Post-Brexit civic nationalists face High Noon in Yorkshire and Devon by-elections

Nominations closed this afternoon for two parliamentary by-elections to be held on 23rd June in the West Yorkshire constituency of Wakefield and the Devon constituency of Tiverton & Honiton.

Each of these by-elections follows scandals that disgraced the previous Conservative MP. In Wakefield a homosexual Muslim Conservative – overseas readers might think we are making this up but it’s absolutely true – resigned after being convicted for sexually assaulting a teenage boy. He has since been imprisoned.

In Tiverton & Honiton, the local Conservative MP resigned after he admitted viewing pornography on his phone while at work in the chamber of the House of Commons. Readers will appreciate that parliamentary proceedings can be boring, but this was probably not the best way to relieve the tedium.

Each by-election has attracted a range of civic nationalist, populist and/or anti-Islam candidates.

In Wakefield voters can choose between:
Ashlea Simon of Britain First, an anti-Islamist party backed by former BNP official Paul Golding – as reported in the current edition of H&D, Miss Simon achieved the best nationalist vote at the recent local council elections, polling 21.6% in Walkden North, Salford;

Jayda Fransen, Mr Golding’s former partner both in Britain First and in private life, who is now based in Northern Ireland where she works for Christian businessman Jim Dowson and his political frontman Nick Griffin – they call their outfit the British Freedom Party but it is not in fact a registered political party, so Ms Fransen is listed as Independent on the ballot paper;

Chris Walsh, a Wakefield gym owner and the most local of the civic nationalist candidates, representing the Reform UK party backed by former Brexit Party and UKIP leader Nigel Farage;

Therese Hirst, a frequent candidate in Yorkshire elections for the English Democrats, a party led by Essex solicitor Robin Tilbrook which campaigns for an English Parliament – Ms Hirst (a Theology graduate of Durham University) finished runner-up at the Batley & Spen parliamentary by-election in 2016, polling 4.8%;

Jordan Gaskell, who at the age of 19 received UKIP’s best vote at the recent local government elections: 10.4% in Hindley ward, Wigan – like Ashlea Simon he has what might prove a big disadvantage of coming from the wrong side of the Pennines, though unlike Jayda Fransen he is at least based in England.

Other anti-establishment parties contesting Wakefield include the CoVID-sceptic ‘Freedom Alliance’, the Christian Peoples Alliance, the Yorkshire Party, and the left-populist Northern Independence Party.

Wakefield’s Conservatives have (perhaps surprisingly) selected another Asian candidate. There is also an Asian independent standing, as well as the ‘Monster Raving Loony Party’, and the usual Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green parties.

The by-election is almost certain to be won either by Labour or the Conservatives, but an unusually poor or good result might either finish off one of the crowded field of nationalist or semi-nationalist parties, or give one of them the boost required to raise their profile.

At present none of these parties has anything like the profile achieved by the National Front in the 1970s, the BNP in the 1990s and 2000s, or UKIP and the Brexit Party in the 2010s.

Tiverton & Honiton in contrast to Wakefield is almost certain to be a battle between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

Here there is a slightly different range of civic nationalist candidates:
Frankie Rufolo is Exeter organiser of the For Britain Movement, the anti-Islamist party founded by former UKIP leadership candidate Anne-Marie Waters. Mr Rufolo has stood several times in Exeter City Council elections, most recently polling 7.7%.
Andy Foan, a former Royal Navy and RAF pilot, is standing for Reform UK.
Ben Walker, also a Royal Navy veteran, is standing for UKIP, for whom he was once a councillor in South Gloucestershire. In 2019 he was fined more than £11,000 for breaking building regulations.
Jordan Donoghue-Morgan is standing for the Heritage Party, which has absolutely no connection to H&D and is a splinter from UKIP.

Since UKIP were runners-up with 16.5% in this constituency in 2015, there is a fairly substantial civic nationalist or populist right-wing vote to share between these candidates, especially given the Conservative Party’s recent problems.

