Ken

May 14, 2008
Butler attacks 'joke' leadership challenger
Posted by Antifascist 27 Comment (s)
A copy of an email from Eddy Butler, the BNP's National Elections Officer, has been forwarded to us as an example of all that is undemocratic within the British National Party

It refers to the coming leadership challenge from Colin Auty, BNP councillor for Dewsbury East since 2006. Auty announced his challenge immediately after the recent elections, and is receiving growing support in the party for his call for openness, accountability and a more democratic internal structure to the party, despite a barrage of verbal attacks on him from the existing hierarchy on both the BNP's own forum and the Stormfront nazi forum, where many of the BNP's officers hang out.

Despite what is said in public, the news we get from inside the party indicates that the officers (and Nick Griffin himself) are none too pleased with the election results of a fortnight ago. They expected to get a lot more than an additional ten councillors (pushing the current total up to fifty-three) and had also hoped for three Assembly seats, ending up with just the one presently occupied by the embarrassing and frequently incoherent Richard Barnbrook. Given that this poor result reflects badly on the leadership of the party, such as it is, the last thing Griffin needs at the moment is a leadership challenge. He is, we are told, already putting himself about in London, to ensure that BNP activists are aware that HE is the chairman of the party, and not Barnbrook. Bless him, he must be feeling vulnerable.

Butler appears to be writing to the BNP's election team - the people at Head Office and the various organisers dotted around the country (though as the party refuses to make its internal structure clear, it's impossible to know if the team also includes local chairpersons, fundholders, et al). Nevertheless, whatever Butler sends to organisers will eventually filter its way down the BNP food chain to the more active membership - though unofficially, thus ensuring that he is not tainted by the criticism that was aimed at Lee Barnes, the 'Director' of the BNP's Legal Department and all-round freak, who was seen to be sharing his opinions rather too freely for a supposedly unbiased officer of the party.

Even so, Butler's email is uncompromising in his contempt for a) the challenger Colin Auty, and b) democracy. Curious really, as Butler makes the point in his email that the right of members to challenge the leadership is 'a declaration of our Parties openness and commitment to democracy' then goes on to spoil it by stating that the party expects anyone who has the 'temerity' to challenge the leadership only if they seriously consider they have the possibility of winning and they are able to perform the duties expected of them as leader should they do so.

Very interesting use of the word 'temerity' there. For those who don't know, 'temerity' means audacity, nerve, cheek, effrontery (or, as we Jews sometimes say, chutzpah). Quite why a challenger should be accused of audacity for challenging is beyond me, though as Nick Griffin's leadership is generally treated as some kind of divine right held by the pig farmer from Welshpool, that might explain it.

The point of Butler's email seems to be to attempt to persuade the more influential members not to sign Auty's nomination papers because he is a 'joke candidate' and a 'no-hoper' and that his frivolous challenge may give the Griffinites within the party enough ammunition to limit possible challenges in future. Thus he says;

'There will be pressure, perhaps unstoppable pressure, to change the rules so that leadership challenges can only take place every four years.'

Whether we take this to mean that he is trying to put off potentially hopeless challengers to avoid Griffin becoming even more entrenched than he already is or is just attempting to divert support from Auty is debatable, though we generally lean to the former. It's pretty well known that Butler doesn't want Griffin around forever and perhaps this really is an attempt, by subverting the BNP's peculiar internal version of democracy, to bring a more substantial and overt democracy to the party in future. However, we would welcome your views. Here is the emai from Butler - let us know what you think of it.

From: Edward. Butler.
To: ###
Sent: ###
Subject: Statement on the so-called Leadership challenge

Anyone in the Party who has more than five years continuous membership has the Right to stand for the leadership of the Party. The only limit to the exercising of this Right is that in the case of officers ten nomination signatures of members of two years standing must be obtained and for non officers a hundred signatures are required. This is to ensure that frivolous candidates do not stand.

As I said this is a Right that members have. And it is an important Right – it is a declaration of our Parties openness and commitment to democracy. However with Rights come responsibilities and duties. A Right without a duty is an abomination in any society. It is a recipe for chaos. Indeed in our modern society it is the incessant claiming of Rights by groups that shown no sense of duty or responsibility that is one of the key components of the undermining of the civic order of our country.

So in the instance of standing for leadership of the Party, the Party as a whole should expect anyone who has the temerity to wish to stand for leadership only to uphold their Right to do so after that person had carefully weighed their duty to the cause and the Party and their fellow members. We as members should expect that a candidate would only put themselves forward if they were of sufficient stature and ability to potentially be able to lead the Party if they were to win. Otherwise why would someone wish to challenge for the leadership? It is a duty of other members not to sign the nomination papers of any potential candidate unless they seriously think that that person is a viable and serious leadership contender. That is the whole point of the requirement for signatories.

