Onwards and Upwards
So there I was, in Bath. I had left everybody and everything I knew behind. I was no longer active with the BNP; although I had held on to my membership. And I was loving it. I walked down to the campus shop, had a look around the main building and I was coming out of the student union block when I bumped into a guy called Sam. As it was he was a British student who had spent his teenage years in Paris at some British School. He was into his rugby and liked to play the guitar, but he also had a head on him that I liked immediately. As it turned out, he had also applied to the same Cambridge College as me, only he applied for engineering.
It was quite funny, because I had forgotten about Cambridge until that day. I had decided to give it a go, went to the interview and I reckon I done quite well in the first one. But the problem was I had gone into a bit of a rant went I was asked about the European Union and I don’t think the interviewer who sounded German was too impressed. I could be wrong about him being German, but in any event I wasn’t really too surprised when I received the rejection letter. I guess I just wasn’t Cambridge material.
Lectures started and it all began to get interesting. One of my lecturers was a guy called Matthew Goodwin and he had interviewed me a couple of times whilst researching for his PhD thesis. I found it to be a little odd being taught by him personally, but as it was he mentioned what a good uni it was during one of the interviews which is what first led me to look into Bath Uni’ as one of my options. Not only that but he didn’t avoid the awkward questions, so I found his classes quite interesting.
As it was, I was still in contact with people I knew from the YBNP and I ended up being pulled back into things. Nick Griffin and Mark Collett were going through their race hate trial at the time and personally I thought Mark Collett had been extremely derogatory in his comments and expected him to be sent to prison. As it is, my opinion falls into line with the comments one judge made at some point I can’t remember. If free speech means anything, it is the right to say that which somebody may not like. They didn’t in any way incite violence and were essentially considered thought criminals.
I had been speaking to a member who was studying economics at Keele and he was practically begging me to step back into the BNP. Nick Griffin and Mark Collett were found not guilty after two trials and I decided to phone Nick Griffin about the YBNP. Basically the YBNP had fallen to pieces as Jen had decided she wanted her own life. Fair one I suppose, it was a difficult job to fill. Nobody wanted to help within the regions meaning there was far too much work on one persons head. So I asked Nick if I could sort it all out.
At first Nick said he didn’t want somebody young to run it, but for some reason ended up asking me to reorganise the YBNP a week or so later. It was to be committee led which I had no problem with as I was thinking the same thing anyway. So I set the ball rolling. To begin with I contacted the new Director for Group Development, Sadie Graham and spoke to her about the YBNP. I’ll say one thing and it’s that she was good at her job, unlike her predecessor Tony Lecomber. As it turned out she was from the East Midlands, and luckily she knew some people there who wanted to get active with the YBNP.
Mark Wain was from Melton Mowbray and he was a switched on guy. He was studying Psychology at Nottingham Trent and I decided that he would be the new YBNP Secretary. I took the National Organisers position and I asked Jen if she would be the fund holder. I knew she was good at organising and I figured it would be a position she could do on the quiet without any bother and she agreed. I even asked Rob Baggs if he would be the Committee Chairman which Nick was quite pleased with. He had wanted somebody older involved and as he rightfully put it, Rob Baggs was disgustingly underused on a national level. Personally I would say he was disgustingly underused on a local level as well, but there you go.
The nucleus of the plan was essentially in position and I was ready to go. As it turned out though, the YBNP just didn’t work out the way it was planned and I found that everybody was calling me the YBNP Leader. Rob just left me to my own devices in the end and we didn’t even draw up a constitution. Everybody held their positions officially, the BNP itself had a constitution anyway and everybody felt there were much more important things to be taken care of first. I had a press release sent out saying that the YBNP was back in business and the new come to guy was Danny Lake and then I asked Nick Griffin for a mobile phone and set about ringing the phone numbers on the membership list.
Inside, I felt like I was on fire. Everything was running smoothly, I was loving uni and I was really enjoying my BNP work. As far as I was concerned if I was going to run the YBNP then it could have just one sole principle. To be an organisation for change you have to be an organisation of change. Basically I didn’t want any questionable members, but at the same time I wanted them to question me. As far as I was concerned that was the only sure fire way of knowing what people thought and I wasn’t about to make the mistake of alienating people who wanted to help purely because I had no understanding of them. I wanted the membership to know me and feel like they could be honest. After all, I am a big believer in free speech.
