Voice of Reason is closed!

Posted on May 4, 2008
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Due to continuing problems with our current host, Voice of Reason and International Voices are closing down…

…and reopening as

Click the graphic to go there - and please update your links!

Auty mounts challenge to oust Griffin

Posted on May 3, 2008
Filed Under News | 1 Comment

If Nick Griffin believed that dressing up the week’s less than impressive BNP electoral performances as a stunning success would be enough to divert the flak and stifle discontent in the ranks he was wrong.

A leadership challenge is to be mounted by Kirklees BNP councillor Colin Auty. The challenge is backed by Cllrs Chris Beverley, Joanne Beverley and Roger Robertson.

A website in support of Auty’s challenge has appeared here.

More news as we get it.

BNP set to falter in bid to clinch 40 more seats

Posted on May 2, 2008
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(From The Guardian. By Matthew Taylor.)

The British National party performed worse than it expected in overnight election results despite gains in the Midlands, northern England and Essex. It gained eight seats but appeared to be falling well short of its leaders’ target of 40 new councillors with 100 of 159 councils declared. It may still make gains in the London assembly elections due to declare later.

Despite the collapse of Labour’s support, early indications show the BNP’s share of the vote fell in the wards they contested. In Sandwell in the Midlands, where they secured 33% of the vote two years ago, they got 17% this time.

“In the party’s heartlands, it looks as though the share of the vote has dropped which, with the backdrop of Labour’s performance, is encouraging,” said Nick Lowles from the anti-racist organisation, Searchlight. “And although there have been eight gains so far that is below what they were predicting, especially in places where they have stood before.”

The number of BNP councillors is expected to increase during the day as results come in from councils such as Stoke and in Yorkshire and north-west England.

The BNP leadership says it expects to win up to three seats on the London Assembly when the votes are declared this afternoon. However, early reports of high turnout across the capital may make this less likely.

Lancaster Unity “live” election coverage

Posted on April 30, 2008
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With the local elections well underway we’d like to ask Voice of Reason regulars to help us bring our visitors the best coverage possible.

From close of polls on May 1st Lancaster Unity will be updating “live” throughout the night with results and news. Comment moderation will be almost instant.

Anybody attending a count can send us results by email from mobile or regular email. Even if you aren’t attending a count, but know somebody you can trust who is and who can transmit results to you, that’s fine.

Television and radio

Local television and radio coverage will continue for much of the night in most regions and will give more detailed coverage of BNP results than the national programmes. We’d like you to keep an eye on what the media are saying in your locality and get the news - no matter how trivial - to us.

Internet

Some local council websites and forums devoted to politics will be updating throughout the night. As we at Lancaster Unity are going to be very busy, we need supporters to keep an eye on them - including BNP websites and Stormfront.

After the election

Results will continue to come in throughout Friday, and so will news concerning the BNP’s performance. Help to keep us up to date!

The temporary email address we’ve set up for you to get in touch is elections@unitywebring.com

Come along to keep us company at Lancaster Unity on Thursday night - and don’t forget to vote yourself!!

As he battles to become London’s mayor, the bizarre truth about the BNP boss, his ballerina fiance and bitter wife

Posted on April 29, 2008
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(From the Daily Mail. By Richard Pendlebury, April 29th.)

With a distinct sartorial style which worries even his most extremist supporters, and a background as a “visionary” artist whose most notable work was a homo-erotic film, Richard Barnbrook is an unusual far-right leader, to say the least. But on Thursday, this is the man who hopes to become the first neo-fascist mayor of London.

Even when Barnbrook fails in that endeavour, as he most certainly will, he is likely to be elected as the first British National Party member of the Greater London Assembly.

Eleven of the 25 available seats are decided by proportional representation, and the extreme Right-wing party needs only a 0.2 per cent increase on its share of the 2004 election vote to gain one. In what it describes as its “biggest push ever”, the BNP even hopes to win two or perhaps three seats. And Mr Barnbrook is top of their candidates list. Even his opponents concede it is possible.

