The BNP and extremist links

Despite claiming to have adopted more moderate policies, the BNP has continued to maintain links with some of the most extreme neo-nazis, antisemites, and Holocaust deniers in the world.

The BNP has a long relationship with William Pierce, leader of the National Alliance, one of the most hardline nazi groups in the US. In August 1999, Pierce addressed asn American Friends of the BNP meeting in Arlington, Virginia. Pierce is the author of the notorious Turner Diaries, the bible of the far right, which inspired the Oklahoma bombing. Pierce's articles regularly appeared in Spearhead when it was the official BNP magazine, and in 1995 he addressed a BNP rally in London.

The American Friends of the BNP has no qualms about inviting some of the world's most notorious nazis to address its meetings. Previous guests and speakers have included Don Black, host of the world's largest neo-nazi Internet site; Vincent Edwards, campaign manager for the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke; and various members of the National Alliance.

In March 2001, Günther Deckert addressed a meeting of the BNP in West Croydon. Deckert was arrested and imprisoned for five years in Germany in 1995 for Holocaust denial. He had translated and published the notorious Leuchter Report penned by American Fred Leuchter, which claimed that no gassings of Jews took place at Auschwitz. Deckert was closely associated with the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) a far-right, racist party. Before his imprisonment he spoke at numerous BNP meetings in Britain, including a party rally in 1994. The February 2001 edition of Spearhead contains an article entitled, "Gunther Deckert: Martyr for Freedom". "How brave are the courageous minority like Gunther and his comrades who still continue the struggle against the blight of the 'New World Order', which seeks eventually to turn Germany into yet another pauper province of the global financial empire."

The star witness testifying on behalf of Nick Griffin, when he faced charges of inciting racial hatred in 1998, was Robert Faurisson, one of the world's foremost Holocaust deniers. Faurisson is a former professor of literature at Lyon University. Faurisson uses the concept of a Jewish conspiracy to account for the "myth" of the Holocaust: "The alleged Hitlerian gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews form one and the same historical lie, which permitted a gigantic financial swindle whose chief beneficiaries have been the state of Israel and international Zionism, and whose main victims have been the German people and the Palestinian people as a whole". Faurisson also testified at the trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, in Canada. He is a key speaker and writer for the Institute for Historical Review, a US-based pseudo-academic body dedicated to denying the Holocaust.

The BNP also sends a regular delegation to the far-right Front National's annual red, white, and blue festival in France.

The BNP has had a long association with David Irving, the holocaust denier whom a judge declared was a racist and antisemitic. In 1992, the BNP hosted an Irving meeting in Yorkshire, while its leadership attended two Irving seminars in London. Several BNP members attended Irving's failed libel trial last year.

The website of the American Friends of the BNP has links to openly nazi and antisemitic groups.

BNP members are heavily involved in the nazi skinhead music scene, Blood and Honour. In 1998, Blood and Honour hosted a fundraising concert for the BNP European Election campaign in Coventry. Among the audience were Nick Griffin (BNP Chairman) and Tony Lecomber (BNP Group Development Officer). The BNP also received financial assistance for its election campaign from Swedish nazis in the form of 100 nazi CDs which were later sold at £12 by the party.

London nailbomber, David Copeland, was a member of the BNP in East London. His regional organiser was Tony Lecomber who himself has convicted to trying to bomb a office of a rival organisation.