More follow on from The BNP Website over EHRC 's letter to The BNP

BNP Membership: Nick Griffin Rejects Equalities Commission ‘PR Stunt’

The Equalities Commission hysteria over British National Party membership is nothing but a PR stunt which has no legal grounding whatsoever, said BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP.

Reacting to the news that the Equality and Human Rights Commission, headed up by black arch-racist Trevor Phillips, had written to the BNP demanding that it change its membership and employment criteria, Mr Griffin said it was obvious that the whole thing was just a publicity stunt engineered by the far left and Labour Party front organisations.

“It is all a bit of liberal hysteria couched in legal terms,” Mr Griffin told BNP News. “The fact that the letter was served on us through the mass media shows that it is actually not legal in intent at all.”

Mr Griffin said the BNP was an exempted organisation under Section 25 and Section 26 of the Race Relations Act which allow for exclusive ethnic organisations with a membership of 50 or more. “The BNP has never been in breach of any of the provisions of the law in terms of its membership and Mr Phillips knows this to be the case,” he said.

“It is a ridiculous PR stunt by Mr Phillips, who is yet another unelected member of the Labour Party who has been promoted beyond his capacity, just like his good friend Mr Peter Mandelson.

“Furthermore, Mr Phillips and the EHRC are on record as being utterly biased in favour of non-indigenous British groups and against the BNP,” Mr Griffin continued.

“Last year in May, for example, Mr Phillips told the Scottish Trade Union Congress that the ‘BNP should be treated as less than human.’ Anyone who suggests that the EHRC has an objective view on the BNP should have their head examined,” he said.

“In contrast, the BNP has a mandate from nearly a million British people who voted for us on June 4th. That is a real mandate, and we reject the EHRC’s grandstanding. We note that Mr Phillips refused to even comment on a ‘black children only’ school programme which specifically discriminated against white kids despite receiving direct funding from the government.

“Furthermore, it has not missed anyone’s attention that the EHRC’s staff is overwhelmingly of non-British origin. When it is considered that this organisation receives £70 million in public funds - more than the foreign aid budget to Zimbabwe - then it can be seen that the EHRC itself is open to question in terms of its objectivity and legality,” Mr Griffin continued.

“The EHRC has never objected to the thousands of organisations in receipt of public funding which exist solely for the interests of non-indigenous groups, such as Bangladeshis, Afghans or Somalis. Somehow the EHRC and Mr Phillips only spring into action when someone dares to speak up for the English, the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh people of Britain.

“Mr Phillips is on record has having had a bust of Lenin on his desk and that should tell us all that we need to know about this vile anti-British organisation which he heads up at a huge salary,” Mr Griffin said.

“Nonetheless, we are taking this neo-Marxist assault seriously, and have already obtained the best possible legal advice. We will be responding to the EHRC’s impertinent and bullying letter in due course.

“We will also be asking them to explain their grotesque failure to address extremely serious problems such as the black rape gangs scandal which was highlighted with unusual courage and lack of self-censorship by Channel 4 last night.”

* Some facts about the EHRC:

- Despite rising unemployment and a 22 percent poverty level, the government has seen fit to spend a further £70 million on its ‘Race Gestapo’ police, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

- The cost of the Government’s anti-discrimination watchdog has grown from £22.5 million in 2008 to £70 million in 2009, with salaries for its staff soaring by an inflation-defying 25 percent.

- Staff received an average increase of around £9,000, taking their average salary to £45,920. In 2008/09 - its first full year of operation - it was given a £70 million budget.

- The EHRC was created when the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Rights Commission were merged in October 2007. Even though the Tories are now bleating about the cost of the EHRC, the reality is that they fully supported the creation of the CRE, and its first director was a Conservative MP, David Lane.

- The budget for those three groups in the last year of their existence was £47.5 million. The commission has 514 workers, with projected staff costs for 2008/9 of £23 million.

- The EHRC has become little more than an anti-white lobbying body, with its head, Trevor Philips, continuously refusing to comment on a ‘black children only’ school programme which specifically discriminated against white kids despite receiving direct funding from the government.

- The EHRC has also been criticised for having a disproportionate number of non-indigenous personnel on its staff, again raising the question of whether or not the organisation is really promoting genuine equality, or simply lobbying for ‘minority’ groups.

- In 2008 it was revealed that a private company co-founded by Phillips and in which he owns 70 percent of the shares, the Equate Organisation, had been employed by Channel 4 following the race row involving Shilpa Shetty and Jade Goody during the May 2007 series of Celebrity Big Brother. The undisclosed sum paid by C4 to Phillips and the Commission’s assertion that “Trevor has gone through all the correct processes of declaring his interests, so there is no conflict” provoked widespread criticism.

- According to The Times, 29th May 2003, p. 8… “Trevor Phillips, the head of the Campaign for Racial Equality, has revealed in the Irish Post why a bust of Lenin sits on his desk. ‘It’s there as a reminder. . . Just because the Soviet experiment failed, we should not throw everything Lenin did out the window’.”