Mainstream concerns about immigration levels have long played into the BNP’s grubby hands. But in the run-up to the election, there has been an additional factor that has given the party a fillip.

Much has been made by would-be-Mayor Barnbrook of his recent engagement to Simone Clarke, the celebrated principal dancer of the English National Ballet. Though she has since left the ENB, her relationship with Barnbrook has given him a veneer of glamour and respectability that he hopes will serve him well at the polls. Speaking recently of their engagement, the Dagenham councillor said: “I gave her a diamond ring. I’m traditional like that.”

Less traditional, though, is the fact that Mr Barnbrook already has a wife - albeit one that he is rather less keen to publicise. For we can reveal that Barnbrook, 47, has been married for the past ten years to a well-educated young American who is a decorated, serving officer in the Metropolitan Police force. Not only that, she has several prominent black friends, including the TV presenter Moira Stuart, and loathes her husband’s far-right ideology.

Their marriage broke down because of his “rotten politics”. She joined the police force, she says, to do some good in the world and, in part, to make amends for him. Little wonder, then, that Barnbrook has been so reluctant to volunteer her existence. Now, though, we can shed some light on the strange private life of Richard Barnbrook.

Certainly, if there is a more peculiar politician in the country, he has yet to emerge. In public, Barnbrook has long favoured what one acquaintance calls a “Stormtrooper” brown suit and matching tie, which even his supporters feel is rather too suggestive of a Nuremberg rally for his electoral good.

“He looks just like Hitler,” one person posted on the extreme Right-wing Stormfront website. “Whoever styles him needs a good kicking.”

Perhaps the uniform look is merely a facet of his military background. For Barnbrook is one of five children of a former NCO musician in the Life Guards, who during his service was based at the Household Cavalry barracks in Knightsbridge and Windsor and served a tour in Germany. After John Barnbrook left the Army, he moved his family to a smallholding near the River Humber. Stephen, Richard’s younger brother, followed John into the armed forces, and later became a prison officer.

Richard was the artistic child. He moved to London, where he studied at the Royal College of Art before falling into the company of Derek Jarman, the award-winning gay film-maker who was later to succumb to Aids. Jarman gave Barnbrook his first film camera. He also introduced him to the future Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton, whom Barnbrook has since described as an ex-girlfriend.

But Barnbrook’s time in this liberal artistic milieu will always be remembered for his writing and directorship of the 58-minute film HMS Discovery: A Love Story which archives describe as “Marxist Gay cinema”. Naked young men run about, flagellating each other and simulating gay sex acts while homo-erotic poetry is intoned. Barnbrook, for whom the 1989 piece is an embarrassment among the homophobic Far Right, huffily insists it was an “art film”.

We shall torment him no further on the matter. Suffice it to say that several years after its release he met a young American woman and surely dispelled any of those silly rumours. She was a wealthy doctor’s daughter 13 years his junior who had moved to Britain because, she says: “I didn’t agree with U.S. foreign policy.”

I met her yesterday, bleary with fatigue having finished her inner-city police shift at 4am. She has reverted to using her maiden name, and cannot be identified because of her job. She is appalled at the possibility of being recognised as the London BNP leader’s wife.

“I was 22 and I fell for him because I thought he was a great artist,” she says. “He was different then.”

They married a year later, in early 1998, at Lewisham register office. The couple set up home in South-East London and she joined the BBC, as an editorial assistant on Breakfast Time. Alas, there were few happy times ahead for her.

“Richard changed around 1999,” she recalls. “That was when his views became very extreme. It was a total shock. Marriage means an awful lot to me, so I didn’t want to walk away though I hated (their) rotten politics. I stuck with him because I thought I could persuade him otherwise. I thought that if he could change once, he could change a second time.”

As their marriage creaked under the strain of conflicting ideologies, Barnbrook and his wife joined the board of the Jubilee Woods Trust, a reputable environmental project with royal connections. It collapsed when Barnbrook’s senior position within the BNP became apparent.

Another board member recalls: “His wife was absolutely saint-like, worked tirelessly and I felt terribly sorry for her. I don’t know how they ended up together. It was obviously a terrible marriage. I think she felt enormously betrayed and embarrassed about the BNP thing. She told me that she had decided to become a policewoman and that was the last I saw of her.”

