He doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me
Tonight the leader of the racist British National Party is to appear on the BBC TV program Question Time. This is a program which has run for many years and involves a group of the great and the good sitting on a panel, currently chaired by David Dimbleby and answering questions from a studio audience.
Having followed Question Time for many years I can attest that the subject to get the British people most riled was not Iraq or the credit crunch but fox hunting.
The news media have been full of controversy regarding whether the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, should appear on Question time and the response from the majority of political pundits is that he should not.
From what I can gather The British National Party believe in stopping immigration to the UK and “encouraging” (my emphasis) people of non-Celtic or Anglo-Saxon origin to emigrate to where their ancestors came from immediately before they came to the UK. I hear that their manifesto specifically prohibits people not of these “races” from joining the party.
I’ll state my position clearly up front. I believe that there is only one race of people, the human race. Individuals should not be picked off because of their supposed membership of some fictional race or indeed because of their religion or sexual orientation. I’m a bog standard ant-racist.
Having said that I am against further immigration to The United Kingdom for a couple of reasons: Firstly it’s too bloody crowded here already – Just look up the population density stats for the UK and compare them against other countries.
Secondly I believe that Tory and New Labour politicians in collusion with the controllers of large capitalist corporations are using immigration for cheap labour which, while it may make Gordon Brown’s spreadsheet glow with tax from profits, degrades the living environment of each individual in The United Kingdom. Bigger airports, more buildings, greater living density; all this contributes to making The UK a worse place to live.
By now, any of the people who regularly boast about their anti-racism will be condemning me as a closet racist.
But to the subject in hand. Should Nick Griffin be allowed to speak on Question Time?
I’m a liberal and I believe that free speech is fundamental to a free society and therefore I believe that anyone should be allowed to speak on Question Time. Over the past few days I have watched and listen as Mr. Griffin has appeared on many news programs alongside “regular” politicians to try to make his point. From memory, without exception, the regular politicians and interviewers have shouted him down and shouted abuse at him. These are the people who are supposed to represent the main stream of our free society.
It is easy to believe in freedom of speech when everyone is saying things that your either agree with or do not see as threatening but then we need no laws to allow this. The point of freedom of speech in a democracy is that you allow people to speak who hold opinions with which you strongly disagree and so Mr. Griffin is the test of our tradition of free speech. If we shut him down merely because we hate what he says then we are no better than the racists dictatorial regimes from the past.
Ken Livingstone was on BBC Radio 4 this morning arguing that Mr. Griffin should not be allowed on Question Time firstly because there is a court case which may find against the BNP and secondly because Mr. Livingstone claims that each time Mr. Griffin appears on TV there is a rise in racist violence.
Firstly nobody, including Mr. Griffin, is guilty until they are found guilty and secondly if we prevented all speech (other than incitement to violence) which might lead random individuals to commit violence then we would do better starting with football matches and New Labour Prime Ministers.
The interviewer asked Mr. Livingstone to explain how his view accorded with his views on Jerry Adams being allowed to speak when the last Conservative government had a ban on him appearing on TV. Without a qualm, Mr. Livingstone then amended his rule about banning anyone who may cause an increase in violence and instated a clause allowing them to speak if this would assist in helping the Northern Ireland peace process.
This off the cuff invention of rules was most instructive as it revealed the unprincipled and fascistic tendency of many Labour politicians. They like to draw up rules which people must adhere to even though the rules have not been passed into law but when they want to contravene their own rules they will change them in a moment.
Having said that freedom of speech should be available top everyone this is not the same as saying that every lunatic should be given space on Question Time. The BBC claim that they give space to all UK political parties who have elected representatives and site the Greens and Plaid Cymru. This seems like a reasonable policy.
The British National Party have two European MPs and therefore the support of a small percentage of the UK population. In a democracy their voice should be heard and I think the question time audience are educated enough to see through Mr. Griffin’s fallacious views on race and dismiss them as they deserve.
Did you see what I did there?
I used the standard attack the messenger tactic beloved of the Tories. I refrained from speaking against the idea while denigrating the messenger. I encouraged everyone to feel very pompously that we are all much more intelligent than Mr. Griffin and need not stop him from talking because of that. I was TALKING BOLLOCKS. I have seen no evidence that Mr. Griffin is any stupider than the bunch of incompetents who currently control number 10. His intelligence is not the point, his policies are.
To be fair there is an argument for why we should deny certain individuals from promulgating their views even when they have broken no laws and are not inciting violence. BBC Radio 4 carried a report this morning with a university boffin who had tracked the rise of the French right wing. He claimed that this gained considerable support after it’s leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, appeared on television.
And here we come to the nub of the matter. How strongly do we believe in freedom of speech and democracy? It could be argued that M. Le Pen appearing on television and the consequent rise in support was a natural part of the democratic process. However unedifying the conclusion is that a proportion of the electorate are racists – and they are, we know this.
So the question is: do we argue against racism; do we allow freedom of speech and democracy to work, or do we shut down the BNP and betray our principles?
I tend to feel that the majority of supporters of parties like the BNP are not all out fascists or even racists. They are people who have the shitty end of the stick and whose concerns have not been addressed by the main parties. I believe that the mistake of most supposed anti-racists is to release their own pent up venom on these people rather than trying to understand their perspective. By ignoring their issues and condemning them all as fascists we merely alienate them from conventional politics. You don’t have to be a fascist to be a racist. The soviets were institutionally ant-Semitic yet are rarely condemned as fascists.
There is a subtext in banning Mr. Griffin which is the idea that other people are not quite as sharp as us and might actually believe him and this subtext is condescending to the general population.
We should show courage and trust our ideals and people. We should trust freedom and trust democracy. Let Nick Griffin speak. The case against racism is obvious and his arguments are not difficult to refute.