As in Wakefield, an especially good or bad result for any of the above four candidates could propel their party either into significance or into extinction.

Other candidates in Tiverton & Honiton are the usual ‘big four’: Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green.

Neither of the two fastest-growing nationalist organisations in Britain is contesting either of these by-elections. Patriotic Alternative is not yet a registered political party so cannot yet appear on ballot papers. The British Democratic Party has decided (probably wisely) not to enter a crowded field that is likely to turn into a media circus.

Civic nationalism wiped off the map

For at least twenty years we have grown used to being told that racial nationalism is ‘unrealistic’ and that the only ‘electable’ alternative to the political establishment is ‘civic nationalism’. We should forget about race, forget awkward aspects of British or European history, forget all essential principles, and focus on a vague form of protest vote combined with strictly non-racial ‘patriotism’: so the argument has traditionally gone.

The high tide of civic nationalism was the Brexit referendum victory in 2016. Before and after that result, parties led by Nigel Farage (first UKIP, then the Brexit Party) seriously challenged the party system, but once Brexit had been achieved, Farage’s politics (essentially an ultra-reactionary version of Thatcherism) lost all relevance.

Several different parties and independents have competed for the same political territory: waffling about immigration while determined not to be ‘racist’; still fighting the Brexit war long after it ended; and obsessed by some version or other of anti-vaccination conspiracy theory. What has been entirely lacking has been any serious political ideology or vision.

There are only two good reasons to be in politics: either to win, obtaining at least some portion of power over the fate of our nations and peoples; or to set out a clear and consistent ideology capable of rallying and inspiring our people if future political circumstances afford any chances to do so.

Civic nationalism does neither: it is the politics both of defeat and of ideological vacuity.

Just before 1.30 this morning, the credibility of civic nationalism ended for good, finally burying the era when Brexit dominated British politics.

At yesterday’s Southend West by-election, none of the major parties stood against the Conservatives, out of respect for the by-election having been caused by the murder of the late MP David Amess.

This meant that from the start of the campaign, there was an open goal for any ‘minor’ party or candidate who could demonstrate the slightest shred of credibility: none of them could do so.

By polling day the government had discredited itself to a barely imaginable extent, so there was obvious potential for a ‘protest vote’. Not one of the various civic nationalist candidates was able to mobilise such a protest.

The once mighty UKIP had furthest to fall, and duly did so, polling a mere 400 votes (2.7%) across the entire constituency and pushed into third place behind the unlikely runner-up on 3.4%, Jason Pilley of the Psychedelic Movement, whose main policy seems to be legalising cannabis but in other respects is yet another cut taxes, cut government spending, neo-Thatcherite libertarian.

The obvious political space in Britain today is for a credible form of radical racial nationalism, but no such party of any size has existed since Nick Griffin turned the BNP into his personal retirement fund.

Griffin’s latest scam – the British Freedom Party – was not able to put its name on the ballot paper due to not being officially registered, so its leader Jayda Fransen stood as an independent. She polled 299 votes (2.0%), finishing fifth of the nine candidates, and most of these votes were probably due to her being the only candidate described on the ballot paper as an independent. In reality her campaign was just another fundraising stunt by the men who really run her party – Nick Griffin and his ‘business adviser’ Jim Dowson.

Griffin and Dowson weren’t even prepared to spend money on a leaflet to take advantage of the free mailshot to voters that candidates are given in return for their £500 deposit. Any donors to ‘British Freedom’ who expected a serious campaign have (yet again) been conned.

By far the most creditable performance among the civic nationalist fringe candidates was by English Democrat candidate Catherine Blaiklock, who finished fourth with 320 votes (2.2%) despite competing for many of the same voters as UKIP (a far better known and publicised party). Many H&D readers will dislike Ms Blaiklock for having twice married non-Whites, but she has never pretended to be a racial nationalist and cannot be accused of hypocrisy. Moreover her party leader Robin Tilbrook is a thoroughly honest and able spokesman for his cause. Sadly that cause – primarily focused on an English Parliament though also commendably drawing attention to failures of immigration policy – is too limited to rally much support from racial nationalists.

