BNP Suicide Bomber?

West Midlands Regional organisor Mike Bell has been well and truly caught with his pants down. After years of denying the BNP have any links to nazism and proudly boasting that his family had "a pround history of opposing the Nazis in both world wars" (sic) and of collecting money for the Royal British legion, he was photographed this week at a Neo-Nazi Rock concert in Germany where he was the headline speaker. His reaction on the Stirrer forums was really quite disturbing:

prod, probe, attack, destroy me , just be aware that the preservation of the martyr within me will live on.You will all see me very soon unleash the wrath of gods heil Odin, Heil Thor.I shall go down in flames,remember my name it will be etched into your memories forever.You will be part responsible,an unwanted trophy which you will have to take the credit for.

Now, what does this remind you of?

Birmingham Stands Alone

So there we have it. A week ago today, the BNP gained two seats in the European parliament in their most high-profile victories to date. Despite getting less votes than they did in 2004, they gained a bigger proportion of the vote in the North West and Yorkshire & Humber to take the last seats, allocated by proportional representation, in both. I do not think we should be so sure that an increased turnout in future elections under a likely Conservative government will necessarily happen; both the North West and Yorkshire & Humber were part of the postal voting experiment in 2004 designed to increase Labour turnout. We may have to turn to the opposition to the BNP which exists in this country to get them out in five years and remove the stain of electing them sixty years after British troops landed in Normandy in an attempt to remove fascists from Europe. European elections will become more exciting than they ever have.

It was not all bad news, however, as BNP no 2 Simon Darby got nowhere near getting a seat in the West Midlands constituency. The sixth seat went to UKIP, with the potential seventh, should Lisbon be ratified, going to a third Tory. Next would have been the BNP, but the population in the region is not big enough for us to get any more representation. Perhaps we need a few more immigrants?

This leave Birmingham, unlike London, Manchester and Leeds, free of fascist representation at any level, which is quite funny given the national press have tended to think we are one of the most likely places to elect Nazis. Just like Britain in 1940, Birmingham now stands alone as a bastion of freedom in the fight against fascism. Let us not underestimate how much fascists can damage the reputation of a city. Richard Barnbrook, elected to the London assembly under PR with just over 5% of the vote, has undermined England's 2018/22 bid for the World Cup and potentially embarrassed the Queen by attempting to take Nick Griffin to Buckingham Palace with him; both a direct consequence of his election. If it had been any other city other than Our Glorious Capital! no doubt the press would have been sneering. Perhaps all future events to promote the country should take place away from London to stop this happening in future. All we need is a major city that has refuted fascism at the ballot box at every opportunity.

How about Birmingham?

Green Day?

On their website, the BNP have been talking up their chances of getting some seats in the European elections. Having analysed the local election results and assuming local votes will also translate into European votes (with a couple of other caveats), they believe they will get between 1 and 4 seats (one or two in the North West, one in the North East and one in the West Midlands).

For the West Midlands:

Average BNP vote: 12.6 percent. Result: One possible Euro BNP seat. (This result could be boosted by the fact that the best BNP-supporting areas in the West Midlands - Stoke, Sandwell, Dudley and others - did not have local elections on Thursday, meaning that large numbers of BNP voters are not reflected in this average figure.)

Leaving aside the facts that an increased UKIP vote, local votes do not necessarily translate into european votes and there were no local elections in BNP stronghold areas, the signs look ominous. Will the fascists really win four seats on the anniversary of Winston Churchill's "Fight them on the Beaches" speech?

Possibly not. I reported on the political betting website that turnout seemed to have been good in Sparkbrook, a predominantly Muslim area. This was despite the fact that Respect were not standing in the European elections and there was no council election (Respect have all three councillors in Sparkbrook). Newsnight also interviewed some Sikhs on election day who came out to vote to stop the BNP. Anecdotal evidence suggests that BMEs may have come out to vote in higher numbers in an attempt to stop the BNP.

The Green party may be key. Salma Yaqoob has called for Respect voters to vote for the Greens in the absence of a Respect candidate. The combined Respect/ Green total at the last European election would have beaten the BNP by .1%. The Green Party had "Say no to Racism" as their strapline on the ballot paper. I am pretty confident that Labour, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP will get one seat each in the West Midlands constituency, with the Conservatives getting two. I believe the final seat will be a tossup between a third Conservative, second UKIP, or maiden BNP or perhaps possibly Green. It will be very close. I just hope that people exercised their right to vote.

