Defeating the BNP can’t be left to the Left
On Thursday the BNP leader will appear on BBC1′s Question Time, and for once I might stay up long enough to watch what is clearly a watershed.
Personally I find the BNP to be lower than vermin. The prospect of ever sharing a platform with a bunch of racist thugs turns my stomach.
Over the weekend there was some excellent writing in the press, most notably the articles in the Sunday Times on the issue facing the BBC this week and on the rise in support for the BNP.
Martin Ivens’ excellent commentary touched on the paradox that whilst support for the far right has increased, Britain has generally become a more tolerant and accepting society. The problem is the pattern of voting amongst those C2DE male voters whose shift to the BNP is based on a fear of immigrant workers “taking their jobs”.
Whatever the reason for the recent shift of political allegiances mostly of natural Labour voters in working class towns in England, this is a growing problem that cannot be defeated by the Left alone. Traditionally we’ve all been happy to sit back and leave the protesting and arguing to the usual collection of communists, Anti Nazi League members and other assorted leftists. However it’s in no-one’s interests to allow the BNP to claim for themselves those voters who are disillusioned with the political process.
For those of us on the centre right we need to remind people that voting BNP does not make Britain more British, that our country has welcomed people from across the world, absorbed their culture and has become richer for it. But this does not mean that our proud assertion of Britain’s place in the world should ever be a deterrent from discussing immigration.
There has been a reluctance within the mainstream parties to discuss immigration for fear of dealing with a sensitive subject. Whatever one’s views about population projections, public service pressures and community cohesion, if we don’t start talking to the public then the BNP will fill the gap instead.
I hate what the BNP stand for but we must take them head on.