The Heritage Party – a UKIP splinter led by a half-Jamaican and obsessed by anti-vaccination issues, polled only 1.6%, and other versions of the same message received even less support – just 1.1% for the ‘Freedom Alliance’ and 0.6% for the most conspiracist version of the anti-vaccination cause, offered by Graham Moore of the English Constitution Party.

With the exception of Mr Tilbrook who is a good spokesman for a limited cause, the rest of the civic nationalist candidates and leaders should take a long hard look at themselves after this latest debacle. Their only honest conclusion must be that they are simply not good enough: not of serious calibre as parliamentary candidates, not serious as parties, and offering no serious ideological challenge to the system they profess to oppose.

Our own movement also needs to take a good look at itself. First we need to sort out what are the essentials of our ideology and put in place a proper system of ideological and political training for our recruits. Second we need to sort out our attitude to the electoral process: when and where do we fight elections, and what will be our vehicle for doing so?

There’s no need for defeatism; there is need for realism – and the death of civic nationalism leaves us with no excuses for our own failures.

H&D will seek to play its part during 2022 in the long overdue relaunch of a serious racial nationalist challenge to Britain’s morally and ideologically bankrupt politics.

Hallowe’en Nightmare for Anti-Fascists!

This weekend was a Hallowe’een nightmare for anti-fascists and their crooked allies Nick Griffin and Jim Dowson. Not to mention middle-aged hooligan and Dick Emery tribute act Matthew Collins, risibly titled “Head of Intelligence” at Hope not Hate, who true to form “got it wrong again”!

The fast-growing nationalist movement Patriotic Alternative held an excellent conference in the beautiful surroundings of the Lake District, with 240 PA activists and guests in attendance and a line-up of first-rate speakers. Meanwhile Hope not Hate, Unite Against Fascism, Nick Griffin, Jim Dowson, and a depressing line-up of sad and bitter losers joined forces to post lie after lie on social media, falsely claiming that the event had been cancelled.

While the audience was assembling at the Villa Levens Hotel late on Saturday morning, hotel management tried to cancel the booking. However PA leaders Mark Collett, Laura Towler and colleagues stood firm and successfully insisted that the conference must proceed.

Apart from this stress to Mark and Laura, no-one attending the conference was in any way inconvenienced throughout the afternoon. We heard excellent speakers in first rate surroundings, enjoyed a splendid buffet lunch, and sold many copies of H&D while meeting up with old friends and making new ones.

Adding to our enjoyment of this great event was the embarrassment caused to ‘anti-fascists’ whose grotesque lies were so swiftly and comprehensively exposed.

Gullible readers of both ‘anti-fascist’ and Griffinite social media accounts were fed a stream of deceit all day, as the likes of Matthew Collins congratulated themselves on supposedly getting the PA conference cancelled.

While we enjoyed the best nationalist event in years, sad antifa losers and bitter factional obsessives reposted the lies of Hope not Hate, whose credibility might never recover from the total deception they have perpetrated on readers and donors.

Collins and Hope not Hate raved on Twitter that the “secret conference has been rumbled… descended into chaos and farce, with the Cumbrian venue cancelling the booking as people were arriving… Recriminations are now flying around. …Many were angry that they travelled to such a remote location, only to be turned around the moment they arrived. The question is less can Collett regain the trust of his members, but whether they will stay around to hear him out. A quite humiliating day for Collett and PA.”

This ‘anti-fascist’ account was 100% untrue – made much worse by the fact that Hope not Hate didn’t simply repeat untruths picked up online (partly from their little helpers in Griffin and Dowson’s floundering confidence trick that masquerades as a ‘British Freedom Party’). HNH went much further, characteristically embroidering their tissue of inaccurate gossip so as to give their donors the quite fraudulent impression that they had an on-the-ground ‘intelligence’ operation and were actually reporting from outside or inside the hotel.