A leadership challenge is not an excuse to air grievances. It is not there for disgruntled people to act out their personal bitterness about things – no matter how ‘justified’ they may think their grievances are. It is an abuse of the process to misuse it in that way. It is an abuse of their Constitutional Right.

And that is precisely what we are seeing this year. We are seeing a candidate pushed forward by people who themselves admit, has absolutely no chance of winning, and admit would never be up to the job of chairman anyway and they admit that the sole reason they are doing it is to air their own personal grievances. In other words their sole aim is to raise issues which have already been fully aired and which could be raised at a variety of different forums such as the Summer School (where there is always a session for all participants where they can bring up matters they are unhappy about) or the Annual Conference.

What is the likely outcome of this leadership challenge? The challengers (there may in fact be two!) will be comprehensively defeated. The leadership challenge process as it currently stands in the Constitution will be brought into disrepute. There will be pressure, perhaps unstoppable pressure, to change the rules so that leadership challenges can only take place every four years.

I would not normally comment on a leadership election. It should normally be up to the membership to make their own minds up without non-participants trying to influence the process.

But the backers of this ridiculous bid should reconsider their aimless tactic. People should refuse to sign the nomination papers. It is a distraction and a waste of time and effort and it will end up almost certainly with the constitution changed in a way that destroys the important Right of the possibility of a yearly election. Standing a no-hoper is stupid, mindless and fatally undermines our Constitution. It is a pitiful and moronic – a bankrupt tactic by people who can only be described as having gone giddy to the extent that they are now without the imagination to think how they can raise issues in a legitimate way.

This election, if it goes ahead, should be carried out in the most rapid manner possible with zero publicity allowed for the joke candidate (who may in lother circumstances be described as a decent and 'nice' bloke etc) and the least disruption to our continued efforts. That is the best way to minimise the harmful effects.

Eddy Butler
National Elections Officer

For_England

There are reports now that Chris Jackson will also stand, and that Richard Barnbrook will stand after a poor Euro-election showing. BNP membership now down from what it was two years ago, and still we haven't been told what percentage of the vote the BNP gained in the recent council elections. Yet the majority of the country are fed up and half want to encourage foreigners to go home. But no, it's nothing to do with Nick Griffin, Collett, Barnes, Butler, Lecomber et al, Griffin is the messiah who will lead the BNP to victory if people would only believe everything he says (word has it though that even Griffin doesn't believe his own propaganda about the recent elections being a 'success'). A large chunk of the BNP itself liken Griffin to Mugabe - and you expect the public to ever vote him into power? Well the good news is, that at present rates of increase in the vote, the BNP will win power. The bad news is that it'll take a hundred years, and long before then demographics will wipe away the small incremental gains (or is that stagnation?). Still, the Griffin mind cult continues to wreck any chance of the BNP ever being judged on the basis of its policies, and not its past/present. Who here seriously thinks there is any chance of any credible challenger being allowed a fair leadership election? Actions speak louder than words, and Griffin has shown what he really thinks of British values like fairness, integrity, openness, selflessness, and democracy.

British-Conservatism

Do you think anyone else could lead the BNP to such electoral success?

__________________
http://conservativedemocraticalliance.blogspot.com/

British-Conservatism

Returning to the contradiction. There also exists a large swathe of the population who are totally estranged from the education system.

This is where you get the fear of the far right. The BNP is getting very sophisticated. They’re talking about being more labour than New Labour. They are using ne technologies to mobilise people. Their message is anti-globalisation, anti-Europe, anti-Muslim, and the scapegoating of forms of cultural and racial difference. It is precision bombed onto those cohorts who were disenfranchised from the New Labour project, people for whom it was previously an article of faith that they’d go nowhere else. I’ve spent the last year going round the country and this problem is everywhere. The BNP stood 800 candidates in the local elections in 2006. That’s 500 more candidates than they’ve ever stood before. They averaged 14.8 per cent of the vote. They have their own internal contradictions, like any Trotskyist group, but they’re not going away.

The seeds are there for extremism and violence. My fear is that if they become more effective, especially in areas where the Labour Party is no longer an organising and mobilising force, they’ll be much more significant than the National Front of the late 1970s. Compass is attempting to grapple with these issues but in a very cold climate. We’ve tried to force the government to deal with the issue of agency workers. Migrant workers are being abused by unscrupulous employment agencies. In my constituency there are Lithuanian workers on £15 a day – half the minimum wage- and these stories ricochet through the community. The state should intervene. But this goes against New Labour politics. We’re reaping the consequences of the way we’ve been using migration to enforce our flexible North American labour market. Similarly the education strategy around secondary school academies undermines the capacity to provide solidaristic, comprehensive solutions.