We Will Fight Them at the Ballot Box

Thursday will see the 69th anniversary of one of Winston Churchill's most famous speeches. Thurday will also see the European elections takes place, with the big three parties bracing themselves for a kicking from the electorate due to the expenses saga.  One of the parties hoping to benefit are the BNP, who are tipped to win one or two seats in the North West and West Midlands constiuencies.   Readers of this blog will be under no illusions; despite its best efforts to clean up its image, this is still essentially a racist, fascist party. Don't believe me?  Take a look at its section 2 of its constitution:

http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2009/04/03/constitution-of-the-british-national-party-bnp/

Their leader, Nick Griffin, has continually denied the Holocaust ever took place, calling it the "Holohoax".

Recently, in guidance sent to his party members he claimed black and asian Britons do not exist;  the correct term for such people is "racial foregners".  The manual describes the BNP's "ultimate aim" as the "lawful, humane and voluntary repatriation of the resident foreigners of the UK".

There is absolutely no doubt that immigration is a big issue for people living in Britain today.  The question is, are the beliefs expressed above representative of what the British people think, or has the debate been hijacked by racists in an attempt to turn legitimate grievances against government policy into a wider attack on anyone who is different?

For quite some time I have believed there is a need for the immigration debate to be deracialised.  While I do not support them, I was glad to see UKIP park their tank on the BNP's lawn with this party political broadcast on Friday:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8074734.stm

It is a question of space, not race, says television cook Rustie Lee on the UKIP European election leaflet.  It is more important than ever not to confuse race and immigration.  While the issues may be related, they are not the same.

Fight Night

It seems local MP John Hemming and my former local councillor Martin Mullaney are having some trouble with the BNP.

I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Cocunuts

Bruce Forsyth presented 'Have I Got News for You' and resurrected his career hosting 'Strictly Come Dancing'.

Boris Johnson presented 'Have I Got News for You' and became the new Mayor of London.

Next weeks guest presenter: Barack Obama

So Boris is the new Mayor of London. My position on the matter is no different from what it was back in September. The Mayor of London should be a training ground for a future Prime Minister, not a popularity contest. It is unlikely that Boris will ever reach 10 Downing Street however well he runs London. Having said that, perhaps the left have underestimated Boris by assuming he is a bit of a clown who appears on comedy game shows. The reality is he ran a very good campaign to unseat Ken Livingstone, a feat which should not be underestimated itself despite the rantings of the right-wing press. It will be interesting to see how he performs in his new role.

If the Mayor has not undermined 'World-class' London, the BNP getting a seat on the GLA certainly has. As this article points out, Berlin, Paris and New York do not suffer from this embarrassing situation. I hope the London media remember this the next time they report on racial tensions in Birmingham, Bradford or any other northern towns they want to disparage.
At least we have not elected a fascist to the largest council in Europe.

Candidate Apathy

We hear a lot about voter apathy, but what about when the candidates cannot even be bothered with democracy?

I went to the Balsall Heath Hustings last night, looking forward to listening to a debate between the candidates so I could decide who to vote for having recently moved to the area. When I got there, I was very disappointed to find that only two candidates had turned up, namely the Respect candidate and the Conservative candidate. Clearly the candidates for the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, the Greens, the BNP and the Independent Community Party had more important things to do. Apparently Mohammed Azim, the Labour party candidate has not been present at the hustings for the last three years!

This leaves me in a bit of a problem. I was not planning on voting for either of the parties who actually turned up. What should I do?

It looks like I have three options:

1) Vote for one of the parties that turned up. At least they care, even if I do not agree with what they stand for

2) Give the candidates who did not turn up the benefit of the doubt and vote based on election literature, or relevant ward, local and/ or national issues?

3) Follow the example of the majority of the candidates, reject my democratic rights and do something more important instead?

I am being serious when I say my vote is up for grabs, so please, whatever your party allegiance, use the comments below to inform me of what you think the important issues are at this election and who I should vote for. All comments will be considered seriously.

