Vendetta against Burnley BNP  (2002)

 

Note; the pics above have recently been found on an old PC hard drive. They were thought to have been lost years ago. These pics are unique, as Herr Nick Gri££in had declared that NO pics were to be taken at this meeting.

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This is an excerpt written by John Tyndall in SPEARHEAD magazine..........

The full story of the damage Griffin has been doing in this region is much too long and detailed to fit into this article; others are working on that and before long we may have the chance to study it. Here I will just give a few of the barest of bare bones.

Somehow Nick has managed to alienate a large portion of leading activists in the most successful branch of all, the Burnley branch. Local people are better qualified than I am to give chapter and verse as to how this has happened. My own vantage point is a limited one and connected with my own personal experience. I was invited to speak at a Burnley branch meeting on the 1st August 2002. This infuriated Griffin when he heard about it and he employed all the persuasion he could to get the then organiser, Steve Smith, to cancel the invitation. Steve, to his great credit, stood firm. From then on, it became clear that his card was marked.

Spearhead gave a full account of that event in its September 2002 issue and I will not repeat all the details here save to say that, mysteriously, Anti-Nazi League demonstrators turned up on the evening, whereas they had not been present at any previous Burnley BNP meeting nor have been since. Who tipped them off about the meeting and my appearance at it as speaker? You can make up your own mind!

The meeting, notwithstanding all this, was very successful - but not nearly as successful as the one which took place on May 29th 2003, when 140 people turned up to hear speeches by Richard Edmonds and myself. This further angered Griffin. An inside report I received from friends in the party told me that at a private meeting at Blackburn just previous to the Burnley one Griffin had hatched a scheme to disrupt the latter. The plan was that one of his (Griffin's) acolytes would be present at the Burnley meeting accompanied by a group of 'heavies'. At a certain point in my speech the acolyte would stage a protest, whereupon if anyone tried to restrain him the heavies would move in and a violent scene would ensue. Then Griffin would be able to claim that wherever Tyndall speaks at BNP meetings there is disorder.

The plan went badly wrong. As the meeting proceeded, the Griffin acolyte could see that his brawny companions were reacting so enthusiastically to Richard Edmonds' and my speeches that he would be unlikely to get their support if he tried to make trouble. He remained silent and nothing happened. The meeting went smoothly and was a terrific success.

Apparently, Searchlight got hold of the story and printed it, but in this case the fact does not make the story untrue. My own source for it is much more reliable.

I have spoken at other meetings in the North West over recent months, in all of them getting a very good reception, and was down to speak at more when Griffin contrived my expulsion. It is very clear that he was getting frightened that I might influence local members.  

 http://www.spearhead.co.uk/0310-jt2.html

NWN: Tony 'bomber' Lecomber was generally thought to have tipped off the 'communists' that enabled a mob to descend on Burnley on that warm summer evening.

Another sad note not mentioned in this excerpt, but John Tyndall did mention it several times in other writings. Was the despicable decision by Nick Griffin to ban Peter Rushton from the meeting. This was done in very poor taste indeed. 

Steve Smith and others were extremely sad and embarassed  by this personal slight on Peter Rushton. It was shameful how he was led out of the building by the stewards of that meeting.

We think this shameful and personal episode 'tipped' decent nationalists like Steve Smith and Simon Bennett at Burnley BNP to 'dig their heels in' against the tyranny of Griffins leadership of the BNP.