British Extremist Membership List Leaked

A detailed spreadsheet containing the names and personal information of nearly 13,000 British National Party members was leaked on the Internet last Nov. 18, causing a major embarrassment for the neofascist political party known in the United Kingdom both for its tight-lipped secrecy on membership and its calls for expelling non-white immigrants. Nick Griffin, the BNP's longtime leader, called the leak "a nasty piece of intimidation."

The leaked list includes addresses, cell phone numbers, E-mail addresses and, in many cases, detailed notes on members' professional and family backgrounds. The British press had a field day. One newspaper provided an interactive "heat map" that displays BNP member concentrations by region of the United Kingdom. An Internet service provider went so far as to include an E-mail newsletter with a link to a Google map page that allowed customers to "find your nearest BNP member" by postal code. The revelatory material has frightened BNP rank-and-file members, several of whom told BBC reporters that they have been subjected to death threats and harassing phone calls since the list's publication.

At least one police officer was suspended from duties after his supervisors found his name on the list. (In Britain, police officers are banned from BNP membership because of its racist platform.) Several names on the list were connected to addresses on military bases. (British soldiers aren't banned from BNP membership, but are prohibited from attending BNP demonstrations.) The list seems to have been created in 2007 and contains former, current and even prospective members of the BNP — people who asked to be added to the mailing list.

A report by the Guardian newspaper identified BNP members who came to the extreme-right party from former posts in other parties, including the conservative Tories and free-market Liberal Democrats. In addition to the police officer, they included church ministers, prison guards, lawyers and a number of public school teachers. Several outed BNP members told the newspaper they were drawn by the party's staunch anti-immigrant rhetoric. Andrew Emerson, a former local candidate of the center-left Labour Party who appeared on the list, told the Guardian he joined the BNP in 2005 and ran for a local town council on the BNP ticket in 2008. "My unhappiness with the [Labour] party's open-door immigration policy, making no attempt whatever to control immigration ... and to properly control our borders," was Emerson's stated reason for joining the BNP.

BNP leader Griffin called the leak a "disgraceful act of treachery" and claimed the list was leaked by a disgruntled "hardliner" who left the party in 2007. Acting on complaints from the BNP, police in Wales arrested two suspects on Dec. 5 for possible violations of Britain's Data Protection Act.