The Road to Blackpool Pier:
Stopping the BNP in the North West
By Tim Woodall, Manchester LMHR.
Nick Griffin is likely to appear on your television screen. Dressed in the black suit and white shirt of a politician it might seem ordinary – acceptable even – to hear his voice in the middle of a Sky News broadcast. He speaks in the same tone and manner as a Labour backbencher or Conservative MP, and his presence will probably not immediately conjure images of the National Front or Combat 18. Indeed, just this morning he was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 about an online publication that gives full details of members of the British National Party (BNP). There is, however, something important we must all remember whenever we see him.
Beneath the mask of respectability and legitimacy he has attempted to drape over the BNP there remains – stronger than ever – the despicable actions and offensive attitudes of a fascist organisation. In public Griffin presents himself as a well-dressed Cambridge graduate, family man and protector of the British way of life. Sadly, it takes very little research to realise the full extent of what ‘Britishness’ means to both the man and to the party of which he is chairman.
Griffin himself has a 1998 conviction for incitement to racial hatred due to his involvement in a far-right publication that denied the Holocaust. Now, ten years on, the policies of the BNP move openly against a multi-racial, multi-cultural Britain, and threaten our national sense of equality and acceptance. Why, then, are the BNP an increasingly dangerous concern? Surely people can see them for the offensive, ignorant and harmful collective they really are.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Like all manipulative fascist organisations the BNP operates on a largely grass roots level, targeting traditionally white working class areas in order to formulate and exploit tensions that have arisen as a result of complex global issues. It is not uncommon to come across people canvassing for the BNP. They appear quite like any political activists, going from door to door with pamphlets, pin badges and – most worryingly – a ‘solution’. So, what exactly does the BNP offer?
Firstly, it must be understood that their entire manifesto, mission statement, list of policies and much-fabled ‘answer’ to the problems faced by people living in Britain is built on lies. One need only pay a short visit to http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/practice/basics/facts.htm to realise the information presented by the BNP on the issue of immigration is an unhealthy mixture of propaganda, misinformation and twisted fear. Their belief that Britons are gradually being turned into ‘second class citizens’ through ‘positive discrimination schemes’ is hyperbolic nonsense – not to mention totally unfounded. Equally as untrue is their promise to ‘clamp down on the flood of ?
