The outrage felt by Plaid Cymru and others at the fact that the BNP were allowed to have a stand at the recent Vale of Glamorgan Show has culminated in a letter to the Western Mail from one of their activists.
The writer is quite right to point out the disturbing nature of the BNP but goes too far in arguing that they should not be able to exercise their democratic rights as a registered political party. The reference to South Africa is bizarre. Yes the apartheid regime there was appalling and never gained international legitimacy but it survived for some considerable time by crushing opposition from the majority ethnic population and preventing them from publicly campaigning against the government.
Stopping the BNP having a stand at a local show is not in the same league in any sense whatsoever, but once you start trying to prevent a group you disagree with from exercising their democratic rights then you are on a very slippery slope indeed. In this case those seeking to ban the BNP stall are playing into that party’s hands.
All that has been achieved by this controversy is to create publicity for the BNP and to reinforce their anti-establishment image. They are able to portray themselves as victims and that assists them in targeting susceptible voters.
The writer is absolutely right to conclude that every democrat has a duty to act to prevent this vile party from fooling any more people. But the best way to do that is to engage them on the issues and demonstrate to people their inconsistencies, that their policies are repulsive and unworkable and to take away the issues they campaign on by patiently destroying the myths they rely on to gain support.
Once you start to adopt the BNPs tactics against them then you have lost the moral highground. Let us not allow that to happen.
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Only Peter Black would be so blinkered in his hatred for Plaid that he would use the BNP as a front to attacking them. Shame on you Peter. Political parties should be united against these facists not using them as a handy tool to bash plaid.
What on earth are you on about Mathew? If you look at Peter’s blog you will see he has been consistently arguing that the way to beat the BNP is not to allow them to present themselves as being victims of the other parties ganging up on them.
And I have not used the BNP to attack Plaid I have argued (I thought sympathetically) that their stance on this issue was wrong and made a constructive suggestion as to how we should move forward.
Would your answer then Peter be to share a platform with a member of the BNP in a political debate? There is a very large differnece between people or parties exercising their democratic right, and those who wish to hinder the rights of others through racist connotations.
I personally would not wish to share a platform with a member of any party whose leader has been convicted of inciting racial hatred and denying the holocaust.
If you are going to expose them you have to debate with them
Totally agree Peter, once you start getting them involved in debates, they will be asked questions which are not pre-prepared by the party and they are much more likely to shoot themselves in the foot as to regard of their less popular policies. After the Sun reported on their anti-Gurkha stance I seem to remember them changing their line on it three times.
How can you have a debate with a party that is not honest about its true face? The debate would be skewed and unfair.
It’s quite easy to expose the BNP without engaging with them in debate, the criminal convictions are on record for all to see.
Peter says: “The writer is absolutely right to conclude that every democrat has a duty to act to prevent this vile party from fooling any more people.”
So how do we prevent them? Whatever anti-fascists have done so far hasn’t stopped the far-right from gaining ground. In the recent European elections the BNP won nearly 38,000 votes in Wales. Their ideology and white supremacist stance is quickly gaining support because people who are suffering from the economic crisis are being manipulated to believe it’s the fault of the “foreigners”. Who can forget the slogan “British jobs for British workers”? This is happening at the same time as people feel conned and let down by the political establishment. Have we learned nothing from history?
The BNP have had a stall at the Vale of Glamorgan show for the last four years. They are a party which practices apartheid. Black and gay people do not feel safe in their presence, nor does anyone else who opposes them. As democrats, our duty is to ensure that everyone is free to attend a show like this, without fearing for their safety.
At what point do we stop them? At what point could Hitler have been stopped? Do we wait for them to get into power? Or should we take the fight to them before that?
Here are some of the things Nick Griffin MEP has said:
“Without the White race, nothing matters. [Other right-wing parties] believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create ‘Black Britons’, while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land.”
“Yes, Adolf went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem that the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image.”
“The electors of Millwall did not back a Post-Modernist Rightist Party, but what they perceived to be a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up its slogan ‘Defend Rights for Whites’ with well-directed boots and fists. When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate.”
The crunch must not come. Debate is obviously useless when faced with the boots and the fists of Griffin’s BNP.
Well if you adopt their anti-democratic tactics then you are as bad as them. In a democracy you can only defend your rights through democratic means.
Luke, the trouble with the BNP’s criminal record is that they love it; to them it’s just more evidence of the conspiracy against their “truth”. Far from exposing them, for many people they’re a reason to vote for them.
