Majorityrights Central > Category: British Politics

Three weeks today Londoners elect their Mayor and Assembly members for the next four years.  Under the complex party list voting system, any party bettering 5% of first choice votes is thought likely to win one of the 11 indirectly elected seats on the Assembly.  No one doubts that the BNP vote will pass the 5% mark.  So this will be a significant first for them, and a step nearer to challenging for representation in parliament.

The leader of the London party of the BNP is Richard Barnbrook, and today he was accorded a Q&A interview by the BBC News website.  Considering this was the same BBC which sent in mole Jason Gwynne to “report” on the party in 2004, the questioning seems to have been pretty friendly.

This unfamiliar situation begs correction.  Accordingly, I have decided to report on the BNP’s steady progress towards electability, as it is expressed in Barnbrook’s bite-sized politics.  I’ve cheated a little, of course, by reconstructing the questions and answers from the BBC article.

The BBC: You have said that you want to give the real people of London a voice.  Who are real Londoners?

Barnbrook: I mean the indigenous population first, and the post-war immigrants who came over to rebuild Britain, such as Caribbeans who arrived on the Empire Windrush, second.

The BBC: You have said that immigrants arriving in the last 15 years are taking more from British society than they are putting back.  Who is to blame for that?

Barnbrook: It’s not immigrants that are at fault here.  Never has been.  It’s the establishment, our own governing powers and their greed or their ignorance or their simple gutlessness to do anything about it.  They feel if they try to look at immigration they will have the finger pointed at them - ‘racist’.  This is an easy get out clause - this is bullying people.

The BBC: Is the BNP a racist party?

Barnbrook: We’re not racist at all. We do not perceive one person’s religion, identity, culture or way of life as being better or worse than our own, we are simply different.

The BBC: Would you characterise the BNP as a far right party?

Barnbrook: Not at all - not far right, not far left, not too wrong.

The BBC: If elected to govern at Westminster one day what would your party do on the immigration question.  Would you like to repatriate the immigrant population?

Barnbrook: I would like to see a freeze on immigration, which I believe influences all aspects of our existence, from health and crime to water supplies.  Legal immigrants would stay, illegal immigrants would go - as would those being released from prison.

The BBC: What is Britishness?

Barnbrook: Britishness is the shake of a hand that is a guarantee, the humility, the honesty and the benevolence - all these elements are what make the British people British.  Language, religion, humour and law are around the periphery.

The BBC: Can there be British Muslims?

Barnbrook: The answer is yes, but on the grounds that you follow all of the identities being described of living in this country and benefiting this country.  You may have your religion behind your closed doors but you don’t bring it onto the streets. You can be gay behind closed doors, you can be heterosexual behind closed doors, but you don’t bring it onto the streets, demanding more rights for it.

The BBC: Can you win the Mayoral vote?

Barnbrook: Realistically it’s unlikely but who knows?  Immigration has moved up the political agenda and the mainstream parties have been adopting issues raised by the BNP.  Where we lead, they are following.

If the other parties had done their jobs properly in the first place, this party wouldn’t exist.  It’s as simple as that.

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For several days now the BBC has been lauding its White season of five programmes.  It begins tomorrow night at 9pm on BB2 with “Last Orders”, a documentary about some supposedly plain-speaking nothern lads in an ailing Bradford working men’s club.

I must say at the outset that I watch so little TV, I can scarcely raise the enthusiasm to wade through all this - though I know I probably should, if only to better understand the internet commentary which will flow from it.  But I am less interested in the programmes themselves than in trying to understand the Labour Party’s new-minted consciousness of its old client-group, the jilted “white underclass”.

For two years now, since the arrival of the well-aired Dench-Gavron book on the East End, there have been more and more expressions of urban liberal concern.  Here’s the BBC executive producer of White:-

‘The white working class feels alienated, threatened and voiceless,’ says BBC boss

The white working classes feel “politically alienated” and frightened to speak out, a senior BBC executive has claimed.

Richard Klein said poorer whites believe they are “threatened economically and stifled socially” and that they no longer have a voice.His latest comments come ahead of a season of BBC2 programmes under the banner White, which he is overseeing and which he believes can play a part in easing the anxieties of that section of the community.

He said: “You don’t hear white, working-class opinions often enough on TV.

“There’s a large group of people who feel politically alienated, threatened economically and stifled socially. They feel they haven’t got a voice.”

He said many people interviewed for the programmes felt they could not say what they really thought for fear of being criticised.

“I wanted to change that. And I think it was important for the BBC to try and have a go at it.”

And here’s a gnashing of teeth from the Guardian in 2006:-

Who has failed the white working-class?

