Jim Dowson
Jim Dowson is a right-wing British political campaigner and former Calvinist minister.[1] Based in Ballygowan, Northern Ireland, he also led an anti-abortion campaign, the UK Life League
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Dowson has been involved with a number of right-wing groups, most notably the British National Party from 2007 to 2010; as an active fundraiser for the party he earned a reputation as "the person who owned the BNP".[1] Other groups that he has been affiliated with include an anti-abortion outfit called the UK LifeLeague.[2] Despite his connection to the racist BNP, Dowson seems to be less interested (though not entirely uninterested) in racial politics and more involved with the kind of right-wing religious campaigning associated more with the United States than with Britain.
In 2010 Shelley Rose, a former BNP candidate, publicly claimed that Dowson had lured her into a hotel room and groped her. Dowson denied this accusation and claimed that Rose was trying to smear him for being a party hardliner, as opposed to "people like Nick Griffin who want to open the party to Asians and other groups". Dowson left the BNP shortly afterwards.[3][4]
In May 2011 Dowson and his colleague Paul Golding announced the establishment of Britain First. The group focuses more on religion, being strongly pro-Christian, anti-Islam and anti-abortion.[1] Britain First has spawned a couple of appendages: its political wing the National People's Party[5] and the English National Resistance (not to be confused with the openly white nationalist group of the same name), a protest group co-founded by representatives of the English Defence League, the English Democrats and the South East Alliance.[6][7] However, in 2014, Dowson left Britain First as he was completely shocked to find that BF was full of "racists and extremists" (*gasp*), adding that "going into their mosques and stirring them up and provoking them is political madness and a bit rude".[8] Well, you know what they say about a stopped clock...
Dowson is a homophobe and appears to believe that gays should be executed. When somebody quoted Leviticus 20:15 (the infamous verse prescribing the death penalty for homosexuality) on his Facebook page, his response was "Indeed so and Amen!"[9]
References
- http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/hate-groups/bf/
- http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/features/article/17/jim-dowson-a-place-in-the-sun
- http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/article/1701/bust-ed-sexy-ex-candidate-claims-that-sleazy
- http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/bnp-money-man-quits-after-1074247
- http://www.britainfirst.org/britain-first/national-peoples-party-authorised-by-electoral-commission/
- http://www.britainfirst.org/britain-first/introducing-the-english-national-resistance/
- http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/article/2470/are-the-english-democrats-the-stupid-party
- Britain First founder Jim Dowson quits over mosque invasions and 'racists and extremists' The Independent, 28 July 2014 (archived)
- "Jim Dowson turns his hate towards gays", EDL News. 4 February 2013. Archived.