BNP National Treasurer debunks the lies and groundless claims currently being perpetrated by our political opponents about the state of the BNP's finances.

As predicted by Nick Griffin the other day, another big media attack has been launched on the party, this time on the front page of the main West Midlands paper, the Sunday Mercury. In a ridiculous piece of ‘non-news’ journalism, the paper uses a highly selective and distorted analysis of our accounts up until December 2005 in an effort to suggest that the BNP is ‘nearly bankrupt’.

It certainly is true that last year saw a drop in our income over the year before, but that was neither a surprise nor unduly worrying, given that 2004 was a European Election year, and hence saw a far bigger election campaign than at any other time in the history of the party. The Mercury comments about an alleged lack of donations last year are, however, pure fiction, based on a deliberate misreading of the fact that only reportable donations show up on the Electoral Commission website.

The vast majority of our donations are always from ‘ordinary’ people who each give relatively small amounts, unlike the other main parties which are financed largely by a few giant donations which have to be reported. So our lack of reportable donations doesn’t mean that we aren’t bringing in large sums of money, merely that we are not in hock to various sleazy vested interests like Lib-Lab-Con and UKIP.

In addition to misinterpreting the information on the Electoral Commission website, the report also draws on deceitful and groundless criticisms from the failed treasurer of a ‘rival’ nationalist grouplet – a man whose reliability as a financial analyst is best gauged by the fact that he is now eight months behind with the accounts for which he is responsible. UKIP too, incidentally, are in blatant breach of Electoral Commission rules, and have also failed to submit any accounts at all for 2005.

State Desperation

In reality, the Sunday Mercury story isn’t meant to inform its readers – what on earth do ordinary people care about the BNP having been £52,000 in debt last December, or the fact that the LibDems may well be forced to repay an illegal £2.4 million donation, or even that the Labour party is more than £20 million in the red?

The remarkable thing is that our opponents in high places are so desperate to stop us that major newspapers are being used to run petty smear stories merely to provide ammunition to a tiny clique of malcontent ‘keyboard warriors’ on neo-Nazi Internet forums.

These people try to seize on such publicity to make ‘demands’ which might, on first hearing seem reasonable enough, but which are in fact nonsensical and merely ways to try to worry or demoralise our activists so as to hinder our continued progress.

One such is the suggestion that “our members should be able to appoint an auditor of their own”. And indeed, why shouldn’t they? Well, for a start, no other party operates such a system, which suggests it’s not very necessary. After all, the professional auditors we already employ are completely independent and professionally bound to carry out a full, accurate, ‘warts and all’ audit. Then their figures are in turn gone over with a fine-toothed comb by the Electoral Commission.

Security risk

What would the point be of our membership having to raise another £5,000-plus to cover the fees of a second firm of auditors, who would only come up with the same figures and conclusions? Further, we don’t like having to give the details of our suppliers, printers, etc to one outside firm, let alone doubling the risk of leaks by handing everything over to another one.

It would achieve nothing. We already have in place a system under which the Electoral Commission can – and does – hold us to account for every penny we raise and every penny we spend. What more needs to be done than that?

In addition, the National Treasurer gives a detailed financial report to the Advisory Council at least three times a year. There senior officials can, on behalf of the membership, ask the treasurer to explain or verify any aspect of party spending.

The rumour-mongers are also ‘having a go’ at our regional accounts, saying that party’s accounts are not ‘fully transparent’ because the petty cash records and income and expenditure of every local unit are not independently audited. The idea that all our units should have to find and pay chartered accountants to go through their records is, of course, ridiculous. But that’s the kind of nonsense that comes out of people who want to cause trouble rather than make a positive contribution.

Healthy balance

As a matter of fact, the regional accounts are in healthy balance and are well placed to fight future elections. Claims that central office can at will ‘raid’ the regional accounts are simply untrue and are borne out by the facts quite clearly to be seen in the public document on the Electoral Commission’s web pages containing the Regional Accounting Unit statement of account (SOA) for year ending 2005. In fact, the healthy state of the regional accounts – which have rarely dipped below £40,000 in the black for several years now – give the lie to the Sunday Mercury’s alarmism.

Another popular target for the opposition is the Trafalgar Club. This organisation has over the years raised considerable funds for special political projects which otherwise would never have come about. Some examples are the development of the most popular political website in this country, extra help towards electoral breakthroughs in key areas, our superb audio visual department BNPtv and numerous music projects. All these activities have been vital to launch British National Party into the political mainstream and also raise those extra funds this party needs.

