Tag Archives: Amber Valley
Derbyshire BNP freefall continues
As predicted, the BNP’s four candidates in the region polled very poorly in Thursday’s local council elections.
In Amber Valley, Derbyshire, Ken Cooper came in fourth place in Ripley Ward with 80 votes – 3.2% of the poll. In Codnor & Waingroves ward, Alan Edwards also came fourth with 39 votes, 2.8% of the poll. However, both BNP candidates narrowly beat the LibDems into fifth place. These results are even poorer than the 2010 elections, when the BNP polled 7.5% in Ripley and 4.2% in Codnor & Waingroves.
In Derby, Paul Hilliard came last in Chaddesden ward with 4% of the poll (136 votes), whilst Carol Tucker also came last in Derwent ward, with 3.1% (84 votes). This is a significant drop from their performance in similar elections in 2012, when Hilliard polled 14.7% in Chaddesden and Julie Fuller polled 11.9% in Derwent. That performance was itself a disappointment for the BNP in 2012 – how much lower can they go?
We have been enjoying Derbyshire BNP’s downhill trajectory for a few years now, and it’s good to see it continue.
New UKIP councillors
The most significant feature of the local elections was the dramatic rise in fortunes of UKIP. They now have increased representation on several local councils in the region, with 8 councillors in North-East Lincolnshire, 3 in Daventry, and 2 in Derby.
Whilst enjoying the increased electoral irrelevance of the BNP and their ilk, the entry into the mainstream of a new brand right-wing nationalism in the guise of UKIP poses significant fresh challenges for antifascists. We will be monitoring UKIP in the region closely. This piece from the IWCA, written a year ago, is an interesting contribution to this vital issue.
Comments Off on East Midlands local election results | tags: Alan Edwards, Amber Valley, BNP, Carol Tucker, Derby, Ken Cooper, local elections, Paul Hilliard, UKIP | posted in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire
As an illustration of how the local BNP has been decimated over the past few years, check out this photo of local activists taken in the run up to the 2010 elections. All of these party activists have since fallen by the wayside.
- From left: Edward Holmes, Hilda Holmes, William “Chris” Bell, Lewis Allsebrook, Michael Clarke, Janina “Nina” Brown
Edward Holmes is probably the only Ashfield candidate to have featured in the local paper after being sent a blood-stained “hate effigy”. His other claim to fame was getting into a row with BBC presenter, Des Coleman, who was filming a documentary about the fascist party. Both Holmes and his wife Hilda were last seen standing as “independent nationalists” in Selston, at the end of last year, but there hasn’t been a peep out of them since and Holmes’ Ashfield Matters website, along with the Ashfield Patriot site, is defunct. Meanwhile, the Ashfield BNP which struggled to find candidates in last year’s local elections, has collapsed.
William Christopher “Chris” Bell, was the organiser of the always fairly weak Nottingham BNP until last year when he threw in the towel and left fascist nut, Bob Brindley, in control. Brindley was last spotted handing out leaflets on his own. Presumably Bell has gone back to running shit financial advice websites and being a dodgy student landlord.
Lewis Allsebrook had been falling out with just about the whole of the East Midlands BNP for a while before he finally quit the party in February this year claiming that the BNP only had a “shallow pool of members” in Amber Valley. He was backed by Mick Clarke, the party’s parliamentary candidate for Amber Valley in 2010 who also seems to have left the party. Allsebrook’s prediction proved to be correct as the BNP slumped at the polls and lost both its councillors in Heanor this May. Allsebrook maintained his Amber Valley Matters website for a while but it hasn’t been updated for months now. He seems to have given up hope on joining another nationalist party.
Nina Brown has been in and out of the BNP more times than we’ve been able to keep track of over the past 5 years. She was the person who famously let the BNP’s security team into Sadie Graham’s house to ransack it looking for evidence of treachery. Following this she and husband Dave were part of the group that resigned forming a major split in the BNP. When that didn’t work out the Browns came back to the fold, tails between their legs and were running the Broxtowe Nationalist website up until 2010. They were spotted representing the BNP at a neo-Nazi rally in Germany at the end of 2009. Broxtowe BNP has since collapsed and a recent attempt by David Wright to revive it seems doomed to failure.
