Nick Griffin has welcomed the ruling that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) must pay the British National Party’s court costs in full as a “victory for freedom”.
“It is a massive victory for the British National Party and freedom and a crushing blow for the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Trevor Phillips' PC bullies,” he said.
Mr Griffin’s comments follow the High Court judgement ruling that the EHRC must pay all the costs incurred by him, Simon Darby and Tanya Lumby during their brave defence against the EHRC’s attempts to seize the Party's assets and throw the defendants into prison.
The ruling of Lord Justice Moore-Bick and Mr Justice Ramsey is a further crushing defeat for the Commission and a personal humiliation for Trevor Phillips and Simon Woolley, who at the start of proceedings boasted on TV that they were going to close the British National Party down.
"Thanks to the staunch generosity of so many of our members and supporters and the magnificent efforts of our legal team, their attack on democracy and freedom failed utterly," said Mr Griffin.
"The British National Party is still very much alive and kicking. We've built up a legal team which can go head to head with the most powerful opponents and beat them."
On being told that EHRC would be forced to pay its costs in full, Simon Darby said, "I told them they would never beat me or the British National Party, but they simply wouldn't listen. Now these people are going to pay the price for persecuting Nationalists. The question has to be asked as to whether this discredited quango will survive the next round of government cuts."
Exactly how much the EHRC will have to pay must now be assessed in a long and complicated procedure that will take some months. When we get our money back, it will make a healthy contribution to our war chest for next year's Assembly election in London, where the EHRC is/was based.
For nearly two years the Equality and Human Rights Commission, headed by the racist Trevor Phillips, has been hounding the British National Party in an attempt to get the party deemed illegal and ultimately squashed.
Not content with the BNP’s constitutional changes, Phillips dragged them through the courts for months at huge expense to the party and the British tax payer.
Well, today the lion roared, and the EHRC’s attempts to have the British National Party’s assets seized were rejected by the Royal Court of Justice.
The media were outside the venue in force hoping to get the story of the year - The British National Party being squashed - but they failed miserably, and while they are now saying the case wasn’t important, those of us who support the party know differently. Because if the EHRC had won this case the BNP would be no more.
Here’s what Mr Griffin had to say:
This is a great day for the British National Party.
We have won a spectacular David and Goliath victory for freedom. This is the fourth time that the politically correct state has tried to jail me, and it is the fourth time that it has blown up in their anti-British faces.
While the political elite get paid for telling lies, they try to bankrupt and imprison us for telling the truth. Against all the odds, we won again, and the High Court has confirmed that the British National Party has acted within the law.
We are a legal and legitimate political part y which is entitled to organise and campaign for the fair treatment and equality of the British people,” he continued.
We welcome good people of all races who are willing to help us win fair play and freedom for the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish.
Most important of all, this case forced the ECHR to acknowledge the existence of the native people of our islands as a distinct ethnic group, with the result that all members of that group are at last entitled to the full protection of anti discrimination laws.
The English people especially are now no longer a non-people in their own country.
It was worth going into debt and risking prison to secure this principle. But we are not going to prison. We have won.
So we are going home to celebrate giving the British people an early Christmas present: freedom, equality and the right to be ourselves.”
The British National Party will be seeking a full costs order against the ECHR for this vexatious action, Mr Griffin added.
I particularly liked the following comment...
Two important issues came to light with the verdict today (and the EHRCs comments afterwards).
1: the EHRC were forced to acknowledge the existence of the native people of our islands as a distinct ethnic group, with the result that all members of that group are at last entitled to the full protection of anti discrimination laws.
2: By stating that the party have complied with the EHRCs requests to ammend the constitution, it is now impossible for any member to lose their job or be persecuted for being a member without having the protection of the EHRC.
So everyone who has been afraid to openly support or join the British National Party, be afraid no more.
Adam Walker speak about the court case brought by the EHRC against the British National Party which drew to a close yesterday. Judgement will be delivered in a weeks time.
The EHRC are at it again. They are considering suing police forces for discriminating against blacks and Asians.
They say that stop and search powers are used disproportionately against ethnic minorities and in London alone almost 20% searched were black.
Hello! Wakey, wakey!
London is MAJORITY ethnic now, in fact London has the highest proportion of non-white British ethnics, with a constant inflow of new migrants from abroad, so that means us whites are discriminated against.
News for Trevor Phillips...
