BNP - Defending Your Rights to Give People Jelly Babies.
So, there's a "special feature" on the BNP's website, with a
:
"In a country where offering someone the wrong coloured jelly baby can get you arrested for a 'hate crime', you don't have to be a political activist to need to know what to do if it happens to you..."
The "special feature" itself, turns out to be the announcement of a new initiative "Shieldwall - the Nationalist Welfare Association", a "political and civil rights legal defence group", designed to help "active patriots avoid legal problems where possible, walk free from court where push comes to shove, and come through any sentence unbowed if the worst comes to the worst..."
So, what sort of "active patriots" can hope to benefit from this fount of wisdom?
Well, there's "73-year-old Margaret Walker...hit with a permanent ASBO and a £5000 costs bill for writing a politically incorrect letter about Muslim groomers to politicians..." or, as the, possibly less biased Portsmouth News puts it, a woman who sent hundreds of anonymous racist leaflets to politicians, social services, pubs, a retirement company and Marks and Spencers, leaflets that were described by a Councillor with twenty six years of experience as the worst they'd ever seen. And how restrictive was the ASBO that was so unreasonably applied to this defenceless little old lady? She was banned from posting anything that contained words or pictures that were foul or abusive or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress, and banned from sending anything unless her signature, name and return address were clearly marked on it. So terribly oppressive was this reaction, Nick Griffin felt driven to complain that "They're bullying a disabled 73-year-old lady for writing a letter about something she feels strongly about..."
And what will Shieldwall do for "73-year-old Margaret Walker", or indeed for "six patriots on Merseyside...arrested...as a result of a scuffle with far left thugs..."? They've published a leaflet.
Called, "Arrested! What You Need to Know to Walk Free", it aims to tell "patriots" how to react should they find themselves "up against some cynical 'ethnic' playing the race card".
Clearly, this is a serious, academic tome. According to Nick Griffin:
"We have included advice from a practicing solicitor, two law graduates, British nationalist activists all over the UK, a former Ulster loyalist POW (who had no compunction in learning from the other side in that conflict) and top members of several 1980s football firms. Nearly all of us have been arrested, questioned and prosecuted several times..."
A practicing solicitor and two law graduates. Doesn't exactly sound like a team of legal eagles does it? Some aging football hooligans and "a former Ulster Loyalist POW". That'll be a terrorist then. It's funny that Griffin doesn't mind mixing with them, but will still tweet that "Mandela led Communist terror campaign & his ANC regime has incited ethnic cleansing murders of thousands of Boer farmers." (Thanks to The Guardian for spotting that particular gem of wisdom.) Not like those nice loyalist terror gangs who attack policemen and force people out of their homes then. Of course, given that he's currently visiting with the government of Syria, Mr Griffin's choice in friends could be open to question.
And needless to say, the mystery of when anyone has ever been arrested for offering someone the wrong colour jelly baby remains unanswered. It's almost as if the BNP were going in for unsubstantiated scaremongering, at the same time as they're promoting a publication containing the work of some very unsavoury individuals indeed.