The Staggers

The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog

The BNP lose their "peer"

Lord Bramall is off the hook

By George Eaton Published 20 October 2009 11:57

Has the BNP claimed its first parliamentarian? Early stories on the leaked membership list, which can now be seen on WikiLeaks, erroneously reported that a sitting peer was among those included.

Baron Bramall, a former chief of the defence staff, was branded as the guilty man and the fact that he once traded blows with Lord Janner after a series of anti-Israel comments did little to dampen speculation. But with a bit of digging I've found out that the individual in question is in fact the self-styled "Lord" Brian Bramhall of Newbury, a man who has certainly not been elevated to the House of Lords.

Meanwhile, Mary Riddell has an excellent piece in today's Daily Telegraph on the practical policies needed to counter the BNP, a welcome reminder that Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time is unlikely to swing many votes either way.

UPDATE: Lord Bramall has responded: "I'm completely apolitical and I've had no involvement with the BNP," he told the Guardian.

"I'm the last person who would have anything to do with them. I fought fascism in the second world war. People do have views of every sort in a democracy, but many of the BNP's views are very unattractive."

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16 comments

Tue, 2009-10-20 23:42 — Porous (not verified)

Nothing can stop the BNP

Sat, 2010-01-30 02:09 — JAMES (not verified)

The bnp will grow in power ,all your lib. labo coms, merdoc bbc. shite that you throw vertically into the air due to gravity, will land on your own heads.As for the UAF, now thats a laugh, if never there was one. sorry let me restate that UWF, united with fascism.the time will come when you and your kind will be given too chouse ,live amonge your allies ,HAMAS ,N KOREA,BLACK MURDERING STATES, or be hunted down in the form western democratic states,we will give you your freedom, in fact we will ram it down your throughts,until you chock on it?

Tue, 2009-10-20 12:22 — @Morus1516 (not verified)

Hard work, that digging?

Tue, 2009-10-20 12:25 — Morus1517 (not verified)

Dont listen to my brother, he's a fascist.

Tue, 2009-10-20 12:56 — unseen (not verified)

George

when you say "I've done a bit of digging", do you mean "I ripped off the work of the political blogger Morus and claimed it as my own"?

Tue, 2009-10-20 13:06 — damianneum

I don't actually. I've never read anything by Morus.

I was hunting for the 'peer' on the list, noticed the presence of 'Lord Bramhall' and a quick Google revealed his background.

Tue, 2009-10-20 13:22 — unseen (not verified)

Ok, fair enough that you did your own research in this case.

Surprised that a political journalist has never read anything from Morus, a regular writer for politicalbetting.com and one of the founders of the Jury Team.

Tue, 2009-10-20 13:26 — @Morus1516 (not verified)

Forgive my skepticism George, but it took me the best part of 45 mis at 6:30 GMT this morning to ascertain that this definitely wasn't Edwin Bramall.

The link you have to Lord Brian Bramhall is not an obvious link - it doesn't show up for the first three pages of Google results, even when I refine it. There are far more expired links further up that confirm nothing.

Furthermore, by the time you published this, and we had been spreading refutations for 3-4 hours, the search term "Lord Bramhall" would have (as now) returned plenty of results already debunking it - on blogs, tweets etc.

I know because I commented on every webpage from the last 24 hours mentioning any version of the text string. I don't see how you would have found the page you link to without hitting our stuff first.

Also - the page you cite has no confirmatory link to the postcode, which I found on the ASCII source of his geneology database - proving the link. Before that point, it might well have been Baron Bramall with a common mispelling. How could you *know* the identity was mistaken?

I actually, when all's said and done, don't give a damn about the credit. Not many people will read this, and it's no skin off my nose.

What pisses me off is someone who claims to have waltzed in, found the perfect Google page, and solved it. That doesn't make sense - and the reason I know that is that I *did* solve this and have the Twitter records to prove it. I also got the Guardian to correct their stories, and myself corrected every blog and tweet before this piece was even published, and I know that it needed more work than a simple search.

I don't care if my work was indirectly used without acknowledgment, and it would have been easy for you to read it on a tweet follow the link and never know whence it came. That's fine. But don't insult my intelligence - you didn't solve it the way your comment suggests, and I'm calling you on it.

Tue, 2009-10-20 14:01 — Paul Evans2

Morus, I worked this one out myself in about 10 minutes by checking the postcode, don't flatter yourself!

Wed, 2009-10-21 10:30 — Luddite.

Can we print the Labour party membership list that's if we can find one.

Wed, 2009-10-21 10:40 — Luddite.

The hysterical media coverage and political intimination and harassment of BNP members will only help the nationalist-right and when the political boot in on the other foot can we then really complain when our name's are on the wrong political list let's never forget facists don't take political prisoners the left is playing a very dangerous game.

Tue, 2009-10-20 14:19 — yeahbutno (not verified)

Morus, flatter yourself. Whether or not these people all figured it independently, strictly speaking along linear time you still posted the facts first.

Tue, 2009-10-20 14:20 — @Morus1516 (not verified)

Paul - well either you are vastly superior in mind and technology, or you got there late when we had already opened the ketchup bottle!! I could believe either!

What did you check the postcode against? Did you already know where in the UK the real Lord lived (because I couldn't find that for toffee, but that would have made it much quicker). I still think there's only one Source Code page that links the postcode and the name, and that wasn't quick to find unless you knew what you were looking for (the first name for the text string), or because the conjunction had already been moved up the rankings by being posted lots.

In all seriousness, I genuinely don't want to be given credit, I just don't like it being claimed so casually.

By the time this blogpost came out, there were blogs and tweets covered with links all clogging up the top of the search rankings. I know - because I was checking constantly all night.

George, with respect, wasn't (I don't think) in any position to present this as entirely his own investigative work. I don't like the journalistic trait of finding stuff on blogs and then presenting it as original work - happens too often, and it should be called where possible.

I now have a full day, so I need to leave. Happy Tuesday one and all.

Tue, 2009-10-20 15:15 — unseen (not verified)

Also the Guardian news blog reported this at 10:38am

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/oct/20/bnp-controversies-live

It points to a source that cites Morus

Tue, 2009-10-20 15:19 — Paul Evans2

Morus, I went to Wikileaks and checked the postcode on the source - I suspected it was unlikely that Field Marshall the Lord Bramall lived in a suburban Stoke-on-Trent and that given the name was spelled incorrectly it was obviously not him.

Tue, 2009-10-20 15:27 — joetheplumber

I'm totally new to NS blogging and am surprised at the essential triviality of it all. Who really cares that the BNP have lost their 'peer' or, more particularly, how good Morus 1516 is as an internet detective.?

Free speech should involve debate on on issues of importance. What's going on?