The Barnbrooks separated four years ago. His wife says: “In the end he said: ‘If you don’t like my politics you can get out.’ So that is what I did. In a way, I wanted to join the police to redress the karmic imbalance in the world caused by my husband’s views.”

Police officers are not allowed to be members of the BNP. “You have no idea how much harder the vetting process to become a police officer was for me, because of who my husband is,” she says. “Or what problems it could cause if people knew.”

She adds: “He used me and he has admitted it and apologised. He owes me a lot of money and is just starting to pay me back.”

She says because of the delicacy of both their positions they had agreed not to talk about the other. She adds: “I don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as him. I want to move on. I love my job and want to be in it for another 25 years. I already have two commendations. Also I am a friend of Moira Stuart (the black newsreader) from my time at the BBC, and I have met Doreen Lawrence (mother of murdered black teenager Stephen) a number of times. I do not want them to stop talking to me or think ill of me because of a mistake I made at 23.”

In the next few weeks, perhaps even days, the Barnbrook marriage will finally come to an end when their divorce is made absolute.

“I don’t really have any problem with Richard saying he is engaged,” she says. “Our divorce is so close now I can almost smell it. I can hardly wait. Let’s just say that if Simone Clarke buys her wedding cake now, it won’t be stale if she marries Richard at the first possible opportunity.”

Ah yes, Miss Clarke - the principal ballerina who is said to be Barnbrook’s fiancé. If his first marriage was dysfunctional, then the omens for Barnbook’s second one are hardly more encouraging. Not least as he will become stepfather to Miss Clarke’s four-year-old mixed-race daughter - the product of her previous relationship with a Cuban-Chinese dancer - despite the fact that he has previously spoken out against inter-racial families.

But will the marriage to Miss Clarke take place? There has been talk in far-right circles of a recent cooling between the couple. She does not wear an engagement ring - an absence Barnbrook explained by saying it had been stolen in a burglary. Nor has she stood, as once suggested, as a BNP candidate. Some have even speculated that the relationship is just a publicity stunt. But Barnbrook’s wife does not think so.

“I have met Simone. She was there when I went to see Richard to discuss our divorce. I have to say they did seem to be genuinely in love.”

If that’s true, then Miss Clarke will hardly have been delighted by the kiss-and-tell story which appeared in a downmarket newspaper on Sunday. Finnish-born NHS nurse Annika Tavilampi claimed the mayoral candidate had also proposed to her after they met through an internet dating site. She claimed to have found a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf under the bed in which they had “romped”.

But if Barnbrook’s relationship with women is odd, then it is by no means the only contradiction in his personal life. For while he has been busy gaining status within a party obsessed with racial purity, his prison officer brother Stephen has no such hang-ups. Doubtless to his brother’s dismay, he has had at least two long-term relationships with black women. The first was with Stephanie Waldron, a cardiac rehabilitation nurse at the world-renowned Papworth heart hospital.

Yesterday, her daughter, Natasha, described the awkward scene that took place five years ago when the family spent Christmas at the Barnbrooks’ parents’ home in north Lincolnshire. One evening Stephen, his girlfriend and Natasha played board games with Richard and his wife.

“Richard was very reserved, even a little frosty,” recalls Natasha. “We didn’t know about his politics then - they weren’t discussed by the family. We found out only later when we read that he had become the British National Party leader in London. The reason for his odd mood that Christmas then became clear - it was antipathy towards us because of our colour.”

Stephen has since amicably split from Ms Waldron, and is now with a Jamaican woman whom he is understood to have married. One imagines he does not vote BNP.

For Barnbrook, such revelations are certain to cause huge embarrassment within his party. A brother who has embraced multiculturalism in its most literal sense; a liberal police constable wife who detests her husband’s warped ideologies; a homo-erotic past…it is all richly ironic. But unless the British voting public turns out in force on Thursday, the BNP could win that extra 0.2 per cent needed and celebrate another morale-boosting step up to the mainstream, rather than a nosedive.

