Could we have an English National Party?

Isn't it interesting how 'wrong' that question feels? Yet in the wake of the defeat of the BNP in Barking - Nick Griffin failing to secure a seat and all the BNP Councillors losing theirs - it is a question I think worth asking, especially as many Christians seem to hate the BNP with a vengeance (and there's an issue worth debating as well).

Those same Christians seem to have no problem in principle with the Scottish, Welsh or Irish nationalist parties (respectively SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein), but I suspect it is not just the nature of the BNP's policies, but something about our whole psyche as a nation which makes an ENP a 'no go area' even before we've considered the policy. Is this simply a national sense of guilt - and if it is, why do we have it in such huge doses when other nations don't? Or is there something inherently wrong about nationalism which we allow the other nationalist parties to get away with because they aren't English?

So my question is really two-fold. Could an English National Party be so constructed as to be a good thing? And are the other UK nationalist parties really as innocent as we suppose?

As a PS, the BNP actually got more votes than any of the other nationalist parties!

As a PPS, I am a great fan of the Union, and for that reason not a fan at all of the nationalist parties, but if that's the way we're going ...

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Can secular society cope intellectually?

Two recent newspaper articles raise the interesting question of whether modern secularism can really cope with intellectual challenges.

The first, by Antonia Senior in The Times, is titled, ‘A flawed philosophy that bolsters the BNP’. The philosophy to which she refers is what she calls ‘moral relativisim’:

Truth, and moral worth, are entirely relative to a culture or society. I think bacon is divine; you are a vegetarian; he thinks pig meat is an affront to God. Each of these positions is true, because truth is in the eye of the believer.

This viewpoint she describes, with some justification, as “ incoherent, logically flawed and utterly tired.” And in case anyone should think she is exaggerating, she quotes Germaine Greer on the issue of female circumcision:

Germaine Greer famously accused the critics of circumcision as launching attacks on “the cultural identity” of the circumcised. “One man’s beautification is another man’s mutilation,” she said.

By contrast, she herself believes,

It’s impossible to be a cultural relativist when faced with daily examples of other cultures getting it wrong. There is no validity in any view of right or wrong expressed by the Taleban. There is no truth in any cultural creed that treats women as inferior, let alone those that mutilate them. There is no cultural excuse for child abuse disguised as exorcism.

And doubtless there are many who would agree with her. However, she continues,

Relativism is in retreat, but there is no coherent moral framework taking its place. It helped us move from the certainties of the imperial age into a more tolerant era, but it’s almost impossible to work out what comes next.

The difficulty, as she acknowledges, is that,

The only way to decide if a proposition is true or not, or if an action is right or wrong, is to test it and debate it. This takes more rigour than a lazy assumption that all views are truth and rightness is relative. It’s also tricky if you are an atheist, as so many of us are.

But such rigorous analysis is needed. Otherwise, “paralysed by our inherited relativism, fearful of seeming racist and adrift in a Godless world, we fall silent just when we should be debating and talking.” And then, “Into this silence strides Nick Griffin”.

It is Nick Griffin who also prompts an article by Matthew Parris, again in The Times, who claims that he has only twice been moved to tears by our political life. The first occasion was when Clause 28 of the Local Government Act was passed by the House of Lords. The second was when surveying what the national press had to say about Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. What he saw in the papers was,

... an entire national intelligentsia, in a time of relative peace and stability, unthreatened by any serious challenge to the values they hold dear, and in the face of no more than a gnat of a man leading no more than a rag-tag party with no more than a dishcloth of a manifesto, flinch — seriously flinch — in its commitment to free speech.

By contrast, he asked,

Was there nobody to restate, with the relaxed confidence that philosophical certitude should bring, the only available position for a modern British liberal: that this is a free country in which a range of highly diverse opinions may be held and, if held, published, subject to the law? Full stop. Yes, full stop; for heaven’s sake, full stop.

But of course the answer is no —we do not have this ‘relaxed confidence’ amongst the intelligentsia, and we especially do not have it amongst those in charge of our institutions of government and mass communication. And the reason for this, I would suggest, is twofold.

The first is that they are products of an educational system which did not teach them to think. It especially did not teach them to think about positions which disagreed with the popular morality of their educators. I remember once in my early years as a University Chaplain, some time in the 1980s, having a conversation with a lecturer about his students’ essays on the subject of abortion.

“What do you teach them about the arguments against abortion?” I asked him.

His answer was, “I would never dream of teaching them the arguments against abortion.”

Clearly he felt this was morally justified. But educationally, of course, it is disastrous. But it is also disastrous tactically, for if we do not know the arguments against our position, how will we cope when we come against someone who does? My suspicion is that at least some of the nervousness about allowing Nick Griffin on television was not that he is a palpable fool but that he might turn out not to be. And judging by Tom Sutcliffe’s report in The Independent (despite its headline), that proved partially to be the case:

The challenge for the panellists was to pry this limpet of strategic blandness from the rock and expose the unsightly muscle beneath – something achieved with only variable success.

The test will be whether Mr Griffin is invited back so that his opponents can finish the job.