The other idea was that if the YBNP was to work, where previously it had failed, then it needed two things. First of all it needed a well organised and politically driven membership. Second of all it needed a permanent structure that would survive even if me or my successor were to make a hash of things. One thing I had learnt was that the YBNP always fell to pieces because the organisation was based around one man, when in truth any organisation that wants to push for change needs to be driven by the many not the few.
Jen had left the job and the YBNP had simply stopped functioning. Tony Wentworth before her had left and not only did everything fall apart but the website even disappeared. And When Mark Collett had run the YBNP before Tony, whilst it had been the most successful it had ever been, the overall crash and burn scenario upon his leaving the position was something that was unavoidable. Ultimately I believed that the Young BNP had an awful lot of potential. It was run by young people, it was controversial and so long as the path it chose was in sync with the general feelings and ideals of the younger generation there was no reason why it would not only grow, but every chance it could provide a foundation for a future BNP that was free from the shackles of it’s extremist past and every inch in tune with the British people. Ultimately, I wanted the YBNP to provide the BNP with the people who would one day take the party into government and to do that I needed an organisation of independently minded, free thinking and intelligent individuals.
The YBNP’s recruitment campaign began with me, Mark Wain and a lad called Gavin spending two days travelling around various uni’s with a big pile of leaflets – or that was the plan anyway. Basically it pissed it down with rain for two days and whilst we spent the morning doing a little filming at the White Horse of Uffington for a video on the website I was looking into, the rest of the time was spent driving to Wales, getting hold of some Leafletts from Swansea BNP because the leaflets that Mark was supposed to take delivery of didn’t arrive and we then spent a very rainy, low visibility evening driving to the top of some mountain after I programmed the satnav wrong. As it was it was an enjoyable two days and if it provided nothing in the way of recruitment it was good to meet each other where as previously we had only spoken on the phone or online.
At the same time I stepped back into action with the YBNP I decided to make contact with the Swindon group as well and as a result I phoned Steve. To begin with he told me to fuck off and made it quite clear I wasn’t to contact him again; which I found a little odd. Last time I had spoken to him everything was fine and his sudden change in attitude made no sense whatsoever. I looked into things, asked some questions and before I knew it I heard that the story locally was that I had been expelled and proscribed by the BNP. As it turned out it was Mike Howson up to his old tricks again and the fact I knew he had conned his way into the Regional Organisers job by using the most conniving and underhand tactics going just pissed me off even more.
After emailing Steve and Mike to explain that I was in fact very much a member and activist, and not only that, but was the new YBNP Leader I heard nothing more on the matter until I went to a Swindon meeting with Rob a month or so later and Steve came and apologised to me. As it was I found the whole situation a bit funny given his advice about keeping control after I lost my rag with Mike two years previously, but I accepted his apology anyway and as it was didn’t speak to him again until I saw him in a bar a few weeks later.
Laura had decided to move to Spain with her boyfriend and it was her last night in the UK so we had gone out on the town with a load of her mates. I was at the bar when I spotted Steve, said hello and started talking to him. Before I knew it I was active with the Swindon group again and the best bit was that election time was on it’s way.
There were a few meetings, we decided on two candidates – Reg Bates and Ken Waters. I was a bit pissed off with the fact that we had candidates for the Penhill and the Gorse Hill & Pinehurst Wards, but lacked a candidate in the Parks ward. There was no doubt in my mind that if the BNP was to make inroads in Swindon then it’s first breakthrough would be in the Working class parts of the town, in particular Parks. I remembered the local School, Churchfields, and if my memory of it was anything it was of a school drastically divided by race and religion. Basically, the Pakistani Muslims would wander around in gangs of thirty whilst the white kids were constantly accused of racism whenever they tried to defend themselves. I was convinced that if my memory of that school was anything, then the Parks could easily have been a breakthrough area and not only that I had spoken to quite a few of the locals given I had lived there for years and the general feeling was pro BNP. As it turned out I received a phone call from a Penhill based member called Chris Southgate who was interested in standing for election and after speaking to one or two people I had a quick chat with Chris and we decided he would stand in Parks seeing as we already had a candidate for his ward.