Most crimes ARE committed by ethnics especially in highly enriched areas.
And how is it I dare to say this? Take a look at the figures and also, in case you missed it, the video of Wimbledon and you'll see why.
Now for a few facts...
In 2007, 42% of London’s population were non-White.
A third of all Londoners were born outside the UK, compared with 12 per cent of the population of the UK.
The region had nearly 40 per cent of all foreign-born residents in the UK.
As usual, the liars in the press are reporting that the BNP are racist and membership is closed. The only one to report the truth is Sky News, so here is their report...
The British National Party says applications to join are being processed again despite a court order earlier banning recruitment of new members.
Judge Paul Collins at the Central London County Court said that the party's new membership rules "could discriminate against non-whites".
The group was forced to draw up a new constitution after scrapping its whites-only policy, following the threat of a court injunction by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
The Judge told the court: "I hold that the BNP are likely to commit unlawful acts of discrimination within section 1b of the Race Relations Act 1976 in the terms on which they are prepared to admit persons to membership under the 12th addition of their constitution."
An injunction was put in place ordering the BNP to comply with race equality laws, and the membership list will be closed until it does.
However, the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, later claimed he had amended the constitution to comply with the law and membership had therefore reopened.
Mr Griffin was met with taunts of "Nazi scum" as he arrived in court.
After the ruling he told Sky News that he had changed the constitution in line with the court's decision, but described the ruling as "outrageous".
He said: "It's embarrassing for the politically correct to say that believing we should stop and reverse the flow of immigration is in some way against the law.
"The idea that the state can give a taxpayer-funded quango the right to go poking its nose into what political parties believe and don't believe sets a very dangerous precedent."
Following the ruling, Susie Uppal, of the EHRC, said: "Today's judgement confirms our view that both the BNP's 11th constitution and the amended 12th constitution are unlawful.
"This matter could have been resolved last year by the BNP changing its constitution properly, rather than believing it could find a way around discrimination laws."
After the change of constitution last month, millionaire Asian businessman Mo Chaudry vowed to join the party and "fight them from within".
Membership applications to join the British National Party are now again open despite the state’s best efforts to subvert the party and democracy, Nick Griffin MEP has announced.
Speaking after the conclusion of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) court case today, Mr Griffin said the court had in effect ruled that political parties could not ask its members to endorse policies which oppose mass immigration.
“The court ruled that sections 3.2.1 and 3.2.3 of the BNP’s new constitution could not be set as conditions for membership of the party as they would discriminate against ethnics,” Mr Griffin said.
Section 3.2.1 of the BNP’s new constitution reads as follows:
Our party is a party of British Nationalism, both ethnic and civic, and we are committed to the principle of national sovereignty in all our British Homeland affairs and of self determination and sovereignty in all Indigenous British affairs.
We are pledged to the continued creation, fostering, maintenance and existence of the unity and of the integrity of the Indigenous British and of the government of the countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and of Eire, which together, and as further expanded in Schedule 1 (“Interpretation Rules”), are referred to in this, our constitution, as our “British Homeland.”
Section 3.2.3 reads as follows:
We are pledged to stemming and reversing the immigration into our British Homeland that has, without the express consent of the Indigenous British, taken place since 1948, and to restoring and maintaining, by legal changes, negotiation and consent, the Indigenous British as the overwhelming majority in the make-up of the population and expression of culture in each part of our British Homeland.
“The court has ruled that these clauses, which are part of the membership conditions as stated in section 4 of the constitution, makes it impossible for ethnics to join the BNP,” Mr Griffin said.
“We, of course, disagree with the court’s opinion.
“There is no correlation between being opposed to mass immigration and the opening of membership of the party,” Mr Griffin said, adding that he knew members of ethnic minorities who were just as opposed to mass immigration as any indigenous British member of the party.
“Section 3 of the BNP constitution is protected and cannot be changed except by an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of the party,” Mr Griffin went on.
“The new constitution grants the party’s leader the power to change all non-protected parts of that document to comply with the law, without the need for EGMs.
“Section 4, which deals with the requirements for membership and includes the demand that members support all the principles of the party, is not protected.
“I have, therefore, with immediate effect changed the section 4 requirements, as I am entitled to do, to comply with the court order,” Mr Griffin continued.
“What this means is that people can apply to join the BNP without having to endorse and support the principles of the party.