And that would not be funny at all.

BNP man arrested in ‘gun’ drama

Posted on April 25, 2008
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A Barnsley BNP candidate was thrown out of the police force in disgrace and conned an 80-year-old woman out of £1,000 as he awaited trial for perverting the course of justice.

This week, after the Chronicle tried to ask Simon Goodricke, 45, of Darton, about his past, he was arrested on suspicion of possessing a fire arm after our photgrapher saw him brandishing what appeared to be a handgun from his front door.

The former Solihull Detective Constable, who is standing in the Hoyland Milton Ward at Thursday’s council elections, was sentenced to 18 months at Birmingham Crown Court in January 1998. He was found guilty of perverting the course of justice after he tipped off fraudsters attempting to swindle £100m from Columbian drug barons.

An international police investigation was underway but collapsed after the fraudsters were tipped off. Mr Goodricke was a gambling addict who had borrowed £200,000 from one of the fraudsters, to whom he later gave insider information. The judge at the time said evidence against him was overwhelming.

While on bail he tricked a pensioner into loaning him £1,000. He had first met her some years before while investigating a broken window at her house. When Mr Goodricke tried to beg more money from the woman she became distressed and wrote a letter asking him to leave her alone.

He admitted a charge of dishonestly obtaining money.

Last week when the Chronicle first approached Mr Goodricke about his convictions he said he would not confirm or deny anything and that he was not prepared to discuss anything other than his political views and election nomination.

On Wednesday night this week the Chronicle went to his Pennine View home to question him further. At first he shouted that he had nothing to say from an upstairs window. Then he came downstairs to his front door and in a raised voice told the reporter: “It was more than ten years ago” before refusing to make any more comments and slamming the door shut.

As the reporter walked to the photographer, who was inside his car, the photographer saw Mr Goodricke come back to the front door brandishing what appeared to be a handgun. The photographer was not close enough to determine whether the gun was real.

As the Chronicle reported the incident to the police Mr Goodricke was also ringing 999. Police said he had claimed there were people in his street taking pictures of children.

A police car arrived within minutes but officers were given proof of the Chronicle staff’s identity and told the real reason for their presence. Armed police were also on their way to the scene following the allegation Mr Goodricke was in possession of a gun.

Chief Superintendent Andy Brooke said: “A man was detained and his house was searched, he is presently on bail.”

Mr Goodricke’s house was searched about an hour and a half after the incident, the Chronicle understands nothing was found on the night. Yesterday Barnsley BNP leader Ian Sutton, who is also Mr Goodricke’s election agent, was asked how he felt about his candidate’s convictions.

Mr Sutton, who is standing in Darton West, said: “It is a spent conviction and that is all I can say.”

Mr Goodricke’s wife Lisa is the BNP candidate for Wombwell.

Barnsley Chronicle

Criminal past of BNP man

The BNP today defended a candidate with a criminal record who is standing in Barnsley in the local council elections.

Simon Goodricke, the BNP candidate for the Hoyland Milton ward, was jailed for 18 months for perverting the course of justice 10 years ago.

But Barnsley BNP organiser Ian Sutton today insisted the offences were all in the past and that Goodricke hADVERTISEMENTad paid his debt to society. He said: “That is a spent conviction, Simon has moved on since then and we believe he is a good candidate who has a great deal to offer the local community. We are happy with him as our candidate and have given him all our support.”

Goodricke declined to comment.

He is standing for election in Thursday’s Barnsley Council ballot.

The party contested a number of seats at the last election, but failed to gain any places on the local authority. This years they have a record 21 candidates for seats on the council - almost a representative in every ward.

A spokesman said they were confident that they would win at least one seat.

Goodricke is a former West Midlands detective who was kicked out of the force and jailed for 18 months for perverting the course of justice and conning a pensioner out of £1,000.

Described in court as a ‘gambling addict’, he borrowed £200,000 from a crooked businessman to try to deal with his massive debts. He was jailed at Birmingham Crown Court after being found guilty of tipping off two corrupt businessmen, including the one who had loaned him money, that they were the centre of an international police inquiry into a money laundering plot and scam to swindle £100million from Colombian drugs barons.