Later that weekend I went back to Bath and carried on with the YBNP. I spoke to Joe Finnon about the Student BNP and decided to amalgamate it with the YBNP. Previously they had been two semi separate organisations and I felt that the YBNP could do so much more if it concentrated it’s energy and made an effort to deal with all young people rather than have different groups of members dealing with different groups of young people. Not only that, I wanted to break down the class barriers that existed within the BNP and I felt that by amalgamating them the students would mix with the non students and the membership would learn that class and education doesn’t mean nearly as much as people often think it does and as a result would have no problem working with each other and if anything would even learn something from each other.
Ultimately one thing I had taken from uni was that whilst Bath was full of privately educated upper middle class students, they were basically the same as the working class kids I had grown up with. The only difference was the opportunities their parents were able to provide them with and other than their quite often very easy, care free and simplistic life’s the people at Bath uni watched the same TV programmes, wore the same clothes and by and large believed in the same things as their working class counterparts.
Class, I had learnt, served only to divide the British people, and my YBNP was something I wanted to unite the British people. If not as the YBNP, then when it’s members eventually became the BNP. Ultimately I had decided that whilst society believes it is so much more, class is in fact purely economic. Anything else that exists to divide the classes does so purely because the people allow it to and I for one wasn’t prepared to damage the YBNP’s potential by restricting it to a specific class group in the way that the BNP itself and other political organisations had done. Not only that, but the only thing such organisations had ever done was seek solutions for a specific group rather than the whole of society and as a result there is and always has been people who have been forgotten by political and governing bodies. What Britain needs – and thinking about it what the world needs as well – is governments that are accountable locally and political organisations who seek solutions for all, not a specific class.
As it turned out Joe wasn’t too happy about the whole idea as he felt the students and non students wouldn’t mix as well as I thought they would and as a result he decided not to go along with the idea. But as it was, Nick Griffin, my organisers and activists agreed with me – if only because of the fact that Joe was too busy training to be a Barrister that people felt things were best left as I wanted them. In the end I compromised with Joe and we decided that he would keep his position as Student Leader whilst the Student BNP would be amalgamated with the Young BNP and his role would be one that was more in keeping with a spokesman rather than an organiser. Basically, he did have some valuable student issue/election experience that I didn’t want to loose and if anything I felt that I was better off taking advantage of that experience and using his more intellectually motivated political outlook to balance out my more emotionally driven political outlook. Not only that, but as a head strong and energetic leader I hoped his more sensible and grounded approach to political activism was something that would cause me to think occasionally before acting.
The crazy thing is that all of this was happening whilst I was in my first year at uni. At the time, I had taken part in a European election, a parliamentary election and a local council election. I was playing a leading role in another round of local elections and had been named, shamed and blamed in god knows how many local newspapers. I was the Young BNP Leader – even if my official job title said otherwise - and the liberal left were very much aware of my activities. One thing I noticed though was that I never had any problems from anybody on campus. I was always honest about my politics, more people knew I was BNP than I care to remember and I certainly couldn’t hide the fact from my lecturers, not that I wanted to anyway. But what it did show me was that it was more than possible to be a BNP Organiser whilst at the same time dealing with people on a normal level.
I knew people from all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of places, and they all knew my politics. The key is in being friendly and explaining your beliefs in a reasonable and thought out way, as opposed to the hate and anger that seems to permeate the far right. Not only that, if you’re honest and friendly with people, then they will respect your beliefs no matter what they are. As it is maybe I am just lucky enough to be a good communicator who values the power of honesty. Although I think I would be closer to the mark if I said that my views represent a sea of change that is sweeping it’s way across Britain, where as the views held by the older wing of the BNP is where you will find the hate and anger associated with the party’s past – and as a result it’s this that enabled me to settle into uni without any hiccups.
I remember talking to my head of department; Roger Eatwell, and it turned out that he was from Swindon originally. So I jumped at the chance to tell him what I and the people of Swindon thought about Coate Water and the universities plans to build a new campus on land next to it. A month or so later whilst discussing one or two issues relating to my course, he shot off for a meeting of The Senate – the body that runs the university. I saw him a few days later and he told me that he had news which would please me. It turned out that the Senate had taken a vote on Coate Water and the university had reversed it’s decision to build a new campus in Swindon. To be honest I was a bit surprised, especially given that planning permission had been given and the paperwork had all been finalised. But in any event, who was I to question such a fantastic decision out of the blue. Coate Water wasn’t being built on and Swindon Borough Council was left looking for a new investor. Me on the other hand, I was grinning like an asylum inmate and couldn’t control my glee.
