubters and detractors, I shall not be so mean-spirited as to say "I told you so". No, perish the thought.
It's quite clear that Andrew has assessed the situation accurately and has prescribed the only remedy that is remotely likely to succeed in restoring the body politic of nationalism to a healthy state.
Andrew is an educated man and has spent most of his career within an academic environment. He expresses himself rather like a tutor holding a seminar. He is discursive, allusive, he drops hints and makes donnish jokes. None of this is meant as a condemnation of his style. We all have our foibles and our own personal style, after all.
But it should be remembered that he is not addressing an audience of students of politics or law. The people whom he is addressing, nationalists, are primarily men of a certain age and experience. They are more men of action than of ideas, I think it would be fair to say. Many of them are not of an academic bent and never have been. They tend to be of a practical turn of mind, more than they are given to abstract theorizing and speculation.
I think this partly explains the impatience and criticism with which Andrew's strategy of unification via nationalist co-operation has been met. Rather than remembering the truth of the saying "They also serve who only stand and wait" many nationalists have, quite wrongly, attributed Andrew's waiting to a pusillanimity and an indecisiveness of which he is, in reality, not guilty.
As practical men, many nationalists want to be a-doing. They measure success in terms of activity. The trouble is that, as Games theory shows us, when many are engaged in the same activity, the activities of each can often cancel out the activities of others. That is the situation in which nationalism now finds itself. The activities of each of the would-be successors to the BNP's title of premier nationalist party cancel out the activities of the others, in the eyes of the disaffected bulk of the BNP's former membership, as also in the eyes of the electorate.
For nationalism to regain credibility in the eyes of the electorate, as in the eyes of its disaffected former adherents, it must reverse the process of fission which it has undergone over the last eighteen months and begin a sustained process of fusion.
As I have said, many nationalists are temperamentally averse to this proposal and find the notion of patiently and unadventurously working for inter-party co-operation and understanding unpalatable.
They would much rather be taking part in a cavalry charge against the Russian guns. Well, the outcome of such a charge is sadly only too predictable, but perhaps it has to happen before cooler heads will be allowed to have their way.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
One more 'benefit' of immigration?
Acknowledgements to the news.scotsman.com web site
Partner of man murdered in street attack witnessed him being beaten and killed outside home
By Gareth Rose
Published on Monday 16 January 2012
A WOMAN saw her partner fatally wounded in a “brutal and violent” assault without realising that it was him.
It was only when the 48-year-old woman went outside after the attack had taken place that she recognised William Mc-Keeney.
Mr McKeeney, 57, was taken by ambulance to the Victoria Infirmary, in Glasgow, where he died without regaining consciousness. Police said his partner has been left “completely traumatised”.
Mr McKeeney was walking home after a night out when he was attacked by two men in Melville Street, in Pollokshields, Glasgow, at 12:40am on Sunday.
When his partner found him, he was unconscious.
Area commander Chief Inspector Stephen McAllister said: “The fact she found him makes it even more horrendous.”
Mr McKeeney had been out locally and called his partner shortly before he was attacked to say he was coming home.
Detective Chief Inspector David Gailey, of Strathclyde Police, who is appealing for witnesses, said: “Mr McKeeney suffered massive injuries to his head and body in what can only be described as a brutal and sustained attack.
“To speculate on a motive at this time is completely unhelpful and indeed may hinder our investigation. However, we are keeping an open mind as to why it happened.
“People should be repulsed by what has happened and I would ask them to think about the effect this has had on his partner, and on the local community.”
Mr McKeeney, who was originally from Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, was “extremely popular” in the area and had no known enemies, police said.
The labourer had been living in Glasgow for the past five years. Mr Gailey added: “He went out of his way to help members of the community on a day-to-day basis. There is no motive for the crime at present and it is absolutely pivotal that I establish what the motive is.”
Police are looking for two men in their early twenties, and of Asian appearance, in connection with the murder. [Emphasis mine].
One is 6ft 2in to 6ft 4in tall and slim, and was wearing a light coloured hoodie, and light grey tracksuit bottoms. The other is of average height and build, and wore a navy tracksuit.
Mr Gailey said: “The cause of Mr McKeeney’s death was the result of a physical attack on him.
“He suffered injuries to his head and body. There is nothing to suggest a weapon was used, but I’m not in a position to rule a particular weapon out.
“At the moment it would appear that it was a completely unprovoked and violent attack.
“There is absolutely nothing at the moment to suggest that this is a racially motivated attack.” [If anyone believes it to be a hate crime, however, it must be treated as such by the police].
Police have appealed to anyone in the area who knows who killed Mr McKeeney, or who saw or heard the attack, to contact them. Mr Gailey said: “I am convinced that because of the local nature of this investigation, the answer lies within the Pollokshields community.
“My message to the killers is that I would like them to consider the impact that their violence has had on the Pollokshields community, and if they have any conscience at all, I ask them on behalf of the community to give themselves up.”
Extra officers are patrolling the area to reassure residents. Chief Insp McAllister said: “I would encourage people to approach them with any information or concerns they may have.”
Partner of man murdered in street attack witnessed him being beaten and killed outside home
By Gareth Rose
Published on Monday 16 January 2012
A WOMAN saw her partner fatally wounded in a “brutal and violent” assault without realising that it was him.
It was only when the 48-year-old woman went outside after the attack had taken place that she recognised William Mc-Keeney.
Mr McKeeney, 57, was taken by ambulance to the Victoria Infirmary, in Glasgow, where he died without regaining consciousness. Police said his partner has been left “completely traumatised”.
Mr McKeeney was walking home after a night out when he was attacked by two men in Melville Street, in Pollokshields, Glasgow, at 12:40am on Sunday.
When his partner found him, he was unconscious.
Area commander Chief Inspector Stephen McAllister said: “The fact she found him makes it even more horrendous.”
Mr McKeeney had been out locally and called his partner shortly before he was attacked to say he was coming home.
Detective Chief Inspector David Gailey, of Strathclyde Police, who is appealing for witnesses, said: “Mr McKeeney suffered massive injuries to his head and body in what can only be described as a brutal and sustained attack.
“To speculate on a motive at this time is completely unhelpful and indeed may hinder our investigation. However, we are keeping an open mind as to why it happened.
“People should be repulsed by what has happened and I would ask them to think about the effect this has had on his partner, and on the local community.”
Mr McKeeney, who was originally from Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, was “extremely popular” in the area and had no known enemies, police said.
The labourer had been living in Glasgow for the past five years. Mr Gailey added: “He went out of his way to help members of the community on a day-to-day basis. There is no motive for the crime at present and it is absolutely pivotal that I establish what the motive is.”