“Everyone knows this is a mad situation, and it has set an astonishing and extremely dangerous precedent for all parties.
“It is a complete subversion of democracy and is in reality an attempt by the state to order the citizenry what policies they can or cannot believe in.
“The bottom line is that the BNP’s policies remain exactly as they were, particularly the demand for an end to mass immigration.
“I have changed the non-write protected constitution to comply with the court order and the amended version will be published online well within the 30 days set our constitution.
“Membership applications are therefore are now open and the 7000-strong backlog will be processed in the order in which they applied,” Mr Griffin said, adding that any ethnic who had applied to join the party would wait in turn like anyone else to have their applications processed.
The malicious court case against the British National Party over its membership rules has been postponed for final judgement to Friday after the presiding judge threw out two thirds of the Equalities and Human Rights Commissions’ case today.
“The EHRC’s argument was in two sections,” said BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP.
“The first was that the new constitution was not in force because the BNP had not followed the correct procedures in setting it up.
“The judge has decisively rejected that and ruled that the BNP’s new constitution is valid and has been constituted in a correct and legal manner,” Mr Griffin said.
“The only remaining part upon which the judge still has to decide is the EHRC’s allegation that the BNP’s new constitution constitutes a form of indirect discrimination. He will give his opinion at 10:30 on Friday morning.”
Mr Griffin said the EHRC’s argument was based on an attempt to use the word “policies” in the Act to mean to refer to aims and objectives of any party or group, rather than about application and recruitment policies.
“The EHRC of course claims otherwise, but it is patently obvious this is what they are trying to do,” he said.
“If their argument was followed through, it would open up a can of worms which would be absolutely absurd.
“It would mean, for example, that a party which stood for abortion on demand could be accused of discriminating against Catholics, or vegetarian parties could be accused of discriminating against meat eaters,” Mr Griffin said.
“This would set a terrible precedent and we would hope that the judge would not go down this road.
“It is a very promising sign that judge has already seen fit to strike down most of the EHRC’s pathetic arguments over procedural issues. We would hope that this consistency and logic is followed through on Friday.”
Mr Griffin added that the BNP’s new constitution has empowered him to make any changes if so ordered by the court without having to go through an extended procedure once again.
“As a result, I intend to end this waste of time, money and blatant political persecution one way or another on Friday,” Mr Griffin concluded.
In 2009 Boris Johnson praised BHM for its vital work in educating people about the "historical role and the huge contribution of African and Caribbean communities to the capital".
So why is he now cutting its funding to the bone? It is particularly ironic that this occurs in the run-up to the Olympics, with the GLA busy marketing London as a great world city.
We ask the mayor to immediately reverse this ill-judged decision and to restore BHM's funding.
Professor Barbara Taylor (Raphael Samuel History Centre, University of East London) Dr Matt Cook (Raphael Samuel History Centre, Birkbeck, University of London) Prof Stuart Hall (Emeritus, Open University) Sarah Waters (writer) Prof Catherine Hall (University College London) Prof Alun Howkins (University of Sussex) Prof Jerry White (Birkbeck, University of London) Prof Cora Kaplan (Queen Mary University of London) Prof Jane Caplan (Oxford) Prof Norma Clarke (Kingston University) Prof Matt Innes (Birkbeck, University of London)Dr David Feldman (Birkbeck, University of London) Prof John Arnold (Birkbeck, University of London) Prof Lynne Segal (Birkbeck, University of London) Dr Anne Summers (Birkbeck, University of London) Dr Caroline Humfres (Birkbeck, University of London) Prof Sally Alexander (Goldsmiths, University of London) Dr Sean Brady (Birkbeck, University of London) Dr Serafina Cuomo (Birkbeck, University of London) Alex Potts (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Professor Andrew Hemingway (University College London) Dr Steve Edwards (Open University) Dr Gail Day (University of Leeds)
Seeing as our universities and schools are trying to phase out British history and it’s not politically correct to be proud to be white, why the hell should there be a Black History Month?
One of the Times liars, Dominic Kennedy, is ejected from the BNP Conference and Richard Barnbrook lays down the law.
What you don't realise is that Richard Barnbrook 'laid down the law' BEFORE the reporter entered the meeting, although the video implies it was after he was ejected.
Another typical propaganda stunt from the media scum.
Today, British National Party members voted to change their constitution to allow black and asian people to join.
