Jazz-Hands

On Thursday there are council elections in England, which reminded me about this – the sheer cheek of this skeet!

‘Thanks to the work of anti-racists’ ? ‘Fought them at every step’ ?

Excuse me, but the evidence is that you did the sum total of bugger all in the case of this ward!

Here’s the election results for the Marsden Ward of Pendle Borough Council from before BNP councillor Brian Parker’s entry and the three elections he fought.

(In 2006, Pendle Borough switched so not all the wards on the council would be up for election at once, hence where two were elected in 2002 but not afterwards).

That’s three times he stood, three times he won, with the Labour Party he took it off never coming close to regaining it (it looks more like the Conservatives were best placed to take it – twelve years earlier they could only get 22.3%) – something no one standing for any openly racist or far-right political party has ever achieved in British electoral history.

Work of anti-racists who fought them at every step? What rubbish!

To make Nick Lowles claims even more absurd, over in Maldon in Essex local business tycoon Richard Perry and the rest of his BNP cronies have been running Heybridge Parish Council for the last two years – something no racist or far-right party has ever achieved (indeed no far-left party or even the Green Party has managed as much).

‘A BNP government will bring back the mullet.’ The one on the left is Richard Perry. The alleged story behind the photo is an anti-fascist activist went to snap BNP members at the above polling station for ‘intelligence purposes’, Perry and the other bloke thought it was a sympathiser so posed with smiles. It gets better – the activist was scolded by his own bosses for ‘screwing up’ – the purpose of snapping far-right members at polling stations is in the hope they lose their tempers and attempt to attack the photographer (fearing their picture will be passed to ‘direct action’ groups). Make of it what you will.

They were criticised for standing as ‘Fighting Unsustainable Housing Because We Care’ (one of the BNP’s slogans) ticket – but this is a common enough tactic at minor council levels by all parties, where many stand as independents or as ‘Progressives’, ‘Rate Payer’, ‘Residents Association’ or other names masking party affiliations because of the convention in some areas (particularly rural) that it is poor form to stand under national party labels at neighbourhood level. Also in safe Conservative or Labour areas, it is regarded as suicidal to stand as the opposite especially during periods when they are highly unpopular.

What? You didn’t know any of that? Another little snippet that didn’t make the national news.

Not because of some plot against the BNP (as they tend to say over and over and over and over again), but because no one outside of town and district newspapers gives a shit about Parish councils. Or Town Councils. Hence why so many Official Monster Raving Loony Party councillors get elected onto them.

(To be fair, at least their councillors last longer than more far-right – or far-left – ones do on them. Once they discover there’s a fair bit of work involved cutting into their precious pub time, they’re often never seen again)

If you have ever watched a Town Meeting episode of Gilmore Girls, they go rather like that – on a good day. On a very good day, they go like this.

But back to Nick Knowles claims. Most factual academic reports say that far from finished the BNP is awash with money from legacies and its tiny membership have the luxury of being able to restart from scratch, rebuilding over as long a period as they please, happy to sit back and allow the remains of Britain’s far-right to destroy one another and leave the field clear (most of whom are elderly and dying off rapidly). They’re also waiting for the collapse of UKIP – the biggest obstacle Britain’s far-right has ever faced, whose twin concentration on anti-EU and immigration issues left the so-called ‘patriotic Right’ with no palatable issue to offer the public of their own.

This is the trouble with anti-racists/anti-fascists – all too often they’re every bit as bad as those they oppose when it comes to exaggerating. When you are meant to be fighting from ‘the moral high ground’, that’s a luxury you cannot afford.

They made huge claims about ‘fighting the fascists’, but apart from shouting at each other and the odd street battle every so often when they’ve had too many shandies, they do little tangible in practice.

There’s even suspicions of both propping the other up when times are hard and the world isn’t paying them both too much attention, but that’s another matter better covered by others. But it is very suspicious the large number of former members of ‘white nationalist’ groups who go on to enjoy lengthy careers as ‘race relations’ campaigners – you know what they say about poachers turned gamekeepers.