But the other reason why our intelligentsia lack confidence is that, thanks to recent government policy, they have come to rely on force, not on argument. Why bother presenting a case when you can just ban someone from speaking, or blockade the arena where they would appear, or —best of all —pass a law which will make it illegal for them to speak in these terms at all.

The justification for this is that we are ‘safeguarding’ society. But the reality is that we are doing nothing of the kind. On the contrary, as Parris writes, there is an argument that,

... free speech will strengthen and sharpen the critical faculties of the whole citizenry, producing a society less susceptible to herd mentality.

Unfortunately, a citizenry susceptible to a herd mentality is not only what we are dangerously close to having, it is what our social and educational policies and practices of the last several decades have tended to produce. We are a society that, like the Question Time audience, cheers and boos to the cues in which it has been coached. And woe betide the person who truly stands out, or goes against the crowd. But sometimes one gets the feeling we are just being set up for the next stage, whatever that might be.

John Richardson
24 October 2009

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The 'indigenous people' of Chelmsford

One of the (many) things that people seem not to like about Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, is his use of the term ‘indigenous people’ to describe the white population of the UK. Thus the BBC report on his appearance on Question Time describes how,

... those he described as the “indigenous people” felt shut out in their own country. “We are the aborigines here,” he said.

I was thus somewhat amused to read the following in the ‘Statement of Needs’ produced to help the Diocese of Chelmsford in its search for a new bishop:

There have been significant areas of church growth in some of the most multi-cultural parts of the Diocese and in our more rural parts we have seen the ageing of the indigenous people and this is particularly so within the Church.

Not only, it seems, am I a member of Griffin’s indigenous people, but the Church of England has to rub my nose in the fact that I am getting old!

John Richardson

(Exits left, Morris dancing awkwardly)

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The BNP and the 'rise of Fascism' - what's in a name?

As people fume about the election of a couple of BNP MEPs, the rise of the Far Right and, as one commentator put it, the shame of us sending 'Fascists' to Europe when we once liberated Europe from Fascism, it is worth reading again George Orwell's 1944 essay, What is Fascism?. Given that he was writing a good deal nearer the demise of the last (and first) self-proclaimed Fascist regime than we are, the issues he raises about the 'fuzziness' of the term are worth bearing in mind when it is bandied about in modern debate. Here are some quotes, with my own highlights, (but do read the whole thing):

Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is: ‘What is Fascism?’
[...]
In this country if you ask the average thinking person to define Fascism, he usually answers by pointing to the German and Italian régimes. But this is very unsatisfactory, because even the major Fascist states differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology.
[...]
Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism.
[...]
It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning.
[...]
... as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
[...]
But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.

I would simply add that the use of the word 'Fascist' is (still) an excuse for not thinking, not defining and not engaging. It is like the use of 'fundamentalist' or 'bigot' - it is something 'everyone' (except those on the receiving end) knows is supposed to excite our disapproval. As Orwell put it, "even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it " (my emphasis).

'Fascist' is, in short, a boo word and as such, it appeals to the mass instinct inside each one of us. It contributes nothing, however, to our understanding of the real issues.

John Richardson
9 June 2009

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For England and St George

As my contribution to St George’s Day, I’ve copied out my old school song —the first time I’ve done so since having to write it out three times by hand in a class detention (for us being noisy) back in the early ‘60s. (Not having your school hymnbook in morning assembly was also a punishable offence, which meant most of us carried the hymnbook in our blazer pockets for our entire school career. I still have mine.)

I have a lot of affection for this song, written by James Edward Geoffrey DeMontmorency (a former Quain Professor of Comparative Law), because it establishes what I think is the basic principle of citizenship, namely ownership of a story (something which I explored here early last year). It is the same thing which drives so many people to take an interest in genealogy — who we think we are is affected by the story of which we feel ourselves to be a part.

This, however, is why I cannot accept the underlying political philosophy of the British National Party, who regard citizenship as essentially an ethnic concept. It is a fundamental biblical principle that citizenship of God’s people is open to anyone who will ‘own the story’. Ruth is characteristic of this (and is, of course, a profound challenge to the concept of exclusivity even on the basis of God’s judgement):

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” (Ru 1:15-16)

According to Deuteronomy 23:3, no Moabite could become part of Israel, yet Ruth was a Moabitess (Ru 1:4). And in case anyone should think the exclusion was itself restricted, in the days of Nehemiah it was still taken to apply to mixed marriages (Neh 13:1). Whatever else this may mean, it surely is a word to those who would draw tight ethnic boundaries around social identity.

The same is true of the Passover regulations regarding non-Israelites, “An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the Lord’s Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land.” (Ex 12:48) The key to joining in the Passover is simply identification with the Lord’s Covenant people. And of course the Passover was itself celebrated as the recapitulation of a story:

In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal. This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.’ And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand. (Ex 13:14-16)

(I wonder, incidentally, whether the Passover is not a significant challenge to those who would deny the penal element of Christ “our Passover” dying on the cross.) The Passover feast made, and makes, every Jew part of the story. But it is not initially restricted to ‘born Jews’, provided the person wishes to embrace the Covenant.

