The Griffin is given wings and claws

You are probably wondering what a couple of stone beads have to do with Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party.

These beads may be thousands of years old. They turn up in the sands of the Sahara and are sold to foreign collectors by the hardy people who live there. A very long time ago someone used very primitive tools to drill holes through two attractive pieces of stone and polish their surfaces. One is probably a piece of agate with some tiny quartz crystals that, even now, sparkle in the light, the other may be a piece of petrified wood. I love them because they are tiny and affordable pieces of ancient history and because they are a connection with my most distant ancestors - Africans.

One of the few intelligent and serious comments made by a member of the studio audience on the BBC’s “Question Time” was in response to the BNP leader’s suggestion that white English people are now aborigines in their own country. She pointed out that, as we are all descended from the first humans who came from Africa, we are all members of minorities now.

I did not plan to watch it. I haven’t in years and I don’t need to see Nick Griffin in person to know that I don’t agree with his views. In the end I watched it online because I had heard so many comments about the programme that I felt I had to see it for myself. Unfortunately my love for the BBC has now cooled a little because what was considered a smart attempt to undermine the BNP‘s growing influence has probably backfired.

Those involved in the decision to invite Griffin to take part in a debate alongside other politicians are clearly out of touch with the sort of people inclined to vote for a party generally regarded as racist and beyond the pale. They made the mistake of treating him differently to any other politician. There was an obvious and open lack of respect from the very beginning. I understand that the audience was carefully selected - I am not sure what criteria were involved in this selection but the impression I was left with was that they chose anyone prepared to boo and shout. The atmosphere was such that I expected to see girls with trays of ice cream (or rotten eggs and tomatoes) wandering up and down the aisles.

Jack Straw has been criticised for his performance on the night. It is easy to forget that, while we often see images of politicians seconds apart on our TV screens, in reality they don’t always meet face to face. It may have been one of the few times that they had been in each other’s presence and Straw was clearly already very angry. Having Griffin raise the fact that his father was a conscientious objector imprisoned during WW2 couldn‘t have helped. It must have taken some guts to do what his father did but Griffin’s comment was a crafty and subliminal message to anyone watching who has sympathy with his views. They won’t remember the fact what his dad did had little or nothing to do with today‘s politics. All they will take in is that, in their opinion, Straw is not made of the right stuff unlike Griffin whose daddy was in the RAF during the war.

The fact is that Nick Griffin came across as a reasonable, well mannered, clearly spoken individual - if you ignore what he was actually saying - compared to the programme’s presenter, most of the panel and the studio audience. What I saw was a gathering of arrogant liberals (with the exception of Bonnie Greer, who I felt was respectful to him) having a night out at the circus, the sort of circus where lions eat people. Griffin has had a lot of practice saying all the things he said on the night. He has said them a hundred times before to television cameras. He would have had a much harder time if he had been asked for his policies on the environment, Afghanistan, Iraq, the postal strike.

More importantly, the people who have some sympathy for his views on immigration and its impact on the availability of resources (as pointed out by Baroness Warsi this, not race, is the issue) will have seen someone they feel represents their views being howled down. It would be an enormous mistake to assume that the average BNP type is still a skin head with a swastika tattooed onto his forehead. It is unlikely that those who make “Question Time” have experienced life in a tower block, waiting years for a transfer to more suitable housing, or been in the queue at the post office watching someone who can’t speak English collect substantial benefits as they wait to get their own meagre pension. I suspect they pay occasional visits to this alternative reality. They don’t have to live there. They can afford to be open minded.

To me the worst thing of all about that broadcast was the complaint made by a woman in the audience at Jack Straw’s repeated use of the term “Afro-Caribbean”. It seems that he should have said “African-Caribbean”. Surely that night of all nights was an occasion for what is a very tiny failure in protocol to be overlooked. A group of people who should have been united against racists have shown themselves to be divided by semantics. I suspect that this woman, who struck me as someone I would like to know in spite of what she said, would regard me with some suspicion for stating my love of things African. Perhaps she would find me patronising. Sometimes you just can’t win but the taste in my mouth is all the more unpleasant for a realisation that the BNP have gained more than they have lost because of the BBC’s lack of judgement.

This Griffin now has wings and claws. The dangerous fantasy of a country run by racists may now become reality. Thanks Auntie Beeb…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nft24#synopsis

Vote!

It is European Parliamentary Election time again and this has meant that assorted “election communications” have come through the letterbox. I send in a postal vote which means that I get some advance notice of those who are standing. I am not left lurking at the polling station, faced with a list of people I have never heard of or from, apart from representatives of the main parties.

This year several independent candidates are standing and, thanks to the scandal of MPs’ expenses, they are likely to get more votes that they bargained for when they opted to become involved in the process. The UK’s electorate are in the mood to punish. The three main parties are likely to feel the full force of the average voter’s anger but smaller parties, some of whom have yet to win seats in the UK’s Parliament, are bound to gain from this situation.

The British National Party has made the most of it and their representatives have been heard and seen on the mainstream broadcast media. They usually shun the BNP but the fact that many people are openly stating that they will vote for a party that claims “It’s not racist to oppose mass immigration and political correctness - it‘s common sense!” means that they have to be seen to be fair and give them some air time. There isn’t a single foreign sounding name on their list of candidates, in contrast to the other parties, and their leaflet only features white faces.

