The finances of the British National Party are lurching from bad to worse following reports its staff were not paid last month, sparking speculation on nationalist websites that the party could go bankrupt. With the leadership struggling to manage a ballooning turnover, profligacy and calamitous legal cases have laid waste to a reported income of £1.9 million. While BNP staffers work out how to get by without any money, a fundraising consultant brought in by Führer Griffin is still being paid £162,000 per year.
The string of cock-ups that have brought the party to the precipice have been reported elsewhere but are worth recapping. The party faced a bill of up to £100,000 after its legal struggle with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Even after members voted to ditch whites-only membership in February, the equalities body claims the party has not gone far enough. If the High Court finds the BNP in breach of the EHRC’s order then it faces having its assets seized. The costs the party would face until it complies are eye watering: up to £1,000 per day for a legal commissioner and £3,000 per day for its assets to be held. A settlement for an unfair dismissal case brought by former staffer Michaela Mackenzie has still not been paid.
With his organisation up financial sh*t creek, what was the Great Leaders’s masterplan? Nick Griffin’s next move was to deliberately start another legal dispute with a multinational corporation! The unauthorised use of Marmite branding in a party advert, a reference to the party’s supposed “love them or hate them” appeal, cost the BNP a reported £168,000 [The Mirror mow report that a settlement, between £70,000 and £170,000 has now been reached] after legal action by Unilever. The party first claimed the advert was a spoof before – realising the financial implications of their stunt – denying responsibility for adding a jar of yeast extract to the video:
Legal action over the BNP's use of Marmite in a party ad cost the party £168,000
The tale of the BNP’s financial troubles has been given added piquancy by the emergence of the head of the party’s elections department as a leadership challenger to Nick Griffin. Eddy Butler has the backing of heavyweights such as Nick Cass, described as the “face of the party”owing to the use of his family in leaflets and their appearance on the documentary BNP Wives. The insurgency against Griffin raises the hilarious prospect of disgruntled oiks doing the job of anti-fascists such as Searchlight for them by washing the BNP’s dirty linen in public.
Butler has already likened the party’s finances to “the Bermuda Triangle, where all this money goes into it and nothing comes out again”!
