Ah, it's a good time if you like laughing at the BNP. Earlier this year, an attempt by them to present new membership rules which appeared to allow anyone (i.e. non-whites) to join but was a fudge, was overruled by a judge. Here's an extract from The Guardian dated 13.03.10.
The British National party was plunged into chaos yesterday, weeks before the general election, when a court ordered it to remove central beliefs and policies about race from its constitution.
In a landmark injunction at the Central London county court, a judge found that the BNP's membership policy remained discriminatory, even after a direct whites-only clause was removed last month.
The judge, Paul Collins, ordered the BNP to remove two clauses from its constitution as they were indirectly racist towards non-white would-be members.
The party also remains banned from signing up new recruits until it satisfies Collins it has changed the constitution, although it said last night that applications to join were being processed again.
In a further blow to the party's election hopes, it was ordered to pay an estimated £60,000 in legal costs. The bill could rise to £100,000 when its own legal fees are included.
Doesn't this just warm the cockles of your heart? Don't you just want to donate some money to help out these poor oppressed racist scumbags? Well, no, of course you don't.
And then, just as the General Election campaign begins in earnest (and no doubt fred too), The Independent 04/04/10 reports on an attempt to destabilise Nick Griffin the moron in chief of the BNP.
One of Nick Griffin's closest lieutenants has been purged from the British National Party's high command amid claims of a "conspiracy" against the leadership, it emerged last night.
The party confirmed that the BNP publicity director Mark Collett, who had been lined up to stand against David Blunkett in Sheffield, had been "suspended pending a disciplinary tribunal", after a leaked memo accused him of plotting a "palace coup".
And, as the party was gripped by claims that insiders were trying to "sabotage" its election preparations, it emerged that two more officials had left head office.
...
A spokesman for the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said a row about finances lay behind the feuding. It emerged last month that Mr Griffin, who was elected last year as Euro MP for the North-west of England, had submitted claims for more than £200,000 – on top of his £82,000 MEP salary – for his work in Brussels. The costs include some £18,000 in "consultancy fees" and £10,000 in "agent fees". "Discontent with Griffin's leadership has been rumbling ever since his disastrous Question Time performance, but it's the row about European expenses which has caused the explosion," the Searchlight spokesman said. "The view is Griffin has jumped aboard the Euro gravy train, and they don't like it."
I'm not sure whether or not that I'm disappointed the coup failed. I mean, I can't stand the smug git but he's such an obvious smug deluded git that there's always the danger he might have been succeeded by someone who knows how to manipulate the media rather than just be a laughing stock which he showed when he appeared on the BBC's Question Time. The Daily Telegraph (just for balance, it's the Daily Mail for people with two brain cells not one) reports that-
Mr Griffin said Islam was not compatible with life in Britain, while describing homosexuals as "creepy".
However, he admitted sharing a platform with the Ku Klux Klan, which has carried out racist attacks across America’s Deep South, and defended leaders in the organisation as "non-violent".
The remarks provoked indignation from other members of the BBC panel and hostile parts of the audience, some of whom booed, calling him "a disgrace".
The BNP leader could not explain why he had previously sought to play down the Holocaust and defended his use of Sir Winston Churchill on BNP literature on the basis that his father had fought in the Second World War.
He claimed that Churchill would have been a member of the BNP and was "Islamophobic" by "today’s standard".
Asked whether he denied that millions of Jews and other minorities had been killed by the Nazis, Mr Griffin would only reply: "I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial."
He was then chastised by David Dimbleby, the host of the programme, for smiling.
When this happened a few months ago, there was considerable debate about whether Fuhrer Griffin should actually appear or not. The BBC argued that the BNP had enough support (indeed Griffin is a Euro-MP, see above) that in the interests of fairness he had to be given a place and I agree with them.
Free speech is either free for everyone or for no-one. It isn't something you can divide and so you either have it or you don't. A free society means allowing minorities with views the majority consider repulsive to be heard. I was disgusted just recently when a fundamentalist American preacher visiting the UK was fined for saying that he believed homosexuals would go to hell, a not uncommon belief where he comes from. Suppressing opinion and suppressing debate should not be tolerated in a free society. It doesn't even work. If you ignore it it does not go away, just festers in a dark corner. These ideas should be allowed to be aired in the open because there they can be challenged and exposed for the anti-humanitarian poison that they are.
Next time: Is Scientology the religious equivalent of the BNP?
A. Yes.
B. No.
C. Who cares? They're all bloody loonies anyway.
And some other time: L.Ron Hubbard, the man who never met a sucker he didn't like (allegedly).
