BNP are criminals too!

The British National Party are sometimes quoted as saying that they are “not racists” and are a party of "law and order", despite huge amounts of evidence to the contrary. If more examples were needed, one needs to look no further than the BNP’s “Northants Patriot” website.

On a regular basis this web-site (based on stories in the local press) has reported on the arrest or imprisonment or otherwise of people usually identified only by their “foreign-sounding” names. No reports appear of any other people (with, for example, “English-sounding” names) commiting crimes, thus giving the clear message that only “foreigners” commit crimes, according to the BNP that is. This is despite regular statements by the Police that ethnic minorities or new migrants are no more likely to be involved in criminal activities overall that anyone else.

Such highly selective and prejudiced reporting is not new in the annuals of fascist organisations. The Nazi’s were well versed in similar attempting to smear and isolate the Jewish community through similar devices, in order to create a climate of hostility against them. We know, of course, where this led.

However, the BNP, like their Nazi predecessors, hide their own propensity to serious criminality (even if we leave out their support for, or denying of, genocide) despite their pathetic attempts to clean up their tarnished image.

A BNP candidate for election in Barnsley was recently exposed as having served an 18-month prison sentence for perverting the course of justice and conning a pensioner out of £1000. The local BNP election agent described their man as “a good candidate who has a great deal to offer the local community”!!

A BNP member in Calderdale was also jailed in February for a cocaine-fuelled orgy of destruction at a women’s home in Bradford.

And the list could go on…..

Whilst it is true that all political parties have within their ranks people who are criminals (as indeed do all sections our diverse community), it seems that for such a small party the BNP has more than its fair share. The BNP also has a tendency to defend such people, rather than to expel them from their ranks.

Although not a criminal (as far as I know), one of the BNP’s candidates in the recent London Assembly elections, until he was ignominiously dropped, has given us an insight into some of the thinking within the BNP on the serious crime of rape. “Rape is simply sex” Nick Erikson said on his blog in 2005 He continued: “Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal. To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that force feeding a women chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A women would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched”.

Rather than condemn these comments and publicly expel Erikson from their party, the BNP simply shrugged its shoulders.