HNH and their rivals in a superficially more competent ‘intelligence’ organisation called Red Flare began the day by falling out over who should claim credit for discovering the venue, but within hours were in an even more bitter dispute over whether HNH had deliberately lied about the conference being ‘cancelled’.

Priceless examples of this internal war included a violent antifa group calling itself ‘Football Lads and Lasses Against Fascism’ writing:
“Do not believe a word coming out of UAF or Hope not Hate, who prematurely claimed ‘victory’ and credit for exposing this event.”

Similarly Red Flare posted:
“Claims about fascist activity should not be based on speculation or wishful thinking but on verifiable information. …Exaggerated and premature claims of [PA’s] demise only serve to demobilise opposition.”

The truth is that whether or not the opposition is ‘demobilised’ by its own incompetence and dishonesty, the racial nationalist movement will eventually win because we stand for truth and justice, whereas the left denies nature, denies science, denies history and denies political reality. We look forward to reporting on further victories for our movement and further confusion and division among our enemies!

Links to video from the event will be posted here as and when available. A selection of photos are already online here.

Thanks to our old friend Liam Haines who sold many copies of H&D and wished he had brought more! And to Lady Michèle Renouf who donated a copy of her Jailing Opinions DVD to every conference attendee.

(Michèle’s new video which also features H&D Assistant Editor Peter Rushton is now online at the link below)

Speakers from the 2021 PA conference

Civic nationalism crashes to defeat in Yorkshire by-election

Parts of the Batley & Spen constituency in West Yorkshire were among the strongest racial nationalist areas in Britain during the first decade of the 21st century. The BNP’s David Exley won the mainly White working-class Heckmondwike ward at a by-election in August 2003 – one of a series of BNP victories either side of the Pennines, triggered by the Oldham riots of May 2001. Cllr Exley retained his seat in 2004 and a second Heckmondwike councillor was gained in 2005. Even as late as 2010 when the local BNP fought its last campaign, they managed 17.6%.

Admittedly this is just one of the six wards that make up Batley & Spen, but the party also polled very well elsewhere in the constituency in the 2000s, including the Tory wards Liversedge & Gomersal and Birstall & Birkenshaw. Any parliamentary by-election in Batley & Spen should have been (and should still be) good news for any serious pro-White nationalist party.

Yet when such a by-election first occurred here, it was in dramatic circumstances that made racial nationalist campaigning appear distasteful. A week before the Brexit referendum in June 2016, Batley & Spen’s Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a deranged Heckmondwike resident who was quickly labelled a ‘far right terrorist’ by the media. Despite living in Heckmondwike, Thomas Mair had no connection whatever with the BNP and was totally unknown to any other British nationalists, apart from the eccentric Alan Harvey (a former NF member long resident in South Africa) to whose newsletter South African Patriot Mair subscribed.

The other mainstream parties gave Labour a clear run in the ensuing by-election held in October 2016 and Labour’s Tracy Brabin won a majority of more than 16,000, with the civic nationalist English Democrats in second place on 4.8% and a much-diminished BNP third on 2.7%.

Reaction to Jo Cox’s murder only briefly disguised an anti-Labour trend among White voters. As in neighbouring Dewsbury, many White voters have been repelled by what they see as an Asian takeover of the local Labour party and by policies of the Asian Labour-led Kirklees council. To some extent these voters (using Brexit as a proxy issue for unmentionable racial concerns) have drifted to the Tories in recent elections. Even though UKIP and the Brexit Party failed to make much progress here, a former UKIP activist formed a populist movement called the Heavy Woollen Independents (a reference to the former staple industry of this area) who polled 12.2% at the 2019 general election, leaving Labour even more dependent on the presumed loyalty of Asian voters, concentrated in the Batley part of the constituency.

