Racist campaigning for BNP

Manchester Evening News by Chris Osuh | Tuesday, 2 June 2009 | Click here for original article

A CAMPAIGNER touring the north in a bid to drum up support for the BNP is a convicted racist.

Roy West, from Dukinfield, has been promoting the right-wing party in the run-up to Thursday's European Parliament elections.

The M.E.N can reveal that in February Mr West pleaded guilty to racial harassment after telling his German next-door neighbour to 'go back to Krautland and kill some more Jews'.

Mr West, who has stood for the BNP in Dukinfield, was fined £125 and ordered to pay £215 costs and £50 compensation to the victim, Bernd Kugow.

Mr West launched into the tirade after attempting to put a Union Jack flag on Mr Kugow's shed.

During sentencing the judge described his behaviour as 'wholly unacceptable, vile, offensive and distasteful'.

Mr West boasts of having handed out 10,000 BNP leaflets in Rochdale in one of his internet postings. He claims to be 'elections co-ordinator for the North', although senior party figures have denied the BNP has one.

In the most recent video, posted on Sunday, Mr West boasts of a 'great response in Rochdale' and an 'even bigger response' in Bury.

The campaigner has also driven a promotional truck - which he calls the 'BNP truth truck' around Dukinfield and Hyde.

After Mr West's arrest last year, the BNP condemned the Crown Prosecution Service as 'viciously anti-British'.

Quotes on the outfit's website attributed to leader, Nick Griffin, said: "The BNP has it on good authority that the political masters of the Manchester Police and the CPS in the North West have been told to find anything at all to try and destroy the BNP in that city and the region."

As reported in the M.E.N., Eddy O'Sullivan, Salford organiser for the BNP, has been 'disciplined' for posting racist comments on the internet.

Speaking of Mr O'Sullivan, the group's deputy leader, Simon Darby, said: "It's an internal matter - he regrets what he's done and he has been severely disciplined by the party. He will not be an MEP, not under any circumstances. That's his punishment and he understands that."