Analysis of the leaked BNP membership list in 2008 suggested that NG16 in Broxtowe was the country’s “most racist postcode” with more members than any other. Leicester, Nottingham and Derby were the cities ranked as having the 2nd, 3rd and 8th most members, with Leicester and Nottingham both having more than London. Since those days the BNP has had a near total collapse across the region. Although the dregs still remain, the endless splits, exposures and infighting have destroyed the party and many local activists have left in disgust, been purged, or have just given up. Long may it continue!
Comments Off on Gone with the wind | tags: Amber Valley, Ashfield, BNP, Broxtowe, Chris Bell, Edward Holmes, Hilda Holmes, Lewis Allsebrook, Michael Clarke, Nina Brown, nottingham | posted in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire
Fascists had a bad night in local elections across the country. The BNP has, at the time of writing, lost all of the seats it was defending and failed to win any new seats. None of the smaller fascist groupuscles has fared any better.
In the East Midlands, the BNP lost their two seats in Heanor where their share of the vote was considerably reduced. Cliff Roper’s term as “the invisible councillor” obviously didn’t go down well with the electorate and his share of the vote has fallen to 19.1% from the 36.5% he won with in 2008. Beaten into third place, Councillor Roper has become simply another nationalist chancer, the Heanor Patriot. Lewis Allsebrook’s replacement, Adrian Hickman, also failed to impress and came last. In Heanor & Loscoe the BNP’s share of the vote was halved and in Ripley & Marehay it was reduced to a third of the 2008 result. Emma Roper did particularly badly, getting only 59 votes (4.2%) in Codnor & Waingroves. This is about a quarter of the share won by fascist farmer Alan Warner in 2008.
The National Front’s Amber Valley candidate, Timothy Knowles, only got 99 votes in Langley Mill, coming in last place.
Over in Lincoln, disgraced Nazi sympathiser and BNP candidate, Dean Lowther, got a pathetic 49 votes (2.8%) coming in last place. This is less than a quarter of the 12.2% he got last time around.
In Derby, the BNP did slightly less badly but their vote was still down on the 2008 results. Paul Hilliard’s black shirt campaign won him 14.7% of the vote in Chaddesden, but this was down from the 17.9% he got in 2008. The only good news for the party was that candidates in Derwent and Spondon beat the Lib Dems into last place, gaining 11.9% and 8.1% of the vote respectively.
Hope Not Hate are collecting the far right’s results on their website and you can compare them with the results from 2008 here.
It seems that electoral support for the fascists is well down from its peak. Nick Griffin’s troubled leadership of the BNP looks decidedly shaky and party activists and voters are leaving in droves. The new fluffier British Freedom Party, who are backed by the EDL, haven’t got off to a good start either. Their candidate in Basildon only managed to get 4% of the vote and none of the 4 candidates currently declared in Liverpool got more than 3%.
These are good results for anti-fascists but we should never be complacent. The BNP was still voted for by a little under 1 in 5 people in Heanor and they are consistently winning over 10% in parts of Derby. There is always the danger that the far right will rearrange itself around a new pole in the wake of the BNP’s plunge into obscurity and start building on these foundations. Their current failure is a cause for celebration. Let’s make sure they don’t come back from the dead.
Comments Off on Bye bye BNP! | tags: Adrian Hickman, Amber Valley, BFP, BNP, Cliff Roper, Dean Lowther, Derby, Emma Roper, Heanor, Lincoln, National Front, Paul Hilliard, Timothy Knowles | posted in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire
Tim Knowles standing for the National Front (NF) in the Amber Valley ward of Langley Mill and Aldercar came third, in a contest which saw labour take the seat from the Tories, receiving a paltry 99 votes.
Knowles was the only NF candidate standing in the East Midlands in yesterday’s local elections. However, across the country the NF was contesting more seats than it had in any election since 1982.
Knowles had previously managed to get himself elected unopposed (i.e. no one else bothered to stand, so he won by default) to Langley Mill Parish Council last year, but was booted off the council after only a few months having failed to fill in the declaration of acceptance or to attend a single meeting.
