Tag Archives: Timothy Knowles

2012/05/04

Bye bye BNP!

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

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.

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2012/04/20

Local elections round up

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

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.

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2012/04/10

National Front’s Tim Knowles tries again

By East Midlands Anti-Fascists

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.

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