The Lancashire Evening Telegraph explained that BNP Councillor Parker had decided not to bother standing for election again due to having to look after his 90 year old mother – but also more telling was his claim ‘After 12 years I feel I have done enough… the workload is getting heavier not lighter.’

In fact, a large number of Welsh seats went uncontested in last year’s elections, with only one candidate

This is a problem throughout the UK as councillors from all parties – not merely those in charge – have to deal with increasing issues which with shrunken council budgets they are in no position to do anything about. Many newer councillors give up and simply quit in despair at the impossibility of their task, and it is certainly no coincidence that Parker has become the latest a year after finding himself the unwitting ‘confidence and supply’ prop for the Labour-LibDem coalition running Pendle Borough Council after one Labour councillor defected to the Conservatives.

Councillor Nawaz Ahmed, representing the Brierfield ward, left in the huff (or was induced to go, depending whose story you believe) because he was not selected for a County Council seat despite being the Borough mayor last year. He’d previous form for political treachery, having defected previously from the LibDems to Labour.

But if Tory leader Joe Cooney thought he was now going to become council leader from now having the biggest party in council, he was swiftly disabused as the existing council leader, Labour’s Mohammed Iqbal, did a deal with the BNP councillor (who always claimed he couldn’t be ‘bought’) to keep the Labour-LibDem coalition in charge (!) – much to the fury of the Tories. The clincher was a promise to redevelop unused ground in Marsden which was a pressing local concern: but needless to say all the electorate in Pendle were scandalised by this turn of events.

All of which goes to show that no matter what the party labels, no matter what the ideology and rhetoric, politics is always politics.

‘Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.’

Most anti-racist/anti-fascist groups are fronts for far-left parties in order to divert funds to keep themselves alive; excuses for violence under the pretence of political activity; or like Nick Lowles (and his former mentor Gerry Gable) self-appointed niche subject ‘experts’ wanting an easy career on the back of the lunatic world of Britain’s far-left and far-right where they are unlikely to be challenged by real analysis by academics or lazy journalist.

Much of their claims bears a lot in common with the crankiness of those following UFOs, ghosts and other para-scientific fields where flights of fancy are less likely to challenged.

Those anti-racism groups – and who is really behind them:

Anti-Nazi League/Unite Against Fascism/Stand Up To Racism: history’s warning for all future such groups. Founded in 1977 ostensibly to counter the growth of the National Front (in reality the NF had suffered a terminal split the year before – most of it’s non-Nazi leaders and a third of the members leaving to become the National Party UK – and what was left could only manage confrontational marches through black and Asian areas which ultimately ended in riots). The ANL tried to physically stop far-right marches (copying Tariq Ali’s International Marxist Group/Socialist League/Socialist Action), ran pop festivals (Rock Against Racism), was sponsored by trade unions and enjoyed cross-party support.

But misgivings emerged over misappropriation of funds and senior leadership of the organisation from branch level upwards being dominated by members of the thuggish Socialist Workers Party (formerly the International Socialists until exposed for orchestrating football hooliganism along with Colin Jordan’s neo-nazi British Movement). The ANL collapsed in March 1979, two months before the general election which saw the NF bankrupt itself, with previously supportive celebrities such as Brian Clough publicly disowning the organisation as an SWP front.

After re-emerging on and off over the years (usually when the SWP needed its coffers boosted), it merged with the remains of the Anti-Racist Alliance/National Assembly Against Racism (whose members it once assaulted as rivals) to form Unite Against Fascism/Stand Up To Racism – still dominated by SWP thugs. It was disowned by the anti-racist/anti-fascist research magazine Searchlight in 2005, and has been criticised for its disturbing links to the Muslim supremicist Islamic Forum in Europe.

Anti-Fascist Action/Red Action: founded in 1985 by those who felt there wasn’t enough being done to physically attack the far-right, which meant not merely marches but even attempting to sell their newspapers or magazines in the street. It later emerged many active members did so out of homoeroticism towards violence rather than any genuine political concerns – which was reciprocated on the far-right and evidence emerged of members of both sides organising battles in order to get their ‘kicks’ (and tough luck if you were an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time). In 1997 it forbade its members from talking to Searchlight from fear of this facet of their activities being exposed in the light of neo-nazi Nikki Crane’s ‘coming out’ and accusations of collusion between racists and anti-racists.