Party rules have been in place since 1982, but after interference from the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the Central London County Court told party leaders the constitution did not comply with race relations.
14,000 BNP member received the proposals for change via the post after the court ruling and were invited to London to vote.
Over 300 people voted for the changes with 5 against and 3 abstainers.
During the meeting, BNP security removed a journalist from the Times newspaper from the hall. The journalist in question had been asked to pledge that he would not work with another Times journalist, Fiona Hamilton, who has specialised in fabricating the most vicious lies about the BNP in the columns of that newspaper.
The journalist refused to give such an undertaking and was then asked to leave. He refused and was then escorted off the premises by the BNP stewards. Mr Griffin said afterwards that the BNP did not mind criticism, which was part of the political process, but was sick and tired of the outright lies from the Times.
The EHRC will be presented with the new constitution by Tuesday, before they and the BNP return to court next month.
Will the EHRC move the goal posts again?
Of course they will.
Mr Griffin said it was clear that the ECHRs intention was to keep the BNP in the courts in an attempt to financially exhaust the party.
Mr Rajinda Singh, a Sikh and long time supporter of the party, is expected to become the first non-white member.
Why doesn't the BNP stand its ground and fight the Equalities Commission? Why are we changing our Constitution when the law is not yet in force?
We are standing our ground, and doing so has already cost us tens of thousands of pounds. The Equalities Commission timed their legal assault to interfere with our General Election preparations. They claimed that our present constitution not only will be illegal under the forthcoming Equality Act (which it clearly would, because this wicked 'law' has been tailor-made to deal with the BNP) but that it is also illegal under the present law. We dispute this, but to engage in a legal battle that could easily end up costing us £250,000 to try to prove that point - which will almost certainly be irrelevant within a couple of months - would be utter madness.
It was a simple choice: Contest that on their ground in court, or contest the General Election. We are a practical party fighting in the real world for the rights of our people. Victory in the left-leaning court system would have been very unlikely, and we would then have been forced to pay the Equalities Commission gargantuan legal costs as well as losing our own. Such futile show-boating could easily have bankrupted us.
Why has our membership list been frozen?
We undertook to freeze membership applications because by doing so we instantly made it impossible for the Equalities Commission to claim that our admissions policy is discriminatory. If we hadn't done this they would immediately have been able to launch full blown legal warfare that would have cost the Party an enormous sum of money and virtually destroyed any chance of our contesting the General Election. The freezing of our membership list enabled us a 'breathing space' of several months in order to change our Constitution, making our membership criteria compliant with the forthcoming Equality Act that is being rushed through Parliament.
We have no real choice in the matter, any attempt to circumvent or deviate from the brittle undertaking to the court would result in financial disaster for the Party and certain ruin. We certainly didn't agree to this lightly. The membership ban is seriously hitting our finances and organisation, and has stunted our General Election preparations - which was their plan all along. But it was clearly much the lesser of two evils.
Why has the court process, and the process of producing a new Constitution, dragged out for so long?
Solicitors are very expensive to hire and until the decision to put the new constitutional changes to the membership had been taken by the Voting Members at National Conference, it would have been folly to spend money on legal researchers in advance. So until mid November when the Conference took place, our hands were tied. Once Conference had made the decision to put the new constitutional changes to an EGM, solicitors were hired to produce a legally sound new constitution for the Party. Then several more factors delayed the production of the proposed new constitution.
First, to stand even a chance of creating a constitution which would come within the Equality Act without leaving the party wide open to the kind of subversion being planned by the likes of Simon Wooley and Operation Black Vote, we had to find lawyers who were experts in Race Relations and anti-discrimination laws. Since every single existing firm of specialists in this field is fundamentally left-wing, that meant that we had to find a normal, non-political, firm willing to start from scratch becoming expert in this enormously complicated area of the law. Second, with the far-left and police regularly intimidating venue owners we had difficulty finding a suitable place to hold an EGM. Then the bitter winter weather caused delays and cancellations to several key meetings with our lawyers, disrupting the extremely tight timetable laid down by the court, thus in the end putting our planned EGM on 14th February sixteen days past the date first agreed.
Is this whole saga a disguised attempt to ban the BNP by the backdoor?