For context, the 2007 results were as follows:

Sparkbrook Ward, Birmingham City Council

Candidate	Party	Number of Votes
Shokat Ali	Community Independent Party (UK)	503
Charles John Alldrick	The Green Party	310
Mohammed Azim	The Labour Party	2503
Arthur Charles Botterill	British National Party	106
Anwar Hussain	The Conservative Party	548
Mohammed Ishtiaq	Respect	3514
Dilawar Khan	Liberal Democrat	919
Candidate Elected - Mohammed Ishtiaq

A review of the husting is available here.

A Brief History of White

I think the BBC may finally have well and truly lost the plot. The recent White Season seems to be one of the most confused pieces of programming scheduling I have seen in a while.

My review of the first programme was here and mainly positive. While I still think this, Beaman pointed out it was rather biased. Perhaps I had prematurely given the BBC the benefit of the doubt; after all, there was a whole week of shows to prove not all white working class people pledge allegiance to the Swastika, surely?

Next came a programme on Enoch Powell's speech in Birmingham which ends with the words "Like the Roman, I see the River Tiber foaming with much blood" (someone should come up with a catchy title which encapsulates the fear contained of that speech). My instinct was that although the programme tried to exhibit a range of views to the speech, it ended up with a rather orthodox reaction to it (which I happen to agree with). A well argued, revisionist history that the programme could have contained is available here.

White Girl's inclusion in the season was simply bizarre. The subtext seemed to be that white working class people can save themselves by converting to Islam. While their are individuals where this may well have been the case (and this drama was apparently based on a true story), it could be construed as being highly offensive and denigrating to white working class culture by including this in the season.

The Poles are Coming was an interesting look at the Polish invasion since the EU expanded, but left white working class people looking like work-shy dole cheats. There was no balancing view.

The Primary was a fantastic look at a multicultural inner city school in Birmingham, and appeared to show working class white people who (shock, horror!) did not mind people of other races. For a programme included in white season however, it spent very little time with the minority white community in the area and rather a lot of time looking at the others.

All White in Barking was yet another show which concentrated on white working class flirtation with the BNP. However, it did acknowledge insularity in other cultures. Holocaust survivor Monty's heart-rending story should have a programme all to itself.

Now what was the point of this season? The infamous advert advertising it seemed to refer to the white working class being drowned out by other cultures. If this season was supposed to be about the white working class in relation to other cultures, it was simply too one-sided. Where were the (I would say majority) white working class people who are appalled by the BNP and have friends and colleagues from other races and cultures? Or those who oppose the level of immigration in this country but oppose the BNP's exploitation of it? Or those whose children have married people from other cultures and get along well their in-laws? Or those who have extended their hand in friendship even when they have it thrown back in their face?

And excuse me if I am wrong, but it is only the BNP who truly believes that the only issues the white working class face are based on their relationship with people of other cultures. What about white working class people who live on sink estates, living in fear of "their own kind" as some in this season might put it? Or those who are trying to get their children into the best schools despite the best efforts of the choice agenda of the middle class? Where are the working class people who have values of hard-work, self-reliance and decency who abhor the benefits culture? Or those who believe or no longer believe, as the case may be, in the institution of the trade union?

Is the white working class becoming invisible? If this is the kind of programming being used to report about them, then the answer appears to be yes. However, the problem does not lie with other cultures coming to this country; the problem is the bog-standard programming produced by the state broadcaster, which once-upon-a-time used to be the envy of the world.

Instead of advertising this series by writing all over a white person's face in foreign languages, perhaps it would have been more aptly demonstrated by hitting him around the head with an overpriced TV licence instead.

White is Right

I have been looking forward to the 'White' season on BBC ever since they started advertising it and I must say that the first programme yesterday 'Last Orders' did not disappoint. I say this as a working class Asian who grew up among second generation descendants of Irish immigrant labourers. It is important for the BBC to show the concerns of real white working class people so we can see and understand their real concerns, which are usually not the same as those of the BNP who claim to represent them.

Hopefully, it will go some way towards redressing the balance on the BBC, which is perceived to be biased towards the liberal middle classes. We do not need one season of this; we need to have a regular stream of programmes that challenge and educate us about the issues facing 21st century Britain particularly targeting groups that are under-represented by the mainstream media and political establishment (and it is not just the white working classes believe me).

Having said that, some right wingers will never be happy until the BBC broadcasts the Queen reading 'Mein Kampf' in English simultaneously on all available channels.

PRoBrum Right-Leaning?

