March 28, 2008

Keep BNP out, Welsh voters are warned

Welsh voters have been urged to vote in the May elections amid fears that the British National Party (BNP) could otherwise make substantial gains. All councils in Wales will be holding elections on May 1.

This week, Alun Hughes, national secretary of the Communist Party of Wales, said he was extremely concerned that the BNP could make gains in May.

“They are making huge inroads, especially in north east Wales. They have been saying that they are more nationalist than Plaid Cymru [the Welsh national party] and people are falling for that, which is dangerous,” warned Dr Hughes.

He added that he thought the BNP may make considerable gains in some parts of Wales, such as Wrexham and Cardiff, in the elections.

“I’m concerned that they might do quite well in certain parts of Wales, and many of them are just yobs,” claimed Dr Hughes, urging people in Wales to use their vote to stop the BNP. “All the regular parties in Wales are involved in the National Assembly, so a vote for any of those parties is preferable to voting for a fascist party,” he declared.

Several high-profile BNP members live in Wales, including party leader Nick Griffin who lives in mid-Wales, and the party’s treasurer, John Walker, who lives in North Wales. It is thought that Arthur Kemp, the author of March of the Titans, in which he praises Hitler and Nazi Germany, also lives in North Wales. As reported in last week’s JC, Mr Kemp was alleged to have been involved in the assassination of South African anti-apartheid activist Chris Hani in 1993 and previously co-ordinated the BNP’s London Mayoral efforts.

Gerry Gable, London-based publisher of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, told the JC it was believed that the BNP’s merchandise operation —Excalibur Products — is administered from North Wales.

“It’s the duty of everyone to get out and defend democracy, and to vote for any party other the BNP,” Mr Gable told the JC this week.

He added that Searchlight had a strong presence in Wales, where it is supported by the mainstream parties.

“There is a lot of activity against them [the BNP] and hopefully all the campaigning that’s going on will have some impact.”

The Jewish Chronicle

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

How did Arthur Kemp get into this country???? We let an apartheid terrorist run around this country freely, helping the BNP further its fascist and racist goals. What the hell has Arthur Kemp got to contribute to this country - nothing, expect dividing the country.

Anonymous said...

Is,nt the Welsh international goal scoring hero Robert Earnshaw black??

I wonder what genuine Welsh people will think of that as opposed to the vile BNP

Anonymous said...

Interesting article on BNP intelligence officer Arthur Kemp. Taken from the South African-based Mail & Guardian Online.