Given the general frenzied tone of most articles covering race or faith related issues, one emerging trend seems to have escaped attention. Last week the Economist carried an article on Britain’s “forgotten underclass”, with a tagline stating: “Muslims and blacks get more attention. But poor whites are in a worse state”.

This is a bold statement to make but not without merit. The article briefly examines three issues in turn: education, unemployment and crime; citing statistics to show that while poorer ethnic minority kids are doing their best to get ahead in society, white working-class kids are languishing behind.

And just this week, also in the Guardian:-

How Britain turned its back on the white working class

What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘white working class’? Tattoos? Dangerous dogs? Shellsuits? Scratch cards? Chips? Binge drinking? The BNP? It would be no surprise if the images conjured are negative; in the past four decades, the image of the white working class has gone from hero to less than zero.

In these tolerant days, the one underprivileged group that it’s OK to find intolerable is the white working class. In our multicultural society, they’re the unlucky ones deemed to be without a culture. Last year, for example, the editor of Eastern Eye went on television to condemn Channel 4 for allowing ‘illiterate chavs’ on to Celebrity Big Brother. Eyelids remained unbatted. Trevor Phillips was not called upon to issue a statement. The Sky News presenter to whom this comment was made simply nodded his head in silent agreement.

It’s the same story on the right of the governing party.  This from the Telegraph, again in 2006:-

Why is the white working class so roundly despised?

Our politicians are so obsessed by race that they have forgotten the importance of class. They agonise about racial segregation, while generally ignoring the exclusion of the white working class from our politics.

Lord Bruce-Lockhart, the head of the Local Government Association, this week recommended ethnic quotas for state schools, to end the division of neighbouring schools along ethnic lines. But, while ethnic divisions are certainly deep in some areas, they are nothing like as widespread – and in many respects nothing like as pernicious – as the scornful treatment by our overwhelmingly bourgeois political establishment of the white working class. While a brilliant campaign has been waged against racial prejudice, prejudice against the white working class has flourished as never before.

And this from the Daily Mail just a few days ago:-

White and working class ... the one ethnic group the BBC has ignored

Over the past two decades, Britain has been through a revolution.

The extent of the change, in both scale and speed, has probably been unique in the peacetime history of our country.

Globalisation, mass immigration and economic upheaval have helped to transform the fabric of our nation. Today, we are one of the most culturally and racially diverse places in Europe.

These changes have been the subject of noisy debate within the media, politics and academia, yet it is a curious irony that, in all the heated discussion about the consequences of this revolution, one voice has been largely absent: that of the white working class.

Politicians pontificate and academics argue, yet the voices of the British working-class public have been all but ignored.

Given that they are the people most affected by all this upheaval, this is a bizarre omission.

In case you think this is all just a Fourth Estate issue, take a look at this video, which is the first and, from our point of view, most interesting of a three-part programme on the educational failure of the white working-class.  The star of the show is Philip Beadle, a rather extraordinary teacher who has taken it upon himself to enlighten school heads and their staff about the issue.  Here he is speaking at the HQ of the National Union of Teachers (it gets interesting from 1 min 46 sec in):-

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by David Hamilton

We are led to believe that mass immigration is a blessing to us, and that only Enoch Powell and a few narrow-minded and prejudiced people have ever seen danger in it. All decent folk of good will, we are told, have embraced this break in our national continuity as a sign of enlightenment progressing to a higher state of civilisation - that of a one-world utopia made up of coffee-coloured persons. It also has been presented as an ideological battle between left and right.  But actually it is between people of common sense and, at best, utopian idealists.

Most ordinary people relate to the world by common sense.  So the impracticable dream of a multi-racial utopia has had to be socially engineered, which requires totalitarian methods. The Utopians see immigrants as essentially good, and if we are nice to them they will be nice to us.

This utopianism does not engage with human nature, and does not need to.  Actually, we find people being brought in as cheap labour, with all the idealism a mere smokescreen. If the high-minded ones are so benevolent and moral, why have their plans been underhand ... and why public infamy for those who foresaw the danger in just letting it happen?

Multi-Racialism follows on from the French Enlightenment in trying to create a society on rationalist principles and ignoring human nature as was the Soviet Union too. Those who wished to preserve our traditional way of life knew how human nature works from their experience of how people treat each other and what they are capable of doing to each other. They learnt from history how different ethnic groups have vied with each other for power and territory and looking at the world around them see that in practice immigration is not assimilation, but the colonisation of our territory. Conversely, Multi-Racialists never describe reality but appeal to a vague future utopia, not facing that if we have been cruel to them in the past then these newcomers could be cruel to us in the future. Further, people from all walks of life have now given warning of the practical consequences which shows the British people as essentially conservative. Some have made crude remarks but most bring common sense to an irresponsible series of idealists who just let things happen with no control. All have suffered and some have been openly persecuted.

