Exclusive: Fascist boss fights ex-pal in court; bring Bring it on!

The Sunday World by Steve Moore | Tuesday, 7 February 2012

Griffin: Who's sorry now?

BNP leader Nick Griffin is going head-to-head in court with a former printing boss from Belfast.

We can reveal that Griffin will appear as a witness in a blackmail trial after he alleged that ‘loyalists’ threatened him if he didn’t pay a £50,000 debt he owed.

David Sloan has been charged with blackmail and is due to appear at Carlisle Crown Court on March 12.

Mr Sloan was the boss of small family firm Romac Printing which was based off the Newtownards Road until it went bust last year.

The company had taken on an extensive contract from the BNP which at the time was being operated from a secret Belfast base.

Romac printed thousands of election leaflets for the BNP’s doomed 2010 election campaign.

But the BNP refused to pay a penny and Romac went to the wall as a result.

And in a further twist to the story we understand Griffin’s former best mate – firebrand Scottish Reverend Jim Dowson is helping the defence.

Dowson once ran the BNP in Ulster and gave the printing contract to Romac but he has fallen foul of the party since then and has commented on how the party had forced a number of Ulster firms to go bust.

Jim Dowson

Last year the Sunday World revealed how Griffin was visited by a group of men from Belfast demanding debts owed.

The men also allegedly visited the parents of Nick Griffin as well as his daughter Jenny Matthys during an extended ‘tour’ of the mainland.

Expected

No money changed hands and at a farcical employment tribunal in Belfast last December, where the BNP were in the dock, it was claimed that both Nick Griffin and his daughter were too scared to come to Belfast to give evidence because loyalists had previously threatened them.

During the three day hearing at Belfast’s gasworks Jenny Matthy’s husband Angus gave evidence that his wife couldn’t come to the tribunal because she feared for her life.

He also claimed that he and his wife were “run off the road” by supposed loyalists in England.

All three members of the Griffin family are due to give evidence at the upcoming hearing which is expected to go to trial.

Until the office closed following a string of financial cock-ups, Jenny Matthys ran the BNP membership department from a unit in a Dundonald industrial estate.

She lived in Comber with her husband but Angus claimed at the employment tribunal they were forced to leave abruptly.

Following the 2010 election the BNP went into financial meltdown and today have debts estimated of at least £500,000.

In the aftermath the BNP tried to come up with a financial plan which would see their creditors getting a fraction of what they were owed.

They offered a string of Ulster business’s as well as landlords and other people owed money just 5p in every pound.

Staff made redundant when the Belfast office closed were owed thousands in unpaid wages as well.

Lawyers acting for a some ex-BNP staff served papers on the party demanding they be paid in full.

We revealed last year how a group of men from Ulster had visited addresses connected to Nick Griffin.

They made an unannounced call at the home of Griffin’s daughter Jenny.

But when she wasn’t in they called at the home of his father in Wales and delivered the message.

“These guys meant business,” said a source at the time.

“The printing company wants their money. They are run by a man who has plenty of friends.

“There were four men. They called at Jenny’s house but she wasn’t there so they went to Nick Griffin’s dad’s house in Welshpool, Powys,Wales.

“Griffin’s dad has money and bailed his son out before. The message from this gang was very simple – ‘Pay what’s owed or we’ll be back’.

“The BNP have left a lot of Ulster business’s in the sh*t. They owe hundreds of thousands of pounds but they have no way of paying up because they are practically bankrupt.”

The deal with the printers was secured by Scottish firebrand and convicted criminal Jim Dowson.

Blamed

At the time Dowson was in charge of the BNP nerve centre which was based in an enterprise park in Dundonald.

Indeed Dowson had convinced the BNP hierarchy to base their major fundraising in Belfast promising they would be able to operate in peace.

But the move was a complete disaster with rising costs not being met by donations and membership dues.

Dowson and the Belfast office were blamed by members in England for the election fiasco which saw the BNP fail to win a single Westminster seat and lose all their council seats in east London.

Dowson: Fancies the fight