The British National Party

The BNP’s website: http://bnp.org.uk/

Most western European nations have a powerful far-right political party. But until the last few years, the UK was an exception. Then the British National Party rose from its previous status as a fringe 1980’s split-off of the National Front and entered the limelight, winning many council seats and achieving runner-up counts in Parliamentary elections.

The party sports a very different look to the neo-Nazi NF. They don’t march in jackboots through city ghettoes; they put on shirts and ties and grin in front of flickering flashbulbs, just like any other politicians. Their policies are radical and in some cases very sensible and progressive. They’re opposed to the European Union and think Britain should get out of it, immediately and totally; so do I. They’re very keen on environmental conservation and campaign for the use of clean energy like wind and solar power. They want to shift urban development to “brown field” sites rather than ripping up the natural countryside. They support local democracy and under their rule community pressure groups would have official recognition and be allowed to influence and even overrule Parliamentary decisions. Good idea! But in truth these are all secondary policies; the very core of their mission, and the reason they’re now gaining so much public support from decent, mainstream people, is the recent increase in immigration to the UK. Many people see this as something very destructive.

Here’s a selection of lectures by Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP which goes into his party’s position on immigration and race:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-729903760893650752&ei=g7cmSZO-Go2A2wKuwKH3Bg&q=nick+griffin+bnp
and
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8336123906443296275&hl=en
and
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1269630805284168668&hl=en
(And here’s an alternative view of the BNP, a video diary with a former BNP council candidate, Mark Collett, which raises questions over the party’s conventional suits-and-rosettes public image: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3794899708486815008&ei=n7smSeXVMJ722wKU3oSoAw&q=dispatches+BNP&hl=en)

I’ve encountered the controversy over the BNP and Holocaust Revisionism before and written about it here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/11/bnp-and-david-irving-at-oxford-union.html and http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/11/bnp-and-david-irving-at-oxford-union-2.html

It can cause problems when too many people want to live in one part of the world, but Griffin and the BNP never ask what I think is a very obvious question: Why do so many people want to come and live in Britain? The answer is simple: life in Britain is so much better than in many other parts of the world. Most immigrants are not coming from the United States, France and Germany; they’re coming here from Africa, Eastern Europe, the Philippines, the Arab world, places hit by poverty, war and other problems which make life in their homelands very difficult. The “solution” therefore, if you see mass-immigration as a problem, is to improve the quality of life across the globe so that people won’t need or want to leave their own countries. They’re surely not going to come here for the weather! Putting up the blockades and keeping people out will also require more and more Big Brother laws and may well be part of the plan for the New World Order. I’ve even heard rumours that some racist groups are fronts for Government Intelligence agencies. Nick Griffin himself has been nominated as an MI5 asset!

As you’ll hear in Griffin’s speeches, the mainstay of the BNP’s case is the rights of aboriginal cultures and races under international law to have exclusive privileges to the lands they own, like the Australian and American natives. But what Griffin doesn’t say is that the reason those lands were so easily taken off the natives in the first place was because the whole concept of "land ownership" is alien to them. This is very obvious if you listen to the words of those natives themselves, and I write about them here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/11/chief-seattles-letter.html . With our own culture it’s the exact opposite: land ownership is so fundamental to Western thought that any alternative is almost beyond contemplation. But I do question this “it just is” value. Why is this “our” country? At what point and by what right does it become our property, like our house or car? No other species claims permanent possession of land, so why do we? I think we, as the dominant land animal, are stewards and guardians of this little part of our home planet called “Britain”, but as Chief Seattle said: How can we consider it a collective property of the racial and cultural group who live here, something that can be bought or sold? Without the notion of national ownership we can no longer claim the right to decide who comes and goes from the archipelago of Britain. Anyone has the right to travel to and from these islands because we’re all human beings and these islands are part of our home planet; in fact we all have the right to visit and live wherever we want! What’s more in a world of plenty and safety for all people (which is perfectly possible; don’t let anyone pretend otherwise!) there’d be no need for humanity to squeeze into the few small corners free of poverty, war and starvation, like shipwreck survivors huddled on an overloaded life-raft. As I said, they ain’t going to come here for the weather! I actually find the whole concept of national boundaries and official borders, and needing permission from the authorities to cross them, rather obscene! This is our planet, our home, we’re the creatures who live on it; why can’t we share it freely!? Why can’t we just wander wherever we like?