It was quite funny, because I had forgotten about Cambridge until that day. I had decided to give it a go, went to the interview and I reckon I done quite well in the first one. But the problem was I had gone into a bit of a rant went I was asked about the European Union and I don’t think the interviewer who sounded German was too impressed. I could be wrong about him being German, but in any event I wasn’t really too surprised when I received the rejection letter. I guess I just wasn’t Cambridge material.
Lectures started and it all began to get interesting. One of my lecturers was a guy called Matthew Goodwin and he had interviewed me a couple of times whilst researching for his PhD thesis. I found it to be a little odd being taught by him personally, but as it was he mentioned what a good uni it was during one of the interviews which is what first led me to look into Bath Uni’ as one of my options. Not only that but he didn’t avoid the awkward questions, so I found his classes quite interesting.
As it was, I was still in contact with people I knew from the YBNP and I ended up being pulled back into things. Nick Griffin and Mark Collett were going through their race hate trial at the time and personally I thought Mark Collett had been extremely derogatory in his comments and expected him to be sent to prison. As it is, my opinion falls into line with the comments one judge made at some point I can’t remember. If free speech means anything, it is the right to say that which somebody may not like. They didn’t in any way incite violence and were essentially considered thought criminals.
I had been speaking to a member who was studying economics at Keele and he was practically begging me to step back into the BNP. Nick Griffin and Mark Collett were found not guilty after two trials and I decided to phone Nick Griffin about the YBNP. Basically the YBNP had fallen to pieces as Jen had decided she wanted her own life. Fair one I suppose, it was a difficult job to fill. Nobody wanted to help within the regions meaning there was far too much work on one persons head. So I asked Nick if I could sort it all out.
At first Nick said he didn’t want somebody young to run it, but for some reason ended up asking me to reorganise the YBNP a week or so later. It was to be committee led which I had no problem with as I was thinking the same thing anyway. So I set the ball rolling. To begin with I contacted the new Director for Group Development, Sadie Graham and spoke to her about the YBNP. I’ll say one thing and it’s that she was good at her job, unlike her predecessor Tony Lecomber. As it turned out she was from the East Midlands, and luckily she knew some people there who wanted to get active with the YBNP.
Mark Wain was from Melton Mowbray and he was a switched on guy. He was studying Psychology at Nottingham Trent and I decided that he would be the new YBNP Secretary. I took the National Organisers position and I asked Jen if she would be the fund holder. I knew she was good at organising and I figured it would be a position she could do on the quiet without any bother and she agreed. I even asked Rob Baggs if he would be the Committee Chairman which Nick was quite pleased with. He had wanted somebody older involved and as he rightfully put it, Rob Baggs was disgustingly underused on a national level. Personally I would say he was disgustingly underused on a local level as well, but there you go.
The nucleus of the plan was essentially in position and I was ready to go. As it turned out though, the YBNP just didn’t work out the way it was planned and I found that everybody was calling me the YBNP Leader. Rob just left me to my own devices in the end and we didn’t even draw up a constitution. Everybody held their positions officially, the BNP itself had a constitution anyway and everybody felt there were much more important things to be taken care of first. I had a press release sent out saying that the YBNP was back in business and the new come to guy was Danny Lake and then I asked Nick Griffin for a mobile phone and set about ringing the phone numbers on the membership list.
Inside, I felt like I was on fire. Everything was running smoothly, I was loving uni and I was really enjoying my BNP work. As far as I was concerned if I was going to run the YBNP then it could have just one sole principle. To be an organisation for change you have to be an organisation of change. Basically I didn’t want any questionable members, but at the same time I wanted them to question me. As far as I was concerned that was the only sure fire way of knowing what people thought and I wasn’t about to make the mistake of alienating people who wanted to help purely because I had no understanding of them. I wanted the membership to know me and feel like they could be honest. After all, I am a big believer in free speech.