Police are looking for two men in their early twenties, and of Asian appearance, in connection with the murder. [Emphasis mine].
One is 6ft 2in to 6ft 4in tall and slim, and was wearing a light coloured hoodie, and light grey tracksuit bottoms. The other is of average height and build, and wore a navy tracksuit.
Mr Gailey said: “The cause of Mr McKeeney’s death was the result of a physical attack on him.
“He suffered injuries to his head and body. There is nothing to suggest a weapon was used, but I’m not in a position to rule a particular weapon out.
“At the moment it would appear that it was a completely unprovoked and violent attack.
“There is absolutely nothing at the moment to suggest that this is a racially motivated attack.” [If anyone believes it to be a hate crime, however, it must be treated as such by the police].
Police have appealed to anyone in the area who knows who killed Mr McKeeney, or who saw or heard the attack, to contact them. Mr Gailey said: “I am convinced that because of the local nature of this investigation, the answer lies within the Pollokshields community.
“My message to the killers is that I would like them to consider the impact that their violence has had on the Pollokshields community, and if they have any conscience at all, I ask them on behalf of the community to give themselves up.”
Extra officers are patrolling the area to reassure residents. Chief Insp McAllister said: “I would encourage people to approach them with any information or concerns they may have.”
Monday, 16 January 2012
Permanent Chairman and pensioner-for-life?
Acknowledgements to the Searchlight web site for the following article.
Nationalists, including members of the British National Party, should read it, primarily for the insight it provides into how the party is currently regarded by our enemies. It is always useful to know what the enemy is thinking and saying about one, even if, or perhaps especially if, it is unflattering. Furthermore, if one grants that the article should be read, surely it is better to read it on a friendly, nationalist site than to give the traffic to Searchlight.
The author of the piece, one Ossowski (pronounced 'oss-off-ski', as in 'off-piste') has certainly been rather uncomplimentary about certain individuals, to not every one of whom he refers by name. Considering that English may not be his mother tongue it is not written at all badly.
Should we care what our enemies say about us? Well, it has been said (by a seventeenth century French aristocrat) that our enemies are closer to the truth in their estimation of us than we are ourselves. Of course, what they really think of us may not be the same as what they say they think of us.
There can be no harm in reading the article, provided one bears in mind its source and treats it as the testimony of a hostile witness: to be taken with a grain of salt.
Should we care about the BNP any more?
12 January 2012
By Ketlan Ossowski
Just two or three years ago, the British National Party was looking like it was rapidly becoming a force to be reckoned with. With a large complement of councillors in second position on Barking and Dagenham Council, a member of the GLA and a total of fifty-five councillors tucked away around the country, notably at Stoke on Trent, things were looking good for the country's most successful fascist party.
In fact, the only fly in the ointment was the party's apparent inability to fulfil its accounting duties for the Electoral Commission each year, and the curiously divisive nature of Nick Griffin's leadership style, which was, and always has been, a dangerous combination of dictatorship and cronyism. And one more thing: the sheer uselessness of the average BNP councillor.
This latter point has saved a lot of work for anti-fascists. I've no idea who, over the years, has been responsible for selecting people to stand for the BNP at local authority level (at various times it's been anti-semite and bomber Tony Lecomber, white supremacist Arthur Kemp and the increasingly moronic Clive Jefferson, among many others), but they've done a sterling job for us.
Just one example of the BNP's disastrous selection process is reflected in one of their first Burnley councillors, the late Luke Smith. Twenty-six year old Smith was a well-known and highly active football hooligan and thug but even after he had served a seventeen-month jail term for violence, the BNP declared that he was not a violent young man. Shortly after that, Smith attacked the BNP's head of security, following this with an attack on a pub landlord. And who was it who chose Smith for his disastrous and doomed stint as a Burnley councillor? On this occasion, Nick Griffin himself.
Less dramatically, a high proportion of BNP councillors simply stop going to meetings because they either find them boring or simply don't understand what's going on. Six months of no attendance results in an automatic disqualification and normally the triggering of a by-election, which is inevitably won by someone who will properly serve their community. Those who are left, generally lose their jobs at the next election simply because they are useless. Although they attend the minimum number of meetings required to keep them in place, they choose not to speak (unless it's to be racist or idiotically stupid) and hardly ever engage with the electorate. Thus they are kicked out at the earliest opportunity.
That the BNP's councillor selection process is flawed is made fairly obvious by the simple fact that two or three years back they had fifty-five councillors and they're now down, last time I looked, to eight. Great for us but pretty crap for them. Not that I'm complaining.
Arguably the most important of the BNP's councillors is the party's representative on the GLA. At the moment, they don't have one, but for a while there, it was the inept, incoherent, lying drunk Dicky Barnbrook. Dicky, without a doubt, was an absolute boon to anti-fascists and while (obviously) we didn't want the BNP on the GLA at all, it was a mercy that they hadn't chosen somebody who was even remotely competent (or indeed, coherent).
Dicky is now an Independent on the GLA following a terminal fall-out with Griffin, leaving the latter having to find another candidate in the forthcoming elections. Much to everyone's surprise, Griffin has chosen Carlos Cortiglia, about whom anti-fascists only need to know that during the Falklands War, he volunteered to fight against the British. Once again, Griffin's ability to select sensible candidates who might actually score with the voters, is called into question.
This is the problem when one runs a dictatorship and when said dictator has absolutely no idea of how to delegate to people who might actually have some idea of what they're doing. They become self-absorbed and lose all sense of reality. And thus we come to Nick Griffin himself.
Back in the heyday of the BNP, it was said (though never confirmed) that the party had 14,000 members along with its fifty-five councillors, one GLA member and eventually, two MEPs. Now, it's estimated that the party has around 2,000 members, eight councillors, no GLA member (and no prospect of getting one) and two MEPs, though one of them, Andrew Brons, has so far removed himself from Griffin's orbit that he could never be endorsed by the party again whether he's a member or not.
These are staggering changes over a mere two years and for some time speculation within the party membership has been rife as to how this rapid downturn can be reversed. Well, I'm here to tell the membership who are discussing this question, the answer. It won't be, because Nick Griffin has absolutely no interest in the party beyond securing his own financial future.
Griffin's election to the European Parliament was a shock to everyone, not least to the man himself. The appalling peculiarities of the D'Hondt voting system (look it up) used during the election were being worried over long before the elections were held, and warning bells were sounded by those with long experience in the mysterious world of election mathematics that we could end up with extremist MEPs in seats where, under the First Past The Post (FPTP) system that we usually enjoy for Parliamentary elections, we wouldn't see the likes of Griffin infesting the place for the next thousand years. Sadly, D'Hondt was what we were stuck with and Griffin and Brons is what we got.