The end result of the Equalities Commission court case is that the right of ethnic groups to associate amongst themselves is outlawed, and any attempt to do so will result in legal retribution. However, what is also apparent is 'one rule for them and one rule for us' - the Equalities Commission is engaging in selective prosecution on a truly breathtaking scale. Why the BNP now, 28 years after its foundation? Why not haul into court similar ethno-centric organisations? If the Equalities Commission had its way, the BNP would not exist at all.
This was apparent by their statements at the last court date, where they seemingly dropped all reference to our admissions policy and instead started lambasting the principles that underpin our Constitution, such as our commitment to preserving the indigenous ethnic and cultural character of the British people. Ethno-nationalism is then the first ideology and viewpoint to be outlawed in democratic Britain. From the start of the court case onwards, ethno-nationalist political organisations cannot exist, except in prostrated form, and take part in the political process. Welcome to totalitarian Britain.
Will the Equality Act become law if the Conservatives win the election?
Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Leader of the House of Commons, Harriet Harman (the person responsible for deciding/timetabling Parliamentary business), are hell-bent on forcing the Equality Act through before the forthcoming General Election. The judge in the last hearing stated categorically his opinion that the current Bill will become law very shortly. Even if by chance that doesn't happen, anyone who thinks that David Cameron's ultra-liberal Conservative Party would scrap the Bill clearly doesn't understand just how much Cameron has been created and promoted as a clone of Tony Blair, in order to carry on Blair's work.
Just this week, Cameron has declared his intention to give Africans with AIDS an automatic right to asylum and medical care in Britain. The idea that such a creature would let us off the hook is ridiculous. We have to prepare to survive the worst this rotten Establishment can throw at us. But in truth it doesn't even matter. The Equality Commission's attack was launched under current law, and had to be dealt with now. Waiting to see who wins the next election just wasn't an option.
Will the new constitutional changes lead to a multi-racial BNP?
The new constitutional changes comply with the forthcoming provisions of the Equality Act, thus making the BNP a legal entity once the new law comes into force. There is simply no alternative, except to face legal financial meltdown, and not being able to take part in elections. As for the BNP becoming a 'multi-racial' organisation, this will never happen. Nationalist political parties all over Europe such as the Front National in France, and more 'hardline' parties in many parts of Europe, have always had to allow ethnic minorities to join their respective organisations. This has never led to them becoming 'multi-racial' and it has never hindered their progress.
In the experience of nationalist parties on the Continent, only small numbers of patriotic civic ethnic minorities join and there is no reason to suppose that our experience - if the new constitution is accepted - will be any different. Among the changes and expansions to the constitution are many clauses designed to prevent any group who wish us ill from infiltrating and derailing the BNP. The biggest danger there never was the empty boasting of Simon Wooley and his fellow black racists, but impeccably white but liberal civic nationalists, refugees from the Tory party and such like. The new constitution gives significantly extra weight to the people who are already in the party, who have been 'through the mill' when times were really difficult. This does not discriminate against any ethnic group, but it will keep Johnny-Come-Latelys in their place.
Is Chairman Nick Griffin not willing to go to jail rather than capitulate in the face of establishment persecution?
Chairman Nick Griffin has made it very clear that he would regard being sent to prison on this matter of principle as a tremendous moral and political victory. But, unfortunately that is not the 'risk' we are facing. The penalties if we resist the Equalities Commission and the Equality Act would be overwhelmingly financial, further astronomical court costs and being deregistered as a political party and hence banned from standing in elections. Should we choose to adopt a stubborn, irresponsible posture, we would be financially ruined, tied up in expensive litigation and barred from taking part in the democratic process.
The choice we face is stark and non-negotiable: adapt to the new legislation, and survive, or face total and irreversible ruin. Fortunately the Voting Members took this point on board at the Annual Conference, where the vote in principle of complying with the Equality Act and keeping up the political fight was passed with only two individuals voting against. If the members who come and vote at next weekend's EGM show the same level-headed determination, we will present the new constitution to the judge during the first week of March, and anticipate that we would then be able to reopen our Membership and get back to business as usual. Poorer, but still standing, still in the game, and still working to win!
For months now we have battled the Equalities Commission to a standstill in court, and it has cost us dearly. At the last court date on Thursday 28th January, for example, the judge ordered us to pay £12,500 in court costs. When you add court costs on top of the money we are losing via the membership ban, you are talking about huge sums which should have been allocated to our General Election campaign. If you can spare any amount, however small, towards fighting the Equalities Commission and to our General Election preparations then use the details below. Thank you.
