Dowson starts the war early

Dowson’s attack

There’s few characters more interesting on the British far-right than Jim Dowson. Dowson, a third party fundraiser, made his name and his money by intimidating young women-in the name of God, outside family planning clinics across Ireland and Britain.

He then found Nick Griffin, and between 2008 and 2011 the two of them drained the pockets, purses and pensions of thousands of BNP members and supporters with endless begging letters, text messages, fundraising appeals, phone calls and emails all begging for money to save Britain.

Dowson in particular, was very good at it, boasting to one Irish newspaper that from his Belfast bunker, he and the BNP were “raking it in.”

So tight were Griffin and Dowson, that we used a phrase better associated with the Mafia to describe Dowson’s role in the British National Party (BNP). We christened him Griffin’s consiglieri. Given that one Dowson/BNP employee was threatened by Dowson with a shot gun and others who crossed him were threatened with death and destruction, it seemed a fitting sobriquet.

BNP officials however, hated him. They were none too happy with the secrecy and intimidation that cloaked the BNP call centre in Belfast that Dowson owned and ran. Dowson even excluded a number of BNP officials from the office, and forced the hapless son in law of Nick Griffin, Angus Mathys, to spend his days at the office wearing rubber gloves and opening sacks of hate mail.

Dowson eventually fell on his sword and was one of the first to leave the BNP’s sinking ship in 2011. He was loathed by the majority of the far-right, but as he has the apparent Midas touch, it was not long before he not only set up a commercial rival to the BNP (the BNP’s own description of their political attitudes), he even lent his services to other far-right groups.

Later, when the BNP leader and his family became embroiled in kidnap plots and alleged paramilitary conspiracies’, Dowson was never far behind the headlines.

Dowson’s own political venture, Britain First, has surprised many by surviving and even showing signs of growth. This has been in part to Dowson’s ability to grab headlines in Northern Ireland over his often outrageous antics and those of his own boy wonder, the former BNP leading light Paul Golding, another one not averse to publicity stunts.

Last month we revealed exclusively, that Dowson’s party is to fight the European Elections, most notably in Griffin’s seat in the North West region. News of this came just before Griffin was declared a bankrupt.

Griffin’s response to the news was angry. Well, he probably won’t take very well either to last night’s email shot by Dowson to some 80,000 people from the BNP’s old mailing list, either.

The bulletin was entitled ‘WARNING: All ex and current BNP members, must read this!’ It went on to make a number of unsubstantiated allegations about people in the party, but most of all, warned current official’s that they may well be liable for Griffin’s debts, as we blogged about here first.

If waking up to Dowson’s kiss and tell attack was not bad enough, today’s YouGov poll for the North West Euro constituency makes even worse reading, probably….

YouGov: Not looking good for Griffin