Monitoring fascism across the region
A Lincoln City fan who took an EDL flag to matches and was photographed giving a Nazi salute has been banned from attending football matches for 3 years.
Briggs lives on Bentley Drive, Bracebridge Heath, in the area that BNP candidate Dean Lowther is standing for election.
The sole BNP candidate in Lincolnshire for the upcoming local elections, Dean Crowther, is under investigation by police for posting racist material on his Facebook page. Lowther, who is standing in the Bracebridge ward, posted pictures of the Obamas as monkeys and called the government a “race traitor Government” for giving benefits to Muslim women with children. The Lincolnshire Echo reports that “Many other images were too offensive to describe in the paper.”
Lowther is clearly none too bright and defended himself by saying that “These sort of pictures are all over the internet anyway” and that “Facebook have only ever deleted one of my photos,” ending with the classic, “I’m not a racist – I have black friends”. He didn’t mention what those black friends thought about being likened to monkeys.
Geoff Dickens has some words of wisdom as well: “There’s little or nothing that anyone can do about it, in the same way that there’s some awful images across the internet depicting all sorts of stuff.” Err… the images could be taken down. You could kick Lowther out of the party, after all, according to Geoff, “We are not a racist party.” But then I suppose the BNP wouldn’t even have dregs like this left to run in elections.
Recent statistics released by Lincolnshire Police suggest that racially and religiously aggravated crimes in the county have risen by 22% over the past 5 years. The number of racist incidents has also risen by 12% over the same period. The most commonly reported crimes were racially motivated criminal damage, verbal abuse and minor assaults. Nationally, racist incidents decreased by 18% over the same period.
The Lincolnshire Echo illustrates the story by interviewing Munir Zafar, an 18 year old from Afghanistan, who was attacked in Lincoln in 2010. Zafar suffered a fractured skull and cheekbone as a result of the racist attack. “When I first came,” he said, “people would look at me in the street and argue with me over nothing. I was always thinking people might swear at me or want to start a fight.” He says he last experienced racist abuse in the street 4 months ago.
This very worrying trend might be partly explained by tension over the large number of migrant workers employed in Lincolnshire’s agricultural economy. Lincolnshire farmers have realised that they can take advantage of migrant labour at much lower wages than local workers. This has led to large numbers of migrants arriving in the area looking for work, often living in extremely poor conditions, and a strong downwards pressure on wages.
The far right have been looking for opportunities to exploit this tension. We are not talking about the deranged babbling of David Icke lovers, the Lincolnshire Voice here, but the more cynical elements in the BNP, EDL and their fellow travellers. They were given an opportunity last October, when Boston resident, Dean Everitt, organised a march against immigration on Facebook. Stating that “we are fed up of being second class citizens in our own town. The British person is being discriminated against in their own country”, Everitt claimed that “We are not racist… but we are saying this place is now full and we should not have any more.” He was also reported as saying “The problem is simple – they need to shut the floodgates.”
Unfortunately Everitt failed to identify the problem as an economic one, driven by the bosses of the farms who want to exploit cheap labour. If decent pay and conditions were the norm and the practice of housing workers in poor conditions abolished, local workers would be able to find work again. Instead, Everitt focussed on cultural invasion, using language reminiscent of xenophobic politicians of the past. And whether or not you believe his claim not to be a racist, his march instantly became a beacon for fascists of all stripes.
It was soon picked up by the BNP as well as EDL offshoot, Casuals United. Each far right website moulded the story to fit its own agenda with the BNP trumpeting “People in Lincolnshire have had enough of migrant workers who have invaded their county”. The London Patriot used it to push the line that “the Labour party don’t support the white working class anymore” and the South West Nationalists claimed that “there are plenty of tales of drunken Eastern Europeans urinating in public, and of being able to walk through the town and come across next to nobody who speaks English.” Needless to say, no sources for these tales were produced.
Realising that he was going to attract all kinds of misfits, boneheads and delusional idiots if he went ahead with his march, Everitt cancelled saying that he was worried about it being hijacked.
The incident showed that organised fascists are taking an interest in the situation in Lincolnshire and trying to exploit the tensions between the settled community and migrant workers for political gain. Wherever the far right and their poisonous propaganda gain a foothold, racist attacks follow.
Happy new year antifascists! Hackers Anonymous have got the 2012 off to a good start with Operation Blitzkrieg, a sustained assault on neo-Nazi websites in order to expose the fash.
One of their targets was the infamous Blood & Honour network, which promoted Nazi gigs and bands and was linked to wannabe stormtroopers, Combat 18. B&H was founded by Ian Stuart and took its name from the motto from of the Hitler Youth. In the early ’90s the East Midlands division of the group was active in promoting gigs around the region. Thankfully B&H’s humiliation by antifascists at the ‘Battle of Waterloo’ (the London railway station, not the Belgian town), which is amusingly retold in No Retreat, and Ian Stuart’s fatal encounter with a Derbyshire ditch took a lot of the wind out of their sails. However, the group is still active and organises occasional highly secretive gigs in dingy shitholes around the country.
A complete leak of personal details from the UK B&H website can be found here. There are quite a few names from the East Midlands on there, including BNP councillor, James North. North is the BNP’s representative on Asfordby Parish Council (Melton, Leicestershire) and appears no less than 3 times on the leaked list along with his ‘stallion’ email address (lol). James was a rising star for the BNP in Leicestershire and regularly chairs their meetings and gives presentations to other branches as well as writing articles for the BNP website. The revelation that he was a signed up member of an openly Hitlerite organisation will no doubt cause him a few image problems. The BNP is already in freefall in Leicestershire, having lost a number of councillors at the last elections and now being forced to merge branches due to insufficient interest. This damning detail about the formerly squeaky clean North will put him alongside Ian ‘NF plank’ Meller and Wayne ‘racist torture’ McDermott as yet another embarrassment.
Nazi James North
Other local Nazis include Marc Adams of Countesthorpe, Leicester, Liam Hankin of New Selston, Notts, Nigel Robinson of Ilkeston, Derbyshire, Ian Stafford of Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, David Honeybell of Beechdale, Nottingham, Lee ‘Morphus’ of Bulwell, Nottingham, Jonathan Benn of Mansfield, Notts, Ian Smith of Grantham, Lincs, and Wayne Buckby of Hinckley, Leicestershire.