Nick Griffin, Defender of the Faith?
According to the BNP themselves, 3,000 people have registered to be signed up as members following Question Time. Unsurprisingly, their site is getting way more hits than those of any other political party at the moment – Alexa rankings are proudly displayed at the bottom of it. A poll carried out since the programme found that 22% of those surveyed would ’seriously consider’ voting for the BNP.
Some of that may be Brits siding with the underdog, as we traditionally do, but there’s nothing to be gained by simply dismissing these figures. As the BBC report puts it “more than half of those polled said they agreed or thought the party had a point in speaking up for the interests of indigenous, white British people.” Baroness Warsi made the point during the debate that there was more to the BNP vote than disillusionment over expenses: “there are people who feel the pace of change is too fast.”
A Christian Country?
Nick Griffin referred to the UK as a ‘Christian country’ several times during Question Time. Do a search for ‘Christian’ on the BNP site, and most of it is articles against Islam and political correctness where that impinges on the church. It’s a defensive statement of cultural identity (’we don’t want Islam’) more than a positive one of religious identity. ‘Christian country’ is a piece of branding, the language of resistance, looking back to where Britain has come from, and trying to hold on to it. Christian groups have made it clear that Griffin speaks only for the BNP when he seeks to portray them as defenders of the faith.
Britain is in a transition phase: post-Christian without being non-Christian. We still have many of the institutions, but culture and personal ethics have slipped their Christian moorings for the open sea. ‘Life of Brian’ would scarcely raise a murmer now – witness recent attempts to create ‘outrage’ stories over religious imagery which, 40 years ago, wouldn’t have needed any media help in causing a storm.
But it’s not a clean break: recently two councils added 3 other religious holidays to the normal closures for Christmas and Easter. Despite relatively small numbers of Sikhs in Newham and Waltham Forest, Guru Nanaks birthday joins Eid and Diwali on the holiday list. The ensuing lively debate has caused a review of the policy.
The stated aim is, you guessed it, ‘community cohesion’. The result is often the opposite: there will no doubt be another row over ‘Winterval’ some time in the next 2 months, as Christmas is rebranded, and ‘we don’t want to offend people of other faiths’ is cited as the rationale. Result: people of other faiths are blamed for the decision. Winners: nobody. Except perhaps the BNP.
Given the use the BNP makes of ‘Christian Britain’ language, Jonathan Bartley questions whether the church should give up the ghost on trying to preserve the remnants and rhetoric of Christian identity in the UK. I’m not sure the church should give the BNP the right of veto over the terms of debate. If the opposition starts to colonise our language, do we abandon it, or try to redeem it?
Aside from a reference to freedom of worship, there is no statement about religion or Christianity in the BNP Constitution. However a BNP leaflet from May/June this year, calls for a ‘Day of Prayer’ and attacks the Church of England for selling out. It’s since been taken offline, but points the finger at ‘Judas Archbishops’, who in the next breath, bizarrely, it calls for dialogue with. It doesn’t take much digging to find BNP members with religious views which range from the bizarre to the scandalous. But is it enough simply to dismiss them?
Issues
Back to the data at the top. Ridicule may make us feel better, and more righteous, but what else does it achieve? Whether we like it or not, the popularity of the BNP raises a host of knotty issues which our politicians have been tiptoeing round for years:
– What is the nature of British identity, and what is the place of Christian faith, and the Christian roots of our society, in that picture?
– What is the true nature of Islam? I live in Yeovil, which is almost entirely white, and went up to London for a day conference earlier this year. Westminster seemed to be swarming with police, and young Asian men with backpacks. My instinctive reaction was a flashback to similar figures getting onto the Tube in those CCTV videos. I was nervous, I couldn’t help it, even though I know that Al Qaeda is a crackpot minority. Is that just me? Can we talk in the UK about, for example, Muslims persecuting Christians in other countries, without it being branded as hate speech and quickly ushered offstage? When Nick Griffin quotes from the Koran, how many of us know whether those texts are foundational to Islam, or peripheral?
– Apart from appointing a few ‘Community Cohesion Officers’ at local councils, how are we dealing with immigration? If the population projections are right, we can expect 180,000 new immigrants per year for the next 20 years. It’s either that, or raise the retirement age to 80: increased life expectancy means that 15.6m people will be drawing their pension by 2033, and with a low birth rate, immigration is the only way to keep a balanced demographic.
- Without some crass ‘back to basics’ campaign, how do we have a debate between the values of the past and the values of the present? In two generations, public morality has changed out of all recognition, whether you look at race issues, the environment, or sexual ethics. There are both gains and losses. In areas like sex and culture, schools are encouraged not to teach a set of beliefs/morals, but to promote an informed choice. The continued epidemic of broken families, and the stubborn persistence of racism, show that this isn’t really working. Is there a place for a moral framework, and in post-Christendom, where do we get that framework from?