Goodricke, aged 46, who now lives in Pennine View, Darton, used his position as a CID officer in Solihull to get information from the National Criminal Intelligence Service which he then passed on to a fraudster Graham Alexander.

Charges of plotting to obtain the £100million against Alexander and his accomplice John Butler, both from Solihull, were subsequently dropped. But they were later each jailed for six years after being found guilty of conspiracy to obtain money by deception.

At court Goodricke was found guilty of perverting the course of justice and he admitted dishonestly obtaining £1,000 from an 80-year-old pensioner he had first met when as a police officer he was investigating a broken window at her home. He was said to have duped her with a sob story telling her he owed £3,500 on his mortgage and his house was going to be repossessed.

The court was told he was not in arrears and there had been no threat of repossession. He had used half of the £1,000 to pay of loans and gave his then wife, from whom he subsequently was divorced, the other £500 to pay bills and feed them and their three children.

Goodricke, described as ‘an unremarkable detective’, was thrown out of West Midlands Police in 1996, two years after being suspended on disciplinary charges.

He is standing for the BNP in the Hoyland Milton ward of Barnsley Council.

The Star

Foul-mouthed BNP attack Recorder

Posted on April 24, 2008
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(From the Barking and Dagenham Recorder, April 24th.)

A Councillor launched into a foul-mouthed tirade of abuse today, branding Recorder news editor Sally Lowe “a Nazi”.

Cllr Robert Bailey, deputy leader of the British National Party (BNP) group on Barking and Dagenham Council, was unhappy over the Recorder’s coverage of the London Assembly elections.

In a verbal attack peppered with four-letter words, the former Royal Marine accused the Recorder of bias and called Miss Lowe, 29, a “jobsworth”.

The Barking and Dagenham Alibon ward councillor threatened to urge BNP members to boycott the Recorder.

Cllr Bailey said: “When we have control on Barking and Dagenham Council we are going to hit you where it hurts. You won’t see a penny from us and we will tell everyone to boycott your paper.”

After Miss Lowe protested about his language he then accused her of swearing and hung up when she challenged the assertion.

Within half an hour of Cllr Bailey slamming down the phone, he turned up at the Recorder’s offices in High Road, Ilford with a group of party members.

After shouting garbled messages through a megaphone, Cllr Bailey also called the newspaper’s head of classified sales a Nazi before being moved on by the police.

Recorder editor Chris Carter said: “I am shocked that someone who claims to be a member of a legitimate political party behaves in this way.

“It is not acceptable that a member of my staff should be subjected to abuse like this and I will be considering making an official complaint to the Standards Board for England.”

Additional from the Press Gazette:

A spokesman for the BNP stood by Bailey’s actions.

He said: “The Recorder papers are astonishingly biased against us and they make no attempt at hiding that, there’s no love lost between us.”

Asked about Bailey’s language he said: “To be honest I wouldn’t blame him because the way that paper behaved – it’s scandalous that they should pass themselves off as an impartial purveyor of news when all the time they are undermining the BNP and propping up Ken Livingstone.”

BNP “no problem” for Burlington Hotel

Posted on April 23, 2008
Filed Under News | 1 Comment

(From The Stirrer.)

Birmingham’s Burlington Hotel which hosted a bizarre re-creation of Enoch Powell’s “Rivers Of Blood” speech by the BNP on Sunday has said it would have “no problem” with hosting the far-right party again in future.

The startling admission was made by manager Nigel Green, when we quizzed him about the curious event which marked the 40th anniversary of Powell’s notorious anti-immigration rant at the same venue – albeit in its previous guise as the Midland Hotel.

As we reported on Monday, BNP member Peter Mullins recited the speech in its entirety – shortly after a multi-ethnic gathering heard an address by Sir Trevor Philips, chair of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights (see link here).

We asked Green if the Burlington had known the booking was for the British National Party – especially as one poster on The Stirrer Forum has claimed it was made by the party’s regional organiser Simon Darby in his own name.

