Let's stop Nick Griffin's visit to Australia

The BNP has announced that its leader Nick Griffin intends to visit Australia in the “very near future” at the invitation of the miniscule far-right Australian Protectionist Party.

The APP is a tiny, minority party (led by a former BNP leading light) that seeks to drag Australia back to the dark ages of the “White Australia policy”, a policy that prohibited non-white immigration until 1973.

The proposed December visit by the leader of Britain’s premier racist party would help a tiny minority there in their attempts to drag Australia back into the dark ages of unapologetic imperialism and racism. It would also give Griffin the opportunity to act like some kind of spokesperson for ex-patriots, damaging Britain’s tolerant reputation while at the same time attempting to raise funds for his party’s coffers.

This year, the Australian parliament’s first order of business was to make an apology on behalf of the nation to the “stolen generation”, Aborigines who were removed from their families and ancestral lands to be “anglicised” (made to behave more like white people) for over one hundred years, until 1969. Only a tiny minority of Australians were opposed to this long overdue sentiment.

As a modern nation, Australia celebrates its new, modern and diverse culture with great pride. A visit by the BNP, a party notorious for sewing the seeds of intolerance, hate and mistrust, is likely to only be attractive and beneficial to the sort of Neanderthals who took pleasure from race-related rioting against Muslims in Cronulla New South Wales in 2006. Since those riots, described as a “pogrom” by some Australian journalists, the Australian far-right has gone to great lengths to recruit and galvanise support for their policies.

The BNP and its Australian supporters will attempt to use Griffin’s controversial visit to garner support to their campaign against the new Australia. In a time of sweeping economic turmoil, the APP will be hoping to learn from Griffin how to make local gains on the back of world-wide difficulties. This weekend (September 13th) the APP is standing in local elections as a litmus test for its policies.

Britain has strong historic, cultural and sporting ties with Australia. In 1998, Griffin was refused entry to the country as was Holocaust denier David Irving before him. The Australian government is being urged once more not to soil those positive ties by allowing Australia to take in another one of our criminal undesirables.

Jeremy Jones, a spokesman for Australia’s Jewish community said: ''A visit by Griffin ought to be a matter of concern for Australia's Muslim community, indeed by all communities here who have found that tolerance and engagement is a better path than division and hatred.''

To add your voice to the campaign, send a ‘He’s not fair dinkum’ postcard to the High Commissioner. Click here.

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