Nick Griffin has been active in fascist politics for close to forty years. He’s been a thinking man, a revolutionary, a conservative, a facilitator, a splitter, a moderniser, a rebel, a revolutionary, a reactionary, a factionalist and always, without fail, a fool.
He’s squandered more wealth and opportunity than any of the few thousand that have ever followed him into the political limelight and then political oblivion on countless times would ever even get a sniff at. He’s wasted his inheritance, bankrupted himself (twice), “destroyed” his well off parents financially, lumbered comrades with debts they could not afford to pay and of course, endangered his own family at the hands of Loyalist paramilitaries who are not the sort to lie down when feeling ripped off.
Having helped agitate the British National Party (BNP) to the brink of complete self-destruction over the last four months, I had sharpened for myself a brand new pencil in anticipation of a thoroughly good ding-dong with the misfits who followed him out of the party he failed to bankrupt.
Griffin was removed as leader of the BNP in a rather more polite manner than the manner in which he took over the party himself. He and his supporters at the time hounded, humiliated and humbled the party’s founder until he died of a heart attack awaiting trial with Griffin on charges related to racist speeches they had both made.
Griffin drove the BNP into the near mainstream of British politics before crashing headfirst into a dead end of paranoia, egotism, factionalism and disaster. Throughout his time in politics he has always had people who would cling to his coattails as he fed them scraps off his overflowing plate. Tony Lecomber, Richard Barnbrook, Mark Collett, Simon Darby, Jim Dowson, Patrick Harrington, Clive Jefferson have all been, at some time, close confidantes and most trusted friends of Griffin. They all had their fingers burnt, they all turned against him-always poorer than when they first met. In fact, Griffin’s filled graveyards with the political reputations of once close friends. Some, like Martin Wingfield, Tina Wingfield and Andrew Brons even came back for second helpings in humiliation.
Some have pitied Griffin’s wife, Jackie, who has followed Griffin through every minute of his bizarre political twists and turns. She originally fell for Griffin during his “young radical” phase of running the National Front (NF) into the ground in the 1980’s. She spent much of her working life after meeting him, financing Griffin’s lavish political stupidity. Her NF detractors labeled her the “night nurse”, and for years had to put up with a long lasting whispering campaign against her and her husband. Still, she eventually, like the rest of the Griffin family, got her reward. (The occasional humiliations continued, however.)
Nick Griffin has always loved Europe and looked up to his European counterparts longingly. They were cultured, intelligent and worldly in comparison to him. Even though he’d lived in France for a while after an accident with a shotgun lost him one of his eyes, he’d barely bothered to learn the language there as he convalesced.
To the Europeans, Griffin was always seen as just a “little piggy” by his counterparts. Even as an MEP, as he trotted around Brussels and Strasbourg holding out his grubby hands for grubby handshakes from fellow fascists, they saw him as little more than a leader of low class, drunken thugs. If they knew (maybe they did?) what Griffin’s loud mouthed thug who provided Griffin’s security did to coffee tables, it’s unlikely they would even have reciprocated his limp handshake. The Austrians positively hated Griffin and much preferred to dine out with Andrew Brons, Griffin’s renegade former comrade and fellow MEP.
When he went travelling Griffin had to make do with friends from Bulgaria, Greece and Hungary. The Germans put up with him (even though he could not speak German) and only the tiny Italian fascists entertained him because he apparently liked to booze as much as they did. Yes, to quote one senior BNP official exasperated by another of Griffin’s boozy foreign trips, “hasn’t he got any white friends in Europe…” Charming! Still, even racists don’t always like each other.
Griffin’s stubby, grubby fingers contributed to him being removed from the BNP as much as his foreign trips did. Travel may have broadened Griffin’s horizons a little, but to those excluded from the boozing in Europe it hardened their attitude toward Griffin’s dismal behaviour as the party collapsed around him.
Griffin very quickly lost control of the battle to win back the BNP. Unable to operate a modern day factional fight as he can barely operate email unaided, the whole battle descended into a slanging match on social media and against his will and instructions, Griffin’s supporters hastened their own destruction with mass resignations from the party.
Griffin tried to put a brave face on it- as we reported from his meeting in St Helens, but as Griffin’s camp descended further into the mire by vulgarity and threats of violence it appears he decided quite privately to also dump the initiative of “British Voice” without telling anybody. Yes, he took the monies from the meetings they held, but did not tell them that he was not going to be a member of the new group. Unbeknown to many of his new sponsors, he also took himself off to Spain to join hundreds of people celebrating the life of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the fascist lunatic who led Spain towards disaster.
All hell has now broken loose. Griffin claims he is launching British Unity instead of British Voice and will not be attending the British Voice launch this weekend. Oh dear. British Unity will obviously be far more high brow than the sort of people who have joined British Voice believing they were following Griffin. It has totally split Griffin supporters down the middle. Some are incredibly hurt, others are saying that those hurt clearly were not paying attention to what Griffin had told the meetings he spoke at in support of British Voice.
Griffin sees himself and the small team around himself at ‘British Unity’ as the cutting edge of British fascism, and the ignorant but loyal thugs like the heartbroken Mick Braun are not part of Griffin’s new idea to build a “central nationalist ideological hub and online resource centre, together with a powerful Social Media operation to give us the platform from which to spread our ideas and activities into the public’s consciousness.”
The other explanation is, that Griffin is desperately trying to shake off a mole he feels is too close to him. When he was expelled from the BNP, he was accused of leaking information to HOPE not hate. That is interesting, as it had been mainly the Head Office faction bombarding us with little bits of tittle tattle about Griffin.
Griffin decided that Mike Whitby, who came to Griffin’s initial rescue was to be sacrificed and left holding the stillborn British Voice. The suspicion in Griffin’s new inner circle was that Whitby was financially compromised! That coming from team Griffin!!!
Others are claiming that Griffin has joined a select few fascists that have received funding from the Russian government. Who really, really, knows? If Patrick Harrington suddenly jumps ship back to Griffin that would be a good indicator.
But, all appears lost in confusion, subterfuge and mystery. Griffin announces that British Unity is a “very different animal from what the people promoting the would-be mass movement, The British Voice, want and need to create. They are not rivals; they are two different things for two different but related purposes.”
He also asks for people with “practical skills to help use social media platforms to build a powerful Nationalist Alternative Media, and to use it to catch Ukip and street movement Patriots and turn them into Nationalists,” to “please get in touch with me.” In other words, he still has not got a clue what he is doing, but he has managed to smash another great big and very welcome hole in the fascist movement.
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…