Three people living in Ireland are among 12,000 individuals included on a list of members of the far-right British National Party that was leaked online over the weekend.
In a statement on its website, the BNP confirmed that the list was "essentially genuine" although it claimed it was a year out-of-date. According to the party, the published list is based on its 2007 membership list.
The BNP said the majority of people named on the list are members but claimed a number of individuals who were not members also seemed to have been added.
The party has demanded a police investigation into the leak, which is believed to have been made by former disgruntled members of the organisation.
The list contains details of the jobs and in some instances, the hobbies and qualifications of members, including teachers, police officers and members of the British armed forces,.
Three individuals with addresses in Dublin, Co Galway and Co Sligo are included on the membership lists. One of these, who did not wish to be named, confirmed to The Irish Timesthat he was a former member of the organisation.
The man, who is originally from England but has been living in Ireland for the past three years, said he had joined the party following the murder of white Glasgow teenager Kriss Donald in 2004. Three British Asians were jailed for life after they were found guilty of murdering Donald in a racially motivated attack.
The man admitted he was worried that his details had become publicly available because he said he was not a racist.
"I'm concerned because some people who don't know about the British National Party are going to think I'm a Nazi, which I'm not. I've got nothing against people, I'm just fed up with my own government," he said.
"I joined purely because Brown and Blair have completely let us down . . . some of my friends in England are black, and some of them I've told honestly that I'm a member."
"Most people I know who are members of the BNP definitely aren't Nazis or anything like that. Don't get me wrong, I don't want people humiliated, hounded, murdered or anything like that. That's the left-wing press way of trying to suppress the BNP. We're not like that."
The two other individuals with Irish addresses on the list could not be contacted.
Google, the owners of blogspot.com, today deleted a blog that contained the membership list from their servers after agreeing that it was a serious violation of several laws and constituted a gross infringement of privacy regulations.
According to the BNP, some members have been threatened following the publication of the list.
“We have had reports that some people on the list - and not all are BNP members, as many appeared to have had their names maliciously added by whoever was responsible for the blog posting - are receiving threatening phone calls, said BNP leader Nick Griffin.
However, the party said that it hoped the episode would allow people to discover what the party stood for.
"Let's enjoy the publicity bonus!," added Mr Griffin.
