Nick Griffin’s British Nazi Party continued its terminal decline this weekend as it managed to mobilise just 25 fascists to mope about around outside the immigration offices in Croydon.
The two dozen attending their rally belies the real strength of the BNP though. In truth, their tiny ranks had been swollen by Nazi National Front members and Polish fascists from the National Revival of Poland organisation – notorious for attacking LGBT demonstrations and chanting “gas the queers”, as well as publishing a book called The Myth of the Holocaust.
A member of the Polish Nazi outfit NOP, with their red and black banner, joins BNP members in Croydon (left). The NOP are infamous for their “shock campaign” posters like this one (right) which reads, “Fascism? WE’RE EVEN WORSE!”
The pathetic Nazi gathering was outnumbered four-to-one by antifascists, who had congregated for a counter-demonstration called by Croydon Trades Council and Unite Against Fascism. Some 100 anti-racists gathered to shout down the BNP’s speakers and hurl abuse at the Nazis until they were seen off.
The pitiful showing reveals a BNP shrunken to its hard core of Hitlerite oddballs. The demonstration was organised by John Clarke – the Croydon Nazi, who Anders Breivik sent his “manifesto” before murdering eight people in a fascist terror attack. Leading the rally, ostensibly against immigration, was South American immigrant Carlos Cartiglia. Meanwhile, former Kingston BNP council candidate (and proud winner of 23 votes, after a UAF campaign against him), David Child, was also in attendance – despite leaving the party to join the National Front, before being kicked out of that outfit and joining the openly “National Socialist” British Movement.
Nothing better symbolises the decomposition of the BNP down to its lunatic core than the recent claims by Nick Griffin to have stopped the war in Syria.
Far from feeding from the kind of soft racism that allowed them to rise to notoriety late last decade, the BNP are now trapped down Weirdo Alley, handing out leaflets about the Labour Party being a paedophilic conspiracy to lower the age of consent and hanging around with open Hitler-worshippers. Luckily, wherever they go, people get organised to show everyone exactly how outnumbered, tiny and isolated they are. This is slowingly condemning the BNP to the dustbin of history.
We need to continue to organise across South West London to beat back the Nazis every time they show their faces, whether it’s the BNP, the National Front or the fascist English Defence League. Many of the country’s most influential politicians will spend the next year, in the run up to the London local elections, shamelessly playing the race card and attacking migrants, Muslims and others. Every time they do so, they open a space for the Nazis to organise – we have to be ready to shut down that space and keep the Nazis where they belong, in the gutter.
About 100 antifascists were out to oppose the embarrassingly tiny BNP demonstration. In 2009, the BNP won 950,000 votes in the European elections – this weekend it managed to mobilise less than 20 of its members. Its decline is down to the hard work of local activists who have pushed to oppose them wherever they stand candidates and wherever they try to intimidate people on the streets.
kingstonuaf 