Parallel to the deputy leadership elections you were also involved in broader antifascist campaigns. The Hope not Hate campaign brought in music, made a film, and linked up with the Daily Mirror.

Yes, parallel yet linked campaigns – that is the future. We made use of the internet. We used databases and were able to communicate quickly and widely to large numbers of people. We used new forms of interactive engagement and tried to link these ways of organising to a more fluid politics of anti-fascist activity. It worked well. I think you’ll see these organising techniques re-surface in Livingstone’s campaign for Mayor. We’ve created a collective memory – or at least the beginning of one – which we can tailor for other types of campaign.

Can the Labour Party develop these forms of cultural politics?

What we were doing was far better than simply discussing whether or not we’re in the era of the end of the political party. I think that some of the anti-BNP activity can re-build the Labour Party as a vehicle for local mobilisation. A cabinet minister told me that this argument is nonsense because we’re now in the era of the virtual party. The role of the party is to scientifi cally construct messages for a few thousand voters. I’d contest that idea. The crucial question is what will constitute a modern political party. It has to be much more open and contingent to local circumstances.

Whether its development is towards formal membership or some other relationship to people is an open question. Personally I like the federal architecture of the party because of its essential pluralism. John Harris and I addressed these issues in our Compass pamphlet, Fit for Purpose. What would Conference look like? What would be the basic units of party organisation? How should we fund political parties? These questions are up for grabs. My approach is not to rule anything out in terms of organisational reform. I think we have to contest the authoritarian model that we have now. What worries me is that, despite what everyone during the Deputy Leadership contest said about rebuilding the party on the ground, very little has been done.

By Labour MP John Cruddas

__________________
http://conservativedemocraticalliance.blogspot.com/

The Bear

Did Joseph Goebbels have any kids?

__________________
I am an old man. I have eaten much salt.

For_England

Yes, it's time for a change. The public needs to see down-to-earth people they can relate to, like Colin Auty. The party doesn't need a fuhrer to get it into power - it needs a strong management structure that allows regions to thrive rather than beating them down out of fear for their own position. A credible, though mediocre, leader, could do far more than Griffin now, in my opinion. He has not only served his purpose, but he has become a liability, as he himself admitted. If you don't believe me, think how many people would consider the BNP if not for Griffin - the number cannot be underestimated. We have a major PR problem, and fresh leadership with no neo-Nazi baggage and past (oops, that excludes VoC) is desperately needed, though without weakening or watering down current policies.

Hunter

Couldn't have summed cruda**e up better myself.

Such blatant lies in this mans statements should only serve to prove how morally corrupt he (and NewLabour) really are. 800 councillors at the 2006 elections - I think not. So what was he trying to prove with that?....What a mutant...IMHO that is...

Hunter

If this is what many members truely believe, and I have met one or two, then it has to be done properly, not behind closed doors or dark alleyways. We have less than a year until the Euro elections, and perhaps even a General Election if Gordon throws a dicky fit at the probability of being ousted as PM. The BNP Conference will be in November (I think) - plenty of time to get the ball rolling if you feel that is what is needed. Posting it on obscure websites or through Searchlight and their minions does Colin Auty no favours.

Part of the problem lies in not knowing what any potential new chairman would be capable of. Colin Auty is an 'unknown'. He, and the others, have never been tried or tested under fire. Would they be capable of handling the sustained abuse and hatred spewing forth from the likes of UAF scum, Cruddas or BoJo? Would they be able to hold their own with television presenters? The membership know Nick Griffin can do these and more, but can Auty? Or anyone else who wishes to take his place?

blueblood1920

How do you know what the membership figures are?
How do you know what a large chunk of BNP membership thing all the way in America? Talking to a few cranks on the internet is a far cry from a large chunk of BNP membership.

blueblood1920

So do you think that COlin Auty will be a good leader as someone who advocates being more PC and cuddling up to Islam?
He is having his strongs pulled by VoC which makes him damaged good and untrustworthy.
As for what he is asking for, they are not original ideas as they are ideas which have been discussed on the BNP members forum and if the membership want them implemented then they should get them to a vote at the conference.

Now I believe that Chris Jackson is a genuine challenge for the more old school wing of the party and I trust him in his challenge and dont have a problem with him challenging again.