While 99 votes and third place will be disappointing for Knowles (and heartening for anti-fascists), on a turnout of 1,137 (27.7% of those registered to vote) it actually amounts to 8.7% of the vote. In a General Election that would be enough to get back his deposit (although Parliamentary constituencies are obviously larger than borough council wards).
That he achieved even this much and the apparent disinterest of much of the electorate underlines the extent to which the mainstream parties have ignored areas like Langley Mill. Anti-fascists cannot afford to make the same mistake.
Comments Off on NF trounced in Langley Mill | tags: Amber Valley, Elections, Langley Mill, National Front, Tim Knowles, vote local elections | posted in Derbyshire
Yesterday’s local elections have not gone well for the BNP in Amber Valley. They have lost the two seats they took in 2008, with a massive slump in the percentage of the vote:
- Heanor East: 19.1% (2012) 36.5% (2008)
- Heanor West: 18.2% (2012) 29.5% (2008)
There were 16 seats up for election (one third of the total) with the BNP standing five candidates. Although none won, the votes they were able to achieve varied widely:
- Heanor East: Cliff Roper, 284 votes, 19.1%
- Heanor West: Adrian Hickman, 272 votes, 18.2%
- Heanor and Loscoe: Ken Cooper, 245 votes, 17.8%
- Codnor and Waingroves: Emma Roper, 59 votes, 4.2%
- Ripley and Marehay: Alan Edwards, 130 votes, 7.5%
Former councillor Cliff Roper has described the results as “disappointing.”
Roper, commenting on his Heanor Patriot blog, would have supporters believe that the party’s loses “mirror those of smaller parties throughout the country as we were swept aside in a national backlash against the coalition government, which resulted in a massive vote for Labour by an electorate eager to punish the coalition parties.” The reality is more complicated with many “smaller parties” actually doing quite well. There was an unprecedented vote for UKIP and steady progress by the Green Party, while Respect ousted the Labour leader in Bradford.
There does not appear to have been a great deal of anti-fascist activity in the area, although Hope Not Hate report having organised a couple of leafleting sessions. Whether this had an effect is impossible to gauge.
Internal squabbling amongst the local BNP can’t have helped. Roper resigned the whip last year and was even accused of being a “secret red”, only to return to the fold. Fellow councillor Lewis Allsebrook also jumped ship earlier this year amidst accusations of backstabbing and incompetence. Hopefully their latest failures will only fuel the infighting.
Comments Off on BNP lose two seats in Amber Valley | tags: Amber Valley, Cliff Roper, election, Lewis Allsebrook, local elections | posted in Derbyshire
With a little under 2 weeks to go until polling day, 3rd May, East Midlands Anti-fascists bring you a round up of local fascist attempts to jockey for power.
BNP
Having finally concluded the messy power struggle within Amber Valley (Lewis Allsebrook jumped ship before he was pushed), the blackshirts of Derbyshire BNP have put up 8 candidates in Derby and Amber Valley.
The “invisible councillor” Cliff Roper is fighting to retain his seat in Heanor East, which should be a struggle if reports that he barely opens his mouth in public are to be believed. Not so long ago Roper was having a strop and resigned the party whip in order to get his way in the local party, and there have been plenty of accusations of backstabbing and being a “red” flung his way. Aging bonehead, Adrian Hickman, will stand in Allsebrook’s former constituency of Heanor West. “Inept” Emma Roper will hope to get slightly more than the 2.4% she polled last time in the Codnor and Waingroves ward. Ken Cooper (Heanor & Loscoe) and Alan Edwards (Ripley & Marehay) are also standing.
Cliff Roper: actively working for his Heanor constituents again
Admirer of Mussolini’s blackshirts and “Grand Dictator of Derbyshire”, Paul Hilliard is standing in the Chaddesden ward in Derby and is joined by Julie Fuller (Derwent) and Vanessa Griffin (Spondon). Let’s just say you wouldn’t buy a second-hand car from the man.
Paul Hilliard: Would you trust this chump with your vote?
