NICK GRIFFIN AND THE BBC

I have veered in the past week between thinking that Nick Griffin's atrocious appearance on Question Time was inexcusable and then, immediately after watching it, believing maybe it might have shown him for what he is. And therefore not such a bad thing after all.
News that the BNP has , allegedly, recruited thousands as a result, was a sobering reminder that "no platform for fascists" might have been the right line after all. I honestly don't know. But the piece below in the Morning Star on-line is a timely reminder of what he really stands for. And how intolerable it is.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/features/Griffin-s-twisted-history

HOIST BY HIS OWN REPULSIVE PETARD

I just might have changed my mind about the BBC's decision to allow Nick Griffin on Question Time. Jack Straw was rightly cheered to the rafters as he laid in to this repulsive specimen of humanity and what he stands for. How heartening it was also to see politicians for once speaking from the heart and more or less zero tolerance from the audience for Griffin's racist, homophobic, unacceptable views.
He was inarticulate, incoherent, and my guess is the BNP will not be regarding this as an "early Christmas present" but an unmitigated disaster.
Which is not to say that Labour does not need to get out there in the coming period and expose the BNP's fascist ideology for what it is. Come up with some answers as to why so many of their natural supporters have turned to the extremism of the right. And come up with some policies to stop it. But, by and large, I'm cheered by the expose of Griffin for what he - and his Party - are.
Our task is now to convince the millions who will not have been watching the programme tonight.

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.

NO PLATFORM FOR FASCISTS

NO, they should NOT be given airtime

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6823364.ece

HOPE NOT HATE AT PROTEST IN DERBYSHIRE

Well done to all who turned out to protest at the BNP's annual hate-fest

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/8201022.stm

WHICH WAY FORWARD?

There is a bit of a debate going on on the Hebweb about Labour's future. The following is a shorter version of my post on what Labour should do to recover lost ground.

New Labour was the result of many years of Tory Government and sheer desperation that Labour would never win office again. So many (myself included) were prepared to conpromise. In Tony Blair we (rightly) assumed we had an electable Leader who could win over a broad coalition of support. That broad coalition has now fallen apart and in its desire to keep Middle England sweet, Labour has lost much of its core support. Most siginificantly that of the working-class .
No-one disputes the achievements of the 1997 Govt. Surestart, Minimum Wage, Northern Irealnd, devolution. But in 2003 Tony Blair took us into an illegal and immoral war in Iraq which for many was the tipping-point out of the Labour Party. We have yet to recover from that.
When Gordon Brown became Leader many also hoped for a change in direction but it has not happened. Far from it. New Labour continues on its road of unnecessary and unpopular privatisations, ie Royal Mail, presides over a society in which the gap between rich and poor has widened, not lessened, and we have a tax system which remains beneficial to the rich. Well-off people actually paid more tax under Thatcher.
In 1997, we said we would re-nationalise the railways and not introduce tuition fees. We reneged on the promise re the railways and did what we said we would not do on top-up fees.We continue to allow the rich to get away with billions in tax avoidance.
Tax credits have helped many people but welfare benefits are derisory. According to the TUC, Jobseekers Allowance should be about £100 a week just to keep pace with inflation. It is about £60.00.
Yet we have committed billions to a new generation of nuclear weapons. At a time when four million people are on waiting-lists for council homes.
So it's not enough to say the Tories would be worse. The fact is many simply don't believe that. What to do? New Labour's status quo is not an option.
Labour backbenchers and trade unionists need to put pressure on the Government to put into place the policies which would win back support. Old state nationalisation might not be the answer but there are many models of social enterprise and alternatives to the iniquities of global capitalism - currently in meltdown.
We need to call for:
A fairer tax system
Millions more investment in social housing
More accountability for the banks we have bailed out.
Scrapping ID cards and Trident
The return of the private utilities into public ownership (doesn't have to be a State monolith) to end the profiteering which is leading many millions into fuel poverty.
The Socialist Labour Party and No2EU are not to blame for the BNP winning. Their vote was frankly, derisory.It says far more that Labour's vote collapsed and we got a BNP Euro MP. If people in the Labour Government are not prepared to listen to that message, then we really are doomed to have a Tory Government.

ZERO TOLERANCE TO FASCISTS

As we're still reeling in the North after BNP victories, some cheering news.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8091605.stm

WAKING UP TO FASCISM

I gave up on the Euro elections about 1.30am and in some ways I'm glad I did as the sight of Nick Griffin winning in my home territory of the North West would have been pretty unbearable. Griffin went over the Pennines after failing to win in Keighley at the General Election. This time, he did it. The news is a terrible blow for al of us. But particularly those of us in the North of England who wake up with two fascists representing us in the Euro Parliament.
I'm going to be careful what I say because my gut instinct is to go into a bit of a tirade against those in my locality who said they could not "bring themselves" to vote Labour.
This morning I just ask them what voting for the Greens, or No2EU, or Arthur Scargill's Friends Of North Korea party has achieved other than to give the BNP a massive blast of oxygen - and the serious prospect now of winning seats at Westminster.But such ire would be misdirected.
Round here, the BNP's share of the vote was highest in former mining communities in Barnsley and Rotherham. Places where traditional working-class communities have felt disenfranchised and abandoned by Labour. We have to ask why and we have to do something about it. And the blame game isn't going to help.
I'm surprised in a way because when I was trying to stand as a PPC in Keighley a common view there with activists was that the BNP had been seen off in 2005 and that they would quietly wither away. Halifax, too, has seen the BNP's share of the vote dwindle at local election level. Now they are back - with a vengeance.
There is truly only one answer to this sickening result and that is for Labour to stop worrying about Middle England. It's now irrelevant. Last night it was crushed and came second to the Conservatives in its Welsh heartland. If Labour does not reconnect with its core vote, get out onto the estates , start re-connecting with the very people who have registered their anger by voting BNP then Labour is finished.

