Question Time

This Thursday evening BNP leader Nick Griffin appeared on the BBC’s Question Time, a show where a panel of five politicians or public figures face questions from an audience made up of ostensibly ordinary people. If you haven’t already seen it then I suggest you watch it on iplayer. If you’re not from the UK then I expect it’s on youtube by now. Obviously to get such a controversial and disliked figure on Question Time was somewhat of a coup for the BBC and I’m sure the viewing figures will reflect this. I certainly tuned into the show for the first time in a while. While I’ll discuss what actually happened on the program later, I want first discuss about the issue of whether or not Griffin should have been on Question Time at all.

In the week or so leading up to his appearance, many politicians expressed their concerns that the BNP should not be given such a mainstream platform from which to express their views. Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary was the most outspoken critic of the decision by the BBC, saying that ‘you cannot treat the BNP like all the other parties.’ I would argue that we have to. Freedom of speech and democracy are values that are fundamental to our society, to deny the BNP a platform from which to speak would be to fly in the face of those values. We may rightly abhor Griffin and his party’s views, but we cannot stop them from expressing them. Similarly we cannot stop broadcasters like the BBC giving them a platform. Freedom of speech is not up for debate, it is not something we can choose to adhere to or not depending on who’s speaking; it is an absolute which is fundamental to civilised society. This not to say of course that we should give Griffin a free hand to say whatever he wants; it’s not like question time is a party political broadcast. The only way to show the BNP up for what they really are is to enter into open and frank debate with them, and this exactly what Question Time is for. To deny Griffin a place on the panel would be to try to sweep his vile policies under the carpet, rather than face them head on and challenge his sick assumptions. We cannot try to ignore Griffin because if we do that we allow his insidious ideas to fester, rather we must face him head on and show him that we reject absolutely all that he stands for.

I’m not going to claim that this was wholly achieved on Question Time on Thursday, but it did go some way to showing exactly how vile a man Nick Griffin is. The show was not without its problems; with a clearly hostile audience and even David Dimbleby, the host, at times unable to hide his bias, it occasionally descended into farce. I would not go as far as to say, as Griffin has said following the program, that it was a ‘lynch mob’, but the atmosphere was at times rather more hostile than I would have liked. Much as we might want to take our righteous indignation out on Griffin, we have to restrain ourselves or we lend credibility to the his cause. Dimbleby needed to be seen to be more impartial; he is the moderator of the discussion, it is not his part to take sides. Because he showed such clear bias it felt like the entirety of the show was out to get Griffin, rather than engage him in a proper debate.

That being said enough was done to make Griffin come out of the evening with a few very bloody scars. The absurdity of the BNP’s concept of an ‘indigenous Briton’ was shown up on several occasions and his statement that Winston Churchill would support the BNP where he still alive was made to look absurd time and time again. Griffin repeatedly contradicted himself and dodged awkward questions. He tried and failed to squirm and slime his way out of difficult situation, trying to apply empty phrases about ‘British, Christian values’ to everything. The other panellists were having nothing of if thankfully. Overall then Griffin was made to look like a fool. His racist policies were shown up for what they are; thoughtless bigotry. The embarrassment was not as total as many would have liked, but it did enough to mean that the BNP will have lost far more than they gained from this week.

Despite some problems, then, I think we can say that Peter Hain was wrong. We should allow extremist to have a voice, both because of the principle of free speech and because we need to publicly show extremist and hate based ideologies to be absurd. We cannot ignore them; we have to battle them head on in a civilised debate. While Dimbleby may have made the debate into a farce at times on Thursday, in principle what happened was exactly what should have happened. Griffin was made to look the fool and with any luck many more people country wide will be aware of just how absurd and hateful the BNP are.

God save the Queen?

Early this week it was revealed that British Royal family spent £1.5 million more last year that the year before, taking the total to £41.5 million. This figure does not include the ‘Civil List’, which pays for the running of the Royal household (£7.9 million per year) and the undisclosed cost for protecting the royal family. All told the total amount that the Royal Family costs the British taxpayer is almost certainly over £50 million. This figure is set to rise as the Royals have been digging into a reserve fund in order to make up a deficit in the Civil List for several years now. When the current deal expires next year the Queen will almost certainly have to go cap in hand to the government and ask for money. If whoever is in government at the time has any backbone they should refuse her.