But this is why I cannot accept the idea of a ‘multi-cultural’ nation which has been foisted on us in this country for the last half-century. If a country is to be more than a dormitory — a place where people sleep and work, but to which they feel no sense of belonging — then it must require of its citizens an awareness of and identity with the communal story. And what better way to do that than in song? So here it is, in all its glory — the John Roan School Song:

Here’s to old John Roan, who lived and worked and died
In the mighty days of Cromwell, of Milton, and of Blake*;
We were born in days of passion, we were reared in days of pride,
That gave the sea to England with continents beside;
Is there nothing we can give her for our Founder’s sake?
Ourselves we give to England till John Roan shall wake.
Here’s to old John Road, sing him loud, sing him low,
He it was who placed us on the road that we shall go.

Here in Greenwich once walked England’s deathless dead,
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, here made their music sweet;
Drake and Blake and Nelson in Greenwich broke their bread,
Flamstead, Halley, Airey, the ranging star flocks led;
While Wolfe still dreams among us beside the roaring street,
Of the broad realms of Canada he laid at England’s feet,
Then to old John Roan, sing him loud, sing him fair,
He it was who made us, sing him sweet for his care.

Here’s to those that come hereafter, the lads we shall not see,
The men of generations who will have new foes to fight;
We look forever forward, seaward, landward free;
Yea, in the air and in the depths, wherever men should be,
Our Greenwich men are lighting new beacons in the night,
John Roan’s men, the Roan boys, are building up the light.
Here’s to old John Road, sing him loud, sing him clear.
Sing him round the continents, sing him through the year.

* John Roan died in 1644, Oliver Cromwell in 1658 and John Milton in 1674. William Blake, however, died in 1857, making him an unlikely candidate. I presume this is therefore a reference to Robert Blake, 17^th century Parliamentarian and naval hero, who was laid in state in the Great Hall of the Queen’s House at Greenwich, following his death at sea in 1657, see also the second verse. Revd John Richardson
23 April 2009

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Engaging with the BNP: Race, Culture and National Identity

If parties were stocks and shares then it might be observed that the political world is currently going through a ‘credit crunch’ of its own as people lose confidence in the old institutions. In such turbulent times, where are they to invest their voting ‘capital’?

Just as, north of the border, voters have finally turned to Scottish Nationalism, it is now evident that in the south the British National Party has become the ‘penny share’ — the low value stock with speculative potential.

Since the beginning of this year, the BNP has gained just one seat in local council elections. But it stood in five out of nine contested wards and, most significantly of all, has taken 22.6% of the overall vote.

A truly grass roots movement
What these results also reflect is that the BNP is a ‘grass roots’ movement. Despite accusations of ‘spreading lies’, the fact is that the BNP relies for its results on hard work by local supporters. Its ‘propaganda machine’ consists of downloadable leaflets and photocopiers, and there is no indication of substantial financial backing. What money there is comes, it would seem, from members’ pockets.

And success at the polls is certainly not dependent on the appeal of a charismatic leader. Unlike the mainstream parties, the fortunes of the BNP seem unaffected by the fact that its chairman, Nick Griffin, is in appearance more ‘David Brent’ than Il Duce. People are clearly not voting BNP because they prefer Griffin to Brown, Cameron or Clegg.

A reason for worry
The mainstream parties are right, then, to be worried about the BNP, not because there is any likelihood of them ever forming a government — a penny share rarely makes it to the FTSE. But as a ‘bellwether’, rising support for the BNP is a clear indication of public feeling.

The accusation from its opponents is that the BNP is racist and even thuggish. Yet despite this, in the privacy of the ballot box people are prepared to put their X by the name of the BNP candidate. Must we then conclude that 40% of the voters in Swanley are racist thugs? However low our opinion may be of Sevenoaks, that seems an unlikely prospect.

Confrontation must give way to engagement
Those opposed to the BNP have, until now, relied largely on confrontation. Most recently, and in my view, most foolishly, the General Synod of the Church of England recently voted that clergy should be banned from BNP membership (a vote with which 59% of those polled on this blog disagreed). This was, presumably, on the grounds that the BNP is racist and since racism is a sin, clergy need to banned from sinning.

Yet the rise in BNP support cannot be addressed by moral sloganeering. What is needed is direct engagement with the issues, as raised by the BNP itself. Otherwise, we may be sure there will be many more ‘Swanleys’ to come. And the first and core issue to address must be that of national identity.

Race and identity
The issue of race is central to the BNP. According to Section 1:2,b of its Constitution,

The British National Party stands for the preservation of the national and ethnic character of the British people and is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples. It is therefore committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent, the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948.

And Section 2:1 states,

Membership of the BNP is strictly defined within the terms of, and our members also self define themselves within, the legal ambit of a defined ‘racial group’ this being ‘Indigenous Caucasian’ and defined ‘ethnic groups’ emanating from that Race as specified in law in the House of Lords case of Mandla V Dowell Lee (1983) 1 ALL ER 1062, HL.

