Statement from John Savage, Treasurer of the Freedom Democrats in response to recent malicious allegations made by the Treasurer of the British Freedom Party.

Readers may be aware of the atrocious way that eleven founder and executive members, including the Treasurer and also the Membership Secretary, of the British Freedom Party (BFP) were unconstitutionally and ultra vires ‘expelled’ on 20th January 2011, and the resultant feud between the two factions.

Two weeks ago I became aware that a false and vexatious allegation of fraud and theft had been made to the police regarding the continued operation of the BFP’s bank account after the ultra vires notices were issued. Mr Simon Bennett, the new Treasurer of the BFP, stated in his usual prosaic style on the British Democracy Forum “After the telephone conversation I just had, that smugness from John Savage is soon to be wiped from his face. I do hope you haven't squandered all your divorce settlement, John, you're going to need a very good solicitor quite soon. Your ability to function as a political representative and a 'professional' accountant will come crashing down around you. It's those you dragged into your murky little activities that I feel sorry for, they only backed you out of sympathy and it is now going to cost them too. All in good time, John.”

A few days later the police contacted a colleague of mine, the former membership secretary of the BFP, requiring her to attend the local police station for interview on 31st August. That lady, a decent, honest, upright citizen and nationalist, who has never been interviewed by the police before, was distraught for several days regarding the matter, not because she has anything to hide, but simply because she was being made to feel like a criminal.

Not hearing from them, I contacted the police myself, a few days ago, as I had been dealing with the BFP’s finances following the extraordinary general members’ meeting of the 6th February, when the members attending unanimously elected me to be the Treasurer for the party, as I wished for the police to learn the facts and see the documentary evidence to support those facts.

On Wednesday 24th August, two detective constables arrived at my office around 1pm, and I asked if this interview was being conducted with me as a witness helping them with their enquiries, or as a suspect. To my amazement, and quite contrary to the rubbish spouted by Simon Bennett, they told me that my name (and I assume that of Mrs Marshall, the registered Treasurer of the BFP until the ElComms removed her name at the end of March) didn’t even come up in the allegations!!! As a result, they wouldn’t give me the full details of the allegations, but when I said I was assuming that Simon Bennett was saying that we were expelled on 20th January, yet were writing out cheques after that date so it must be ‘theft’, they made no denial.

I had prepared a big bundle of documents for them, going from the BFP constitution and the e-mail appointing Verity Blake as Disciplinary Officer ½ an hour prior to the ultra vires ‘expulsion’ notices, through to the notice of suspension of the BFP Chairman Mr Peter Mullins, the details of the members’ meeting of 6th February and then right up to the agreement of the BFP party manager, Mr Jim Ferrie to reimburse us our subscriptions. I produced the cheque book stub and bank statement, a copy of the latter being in the bundle of documents.

I made it quite clear to them that all this time, until around 31st March, Mrs Marshall’s name was on the ElComm website as the registered Treasurer, and we were simply reimbursing expenses incurred, such as stationery, postage, printer ink, hall hire etc. I told them how Messrs Mullins, Bennett, Barnes & co, the Executive Council members of the BFP, were having severe difficulties in opening a bank account, and that Lloyds refused to open a party account for them, I assume because of a poor credit rating. I told them how my understanding was that Lloyds had cancelled the cheque I gave Mullins for the balance of the account, and issued a bank draft to him instead.

I then produced evidence to them of the libel and abuse we have been subjected to, from the libellous website Mr Bennett had done attacking my professional integrity and business, proof that it was Simon Bennett that the domain name was registered to, extracts and examples of some of the comments made by certain members of the BFP Executive Council on the British Democracy Forum, particularly drawing the attention of the police to the pages where Simon Bennett had proudly informed the world that they were ‘investigating’ us, some example e-mails of the abuse and personal insults written by Mr Bennett to several of us, and also copies of my personal credit card statements showing the two unauthorised withdrawals of monies by Mr Bennett on 30th September and 11th October 2010.

The bundle of documents was about 15mm thick, so they took it away with them to have a study. I gave a little six line statement stating it was my bundle of documents. At around 1:45pm they left, and the following morning telephoned the lady they had called in to the police station for interview, advising her that they were taking the matter no further, as ‘theft and fraud’ had not occurred.

I got the impression that the police knew nothing about the truth of what had actually happened, apart from the simple lies told them by Bennett.