It was very soon clear that Griffin's obsession with money had got the better of him. The wage and expenses MEPs can earn are phenomenal and to a former bankrupt who had previously had to scratch around trying to make a bit of cash with rubbish like Affordable Cars, the Skip-Hire Registry and the laughable Horse Matters, the new remuneration must have come as a very pleasant surprise. But there is more - and it's important. If Griffin wins a second term at the European Parliament, he will be guaranteed a pension for life at the end of his second term. This pension will be a) enormous, and b) bulletproof, unlike the pensions of public sector workers who are a hell of a lot more vital than Nick bloody Griffin. For the first time in his miserable life, Griffin will be financially secure.
The only problem is how Griffin can force his way back in as MEP. The North West (which he is laughingly said to represent) is an enormous area, and the costs of millions of leaflets, brochures and so on during what will have to be a super-intensive campaign must be worrying to the leader of a party whose membership base (and thus its income) has been cut so dramatically in so short a time. In fact, his only option is to cut back on non-essentials so the money can be siphoned off for his own election campaign.
For the past year or two, the BNP's campaigning performance has been described as lacklustre, where any real campaigning has taken place at all. It's a pretty fair guess that Cortiglia's campaign will be more or less invisible - after all, he's a blatant no-hoper, put in place only to be laughed at and despised by the electorate. No, Griffin is saving every financial asset that he can screw out of the BNP and its membership for one reason and for one reason only; to get himself re-elected and thus secure his pension plan. If anyone in the BNP cannot see this, they're idiots and deserve to be ripped off by their glorious leader. Unfortunately, it's not just them who will have to pay Griffin's pension for the rest of his worthless life - it's every single taxpayer. Oh, joy.
So should we care about the BNP any more? In my opinion - and I stress it's only mine - no, not while it's being run by Nick Griffin, who is wholly financially self-obsessed. Should anyone with even a speck of political talent take over, who is willing to self-sacrifice for what they see as a cause, however unworthy it may seem to most of the population, I'll have to reconsider.
Nationalists, including members of the British National Party, should read it, primarily for the insight it provides into how the party is currently regarded by our enemies. It is always useful to know what the enemy is thinking and saying about one, even if, or perhaps especially if, it is unflattering. Furthermore, if one grants that the article should be read, surely it is better to read it on a friendly, nationalist site than to give the traffic to Searchlight.
The author of the piece, one Ossowski (pronounced 'oss-off-ski', as in 'off-piste') has certainly been rather uncomplimentary about certain individuals, to not every one of whom he refers by name. Considering that English may not be his mother tongue it is not written at all badly.
Should we care what our enemies say about us? Well, it has been said (by a seventeenth century French aristocrat) that our enemies are closer to the truth in their estimation of us than we are ourselves. Of course, what they really think of us may not be the same as what they say they think of us.
There can be no harm in reading the article, provided one bears in mind its source and treats it as the testimony of a hostile witness: to be taken with a grain of salt.
Should we care about the BNP any more?
12 January 2012
By Ketlan Ossowski
Just two or three years ago, the British National Party was looking like it was rapidly becoming a force to be reckoned with. With a large complement of councillors in second position on Barking and Dagenham Council, a member of the GLA and a total of fifty-five councillors tucked away around the country, notably at Stoke on Trent, things were looking good for the country's most successful fascist party.
In fact, the only fly in the ointment was the party's apparent inability to fulfil its accounting duties for the Electoral Commission each year, and the curiously divisive nature of Nick Griffin's leadership style, which was, and always has been, a dangerous combination of dictatorship and cronyism. And one more thing: the sheer uselessness of the average BNP councillor.
This latter point has saved a lot of work for anti-fascists. I've no idea who, over the years, has been responsible for selecting people to stand for the BNP at local authority level (at various times it's been anti-semite and bomber Tony Lecomber, white supremacist Arthur Kemp and the increasingly moronic Clive Jefferson, among many others), but they've done a sterling job for us.
Just one example of the BNP's disastrous selection process is reflected in one of their first Burnley councillors, the late Luke Smith. Twenty-six year old Smith was a well-known and highly active football hooligan and thug but even after he had served a seventeen-month jail term for violence, the BNP declared that he was not a violent young man. Shortly after that, Smith attacked the BNP's head of security, following this with an attack on a pub landlord. And who was it who chose Smith for his disastrous and doomed stint as a Burnley councillor? On this occasion, Nick Griffin himself.
Less dramatically, a high proportion of BNP councillors simply stop going to meetings because they either find them boring or simply don't understand what's going on. Six months of no attendance results in an automatic disqualification and normally the triggering of a by-election, which is inevitably won by someone who will properly serve their community. Those who are left, generally lose their jobs at the next election simply because they are useless. Although they attend the minimum number of meetings required to keep them in place, they choose not to speak (unless it's to be racist or idiotically stupid) and hardly ever engage with the electorate. Thus they are kicked out at the earliest opportunity.
That the BNP's councillor selection process is flawed is made fairly obvious by the simple fact that two or three years back they had fifty-five councillors and they're now down, last time I looked, to eight. Great for us but pretty crap for them. Not that I'm complaining.
Arguably the most important of the BNP's councillors is the party's representative on the GLA. At the moment, they don't have one, but for a while there, it was the inept, incoherent, lying drunk Dicky Barnbrook. Dicky, without a doubt, was an absolute boon to anti-fascists and while (obviously) we didn't want the BNP on the GLA at all, it was a mercy that they hadn't chosen somebody who was even remotely competent (or indeed, coherent).
Dicky is now an Independent on the GLA following a terminal fall-out with Griffin, leaving the latter having to find another candidate in the forthcoming elections. Much to everyone's surprise, Griffin has chosen Carlos Cortiglia, about whom anti-fascists only need to know that during the Falklands War, he volunteered to fight against the British. Once again, Griffin's ability to select sensible candidates who might actually score with the voters, is called into question.
This is the problem when one runs a dictatorship and when said dictator has absolutely no idea of how to delegate to people who might actually have some idea of what they're doing. They become self-absorbed and lose all sense of reality. And thus we come to Nick Griffin himself.
Back in the heyday of the BNP, it was said (though never confirmed) that the party had 14,000 members along with its fifty-five councillors, one GLA member and eventually, two MEPs. Now, it's estimated that the party has around 2,000 members, eight councillors, no GLA member (and no prospect of getting one) and two MEPs, though one of them, Andrew Brons, has so far removed himself from Griffin's orbit that he could never be endorsed by the party again whether he's a member or not.
These are staggering changes over a mere two years and for some time speculation within the party membership has been rife as to how this rapid downturn can be reversed. Well, I'm here to tell the membership who are discussing this question, the answer. It won't be, because Nick Griffin has absolutely no interest in the party beyond securing his own financial future.