Mr Black, I think your point of view is legitimate and worth serious debate. In fact, I used to think the same way as you. Let me explain why I have changed my mind.
Dealing with the BNP strikes at the heart of what it means to live in a liberal democracy. I am a ‘liberal’ (with a small ‘l’), not without great threat would I curb freedom of speech or expression.
But, in this instance, as you already know, I disagree with your conclusion.
You imply that the BNP have a ‘democratic right’ to attend the Vale of Glamorgan Show. I disagree.
There is no ‘right’ to attend any event of that kind. Any homeowner can refuse entry to their home to an individual. I would not allow the BNP into my home, nor, I suspect, would you. Of course, the Vale of Glamorgan Show is not a house. The more relevant comparison is a large gathering on private property, like a club, festival or pub.
Publicans, club owners and festival organisers have a right to bar groups or individuals on any grounds they like – the shoes or clothes they wear, for instance. As the law stands, whether you disagree or not, they have that right to arbitarily bar entry. Similarly, the Vale of Glamorgan show organisers have the ‘right’ to exclude the BNP from their show, and they have confirmed that to me. They can do so without any grounds or reasoning at all. They could decide, for example, to exclude people wearing pink shirts from their show. No matter how I might disagree with their decision, I would defend their right to make it.
The pertinent question is whether we should attempt to change the minds of this show’s organisers.
If someone I knew invited Nick Griffin into their home I would ask them to reconsider. It’s likely I would point out what he stands for and if they continued to invite him, I would choose to no longer visit that home.
I sent a letter to the Western Mail a couple of weeks ago. The paper decided to edit out what I felt to be the most important part of the letter. Here are the points they omitted:
• The BNP leader, Nick Griffin was convicted of inciting racial hatred after a BNP magazine he published denied the reality of the Holocaust – Nazi Germany’s murder of 15 million Jews, trade unionists, gypsies, Slavs, black, lesbian, gay and disabled people.
• In 2004, Mark Collett, leader of the BNP youth wing, was recorded by Channel 4 saying that AIDS is “a friendly disease because blacks, drug users and gays have it.”
• The same leading BNP member was caught on a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary praising Hitler and claiming that Nazi Germany would have been a better place to live than some parts of Britain.
• Nick Eriksen, one of their London Assembly candidates said “Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible ordeal… [it] is like suggesting force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence.”
• John Tyndall, BNP founder and former leader said “Mein Kampf is my bible”
Plaid activists asked an organiser at the Vale of Glamorgan show to reconsider their decision to allow the BNP to attend the event. The organiser said that the BNP were allowed to attend because, as a registered political party, they are a ‘normal’ political party.
The BNP are not normal – they are led by a convicted criminal, they denounce the holocaust, and they promote violence and hatred against others on the basis of sexuality, race, creed and disability.
For those reasons, I would not let them into home, any club I owned, or festival I ran.
I am not pretending that these issues are easy. They aren’t. But the question I think you should consider is this: what would a political party have to do for you to argue that they shouldn’t attend an agricultural show? Exclude all non-whites from their organisation? Discriminate against Jews? Argue for the repatriation of all non-whites? Promote violence and hatred against black people, disabled people, gays and lesbians? Deny the holocaust? Support Adolf Hitler and his ideals? Commend rape? Endorse Mein Kampf? Argue for apartheid?
Maybe if you organised an event, like a school fete, a music festival or an agricultural show, you would let the BNP attend. Maybe you would let them into your home. I wouldn’t.
We can no longer have a comfortable academic debate about fascists and neo-Nazis. The BNP have two MEPs and a London Assembly Member. One small example – a BNP member was recently fined for making a Nazi salute. These people are here in the 21st century, and millions of our forefathers died to defend us from them in the last century.
I hope and pray that you and your readers will consider my arguments seriously. You can read more at http://www.thisismytruth.org/?p=265, more importantly you can read Searchlight’s website at http://www.hopenothate.org.uk and Unite Against Fascism’s views at http://www.uaf.org.uk
Colin, I agree with you that this party is appalling and I would not want them in my home either. I have the right to keep them out just as the organisers of the Vale of Glamorgan Show may prevent them having a stand. That would be an operational decision for them. The BNP do not have a democratic right to attend that show but neither do other parties or individuals have a democratic right to prevent them.
There are fundamental principles at stake here, those of freedom of speech and of association. Your comment contains the exact arguments that we need to make against the BNP along with effective campaigning to prevent them taking advantage of certain issues that lead to political dissatisfaction and support for them. There are no easy answers least of all ones that undermine our democratic values.