The other idea was that if the YBNP was to work, where previously it had failed, then it needed two things. First of all it needed a well organised and politically driven membership. Second of all it needed a permanent structure that would survive even if me or my successor were to make a hash of things. One thing I had learnt was that the YBNP always fell to pieces because the organisation was based around one man, when in truth any organisation that wants to push for change needs to be driven by the many not the few.
Jen had left the job and the YBNP had simply stopped functioning. Tony Wentworth before her had left and not only did everything fall apart but the website even disappeared. And When Mark Collett had run the YBNP before Tony, whilst it had been the most successful it had ever been, the overall crash and burn scenario upon his leaving the position was something that was unavoidable. Ultimately I believed that the Young BNP had an awful lot of potential. It was run by young people, it was controversial and so long as the path it chose was in sync with the general feelings and ideals of the younger generation there was no reason why it would not only grow, but every chance it could provide a foundation for a future BNP that was free from the shackles of it’s extremist past and every inch in tune with the British people. Ultimately, I wanted the YBNP to provide the BNP with the people who would one day take the party into government and to do that I needed an organisation of independently minded, free thinking and intelligent individuals.
The YBNP’s recruitment campaign began with me, Mark Wain and a lad called Gavin spending two days travelling around various uni’s with a big pile of leaflets – or that was the plan anyway. Basically it pissed it down with rain for two days and whilst we spent the morning doing a little filming at the White Horse of Uffington for a video on the website I was looking into, the rest of the time was spent driving to Wales, getting hold of some Leafletts from Swansea BNP because the leaflets that Mark was supposed to take delivery of didn’t arrive and we then spent a very rainy, low visibility evening driving to the top of some mountain after I programmed the satnav wrong. As it was it was an enjoyable two days and if it provided nothing in the way of recruitment it was good to meet each other where as previously we had only spoken on the phone or online.
At the same time I stepped back into action with the YBNP I decided to make contact with the Swindon group as well and as a result I phoned Steve. To begin with he told me to fuck off and made it quite clear I wasn’t to contact him again; which I found a little odd. Last time I had spoken to him everything was fine and his sudden change in attitude made no sense whatsoever. I looked into things, asked some questions and before I knew it I heard that the story locally was that I had been expelled and proscribed by the BNP. As it turned out it was Mike Howson up to his old tricks again and the fact I knew he had conned his way into the Regional Organisers job by using the most conniving and underhand tactics going just pissed me off even more.
After emailing Steve and Mike to explain that I was in fact very much a member and activist, and not only that, but was the new YBNP Leader I heard nothing more on the matter until I went to a Swindon meeting with Rob a month or so later and Steve came and apologised to me. As it was I found the whole situation a bit funny given his advice about keeping control after I lost my rag with Mike two years previously, but I accepted his apology anyway and as it was didn’t speak to him again until I saw him in a bar a few weeks later.
Laura had decided to move to Spain with her boyfriend and it was her last night in the UK so we had gone out on the town with a load of her mates. I was at the bar when I spotted Steve, said hello and started talking to him. Before I knew it I was active with the Swindon group again and the best bit was that election time was on it’s way.
There were a few meetings, we decided on two candidates – Reg Bates and Ken Waters. I was a bit pissed off with the fact that we had candidates for the Penhill and the Gorse Hill & Pinehurst Wards, but lacked a candidate in the Parks ward. There was no doubt in my mind that if the BNP was to make inroads in Swindon then it’s first breakthrough would be in the Working class parts of the town, in particular Parks. I remembered the local School, Churchfields, and if my memory of it was anything it was of a school drastically divided by race and religion. Basically, the Pakistani Muslims would wander around in gangs of thirty whilst the white kids were constantly accused of racism whenever they tried to defend themselves. I was convinced that if my memory of that school was anything, then the Parks could easily have been a breakthrough area and not only that I had spoken to quite a few of the locals given I had lived there for years and the general feeling was pro BNP. As it turned out I received a phone call from a Penhill based member called Chris Southgate who was interested in standing for election and after speaking to one or two people I had a quick chat with Chris and we decided he would stand in Parks seeing as we already had a candidate for his ward.
Later that weekend I went back to Bath and carried on with the YBNP. I spoke to Joe Finnon about the Student BNP and decided to amalgamate it with the YBNP. Previously they had been two semi separate organisations and I felt that the YBNP could do so much more if it concentrated it’s energy and made an effort to deal with all young people rather than have different groups of members dealing with different groups of young people. Not only that, I wanted to break down the class barriers that existed within the BNP and I felt that by amalgamating them the students would mix with the non students and the membership would learn that class and education doesn’t mean nearly as much as people often think it does and as a result would have no problem working with each other and if anything would even learn something from each other.