For some, this is sufficient evidence of guilt: a racially defined national identity and party membership is ‘racist’, and no more need to be said.

A denial of racism
Yet the BNP denies that it is racist. “Each and every community,” it states, “has the inalienable right to look after its own interests,” adding, “This includes the indigenous British folk” — folk being also used as a technical term for ‘racial grouping’ within the Constitution (2:1,2).

In other words, the BNP says, we are only identifying with White British people in the same way that a multitude of other groups identify with Blacks, Asians, Irish, Poles, etc. To suggest, over against this, that White groups are of necessity racist itself smacks of racism and, moreover, plays directly into the hands of the BNP.

Race and the issue of nationhood
In any case, the issue raised by the BNP is itself too serious to be resolved by simply attacking the party over racism.

How is a nation to be defined? Do nations have a place in the modern world? Do nations have a place in Christian theology? All these are questions which the policies of the BNP rightly identify as needing to be addressed.

The nation is being redefined
Go to the website for the Institute for Public Policy Research, a think-tank with links to the Labour Party, and you will find numerous articles on social issues, including one titled The Power of Belonging: Identity, citizenship and community cohesion, a summary of which can be downloaded here. In the section on ‘National Identity’, this statement stands out:

... the act of removing historical anachronisms such as the place of bishops in the House of Lords could place multiculturalism at the heart of our constitutional arrangements, and by doing so help pluralise our understanding of Britishness.

What is important here is not, of course, the mention of bishops in the House of Lords, but their instancing as but one example of ‘historical anachronisms’ to be removed, over against which our understanding of ‘Britishness’ is to be ‘pluralised’ around a number of new constitutional arrangements with “multiculturalism at the heart”.

The sheer existence of this report, irregardless of its content, proves there is a conscious process underway to redefine the concept of the British nation. If the churches are to engage with both sides of this debate, they must do some serious work on what this involves.

Is nation culture, race or what?
The answer being given by mainstream political parties to questions of nationhood is that it is a matter of culture, and above all of ‘values’. Yet the problem with values, as the IPPR report itself shows, is that they are constantly changing, and indeed may need to be challenged. One of the supposed ‘values’ of British culture is now the inclusion of homosexual behaviours and relationships within our social and legal fabric. Yet this is a value which I, and many Christians, reject. On the other hand, a ‘value’ which some would wish to include is a recognition of Shariah law. Many will disagree with this, yet are Muslim Britons not to be allowed to champion a change of ‘our’ values to embrace theirs?

It is no wonder that the IPPR report concludes that values “on their own lack the motivational power to bind a community together.” National identity, if it has any meaning, cannot simply be ‘the sharing of values’, especially if those values are, for the most part, shared by other nations. Nor does this address the issue of how there can be such an ‘identity’ when values within that nation differ widely.

Over against this, the BNP argument that national identity must include racial identity needs to be taken seriously. For at least racial identity provides a ‘community cohesion’ which cannot be rewritten overnight and yet can be easily recognized and demonstrated.

Yet there are nations, such as the United States, Australia and South Africa, where a genuine sense of national identity transcends race. There are others, however, such as our own, where the establishment of such an identity is much less clearly successful. The suggestion that the answer lies in ‘multiculturalism’ is one that many now find hard to accept, and its rejection undoubtedly explains some of the support the BNP now receives.

What is the Christian position?
And then, thirdly, there is the Christian position — or rather, non-position, since it is not at all clear where we stand on this issue.

The Bible recognizes both the reality of racial identity, and its irrelevance to human unity. Yet the Bible is equally clear that the ‘dividing walls’ of humanity are only broken down in the gospel community. We are, as the old Keswick Convention slogan put it, all one in Christ Jesus. Here, there is neither Jew nor Greek (Gal 3:28).

But what about beyond ‘here’? What about in London, or Liverpool, in England or Scotland, in the UK or Europe, and in the wider world? There, there are clearly ‘Jew and Greek’ and many other ‘folk’ besides.

Does the church simply deny ‘nationhood’? The Apostle Paul once said that God, “made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” Is this simply a matter for ‘the world’ and of no interest to us? Or do we have something to say?

Our society is actually looking for answers on this one. And there are other voices out there providing them. Some want to abolish all our “historical anachronisms”. Others want to reassert “the national and ethnic character of the British people”.

Is there a word from the Lord?

Revd John P Richardson
27 February 2009

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The Trouble with Freedom

(For our parish magazines. Meanwhile, if you want to read something really scarey, go to the government's ID cards website and read the press release, Benefits of Identity Cards will be delivered soon, Home Secretary tells Manchester. When you get to the piece which says that issuing prototype identity cards to workers at Manchester airport will “help ... kick start joint work to explore opportunities for streamlining airside pass regimes,” you realize that the truly frightening thing is not that these people have a cunning plan but that they really haven’t got a clue what they are talking about. They are committed to supporting the course of action irregardless of the possible consequences. Then look at this piece in the New Statesman: John Pilger sees freedom die quietly. What was so brilliant about the TV series In the Thick of It was the way that it showed our leaders as one suspects they truly are: people driven more by fear of office politics than by any truly grand designs. See this clip here on YouTube. The considerable swearing may offend some, but the fact that it is now clearly part of institutional ‘life at the top’ is also itself telling.)

