> Print window < | > Close window < |
Author: Matthew Collins | Date: September 2006
Public rage and private glee were the British National Party’s reaction to the alleged conspiracy by Islamist terrorists to bomb flights between the UK and the USA last month.
Publicly, the BNP claimed the terror plot was further proof of the incompatibility of Muslims with Western society. The party called for Muslims to be banned from all aeroplanes for the foreseeable future and demanded an apology from Muslim community leaders.
But privately, and unsurprisingly, they rubbed their hands with glee. After all, it was Tony Lecomber, Nick Griffin’s sidekick, who said after 11 September 2001 that a terrorist attack on London would be “good news for the BNP”.
The BNP clearly views the terrorist conspiracy as a gift horse for its own political campaign. Not only does it hope it will heighten tension and suspicion between communities but the fascist party will also seek to highlight the intrinsic shortcomings of mainstream parties because of their alleged blind obsession with multiculturalism.
The BNP sees nothing controversial in calling for all Muslims to be ban-ned from boarding aeroplanes, even equating it to the banning orders on English football hooligans for the recent World Cup.
“If white working class men can be treated in this fashion it must be possible to apply a similar ban to Muslims,” the BNP website stated. The writer conveniently forgot that banning orders against football ho-oligans could only be made where either the individual had a conviction for hooliganism or evidence of their involvement had been put before the court.
Yet for all the BNP’s sudden concern for community safety, the party has been remarkably silent over a court case in July involving a BNP supporter from Sussex.
Allen Boyce was branded “evil” by a judge at Lewes Crown Court after he was convicted for drawing up plans to make bombs.
Boyce, 74, should be no stranger to seasoned antifascists. For years he made his mark as the appalling bugler who, year in year out, helped the National Front sully the memory of Britain’s war dead during the NF’s annual shuffle to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.
A nervous, twitchy character, Boyce was also the secretary and sole member of the NF’s Christian group. In addition he was an active member of the British Israelites, a fundamentalist Christian group, and through it close to veteran racists and antisemites such as the late Lady Jane Birdwood.
A sour, bitter man, Boyce is a former employee of Eastbourne’s parks department and used to brag about how he closed parks early in the summer months, purely because he objected to people using the open spaces for fun and recreation.
The sort of bitterness and twisted logic that drives Boyce eventually found a willing ear in one Terry Collins, a BNP member who had moved to Eastbourne and was carrying out a systematic campaign of hatred and intimidation among members of the town’s small minority ethnic population.
Collins, whom the judge described as “a wicked man”, targeted three families in the town, solely because he thought they were asylum seekers and of less value to the community than himself.
He terrorised his victims over a 14-month period by throwing fire-works through letterboxes, repeatedly smashing windows and slashing car tyres. In the worst attack he started a fire at the home of an Asian family in Eshton Road. On 27 March 2004 he threw a brick with a firework attached to it through the window of Ali Rostam’s house.
Collins was caught red-handed by police who witnessed him throwing a concrete slab through Mr Owasil’s window. After he was arrested they found in his possession a lock knife and fireworks and paint that were identical to those used in the attacks.
During Collins’s trial last year, it emerged that he was most certainly suffering some sort of mental stress though it was no excuse for his campaign for which he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
During their investigations police found a series of instructions from Boyce on how to make a bomb that would cause a “large explosion”. He also sent Collins plans of a hostel in the town that Boyce insisted housed “more than 100 bogus asylum seekers” and suggested that they visit a gun shop together.
The court heard that Boyce was fully aware that Collins was behind the campaign of violence and intimidation and not once did he, despite his “previous good character” and “strong religious beliefs”, try to dissuade Collins from his violent path.
When Collins was sentenced his solicitors made much of the fact that their client had been greatly influenced by members and supporters of the BNP who had “twisted” his mind.
Despite the seriousness of Boyce’s offences, Judge Anthony Niblett passed only a two-year suspended sentence because of his age, lack of previous convictions and the fact that the bomb recipe was unlikely to work.
Boyce’s solicitor told the court that his hateful beliefs were based on his “eccentric interpretation of the Bible”.
Boyce was sentenced two days before the country came together to remember the victims of the 7/7 bombs. The BNP refused to call for Boyce to be deported, nor did it describe Christianity as a “wicked and evil faith”. Strange that.
© Searchlight Magazine 2006