Green said: “My board had a discussion, and they made a blanket decision not to comment on events which happened 40 years ago.”

When it was pointed out that we were talking about recent events that took place only a few days ago, he again stalled until a blunt question was put to him – “Would you allow a booking by the BNP in future?”

His reply: “I can’t see why not. As long as it’s paid for, a booking is a booking”.

It is, of course, a point of view, and The Stirrer would be the last to suggest that freedom of speech should not be allowed - even for a racist party that advocates repatriation of non-whites and treating those who remain as second class citizens.

But it’s a moot point whether that freedom extends to willingly accepting money from the BNP and giving a stage to their meetings – especially in a venue which has a multi-racial workforce and where guests from a range of backgrounds would undoubtedly find their views offensive.

Searchlight Cymru calls for BNP candidate to back up ‘extraordinary’ claims, or resign

Posted on April 23, 2008
Filed Under Campaigns, Truth | Leave a Comment

(From Searchlight Cymru.)

A campaigning organisation, dedicated to challenging racist and fascist bodies in Wales, has called on a Carmarthenshire candidate for the county council elections to back up claims he has made in his election campaign, or resign.

Searchlight Cymru is asking Kevin Edwards, BNP candidate for the ward of Penygroes in Carmarthenshire, to justify two extraordinary claims he has made in his leaflet. In Mr Edwards’ election leaflet, he states that soldiers at Birmingham hospitals have to remove their uniforms so as not to offend Muslim staff and visitors.

The leaflet also states that homosexuality is now being taught in our schools to children as young as four years of age.

Darron Dupre, Secretary of Searchlight Cymru is amazed at the claims.

“We were a bit bemused by such claims, but were happy to give Mr Edwards the benefit of the doubt, so checked” he says. “We can find no evidence of his claims anywhere. We know of an unsubstantiated newspaper report of Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, but that has been disproved some time ago.

“We also asked the NUT about the subjects taught to four year olds. To be honest, they were most bemused about Mr Edwards’ claims. As Mr Edwards obviously knows something that no one else knows, then we ask that he, like any candidate, can back up claims with some facts.”

“If he cannot substantiate such inflammatory claims, then we would expect him to do the honourable thing and resign his candidacy,” says Mr Dupre.

Mr Dupre is asking the voters of Carmarthenshire to look into claims by candidates before accepting them as fact.

“On his glossy election leaflet, Mr Edwards states that British people should always get priority in the housing queue over asylum seekers, but as most people know, asylum seekers are not entitled to council housing. He further states that asylum seekers get free cars and TVs. Again, everyone at Searchlight Cymru is intrigued to learn exactly where this is happening.

“If Mr Edwards cannot justify these claims, then he is treating all voters in Carmarthenshire with utter contempt. Voters will have to consider whether they really want to elect someone who is wrong about the healthcare of British soldiers, doesn’t understand schools or education and has no idea about council house waiting lists.

“Our only advice to Carmarthenshire voters is to use your vote and use it wisely.”

Fascist party aims to con LibDem voters

Posted on April 20, 2008
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(By Denise Garside.)

Nobody ever accused Patrick Harrington of hiding his light under a bushel.

His towering self-regard and assessment of his own importance have long been a source of mirth to anti-fascists used to dealing with the inflated egos predominating on the extreme right.

Nobody does more to maintain his own Wiki page than Harrington (he prefers to be called “Pat”), the mystery being why he, Wiki, or anybody else should imagine the serial failure to be worth 2,571 words, and why Harrington thinks anybody could care enough about him and his obscure doings to read the self-penned personal bio he seems to paste at the drop of a hat in various places on the web.

As we’ve often noted, to read anything penned by Harrington is to step outside hard reality. His personal bio gives the impression of a man of political substance and achievement; his writings on the fake union Solidarity’s website are of what you might charitably term the overblown variety; and over on the Third Way website we could be forgiven for believing that this fifth-rate National Front successor organisation, of which Harrington accounts himself a “Director”, really is some vital think-tank throwing up ideas essential to the good of the nation.

The truth is rather more mundane.