Griffin's election to the European Parliament was a shock to everyone, not least to the man himself. The appalling peculiarities of the D'Hondt voting system (look it up) used during the election were being worried over long before the elections were held, and warning bells were sounded by those with long experience in the mysterious world of election mathematics that we could end up with extremist MEPs in seats where, under the First Past The Post (FPTP) system that we usually enjoy for Parliamentary elections, we wouldn't see the likes of Griffin infesting the place for the next thousand years. Sadly, D'Hondt was what we were stuck with and Griffin and Brons is what we got.
It was very soon clear that Griffin's obsession with money had got the better of him. The wage and expenses MEPs can earn are phenomenal and to a former bankrupt who had previously had to scratch around trying to make a bit of cash with rubbish like Affordable Cars, the Skip-Hire Registry and the laughable Horse Matters, the new remuneration must have come as a very pleasant surprise. But there is more - and it's important. If Griffin wins a second term at the European Parliament, he will be guaranteed a pension for life at the end of his second term. This pension will be a) enormous, and b) bulletproof, unlike the pensions of public sector workers who are a hell of a lot more vital than Nick bloody Griffin. For the first time in his miserable life, Griffin will be financially secure.
The only problem is how Griffin can force his way back in as MEP. The North West (which he is laughingly said to represent) is an enormous area, and the costs of millions of leaflets, brochures and so on during what will have to be a super-intensive campaign must be worrying to the leader of a party whose membership base (and thus its income) has been cut so dramatically in so short a time. In fact, his only option is to cut back on non-essentials so the money can be siphoned off for his own election campaign.
For the past year or two, the BNP's campaigning performance has been described as lacklustre, where any real campaigning has taken place at all. It's a pretty fair guess that Cortiglia's campaign will be more or less invisible - after all, he's a blatant no-hoper, put in place only to be laughed at and despised by the electorate. No, Griffin is saving every financial asset that he can screw out of the BNP and its membership for one reason and for one reason only; to get himself re-elected and thus secure his pension plan. If anyone in the BNP cannot see this, they're idiots and deserve to be ripped off by their glorious leader. Unfortunately, it's not just them who will have to pay Griffin's pension for the rest of his worthless life - it's every single taxpayer. Oh, joy.
So should we care about the BNP any more? In my opinion - and I stress it's only mine - no, not while it's being run by Nick Griffin, who is wholly financially self-obsessed. Should anyone with even a speck of political talent take over, who is willing to self-sacrifice for what they see as a cause, however unworthy it may seem to most of the population, I'll have to reconsider.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Macpherson's moral cowardice
A Modern Witch Trial
Racism: the charge against which there is no defense
By Theodore Dalrymple
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_otbie-racism.html
Men may be created equal, but not all murders are equal. Some are quickly forgotten, except by those immediately affected by them, while others—by no means always political assassinations—have a lasting political impact. Among the politically significant kind was the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young black man, in a London suburb on the evening of April 22, 1993. Five or six white youths set upon Lawrence and a friend, Duwayne Brooks. One of the attackers supposedly shouted, “What, what, nigger?” immediately before Lawrence was stabbed to death. Brooks managed to evade the attackers, who ran away.
Despite considerable circumstantial evidence against several suspects, the perpetrators escaped conviction. The police investigation into the murder was a model of incompetence of the kind that every Briton now expects of our boys in blue. Over the investigation there also hung a pall of suspected corruption, for one suspect was the son of a rich drug trafficker who, on a previous occasion when his son stood accused of a stabbing, had tried (unsuccessfully) to bribe and threaten the victim into altering his evidence.
But the Lawrence murder took on a wide social significance because of its racial overtones. The botched investigation became a cause célèbre—the presumption being that racism alone could explain the police’s failure to bring the perpetrators to justice—and the government launched an official inquiry to “identify the lessons to be learned for the investigation and prosecution of racially motivated crimes.” There followed a festival of political and emotional correctness the likes of which have rarely been equaled. It would be impossible, at less than book length, to plumb the depths of intellectual confusion and moral cowardice to which the inquiry plunged. In 1999, it released a report of its findings that won almost universal praise despite its risible shortcomings.
This year, on the tenth anniversary of the report, the press and professional criminologists are celebrating it for, as one put it, bringing about a “paradigm shift” in the sensitivities of British police about “diversity”—police now think about race all the time, it seems. The report’s real effect, however, was to demoralize further an already demoralized police force, which, immediately after the report appeared, retreated from stopping or searching people behaving suspiciously and watched street robberies increase 50 percent.
Perhaps the fact that the inquiry was open to the public had something to do with the nature of the resulting report. The public gallery regularly overflowed with activists and extremists, who did not hesitate to jeer and mock the witnesses with whom they disagreed; the head of the inquiry, Sir William Macpherson, rarely admonished these spectators, thus creating an officially sanctioned atmosphere of intimidation. Among the self-congratulatory sentences that opened the report (“We believe that our procedures did ensure fairness”; “The contributions of the Inquiry’s Advisers to the Report and to the conclusions to the Report . . . have been imaginative, radical and of incalculable worth”) was the following, a flash of lightning in the darkness: “We thank the officers from the Walworth Police Station, who in difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances have helped to keep order when emotions ran high.” An incipient riot is not a situation in which the truth is likely to emerge or to be uppermost in people’s minds.
The report’s contention was that the mishandled Lawrence case illustrated the “institutional racism” of the London police force. Poor Sir William tied himself in knots trying to explain the notion of institutional racism, relying in part on that great moral authority on race relations, Stokely Carmichael, the onetime “prime minister” of the Black Panthers. As Macpherson admitted, he could point to no actual instance of racist behavior by the officers involved in the case, though evidence of incompetence and delay was abundant. But if he had concluded from the lack of evidence of racist behavior that the police were not racist, he doubtless would have become an object of execration by all the people who think the right thoughts. Thus Macpherson’s redefinition of racism: “Failure to adjust policies and methods to meet the needs of policing a multi-racial society can occur simply because police officers may mistakenly believe that it is legitimate to be ‘colour-blind’ in both individual and team response to the management and investigation of racist crimes.”
On the very next page, however, Sir William quoted approvingly the assertion of an association of black police officers: “Institutional racism leads officers to act, albeit unconsciously, and for the most part unintentionally, and treat others differently because of their ethnicity or culture.” In other words, if you treat people the same, you are racist; but if you treat them differently, you are racist. It is clear that we are here in the realm not of the rule of law but of the Malleus Maleficarum, and that Macpherson is acting not as judge but as witchfinder-general.
