Former KKK chief serves as activist for Tories ================================ http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,9061,561023,00.html
Ex-deputy head of British Ku Klux Klan declares admiration for Conservative leader Duncan Smith Jeevan Vasagar Monday October 1, 2001 The Guardian The former deputy leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Britain has joined the Conservative party and describes Iain Duncan Smith as a leader he admires. Bill Binding, 76, joined the Tories in May and was an activist for the party in Hackney, east London, at the general election. The revelation will renew fears that the Conservatives have drifted to the right and that the party is attractive to supporters with a history of neo-Nazism. Mr Binding became deputy leader of the British KKK in 1996, and stood as a parliamentary candidate for the British National party in Dagenham, east London, in 1997. He claims to have quit the klan four years ago after concluding that all races were genetically alike. He continues to be a member of the Swinton Circle, however, a hard right Tory group set up by devotees of Enoch Powell who backed his views on immigration. Mr Binding, a retired train driver, has admitted dressing in a klansman's white robe that was sent from the US for use in ceremonies. He told the Guardian that he was a staunch supporter of Mr Duncan Smith. "I think he's very good. A lot of people have got the wrong idea. There are not going to be any witch-hunts, [but] he will move against the racists in the party. "He will move towards the centre, so it is a centre right party." Mr Duncan Smith's leadership campaign was marred by the discovery that one of his prominent backers was a supporter of the BNP. Edgar Griffin, the father of the BNP leader Nick Griffin, was sacked as a vice-president of the Duncan Smith campaign in Wales after he admitted answering a BNP telephone inquiry line. The Ku Klux Klan earned notoriety in the southern states of the US, where racists dressed in white hoods to terrorise and murder black people. Despite reports of klan recruitment in the west Midlands and south Wales, it has always been considered a marginal force in the British far right. However, the klan's imagery of hoods and burning crosses is known to have been copied in racist incidents in Britain. At his home in Clapton, east London, Mr Binding said that when he was deputy leader there were only 18 members in the British KKK. "There were only six of us in London - and one was a copper's agent [informant]," he said. Mr Binding said he left the klan when he realised that all races were fundamentally alike. "There are three races; the Caucasoid, the Negroid and the Mongoloid," he said. "What really divides us is not so much race. Take these Jews at Stamford Hill [north London], they are 82% northern hemisphere neolithic. Presumably the rest is some Asian blood, but that's not enough to make a difference. What separates us is culture and religion." Once racism was taken out of the equation, the only ideology the far right had was a version of old style socialism, Mr Binding said. "What happens if you take racism out of it and take war-mongering out of it ? What you are left with is a very heavily controlled economy, a big slice of state ownership - rather similar to old Labour. This is not my way of thinking." The former klansman said that he now believed in a multicultural society because the "Anglo-Saxons" were not threatened by the presence of other races in Britain. "The Anglo-Saxon culture is not being destroyed," he said. "We exist." A spokeswoman for the Conservative party refused to comment yesterday. The Tory leadership is thought to be satisfied that Mr Binding has severed his links with the far right group and no longer has racist views.
