Membership List Of British Racist Party Is Leaked
It’s a fascinating document. Row after row of names, addresses, telephone numbers, emails. Column upon column of personal, professional and biographical detail – career, education, family, hobbies. Here are 12,801 of our fellow citizens, their lives laid bare in this remarkable respect: we now know that they are, were once, or have at some time expressed an interest in becoming members of the organisation that calls itself “the foremost patriotic political party in Great Britain”.
When I say “we”, of course, I mean anyone with an internet connection and some time to spare. Nearly 13,000 individual records – 11,211 of them in England and Wales, the remainder in Scotland or abroad, from Alicante to California – is a lot of information. But it comes in a spreadsheet, which means it’s searchable and (sort of) analysable.
And what emerges from a few hours spent with the membership list of the British National party that was posted on the net this week is a picture as alarming as it is, strangely, reassuring. It is a picture of a certain kind of England. At times, it’s depressing. At others, it’s frankly hilarious.
[the list has well and truly escaped - currently hosted on bittorrent and the wikileaks site.]