£50 million is small change compared to the billions that the government has been pouring into the banking sector to try to prevent a wholesale economic meltdown. Nevertheless, the Royal Family remain a meaningless, archaic relic of a bygone era. The Queen performs no real constitutional purpose; she is a figurehead whose place as Head of State is merely for the sake of meaningless and every more irrelevant ceremonial formalities. Essentially the Royal Family represent £50 million which might as well be thrown into the ocean.

It would be unfair to say that the Royal Family do nothing of any use; they do extremely valuable charity work and provide a constant source of amusement and ridicule, but this is not the point; we supposedly live in a country which adheres to the principle of democracy, freedom and justice. Maintaining an unelected Head of State with unearned wealth and privileges completely discredits these ideals. The Royal Family is absurdly rich when you take into account the value of the multiple palaces and stately homes, all by virtue of being born; they have done nothing in their lifetimes to deserve the wealth they own. This unearned wealth is obscene when you consider the millions of people struggling to make end meet across the globe.

This is not to say that I abhor wealth; I regard entrepreneurs like Bill Gates; men who have earned their wealth by virtue of their own ingenuity, to be among the greatest men alive. I do abhor unearned wealth; wealth gained, not by virtue of your own intellect, but through force, fraud or by the chance of your own birth.

The only man who deserves his inheritance is the man who has no need for it; if he could make that inheritance on his own, without the help of those who have come before. There is no way that any member of the Royal Family could and ever would be able to create the kind of wealth that they inherit. There is no way any of them could even create the £50 million grant they get every year from the taxpayer; they couldn’t make it in a lifetime, let alone a year.

The Royal Family is a pointless drain on the taxpayer and it is time that we shook of the needless burden of a redundant and increasingly absurd relic from our history. The only thing keeping them there is a vague sense of sentimental patriotism; we should not allow our emotional attachment to our past to stop us from moving forward. The Royal Family is a nostalgia inducing relic which reminds us of the time when Britain was the greatest superpower on the planet, we need to get over our imperial hangover and start moving forwards if we are ever to be more than a pushy ex-power with an overinflated ego.

We currently strut around on the world stage, pretending that we still matter, throwing our weight around in an attempt to fool ourselves into believing that anyone still cares. It’s time we moved on and we should start off with getting rid of the most redundant institution of them all; the monarchy.

This is not to say of course that the beautiful palaces and statues of former greats should be removed. We can and should still remember our history; it can teach us a lot about ourselves and the way the world works. Our history reminds us that greatness is fleeting, it reminds us just how fickle and world can be. It can humble us and drive us onto to do better than our forbears. These are valuable things that everyone needs, however it is equally important that these things stay exactly where they belong; the past.

By allowing our past to live on into our future is potentially extremely damaging; it is the kind of sentimental attachment to our past that allows extreme nationalist like the BNP to get a foothold. It may seem rather innocuous, but the sentimental patriotism attached to the Royal Family can be directly harnessed by extremists and used to make themselves seem more plausible. To refuse to increate the money afforded to the Royal Family would be a small step on the way to revitalising the country and combating the dangerous rise of extremist nationalist groups. Unfortunately I doubt any government would have the backbone to tackle the monarchical relic and hence drastically change our constitution for the better.

The Not-So-British National Party

Earlier this week the results of the European elections were published and amid the utter collapse of the Labour vote countrywide the British National Party (BNP) managed to grab two seats in Yorkshire and the North East. The BNP are a political party which claims to represent the indigenous population of Britain and to that end wants no-one but these indigenous Britons to live here. This means that all ethnic minorities will have to go, no matter how long they have lived here and no immigrants will be allowed entry to the country. They claim that these non-Britons are stealing jobs which should go to British people and blame any unemployment on these foreigners.