BILLY'S RIGHT ABOUT THE BNP.....

My blogging time is pretty limited at present as I am busy campaigning to get support as PPC in my neighbouring constituency of Keighley, where BNP Leader Nick Griffin stood at the last election . So I just wanted to draw attention to this fine post in today's CiF by Billy Bragg. He's absolutely right..........

Of the 13 million UK citizens who are living below the low-income threshold, just over three million were either unemployed or unavailable for work in 2007. That means there are almost 10 million people out there who are working hard, yet are unable to make ends meet. Over the past few years, the British National party has been picking up votes in those places where house prices are lower than average, where local residents have to face a constant influx of people seeking cheap accommodation and casual employment.
While Middle England has felt the benefit of this growing pool of cheap labour, the working poor have faced ever greater competition for scarce resources such as housing and those other vital social services that make it possible, just, to survive on a low income. Is it any surprise that they see immigration as a threat? However, if the vast majority of the working poor are racist, why didn't they vote in greater numbers for the anti-immigrant platform shamefully offered up by the Conservative party in the last two elections?
Could it be they recognise that the real problem is not immigration, but a global market that has no respect for local communities or national borders? That the unimpeded movement of capital is the root cause of their predicament rather than the mass movement of people? That immigrants are merely a convenient scapegoat for the failure of trickle-down economics?
Yes, they do vote for the BNP in worrying numbers, but more out of frustration than in any hope of getting a solution to their problems. Anyone who has seen BNP councillors in action knows that they are an electoral dead end. Yet, at a time when people are fearful of what the future holds, when the ranks of the working poor are about to be swollen as a result of a bafflingly complex breakdown of the free-market system, then the simplicities of bigotry offer an easy explanation for their dire predicament.
If the Labour Party wants to combat the BNP, it needs to lay off the anti-immigrant rhetoric and address the real problem that keeps the incomes of working poor below the poverty line – the inequalities that have been created by globalisation.

DOG WHISTLE POLITICS CAN ONLY AID THE BNP

My little corner of West Yorkshire is a strange little bubble largely populated by white, middle-class liberals. In nearby Halifax, Bradford and Keighley there is a large Asian and ethnic population and, sadly, lots of support for the BNP.
The way to counter racism is not by pandering to dog-whistle attitudes of the kind espoused by the Daily Mail yet today the Mail is positively triumphalist at the news the Government is to crack down even further on benefits and housing for immigrants.
Under new legislation announced by Minister Phil Woolas, some immigrants will have wait up to 10 years for the right to claim UK benefits and council housing
All legal migrants will have to serve a five year 'probationary citzienship' before being considered for a passport.Some will be eligible for benefits one or two years afterwards.
But others will have to wait another five years before they can claim any benefits at all.
Mr Woolas is quoted thus 'Entitlement to benefits should be for citizens of our country, not other people. If you are a citizen you have earned the right to benefits. People must show they are here to work.'
Such rhetoric is singularly unhelpful and profoundly distasteful from a Labour Minister . In areas like West Yorkshire, it can only serve to fuel the racism of the BNP. If we're in favour of "Hope Not Hate" this is not the way to go.

BNP WATCH.....

This afternoon like many on the left I was forwarded the link to the list of BNP members. Many of my NUJ colleagues who have bravely taken the BNP head-on have found themselves on the vile Redwatch website -targetted as people to be intimidated . So once I get back from tonight's council meeting, I will be scouring that list closely.
Update: According to last night's Newsnight, a fair proportion of BNP membership is based around Blackburn and Halifax - both towns on my doorstep and both extremely vulnerable to being targetted by the BNP due to high levels of unemployment and deprivation.It's depressing news but hardly unexpected to anyone living in this corner of England. Burnley, just 10 miles away, is also BNP heartland. Though the heartening news is that groups like UNITE have won successful battles to see off most of the BNP councillors elected in recent years. Apparently, police are now perusing the list to see if any of their officers are signed up . The list also stretches into the teaching profession. I'm sad to report that it's common knowledge round here that one local teacher told a pupil who espoused interest in the Labour Party that she would "rather vote BNP."
Coupled with the recent glossy PR campaign being conducted by these right-wing scum, the truth is we have to take them head-on and defeat their foul racism. Once confined to the very fringes of political society, they are now mainstream

NO PLATFORM FOR FASCISTS......

I'm giving another plug to Louise and her excellent blog because she has had time to write a considered and cogent piece on why the Indy was wrong to give a double-page spread yesterday to the BNP GLA member Barnbrook. I only read the article late last night on the train and was appalled to see this appalling individual being given credence.It's avery dangerous precedent.......

FIGHTING THE BNP

I have been spending a lot of time away from home at various meetings/conferences/revelries so this weekend it's all hands to the pump as we fight the BNP in Calderdale. We're seriously at risk here of losing two seats to the far right . So I will be joining comrades from UNITY at 10am outside Sainsburys in Halifax to bead off to Ovenden and Mixenden.

Also disturbed to receive an e-mail from my friend John Wiseman who informs me the BNP are fielding NINE candidates in St Helens so if you are from that part of the north-west then please try and give Labour a hand. Because we need it.