So when Tracy Brabin won the inaugural mayoral election for West Yorkshire in May this year, causing a second Batley & Spen parliamentary by-election in five years, one can understand eyes lighting up across various populist and broadly nationalist movements. All the more so because of a mini-scandal that pushed Batley into nationwide headlines in March this year, when a teacher at Batley Grammar School was briefly suspended for showing his pupils a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

A crowded ballot paper of sixteen candidates for the by-election – held on July 1st – included several from the spectrum of pro-Brexit, populist, Islam-obsessed or broadly civic nationalism. Perhaps the best known to H&D readers were Anne-Marie Waters – the multiracialist but Islam-obsessed leader of the For Britain Movement, whose party includes several experienced racial nationalists even though its leader and her coterie are sincerely ‘anti-racist’; and Jayda Fransen, the anti-Islam campaigner and former deputy leader of Britain First who is nominal leader of Jim Dowson’s donation-hunting enterprise that calls itself the British Freedom Party (even though it isn’t and perhaps never will be a registered political party – so Ms Fransen had to stand as an Independent).

At the start of her campaign Ms Waters publicised an endorsement from ‘Tommy Robinson’, an ultra-Zionist career criminal who founded the English Defence League. Perhaps she hoped For Britain could become the political wing of the now defunct EDL – if so it was a foolish ambition.

The results declared early on the morning of July 2nd told their own story. Ms Waters finished twelfth of sixteen candidates with 97 votes (0.3%), while Ms Fransen was fifteenth with 50 votes (0.1%). This was little short of a disaster for civic, Islam-obsessed nationalism – especially since unlike Ms Fransen and her paymaster Dowson, Ms Waters and For Britain had attempted to fight a serious campaign, with seasoned political veterans including Eddy Butler and his wife Sue travelling from Essex, and former BNP activist Gary Bergin travelling from the Wirral.

Nor can they point to any other candidate from the same spectrum having cornered the White vote, as this entire spectrum polled poorly. The English Democrats (who at least had a relatively local candidate) fared best of a bad bunch with 207 votes (0.5%), followed by UKIP on 0.4%, the anti-lockdown Freedom Alliance on 0.3%, the SDP (once a centrist party but now pro-Brexit populists) on 0.1% a fraction ahead of Ms Fransen, and the ex-UKIP splinter Heritage Party (absolutely no connection to H&D!) polling even worse than Ms Fransen with a truly microscopic 0.05%.

Unlike the May local elections covered in Issue 102, one cannot explain these results in terms of a resurgent Tory Party taking the votes of pro-Brexit, racially conscious Whites. Contrary to expectations, the Tory vote actually fell here compared to 2019, and despite maverick charlatan George Galloway taking most of the Muslim vote, Labour managed to hold the seat, confounding pundits and bookmakers’ odds. The Tory campaign in the final few days was handicapped by the scandal that forced health minister Matt Hancock to resign last weekend, but almost every observer assumed this would merely reduce the size of an expected Tory victory.

I’m writing this article within hours of the result, so this is very much an instant analysis, but these are some of the lessons I think we can draw from what was surely the most significant by-election in years for our broadly-defined movement.

