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Author: Nick Lowles | Date: November 2001
The American Friends of the BNP has disbanded. The BNP claims it was no longer effective but is more to the story than meets the eye?
The announcement was brief and to the point. "I regret to have to inform you that as of today - August 28th, 2001, I am resigning both as chairman of the American Friends of the BNP and as a member of the organisation. This was a very difficult decision to take and one which I did not take lightly."
Mark Cotterill, the British-born founder of the US support group for the British National Party, claimed he was resigning for "both personal and political" reasons.
His decision to quit coincided with an investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Centre and taken up by CNN. In its publication Intelligence Report, the SPLC claimed that Cotterill was illegally raising tens of thousands of dollars across the US for the BNP. It said the sum was at least $85,000, "and very likely much more".
CNN claimed $200,000 was raised. "The big money, the real money gets raised behind the scenes and dispersed behind the scenes," a former AF-BNP donor told CNN.
The source went on to say how Cotterill deliberately circumvented the new British political funding laws prohibiting individual overseas donations of more than £200. "Mr Cotterill will convene a small meeting of ten to twelve people that he knows, and dole out money to them. They will then write a cheque (in their own names) in the equivalent amount (to the BNP)."
The SPLC also repeated the story, first revealed in Searchlight in late 1999, that the AF-BNP had broken US law by not registering with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. This law, ironically passed to prevent German Nazi fundraising in the 1930s, requires all groups raising money in the US for an overseas political party to register.
Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, suggested to CNN that the AF-BNP did not register because it would have to reveal its donors' identities. "There are industrialists, wealthy apartment-building owners. These people who do not want their names in newspapers, who never want to be on television."
The BNP reacted with predictable outrage. "The BNP refutes all allegations of receiving illegal donations, we will fully co-operate with the E/C [electoral commission] as we have nothing to hide." Alleging a leftwing conspiracy, it continued: "The far left are extremely concerned about the BNP's increasing media profile and influence within British politics. As such they are embarking on a systematic campaign of harassment and smears rather than confront real issues."
The BNP was equally dismissive of the SPLC claims. "According to them," the BNP statement read, "the AF-BNP raised up to £70,000 for the BNP. In fact it raised less than a tenth of that. It is because of the failure of the AF-BNP to raise any really serious cash - and the change in the laws in Britain which prohibit parties from receiving foreign cash that the AF-BNP Chairman has resigned from the AF-BNP since he feels the AF-BNP is now redundant."
BNP officer Simon Darby went further, telling British journalists that little was ever received from the AF-BNP. He claims that last year the AF-BNP raised $16,000 but this was offset by a similar amount in expenses.
So who is telling the truth? Was Cotterill's decision to shut down the AF-BNP the day before CNN broadcast the story a mere coincidence or did he fold the organisation because he had something to hide?
The American Friends of the BNP was launched in January 1999 to promote the BNP in the United States. Cotterill, a former BNP South West organiser, had moved to the US in 1994. The inspiration for the AF-BNP was the successful Irish Republican fundraising operations in the US.
Cotterill told one journalist that "the potential in America is huge. Other parties have raised a lot of money by appealing to Americans' well-known pride in their ancestry. Why can't we?"
Since then the AF-BNP has played host to many of America's most extreme racists and nazis. They include William Pierce, leader of the National Alliance and author of The Turner Diaries, the book that inspired Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and was a favourite of the London nailbomber David Copeland. Other speakers have included Ed Fields, the editor of the antisemitic Truth at Last, the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Don Black, who runs the nazi website Stormfront.
AF-BNP meetings have been addressed by a number of British speakers. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has conducted two AF-BNP speaking tours in the past two years. Other visitors have included the Scottish nazi Steve Cartwright; the former National Front activist Steve Brady, who spoke under the name Steven King; Paul Thompson, the Darlington BNP organiser and convicted football thug; Darby; and Richard Brooks, the BNP Lewisham organiser .
Darby's claim that little has been received from the AF-BNP does not stand up to scrutiny. As early as spring 1999 BNP publications boasted of funds coming from the US. Cotterill himself admitted that his group provided over $3,000 for party's European election effort in 1999. He proudly announced: "This is just the start; the potential in America is huge."