Ultimately one thing I had taken from uni was that whilst Bath was full of privately educated upper middle class students, they were basically the same as the working class kids I had grown up with. The only difference was the opportunities their parents were able to provide them with and other than their quite often very easy, care free and simplistic life’s the people at Bath uni watched the same TV programmes, wore the same clothes and by and large believed in the same things as their working class counterparts.
Class, I had learnt, served only to divide the British people, and my YBNP was something I wanted to unite the British people. If not as the YBNP, then when it’s members eventually became the BNP. Ultimately I had decided that whilst society believes it is so much more, class is in fact purely economic. Anything else that exists to divide the classes does so purely because the people allow it to and I for one wasn’t prepared to damage the YBNP’s potential by restricting it to a specific class group in the way that the BNP itself and other political organisations had done. Not only that, but the only thing such organisations had ever done was seek solutions for a specific group rather than the whole of society and as a result there is and always has been people who have been forgotten by political and governing bodies. What Britain needs – and thinking about it what the world needs as well – is governments that are accountable locally and political organisations who seek solutions for all, not a specific class.
As it turned out Joe wasn’t too happy about the whole idea as he felt the students and non students wouldn’t mix as well as I thought they would and as a result he decided not to go along with the idea. But as it was, Nick Griffin, my organisers and activists agreed with me – if only because of the fact that Joe was too busy training to be a Barrister that people felt things were best left as I wanted them. In the end I compromised with Joe and we decided that he would keep his position as Student Leader whilst the Student BNP would be amalgamated with the Young BNP and his role would be one that was more in keeping with a spokesman rather than an organiser. Basically, he did have some valuable student issue/election experience that I didn’t want to loose and if anything I felt that I was better off taking advantage of that experience and using his more intellectually motivated political outlook to balance out my more emotionally driven political outlook. Not only that, but as a head strong and energetic leader I hoped his more sensible and grounded approach to political activism was something that would cause me to think occasionally before acting.
The crazy thing is that all of this was happening whilst I was in my first year at uni. At the time, I had taken part in a European election, a parliamentary election and a local council election. I was playing a leading role in another round of local elections and had been named, shamed and blamed in god knows how many local newspapers. I was the Young BNP Leader – even if my official job title said otherwise - and the liberal left were very much aware of my activities. One thing I noticed though was that I never had any problems from anybody on campus. I was always honest about my politics, more people knew I was BNP than I care to remember and I certainly couldn’t hide the fact from my lecturers, not that I wanted to anyway. But what it did show me was that it was more than possible to be a BNP Organiser whilst at the same time dealing with people on a normal level.
I knew people from all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of places, and they all knew my politics. The key is in being friendly and explaining your beliefs in a reasonable and thought out way, as opposed to the hate and anger that seems to permeate the far right. Not only that, if you’re honest and friendly with people, then they will respect your beliefs no matter what they are. As it is maybe I am just lucky enough to be a good communicator who values the power of honesty. Although I think I would be closer to the mark if I said that my views represent a sea of change that is sweeping it’s way across Britain, where as the views held by the older wing of the BNP is where you will find the hate and anger associated with the party’s past – and as a result it’s this that enabled me to settle into uni without any hiccups.
I remember talking to my head of department; Roger Eatwell, and it turned out that he was from Swindon originally. So I jumped at the chance to tell him what I and the people of Swindon thought about Coate Water and the universities plans to build a new campus on land next to it. A month or so later whilst discussing one or two issues relating to my course, he shot off for a meeting of The Senate – the body that runs the university. I saw him a few days later and he told me that he had news which would please me. It turned out that the Senate had taken a vote on Coate Water and the university had reversed it’s decision to build a new campus in Swindon. To be honest I was a bit surprised, especially given that planning permission had been given and the paperwork had all been finalised. But in any event, who was I to question such a fantastic decision out of the blue. Coate Water wasn’t being built on and Swindon Borough Council was left looking for a new investor. Me on the other hand, I was grinning like an asylum inmate and couldn’t control my glee.
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