A VIOLENT nazi group would have been "run out of town" had its plans to stage an anti-asylum seeker rally in Glasgow gone ahead, it has been claimed.

Members of the Hitler-worshipping White Nationalist Party applied to the City Council for permission to hold a racist demonstration in George Square next month.

However, the application was knocked back, as the council said that the area had already been booked for another event.

The decision to ban the event was welcomed bv anti-racists, who said that the nazis would have been "physically" stopped from gathering in any case.

A Scottish Socialist Party spokesman said: "'This sorry little lot are just a handful of maladjusted criminals. Had this gone ahead, they would have been run out of town - and they know that. This is just a means of drumming up publicity."

The WNP - a hardcore splinter which shares members with equally fascist groups such as the BNP and National Front claimed it could expect to get around 60 people to its George Square event; a highly optimistic reckoning since that is about double the organisation's active UK membership.

The Big Issue in Scotland discovered the nazi hate group's plans for the rally more than a month ago, and tipped off Glasgow City Council who promised to "monitor the situation."

Our discoverv came after a Scottish nazi calling himself k/nacht - a reference to Kristallnacht, the night Nazi mobs destroyed Jewish businesses in November 1938 - boasted that he had made the application for the event on the guestbook of the WNP's website.

Last month we exclusively reported how the WNP - whose race hate stickers have appeared sporadically in Glasgow city centre - had its bid to become a legitimate political party spiked by the Electoral Commission on the grounds that its name is offensive.

However, we can now reveal that the organisation has succeeded in registering itself under the name 'England First Party', a title it intends to use to cloak its real identity so that it can stand in local elections.

Earlier this month, the group's leadership instructed its members in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to register similar 'front' parties.

The WNP was founded last year by just seven people, and was originally led by veteran Yorkshire nazi Eddy Morrison.

He stood aside recently and was replaced by Mark Cotterill, who gained some notoriety a few years ago when he was deported from the USA after the authorities there became suspicious of his fundraising activities on behalf of the American Friends of the BNP.

The BNP denies anv involvement with the WNP, but it is well known amongst far right watchers that there is a significant cross-over in membership.

Cotterill is known to be close to Steve Cartwright who, until very recently, "was a BNP Scotland stalwart. In 1999. they toured the states, meeting, amongst others, supporters of the Ku Klux Klan.

By Graham MartIn