If Mr. Griffin has any legitimate concerns then let him air them and keep the regular politicians on their toes.
Sadly, though I have faith in people I have very little faith in politicians of all hues and I doubt that many “regular” politicians will contain their hypocritical self riotousness long enough to espouse many coherent arguments. But that’s nothing new.
Tonight I fully expect all the regular politicians to talk absolute bollocks in a desperate effort to distance themselves from the BNP and I expect that a lone member of the audience will get out of hand and need to be removed by officials.
I shall be watching because I expect a bloody good bun fight that, if we’re lucky, will be more fun than the fox hunting debate.
Read Review of the program in The Independent
The acceptable argument for immigration seems to be that immigrants should only be allowed into the UK if our economy requires their skills.
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We happy few
Tags: Cricket Test, cultural identity, culture, England, Englishness, identity, immigration, racism, racist, Who Killed Pluto
How I Killed Pluto is a book which tells the story of how the planet Pluto was demoted from a planet to a planetoid. The logic seems to have been that since the Kuiper Belt is belt of planetoids and Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt then Pluto must be an planetoid. – QED.
Only no. Not QED. The book tells how, some years ago astronomers thought that the universe consisted of stars which moved across the heavens together and planets which moved with reference to the background of stars. Planets could also be seen as discs whereas stars could only be made out as points of light.
Then, in 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres.
I’ll let Wikipedia take up the story from here:
“Ceres was originally considered to be a new planet. This was followed by the discovery of other similar bodies, which, with the equipment of the time, appeared to be points of light, like stars, showing little or no planetary disc, though readily distinguishable from stars due to their apparent motions. This prompted the astronomer Sir William Herschel to propose the term “asteroid”, coined in Greek as ἀστεροειδής asteroeidēs ‘star-like, star-shaped’, from Ancient Greek ἀστήρ astēr ‘star, planet’. In the early second half of the nineteenth century, the terms “asteroid” and “planet” (not always qualified as “minor”) were still used interchangeably.”
Later, some pompous oaf decided that the star like planets were not planets at all – Ooh, no Mrs. how foolish to refer to them as planets when a planet has a discernible disc – The trouble with this argument is that, as telescopes improved it became possible to discern the discs of many objects including stars. So, should Alpha Centauri now be demoted to a planet?
For me, the whole wahala points up the obsession men have with categorising things. The average American supermarket carries 47,000 categories of product. Like an American supermarket, the universe is big and diverse but it is not full of different categories of identical objects. It is not full of things that are either Marmite or asteroids. In nature, at the super-atomic level, objects may be similar but they’re unique – like people.
It’s ridiculous but men get into heated arguments about such stuff. In 1799 a preserved platypus reached England and was regarded as a hoax because it didn’t fit an existing category but the platypus was rummaging around Australia long before men invented the categories of mammal, reptile and bird so the categories had to be amended. Categories, such as planets and mammals and Englishman, are artificial. They’re invented by humanity and imposed on the universe.
Identifying seems important to us especially when it comes to our own identity. Recently I read a definition of Englishman which stated: a man who lives in England. Broadly I agree. I say broadly because setting foot on English soil does not make you English anymore than emigrating strips you of that distinction.
A century ago Englishmen had a similar understanding of identify. An Englishman meant a man from England but, in those days, this overwhelmingly translated to white, Christian, English speaking and superior to everyone else. Today white and Christian is not a true representation of people living in England. As with astronomy and zoology so with cultural identity. We must redefine our definition to include the people who do live in England rather than trying to reject those who do not fit our old definition.
neither a planet nor an asteroid
On Sunday, at an airport, I overheard a tall gentlemen with a turban and that accent that Englishmen develop after spending a long time in America. He raved about the English breakfast but, to me, his tone seemed false which wasn’t helped by his American pronunciation of the word “Tomato”. As with many Anglo/American expats he seemed keen to prove his Englishness by his choice of breakfast.
Do we possess our identity or is it in the eye of the beholder? In a world of global travel, global brands and online “virtual communities” cultural identity is not as simple as geography. Englishmen of West Indian ancestry are no less English for embracing their cultural heritage but Englishman whose ancestry lies in England are not bigots for taking pride in their roots.
The term English has different meanings in different contexts. Obviously English can mean a person from England but equally it can relate to cultural ephemera. A penchant for bland food, a style of curries, a certain humor, smugness. politeness. a propensity for getting drunk – Take your pick. This is not a problem and we don’t need politicians or pundits to define Englishness for us. Over time various traits die off, rub off on or are accentuated by new arrivals just as the traits of newer arrivals die off, rub off on or are accentuated by the general population. This should not be controversial. It is only to state the bleeding obvious.
To insist that Englishness means no more than resident of England is as insulting as asking an Englishman of West Indian heritage to take the “cricket test” and as redundant as trying to fix Englishness to an outdated set of traits. England, like the rest of the world, is a miasma of waxing and waning cultural phenomena or memes. Bollywood, Cricket, Lamb Madras, Punk Rock, Henry VIII, Mini, The Turbine Hall, Mr. Shake Hands Man, The Green Man, Brit Art, Banter, Spag Bol, suet puddings, Morris Men, Fleur-de-lis, Sunday joint, Ping pong, Routemasters, Nah mean, The Angel of the North, Spitfires, Ska, Cool, Pub grub, Hip Hop, the NHS, Football, the weather, Top Gear, The Queen Mother, Coca Cola and Titter Ye Not. All are bubbling away and, thank God, we somehow resist politicians of all stripes who attempt to steal the moral high ground by defining Englishness. Perhaps the best guidance for a definition of Englishness comes from Frank Howard: Please yourselves!
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