The fight to kill the BNP vote
Richard Barnbrook
Published: 21 March 2008
http://www.thejc.com/
The BNP’s candidate for London Mayor, Richard Barnbrook, 47, is leader of the opposition at Barking and Dagenham council, where he is a councillor for the Goresbrook ward.
The former painter, artist and art teacher has been embroiled in several controversies.
In 2005, he was threatened with libel action by Cllr Liam Smith, the Labour lead councillor for housing in Barking and Dagenham, after he and former BNP councillor Daniel Kelley claimed Mr Smith was behind a £50,000 scheme to bring African people to the borough.The Labour councillor denied that there was any such scheme.
Last year, after English National Ballet dancer Simone Clarke was exposed by a newspaper as a BNP member, Mr Barnbrook rushed to her defence, saying: “I don’t normally go to the ballet, but I’m going to support Simone Clarke. I’m supporting her freedom of expression.” It later emerged that the pair were engaged.
Mr Barnbrook was further embarrassed after the BNP failed to submit its annual accounts to the electoral commission last year. The party blamed 15 local groups and branches, saying they had failed to get their accounts to the party treasurer on time. One of those was Barking and Dagenham — run by Mr Barnbrook.
In February last year, Mr Barnbrook was diagnosed with tuberculosis. His response was: “Immigration has caused this. I am angry that I have picked up this junk. This disease should not have come into our country.”
Robert Bailey
The BNP’s deputy leader in Barking and Dagenham, Robert Bailey, 42, has also seen his fair share of controversy.
A former Marine for 14 years who now sells office equipment, Mr Bailey is a graduate.
In January this year, he was involved in a row with the leader of the council, Cllr Charles Fairbrass, over attending a Holocaust Memorial Day event.
Mr Bailey attended the tree-planting ceremony, despite Cllr Fairbrass writing to him saying his attendance would be inappropriate.
“I’ve been to similar events before and I think such events are important. Lots of the things that happened during World War Two, especially the Jewish Holocaust, should be remembered. I didn’t think it would be a big deal for me to attend,” he said.
He added that the BNP were “not a bunch of Holocaust deniers”.
“British nationalists can identify with Israel. I have a lot of sympathy for Israel and the Jewish people in fighting for a homeland,” he said. But Cllr Fairbrass said: “These idiots work on the same principles as the Third Reich. When there is a problem, find a scapegoat. With the Nazis it was the Jew, today with the BNP, it’s a Muslim, a refugee or an asylum-seeker. “
Julian Leppert
BNP councillor for the Hainault ward of Redbridge, Julian Leppert, a postal worker from Woodford Green, stood as the party’s candidate in the London mayoral elections of 2004. He took more than three per cent of the vote.
In his campaign, he vowed to “throw out” all asylum-seekers, whom he blamed for causing traffic congestion. He also promised an immediate halt to immigration if he was successful, as well as voluntary resettlement for existing immigrants and to scrap positive discrimination.
In a radio interview during his campaign, he said that British-born minority ethnic people were only British citizens “in the sense of having a British passport”, but were not “ethnically British”.
In January 2007, Mr Leppert attended a conference in London organised by the far-right New Right Group. One speaker was Michele Renouf, a Holocaust denier and supporter of David Irving. Mr Leppert sat through anti-Jewish tirades from both Renouf and from one of the leaders of the Islamic Party of Britain.
Nick Erickson
The BNP’s London Regional Organiser is second on the party’s top-up candidate list.
A former Conservative councillor in Southwark, he is understood to be linked to the Sir John Bull blog (sirjohn bull.blogspot.com).
In August 2005, an entry on the blog on date-rape drug Rohypnol read:
“It turns out that these stupid tarts are simply getting blind drunk, taking ‘recreational’ drugs themselves, and then having sex. Next day they wake up with an almighty hangover and a deep feeling of shame and regret. So what do they do then? Why, cry rape of course, and try to get a poor innocent man sent to prison in order to save their ‘reputation’ —as if they had one!”
The blog entry goes on: “I’ve never really understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth machine into believing that rape is such a serious crime.
“Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal. To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that force feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence.”