Two days after the Empire Windrush docked on the 22 July 1948 with 790 west Indians, J.D.Murray and ten other Labour MP’s wrote to Labour Prime Minister Clement Atlee, asking for legislation to prevent an influx. Atlee replied, that he thought they would “make a genuine contribution to our labour difficulties at the present.” There had been racial battles in 1948 between 31 July and 2 August in Liverpool, in Deptford on the 18th July; and Birmingham between the 6th and 8th of August 1949 but the idealists ignored them as they had in 1919 when after the racial battles in Liverpool and Cardiff Lord Milner wrote a Memorandum of June 23rd “On the Repatriation of Coloured Men.” ”I have every reason to fear, that when we get these men back to their own colonies they might be tempted to revenge themselves on the white minorities there…” ( Panikos Paranyi (ed) “Racial Violence in Britain in the Nineteenth Century.” (Leicester University.1996).

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Tonight, far from showing any signs of weakening, the BNP rebels have issued an expanded list of demands to Nick Griffin:-

1. The five sacked personnel to be reinstated and the nullification of the resignations tendered by dozens of local, regional and national office holders.

2. The removal of David Hannam and Mark Collett from their positions.

3. Nick Griffin to remain as political leader of the Party.

4. The creation of a formal management system separating external political matters from internal management issues, enshrined in a redrafted constitution.

5. To make further progress on the implementation of the Voting Member structure, together with the retention of the Advisory Council.

Meanwhile, Griffin made his peace gesture some days ago in the form of a weak-tea reshuffle and, in a local party meeting in Bradford, a proposal to reinstate Sadie Graham and Kenny Smith to the party – a proposal seconded by Mark Collett.

Since the failure of this manoeuvre Griffin and Co have moved on to make serious allegations of financial impropriety and spying against Graham and Smith.  This appears only to have seriously weakened Griffins position with the rebel half of the party (and it is that big).

So, how will it all end?  I see absolutely no sign that this Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.  These people are not going to trust one another, not going to be willing to work together.  What has been done cannot be undone.

So here are three of many possible futures for nationalism in Britain:-

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The BNP is tearing itself apart somewhat tonight.

While 2007 has seen a variety of political advances for the BNP, the party has to an extent been held back and troubled by a string of leaks and misinformation briefings to political opponents, and by internal rumour-mongering designed to damage morale and confidence in the workings of various party departments, and in the leadership generally. Had this continued the result, whether by accident or design, would have been to disrupt, perhaps fatally, our all-important drive to break through with victory in the London Assembly Elections next year.

Some months ago, a BNP Intelligence Department was set up, with one of its key initial targets being to track down the source of these problems and provide the evidence needed to expose those responsible and put an end to their subversion.

Working closely with several other BNP Departments and following discussions with the BNP’s independent auditor, our Intelligence team – headed by Lance Stewart, a long-standing British nationalist and a former high-ranking officer in the South African Police - have now completed the first stage of their investigations.

As a result, two junior level national officials, Administration Officer Kenny Smith and Group Development Officer Sadie Graham, have today been removed from their posts with immediate effect on the grounds of gross misconduct and now face disciplinary charges over alleged offences against the BNP Constitution and Code of Conduct.

The degree of damage is difficult to assess, but it will go a lot deeper than the two who have been named here, and already expelled.

These two, it is claimed, established a blog titled Enough is Enough Nick with the object of forcing Griffin to fire three others whom they accuse of gross incompetence and bringing the party into disrepute.  One of these is Mark Collett, the party’s Director of Publicity, who twice stood trial alongside Griffin and, of course, twice won.

A few moments reading this blog will apprise you of some fairly colourful histories and rumours of histories.  American nationalists will recognise the moral template.

I suppose that rumours of MI5 black ops will also now play on everyone’s mind.  A second nationalist party may well emerge.  There is, of course, room for a second one in England, but not predicated principally on fighting Labour in the Islamic North.  Its orientation towards the BNP, therefore, and towards the electorate will tell us whether those black op rumours have any substance.  Let us hope not.

Instead of regressing to narrow xenophobia, it is time to build on the Human Rights Act. The aim of our British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities will be to clarify and explain the obligations which come with rights

Jack Straw, writing in the Telegraph subsequent to Gordon Brown’s speech on Thursday announcing this forthcoming Bill of Rights and Duties.

Because liberty as it is pursued today contains not a single seed of European survival, I spend a good deal of my thinking time trying to undermine its centrality to political life.  The problem, of course, is that Man is not perfect, and the least perfect of men seem to proliferate among those ambitious for power.  Some restraint on power, then, is essential for an equitable life.  In feudal Germany there was the Comitatus.  In our time there is democracy, and there are the Bills of Rights.

