I have been making daily visits to the BNP website for about 18 months. Because of the bad reputation that has been pinned on the BNP by the mainstream British media over many years, I was initially very suspicious of the accuracy and truthfulness of anything I read there. That suspicion has long gone and I now trust their news reports more than any provided by the BBC and much of the mainstream media.
The BNP have posted many reports of blatantly political police behavior around the country and I believe these reports to be accurate. Most are about actions taken against the BNP and its activists, though there have been some concerning religious activists too. Typically, the police have harassed BNP people engaged in leafleting on the streets of a town, or selling Party literature in a town square or at a college gate. In most cases, several police officers have suddenly arrived and have behaved in an extremely hostile manner intended to intimidate people who are quite clearly doing something lawful. In some cases the police have arrested the BNP activists and taken them to a local police station, to be detained for many hours. In those cases where people have been questioned, the questioning has been sinisterly vague with no crime specified. The questioning has mostly been what might best be called a “fishing trip”, designed to get a flustered and nervous citizen to say something that might be then used to justify a charge. In every case of an arrest, the victims have subsequently been released without a charge and without an apology, occasionally with the threat of further action being considered.
Regular criminals are used to this kind of police treatment and unfazed by it, but law abiding people are not. They are likely to feel frightened, humiliated and intimidated, which is, no doubt, just what the police intend.
Police action of this kind concerning citizen political activity is very definitely a new departure in the UK and is not at all likely to have been instigated by a low ranking police officer. It has to be the result of high-level decision making within the force and part of a broader decision-making process involving the Home Office.
Thanks to an approving media and its collusive silence, the police have not been held to account, since the general public remains unaware that this kind of police activity is happening. There are many British people who have little interest in politics, but who assume that free speech is a Briton’s birthright and that the British bobby is distanced from politics. If they should hear of one of the episodes recorded by the BNP, they are likely to conclude that the BNP people must have been doing something pretty dreadful, otherwise why would the police have been so heavy-handed.
I have returned to this subject on our website because it has been festering in the back of my mind and getting nearer the surface with each reported incident. The more I think about it, the more alarmed I get. First of all, these episodes get publicized by the BNP on their website, yet do not appear to get picked up on other websites that should surely be as alarmed as I. I would have expected people like Michelle Malkin and the “biased BBC” people to spread the word. And what about all those bloggers who use the Internet to get out information that the mainstream media tries to bury? Why are they not outraged? Why do the victims not take legal action against the police for wrongful arrest and harassment? Is there no legal avenue for redress? Perhaps not! Or perhaps it is too expensive for ordinary people to undertake.
I know enough 20th Century history to be aware that police forces around the world have frequently adapted to new masters. The Berlin police in the 1920’s were in bed with the Communists in what was then known as “Red Berlin”. A decade later and they were more than comfortable with the National Socialist Party of Hitler, Roehm, Goebbels and Strasser
The police are, after all, paid public officials, no different than local government clerks or weights and measures inspectors, with careers, ambitions and pensions to be worked for. Yet somehow, I thought that the British police were different than their European counterparts and those in Third World countries. Clearly, I have been foolish to be comforted by this belief. No doubt there are some police officers who are unhappy at having to take part in political intimidation. They probably seek early retirement or slip quietly into other jobs. Increasingly, the force gets left with the unprincipled, the opportunists seeking promotion at any cost and the newly-recruited who have been vetted for political correctness.
Looking ahead, we should all be very worried by the politicization of our police forces. This politicization begins as soon as policemen move beyond crime and criminals and turn their attentions to citizens engaged in purely political activity. Totalitarian rulers always rely on their policemen to first intimidate any opposition, then to punish it and finally to terrorize the general population. What is true of the police is also true of the judiciary. Hitler and Stalin had little difficulty in suborning the legal professions once they had taken power. In occupied France both arms of the law were willing to serve the puppets of German rule. There are countless other examples in recent European history.
On October 30th Nick Griffin and Mark Collett will return to Leeds Crown Court as defendants in what can only be described as a political Show Trial. Stalinist Show Trials in the1930’s were widely publicized by the international Communist movement, but this trial at Leeds may well be conducted as quietly as possible. The Media Class is much more astute than was the old Bolshevik Class and not yet confident enough to abandon stealth. Consequently, the trial, like the police actions I have referred to earlier, may get little mention in the Media. Make no mistake however that this trial is another step towards totalitarian rule in the UK. It is all about crushing political dissent.
We ask every reader to spread word of the trial on the Internet and amongst friends and colleagues. On this website we reject many parts of the BNP platform, but if Griffin and Collett are found guilty, we are all losers.