And now the dirty war begins

Griffin & Walker: Grooming a party to death

The expulsion by the British National Party (BNP) of their former leader Nick Griffin has created national news headlines.

BBC News 24 even ran a blow by blow update late last night. Internal BNP documents are falling like confetti. Some are physically being shoved into our hands. A dirty war has been looming, it has now arrived.

At HOPE not hate we have been giving an up to date account of the internal wranglings in the party from the moment Griffin stood down. Even then we said he had been pushed. I’ll go as far now to say he was kicked.

How did Nick Griffin lose such control of the party he shaped so acutely? Over the past two months we have blogged about the ongoing turmoil since Griffin was ousted. As far back as June we were predicting he was to be challenged and potentially deposed by a faction around Adam Walker.

Griffin’s arrogance is as notorious as are his sticky fingers. He ran the party up the opinion polls and simultaneously down to near bankruptcy. For those who clung onto him, the ride was rewarding. His greed was only ever matched by his wayward generosity. He made ‘Gurus’ out of fools and elevated the very group that have expelled him way beyond where they would have risen in an ordinary party. And now things are really bitter.

Clive Jefferson: In the firing line?

There was an explosion of rage within the party on Tuesday afternoon when it became apparent that HOPE not hate was being fed information from the very heart of the split. Senior figures in both factions pointed the finger at each other. Was it for ideological gain or plain old financial gain?

Who knows. One prominent figure yesterday claimed he had been asked to leak details by both factions.

The war is now turning very dirty. The new Chairman and his team claim that Griffin made threats of violence towards them as well as causing division. Certainly the documents that Griffin has written are full of scaremongering-but the most dishonest thing about the documents is the fact that he refuses to accept any responsibility for the BNP’s financial mess. The fact is that Griffin is a walking financial time bomb that desperately needs to explode inside the BNP.

Between them, during the years when their joint activities and behaviour helped shed thousands of BNP members, Griffin, Harrington, Walker and Clive Jefferson amassed a mountain of dirt on each other. They believed, together, they were impenetrable. Among some of their most outrageous deeds were Jefferson and Walker kidnapping and holding as a hostage a factional rival until cash could be delivered.

They thumbed their noses at angry Loyalist paramilitaries, strolled around issuing threats to dissenters and managed by hook or by Clive’s crook, to persuade people to bequeath the party future funds.

Harrington: Griffin’s man on the inside?

There is now nothing left of the BNP. It’s an empty shell. The party itself is not worth fighting over. It can barely keep itself afloat and membership has been in free-fall for a good three years.

Only bitterness, anger and greed opens its doors for business every morning. That and fighting over who is responsible for Nick Griffin’s debts and who can get their hands on a future-forecast of ten millions pounds.

And now the dishing of dirt begins. Allegations of drug use, drug dealing, past and present ‘gangsterism’ and adultery are alleged to be on their way. So to is the resurfacing of the vile rumour about what happened in the toilets at one drunken Blackpool conference. Griffin has allegedly moved his personal effects to France to avoid what is often inevitable when fascists fall out.

What Griffin won’t be doing is joining UKIP or Britain First. For a start neither would have him and finally, because we often forget, Griffin has an ideological bent for leadership that is so damaging, he destroyed the National Front in the 80’s and very nearly the BNP in the nineties.

Griffin, Walker, Jefferson and Harrington are beyond employment in the real world. Fascism and other people’s money have always been the BNP’s poison. Now it will kill off everything just to attempt to survive