I personally don’t feel threatened by immigration in this country, at least not in comparison to how threatened I feel by the New World Order. Even if I did, I’d have no right to, as I explain above, but I don’t in any case. I once went to Southall in London, a massive Asian community which was the location of race riots during the 1970’s. I walked through the busy suburban market area and passed thousands of people, and I was the only white face I saw. But you know what? I felt totally safe and experienced no hostility at all. In fact the people in the shops I browsed in were very kind and warm. According to some racists I know, what I achieved in Southall should be impossible! I’d surely have been beaten to a pulp less than a hundred yards from the Tube station! History is full of examples of thriving societies where people of different cultures lived side-by-side: During the 8th and 9th Century when Europe was writhing in the turmoil of the Dark Ages, the city of Baghdad was one such place, with a very cosmopolitan university and a vigourous scientific and cultural energy. Other cultures should be a source of fascination and enquiry, not fear, so long as they live in mutual respect and don’t displace each other. Spending time with people who have other languages, religions, philosophies and views on the world is a great source of human inspiration and enterprise! Another such place was Xian in China a few centuries before Baghdad’s golden age, where the poet Li Po found his life’s path in his conversations with people from all over the world. Also Griffin’s paranoia about Islam is unfounded. Of course extremist Islam is a danger, but then so is extremist Catholicism, extremist Protestantism, extremist Atheism, extremist Economics... extremist Any damn thing! Islam is full of wisdom too, look at poets like Jalalladin Al-Rumi and the Sufi movement. Read these wonderful Sufi proverbs: http://www.katinkahesselink.net/sufi/quotes.html .

The BNP have been in the news in the last few days because their membership list, with personal details, has been published on the internet. Here’s the BBC news spot about it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7736794.stm . Who did this is anyone’s guess but I’d put my money on a left-wing activist. In my view the leftist position towards the BNP is very childish and counter-productive, as you’ll see if you read my linked article on the Oxford Union protest. I’ve experienced left-wing stupidity a lot myself from my trade union, in fact it’s the main reason I’m refusing to become a shop-steward, despite a drive to recruit me. They see the BNP membership as pure, unadulterated evil; they’re the leftist equivalent of the Devil. This is unfair; they are naive, misguided dupes, not evil. They’ve been led down a blind alley out of hysterical fear and engineered rage; in other words: divide-and-rule. I always debate politely and respectfully with any racist I meet, even if they’re not always polite back! This is ten times as effective as surrounding their house waving placards and yelling “RACIST SCUM! OFF OUR STREETS!” etc. (And before any non-white HPANWO readers do an “I’ve Been There!” pose on me… see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/11/hpanwo-guide-to-being-ive-been-there.html ... I know how awful racism is because a couple of years ago someone punched me in the face and called me “white trash”!)

So let’s not grab our torches and pitchforks at the mere mention of the British National Party’s name. It’s far better to allow them their universal rights to free speech, and claim ours in order to debunk them too of course, and let the BNP make a fool of themselves. If their beliefs really are all nonsense then let that nonsense be blown apart in the marketplace of ideas. Censorship would be a mistake, as it always is. Locking the BNP away from sight will not make them go away. On the contrary, their ideas will just fester in the underbelly of society, preying on the disillusioned and desperate, not to mention other people who are just fed up of being told what to think!

Today some of our fellow human beings are being imprisoned for the "crime" of traveling to another part of their home world. Here's the site of an Oxfordshire-based group defending them: http://www.asylum-welcome.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=47

Here's a background article on the Divide-and-Rule method: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/04/snob-walls.html