Back in 2009 when the BNP thought they were on the brink of world domination and Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons had just been elected to the European Parliament as MEP’s, a couple of bright sparks got together and decided to offer a lifetime BNP membership to anybody that was foolish enough to part with £395 (rising later to £495).
This wondrous scheme was then given the notorious BNP hard sell, with the Belfast call centre phoning what was at the time a rather buoyant membership up to seven times per month to sell the idea of being a pivotal member of what one must assume was some kind of second crack at the 1000 year Reich.
It was, to be a life time member an exceptional honour. As Nick Griffin himself wrote at the time:
“This honour is being extended to a carefully selected group of British citizens, stalwart BNP members like you, and I would like to be the first to personally congratulate you for being among that special chosen group of people.”
Leaving aside the obvious “chosen people” gag, you were actually “carefully selected” solely on the basis you were daft enough to give the party your phone number in the first place.
Not only did you get a badge and a card, you also got a “top quality, exclusive, engraved watch, his or hers” and a signed picture of the pig farmer himself. Obviously, being a wealthy young man, I succumbed to the charms of the cheery, soon to be unpaid, BNP caller immediately.
If you were not fooled into handing over your money for a lifetime membership your proverbial arm was twisted into upgrading your membership to become a Gold member, the benefits of which I’m not entirely sure about.
Those who could not raise enough gold were then coerced instead into taking out a subscription to a party periodical, either the party’s monthly newspaper or the monthly magazine. Politely declining to part with cash just ensured you got another call and then another and then another in the hunt for the last piece of lint in your pockets.
Actually forking out for life membership, gold membership or a subscription ensured you were also called six more times per month because in the BNP’s eyes, well, you obviously had more money than sense anyway.
Now here I am in 2012 and this morning my “special, exclusive, engraved” watch has died on me. This is a dead watch. It is no longer capable of counting down the final days until Britain is an all white paradise run by a racist pig farmer and his coalition of cerebrally challenged underlings.
I attach a picture of said watch. Is it a symptomatic timepiece of the BNP’s fall from grace? Or is it just, in actual fact, a piece of old tat that the BNP paid 66p for as a job lot to pass on to their already fleeced membership?
You decide. Because the rumour is, the Life Memberships sold by the party are about to become as worthless as my shitty old time piece. That’s right, the 800 remaining life members are now such a drain on the party that they’re going to treat them like they would say, a printer that printed fourteen million leaflets for them.
Their time has run out.
HOPE not hate can reveal the location of plots of land in Wales owned by the Woodlander Initiative, a land-buying scheme with links to Patriotic…