But democracy has spawned a traitorous, internationalist power elite that authors all our political misfortunes.  It denies us recognition of who we are or what unites us, so thereby it can remove from us ownership of that true guarantor of survival: our homelands.

In Britain, as Jack Straw states, this treachery is to be codified in a redefinition of the rights enshrined in the English constitution since the Bill of Rights of 1689.  Crucially, this redefinition will be cast from the Human Rights Act 1998 - specifically, one expects, from the qualifications to Article 10 on freedom of expression and to Article 11 on freedom of association and assembly, and from Article 14 on prohibition of discrimination.

This will be a highly positive (or governmentally prescribed) dispensation of rights, there being little or no sign of the negative rights enshrined in America’s Bill of Rights.  Straw’s reference to responsibilities is perfectly clear.  Big government will coerce us to deny our true self as the people of England, and to be, instead, the MultiCult.  This is a duty to die – eagerly if possible or, at worst, unknowingly.

Keen to discover more about our forthcoming new duty I consulted the words of the Prime Minister Who Is Not Tony Blair, as they were spoken at the University of Westminster, Thursday 25 October 2007, and appear now on the Labour Party website.

The speech is quite refreshingly free from the usual political-aspirational double-talk.  It makes a serious play for academic learning but, happily, is a little too self-serving and reverse-reasoned to succeed.  Its historical references are there solely to represent British history as the midwife not only of liberty but all the exotica of postmodern tolerance.  Everyone from John Milton to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs gets pulled into the effort.  Thereby the dour son of the manse steadfastly dilutes the heady, 70% proof intoxicant of real liberty - after all, drunkards tend to be free with their tongues, and freedom of speech is something no postmodern Prime Minister can allow.  He establishes to his own satisfaction, at least, that England is the home of happy anti-racism and, naturally, we all want much more of it.

Here, in his own words, is how he picks his path to that goal:-

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In October 2005 the UK government Actuary released forecasts for medium-term population growth:-

The United Kingdom population is projected to increase by 7.2 million over the period 2004 to 2031, according to a new set of UK population projections released today. The increase is equivalent to an average annual rate of growth of 0.42 per cent, or 12 per cent over the 27 years. In the longer-term, the projections suggest that the population will continue rising beyond 2031 but at a much lower rate of growth.

The UK population will increase gradually from an estimated 59.8 million in 2004, passing 60 million in 2005 and 65 million in 2023,
to reach 67.0 million by 2031.

... The projected total population of the United Kingdom at 2031 is 1.3 million (2.0 per cent) higher than in the previous (2003-based) projections. This is due to a combination of higher
assumed levels of net migration, higher short-term birth rate assumptions and slightly higher life expectancy assumptions.

Perhaps the first point to make here is that the government actuary has apparently missed some factors trending to a shortfall in housing supply, among them the later age of marriage and the trend towards smaller houses.  However, the picture was bad enough.  It backed up the long and largely failing struggle John Prescott has had to force a major housebuilding programme on councils in the South-East (which, with London, receives 75% of all migration to the UK).  Gordon Brown made it clear earlier this month that there would be no more failure.

Gordon Brown has set out his ambition to build three million more homes across the country by 2020 to address a crisis in the supply of affordable homes.

The figure was 250,000 higher the Government’s previous target and reflects Mr Brown’s determination to make housing a top priority.

And this morning the papers carried the news that the Green Belt, that stubborn, beautiful rural abutment to urban sprawl, must begin to be sacrificed:-

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The BNP was vigorously chasing new writers a few months ago.  I know of two whom they approached, only to be turned down.  Here is a sample of the writing that meets the required standard of intellectual enquiry:-

The suggestion that a French President, who is of second generation Hungarian Jewish origin may be an (admittedly), unlikely candidate to receive the accolade of the most nationalist head of state, will doubtless seem controversial to the many adherents of the old style nationalist parties across Europe, who have regrettably inherited and furthermore institutionalised some degree of anti-Semitism.

However the BNP looks forward, not backward and looks beyond such blinkered vision and while acknowledging that President Nicolas Sarkozy was elected on a populist patriotic nationalist platform at the expense of the BNP’s friends in Le Pen’s Front National, there is no doubt that Le President is continuing to deliver the goods to the long suffering voters of France.

... President Sarkozy is definitely one to watch. As all of Europe faces the common enemy of militant Islam; the scourge of Marxist-liberalism; the interference of the unelected European Commission and the widespread decline of an industrial economic base, it remains to be seen whether Sarkozy’s actions are merely headline grabbing window dressing or genuine action to rescue a nation under threat from within and without. How France responds to these issues could set the scene for replication across all of Europe, including the UK.

Well, style aside, let’s strip away one or two layers of this so very forward-looking nationalist substance, and see what lurks beneath.

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