******************

The Trouble with Freedom

Given that the Church of England has just decided to ban vicars from joining the British National Party, I feel now might be a good time to consider the question of freedom.

Not that I particularly wanted to join the BNP, but I can’t get over the nasty feeling that I am somehow less free today than I was a week ago.

Throughout human history, freedom has been a fundamental issue. The biblical story of the Exodus, for example, has inspired many other enslaved peoples. Long before Martin Luther-King’s cry of, “Free at last!”, Black American slaves were singing, “Go down, Moses,” to express their own hopes: “We need not always weep and mourn, Let my people go, And wear these slavery chains forlorn, Let my people go.”

But — and this is not as stupid a question as it might appear — why do we want to be free?

The most obvious reason might seem that people want to do what they want without interference from others. This is the ‘freedom’ which expresses itself in the language of ‘rights’: “I’ve got a right to — you can’t stop me.”

Yet this is really little more than selfishness, and it is not the ‘freedom to do what I want’ which motivates people to risk beatings, imprisonment and even death in order to gain it not just for themselves but for others.

Then there is another way of looking at freedom, which sees it primarily in terms of equality of treatment and opportunity. That seems to be the social model prevailing in our own society at the present.

But, as we are increasingly seeing, that may not be the same thing as freedom at all. In fact it may be, and I fear has become, a massive exercise in social conditioning, where what matters is not the freedom of the individual but the outcome desired by the Conditioners.

Of course, from the viewpoint of the Conditioners, these outcomes are ‘good’ for us. But the society geared to produce ‘desirable outcomes’ is quite different from one which aims at maximising freedom for its citizens.

Pigeons who have been taught to play ping-pong (it has been done), may seem cleverer to those who have taught them, but they are hardly more ‘pigeon-y’ as a result.

What may seem surprising to some, though, is the importance of freedom in the Christian understanding of humanity. Not that you’d guess this from looking at the historical record of the churches, which very often have been at the forefront of social control.

We must not forget, however, that Jesus was born into a society as tightly regulated in many ways as Islamic culture. Anyone familiar with Orthodox Judaism will know that, although people are glad to accept them, there are a multitude of rules and regulations covering many aspects of day-to-day life.

Jesus, however, not only deliberately overturned such rules, he questioned the very adequacy of God’s Law: “You have heard that is was said [in the seventh Commandment], ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ but I say to you, ‘Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

And here is the paradox. We are made to be free — that is why people will die for freedom. But freedom is so much more difficult than living under the law. That is why freedom is so hard to preserve.

Rev John P Richardson

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The CofE and the BNP

Moral fibre seems to be everywhere at the moment, evidenced by some people telling other people what they may or may not do. Traditionally, this has been part of the role of religion, but was never, of course, not confined to the religious.

Anyway, the General Synod of the Church of England has now decided that membership of the British National Party is to be forbidden (one is tempted to say verboten) to its clergy.

If you would like to express your opinion on whether you feel this is a right or wrong move, please vote in the poll at the top of this blog.

Meanwhile you might like to nip across to the BNP website and read what its supporters (generally) are saying about the Church of England and the Synod's decision. (Treat it as an exercise in listening to those with whom you disagree - something the CofE prides itself on.)

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Be very afraid

According to an article in The Independent newspaper, one Gerald Fredrick Töben, a “holocaust revisionist” was arrested yesterday (1 October) at Heathrow airport by officers from Scotland Yard’s extradition unit at the request of authorities in Germany. He will appear in court on Friday under an EU arrest warrant accused of committing offences in Germany, though in fact he had just arrived from the USA, and is an Australian citizen.

Now it may just be me, but I find this deeply, deeply, disturbing.

There is no doubt in my mind that the holocaust occurred pretty much as most people think — involving a systematic and deliberate attempt to exterminate the Jewish race in Europe, and resulting in the deaths of millions of Jews and others.

No one who has seen contemporary news footage can feel anything but horror, not just at Nazism, but at the human race, for what was perpetrated in a few short years. Nor can anyone who has read Mein Kampf, incidentally, have any doubt but that Adolf Hitler was a clear and deliberate anti-Semite who saw the Jews as being the root of Europe’s troubles.

To deny the holocaust is therefore unreasonable as well as unpleasant. But being unreasonable and unpleasant is not a crime. There are those (sometimes those who send comments to this blog) who think I personally am both. But surely so, too, is the denial of free speech.

We can hardly condemn the Nazis for burning books if we are a society which bans ideas. (Indeed I suspect that it is this very attitude which goads some people into the very attitudes they seek to ban.)

Moreover, there is undeniably a ‘slippery slope’ at work here. We should not forget what ought to be a notorious speech given by the Darwinist philosopher and scientist, Nicholas Humphrey, to the Oxford branch of Amnesty International in 1997, in which he argued that parents of certain religious persuasions which might question Darwinism ought not to be allowed “freedom of expression” with regard to their own children - in other words, I presume, that their children should, if necessary, be taken away from them.

