‘You’ll be found dead on the streets.’ That was the message I received a few weeks ago from an identifiable BNP supporter. Why? Because I was taking a stand against Nick Griffin. When someone writes this to you because you’re fighting as a Lib Dem in a parliamentary campaign against Griffin and the BNP, it makes you think very hard about your political opponent and the campaign they intend to fight. It also makes you think about how you should respond.
I reported the threat immediately to the police. They came to my house and have since referred the matter to SO15 – Counter Terrorism Command. I also urged Nick Griffin to intervene and condemn the culprit. I wrote: “This is London in 2010, not Berlin in 1933.” The response: silence.
The Guardian reported the matter. And that of another death threat – a video put on the web in the name of Wandsworth BNP, featuring Equality and Human Rights Commission chief Trevor Phillips. It suggested he be “dealt with”.
On March 21st, a BNP activist was arrested for threatening to kill Labour peer, Baroness Uddin. His Facebook message read: ‘were (sic) going to hang you one day. Regards the BNP.”
This weekend comes the news that senior BNP official and parliamentary candidate, Mark Collett has been arrested on suspicion of making threats to kill Nick Griffin. Collett was arrested after Griffin made a statement to the police. A Humberside Police spokesman said: “A 29-year-old man has been arrested and bailed on suspicion of threats to kill. We can’t comment further.”
Griffin becomes the fourth person in four weeks to have received a death threat from a BNP member. As BNP chairman, he should not be surprised. His party membership list is full of criminals with convictions for violence. This is the true face of the BNP showing itself in public: a party of violence, committed to violence, using the language of violence.
And Griffin himself uses the language of violence frequently. He once called for a defence of white rights with “well directed boots and fists.” He told me in interview that people “have the right to hurt people to maim and blow things up when they are not allowed any other any way of expressing a legitimate grievance.”
When he had Dominic Kennedy of the Times roughed up and ejected from a BNP meeting in February, Griffin said it proved his party was “not going soft.”
When I asked Nick Griffin who was his political hero, it was not Adolf Hitler or Oswald Mosley. The man he chose was Gerry Adams. Griffin would perhaps do well to remember: ‘Hate begets hate; violence begets violence.’ If he has received death threats from within his own party, then it is perhaps a true reflection of the culture of violence he encourages and supports.
Dominic Carman is the Liberal Democrat candidate in Barking. If you would like to help Dominic in his campaign, please e-mail [email protected].
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19 Comments
His party membership list is full of criminals with convictions for violence.
Being a convicted criminal (with or without violent behaviour) does not prescribe membership of the BNP.
Negative assertions and rhetoric are what parties like the BNP feed on, we do not need to perpetuate similar standards.
Pardon, Kelly-Marie? The BNP has a very high number of individuals with histories of drug-dealing, threats/acts of physical violence and sexual crimes (and Mark Collett should be investigated for at least two of them). It’s perfectly reasonable to point this out.
Did the two meet in Libya when they were seeking funds from Gadaffi?
There are two possibilities for this apparent attempt to send Griffin the same way as Ernst Rohm… either Griffin has for years been cleverly presenting himself as the friendly face of the Third Position with no links to his days with the National Front (that group which loved gothic lettering and made no secret of its loathing of Jews), whilst – behind closed doors – nurturing the likes of Collett or Lee John Barnes, which the latter’s strange belief that Odin is an indigenous deity of the British Isles and not a Norse imposition.
Or, and I personally think this is far more likely, they’re a bunch of maniacs and low-level psychopaths who couldn’t organize a piss-up in a German-themed brewery.
My only wish is that this could go on for ever, with them in perpetual free-fall fighting like ferrets in a bag.
Dominic,
As a fellow Liberal Democrat, I’m really proud of everything you are doing to stop Nick Griffiin’s politics of hate.
Do you have a list of which BNP members have and have not got such a history? It seems unlikely that this statement is supportable.
Certainly they have some. I don’t think we can say much about the quantity.
Except that it’s higher than other parties, both relatively and quite possibly in number even allowing for its smaller size.
When the minders of their ‘Reverend’ threat to nut people, there’s a problem:
http://hnhnorfolk.blogspot.com/2009/07/west-refuses-to-answer-questions-about.html
“Being a convicted criminal (with or without violent behaviour) does not prescribe membership of the BNP. ”
That may be true but I doubt the Liberal Democrats (or any other party) would give someone with a conviction for organising the gang rape of two teenage girls a significant organisation role – significant enough to receive personal praise from Nick Griffin – in an election campaign.
