No secrets left to conceal

Daily Mail, 5th June 2004:

Dr Phil Edwards is the national press officer of the BNP.
...
He may have an academic title, but Dr Edwards makes his living by letting off fireworks. When contacted via the mobile phone number given for his fireworks display company he is, unusually for a party political press officer, baffled and then furious that a journalist can call him, knows where he lives and has dared to pay a visit.
...
And, by the way, Dr Phil Edwards isn't his real name. It is Stuart Russell. When asked, Dr Edwards/Russell tetchily says he uses a pseudonym for 'personal reasons' and it's none of my business why. He is not unusual among his cohorts. Several have used names other than their own for 'personal reasons'.

Stormfront 'White Nationalist' board, 17th April 2006

boutye: Phil Edwards did a great job, and the interviewer knew it. Someone was on earlier from Searchlight saying that isn't his real name. What's the crack on that?

.:.BNP.:.: His real name is Stuart Russell, he is the father of Julie Russel
[attaches picture of Julie Russell with Jean-Marie Le Pen]

Sweetlips: That's a bit strange. Why doesn't he use his real name for heaven's sake?

BNP'er: Strange? I'll tell you what's strange! The Doc and his missis have suffered so much ****e you couldn't wave a stick at it. He is a personal friend of mine and, like me, he has suffered for the cause of his race. No wonder it was decided to give him a non-de-plume. What I find strange is some stupid bitch trying to imply he has something to hide.

Guardian, 27th April 2006:

Even if it is not your usual thing, there is a video report worth watching on the Sky News website. It concerns Phil Edwards, the far-right BNP's national press officer, and the recording of a telephone conversation he had at the start of last year with a student. When the student started working, Mr Edwards explained, he would be paying taxes to raise black children who would "probably go and mug you".

Daily Telegraph, 27th April 2006:

Dr Raj Chandran, a GP and Mayor of the Borough of Gedling, Nottinghamshire, was not prepared to let the unfounded allegations on the BNP website go unchallenged, said solicitor Matthew Himsworth.
...
Mr Himsworth said that the BNP press officer Dr Stuart Russell - who wrote the article - and website editor Steve Blake "freely and completely" accepted that Dr Chandran was misidentified in the article.

Guardian, 21st December 2006, "Exclusive: inside the secret and sinister world of the BNP"

The techniques of secrecy and deception employed by the British National party in its attempt to conceal its activities and intentions from the public can be disclosed today. Activists are being encouraged to adopt false names when engaged on BNP business, to reduce the chance of their being identified as party members in their other dealings with the public.
...
The techniques, adopted as part of the campaign by Nick Griffin to clean up his party's image, were discovered after a Guardian reporter who had joined the party undercover was appointed its central London organiser earlier this year.

Nothing like investigative reporting, eh?

Update 12/2/07

Last week "Dr Phil Edwards" made another appearance in the Graun, in an article co-authored by Ian Cobain (he who went underground in the BNP and emerged with the shocking news about activists being encouraged to adopt false names). I complained, as I generally do, but this time I included some of the material I dug up for this post. The result was a phone call from Ian Mayes (the paper's Readers' Editor) who was very concerned; he said he'd advise the news department to refer to Stuart Russell under his real name from now on, and asked me if there was anything else I wanted from them. (I said No, since I don't really feel that I've been defamed by the blighter. There was one occasion a few years back when my mother said she'd heard "Phil Edwards of Manchester" announced on Any Answers and been quite surprised by the views which followed, but I doubt many people were confused.)

So: a result, provisionally (we'll know when the Graun refers to Russell under his own name). I think it was probably the Torygraph quote that swung it. Top tip: if you're going to publish under a pseudonym, don't write stuff that puts you in the dock for libel.

The most cruel has passed

Newsflash.... General Augusto Pinochet of Chile has just died. His condition is described as 'satisfactory'.



(Thanks, Rob.)



Like Rob (and Ellis), my thoughts turned to Victor Jara, the Chilean Communist singer whose brutal murder would be enough in itself to damn Pinochet, even if Jara hadn't been one of 3,000. Jara's writing is vivid, poetic, charged with love, passion and humour - and it's deeply political. Look at this song, "Abre la ventana":



María

Abre la ventana

Y deja que el sol alumbre

Por todos los rincones de tu casa



María

Mira hacia afuera

Nuestra vida no ha sido hecha

Para rodearla de sombras y tristezas.



María ya ves,

no basta nacer, crecer, amar,

para encontrar la felicidad.



Pasó lo más cruel,

ahora tus ojos se llenan de luz

y tus manos de miel.



María...

Tu risa brota como la mañana brota en el jardín.



María...



Our life wasn't made to be eaten away by shadows and sadness



Let's remember one of the great unpunished crimes of the last century: a moment of revolutionary joy and revolutionary hope, snuffed out by the General. I could almost believe in Hell if I thought he'd rot in it.

Update 12th December

OK, OK, here's a translation.

Open the window

Open the window, Maria
Let the light shine in
To every corner of your house

Look around, Maria
Our life wasn't made to be eaten away
By shadows and sadness

Now, Maria, you can see
There's more to finding happiness
Than just living, growing, loving
The worst time has gone
Now your eyes are filling with light
And your hands with honey

Maria...
Your laughter breaks as the day breaks over the garden

Maria...

Pasó lo mas cruel. Gets to me every time.

Mistakes were made

The incomparable Emma Brockes has turned music critic:

The orchestral arrangements for [the ballet] Chroma were commissioned last year by Richard Russell, head of the XL record label, as a gift to the White Stripes' Jack and Meg White. Three of their songs, The Hardest Button To Button, Aluminium and Blue Orchid, were re-arranged by Joby Talbot of Joy Division

I've commented before now on my admiration for Joby Talbot; he's a bright lad. But he was never a member of Joy Division - not least because the band ceased to exist when he was nine years old. A howler like that could be quite embarrassing for Ms Brockes (and her editors). It's just as well nobody's likely to read this stuff. It's only a ballet review, after all.

On the front page. Of the Saturday edition.