I love these kind of quizzes which map out your position on a two-dimensional political spectrum and compare you with current parties and political leaders past and present. I find them useful because I struggle to find a mainstream political party I fit in with These quizzes give me an opportunity to find out what the differences are. I am surprised to be right-leaning in this version, but I think part of the problem is that it defines neo-liberal politics as being right-wing, an opinion I disagree with (I believe free-markets are a centrist position that have been adopted by the right due to the success of socialist economics during the middle part of the twentieth century). A previous version on an American Scale had me as a Democrat.

Comparing myself with the 2005 UK political spectrum I am closest to the Liberal Democrats which I have always suspected, but this can be misleading due to the fact that the party is polarised between the Liberal and Social Democratic founding traditions. Thankfully, I am on the opposing side of the quadrant containing the BNP.

Interestingly nearly all modern political leaders are in the same quadrant as the two main parties, authoritarian neo-liberals. Is this because this is the most practical form of politics? I hope not. I think it shows that politicians are inclined to award themselves too much power as it keeps them in work. I believe most people who take this test will find themselves in the libertarian half of the chart, indicating to me that the growing chasm between electorates and their leaders does not involve positioning on the traditional left-right political spectrum, but is instead a failure by current governments to recognise that most aspects of life do not need to be legislated over, and that citizens must be given the freedom to live the lives they choose to live.

Hat-tip to Some Random Thoughts.

The Far-Right to Offend

Iain Dale wrote an article today regarding The Right to Offend. It repeated the right-wing myth, also proposed by the liberal hawks of Harry's Place that freedom, if anything, means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear. Interestingly enough, this is a position they share with those "great defenders of free speech", the BNP.

This is nonsense. Freedom of speech means the right to say anything you want without fear of persecution from the government. With that freedom comes responsibility. This means that although you can in theory say anything, some things are better left unsaid. If freedom of speech is not used with discretion, pressure mounts on the government to take it away in certain circumstances; and as soon as a government starts legislating on a certain area, they have a habit of not stopping.

A great example is holocaust denial. In my opinion it should not be an offence to deny the holocaust, because there should be the opportunity to have a full debate on the history if new evidence emerges. Unfortunately though, most, if not all people who deny the holocaust are idiots. Despite the overwhelming evidence that it occurred, they claim it is part of a Jewish conspiracy of one sort of another. So several European countries have made holocaust denial a criminal offence, and it is difficult to argue against it given the type of person who actually make these statements in public.

Freedom of speech is not an excuse to persecute minorities verbally, because they do not have any legitimate way of stopping you criticising them (although they can take the law into their own hands of course). The only organisation that can stop you saying something is the government, who can legislate against statements they do not like. I repeat then that freedom of speech is not the right to make offensive statements, but the right to criticise the government without fear of persecution.

To be fair, Iain's article is not about something as serious as holocaust denial. It is about a state-regulator criticising Jeremy Clarkson for calling something "a bit gay". It is not a surprise with this kind of ruling that more and more people are starting to confuse freedom of speech with the right to offend.

Local Election Digest

It may be said that Blair got a bruising nationally on Thursday, but I feel Labour did relatively well in the local elections both in Birmingham and in the country at large given the scale of their recent problems (although apparently Patricia Hewitt believes the Government is having its best year ever). Noteworthy results include Labour surprisingly losing Longbridge to the Tories (thanks to an increase in the BNP vote) and Salma Yaqoob taking Sparkbrook for the Respect party. I was pleased to see this - regardless of what Respect stand for, she tends to be quite a prominent figure in local politics and deserves her place on the council. The Lib Dems managed to pick up Moseley, but not a lot else, and the Tories picked up Erdington.

Unfortunately the city's name was dragged through the mud again with allegations of electoral fraud against a Lib Dem candidate in the north of the city. It's deja vu all over again. And the count at Kingstanding was right royally messed-up, with more votes being declared than were available. This initially gave first place to the BNP candidate when actually the two Labour candidates should have been returned. Unfortunately, as the result was declared this will now have to go through the courts to rectify this, giving the British Nazi Party more free publicity. They no doubt will be spinning the line that it is a government conspiracy to cheat them out of a seat they fairly earned.

The BNP did pick up three seats in Sandwell and one seat in Solihull, and got about 10% of the vote in Birmingham.

But at least they came sixth out of six in Moseley.