Essentially the BNP appeals to the sense of a British National Identity in order to conceal what is little more than racism; they believe that certain people, based on their race, should have exclusive access to an island simply be virtue of the fact that people of the same race have lived their for centuries. Not only is this an absurd belief, it is also built on a complete misconception of the history of Britain. Britain is not and never has had one indigenous race of ‘Britons’. Even in prehistoric times when the country was populated by Celtic tribes, these tribes were not united politically or racial. There was no country of ‘Britain’; just a whole host of different tribes competing for dominance of small areas of the island. Under the Roman occupation Britain was just part of the greater empire which spanned Western Europe and most of the Mediterranean. Romans were integrating with the tribesmen whom they had conquered. After the Romans had left Britain, the island was occupied by again competing tribes of Germans which only united under Alfred the Great after the Viking invasion. This is seen as the founding of Britain as a nation, and even then it was a hodgepodge of Celts, Saxons, Romans, Angles and various other smaller yet still distinctive groups. The Norman invasion made the makeup of Britain Even more different given that it was now occupied by a foreign power. For a long time after the invasion the aristocracy of Britain all spoke French and indeed much of north east France was part of Britain, or rather Britain was part of north east France. Britain was not ‘united by a common language’ until long into its history. In fact it is hard to say when this happened given that it was more of a gradual integration than a cosmic shift. ‘Britons’ are a peculiar racial mix of Germans, Vikings, Romans, Celts and Normans. This ill defined boiling pot is wrongly perceived as ‘Britishness’; there is no such thing as a British Race.

Using this misconception of what it is to be ‘British’ leads the BNP to believe that this small group of islands belongs to this ‘British’ race. The entire history of the British Isles is one of invasion and integration; new peoples have invaded or settled and become part of the populace. They have become part of the ‘British’ race by virtue of the fact that they have lived here and integrated with the populace, sharing their culture and shaping our history. I see no difference between German tribesmen settling this island and Indian or Polish or African families moving here and settling. The BNP misconstrue the facts to help conceal their blatant racism. The reason they want to expel people who do not fit their ill defined conception of British is basic and irrational fear of foreigners. They alter their conception of history to justify this absurdity.

Not only is the pillar of their beliefs completely unfounded, their leader and many of its members are completely insane. Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP is quoted as calling a holocaust a ‘holohoax’, most of its members seem to think that Hitler was actually a pretty decent bloke and we could learn a lot from his policies. Some members even think that we would be better off living in Nazi Germany. This from a party which claims to fight for civil liberties. They don’t seem to have an issue with rape, but think that homosexuality is wrong. They believe in Corporal Punishment for petty criminals, they’re opposed to globalisation and believe in governmental control of large swaths of the economy. Is this starting to sounds at all like Iran to you? The BNP wants to reduce Britain to the level a fascist state which has one of the worst human rights records of any country on the planet. This goes contrary to the beliefs of almost all great British thinkers through time; like John Stuart Mill, John Locke and Adam Smith. So much for British values, but we’ve already established that the BNP ignored historical facts which do not sit with their racist bullshit.

Fortunately the BNP’s election success was not actually a result of many more people voting for the BNP; they only managed to gain 1.4% of the vote on the last European Election. However their success does mean that Nick Griffin and co will represent, at least in part, British interests in the European Parliament. Given that only 6.3% of us voted for them this is a disgrace. The BNP are a sorry part of British politics for whom only a small number of racist bigots vote. It is a sad reflection of the state of politics in this country that they are able to win seats to represent the people of Britain, whatever the colour. If you too think that the BNP are a disgrace to this country then I urge you in the strongest terms to sign this petition. It is to be delivered to the European parliament when Nick Griffin sits in his first parliament on 14^th July. You can and should also join the facebook group 1,000,000 united against the BNP.

The BNP are a blight on the face of British politics. The best thing you can do to stop them from gaining any power is to vote at the next election (which will probably be next summer). Racist bigots will always be in the minority – less than 6.3% of the country actually agrees with Nick Griffin, but it was the fact that people did not vote that allowed them to enter the European Parliament. Do not let the loud mouthed minority of racists overpower the vast majority of reasonable, tolerant people. One vote every few years is all the say we get in our ‘democracy’ so use your vote wisely. While I have my own preferences, I do not mind of you vote for Labour, or the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats or any other party, but I strongly urge you, when Gordon Brown does call an election, to use your vote wisely and don’t allow the travesty of this weeks European Election repeat itself.