Camp and cowardice

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: The British National Party (BNP), the premier neo- fascist organisation in the United Kingdom, is reeling from worse-than-expected results in local elections last week — not least in London, where the campaign was coordinated by some- time South African Arthur Kemp. The 41-year-old Kemp, whose high point of notoriety came from his role in the assassination of Chris Hani in 1993, is a close friend of BNP party leader Nick Griffin, who drafted him to coordinate its bid to win a seat on Ken Livingston’s London assembly. It failed. Born in what was then Rhodesia, raised in Cape Town and now living with his family near Oxford, Kemp is a strange creature with an even stranger political past. I first met him in 1982 when I was a member of the students representative council at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Kemp, then in his first year, was elected as a “joke” candidate in an uncontested by-election. Unintentionally camp, weedy and unsmiling, his contribution extended no further than planting stink bombs at public meetings. After one such incident, a left-winger threatened to thump him and Kemp immediately backed down, leading Tony Karon (then a leftie student, now a New York-based Time editor and television pundit) to dub him a “gutless fascist”. It wasn’t long before Kemp was heading determinedly in that direction. It had already emerged he was a member of the New Republic Party (a short-lived, right-of-centre, English-speaking affair). Soon after, however, he made a brief and futile attempt to ingratiate himself with the “broad left”. Making no headway, Kemp helped revive the Conservative Students Alliance — a right-wing group funded by the security police. But unlike most of his right-wing student allies, who drifted towards the National Party and later Tony Leon’s Democratic Alliance, Kemp took a more idiosyncratic path — serving the apartheid security and intelligence machinery on the one hand, and the extreme right on the other. He joined the police and then the security police after leaving university while drifting steadily towards a harder-line, pro-apartheid political stance than he was prepared to own up to in his UCT days. He became a prominent stalwart for the South African Conservative Party. Surrounded by burlier men, he had acquired a more confident swagger along with his supercilious sneer. He seemed to be doing well in his attempts to inveigle himself into their circles, working as political secretary to party leader Andries Treurnicht and writing a sympathetic book on the Afrikanerweerstandsbeweging (AWB) in 1990, and becoming a prominent writer in Die Patriot. As an English-speaking right-winger with a dramatic flair, he appealed to the flamboyant side of the Pretoria- based CP couple, Clive and Gaye Derby-Lewis. Kemp supplied Gaye with what became a list of the names and whereabouts of prominent anti-apartheid activists, including the name and address of Hani. Clive passed the list on to his hitman, Polish-born fascist Janusz Walus, who murdered Hani. Kemp’s list was later found in Walus’s flat. What the Derby-Lewises did not realise was that Kemp also informed the National Intelligence Service (NIS) of his list and where it had gone (although the NIS later claimed it had no role in Hani’s murder). Kemp was arrested along with Walus and the Derby-Lewises and held for a couple of days. He became a state witness, admitting his role in supplying the list, including Hani’s details, while denying prior knowledge of its purpose. By this stage Kemp was regarded as a gutless sell-out by his extremist comrades and further infuriated them with his reluctance to assist their amnesty bid. He emigrated soon after South Africa became a democracy and settled in Britain, where he promptly got to work building on his past ties with neo-fascist groups. In 1996 Searchlight, the anti-fascist newspaper, exposed the fact that Kemp had addressed pro-Nazi meetings in Germany and had written for the fascist publication Nation und Europa. He later wrote a 32-chapter racist history book entitled March of the Titans: History of the White Race, and his musings have been highlighted on the Nazi-supporting website Stormfront. Kemp developed a close relationship with BNP leader Griffin and began to make regular contributions to the party’s website and publications on subjects ranging from the Iraq War to “non-white” immigration. One of his most quoted is a lengthy racist diatribe entitled Third World Immigration: Importing Poverty, not Prosperity — a kind of reworking of Enoch Powell’s notorious Rivers of Blood speech, arguing against black immigration to Britain. He joined Griffin at a rally of BNP supporters in Bromley. As with so many things in Kemp’s past, this one did not work out (mainly because of the relative success of the more mainstream right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party). The BNP is defensive about the exposure of Kemp’s past. “He’s a fantastic fellow and I don’t see anything wrong with what he’s doing,” said a spokesperson. However, some British neo-fascist activists are pointing to Kemp’s role as an informer against right-wing comrades in South Africa, saying that he is not to be trusted. If his past is anything to go by, they may have a point.

http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?area=%2Finsight%2Finsight__national&articleid=131007

Anonymous said...

the trouble is there are a lot of bloody sheep in wales.

Anonymous said...

er, isn't this sort of publicity and talking up, doing the BNP's job for them -

"huge inroads"

"substantial gains"

Pray remind me, how many councillors have EVER been elected in Wales under the BNP banner ???

So why talk up their prospects ???

Anonymous said...

iliacus

I like the cut of your jib


now that does,nt sound very irish

I must be part of the UK,s multi cultural society

On a more serious note I fully agree with you The BNP have been rejected by the Welsh, the Scottish and for the most part the English

As I have said again and again

46 councillors out of 22,300

There are also approx 10,000 parish councils each having an average of 10 councillors

The BNP tried to "big up" Donna Baily for a parish election.

the Vicar of Dibley????

However I really believe one of the main reasons the BNP fail so dismally is because of the great work of people like UAF, the great work of all anti fascists and most importantly common sense.

Anonymous said...

Arthur Kemp is an arse kisser of the highest order, and while griffin is getting his fat arse polished by his slippery tongue and the rest of his sycophants, he'll happily bend over and oblige. Take it from me becuase I know, all griffin wants is to get himself into Europe as an MEP so he can then set back like the chubby posh fat-cat bastard that he is and grin from ear to ear. If the way he treats his own members is anything to go by, this should tell us all the facts we need to know. He disserves nothing except utter contempt.

Anonymous said...

Yet another case of the state-controlled media hyping-up the One Eyed Monster under orders from MI5 and MI6.

This is getting ridiculous. They have as much chance in winning seats to the Welsh Assembly as Elvis being found alive.

Wales suffered badly because of the pit-closures. The Welsh people should be reminded the BNP (like the NF) wanted to shoot to kill striking miners, and of the BNP's most voiceriferous opponents of the miners (including the Welwsh miners) was Lady Birchwood.

Hope any Welsh anti-racist leaflets mention the hell-bound lady bigot in their literature, as the mining spirit lives on strong in Wales.