• Lunatic acts of political violence are a disaster for every wing of our movement, since even the most moderate civic nationalists are tarred by association in the minds of many potentially sympathetic voters. I’ve no doubt that many racially conscious folk cast their votes for Labour’s Kim Leadbeater because she is the sister of murdered MP Jo Cox.
• Outside Northern Ireland and some Scottish islands, very few Whites in the UK now define their politics in religious terms – and they regard those who do as a bit mad. No offence to those H&D readers who are religious believers and for whom this is the centre of their lives, but we should not fool ourselves about faith’s lack of electoral impact. Even racially conscious voters do not respond well to a campaign that is ‘over the top’ in shrill references to Islam. We can imply such things in sensibly worded racial nationalist leaflets, but hysterical ‘Islamophobia’ is not a vote-winner.
• George Galloway won most of the Muslim vote in Batley by campaigning on issues related to Palestine and Kashmir; but there is no equivalent bonus to be won among White voters by wrapping oneself in the Israeli flag. Aggressive Zionism is not a vote-winner among non-Jewish Britons, neither does it serve as an alibi for ‘racism’ as some former BNP veteran campaigners seem to believe.
• While Kim Leadbeater undoubtedly lost many Muslim votes because she is a lesbian (in addition to other factors depressing the Asian Labour vote), and Anne-Marie Waters perhaps lost a few socially conservative White voters for the same reason, homosexuality is no longer an issue for the vast majority of White voters, though the ‘trans’ nonsense is another matter.
• There continues to be no electoral benefit in campaigning against the government’s handling of the pandemic. Several parties focused on anti-lockdown policies all polled very poorly, especially the one for whom Covid-scepticism is its raison d’être, the Freedom Alliance whose candidate attracted only 100 votes (0.3%).
• Brexit’s electoral relevance is at last fading, and the Tory party’s hold over sections of the White working class is a lot weaker than many pundits have assumed. It’s Hartlepool (the ultra-Brexity constituency that fell to the Tories by a big majority two months ago) that’s the exceptional ‘outlier’; there are far more constituencies broadly similar to Batley & Spen, including neighbouring Dewsbury, presently held by the Tories.
• Kim Leadbeater won mainly due to White voters retaining (or returning to) traditional Labour loyalties. She lost most of the Muslim vote to George Galloway. In the probably unlikely event that Galloway can recruit high quality Muslim candidates to his new ‘Workers Party’, Labour might have difficulties in some other seats, but it’s more likely that they will just have problems turning out their Muslim voters after Keir Starmer’s shift of Labour policy away from hardline anti-Zionism. Most especially the modern left’s obsession with issues such as ‘trans rights’ will be a handicap in Muslim areas across Britain.
• The many and various consequences of multiracialism continue to provide rich electoral potential for racial nationalists, if and when we get our own act together. Many For Britain activists logically belong in the same party as British Democrats leader Dr Jim Lewthwaite and Patriotic Alternative leaders Mark Collett and Laura Towler, as well as many other movement activists and veterans of the old BNP who are (temporarily?) in political retirement.

All of these questions and more will be the background to a discussion of nationalist strategy post-Brexit and post-Covid. We look forward to hearing readers’ views in forthcoming editions of H&D.

H&D Exclusive: Griffin and Dowson’s ‘British Freedom Party’ collapses

During the last few days the British Freedom Party, led by former Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen but run behind the scenes by Nick Griffin’s business partner Jim Dowson, has collapsed amid accusations of financial misconduct and connections to the ‘anti-fascist’ organisation Hope not Hate.

The BFP was part of an international network coordinated by the Italian racial nationalist Roberto Fiore, who might have thought he had started to assemble a credible team after the recruitment of former London BNP organiser Steve Squire and former Glasgow BNP organiser Joe Finnie.

Although the party has not yet registered with the Electoral Commission, so could not yet use its name on ballot papers, Mr Finnie was standing effectively as a British Freedom Party candidate in the Scottish Parliamentary elections on May 6th, as were Jim Dowson and Jayda Fransen.

However H&D understands that Mr Finnie and Mr Squire quit the party this week, alleging (among other irregularities) that Jim Dowson has maintained continual and improper contact with Hope not Hate‘s laughably titled ‘head of intelligence’ – the foul-mouthed buffoon Matthew Collins – and a member of Collins’ family.

Mr Dowson will doubtless move on to other business opportunities. There is always some corner of the political or anti-abortion scene where a fast buck can be made, although since Nick Griffin was appointed last summer as editor of the BFP’s newspaper The Britannia only one further issue has appeared!

The collapse of the British Freedom Party is surely the end of Nick Griffin’s career in nationalist politics. He clearly believed that the BFP would be his vehicle for a comeback, instead it has been a one-way ticket to further ignominy and oblivion.