The evidence of institutional racism that Macpherson uncovered would be laughable, had the liberal press not taken it so seriously. For example, when the police arrived at the murder scene, Brooks snarled: “Who called you fucking cunts anyway, pigs, I only called an ambulance.” That the police did not feel entirely reassured that Brooks was a respectable, upright citizen, and ignored the fact that he was also a victim of the attack, became for Macpherson a sign of their racist stereotyping, not a natural response to such vile abuse, which is not a normal way for the law-abiding to address the supposed guardians of the law—or, indeed, anyone else.
Further evidence, in Sir William’s view, was that some of the detectives refused to accept that the Lawrence murder was “wholly racist,” though none denied at least a racist element. Of course, since no one had actually been convicted of the murder, the murderer’s motive could not be known for certain. And even if the suspects—a violent group, certainly—were indeed the culprits, was racism the sole, or even primary, cause of their violence? One suspect—David Norris, the drug trafficker’s son—was almost certainly guilty of that earlier stabbing in which his father became illegally involved, as the report observed. But there the victim was white. Norris and two other suspects in the Lawrence murder had also been suspects in another assault, this one on two brothers, both white. In both instances, Norris got off because of incompetent prosecutions.
Macpherson did not draw the obvious inference, and if he did, the liberal intelligentsia would not have applauded.
Let us assume that Norris was indeed one of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers. If the prosecution of Norris’s earlier crimes had not been so incompetent, and if he had received an adequate sentence if found guilty (an unlikely outcome in contemporary Britain), then Lawrence would now be alive.
At one point, the inquiry listened to secretly recorded conversations among the Lawrence suspects. The conversations were racist in the crudest possible way, but they were not purely racist. Norris said, for example, “If I was going to kill myself, do you know what I’d do? I’d go and kill every black cunt, every Paki, every copper, every mug that I know.” The police in London are not predominantly minorities; it is also unlikely that “every mug” that Norris knew was a minority. Norris’s propensity to racism was probably caused by his propensity to violence, rather than the other way around.
So on every possible ground, the police who dismissed the idea that the murder was “wholly racist” were right, at least factually. Their error was political or even metaphysical—beyond the realm of mere empirical evidence. On Macpherson’s view, the police should act more as defenders of politically correct orthodoxy than as keepers of the peace and searchers after the truth.
Further confirmation of Sir William’s moral cowardice was his uncritical acceptance of everything that Stephen Lawrence’s mother said. Now, Mrs. Lawrence had lost her son to murder, and the police had failed to solve the far from insoluble crime; she was understandably distraught and angry. But that did not make her the arbiter of truth; common sense, indeed, should have suggested the contrary. One might have hoped that a judge would have shown some judgment.
At the beginning of the report, Macpherson defended the unusually “adversarial” manner in which the inquiry was conducted. “Cross-examination of many officers was undoubtedly robust and searching,” he wrote. A few pages later, without noticing any contradiction, he mentioned that when one Mr. Gompertz, the counsel for the police, was questioning Mrs. Lawrence, “The nature and content of the questions made Mrs. Lawrence protest that her perception was that she was being put on trial. Wisely Mr. Gompertz desisted.” In short, only the accused could be questioned.
Mrs. Lawrence had already demonstrated that, no doubt in her distress, she was willing to go beyond the facts. In her statement to the coroner’s court, she said (and later repeated the assertion to Nelson Mandela when he visited London): “In my opinion what had happened was the way of the judicial system making a clear statement to the black community that their lives are worth nothing and the justice system will support any one, any white person who wishes to commit any crime or even murder against a black person, you will be protected, you will be supported by the British system.”
Even if we leave aside the question of why she bothered to participate in the system at all if it really was as she described it, she ought to have known that she was exaggerating. I quote from the report, which sought to show that Lawrence’s was not the only racist murder in the area:
In February 1991 a white man named Thornburrow murdered a young 15 year old black youth named Rolan Adams. . . . He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On 11 July 1992 an Asian boy called Rohit Duggal was stabbed to death by a white youth named Peter Thompson. . . . Thompson was found guilty of the murder in February 1993.
Mrs. Lawrence should have known about these sentences. If she did not, she was ignorant; if she did, she was lying. But all that Macpherson said of her incendiary charge was that it showed the depth of her feeling—not that it was inaccurate and misleading. Her victimhood had to be immaculate.
Mrs. Lawrence further said that she felt condescended to by the police and ascribed this condescension to their racism. Macpherson showed—surprisingly, for a judge—no recognition of the obvious difficulties in accepting such feeling as evidence of anything. He did not even demand that her feelings have some objective correlative: if she felt condescended to because of racism, she was condescended to because of racism.
Among the report’s many pernicious recommendations was the following: “The definition of a racist incident should be any incident which is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.” Nothing could be better designed to destroy the possibility of easy—dare I say normal—relations among people of different races. For the notion that racism is so pervasive and institutionalized that it is everywhere, even where it appears not to be, induces in the susceptible a paranoid state of mind, which then finds racism in every possible situation, in every remark, in every suggestion, in every gesture and expression. It is a charge against which there is no defense.
Two incidents in my clinical experience illustrate this nonfalsifiability. In the first, the lawyers for a black defendant asked me to appraise his fitness to plead. The defendant faced charges of assaulting another black man, out of the blue, with an iron bar. The man was obviously paranoid, his speech rambling and incoherent; his lawyers could obtain no sensible instructions from him. I argued that he was unfit to plead. Whereupon the man’s sister denounced me as a racist: I had reached my conclusions, she charged, only because her brother was black. Her 15-year-old daughter started to describe to me her frequent difficulties in understanding her uncle, only to be told to shut up by her mother. The lawyers had been unable to obtain instructions from the defendant only because they were white, the sister persisted. Give her brother black lawyers, and he would be perfectly reasonable. Of course, if I had said that he was fit to plead, she could have claimed with equal justice (which is none) that I came to that conclusion only because he was black.
The second case, far more serious, ended in a man’s death; the blame was partly mine. A black man in his mid-twenties arrived at our hospital with severely cut wrists. He was nearly exsanguinated and needed a large blood transfusion; his tendons also needed an operation to repair. By all accounts, he had been a perfectly normal man, happily employed, a few weeks before, but suddenly he had stopped eating and become a recluse, barricading himself in his house until police and family broke in to reach him. His suicide attempt was not one of those frivolous gestures with which our hospitals are all too familiar. If ever a man meant to kill himself, this man did.
His mother was by his bedside. I told her that her son should remain in the hospital for treatment (you’d hardly have to be a doctor to realize this). At first she was perfectly agreeable; but then a friend of the young man, himself young and black, arrived and instantly accused me of racism for my supposed desire to lock the patient up. I tried to reason with this friend, but he became agitated and aggressive, even menacing. Whether from conviction or because she, too, felt intimidated, the mother then sided with the friend and started to say that I was racist in wishing to detain her son.
