BNP on Question Time

[crackerjack]

Ive watched a bit of the coverage including the Jon Snow interview on C4 today. Some of nick griffins points or at least his sidesteps were almost good - unfortunately.... A lot of people say that the BNP are racist in that they only accept white british as members.... Is this right??? Is that illegal - it is right?

The BNP's constitution forbids non-whites from joining (I believe it also forbids Jews, though they've sidestepped this in the past as they've run at least one Jewish candidate before now).

Now that they're in the European parliament there's been a legal challenge and they'll change it some time next year, most likely.

 

[vimothy]

Someone (Hain?) was saying that on the news last night.

V. amusing and patriotic response to the Army last night as well. Still, I can't help but feel that it would be better if they were ignored rather than challenged.

 

[john eden]

Someone (Hain?) was saying that on the news last night.

V. amusing and patriotic response to the Army last night as well. Still, I can't help but feel that it would be better if they were ignored rather than challenged.

Ignoring them has brought them huge electoral success (in relative terms - it's very impressive considering where they have come from).

 

[crackerjack]

Ignoring them has brought them huge electoral success.

That's impossible to gauge. They've been talked about as their popularity has increased, and as their popularity has increased they've been talked about

Unless by ignoring them you mean not inviting them on QT.

 

[john eden]

That's impossible to gauge. They've been talked about as their popularity has increased, and as their popularity has increased they've been talked about

Unless by ignoring them you mean not inviting them on QT.

They started this process in 1993. Most people were ignoring them until a couple of years ago (or whenever Barking kicked off - 2006?), by which time the foundations had been laid.

Until 2006 they were treated as a curiousity in the mainstream press (and much of the left), like the various left groups and the Natural Law Party.

But this isn't the issue - if "anti-fascism" is about defending the status quo from the BNP then I'm not interested. The etablishment can wring its hands about all this but the simple fact is that there isn't any kind of left wing alternative to the BNP so they have a monopoly on the politics of resentment - a commodity which will be increasingly commonplace in the near future.

 

[slightly crooked]

that Cohen piece where he said it would be good if they got rid of Dimbleby for the night and put Andrew Neil in the chair: yes!

Can't help thinking that it's going to degenerate into such an antagonistic circus that Jerry Springer might be more appropriate.

 

[vimothy]

Ignoring them has brought them huge electoral success (in relative terms - it's very impressive considering where they have come from).

Has it? How do you know that?

EDIT: Also, it should be possible to address the underlying grievances without turning the public debate into a three ring circus -- Griffin all over the news last night to "explain" why he compared British generals to Nazi war criminals, e.g.

 

[scottdisco]

Quite possibly - the thing I remember is Griffin going on about "peace walls" in Oldham (like in Gaza) and how muslims were behind all drug dealing. He was on a roll. Paxman didn't exactly pull him up on any of this shit.

cheers John, my bad, never actually saw it!

peace walls?


IIRC when it all kicked off eight years ago in Oldham provocateur white British Stoke City casuals (or, racists, to give them their proper name) were up for a match and started abusing local south Asian Britons, then local Asian lads from districts like Glodwick were moved to anger over the next few weeks culminating in the scenes a few weeks after the Stoke match at Boundary Park.

(the wiki on the riots goes into detail and is far fairer than my rumour-mongering. certain wards in Oldham are among the most deprived in the country and parts of the town are very segregated - tbc i'm not from Oldham but have mates from there, i'm not just slagging the place off or anything.)

interestingly, when Griffin had been due to speak in Leigh, near Wigan, recently (he pulled out as i recall), there was trouble nearby between bused-in scouse-area NF street thugs and local lads (of various ethnicities and backgrounds) 'defending' their turf.

fair point on the politics of resentment John. i'm sorry to keep banging this drum but Phil Woolas, an Oldham MP and cabinet member, has stoked this to very dangerous levels in the last several years. he has genuinely said things that Nick Griffin would have been too canny to say on the broadcast news. Woolas is doing it clearly as he thinks he can outflank them and then win people over but because he's a useless twat on the whole, all he has done is the first part: stoke it. the second part - salving - he's not so clued up on.

i had no idea (though would have guessed) the actual statistic when they got their man in, in Millwall, in '93, racist attacks in the area then spiked by 300%, incidentally.

Can't help thinking that it's going to degenerate into such an antagonistic circus that Jerry Springer might be more appropriate.

yup probably.

let us hope that Craner's homework shout for Straw pays off...

...nice up Vim on the stats and reports front, as ever.

they have become water-cooler fodder in the last few years, and this has to have helped them.

 

[slightly crooked]

But this isn't the issue - if "anti-fascism" is about defending the status quo from the BNP then I'm not interested. The etablishment can wring its hands about all this but the simple fact is that there isn't any kind of left wing alternative to the BNP so they have a monopoly on the politics of resentment - a commodity which will be increasingly commonplace in the near future.

Very good point.

While it can be too glib to simply blame neo-liberalism for the rise of the BNP, it is undeniable that even well-functioning markets create winners and losers; that a level of instability and insecurity is impossible to avoid. The idea that hard times or declining neighbourhoods are simply due to impersonal economic trends is a much harder sell than embodying the problem in a particular group of people. The BNP's heady brew of blaming immigrants, unpatriotic PC do-gooders and the mainstream political parties does seem the most blatant attempt to mobilise resentment politically.

(Although mainstream public opinion in many other areas seems dripping in resentment/displaced resentment: bankers, MPs' expenses, Jonathon Ross, etc.)

