The English Angle: Party pooper

Thu, Feb 09 2012

Fri, Oct 23 2009 09:58 CET byGabriel Hershman 3428 Views 48 Comments

The establishment’s attacks on the British National Party (BNP) in the UK all miss the point. Of course, it serves the main parties’ interests to concentrate on the BNP because it distracts from their own failings.

The BNP party may be a racist party – that is undeniable because its constitution specifically bars minorities from joining. And it certainly has some unpleasant characters in it.

But anybody who seriously believes that the BNP is one of the greatest evils facing the UK at the moment is either blinded by political correctness or stupid. Is the BNP more dangerous than the fanatical Muslim extremists who heckled Geert Wilders on his recent visit with placards calling for Sharia law? Or those who blew up London in 2005?

Is the BNP more of a threat than the feral scum who ruin the lives of people living on run-down estates? Are we really saying that all BNP supporters are would-be stormtroopers about to throw Muslims and Jews out of the country? That’s a convenient way to ignore a lot of people’s grievances.

In fact, the establishment’s failings have created rising support for the BNP. No doubt, panellists on BBC’s Question Time will preach "tolerance" and "diversity" when they appear on the programme alongside BNP leader Nick Griffin. In particular, expect an onslaught of self-righteous indignation and huffing and puffing from former home secretary Jack Straw.

This from the man whose first action in 1997 was to tell the police they were "institutionally racist" and so contributed more to the lawlessness in our inner cities than any other politician. A man whose sole concern at the home office lay with massaging statistics and manipulating favourable media coverage. How do I know? I was there. Not that Straw is the only example of this. You only have to read Alastair Campbell’s diaries to see that New Labour’s only concern lay with spin.

The main parties won’t succeed in distracting people from their own failings. Labour politicians spent most of their first years in power rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, ignoring the anti-social behaviour that blights the lives of people up and down the country.

Their failure to crack down on Muslim extremism has made the UK a breeding ground for terrorism. Conservative politicians, on the other hand, believe that the measure of a man’s life can be measured purely in material terms. Their decisions in the 1980s propagated mindless greed and social dislocation.

In such times it’s natural that a party like the BNP would grow in support. That does not mean I support it, anymore than one supports vigilantism or the violent actions of animal rights protesters trying to prevent some helpless animal from being tortured. But I understand why people do. My own solution is simply to abstain from voting in the UK and do so in such large numbers that the main parties get the message. A plague on both your houses!