Wrapping Up
It’s easy to dismiss the British National Party and what they stand for, and it would be wrong to let the BNP tail wag the dog of the British body politic (sorry, metaphor decay is setting in here). Most of the liberal chatterati can’t understand how anyone could support Nick Griffin. But until we start to understand their appeal, and start addressing some of these questions, British soil will remain a fertile place for the BNP.
Categories: All WW, British National Party (BNP), Columns, Politics, Touching Base
Doubtful, but who is defending the Christian faith these days? Cannot complain about “Winterval” or whatever, but if someone constantly uses “Christ” as a swear word, Christians cannot complain. Many people feel immigration is an issue not faced by the mainstream political parties, together with erosion of Christian values, so it’s understandable if they feel the BNP has the answers. After all, how many voters really read party manifestos? they just read headlines.
Racism begins with our families, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, people we admire, respect and love.
However, as we grow and mature we come to the realization that what we were told by of family when we were children were slanted lies base on their prejudices. We realize that most people are more alike than different and want the same things, like a home, steady work, a Medicare plan and schools for our children (if you travel you will see this).
We realize that most people are of good hearts and goodwill.
This current climate of blaming others for our woes is not new. We have had this before and we have conquered it .
Remember “Evil flourishes when good men (and women) do nothing”. Raise your voices with those of us who believe we are equal and we can again win this battle.
Quite a few more reflective articles in the broadsheets today, after Fridays feeding frenzy. Couple of good ones:
James Forsyth
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/6425004/The-BNP-can-be-dismissed—but-their-constituency-can-not.html
and Matthew Parris
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article6888054.ece
David Keen´s last blog ..A ‘Christian Country?’ BNP rhetoric and reality.
Having read a former Labour advisor writing in the Telegraph about how Labour planned mass imigration from day one,it makes Griffin quite endearing!!
Racism begins with our families, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, people we admire, respect and love.
However, as we grow and mature we come to the realization that what we were told by our family when we were children were slanted lies base on their prejudices. We realize that most people are like ourselves and not so different and want the same things, like a home, steady work, a Medicare plan and schools for our children (if you travel you will see this). We realize that most people are of good hearts and goodwill.
This reminds me of a parable from the good book where a Levite and Priest come upon a man who fell among thieves and they both individually passed by and didn’t stop to help him.
Finally a man of another race came by, he got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy and got down with the injured man, administered first aid, and helped the man in need.
Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his fellow man.
You see, the Levite and the Priest were afraid, they asked themselves, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”
But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That’s the question before us. The question is not, “If I stop to help the immigrant in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help the immigrant, what will happen to him or her?” That’s the question.
This current climate of blaming others for our woes is not new. We have had this before and we have conquered it.
Remember “Evil flourishes when good men (and women) do nothing”. Raise your voices with those of us who believe we are equal and we can win this battle again.
Paul – can I encourage you to engage with the post that you’re commenting about, rather than just cutting and pasting the same comment into every forum you visit. I’m already losing count of the number of sites where I’ve seen this one identical comment.
David Keen´s last blog ..International Nestle-Free Week
I have long believed that mass immigration was a plan to dilute the opposition with voters who know nothing of conservative policies and would be grateful to the government who let them in. This was accompanied by a curious revival of a class war that had faded away thirty years before. There were vociferous attacks on racism and highly visible displays of welcome, often based on crass ignorance of the political and social conditions that immigrants were leaving. This has produced colonialism in reverse; while fostering grossly distorted accounts of the wicked British Empire, they ignored the growth of an immigrant underclass, exploited and forced into third world living conditions.
The media, in print and on air, give little space to comparable conditions in other European countries – who in the UK knows anything of the Turkish problem in Germany, or the tension in Holland and Denmark?
It is absurd to dismiss Al Qaeda as a small crackpot collection of fanatics. They have cohorts of suicide killers who can hold armies at bay and strike at will in the heart of India as as well as Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Algeria, Nigeria.
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Afghanistan can never be resolved for two simple reasons. One is the birthrate that gives the Taleban an unending flow of fighters and suicide bombers, trained from childhood. The other is the absence of a political entity with which to sign a cease-fire or a treaty. Factions fight each other for power, happily cooperate with the government or NATO for a few weeks and then start roadside bombs again. Forget rigged polling stations – warlords with thousands of votes were bought wholesale before the election, and just as easily will revert to internecine struggles for power and control of the drug trade.
Kabul and Baghdad are rotten with corruption from top to bottom.
These are worlds beyond the understanding of a Bob Ainsworth or even a Hillary Clinton. The whole scene is something out of a third-rate science fiction film.