GRIFFIN BITES THE DUST AFTER ELECTION FAILURE

Lights going out for Griffin.

by Kevin Scott

After his election defeat in the recent European elections, Nick Griffin has resigned as Chairman of the BNP; and the party's National Organiser, a former County Durham teacher, Adam Walker, has replaced him.

As a sop to his ego, Griffin has reportedly become "Party President." Apparently, this was all agreed at a meeting of the party's executive body last weekend, much to the disgust of some grassroots members upset at the leadership's failure to consult what remains of the party's dwindling membership.

As many predicted, had Griffin resigned in 2010 or had he democratised the party, as the former BNP webmaster Arthur Kemp later suggested, then the BNP would still be a force for good on the British political scene. Unfortunately, this resignation has all happened three or four years too late.

Moreover, what is Griffin's role as Party President? What are his powers? Is he paid a salary? Are his children and relatives still on the payroll? And what about the substantial pay-off from the party, as agreed at an AGM some years back, if he ceased being the leader of the BNP?

The current change in the leadership must have been carefully thought out and considered by Griffin, probably some years in advance, with a degree of prompting by his close adviser and former NF colleague Pat Harrington.

It is obvious to many that Adam Walker doesn't have much in the way of an ideological understanding of nationalism or the wider political and economic scene. Although he would have been a useful figurehead as party leader following his victory for free speech at the General Teaching Council in 2010, which was backed by the Civil Liberty campaign group, he now has a lifetime ban from teaching as a result of a criminal conviction (and a suspended prison sentence) following an aggressive altercation with two young boys at a St George's Day gathering in the north east of England in 2011.

It is probable that Adam Walker is merely a puppet for Griffin, who remains the power behind the scenes with access to the various party and Trafalgar Club bank accounts, despite various creditors breathing down his neck following his recent bankruptcy.

The party itself is now a hollow shell and has collapsed across the country.

Adam Walker on a visit to Japan some years ago.

The British nationalist scene continues to fragment with some former BNP leaders, via Jim Dowson's Britain First, attempting vainly to fill the vacuum left by what remains of the English Defence League. Others have set up blogs demanding an end to party politics and advocating a pie-in-the sky platform of community building. The parent party of the BNP, the old National Front, remains terminally split and ineffectual. Many see hope in the recent surge by UKIP which is now contesting almost every council by-election in the country, with some reasonable results, after years of political lethargy and local failure by Nigel Farage's resurgent party.

A handful of BNP organisers still remain with the English Democrats, led by the lacklustre former Tory lawyer, Robin Tilbrook, who are pinning their hopes on a successful Scottish bid for political independence later this year. While others, led by the former BNP MEP Andrew Brons and the former Freedom Party leader, Adrian Davies, have recreated the British Democratic Party, one of the original component parts of John Tyndall's original BNP, established in 1982, as a rallying point and electoral vehicle for nationalist activists disgruntled with Griffin's petulant misrule and incompetence which has virtually destroyed that party.

Only time will tell whether the BNP will rise from the grave or whether "the game" (as Griffin would probably describe it!) and money have moved on.