Stuart Littlewood

Nick Griffin

For the past week Britain, goaded by the media, has whipped itself into a frenzy over whether the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, should have been allowed to appear on the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, Question Time.

The BNP is widely regarded as a racist organization. They don't like foreigners, basically. It is a whites-only party.

However, the BNP’s electoral success now entitles Griffin to a place with the state broadcaster alongside representatives of the mainstream parties. This has caused panic among the political establishment, whom many accuse of failing to get a grip on immigration and presiding over an open-door policy that has made Britain an easy touch for immigrants, asylum seekers and assorted criminals.

The BNP talks about a "tsunami" of immigration that will make the indigenous British an ethnic minority in their own country within sixty years. New official figures published a few days ago add weight to the claim, suggesting that Britain's population will hit 70 million by 2029. By 2033 there will be 10 million more people in the country than now. More than two thirds of the increase, 7 million, will be the result of immigration.

On this particular point the BNP strikes a chord with a lot of people. Ours is already an overcrowded island. Come 2033 how will everyone keep warm and have enough water if population figures are allowed to rocket upwards like this? Dire warnings were issued by energy experts years ago but nobody paid attention. The fear is that it may already be too late to avert disaster, and a morally tolerant public is rapidly becoming intolerant.

That essentially is the background to the fuss. Some were saying Griffin should be barred from appearing on Question Time, the loudest objectors of course being the ruling élite who fear that the BNP at next year’s general election could make significant gains at the expense of the complacent main parties.

Others said he should appear, so that he could be exposed as a racist villain.

Fascists of the right versus fascists of the left

In the run-up to the TV programme "anti-fascist" protesters besieged the BBC and tried to gain access to the studio where Question Time was being recorded. Well-known left-wing figures were wheeled onto the news to talk about the BNP’s "violent fascism" and the need to draw voters back to mainstream politics. It is customary to associate fascism with the political right – usually the FAR right - but we were now watching a scrap between fascists of the right and fascists of the left, each as intolerant and unpleasant as the other.

And all the time Griffin’s detractors were generating unprecedented publicity for him and his party. Some commentators were calling it one of the great moments in politics.

So it was with eager anticipation that I settled down to watch this much-hyped confrontation between the bête noire of British politics - the “racist” BNP leader - and saintly members of the mainstream parties.

It proved a big disappointment, “ambush” and “inquisition” being words that sprang to mind. “Debate” it definitely wasn’t. The laws of cricket were suspended. There was no attempt at balance. Griffin was outnumbered 4 to 1 by what appeared to be a hand-picked execution squad and the chairman was hardly neutral. It smacked of conspiracy… but surely not - this was British democracy at work.

The three mainstream political panelists (the fourth was an American culturist) must have had their party researchers working overtime digging dirt from Griffin’s past. They came to the studio with ammunition galore. They wanted blood and they got it. Griffin was uncomfortable and not cool enough to handle it. Nor is he blessed with the charisma so vital to political leadership. The hostile audience didn’t help. As The Independent headline next morning put it, he choked on the publicity.

At one point Griffin, who is no friend of Islam, told his tormentors that the BNP was “the only political party which, in the clashes between Israel and Gaza, stood four-square behind Israel’s right to deal with Hamas terrorism”. That alone was enough, in my estimation, to sink him and his party with all hands. It put him in the same camp as the mainstreamers. Although an embarrassment to them he was, at bottom, one of their own.

Was it a “great moment”? Well, yes, if you enjoy blood sports and kangaroo courts. I found it a squalid experience and actually a low point in politics. The BNP and its leader were humiliated, which was clearly the aim. But what made me squirm most was the spectacle, on a platform provided by the state broadcaster, of snarling representatives of the mainstream parties ganging up like wolves to mercilessly savage this threat to their pack. It was not a pretty sight. It showed them, the jury and executioners, to be almost as ugly as the condemned man, and none came out of it smelling sweet… including the BBC.

They hauled him over the coals for daring to use Churchillian imagery to promote his party, but I don’t recall any criticism of warmonger Netanyahu’s recent speech to the UN, in which he equated Churchill’s epic struggle against the Nazis with Israel’s brutal suppression of Palestinian resistance to the illegal occupation of the Holy Land.

They didn’t seem to understand that their own parties, as well as Griffin’s, lack basic principles and a moral compass, which is why the British public are so sick of mainstream politics. Nor did they seem willing to address the deficiencies that brought about the rise of the BNP in the first place.

Mainstream parties carry on supporting racism in the Holy Land

Few public figures have been put under such aggressive public scrutiny. This one was found wanting just as many others, I suspect, would be in similar circumstance. Exit Griffin licking his wounds and no doubt looking for a quiet corner where he can curl up and die.

Victory for the saintly mainstreamers then, and good riddance to racism in British politics.

Not quite.... Griffin’s highly publicized vilification and ‘flogging’ masks an ugly truth - that supporters of the racist regime in Israel are allowed to flourish within our three main political parties, and the appalling blitzkrieg on Gaza still has not persuaded the leaders to shut down their respective Friends of Israel groups. It is nine months since the ’Cast Lead’ killing spree. The humanitarian crisis continues and the Zionist entity they call "friend" has not relaxed its vicious blockade. Even the Goldstone report highlighting Israel’s war crimes fails to move them to do the decent thing. Britain’s two most senior politicians, prime minister Gordon Brown and leader of the opposition David Cameron, are locked firmly into a supporting role.

Brown, like Blair before him, accepted an invitation to become a patron of the Jewish National Fund in the UK. Set up to help establish a Jews-only state in Arab Palestine, the JNF’s constitution requires it to benefit Jews exclusively, thereby promoting and implementing policies that discriminate against the Arab population of Israel. The JNF is accused of being implicated in ethnic cleansing, the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages and the expropriation of Palestinian lands. Cameron too has become a patron.

On the central issue, racism, for which Griffin and the BNP have been so roughly chastised, nothing has changed. Mainstream Israel-huggers continue to preach the sins of racism while nourishing support for it in the Holy Land. The hypocrites continue to rule the Westminster roost.

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By Stuart Littlewood