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News and Comment February 2014

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14 February (Part 3) - Mick Barnbrook. An unauthorised biography

It’s very rare that I find myself getting annoyed by a comment made within incoming mail. The several received from councillor Melvin Seymour’s in-laws - self confessed thugs - after he stood in a court witness box and said something that simply wasn’t true. The police documentation made that very clear. Then there were the emails that came from Parsons Brinckerhoff in defence of councillor Peter Craske. You may need to be reminded that Craske had given Parsons Brinckerhoff a £4 million contract.

And then there was this one yesterday…


In the interests of honesty and transparency that you constantly stress you are promoting on your website, could you ask Michael Barnbrook why there is no reference in his election profile to his membership of the BNP - and publish his response?


It wasn’t so much annoying as so damn silly, at least I thought so. Many candidates will be ex-something or other, Michael left the BNP about two years ago. I decided that he would be far too modest if I asked him to reply and probably more restrained than I shall be.

Mick has this millennium been a member of the British National Party, the United Kingdom Independence Party and the English Democrats - definitely not to be confused with the English Defence League. He has stood for election with both the BNP and UKIP and would have done the same with the EDs if only they had gone half way to meet his expenses. They didn’t have the cash! As a younger man he had dalliances with both the Tories and the Labour party. Like many of us he became disillusioned with both of them.

He attempted to reform the BNP from within as did many other members. Mick went further than most; when he discovered just how corrupt the BNP had become under its present leader he reported him to the police. He also provided information to the BBC when Panorama did an exposé of the BNP. His membership came to an end when it became obvious to him that the BNP is beyond reform and he now recognises his efforts were in vain.

People who label all ex-BNP members as racists should logically regard all Tories as expense fiddlers, all Labour members as fraudsters - it was Mick who has had members of both parties jailed. Presumably all LibDems are sexual perverts and all UKIPers are ex-Tory fruitcakes who fanatasise about the weather, gays and Bongo Bongo Land.


Mick BarnbrookI’m not sure Mick will thank me for telling you this but in his youth he was an athlete and only last year he walked half way across France. When in his prime, he was sports mentor to youngsters in the locality. For nearly five years before his death, Mick was the principal mentor to Stephen Lawrence. He spoke up for him at the subsequent Macpherson Inquiry.

These days he spends a great deal of his time, and in my view too great a proportion of his police pension, on looking after a young mixed race boy. Ferrying him to school most days, indulging him with the things that the average ten year old demands and taking him on holiday breaks nearly every Summer weekend. OK, he's his grandson but, for domestic reasons, it is Mick who acts the doting parent.

The picture alongside/above is one I took in 2012. It is of Mick offering advice and support to a clergyman who had set up a school in Ghana. I think some or all of the Bexley Action Group people made a donation to his work.

I should probably tell my anonymous reader something that may persuade him that he shouldn’t visit Bonkers again. I have a second cousin who is a member of the BNP and who is continuing the lost battle to reform it from within. He has stood for the BNP in Parliamentary elections and the only thing I have against him is that he will insist on indulging in academic debates on the finer details of Christianity which leave my knowledge of the subject far behind. He is married to a lovely Chinese woman and has raised a slightly oriental looking child who is very clever and he loves to tell me just how clever she is.

Anyone can Google Mick’s name and will find nothing he need be ashamed of. Maybe it was naive to believe the BNP could be reformed but at least he tried. Mick works tirelessly for honesty in public life and in my opinion can sometimes get too emotionally involved when he sees crooked Bexley councillors cocking a snook at the electorate, which as faults go, I do not believe is too bad a one. Is any candidate listing membership of another party? Surely that would be madness, they might as well stand for that other party if they show any form of support for it.

Mick provided a very short version of the above when that perpetual dickhead James Cleverly made a similar point about Mick and the BNP on Twitter. Obviously I have failed to do it in 140 characters as Mick managed.

Probably the anonymous contributor is yet another demented Tory worried that the presence of one more honest councillor will prove to be anathema to Bexley council.

The normal calmer blogging service should resume tomorrow. Absence of ill informed anonymous messages permitting.

 

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