I could have insisted on the powers granted to me by law—asking a court to have social services replace the mother as the patient’s nearest relative for the legal purpose of keeping him in treatment. But I did not fancy the process: the young friend had threatened to bring reinforcements, and a riot might have ensued in the hospital. Instead, I agreed to the demand that I let the patient go home. The two said that they would look after him, and I made them sign a paper (of no legal worth) acknowledging that I had warned them of the possible consequences.
This piece of paper they screwed up into a ball and threw away immediately outside the ward, where I found it later. I had made copies, and it was one of these that I sent to the coroner when, six weeks later, the young man gassed himself to death with car exhaust. The notion of ubiquitous, institutionalized racism resulted in his death; and I resolved that it would never intimidate me again.
When I think of Macpherson’s feeble mental pirouettes, I turn for relief to an official 1854 report into some abuses committed in Birmingham Borough Prison, where I myself worked a century and a half later. Every day, as I entered, I passed an oak notice board, on which one could read, displayed in gold lettering, the names of past governors of the prison. The second on the list was Lieutenant William Austin of the Royal Navy, whose cruelties—among those of other prison officials, including its doctor—a commission of inquiry had investigated.
To read the commission’s report after Macpherson’s is to enter a different world, one in which words mean what they appear to mean, the integrity of the commissioners is self-evident, facts count more than feelings, and conclusions follow from the evidence. In fact, to read the commission’s report after Macpherson’s is to experience a powerful sense of moral and intellectual progress—at least among the writers of official reports—but in the wrong temporal direction, alas. The prose of the commissioners, one of them a doctor, is clear, vigorous, and without the evasions and contradictions of Macpherson’s writing. They write like men who know they are doing a good job well.
The event that brought the abuses to light was the suicide of a 15-year-old inmate named Edward Andrews, who had stolen four pounds of beef and been sentenced to three months’ hard labor in the prison. The suicide revealed a pattern of abuse. The commission discovered that the prison imposed an entirely illegal system of “hard labour” that forced prisoners to turn a crank 10,000 times a day—2,000 before breakfast, 4,000 before lunch, and 4,000 before dinner. If a prisoner did not complete each stage, he lost the subsequent meal. If he did not complete the 10,000 by the end of the day, he was put on bread and water. The weight on the crank was adjusted, supposedly to meet each prisoner’s physical capabilities.
The commissioners inspected the crank machines and described them with great clarity:
Although in pressing the handle downwards the prisoner has only the five pounds to bear down, yet in lifting it up, when nearest his body, he has to exert a force equal to at least three times that weight; and according to the same evidence, the labour would be of a nature most severe and exhausting; insomuch as, taking into account the speed with which it must be performed in order to accomplish the number of revolutions required for a day’s work, 10,000 namely, or nearly 30 revolutions a minute, we were assured that, in order to accomplish such a task, a boy would necessarily exert a force equal to one-fourth of the ordinary work of a draught horse; the average estimate of the work of a boy, in ordinary labour out of a prison, being about one-tenth of the same.
Young Andrews, unable to complete the work, was not only put on bread and water but also, on Lieutenant Austin’s characteristically harsh order, dressed in the “punishment jacket.” This consisted of an ordinary straitjacket, combined—again illegally—with a leather collar fixed around the prisoner’s neck and attached to the wall. “Very speedily after [the jackets’] introduction into the prison,” the commissioners explained, “they appear to have been converted into ordinary implements of punishment for non-performance of prison labour or breaches of prison discipline (frequently of a very trivial nature).”
The commissioners describe how the “punishment jacket” worked: “the prisoner being first muffled in the strait jacket, having his arms tied together on his breast, the leather stock fastened tightly round his neck, and being, moreover (where the punishment was inflicted by day), in almost every case strapped to the wall of his cell, in a standing position, by means of strong leather straps passed round the upper parts of the arms, and fastened to staples or hooks in the wall, so tightly as to draw back the arms into and keep them in a constrained and necessarily painful position, at the same time compressing them.” After watching a willing volunteer strapped into the jacket, the commissioners realized that “it was obvious that such a mode of restraint must necessarily, if continued for several hours, be productive of great pain—in truth, that it must be an engine of positive torture.” Their conclusion: “With respect, then, to the case of Edward Andrews, we are of opinion that, by the order and with the knowledge of the governor, he was punished illegally and cruelly, and was driven thereby to the commission of suicide.”
The conclusion reflected a proper and transparently honest sifting of the evidence. The Macpherson report did not. Since 1854, prison conditions have improved. Since 1999, race relations have not.
Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His new book is Not with a Bang but a Whimper.
Racism: the charge against which there is no defense
By Theodore Dalrymple
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_otbie-racism.html
Men may be created equal, but not all murders are equal. Some are quickly forgotten, except by those immediately affected by them, while others—by no means always political assassinations—have a lasting political impact. Among the politically significant kind was the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young black man, in a London suburb on the evening of April 22, 1993. Five or six white youths set upon Lawrence and a friend, Duwayne Brooks. One of the attackers supposedly shouted, “What, what, nigger?” immediately before Lawrence was stabbed to death. Brooks managed to evade the attackers, who ran away.
Despite considerable circumstantial evidence against several suspects, the perpetrators escaped conviction. The police investigation into the murder was a model of incompetence of the kind that every Briton now expects of our boys in blue. Over the investigation there also hung a pall of suspected corruption, for one suspect was the son of a rich drug trafficker who, on a previous occasion when his son stood accused of a stabbing, had tried (unsuccessfully) to bribe and threaten the victim into altering his evidence.
But the Lawrence murder took on a wide social significance because of its racial overtones. The botched investigation became a cause célèbre—the presumption being that racism alone could explain the police’s failure to bring the perpetrators to justice—and the government launched an official inquiry to “identify the lessons to be learned for the investigation and prosecution of racially motivated crimes.” There followed a festival of political and emotional correctness the likes of which have rarely been equaled. It would be impossible, at less than book length, to plumb the depths of intellectual confusion and moral cowardice to which the inquiry plunged. In 1999, it released a report of its findings that won almost universal praise despite its risible shortcomings.
This year, on the tenth anniversary of the report, the press and professional criminologists are celebrating it for, as one put it, bringing about a “paradigm shift” in the sensitivities of British police about “diversity”—police now think about race all the time, it seems. The report’s real effect, however, was to demoralize further an already demoralized police force, which, immediately after the report appeared, retreated from stopping or searching people behaving suspiciously and watched street robberies increase 50 percent.
