Running away from the BNP, or hoping the party will vanish of its own accord, will not reduce its popularity, writes DAVID ADAMS
THOSE WHO have been complaining loudest about British National Party leader Nick Griffin’s appearance as a guest on the BBC television’s Question Time programme tonight are missing the point. They say that including him alongside mainstream politicians lends legitimacy to his vile fascist party. They are wrong. Whatever supposed legitimacy there is to be had, it arrived the moment the BBC issued its invitation to Griffin.
This would have remained the case, regardless of whether Griffin subsequently declined the offer (some chance), or the BBC eventually folded under pressure and rescinded it. Anyway, the notion of a degree of legitimacy somehow being conferred on the BNP is a complete nonsense and a distraction.
The British public is not so shallow, nor the BBC’s flagship political programme so influential that the BNP can be elevated to the status of a normal political party merely by its leader being allowed to sit on a television panel with a few mainstream representatives. People are well aware of the hateful racist sentiments and the religious intolerances of the BNP. They know what separates that party from the rest; it would take more than a guest appearance on Question Time to blur the lines.
None of this is to say that the Question Time furore hasn’t served any useful purpose, it most certainly has. It has laid bare the self-deluded thinking prevalent among the establishment political parties in Britain. The suggestion is that if the fascist BNP is largely ignored (denied the oxygen of publicity?) it will wither away of its own accord.
Running alongside this is the even more ridiculous notion that a marked rise in the BNP’s electoral support is mainly down to people mistaking the party for something else. The Welsh secretary of state (and former Northern Ireland secretary) Peter Hain – who has led the charge against Griffin’s appearance on Question Time – made this very argument on the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Monday night. When asked to speculate on how the BNP has managed to attract over a million voters, Hain claimed that most of those people didn’t quite realise what in fact they were voting for. He then went on to use this ridiculous assertion as support for his basic contention that allowing the BNP leader on to Question Time runs the risk of legitimising the party further in the eyes of the public. How dangerously wrong can you be?
The problem we face with the BNP and their ilk is that people know precisely what makes them different from the other political parties, yet still they are choosing to vote for them, and in increasing numbers. The inescapable reality is that those very differences – the racism, and the religious and the ethic intolerances – must in fact be what attracts people to vote for a BNP candidate rather than for someone else. If the political establishment in Britain cannot face up to that stark truth, then support for the BNP will only continue to grow.
There is no doubt that in a recession the perceived outsider is always a tempting scapegoat – for everything from bad luck to personal shortcomings. The BNP has played on this, managing to convince many white electors (mostly, but far from exclusively, of low educational achievement and from poor, deprived backgrounds) that their every misfortune in life is the fault of those of a different ethnicity.
It further heightens religious and racial tension within communities by playing on the widespread public fear generated by terrorist attacks and the continuing threat of them.
The mainstream parties in general and the government in particular have not done nearly enough at a local level to try to counter the BNP. Rather than embarking on a constant round of public meetings where people can be reassured, tension lowered, and poisonous nonsense challenged and exposed for what it really is, they have opted instead for preaching to communities from the safe distance of a television studio or in the print media.
Worse than anything else is how the parties have shied away from any meaningful, rational discussion on immigration. Indeed, so sensitive are they about the subject – along with the media above gutter press level, it should be said – that even to raise it is to risk being branded a racist.
Yet, immigration is of great concern to the British public. According to the government’s own most recent estimate, there are 40,000 illegal immigrants in Britain who cannot be accounted for. This public concern is being exploited wholesale by the BNP, which has no qualms at all about discussing the issue. Running away from the BNP, or hoping the party will vanish of its own accord, will not reduce its popularity. Completely abandoning an issue as sensitive as immigration to such fascists is little short of madness.
The BNP can boast two MEPs, a representative in the London assembly, and about 56 local councillors. How much more electoral power must the party gain before mainstream politicians begin facing up to the reasons why, and publicly facing down its representatives at every opportunity?
Tonight's Question Timegives the perfect opportunity for them to start.