There is no record that he was hissed, booed, or censured by his audience. Yet surely he should have been?

Similarly, we have seen in the last few days an eminent scientist levered out of his post in the Royal Society for saying something which was misquoted in the press.

What is truly frightening is the increasing silence which greets these pronouncements and actions. We have become a society which ignores the abuse of power when it is directed against those who are an easy target: the BNP-supporting teacher, the holocaust denier, the accidental ‘creationist’.

But the very fact that the innocent, such as Professor Michael Reiss, have already suffered should warn us things have gone too far. Moreover, we should surely take note of the fact that what some people warned against is happening before our very eyes, namely that you can now be arrested in this country for something which is not a criminal offence here, and which, in fact, is in accordance with a deeply held tradition, long exemplified by the existence of Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park, that no matter how daft your ideas, you should be allowed the freedom to express them. (There will be some who will observe that, nevertheless, certain expressions of ideas are illegal in this country. I would simply comment that this is not, in my view, generally a good thing.)

We have all heard the pious saying, “I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Unfortunately, almost no one seems to want to step in when real harm might result to their own reputation.

Our cultural leadership have, it seems, learned the ‘Frank McGarahan’ lesson. He, you will remember, was the banker murdered when he intervened to help a Lithuanian being beaten up by some young men in Norwich. Sometimes ‘defending to the death’ means just that.

And maybe declaiming ‘Free Gerald Töben’ would be social suicide. Much better, surely, to wait til they pick on someone everyone agrees is innocent. But that, trust me, will never happen. First they will turn society against them. Then it will be safe to pick on them. After all, isn’t that just what they did with the Jews?

John Richardson
2 October 2008

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Maltby and the BNP: up close and personal

Ed: I received this article via the Comments option on this blog in response to 'Why the BNP is succeeding'. The poster is "the Maltby resident in the article" and the author of 'Crossing Borders'. I publish the article as sent to me, on trust that the details given are factual, as I believe it is a helpful contribution to a necessary debate.

There has been a variety of instinct reactions since the recent local elections, where two BNP councillors gained seats from long standing Labour councillors in the Rotherham Borough. John Gamble has taken the Brinsworth and Catcliffe seat from the Mayor of Rotherham and William Blair, here in Maltby, from long standing Labour councillor Glynn Robinson. Headlines in local and national newspapers have ranged from “Labour Disaster”, “Damning Indictment”, “Shock Results Outcry at BNP” to even “Pride and Prejudice: The Fear Factor” in The Independent.

Obviously these headlines, as well as the results, have a resounding effect on people’s feelings and concerns for the implications. The BNP (British Nationalist Party) has long been associated with, and reported as, the ‘politics of hatred’ particularly referring to the importance of race and keeping Britain as a place, predominantly, for Britons. The mission statement of the BNP states that it exists to “secure a future for the indigenous peoples of these islands. We use the term to describe the people whose ancestors were the earliest settlers here after the last great ice-age, and which have been complemented by the historic migrations from mainland Europe.” It goes on to say that these ancestors are the Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and closely related “kindred people”. Perhaps then, not racist completely, but specific about which races they wish to associate themselves with?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines the term “racist” as someone who believes that other races are not as good as their own and therefore treats them unfairly. (Personally, I would define it with only the latter part of this definition ie. that someone is treated unfairly because of their race — but that is another story) The BNP declares that they are definitely not racist as racism means “hatred of other races” and that they do not hate anyone.

The issue can all become a matter of words and definitions and consequently become even more confusing for us ordinary Maltby Residents. I went to speak with William Blair at his home and shop on Muglet Lane, to see what his views are and how they match up with the BNP’s.

Mr Blair has been in Maltby for around 20 years, coming from a farming background in Northern Ireland, then working in agriculture before taking over the shop. His wife, son and niece work in the shop with him and are well known to locals.

We sat in Mr Blair’s back garden, on one of these surprisingly hot and sunny days that we have had lately in Maltby, his pigeons fluttering in their loft behind us and his poodle dog brushing against my legs and wanting attention. I asked him if it was OK to question him directly from the BNP policies list that I had and he was fine with that. “Ask me anything you want,” he said, “I am here to help the people of Maltby and make it a better place to live.”

Because it is a personal issue, I asked first about the BNP’s disapproval of mixed marriages. “I don’t have a problem with that. If you love each other and get on happily, then that’s all that matters”, he said. This is not the BNP’s view, however. They believe in preserving the identity of all different ethnic groups and that a small number of mixed marriages, with mixed race children is ok (how small they do not say). But if it is “encouraged as it is at present by politicians and the media, then the British genotype will be endangered”. They refer to environmentalists preserving animal species in the wild, and ask why this should not also apply to people. They do also say that Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, points out that often mixed race children suffer identity problems. I assured Mr Blair that at my age there was no fear of me bringing more mixed race children into the area and he said that it would be fine even if I did. My experiences with my ‘other race’ stepsons in Maltby, has been enough, thanks!