It proclaims a “New Battle of Britain” and to this end includes an image of a Spitfire, the aircraft most associated with the desperate hours of World War 2 when Britain faced invasion from the forces of Nazi Germany. Unfortunately for whoever put the leaflet together the actual Spitfire shown has been identified as that flown by Jan Zumbach, a pilot of the Polish Fighter Squadron. Elsewhere the leaflet includes references to other conflicts in which the UK could not have managed without foreign help, namely D-Day (USA) and the Falklands (the Gurkhas and a number of others from Commonwealth countries who chose to join the UK’s armed forces). They also mention the Somme (to this day no one can be sure who really won) and Dunkirk (a major evacuation by the British). They get it right with Trafalgar but that was over two hundred years ago.

Two other parties fielding candidates focus specifically on the European issue. They are either for democracy and against the EU or for democracy and for the EU. Confused? How do you think I feel? I wonder how many members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) would prefer it if their leader stuck to union politics rather than dipping his toe into the European variety as well.

The Green Party is also likely to gain from current voter unhappiness. They have sent out a jolly and positive leaflet, printed on recycled paper (of course), featuring children from a range of ethnic backgrounds. It is ironic that the party that was most vocal about recycling has succeeded in getting what many regard as junk mail through the door when the Labour Party has not made that effort so far in my area. I suspect that the Conservatives have had to bin and reprint some of their literature as the item I received mentions “Taking a lead in reforming MEPs’ pay and expenses” (I doubt that they were too worried about that issue before the Telegraph began telling tales on those who claimed, or tried to claim, duck islands and moat clearance as legitimate expenses). I wonder how many will misread that as MPs’ expenses.

I’ve made my choice and sent off my ballot paper. I hope it was the right one. I did have doubts about voting at all because I was so angry that people who claimed to represent me thought that it was acceptable to ask tax payers to pay for things that tax payers could not themselves afford. People who risked serious physical or psychological injury and even death to take part in events such as D-Day now cannot afford to pay for heating and food. Yet there are MPs who expect to be refunded for the confectionary they consume in the course of their strenuous duties. In the end I remembered what a friend pointed out to me many years ago, that women died so that I could vote, and I put my cross in what I believe is the right place. Better a wrong choice than no choice at all.

True Colours

A few days ago I learned that one of our neighbours had died. We knew that she had at least moved away because a “To Let” sign had appeared in front of her house but, considering how long we had known her, it has to be said that we did not shed a tear at the news. I regarded her as an old fashioned racist, the variety that would have to die out rather than be convinced that they are wrong, but I have realised lately that there are many more people just like her and they don’t need walking sticks.

I discovered my late neighbour’s lack of political correctness during a conversation a decade ago. An avid gossip, she had gone to the effort of leaning over someone else’s privet hedge in order to dish the latest dirt and get a gratifying reaction from me. I must have made the right noises - she opened up and let me know what she thought of black people, Asians and foreigners in general. I countered with the argument that if my foreign mother and others like her had not come to the UK willing to do the dirty work we would have been in a sorry state. She retreated, realising her mistake. I don’t sound or look foreign but increasingly I pity those in the UK who do.

The area I live in has welcomed immigrants for many years and has the highest concentration of Poles in the UK. It was noticeable when the rules for entry to the country changed a few years ago - you were more likely to hear Polish being spoken in the street than English. Generally the attitude towards them was positive. They were obviously hardworking and had old fashioned values, however the tensions began to show when they began to have an impact on local services. I admit that I found it really annoying to have to wait in a queue at the local surgery while a young woman, with a friend in tow to translate, asked one question after another that the receptionist could not answer and kept thinking up more. Most of these problems evaporated when a large number of these temporary residents returned to a revitalised Poland but I have noticed that, for those who have remained, the honeymoon is over. A wariness is evident when I pass them on the street, as if they are expecting trouble.

Recently I made the effort to attend a council ward meeting where local policing problems were discussed. One of the first matters raised was the presence of eastern European men who hang out on the benches at the small park near our home. They are heavy drinkers and this can lead to problems, to the extent that the park is avoided by women with children. This area has been designated as one in which you cannot consume alcohol in public but even though quite large fines are imposed and they are warned off their place is filled the next day by others who continue the tradition. There were cynical comments about the fact that these men had the money on them to pay these fines and that they were actually in work, the attitude being that no one with any sense would actually employ anyone who came to work reeking of beer. I wonder how many of those who expressed these opinions realise the dangerous working practices imposed on those who employ labourers or that they do not have to spend money on accommodation because they spend cold nights hidden the overgrown shrubs at the side of main roads. By the time I left it was clear that, for some in this council ward, the belief is that eastern Europeans are a problem. I fear that, give the impact recent revelations about MP’s expenses have had, a British National Party candidate standing in this area would win a seat on the council.

Some are undoubtedly a problem but these are not usually the ones who attract the undeserved attention of British racists. About a year ago I nipped down the road for a loaf of bread to a Sri Lankan owned shop. It was a Sunday evening and the street was virtually empty but I found I had to pretty much force my way past two young men and a woman to get into the shop. Once inside I found that an irritated but determined shopkeeper was standing his ground as two skinheads tried to get him to sell them some beer at a discount. These shining examples of the master race were still there when I left, forcing my way out once more. The experience left me angry and unnerved, it was a blast from an unpleasant past but with a foreign accent.

And a reminder that, at times, I live in a bubble and that I am a coward. I work with someone who is so ignorant and prejudiced that it often takes my breath away. In order to keep the peace I let her run on when she tells me that visiting her son in Brixton prison would have been less of a challenge if there had not been so many black people in the area. That relations with her in-laws would be easier if they weren’t Asians. I watch her lip curl as she speaks and remember Johnnie, the gentle elderly black neighbour whose death I became aware of because so many people turned out to see his casket driven away from the house he had lived in for decades. He had no need for gossip and I wish that, for his sake, I had more courage.