Perhaps the fact that the inquiry was open to the public had something to do with the nature of the resulting report. The public gallery regularly overflowed with activists and extremists, who did not hesitate to jeer and mock the witnesses with whom they disagreed; the head of the inquiry, Sir William Macpherson, rarely admonished these spectators, thus creating an officially sanctioned atmosphere of intimidation. Among the self-congratulatory sentences that opened the report (“We believe that our procedures did ensure fairness”; “The contributions of the Inquiry’s Advisers to the Report and to the conclusions to the Report . . . have been imaginative, radical and of incalculable worth”) was the following, a flash of lightning in the darkness: “We thank the officers from the Walworth Police Station, who in difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances have helped to keep order when emotions ran high.” An incipient riot is not a situation in which the truth is likely to emerge or to be uppermost in people’s minds.
The report’s contention was that the mishandled Lawrence case illustrated the “institutional racism” of the London police force. Poor Sir William tied himself in knots trying to explain the notion of institutional racism, relying in part on that great moral authority on race relations, Stokely Carmichael, the onetime “prime minister” of the Black Panthers. As Macpherson admitted, he could point to no actual instance of racist behavior by the officers involved in the case, though evidence of incompetence and delay was abundant. But if he had concluded from the lack of evidence of racist behavior that the police were not racist, he doubtless would have become an object of execration by all the people who think the right thoughts. Thus Macpherson’s redefinition of racism: “Failure to adjust policies and methods to meet the needs of policing a multi-racial society can occur simply because police officers may mistakenly believe that it is legitimate to be ‘colour-blind’ in both individual and team response to the management and investigation of racist crimes.”
On the very next page, however, Sir William quoted approvingly the assertion of an association of black police officers: “Institutional racism leads officers to act, albeit unconsciously, and for the most part unintentionally, and treat others differently because of their ethnicity or culture.” In other words, if you treat people the same, you are racist; but if you treat them differently, you are racist. It is clear that we are here in the realm not of the rule of law but of the Malleus Maleficarum, and that Macpherson is acting not as judge but as witchfinder-general.
The evidence of institutional racism that Macpherson uncovered would be laughable, had the liberal press not taken it so seriously. For example, when the police arrived at the murder scene, Brooks snarled: “Who called you fucking cunts anyway, pigs, I only called an ambulance.” That the police did not feel entirely reassured that Brooks was a respectable, upright citizen, and ignored the fact that he was also a victim of the attack, became for Macpherson a sign of their racist stereotyping, not a natural response to such vile abuse, which is not a normal way for the law-abiding to address the supposed guardians of the law—or, indeed, anyone else.
Further evidence, in Sir William’s view, was that some of the detectives refused to accept that the Lawrence murder was “wholly racist,” though none denied at least a racist element. Of course, since no one had actually been convicted of the murder, the murderer’s motive could not be known for certain. And even if the suspects—a violent group, certainly—were indeed the culprits, was racism the sole, or even primary, cause of their violence? One suspect—David Norris, the drug trafficker’s son—was almost certainly guilty of that earlier stabbing in which his father became illegally involved, as the report observed. But there the victim was white. Norris and two other suspects in the Lawrence murder had also been suspects in another assault, this one on two brothers, both white. In both instances, Norris got off because of incompetent prosecutions.
Macpherson did not draw the obvious inference, and if he did, the liberal intelligentsia would not have applauded.
Let us assume that Norris was indeed one of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers. If the prosecution of Norris’s earlier crimes had not been so incompetent, and if he had received an adequate sentence if found guilty (an unlikely outcome in contemporary Britain), then Lawrence would now be alive.
At one point, the inquiry listened to secretly recorded conversations among the Lawrence suspects. The conversations were racist in the crudest possible way, but they were not purely racist. Norris said, for example, “If I was going to kill myself, do you know what I’d do? I’d go and kill every black cunt, every Paki, every copper, every mug that I know.” The police in London are not predominantly minorities; it is also unlikely that “every mug” that Norris knew was a minority. Norris’s propensity to racism was probably caused by his propensity to violence, rather than the other way around.
So on every possible ground, the police who dismissed the idea that the murder was “wholly racist” were right, at least factually. Their error was political or even metaphysical—beyond the realm of mere empirical evidence. On Macpherson’s view, the police should act more as defenders of politically correct orthodoxy than as keepers of the peace and searchers after the truth.
Further confirmation of Sir William’s moral cowardice was his uncritical acceptance of everything that Stephen Lawrence’s mother said. Now, Mrs. Lawrence had lost her son to murder, and the police had failed to solve the far from insoluble crime; she was understandably distraught and angry. But that did not make her the arbiter of truth; common sense, indeed, should have suggested the contrary. One might have hoped that a judge would have shown some judgment.
At the beginning of the report, Macpherson defended the unusually “adversarial” manner in which the inquiry was conducted. “Cross-examination of many officers was undoubtedly robust and searching,” he wrote. A few pages later, without noticing any contradiction, he mentioned that when one Mr. Gompertz, the counsel for the police, was questioning Mrs. Lawrence, “The nature and content of the questions made Mrs. Lawrence protest that her perception was that she was being put on trial. Wisely Mr. Gompertz desisted.” In short, only the accused could be questioned.
Mrs. Lawrence had already demonstrated that, no doubt in her distress, she was willing to go beyond the facts. In her statement to the coroner’s court, she said (and later repeated the assertion to Nelson Mandela when he visited London): “In my opinion what had happened was the way of the judicial system making a clear statement to the black community that their lives are worth nothing and the justice system will support any one, any white person who wishes to commit any crime or even murder against a black person, you will be protected, you will be supported by the British system.”
Even if we leave aside the question of why she bothered to participate in the system at all if it really was as she described it, she ought to have known that she was exaggerating. I quote from the report, which sought to show that Lawrence’s was not the only racist murder in the area:
In February 1991 a white man named Thornburrow murdered a young 15 year old black youth named Rolan Adams. . . . He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On 11 July 1992 an Asian boy called Rohit Duggal was stabbed to death by a white youth named Peter Thompson. . . . Thompson was found guilty of the murder in February 1993.
Mrs. Lawrence should have known about these sentences. If she did not, she was ignorant; if she did, she was lying. But all that Macpherson said of her incendiary charge was that it showed the depth of her feeling—not that it was inaccurate and misleading. Her victimhood had to be immaculate.
Mrs. Lawrence further said that she felt condescended to by the police and ascribed this condescension to their racism. Macpherson showed—surprisingly, for a judge—no recognition of the obvious difficulties in accepting such feeling as evidence of anything. He did not even demand that her feelings have some objective correlative: if she felt condescended to because of racism, she was condescended to because of racism.