“Success” and “Harrington” are words rarely found in close proximity. The “militant fighting union” Solidarity is largely reduced to issuing General Secretary Harrington’s pompous and unremarked press statements and making appeals for funds (a telephone “hotline” - with answering machine - being the latest Must Have for the One Big Union and its 211 members).

And of the Third Way - what does one say about a “party” of 20 members that bores the Electoral Commission to tears with its windy account of its local election performances (successes = 0), admits to having only £88.17 in the kitty (2006), but which allegedly raised £1400 from membership subs (yet £15 x 20 = £300! - go figure), somehow managing to spend £560 of that on vague “internet services” (we thought Wordpress and the Masterplan theme - the very same as used by the BNP - were free).

Harrington is very much a man who rose without trace to lead organisations that campaign without trace.

The Third Way, of course, goes by the dishonest name of “National Liberal Party”.

Many entirely honourable and respectable political parties use the word “Liberal” in their titles - most obviously, the Liberal Democrats and the rump Liberal Party. Quite why the Electoral Commission ever came to allow Harrington’s “National Liberal Party” to contest elections under that name is a mystery, since the EC normally refuses to allow sound-alike parties to campaign when they believe a title has been adopted with the intention of confusing or misleading voters.

The name game may soon be up, however, for the “National Liberal Party”.

On Stormfront Harrington uses the moniker “Doublethink”, and - we believe - that of “Completely Blank”. On the Green Bigot’s forum the poster “Completely Blank” denies being Harrington, despite “Completely Blank” managing to sound in every way like Harrington, even down to the evasions and inflated claims regarding the bogus union Solidarity. At any rate, when Norfolk Unity insisted that Harrington was “Completely Blank”, the great man took the matter no further and contented himself with trying to force Blogger to remove a picture from their website.

Giving Harrington the benefit of considerable doubt, we’ll say no more on the provenance of “Completely Blank”, but go on to highlight a declaration recently made by that entity on the Nazi Stormfront website:

The National Liberal Party intends to contest ten marginal Lib Dem seats at the next general election. In some of these the Lib Dems have a majority of only some hundreds.

There was a National Liberal Party in the early part of the last century so the Third Way’s claim to the title could be said to have some historic basis. There is a Liberal Party and a Liberal Democratic party so why not a revived National Liberal Party. After all, in Ulster there is an Ulster Unionist Party, a Democratic Unionist Party, a UK Unionist Party a Progressive Unionist Party and until recently a Northern Ireland Unionist Party. As the EC allows all these varieties of unionism I can see no reason to prevent a liberal nationalist party from using ‘Liberal’ in its title.

Ignoring the feeble attempt at self-justification as to why a fascist party lays claim to the title “Liberal”, the first paragraph of Completely Blank’s posting leaves no doubt whatsoever that the National Liberal Party intends to go into the next general election purposed on conning votes away from the Liberal Democrats by confusing itself with the mainstream party, and - they hope - losing the sitting Liberal Democrats their seats.

There can be, and is, no other reason for the NLP to target itself so specifically - only against Liberal Democrats, and only in marginals where a small number of votes will decide the sitting MPs’ fates.

No other no-hope party, to the best of our knowledge, has ever gone into a general election fixed purely on unseating MPs by use of deceit and obsfucation.

In our opinion this amounts to a clear intention to mislead voters and to abuse the democratic process on the part of a nasty little organisation made up of no-hopers and fantasists closely connected with the BNP and complicit in the running of the racist party’s bogus front groups.

It is also reason enough for the Electoral Commission to strip Third Way of the right to campaign under the spurious “National Liberal Party” title.

We have already alerted the Liberal Democrats to the underhand intentions of the squalid NLP, but visitors (of all political persuasions) to this website can help by complaining to the Electoral Commission, and by bringing this post to the attention of Liberal Democrat MPs and LibDem organisations.

Follow this link to the Electoral Commission’s contact web-page, where complaints can be made to each national EC outpost in writing, by email, or by telephone.

Harrington and company may well have over-stepped the mark with their premature blustering. Let’s ensure it comes back to haunt them.

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