The BNP’s only candidate in Lincolnshire is neo-Nazi Dean Lowther, whose campaign is in a bit of a pickle after his openly racist posts on Facebook became the subject of a police investigation and front-page news in the local paper. His posts included cartoons portraying the Obamas as monkeys and the insignia of violent and openly Nazi groups, the Racial Volunteer Force, the British People’s Party, Blood and Honour and Combat 18. Lowther is standing in the Bracebridge ward of Lincoln.
English Democrats
The entire North-West Leicestershire BNP branch has recently defected to the English Democrats in the hope that they can do away with secret meetings and redirection points and gain a bit of respectability, something which seems unlikely given that about half of the English Democrats’ candidates across the UK are recent defectors from the BNP. Alan and Gaynor Bennett Spencer are standing for the half-fascist party in Daventry.
National Front
Fascist failure, Tim Knowles, who was so dim he managed to fuck up being elected unopposed is trying for a second crack of the whip in Langley Mill, Amber Valley. Last time round he failed to fill in the acceptance form or turn up to any meetings so was booted out. We hope the Front will sink further into irrelevance during these elections.
Comments Off on Local elections round up | tags: Adrian Hickman, Amber Valley, Blood & Honour, BNP, British Peoples Party, Cliff Roper, Combat 18, Dean Lowther, Derby, Emma Roper, English Democrats, Lincoln, National Front, Paul Hilliard, Racial Volunteer Force, Timothy Knowles | posted in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire
The National Front? No we haven’t heard much about them lately either. You would think the East Midlands NF would be keeping a low profile after anti-fascists stole their flag and ran them out of Ripley a couple of years back. Their website’s been down for a long time and it looked a lot like they’d given up the game in the region. It’s no surprise – the Front’s indigestible mix of explicitly racist politics and crusades against sexual perversion are unappealing to all but the most barmy Hitler worshippers.
However, it seems that Tim ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ Knowles is trying for election once again. For those who blinked and missed it, Knowles was elected unopposed (i.e. no one else bothered to stand, so he won by default) to Langley Mill Parish Council last year. However, being a fascist bonehead and all, Knowles found the paperwork a bit difficult. He was booted off the council after a few months having failed to fill in the declaration of acceptance or to attend a single meeting. Undeterred, Knowles is having another crack at the position in this year’s local elections.
This is presumably because no one else has bothered to stand again, which should tell you something about the problem. Langley Mill is one of those areas which has been abandoned by the main parties, like neighbouring Heanor where the BNP have won elections. Now the East Midlands Anti-fascists have no love of the mainstream crooked politicians and we understand why the people of these areas are turning their backs on them in search of someone who might do something locally. However, voting for or failing to oppose fascists like the National Front’s and the BNP’s candidates will not change anything for the better. These parties cultivate an image of helping the community for as long as it takes to get into power before their real authoritarian and xenophobic agenda comes to the fore.
Let’s hope Knowles fucks it up again.
Comments Off on National Front’s Tim Knowles tries again | tags: Amber Valley, Langley Mill, National Front, Timothy Knowles | posted in Derbyshire
Cliff Roper has announced the BNP’s Amber Valley candidates for the upcoming local elections. They are a bunch of well-seasoned losers.
Fascist losers: Emma and Cliff Roper
Ken Cooper (standing in Heanor & Loscoe) lost in Ripley & Marehay in 2011, came last in Codnor in 2010, lost in Heage in 2009 and came last in Ripley & Marehay in 2008.
Emma Roper (standing in Codnor & Waingroves) lost in Alfreton in 2011 getting only 2.5% of the vote.
Alan Edwards (standing in Ripley & Marehay) lost in Ripley in 2011.
The ones to watch will be “the invisible councillor” Roper himself, fighting to retain his seat in Heanor East, and Hickman, the official BNP challenger to ex-BNPer and “pretentious Tory boy” Lewis Allsebrook in Heanor West.
Comments Off on BNP candidates in Amber Valley | tags: Adrian Hickman, Alan Edwards, Amber Valley, BNP, Cliff Roper, Emma Roper, Ken Cooper, Lewis Allsebrook | posted in Derbyshire
Some might have though that the Cliff Roper side of the Amber Valley BNP rift were playing it cool and ignoring the Allsebrook camp’s temper tantrums, avoiding giving anti-fascists any material to use against them. However, it seems that the fascists can’t resist the temptation to expose their dirty laundry in public for the whole world to see.
