Monday 6th November

Monday 6th - Mark in the dock

We're due on at 10.15 so we arrive just before ten and have time to chat briefly with the loyal hardcore band standing with their flags and placards in the precinct (yet again it's cold but clear and dry). We have to go in as it wouldn't do for us to be late. But, of course, it's a different matter for the Great and Good and the Establishment, and by half ten one of the barristers still hasn't arrived and got 'robed' so Mark and I are still chatting with the security guards in the dock.

Mark is a bit nervous as he's going to be giving his evidence today. I tell him that he's much better placed relative to his adversary today, because last time around Mark had never even been in a Magistrates Court for a speeding fine before, let alone stood in the witness box in a Crown Court, so he is now 100% more prepared than he was last time.

The judge enters Court Number 8 at 10.36 and the jury are brought in straight away. Mark is called to the witness box by his Silk, Stuart Lawson-Rogers. He swears on the Bible and we're off.

He is briefly taken through his education, then how he got involved with the BNP as a result of meeting Chris Beverley, who was also at Leeds University, in the Leeds Uni Free Speech Society.

By a quarter to eleven Mark is being questioned about how and why we have to hold our meetings in private, usually through re-direction points, so as to avoid confrontation with the far-left.

A member of the public wanders into the public gallery and, spotting an empty seat at the far end of a row of seats proceeds to excuse himself and chatter as he squeezes past people. Just as with the way that no jurors bother to wear ties or really smart clothes, there is an amazing lack of respect for the legal process among the general public these days. Despite my deep loathing of the essentially parasitic and unproductive legal system, I find this a shame - just another example of the collapse of civility and proper standards which is proceeding at Gaderene speed throughout British society. From a personal point of view being in the dock, I get very uncomfortable when individuals can't behave themselves and stay dead quiet while in the public gallery, lest in some way their disrespectful attitude rubs off on me and Mark.

Within a few minutes the man in question, who I've never seen before in my life, says 'yes' in a very loud voice when Mark, being questioned about the problem of 'grooming' in Keighley, says that we were working in the area to try to get the issue addressed because it is a very serious one. The judge orders him to leave the court and he does so, saying as he does so that it's time that something was said and done and that there's "no point all sitting there being quiet about it." I'd guess that he's come as a member of the public who has personal family experience of the scandal of sex/drugs/violence/police blind eye anti-white racism that we were addressing in our speeches and campaign, and is just too angry to control himself. How would you feel if your daughter had been turned into a heroin-addict prostitute?

That, of course, is no excuse. Again, it's a sign of the collapse of our society that a grown man can't be bothered to, or doesn't understand the reason why he should, control himself in a court of law. Of course, we get the same thing at our own meetings sometimes, and the prosecution in cases like this dishonestly use them as 'examples' of us 'winding up' otherwise calm and rational people, whereas the truth is that there's a lot of anger among ordinary people out there anyway. We believe it is better channelled positively, rather than brushing it under the carpet to fester.

Systematic grooming

Mark now looks relaxed in the dock. He explains how 'grooming' is systematic, controlled and deliberate, taking the jury through how it is done stage by stage.

Lawson-Rogers takes Mark through the two speeches, repeatedly bringing out the theme of how he was seeking not to incite 'hate' but to persuade new members and enquirers to get actively involved and to help advance our cause through the democratic political process. There are, of course, no fireworks at this stage, but between them Mark and his defence QC lay down some good material for the jury to think about and for the defence summing up.

"Has the party grown in the way you said you wanted it to at those meetings?" asks the QC. Yes, certainly, replies Mark, giving as a particularly good example the way in which the BNP got more votes in the last council elections in the whole of Kirklees than any other party.

By 11.35 a.m. they are going through Mark's jury bundle. The jury peer closely at the first document, a copy of a cutting about the Bradford riots from the institutionally anti-white Bradford Telegraph & Argus. Lawson-Rogers skims through cuttings such as one from the Dewsbury Free Press about Lee Massey (the near murder of this young dad by a gang of Iraqi asylum-seekers wasn't covered anywhere else), asking the jury to study them more carefully later. Mark says very little through this stage. An account of a brutual attack on an elderly man tending the grave of his wife in a Bradford cemetery, by a gang described by the police and local paper as involving "six Asian teenagers" is particularly shocking.

The jury, among other things, are talked through the Home Office Joint Tenancy Agreement, which shows the huge list of handouts and luxuries given to asylum seekers in private accommodation (at taxpayers' expense). Hopefully this raised a few hackles against Establishment folly among the jurors, although it's hard to tell because a large TV is positioned between them and me in the dock at the back of the court, so I can't see them all.

By 12.15 Mr Lawson-Rogers has finished going through the source material, and sits down. Mr Jameson takes over for the Prosecution and offers Mark a short break as he's been in the witness box quite a long time. Mark declines and says we can just get on with it.

Jameson tries to get Mark to accept his proposition that if someone says that "all Asians are criminals" it would be abusing or insulting. Mark says it might be, but he wouldn't regard it as such. He points out that he has been called a criminal by various media outlets and demonstrators, but isn't abused or insulted, "it's just one of those things."

