From the website of the London-based Springbok Club:
2008 AGM – to be followed by a special tribute to long-standing Springbok Club/ELC ExCo member Bill Binding, who sadly died in November, by his nephew Dr. John Pope-de Locksley.
The Springbok Club, which I have blogged on a couple of times in the past, agitates for the return of white rule over Africa. Its leader is Alan Harvey, a former National Front organizer who for a time edited SA Patriot, a far-right newsletter which was recently the subject of spirited discussion on Wikipedia, where Harvey explains that it only included articles with titles such as “Know Your Kikes” because he was young and he didn’t know what the word meant (the Springbok Club is pro-Israel).
The Club came under journalistic scrutiny a few months ago, when Johann Hari noted in the New Republic that right-wing historian Andrew Roberts had spoken to the group (Roberts, inevitably, made noises about “libel”), and despite Harvey’s background the Club appears to enjoy some support from the respectable end of the radical right. A few of the Club’s speakers are billed without their names being given (e.g. an unidentified “prominent Ulster-born friend of Israel”), which suggests that at least some of those involved wish to keep their association discreet. Harvey also has links with WorldNetDaily’s South African correspondent, Anthony LoBaido.
The late Bill Binding, meanwhile, was in the news in 2001, when he attempted to join the Conservative Party:
Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith says he will be looking at whether action is needed over reports that a former deputy leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Britain has joined the Tory party.
Bill Binding, 76, from Clapton, east London, who stood for the far-right British National Party (BNP) in the 1997 election, told the Guardian he had left the klan four years ago after deciding different races were genetically alike…
His nephew Pope-de Locksley runs Jack the Ripper tours of east London, and on his website he is described as “a master of the black arts, a third degree witch and Odinist…a natural shaman and master of Yoga and other preternatural mysteries and systems”. He also claims to be a descendant of Robin Hood, as well as being of “blood line to Jack the Ripper and Dracula”. For several decades he and his occultist associate David Farrant have been in a feud with Sean Manchester, a bishop of the Old Catholic Church who pops up on TV from time to time with tales of battling vampires and other paranormal manifestations. Bishop Manchester has a website entitled Aftermath of the Highgate Vampire, which contains a number of purported photos of Pope-de Locksley and contains a number of allegations about his past occultic activities. Pope-de Locksley also styles himself as ” King of Ibogonia, Ofrika & Ife in Nigeria”, which perhaps would particularly impress the Springbok Club, and has been dubbed “The Scariest Man in London”.
Moving on into 2008, the Springbok Club will again be addressed by Prof David Marsland, whom I blogged on previously here and here. Back in 2004 Marland gave a speech to the Club on winning the “War on Terror”, which included the prescription:
…Halt or segregate air flights into or out of Britain by Arabs.
…Strengthen anti-terrorist legislation to allow on suspicion indefinite secret imprisonment (without appeal, without visits and without any privileges), tough interrogation, and where necessary summary execution by authorised agents.
…Reduce the need for prisons in Iraq by authorising summary execution of known enemy. Throw journalists, servicemen or anyone else who seek to file lying and negative reports about conditions in terrorist prisons in Iraq or elsewhere into these same prisons for an indefinite term.
Censor prejudiced and negative reporting of the war against terrorism by British media. Neutralise by military means any Arab media providing a propaganda outlet for terrorists.
Apparently such views (which he also expressed in the magazine Right Now!) are not incompatible with being a well-known “libertarian”, at least on the libertarian-right.
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