The inside story of the BFP’s collapse, the exposure of Hope not Hate‘s ‘intelligence’ operation, and the political death of Nick Griffin will appear in the May edition of Heritage and Destiny.

Jim Dowson enters electoral politics as Scotland prepares for May 6th polls

Jim Dowson – right-hand man to former BNP leader Nick Griffin – is making his debut as a Scottish parliamentary candidate. 56-year-old Dowson has extensive experience in political fundraising and publicity, initially for the anti-abortion movement, and despite his longstanding Ulster Loyalism has in recent years built bridges with a small Catholic and Irish nationalist group in the Republic.

His previous electoral experience was on the Britain First slate in Scotland at the 2014 European elections, but most of Dowson’s recent political activity has been in collaboration with Nick Griffin, the former BNP leader with whom Dowson first worked professionally almost fifteen years ago. They split for a few years after Griffin (to no-one’s surprise) failed to pay bills, but a reunion was promoted by the Italian nationalist Roberto Fiore, who is the real organiser behind Dowson and Griffin’s new venture, the British Freedom Party.

The BFP, whose figurehead leader is former Britain First deputy chief Jayda Fransen, has not yet registered as a political party with the Electoral Commission, so its three candidates next month cannot have the party name on ballot papers.

Ms Fransen will be an independent candidate for Glasgow Southside in the Scottish Parliament election, opposing Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, while her colleague Joe Finnie (a former BNP organiser who remained loyal to Griffin after the latter’s expulsion from the party he once led) will contest Glasgow Pollok, against the SNP’s Justice minister Humza Yousaf.

These two campaigns have long been expected and mentioned in previous editions of H&D. The new development is in Airdrie & Shotts, where Jim Dowson has only recently decided to stand as a candidate himself. At first we understood he was going to stand both in the Scottish parliamentary election and in a Westminster by-election that will be held a week later on May 13th. In the event he decided not to stand in the Westminster contest.

H&D understands that Mr Dowson saw a political opportunity in Airdrie & Shotts for two reasons. Firstly the farcical and money-wasting circumstances, where the sitting Westminster MP Neil Gray has triggered an unnecessary by-election because of his decision to stand for the Holyrood parliament (a farce worsened by the returning officer who quite pathetically decided that he and his team could not safely and competently hold the by-election on May 6th alongside the Holyrood polls).

And secondly because in typical ‘woke’ fashion, the ‘Scottish’ National Party is putting up yet another Asian candidate in the Westminster contest.

For some reason neither Mr Finnie nor Mr Dowson have put the word ‘Independent’ on their nomination papers for Holyrood, so they will appear on the ballot as ‘no description’.

Mr Finnie is unlucky to be facing opposition in Pollok from the anti-woke party Reclaim’s only Scottish candidate as well as UKIP.

Various other parties are fielding candidates across Scotland either to the right of the Tories on immigration and social issues; still flogging the dead horse of Brexit; or committed to anti-lockdown or anti-vaccination campaigns that have attracted some support from sections of our movement.

Scotland’s parliamentary election is similar to that for the Greater London Assembly in that there are first-past-the-post elections for constituency MSPs, plus additional MSPs elected via a proportional list system – one very important difference being that in London this list covers the entire city region, whereas the Scottish Parliament has eight regions each with their own list.

This means in practice that (unlike London) a fringe party stands little chance of getting an MSP elected unless their support is very heavily concentrated in just one of these regions. Whereas the system does favour the more substantial smaller parties, notably the Greens and Liberal Democrats, and in theory protects 21st century Scotland from one-party SNP domination.