In order to avoid having ‘all our eggs in one basket’ I do not handle the day to day running of this particular facet of the party’s finances, but as national treasurer I oversee and authorise all major items of expenditure carried out by the Trafalgar Club, and check through all its items of income and expenditure at the end of each financial year. All T.C. transactions are, of course, included in the independent audit and the accounts supplied to the Electoral Commission. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. You can make up your own mind as to why people who pretend to be on our side go around spreading such lies.

Staff costs

The black propaganda operation which is run by operatives of the far-left Searchlight organisation -which works closely with rags like the Sunday Mercury - is also trying to make mischief over the party’s staff operating costs. In reality, however, the BNP wage bill as a proportion of the total income is not surprising for a party of our size and sophistication. Take a look at the interesting comparison with some of the other political parties based on their year end accounts for 2005:

The Conservative Party total income of £24 Million and staff costs of £9.4 million
(39.5% of total income)

British National Party total income of £672,246 and staff costs of £247,592
(36.8% of total income)

The Labour Party, total income £35.3 Million and staff costs of £12.8 Million
(36.5% of total income)

The Liberal Democrat Party, total income £8.58 Million, and staff costs of £1.55 Million
(18% of total income)

United Kingdom Independence Party - No information available at the time this document was written as they have yet to submit an annual statement of account for year ending 2005.

The Lib-Dems appear to have much lower costs simply because, relative to their size of membership, they have a far higher proportion of elected representatives – MPs, MEPs and local councillors – than any other party. The state funds paid to all these act as a huge and disproportionate subsidy to them.

This same factor benefits the Tories and Labour to a huge extent as well (many Labour staff members don’t show up in their party accounts, as they’ve been slipped on to the public payroll instead. Even UKIP is helped along by this, as each MEP gets not just a huge private salary but also money for full-time staff paid by Brussels. None of this will show up in the central accounts of our rivals, which means that our wage bill as a proportion of total income ‘should’ be very much higher than theirs. The fact that it is not is an indicator of how carefully we keep our expenditure under control, and how much we get out of staff who all work for much less than the national average wage.

Unprecedented growth

That said, we are certainly not complacent about our expenditure or the fact that we overspent last year. It should be noted that this year the British National Party made significant savings on staff costs with two full time and two part time backroom staff jobs redistributed among various full time and volunteer workers. We have also made big efforts to switch paid staff from backroom admin into frontline roles such as Group Development and Group Support, which are helping to fuel growth. The 2005 figures also included very significant extra security department costs that have now been eliminated.

Another area for totally unfair criticism is the cost of management and administration charges. Unlike the other parties, whose statement of accounts show these costs as a total figure with no breakdown of costs, the BNP accounts show a more detailed breakdown. Most people would agree that looking at the bare titles of expenditure and coming to the wrong conclusions is most unfair, when as we have seen, the other parties are not nearly as transparent financially as ours.

For example the figure for Management & Administration, Travel & Entertainment (£63,216.09) when broken down shows a very different story to what our detractors would have you believe. Virtually half of it, £30,009.03, was spent on fuel for all our delivery costs and party officials travelling thousands of miles a year running their own cars into the ground in the process. £3,905. 95 of it was on bus and rail fares for officials and key activists. £4,505 was on accommodation costs for individuals who had to stay away from home while on party business – including court hearings, literature delivery runs and appointments with the Electoral Commission or in TV studios. All these are essential costs that we could not expect our hardest working officials to find from their own pockets.

The list is exhaustive and too detailed to print here, but rest assured that this is all justified expenditure that is scrutinised by an independent auditor and is accounted for to the penny. Yes it does add up to a significant sum, but these are the costs involved in running a serious political machine building a movement for future political power.

Opposition lies

In addition, the ‘Entertainment’ figure includes the entire cost of setting up and running the Red-White-and-Blue; ending up in that category because the auditor didn’t know where else to put it! The lies by Searchlight operatives and their useful idiots on crank forums are thus shown to be groundless.

So too is the Sunday Mercury claim of imminent financial disaster. The £52,000 we owed back at the end of last year was more than anything the result of fighting two massive national election campaigns in two successive years. It has now been cut in half, and is falling steadily. If one takes into account the funds held in the regional accounts, the BNP is actually in the black to the tune of about £25,000 at present. No other major party in Britain is in such a healthy financial position, so having taken time off from positive work to answer our enemies’ wishful thinking I do not intend to return to the subject again.

Having said all of which, this party’s treasury staff are not complacent. We recognise that we must continue to endeavour to increase income streams and to maintain financial stability, but to downsize and downgrade the party organisation would be a recipe for disaster. We have now put plans into action for various increases in the party’s’ regular income and with sound financial stewardship I am confident that the party is now laying the foundation stones for a mass Nationalist movement which will propel us further into the political mainstream. Power is only a matter of our own strength and determination to see our political ambitions through to ultimate victory.