BNP expels its former London Assembly member

Searchlight / HOPE not hate by Hope not Hate | Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Richard Barnbrook, who was elected in 2008 as the British National Party’s sole member of the London Assembly, has been expelled from the fascist party.

Barnbrook had resigned the BNP whip in the London Assembly on 13 August over the financial mismanagement of the party and the suspension of several of its members. He declared that he would be sitting as an independent until these issues had been resolved.

Before that he had been persuaded by Patrick Harrington, one of the leaders of the rival Third Way party, who works for the BNP in a human resources role, to stand as a “stalking horse” candidate in the leadership challenge in an attempt to deflect votes from Eddy Butler, the real challenger to Nick Griffin, but received a mere 23 votes.

Barnbrook’s expulsion was announced in an email that was apparently sent to BNP officers but not to Barnbrook himself, who found out about it from an internet forum. In the email Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s acting national organiser and Griffin loyalist from Cumbria, stated that Barnbrook should have resigned his London Assembly seat if he no longer supported the party. “A Party list seat, he is fully aware, is not a seat won by an individual; people voted for the British National Party not for Richard Barnbrook and in our opinion this makes Richard’s actions indefensible.”

Barnbrook has 14 days to appeal to an internal disciplinary tribunal according to Jefferson. Lee Barnes, the BNP’s former legal officer who left the party over its refusal to investigate allegations of fraud and sexual assault against Jim Dowson, Griffin’s fundraising consultant and owner of most of the BNP’s assets and operations, says that Barnbrook asked him to represent him at the tribunal. Not one to miss a trick, Barnes suggested Barnbrook first ask Harrington, who as well as working for the BNP is general secretary of the BNP’s fake trade union Solidarity, to see whether Harrington would represent a Solidarity member against his own employer.

Expulsion from the party he joined in 1999 and claims still to support is not Barnbrook’s only problem. Tess Culnane, a former member of Barnbrook’s staff at the Greater London Authority, says she has reported him to the GLA’s standards committee for his “unreasonable” and “bullying” behaviour towards her.

Culnane, who was the BNP candidate for mayor of Lewisham this year, told Andrew Gilligan of the Daily Telegraph: “Richard Barnbrook failed to respond to requests for help from members of the public. When I did tell him about people who had come forward, he very often adopted a resentful manner towards me and threatened me with dismissal.

“His continual bullying manner and threats to sack me became intolerable. He would fall into a strop. He would make faces behind our backs when we were talking. He was a total embarrassment to those of us in his office.”

Culnane also says that Mr Barnbrook took out his anger on other members of his office staff, including Emma Colgate, a BNP councillor in Thurrock. “She was forced to resign due to Richard’s perpetual hectoring manner,” said Culnane.

“At one point he followed her into the ladies’ toilet hectoring her.”

Culnane says her complaint also alleges that Barnbrook has been drunk during Mayor’s Questions. It is well known that Barnbrook has a longstanding alcohol problem.

It is possible that the BNP has encouraged Culnane to make trouble for Barnbrook in revenge for his rejection of Griffin’s leadership of the party. Barnbrook’s election to the London Assembly was a coup for the BNP. Even this summer the party described it as “the most momentous breakthrough” up to that point, the result of Dowson’s early success in fundraising, which enabled the party to mount a “large and unprecedented campaign”.

His subsequent failure to make a mark on the Assembly or indeed on London, and a string of embarrassing public appearances and lies, made him more a liability than an asset to the BNP. After the BNP lost all 12 of its seats on Barking and Dagenham council, Barnbrook was sacked as the party’s local organiser.

Before his expulsion he had promised “as a loyal member of the party” to ensure that a BNP member is re-elected to the Assembly in 2012. Perhaps Griffin, who is the party’s acting organiser for London, thinks there is a greater chance of that without Barnbrook’s help.