Searchlight: the premier anti-racist/anti-fascist research magazine for decades, launched in 1975 by the well-meaning Maurice Ludmer, who as a young Jewish communist never got over the shock of visiting Bergen-Belsen nor the blind eye British communists took to racism because they saw racial tensions as speeding the collapse of capitalism. The name was taken from an earlier publication, but Searchlight differed in that it infiltrated far-right groups in order to expose and thwart their plans. Rivalry within the far-right meant Searchlight also gained a lot of tip-offs from the feuding factions looking to harm each other – consequently it enjoyed ironically a large far-right readership, for whom exposure by Searchlight was essential for ‘street-cred’, and failure to be mentioned arose suspicions that someone was a Searchlight ‘mole’.

However after Ludmer’s death it was taken over at length by Gerry Gable, a former Marxist with convictions for violence and attempting to break into the home of Holocaust denier David Irving dressed as a gas man (was this meant to be some sort of sick joke in itself?), who made Searchlight more tabloid and confrontational. It also became more inclined towards Gable’s own personal feuds, such as against Stephen Brady of the National Front who was the ex-boyfriend of Gable’s fourth wife Sonia Hochfelder (who went from the Communist Party of England-Marxist Leninist to the NF and writing articles for The League of St. George). More disturbing was the rumours of hit lists and tip-offs being given to militant anti-fascists in order to ‘stir the pot’ at times when business was slow (Britain’s far-right being more often in a state of terminal decline than rude health).

What finally did for Searchlight’s credibility was the Tim Hepple affair: a former neo-Nazi whose conscience got the better of him they persuaded to go back into the British National Party (then led by founder and veteran Nazi John Tyndall – the single most unpleasant specimen Britain’s far-right has ever known). Between 1991 and 1992 he was working at the BNP’s HQ and a magazine of his time there and dealings with other Nazi groups – ‘At War With Society’ – was supposed to set the far-right back years.

Instead within a few months Derek Beackon became the first far-right candidate to win a contested election (Millwall Isle Of Dogs council seat) and allegations came from another anti-racist/anti-fascist researcher – Larry O’Hara – that Hepple had not only been working for the BNP, but had been involved with Ray Hill (Gerry Gable’s deputy, and another former far-right mole) in agent provocateur activities within the militant green movement, especially concerning the efforts to stop the Twyford Down bypass (See O’Hara’s ‘A Lie Too Far’ and ‘At War With The Truth’).

Accusations flew – not for the first time – Searchlight had sent a mole into the BNP to lick it into shape rather than destroy it in order to keep themselves in jobs (Hepple’s own admittance in ‘At War With Society’ at the disorganisation of the BNP’s administration until he joined was later verified by BNP members during its own internal feud which saw Nick Griffin replace John Tyndall as leader) and moreover was involved in agent provocateur activities within left-wing groups at the behest of MI5 for money.

Searchlight never truly recovered from the distrust other anti-racist campaigners felt towards it thereafter, and it even became estranged from Hope Not Hate in 2011 – a group it had created.

Hope Not Hate: a so-called ‘advocacy group’ started in 2004 by Searchlight to regain its credibility after it had been shot to pieces by the Tim Hepple affair ten years earlier. Like the ANL before it, it enjoys celebrity and trade union backing, but its fixation on UKIP rather than the overly racist BNP simply because UKIP was the biggest right wing party outside of the Conservatives alienated some as counter productive and begging the question whether this was another ‘career campaigner’ group.

It split with Searchlight in 2011 over its stance on Israel, or because Nick Lowles no longer felt he needed the Gables and had an eye for the main chance – the verdict is yours.

On 28th November 2016 it published claims extremists had used 25 000 Twitter accounts to make 50 000 abusive posts celebrating the murder of MP Jo Cox the week before the Brexit referendum. However on 17th December, The Economist magazine ripped the claims to pieces, and accused HnH of deliberating exaggering beyond belief.