 

[scottdisco]

(Although mainstream public opinion in many other areas seems dripping in resentment/displaced resentment: bankers, MPs' expenses, Jonathon Ross, etc.)

very good point, politics of mob easily roused across the axes.

that RBS guy Goodwin was essentially incited against one day by H Harman in a statement, bonkers.

 

[slightly crooked]

From Wiki on Oldham:

Many people of the white community believed that more council tax money was spent to serve Asian agendas such as mosque building in substitution for providing for 'white needs'

A few years back, I worked for a company who did research for local authorities on housing needs - carrying out surveys to assess particular shortfalls in housing provision (especially social housing) in the area as a guidance for future planning policy. One of the directors told me that the survey they had done in Oldham a couple of years before the riots may have contributed to the tension that caused the riots. As ever, after a piece of work like that, the council were looking for clear targets/conclusions but Oldham had/has a fairly plentiful supply of cheap housing, so there were few standout findings. The only real shortfall in provision was for homes for larger families, so the council ran with this. Of course, this was then interpreted by local opinion as the council favouring Asian families by building new homes for them.

 

[vimothy]

Housing is a massive issue round here. I know a few people who are outright unashamed racist and lack of housing because the council gives it to immigrants and bag heads first is the chief reason given.

 

[IdleRich]

"Can't help thinking that it's going to degenerate into such an antagonistic circus that Jerry Springer might be more appropriate."

Yeah, sounds right, and, to get back to the thing about whether it's ok for them to be on Question Time, I can't see that a load of thugs involved in a Springer-style slanging match is going to win over many undecideds so where is the harm?
Also, to look at the bigger picture, presumably if the BNP did have a bigger political representation then the arguments that the BBC is putting across about being obliged to show their side of the debate would hold more water and in that case the other political parties would have no grounds to disagree with their appearance - unless they simply hold that their views make them unacceptable which I think is a dangerous way to go. What I'm saying is, democracy means that sometimes you have to debate with people who you find abhorrent so they might as well realise that and get on with it.

 

[baboon2004]

Quite possibly - the thing I remember is Griffin going on about "peace walls" in Oldham (like in Gaza) and how muslims were behind all drug dealing. He was on a roll. Paxman didn't exactly pull him up on any of this shit.

It wasn't great by Paxman, must be said.

Surely if BNP thugs do turn up tomorrrow night, it's gonna totally fuck up Griffin's attempt to position the bNP as a 'normal' political party with positions on topics outside race and immigration?

 

[nomadthethird]

OT, but you guys realized Jerry Springer is all staged, right?

Just checking.

 

[scottdisco]

It wasn't great by Paxman, must be said.

Surely if BNP thugs do turn up tomorrrow night, it's gonna totally fuck up Griffin's attempt to position the bNP as a 'normal' political party with positions on topics outside race and immigration?

this may sound like provincial self-flagellation from yours truly in a perverse way but the location (London) is surely good for Griffin.

i don't know the stats of BNP voters broke down into hardcore committed camps and the floating voter resentment camps (etc.) but it's areas up north and in the midlands that seem to have the most of the former, anecdotally.

(though i know the BNP do well in bits east of London, granted.)

Nomad: QT is often such car-crash viewing - as noted ^ - that it should be staged..

 

[john eden]

It wasn't great by Paxman, must be said.

Surely if BNP thugs do turn up tomorrrow night, it's gonna totally fuck up Griffin's attempt to position the bNP as a 'normal' political party with positions on topics outside race and immigration?

Unlikely to happen. More likely is that there will be some kind of disturbance outside the venue - a picket of anti-fascists.

Griffin, as an elected politician, has the right to organise bodyguards tp ensure his safe delivery to a speaking engagement he has been invited to.

I would imagine plod and the BBC will be keen to maintain public order...

 

[slightly crooked]

Housing is a massive issue round here. I know a few people who are outright unashamed racist and lack of housing because the council gives it to immigrants and bag heads first is the chief reason given.

Housing is a massive issue in most parts of the country, but issues around social housing never quite managed to be trendy enough to rise up Labour's public service agenda in the same way as schools, NHS etc. Harder sell to middle-England, perhaps?

The main problem being huge quantities of social housing stock were lost completely through Right to Buy, without ever being adequately replaced. Also this trend ment that it was, on the whole, the better council properties that were bought, leaving only the worst of the stock in public hands. Even in recent years, when the lack of social housing was having real knock-ons in driving up prices for private housing, the government were desperate to avoid spending any real money to improve the situation, choosing instead to try to increase supply almost solely through section 106 arrangements with private developers (i.e. for every development of over 15 units, x% had to be provided for social housing, shared-ownership etc.) The main problem with this strategy being that, if the arse falls out of the property development business, increases to the supply of social housing dry up as well.

I'm pretty sure that most allegations of favouritism towards immigrants are unproven, but given the overall scarcity of provision it's inevitable that it will become a focus for tensions.

 

[scottdisco]

The vast majority of people who live in social housing in Britain were born in the UK according to a research study published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission today. The study found that less than two per cent of all social housing residents are people who have moved to Britain in the last five years and that nine out of ten people who live in social housing were born in the UK.
The independent research, which was undertaken for the Commission by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), found that social housing policies are targeting those in most need including the homeless, the elderly and families with children.

It found no evidence to support the perception that new migrants are getting priority over UK born residents. Nor was there any evidence of abuse of the system, including 'queue jumping' or providing false information.

EHRC report from this July

 

[vimothy]

Nice one Scott