NICK GRIFFIN

I'm third generation Irish. I can recall my mum telling me how during the 1930's - and later - signs would appear on lodging houses in Manchester saying, "No Irish, No Blacks." Today, the Irish community has been assimilated and is indistinguishable from the indigenous English population ( if there is such a thing) . But 50 years ago, we were subject to the same bile which now spills from the BNP and is targetted at the black community.
Tonight in the pub, by no means a bastion of bigotry, nevertheless much chat from sundry locals about Nick Griffin appearing tomorrow on Question Time. Much was seriously depressing. He "has a point" say people I have thought were decent. Many, it seems, will be watching with anticipatory glee.The ratings are likely to go through the roof- for entrirely the wrong reasons
Then home to Newsnight and Barbara Follett speaking the folly of defending Gordon Brown's call for "British jobs for British workers" as if that were a perfectly axceptable palliative for those obviously already inclined to talk about "them" rather than "us." It is not, as Follett said" reassuring".It is inexcusable rhetoric which has only strengthened their vile outpourings
On Monday, my uncle was buried at the age of 84. He survived the D-day landings, fought the Nazis, was a socialist all his life, and I know he would be horrified at Griffin's appearance tomorrow night. Like, I hope, most of us who know where the horrors of racism can lead and whose families have suffered from it in the past. As far as the present goes, I deplore the BBC's decision to give fascists a platform. And I wish I lived within striking distance of Television Centre to protest.
The notion that the BNP's views are legitimate is abhorrent and it makes me sick to my stomach. The BBC has taken the decision to give them the oxygen of publicity. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.