Jameson admits that Mark's motive is to get support for political action and to get elected, but then says he accepts that, but "what was the point?" Mark responds that he thought that the motive was the point, and Jameson moves on. Once again Jameson tries to make something significant about the fact that Mark talks about the problems of Bradford, rather than Keighley. Mark points out that Keighley is simply part of Bradford in political boundary terms and the point is dropped. This is all moving along at a fair bit faster than last time.

The two joust over the press cuttings, with Jameson trying to use the most sickeningly PC propaganda tale parts of them as 'evidence' that Mark has somehow got it all wrong. "Did you speak to the mothers quoted in the paper who say it's not a racial issue but a child protection one?" Mark is asked. "No, but I talked to the mothers of victims who came to our meetings and they had a very different opinion; they thought it was racial." A scoring point!

"Do you suggest that the police weren't doing everything they should?" Mark is asked in an incredulous tone. Jameson has just dropped his guard and walks on to a cracking right hook: "When you've got carloads of young Asian men aged between 18 and their mid twenties sat outside schools waiting for young white schoolgirls, to get them onto drink, drugs and rape them, and the police do nothing to stop these perverts, then of course the police aren't doing everything they should."

Mark stops Jameson and accuses him - rightly - of cherry-picking instead of taking the speech as a whole. Jameson asks his forgiveness and says that he doesn't want to gloss over Mark's overall political aims. Mark says he forgives him!

Mark starts to make a point, Jameson interrupts him and gets him to answer the question. The judge then interrupts Jameson and gives Mark the opportunity to say what he wanted to. Very fair.

Adjourn

At one p.m. precisely we adjourn for lunch, expecting a few questions still to come.

We start again at 2.15 prompt, with a brief discussion on the timing of the rest of the case. A piece of extra evidence that I have found should have been viewed by my team during the lunch break, but one of them had to go to the A&E Department of the local hospital with something in her eye. It is therefore agreed that today will finish at the end of Mark's evidence, with me starting tomorrow morning.

Mark had been advised by his counsel to be defensive and non-aggressive in his responses. Over lunch we've concluded that, while he's done fine under a much tighter cross-examination than last time (Jameson has dropped all the weak points that got him such a comprehensive hiding from Mark last time around) he does better when taking the fight to the 'enemy'.

We're right. Mark comes out fighting. We're going through his second speech now. Jameson tries to make something out an idiotic (or planted?) comment from the audience and Mark uses it to condemn such morons and say we don't want them, but that there is righteous anger over what is going on in places such as Keighley, and that it is far better that this is brought out through sensible and peaceful channels.

Mr Jameson now (rightly) gets accused of worming his way around and using weasel words. Mark, on occasion, however, can be weasley too (he knows that and happily admits it) and the pair verbally circle each other warily.

At one point in my speech in Keighley I said that the members of the paedophile rape gang that had been exposed (just once) on Channel 4 were all in prison. Mark had later said that none had been jailed. Why, Mark was now asked, had he not given my answer. Had he not listened to what I was saying. "No", said Mark, grinning boyshly as he said of me that "he does go on a bit." The judge and jury and almost the entirely court laugh or smile; I'm not able to see if Rodney Jameson joins in the brief merriment.

Asked a question on his use of the word 'pride' and why it's important that white people especially should have pride, Mark launches a powerful response that "when there are Asian Pride Melas or Black History Month it all gets a round of applause from the Guardian and leftists, but when we talk of pride among white peope we're 'racist'." The blow goes home and Jameson moves swiftly on.

In fact, he moves swiftly on to the end. Mark has got his teeth into him and doesn't want to let go. Jameson's final question is about press coverage of the kind of incidents which our speeches were about, but he doesn't even stay on his feet until the end of Mark's reply, which concludes by asking him "Mr. Jameson, if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it fall, does it make a noise?" "I'm not answering your questions" he grumbles as he sits down, distinctly deflated once again.

"Spot on. That was brilliant," says one of our guards as Mark picks up his files and steps down from the witness box - the typical position, I'd reckon of virtually the whole of honest, hard-working, taxpaying Leeds if they could but have heard the exchanges.

That's it, we're done for the day by 2.55 p.m. At one level I'm glad, because I want to have one more look through my own material before taking the stand. But, at another, I'd love to be able to get straight on with it. My defence team, security chaps and a couple of members of the court staff stay behind after everyone else has left. We are now able to play and watch the last minute piece of evidence I want to produce, a DVD of a Jihadi rap video in which I feature and am recommended for death. Charmers!

While the lawyers discuss the material one of the court staff asks for my autograph on a court document. Actually we've found that they're pretty much all on our side, although not all as blatantly as that. I take the opportunity to step into the witness box for a moment, just for the fun of it and by way of practice for the morning. A severe adrenaline rush - I'm going to tear the unfortunate Mr. J. to pieces tomorrow. Of course, I know he's only doing his job, and I'm not one to hold grudges, but he did try to rough young Mark up this morning and I'm looking forward to repaying him in kind. We'll see, I'm all too well aware that it doesn't pay to count your chickens before they're hatched, and given my tendency to "go on a bit" M'Lud may well keep me on a much tighter leash than he has Mark.

Come what may, Mark will be your reporter from the dock of Court Number Eight tomorrow so I, like you, will look forward to reading what he makes of it all.