Mr Blair agrees with the BNP’s views on homosexuality that: what people do in ‘the privacy of their own bedrooms’ is up to them, that they are not homophobic, but that homosexuality should not be “encouraged or promoted”.

He doesn’t agree with not letting “blacks and Asians” into the BNP party — I am not sure why blacks and Asians are specifically named, and neither is he — and here is yet another anomaly between William Blair’s views and those of the party he is representing.

As do many, if we are brave enough to admit it, he believes that the immigration levels into Britain have become out of control and that more forward thinking needed to have been done a long time ago. He would, as the BNP states, deport all illegal immigrants immediately — how we find them all and also the money to do that. neither I nor he are sure. Deport all who commit crimes and whose original nationality was not British — again, how far back in time do we go here to determine ‘British’. Review all citizenship/residency grants to make sure they are still appropriate, that is, anyone who has been granted citizenship because they have married a ‘Briton’, need to be still married. Watch out husband — divorce me at your peril!

Attend to the needs of pensioners before asylum seekers (note here the BNP does NOT say immigrants, but I wonder if they sometimes confuse the two.)

Invest in transport, the NHS, defence, the environment. Stop sending aid to other countries until we have solved the problems with Britain. Change the attitudes of the young people to one of a work ethic and not a take for doing nothing one. Make sure all unemployed people take the jobs that are available or stop their benefits. After all, as Blair says, “We don’t need immigrants when we have all these WHITE people here who won’t work” (my capitals on ‘white’)

It appears from his own words that William Blair is neither racist, nor wishing to be devisive in any way. He wants the best for Maltby and Maltby people and intends to do his utmost to start with the basics — sorting out the litter problems by regularly putting skips in various areas of the town, repairing fences, doing something about the roads situation. He believes that a lot of the problems that residents feel are the main problems — mainly anti-social behaviour and general apathy of some — can be alleviated by attitude change and a more community based approach to life here. All sentiments that most of Maltby residents share.

People I have spoken to in Maltby quote numbers and percentages and proportional representation as the reason why Maltby now has a fairly elected BNP councillor. Some say that it because of recent changes and disruptions with the Town Council.

I asked Mr Blair why he had stood as a BNP candidate when he clearly does not whole -heartedly agree with all their policies. Why did he not stand as an Independent?

“I suppose I am 80% BNP and 20% other”, he says. “Independent candidates are either old Labour people or old Conservatives. What we need is change.”

Let’s hope that our new councillor’s change goes in the right direction, and that the change is for the better for the whole of Maltby. Time will tell.

Brenda Abou El Ola
Maltby

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Why the BNP is succeeding

This article from The Independent makes very important reading for all those church people who want to 'stop the BNP'.

[...] Look at the BNP's literature and you'll find that, on occasion, it points to some inconsistencies in the stance of "politically correct" liberals that are indeed hard to justify. For example, by coincidence, only a few days before going to Rotherham, I had been interviewing the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton and he had mentioned how the organiser of the English Music Festival received no Arts Council funding "because of the word English". Yet a festival of virtually any other national culture would be funded. Even if the frequency of these sort of cases is overstated, there has been an inconsistency between the acceptability of asserting Englishness compared with other national or ethnic identities.

Things may now be changing in this regard. But if it is the case that minority cultures have sometimes been given greater respect than the majority one, then it is easy for people to believe that this is symptomatic of a wider bias against what the BNP calls the indigenous British population.

Patriotism, if not allowed to express itself, will gravitate to wherever it is given a home, which right now is in nationalism. Of course, this has been a worry for some years, which is why Gordon Brown, among others, has been trying to reclaim patriotism for the Left. So far, it has not succeeded; in part, because no one has found a way of promoting national identity that is genuinely inclusive yet not utterly banal.

Those worried by the nationalist success in Everytown should take heart from the fact that everyone seems to agree that, whether they loathe the BNP or love it, most people in Maltby are not racist. The most incredible testimony of this comes from a woman who is remarkably well placed to judge such things.

Brenda Abou El Ola has lived in Maltby most of her life and married a Palestinian man in Lebanon. She's writing a book about what happened when they went back to live in Rotherham and confronted the reality of being an immigrant in Maltby.

"Put it this way," she told me, "we are perfectly happily married, but I am now living on my own in Maltby, and my husband and the two lads are renting a house in Eastwood for the simple reason that it wasn't working in Maltby."

One incident in particular explains why. "One night, my son, who was born and bred in Maltby, was walking home and a 15- year-old boy came out, drugged up or whatever, with a knife, threatening my son about my situation – 'Why don't you get you're mother to take her black Bs back to where they came from?' – and various threats on his and our lives."

Her son went into his flat and called the police, who didn't initially come, but his mother was not so retiring when he called her. "Me, being the person I am, and against my husband's and stepson's recommendations, went out on to the street to ask what was going on. He came towards me with the knife saying the same comments, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor."

The attack broke her jaw and the next day her face was bruised and swollen so badly "I didn't want to leave the house for days, it looked so shocking". The attacker got off with nothing more than a "severe talking to", having said that he was sorry.