In a succession of AF-BNP publications, videos and supporters' emails, Cotterill urges followers to support the BNP financially. In 2000, the year when Darby claims no money came from the US, the AF-BNP boasted of its fundraising effort.
Cotterill opened his May-June 2000 members' and supporters' bulletin by thanking donors. "Whether you sent in a donation by mail or donated at one of our meetings. You have helped us to help the BNP back in Britain obtain the best election results they have ever had."
The second item, "Donations", continued the theme. "With your help the American Friends of the BNP will keep raising money here in America for the BNP back in the old country." Believing a general election was imminent, Cotterill told readers: "we must make sure the BNP is well funded enough to mount decent campaigns against the anti-white establishment that now sadly controls Britain. So please take a moment or two to fill out and return the enclosed donation form...Remember every dollar counts in the battle to win Britain back for the British people."
In an email dated 23 September 2000 Cotterill appealed for financial support to assist the BNP in its by-election campaign in West Midlands West. A donation form was attached specifically for this by-election effort.
The SPLC arrived at its figure by adding together Cotterill's own claims in his videos, emails and bulletins.
Searchlight has also learnt that Cotterill organised for $10,000 to be transferred to the BNP in January 2000 by Brady who was then in the US addressing an AF-BNP event. The previous year Cartwright boasted to a Scottish newspaper that he had brought back £10,000 in cash from his visit.
Only this summer, Griffin spent six days in the US with his wife Jackie. Billed as a "fund-raising tour", the BNP later boasted of raising a "significant sum to our General Election fund". The amount was several thousand dollars.
Long before 1 July, when the law banning foreign funding of political parties came into effect, the BNP had long been looking for ways to keep the money flowing. At a BNP leadership meeting held earlier this year Griffin suggested a possible route via Northern Ireland.
But the BNP's claim that it was the change in the law that made the AF-BNP redundant is ridiculous. Given the clandestine nature of much of the money raised, it is very doubtful whether the BNP would have completely stopped its US fundraising efforts. More importantly, the AF-BNP provides the BNP with far more than money. Since its inception, the AF-BNP has established itself as a major political force on the US far right. With Cotterill acting as the hub, it brings together many of the disparate groups who would have little contact otherwise.
Cotterill has close links with the National Alliance, Duke's No-Fear organisation, Jared Taylor's American Renaissance, Gordon Baum and Tom Dover of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the now-bankrupt Liberty Lobby and the Reform Party. In 1998 Cotterill and Todd Blodgett, a fellow rightwinger, bought Resistance Records from Willis Carto on behalf of Pierce.
Last year it was revealed that Cotterill had orchestrated employment for his supporters in the Pat Buchanan Presidential campaign organisation. Cotterill was one of 20 AF-BNP supporters eventually thrown out.
Cotterill's growing network has not been to everyone's liking. Pierce, for one, has become increasingly irritated by Cotterill's growing influence, although this did not prevent the National Alliance and AF-BNP joining forces in a protest against a proposed ban of the German National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany.
The coalition brought together by Cotterill has boosted the image and profile of the BNP in the US dramatically. It also provides the BNP with a pool of supporters whom it can use in Britain. Only this summer Cotterill arranged for Baum and Dover, a key fundraiser for the CCC, to attend the party's Red, White and Blue festival, although in the event they failed to show up.
Encouraged by the BNP's electoral advances in Britain, some on the US right are even publicly voicing a need for a similar organisation in the US. Cotterill would surely have been at the heart of any new group.
The disbandment of the AF-BNP is all the more surprising given its growing importance and influence. There is another possible explanation for Cotterill's decision. He claims to have married an American woman but several people have told Searchlight that this is a marriage of convenience. Despite claims in his publications of the Griffins going out with him and his wife, Cotterill lives alone in what is obviously a bachelor flat. Perhaps he is concerned that any investigation into his status will reveal that he is not entitled to live in the US.
Whatever the explanation, the demise of the AF-BNP is a welcome development. Cotterill is a clever political operator and very useful to the BNP. While mystery continues to surround his actions, he is currently keeping a low profile. Searchlight understands that he is currently working for one of the key architects of postwar racial eugenics, British-born Roger Pearson.
There is more to Cotterill's decision than he has publicly admitted. It is just a question of whether it is financial or personal, or both.
© Searchlight Magazine 2001