I was the agent for Nader Fekri, the Lib Dem who stood against Nick Griffin last General Election, Nader being of an ethnic minority background . We just stuck to what we were doing and ignored the BNP. Nick Griffin came last. That’s why you’ve got him this time round. Sorry about that. (The count was interesting, quite a few heavy blokes in very bulky jackets around.)
Actually one of the BNP men really shocked me – by holding a door open for me, for which I duly thanked him.
Every Lib Dem I’ve spoken to is thrilled to have Dominic Carman fighting Nick Griffin wearing a yellow rosette. We were all hoping you wouldn’t have too much of this kind of cr*p to put up with but I guess it’s inevitable… Thanks for all you’re doing, you deserve several medals!
Seems like the BNP have a real problem with death threats at the moment!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/04/bnp-mark-collett-nick-griffin
@Mike. Nick Griffin: the Eugene Terreblanche of British politics.
For a good overview of how criminal the BNP are, subscribe to Searchlight Magazine for a while. I’d say VERY, and it is amusing to consider how infiltrated the BNP must be with journalists and MI5.
http://www.hopenothate.com
I’m no BNP sympathizer but the video interview to link to shows Griffin saying that people should not use violence unless they have no other option. Considering the alternative is that you just ignore the problem and let the government walk all over you I have to agree with him. Sometimes violence is the only way to enact change, that’s just how the world works.
We are however a long long way from that in the UK. I suspect Griffin thinks violence might be reasonable at the moment but there’s not much hard evidence to suggest this is the case. I don’t seem him voicing support for EDL rallies and so on where violence activity is the norm.
“Sometimes violence is the only way to enact change, that’s just how the world works.”
It may be how Burma works and apartheid South Africa worked, but it’s certainly not how the world works. Yes, our democracy is degraded, but that doesn’t remotely justify a resort to violence.
Translation: BMP = animals. Or maybe I’m insulting animals! Problem with you Brits is you’re too cynical to be idealistic, and that’s what a leader should be, a utopian.. Into the future! Go! Blair was the same coat anyway, as BMP — go lib dems or somebody. Mick Jagger? No, I can’t believe he’d be as bad as blair, refuse. someone who can jump around and let their hair down.
i salute you for your stance,well done,your name’s going to be in my book.i would enjoy shaking your hand and buy you a well deserved drink.i hope your 1love family are ok after those nasty threats.i’m a LABOUR voter but i hope you win your sea you’ve earned itt.from where i come from we would call you a ZULU WARRIOR.GD KARMA SENT FROM AFAR.9XZULUG
sorry about the spelling mistakes i was eager to send CONGRATS.PEACE N UNITY 2 ALL IT WILL LEAD 2 HARMONY IN OUR GREAT FANTASTIC,DIVERSE,LOYAL,CARING BRITAIN.1LOVE
Alex, you and I understand that but unfortunately you have to think about the audience for Griffin’s comments – are they?
“People have the right to hurt people to maim and blow things up when they are not allowed any other any way of expressing a legitimate grievance.”
Comparing white people in Britain to black people in South Africa or Palestinians in Gaza is disingenuous to say the least. To quote Chris Rock: “Man, the white man thinks he’s losing the country. Losing? Shut the fuck up.
White people ain’t losing shit. lf y’all losing, who’s winning?”
It amuses me (or would, if it wasn’t horrifying) that the #1 scapegoat in this country is asylum seekers, destitute vulnerable people who, by definition, have had such appalling lives and faced such severe persecution that they had to FLEE THEIR COUNTRY to escape it. Hardly an easy decision. Thinking about what would drive me to actually emigrate makes me incredibly confused about how people like BNP et al. can call themselves human, lacking as they seem to any form of human compassion.
Good on you Dominic Carman.
Subject : Dominic Carman
I’d like to somehow get in touch with Dominic. He was the MD at Asia Law & Practice in Hong Kong and he hired me to work for him.
He’s got my support and would ask that a Press Officer takes a look at my website. I’m a journalist and have interviewed the ex-Provost of Eton College Sir Eric Anderson….I have tried contacting the Chinese element in the Lib Dem’s through my contact with China Ethos magazine.
Regards – John R Crampton (ex-IHT worker in HK also)
Tel 01753 545313 (Windsor, Berks)
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