Among the report’s many pernicious recommendations was the following: “The definition of a racist incident should be any incident which is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.” Nothing could be better designed to destroy the possibility of easy—dare I say normal—relations among people of different races. For the notion that racism is so pervasive and institutionalized that it is everywhere, even where it appears not to be, induces in the susceptible a paranoid state of mind, which then finds racism in every possible situation, in every remark, in every suggestion, in every gesture and expression. It is a charge against which there is no defense.
Two incidents in my clinical experience illustrate this nonfalsifiability. In the first, the lawyers for a black defendant asked me to appraise his fitness to plead. The defendant faced charges of assaulting another black man, out of the blue, with an iron bar. The man was obviously paranoid, his speech rambling and incoherent; his lawyers could obtain no sensible instructions from him. I argued that he was unfit to plead. Whereupon the man’s sister denounced me as a racist: I had reached my conclusions, she charged, only because her brother was black. Her 15-year-old daughter started to describe to me her frequent difficulties in understanding her uncle, only to be told to shut up by her mother. The lawyers had been unable to obtain instructions from the defendant only because they were white, the sister persisted. Give her brother black lawyers, and he would be perfectly reasonable. Of course, if I had said that he was fit to plead, she could have claimed with equal justice (which is none) that I came to that conclusion only because he was black.
The second case, far more serious, ended in a man’s death; the blame was partly mine. A black man in his mid-twenties arrived at our hospital with severely cut wrists. He was nearly exsanguinated and needed a large blood transfusion; his tendons also needed an operation to repair. By all accounts, he had been a perfectly normal man, happily employed, a few weeks before, but suddenly he had stopped eating and become a recluse, barricading himself in his house until police and family broke in to reach him. His suicide attempt was not one of those frivolous gestures with which our hospitals are all too familiar. If ever a man meant to kill himself, this man did.
His mother was by his bedside. I told her that her son should remain in the hospital for treatment (you’d hardly have to be a doctor to realize this). At first she was perfectly agreeable; but then a friend of the young man, himself young and black, arrived and instantly accused me of racism for my supposed desire to lock the patient up. I tried to reason with this friend, but he became agitated and aggressive, even menacing. Whether from conviction or because she, too, felt intimidated, the mother then sided with the friend and started to say that I was racist in wishing to detain her son.
I could have insisted on the powers granted to me by law—asking a court to have social services replace the mother as the patient’s nearest relative for the legal purpose of keeping him in treatment. But I did not fancy the process: the young friend had threatened to bring reinforcements, and a riot might have ensued in the hospital. Instead, I agreed to the demand that I let the patient go home. The two said that they would look after him, and I made them sign a paper (of no legal worth) acknowledging that I had warned them of the possible consequences.
This piece of paper they screwed up into a ball and threw away immediately outside the ward, where I found it later. I had made copies, and it was one of these that I sent to the coroner when, six weeks later, the young man gassed himself to death with car exhaust. The notion of ubiquitous, institutionalized racism resulted in his death; and I resolved that it would never intimidate me again.
When I think of Macpherson’s feeble mental pirouettes, I turn for relief to an official 1854 report into some abuses committed in Birmingham Borough Prison, where I myself worked a century and a half later. Every day, as I entered, I passed an oak notice board, on which one could read, displayed in gold lettering, the names of past governors of the prison. The second on the list was Lieutenant William Austin of the Royal Navy, whose cruelties—among those of other prison officials, including its doctor—a commission of inquiry had investigated.
To read the commission’s report after Macpherson’s is to enter a different world, one in which words mean what they appear to mean, the integrity of the commissioners is self-evident, facts count more than feelings, and conclusions follow from the evidence. In fact, to read the commission’s report after Macpherson’s is to experience a powerful sense of moral and intellectual progress—at least among the writers of official reports—but in the wrong temporal direction, alas. The prose of the commissioners, one of them a doctor, is clear, vigorous, and without the evasions and contradictions of Macpherson’s writing. They write like men who know they are doing a good job well.
The event that brought the abuses to light was the suicide of a 15-year-old inmate named Edward Andrews, who had stolen four pounds of beef and been sentenced to three months’ hard labor in the prison. The suicide revealed a pattern of abuse. The commission discovered that the prison imposed an entirely illegal system of “hard labour” that forced prisoners to turn a crank 10,000 times a day—2,000 before breakfast, 4,000 before lunch, and 4,000 before dinner. If a prisoner did not complete each stage, he lost the subsequent meal. If he did not complete the 10,000 by the end of the day, he was put on bread and water. The weight on the crank was adjusted, supposedly to meet each prisoner’s physical capabilities.
The commissioners inspected the crank machines and described them with great clarity:
Although in pressing the handle downwards the prisoner has only the five pounds to bear down, yet in lifting it up, when nearest his body, he has to exert a force equal to at least three times that weight; and according to the same evidence, the labour would be of a nature most severe and exhausting; insomuch as, taking into account the speed with which it must be performed in order to accomplish the number of revolutions required for a day’s work, 10,000 namely, or nearly 30 revolutions a minute, we were assured that, in order to accomplish such a task, a boy would necessarily exert a force equal to one-fourth of the ordinary work of a draught horse; the average estimate of the work of a boy, in ordinary labour out of a prison, being about one-tenth of the same.
Young Andrews, unable to complete the work, was not only put on bread and water but also, on Lieutenant Austin’s characteristically harsh order, dressed in the “punishment jacket.” This consisted of an ordinary straitjacket, combined—again illegally—with a leather collar fixed around the prisoner’s neck and attached to the wall. “Very speedily after [the jackets’] introduction into the prison,” the commissioners explained, “they appear to have been converted into ordinary implements of punishment for non-performance of prison labour or breaches of prison discipline (frequently of a very trivial nature).”
The commissioners describe how the “punishment jacket” worked: “the prisoner being first muffled in the strait jacket, having his arms tied together on his breast, the leather stock fastened tightly round his neck, and being, moreover (where the punishment was inflicted by day), in almost every case strapped to the wall of his cell, in a standing position, by means of strong leather straps passed round the upper parts of the arms, and fastened to staples or hooks in the wall, so tightly as to draw back the arms into and keep them in a constrained and necessarily painful position, at the same time compressing them.” After watching a willing volunteer strapped into the jacket, the commissioners realized that “it was obvious that such a mode of restraint must necessarily, if continued for several hours, be productive of great pain—in truth, that it must be an engine of positive torture.” Their conclusion: “With respect, then, to the case of Edward Andrews, we are of opinion that, by the order and with the knowledge of the governor, he was punished illegally and cruelly, and was driven thereby to the commission of suicide.”
The conclusion reflected a proper and transparently honest sifting of the evidence. The Macpherson report did not. Since 1854, prison conditions have improved. Since 1999, race relations have not.
Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His new book is Not with a Bang but a Whimper.
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