Nick Griffin expelled from BNP – set to found new party
Posted by admin978 on October 2, 2014 · Leave a Comment
Nick Griffin has been expelled from the BNP and is planning to launch a new party. H&D understands that Griffin is likely to take about a third of the BNP’s remaining activists with him into this new venture, and will retain his overseas alliances with some leaders of Hungary’s Jobbik, Golden Dawn in Greece and the Italian Forza Nuova. A series of meetings will be held around the country to launch Griffin’s new venture: his North West followers have been invited to meet in Warrington next Wednesday, October 8th.
The original plan following a BNP internal coup on July 19th (when Griffin was replaced as chairman by his former crony Adam Walker) had been for the Griffinites to rally behind former Stoke councillor Michael Coleman, widely respected among ideological hardliners in the party. Several London based activists had said they would stick with the BNP ‘brand name’ as it would take too long to build up another party.
Yet Griffin has now concluded that there is no chance of the current leadership clique allowing anything resembling a free and fair leadership election. He has now acknowledged that Patrick Harrington is the brains behind the new leadership, as we reported last month.
The former chairman is calling on his supporters to cut off funding for the BNP and to change any wills previously made in the party’s favour. In a significant victory for Harrington, Walker and the party treasurer Clive Jefferson, Griffin has apparently given up on several legacies already in the pipeline from deceased supporters.
However these legacies (and the BNP’s other remaining assets) are likely to be eaten up in legal expenses. Griffin will not bring legal action to gain reinstatement in the BNP, as he believes his old party is now wrecked beyond repair. In particular he believes that his own bankruptcy trustee (appointed when Griffin was bankrupted nine months ago due to non-payment of his own solicitors) will shortly proceed to seize BNP assets, a move which would sooner or later lead to an Official Receiver taking full control of the party.
These procedures are a consequence of the ruinous legal actions brought by Griffin when he was party chairman, especially a disastrous attempt in March 2008 to sue several former party officials who had split from Griffin in December 2007. Griffin believes that the enormous costs from this and other failed legal actions should be met by the BNP – even if they were taken in his own name and in the name of his former right-hand man Simon Darby.
He argues (correctly according to H&D‘s legal advice) that the BNP constitution indemnifies him for these expenses. So far his bankruptcy trustee has been busy seizing Griffin’s own earnings from the European Parliament, including the pay-off he was due after losing his seat in this year’s European election. But it’s only a matter of time before the trustee moves on to seize BNP funds. So far (according to Griffin) the new BNP leadership has simply refused to communicate with the trustee and has conjured up a fraudulent change to party rules, which they believe will allow them to hide assets.
In a recent letter to Adam Walker (later circulated to BNP officials) Griffin warned:
“Written by Pat Harrington, the main line of ‘defence’ on which you appear set to try to rely is that you have given yourself the purported power to declare that any chunk of ‘central funds’ aren’t ‘central funds’ at all. Leaving aside the questions of probity such a declaration would raise, I can tell you that this clause is childish nonsense. The best that can be said for it is that the Trustee may be more amused than annoyed at such a pathetic attempt to block his enormous legal powers.”
The main question for Griffin and his followers is whether to attempt a BNP-style electoral party, or whether to go back to Griffin’s 1980s formula of a “cadre” based activism which ignores the ballot box. If the former, any new party will have its work cut out to be ready for a credible campaign at next year’s general election.
UPDATE: Griffin’s former right-hand man Simon Darby, who had been suspiciously silent until now on the BNP’s internal crisis, has effectively come out in support of the new leadership and against his old friend Nick. Heritage and Destiny contributor E.N. Ronn gives his insights into the developing imbroglio in a new article at the Civil Liberty website.