Despite this and racial harassment of her two stepsons at school, Abou El Ola chooses to stay in Maltby. "I like it here. I brought up my first family here and I feel at home." She thinks most of the people are good and decent, and that those who voted BNP did so for the main reason that they "have had enough of Labour and want something different".

So are the mainstream parties, and Labour in particular, ready to learn the lessons of the nationalist successes in Rotherham? It won't be easy. As Denis MacShane put it: "The difficulty is that you have to see that part of the argument that has some validity. Just because a BNP guy is saying that many people who are born and brought up here feel that there's too much foreign in Britain doesn't mean to say it's untrue. The question is how do you react to that?"

The answer, he believes, includes swifter return of asylum-seekers whose claims are unjustified, promotion of the English language, and construction of "a set of rules we expect people to abide by".

Whether he's right or wrong, to dismiss as racist the tough questions that he and others are now asking would be to repeat the mistakes that have led the BNP to victory in South Yorkshire. Unless mainstream politics finds a way of responding to the fears and desires of the voters who feel disenfranchised and afraid in a changing world, nationalist parties can look forward to even more success in the future. Read more

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A friend of tax collectors, sinners - and BNP supporters?

(Please note, no comments are published on this blog unless they include a real name, not a pseudonym, and a location. J Smith or John Smith are acceptable. Janet or Janet S are not. Likewise, no location, no comment.)

What has Nick Griffin got in common with Jesus Christ? The answer, as far as I can see, is two things: Jesus appealed to the ordinary people, and he mingled with those society regarded as ‘beyond the pale’.

This is not to suggest that Nick Griffin is particularly Christ-like, but I am not going to heap on him the opprobrium usually considered compulsory at this point, because I believe the Church has got it largely wrong when it comes to dealing with the challenge posed by the British National Party.

That challenge should not be underestimated. The Party’s performance in this week’s local government elections was modest and they only gained one member on the Greater London Assembly, but their candidate came fifth in the mayoral election and in many areas BNP candidates came second in the polls. On the other hand, they faced public opposition literally from all sides. Prior to this, in the eleven bye-elections where they have stood in 2008, the BNP have polled an average 17.5% of the vote, well above the Greens on 4.7% in those constituencies or UKIP on 8.5%.

As the Bishop of Durham pointed out, however, ‘the reason the BNP can even gain a foothold in people’s affections is because many people ... feel so disaffected after the last thirty years of national politics.’ I myself became aware of this several years ago after conducting a wedding in Canning Town. Standing outside a smoke-filled community centre, I listened to the complaints of the guests about immigration, asylum seekers, housing and so on. And as I mused on how easy it would be to build support for a political party that sympathised with these complaints, I realized that the BNP already fitted the bill. All they needed was the organization to field the candidates - and now they have it.

Of course the comments I heard were racist. Of course the BNP appeals to people’s worst instincts. But here is surely both the unique challenge and opportunity for the Church. The Church is in the business of salvation, not politics, but if salvation is from real sin (and it is), we should expect it to extend to real sinners.

Our familiarity with the Gospels, both in the Church and in society as a whole, has removed the scandal from what Jesus did. One modern Bible translation even uses inverted commas when it talks about Jesus mixing with ‘sinners’. But at the time these were not inverted-comma sinners, they were people decent folk did not want to mix with, much less live next door to.

The first challenge to the Church, then, is whether it is a real haven for real sinners. So when confronted with a racist, for example, will it be radical or will it follow the crowd? Does it reach for the stones to stone the guilty offender, or does it say to the crowd (as its founder warned), ‘Condemn not, lest you stand condemned?’

And secondly, will the Church speak unpalatable truths on matters which affect those who see their salvation in the BNP? Addressing this whole issue in 2006, the Archbishop of York said that during his time as Bishop of Stepney, ‘it was very obvious that the housing policy by the then Lambeth Council was not actually favouring the indigenous population’ (the latter, incidentally, being an expression favoured by the BNP itself), adding that this had also been true of Tower Hamlets Council. Well, it was helpful that he should say so - but could not more have been made of this at the time?

It is, perhaps, significant that the second recorded problem to affect the early Church internally was an accusation of racial bias in welfare distribution (Acts 6:1-6 - the first was lying about charitable giving). If the apostles had accused the accusers of being racists, this would no doubt have also have seen the first denominational division. Instead, they listened and came up with an effective solution. Might not the Church give a lead in doing the same today when people complain about perceived injustices?

A political party which is gaining influence cannot be ‘stopped’ by telling people to vote against it. If history teaches anything, it is that the effectiveness of a movement depends entirely on its ability to gain supporters willing to devote themselves to the cause. In those circumstances, establishment opposition may have precisely the opposite effect to that intended, by strengthening what is seeks to undermine. (Look at the history of the Church itself.)

In God’s plans and purposes, politics plays a very small rôle, but in the life of the nation, the Church of England has an important part to play. Since the election results, Labour politicians have emphasised the need to listen. Support for the BNP surely teaches the need for that listening to include people like those I heard in Canning Town all those years ago. And if the Church won’t listen to them, who will?

Revd John P Richardson
3 May 2008

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