The latest developments are recorded on a blog melodramatically titled ‘The Allsebrook Files’ reprinting material from “every sector of the political spectrum who detest Amber Valley former BNP member Lewis Allsebrook and his covernous cohorts.” It seems highly likely to have been set up by Roper and there’s backstabbing aplenty in the comments.
‘Buckspatriot’ says “pretentious Lewis recognises he wont get re-elected as a BNP councillor and has been currying favour with the tories with the aim of joining them”, but “if any BNP councillor imagines the Tories will have him as a candidate he is barking. ‘Gillam’ replies “The Tories are welcome to him. I’m sure Amber Valley will progress now without his tantrums – and his rather strange lady friends.”
‘Simo’ agrees: “The pretentious tory boy has spent years stabbing real activists in the back whilst he climbs the greasy pole to glory. He’s tried it once too often and has had the tables turned on him. Now he realises that he can’t climb any further in the BNP, he’s jumping ship – again.” Apparently, Allsebrook’s “judgement is abysmal.” Allsebrook is “The third councillor rep [to resign] in a year, and by far the most incompetent and useless of them all.”
‘NewInn14’ thinks Allsebrook’s departure is “not a great loss to the BNP compared with what they have lost in the last 2 years. Its just another rat jumping off a sinking ship.”
Not everyone is happy though. ‘Mike’ sarcastically comments that it’s “Nice to see the bnp herd turning on another one of their former colleagues.” He concludes “Down the plughole goes the bnp.”
We would have to agree with ‘Simo’ about Allsebrook’s importance: “Incompetent fool or sabateur? Who knows or even cares? Good riddance.”
1 comment | tags: Amber Valley, BNP, Cliff Roper, Heanor, Lewis Allsebrook | posted in Derbyshire
Clearly annoyed at not having brought down Self-Appointed Dickhead and Self-Obsessed Slapper yet, there is yet another whingefest on the Amber Valley Matters website. This time it’s Lewis Allsebrook’s right-hand woman Debra Purdy’s moment to take a break from talking to her 7 followers on Twitter and step on the soap box.
Apparently the Ropers and Paul Hilliard have “destroyed the local branch” of the BNP. The post mostly consists of repeating the boring story of Allsebrook’s fallout with the Ropers again including the moment when “Cliff spat his dummy out over group finances and went Independent.” Apparently, Lewis offered Cliff the role of leader of the BNP group on the Amber Valley Council, an opportunity which he “grabbed … with both hands and re-took the party whip after just 5 days as an Independent”.
There’s also an interesting account of the BNP’s ill-fated expedition to Matlock to run a stall. Apparently Paul Hilliard and Lewis Allsebrook abandoned the stall early on and called the male members of the group to join them scratching their balls in a cafe while the women did the work. Debra ” felt this was unacceptable as we were all hungry and thirsty and to leave just women on the stall was not very safe.” On finding the menfolk dossing about Debra’s daughter Amy “confronted them and in effect humiliated them for their actions. Paul was livid.” Naughty boys! Paul told Debra that “he would not forgive Amy’s outburst and she was now on her final warning.”
Hilliard also comes in for criticism for his insensitivity to Debra’s health issues “Paul continued to criticise me for my inability to deliver leaflets or stand in the freezing cold on stalls.” Debra clearly isn’t aware of fascism’s history of forcing ‘Untermenschen’ to work in inhospitable conditions.
Purdy also ‘fesses up to having restarted the Derby Patriot blog: “It was borne out of sheer desperation of our being unable to defend ourselves against the true enemies of the party who had gained the protection of the party hierarchy.”
Allsebrook and Purdy now find themselves in the political wilderness, forced out of the only party desperate enough to have welcomed them in the first place with only the”leading voices in right-wing politics” of The Express and Fox News to keep them company.
2 comments | tags: Amber Valley, Cliff Roper, Debra Purdy, Derby Patriot, Emma Roper, Lewis Allsebrook, Paul Hilliard | posted in Derbyshire
