A comment arrives, from Evangelist Nigel Owens:
Hi, please feel free to check out our new Northern Ireland Springbok Club website. It is really good and has a few articles on anti-semitism and Israel. God bless Israel.
So off we head:
Welcome To The Northern Ireland Springbok Club
Where the British Empire Lives On!
Proudly Standing For Faith, Flag, Family, Freedom & Future
I’d always wondered what had happened to the British Empire…The site carries a disclaimer:
Needless to say, it is not the intention, policy or purpose of the ‘Northern Ireland Springbok Club’ and / or its web site to incite or justify law breaking or hatred against anyone, in fact we condemn all such activity…Whilst there may be those with whom we disagree, we bear them no evil whatsoever, we wholeheartedly respect their legal right to have, defend, express and promote whatever opinion they hold to and we hope that they, in return, will afford us those same courtesies.
Evangelist Nigel contacted me in response to a couple of blog entries (here and here) that mentioned the Springbok Club, which I described as “a London-based network for disaffected white South Africans and Rhodesians living in the UK.” His Northern Ireland Springbok Club is the official NI branch of that organisation. The “Who We Are” section gives further details:
The current Chairman of the Northern Ireland Branch is Evangelist Nigel Owens B.Th., B.A. (Hons) and we are incredibly privileged to have none other than Mr Jim Dixon of Enniskillen as our ‘Honorary Life President’.
And as it happens, Jim Dixon (a survivor of the 1987 Enniskillen terrorist bombing) was interviewed in the Daily Ireland just a few days ago. Take a deep breath:
“It’s wrong that blacks are coming to Northern Ireland,” he said.
“I couldn’t care less if people call me a racist. I couldn’t care less what they think. Apartheid meant the black man was better treated and respected
“Immigration is a recipe for trouble. It shouldn’t happen anywhere. Each to their own. Other races should have their own schools, hospitals and buses.”
It should also be remembered that the London Springbok Club is headed by Alan Harvey, a former activist with the National Front. However, the NI Springbok Club insists that it is “not a ‘far right’ movement”.
As promised, the NI website also hosts a number of articles. There we can find news about how there is “massive Jesuit Activity Reported in Rhodesia and South Africa“, among much else (and the writer means “Rhodesia” in a contemporary sense). A number of pieces come from Shaun Willcock, a South African who runs Bible Based Ministries. Willcock is vehemently anti-Catholic, and on his own website he mourns the end of Afrikaner supremacy and rails against the “occult fantasy” of CS Lewis.
Evangelist Nigel also runs True Grace International Ministries, and is president of Reaching Mormons for Christ Ministries. Neither has any internet presence that I could find. Back in late 2004 Owens was complaining that one of his fellow evangelists had been banned from harassing Mormon missionaries.
A few weeks ago the Guardian was heavily criticised for running a two-part article that explored the idea that Israel can be compared to apartheid-era South Africa. Less criticism, if any, has been levelled against a constituency that supports Israel precisely because it reminds them of the good old days of Rhodesia and 1980s South Africa.
(Daily Ireland link via Slugger O’Toole)
UPDATE: Apparently Owens responded to the Daily Ireland piece with a letter. He provides a copy in the comments section of Slugger O’Toole:
…Within the ‘Northern Ireland Springbok Club’, as is the case throughout the black and white communities of South Africa themselves, you will find a variety of views on the issue of apartheid.
We are not a ‘white rule’ club. Our vision for the future of South Africa is to see a multi-racial, Conservative, Judeo-Christian, pro-freedom, Atlanticist party (or coalition of parties) replace the present day Marxist ANC government. We do not campaign for a return to apartheid.
…We are ‘neo-imperialist’, not ‘old imperialist’. We only wish to restore those things that were good about the Empire, and them alone.
One wonders how this squares with Alan Harvey’s vision for the Springbok Club, which he laid out at its founding:
In a nutshell our policy can be summed up in one sentence: “We want our countries back, and believe this can now only come about by the re-establishment of civilised European rule throughout the African continent.”
Harvey spoke in similar vein when he was interviewed by Anthony LoBaido (himself the subject of a recent ConWebWatch exposé) for WorldNetDaily in 2001:
White rule around the world has a lot more influence than people think. I personally believe that the white man will return to Africa and rule one day.
It should also be noted that while the NI Springbok Club is prepared to be ecumenical about whether white and black people should be allowed to mix, some other views are unacceptable. Hence the Google cache of the site shows that it used to sell books by Alan Campbell, while these appear have been purged from the current website. One assumes that someone noticed that Campbell is a British-Israelite who believes in “the Celto-Anglo-Saxon peoples as the Israel of God”, rather than Jews.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