Parties standing at the 2021 election include:

Reclaim (anti-woke party led at a UK level by actor and London mayoral candidate Laurence Fox)
– comedian Leo Kearse is standing both for the Glasgow regional list and in the Glasgow Pollok constituency

Freedom Alliance (a new anti-lockdown party)
– all eight regional slates;
– constituency candidates in Banffshire & Buchan Coast; Edinburgh N & Leith; Caithness, Sutherland & Ross; Glasgow Southside

Reform UK (the Scottish branch of the former Brexit Party, led by Richard Tice and associated with Nigel Farage before the latter’s retirement from party politics)
– all eight regional slates

Abolish the Scottish Parliament (a new party led by John Mortimer who founded the British Union & Sovereignty Party, later renamed the British Sovereignty Party)
– seven of the eight regional slates (not contesting Highlands & Islands region)

Scottish Family Party (anti-woke, social conservatives)
– all eight regional slates;
– constituency candidates in Renfrewshire N & W; Mid Fife & Glenrothes; Edinburgh S; Coatbridge & Chryston; Strathkelvin & Bearsden; Edinburgh Pentlands; Perthshire N

UKIP (a now much-diminished force across the UK, and especially so in Scotland)
– all eight regional slates;
– constituency candidates in Glasgow Pollok; Edinburgh C; Eastwood; Moray; Motherwell & Wishaw

Scottish Libertarian Party (a rare example of a party that’s both pro-Brexit and pro-independence; but mainly a US style small-state, pro-market, pro-privatisation party)
– all eight regional slates;
– constituency candidates in Aberdeen S & N Kincardine; Dumbarton; Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley; Glasgow Pollok; Kirkcaldy; Edinburgh C; Edinburgh W; Caithness, Sutherland & Ross; Motherwell & Wishaw

Restore Scotland (another pro-Brexit but pro-independence party; has attracted a very small number of veteran SNP activists who were also pro-Brexit; seems to be concentrated in the north / Highlands)
– regional slates in Highlands & Islands; NE Scotland;
– constituency candidates in Dundee City West; Banffshire & Buchan Coast; Inverness & Nairn; Shetland

Vanguard (sometimes known as Scottish Vanguard Party; founded by former Brexit Party candidate and barrister Michael Banks; no known connection to the Ulster Vanguard Party of 1970s fame)
– regional slate South Scotland; plus the Midlothian South, Tweeddale & Lauderdale constituency

Social Democratic Party (a pro-Brexit party whose other policies seem more like the old right-wing of Labour; rump of the old SDP that supported David Owen, though Owen is no longer in any way associated with the party)
– regional slate Lothian.

Numerous other parties are standing representing leftist, liberal or establishment political traditions. H&D will report here and in the next issue of the magazine on these elections and their implications for racial nationalism.

Beyond a joke: Nick Griffin’s latest reinvention

Former BNP chairman Nick Griffin has in typically shameless fashion begun yet another reinvention.

Just seven months ago Griffin was guest speaker at a memorial rally in Dresden to mark the 75th anniversary of the city’s terror bombing by British and American air forces in February 1945.

As he had done when picketing Coventry Cathedral in 1996, Griffin was posing in Dresden as a ‘radical’ nationalist condemning wartime prime minister Winston Churchill and his Bomber Command chief Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris as war criminals.

A decade or so ago Griffin played a very different tune, losing no opportunity to associate himself with Churchillian and wartime images and stating in one video that his version of the BNP would have welcomed Churchill “with open arms” had he been alive today.

In recent years Griffin has again cynically toyed with the sort of anti-Zionist ‘radicalism’ that he embraced in the 1980s and early 1990s, but now it’s back to sub-Churchillian posturing.

The new context is that Griffin is joining the British Freedom Party, whose main organiser is his close business adviser Jim Dowson and whose leader (for the time being) is Jayda Fransen, formerly Paul Golding’s right-hand woman in the Islam-obsessed ‘Britain First’.

Ms Fransen has appointed Griffin as editor of the BFP’s newspaper The Britannia which practically worships Churchill and eagerly promotes every facet of Second World War mythology.

The sad thing is that Ms Fransen seems sincere if deluded: it’s tragic to see her being used as Griffin’s latest dupe.

No doubt Ms Fransen has no memory of the last time a political leader appointed Griffin as (deputy) editor of a nationalist journal. We can give her a clue – it didn’t end well for the leader concerned!