Nick Griffin plans 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.

It appears that Griffin intends to conduct a speaking tour of the country in December of this year. However, to enter the country he requires a visa and this was refused in 1998 when he last tried to visit Australia.

Nick Griffin wants to visit Australia, now one of the most vibrant, brilliant and multicultural countries on the planet, to help that tiny minority (led by a former BNP member) attempt to drag Australia back into the dark ages of white, racist and unapologetic imperialism that the Australian Protectionist Party wants to "protect".

There is still a minute imperialist, divisive and racist minority of Australians that often hark back to the bygone days when the country had a "White Australia" policy, which restricted non-white immigration into the country right up until 1973. The BNP has often commented that this is the sort of policy that it feels it would like to introduce to this country. If Australians thought that the imbecilic Pauline Hanson and her band of One Nation red-necks were bad, they will be in for one hell of a rude awakening when Griffin and his band of perennial sunglass wearing thugs arrive on their sunny shores.

Contrary to the popular stereotypes, today's Australia is a modern, vibrant multicultural country. In the last couple of years Australia has made very positive steps to redress some of the awful injustices meted out on its indigenous people by British descendents who colonised the vast nation and the surrounding continent. The Labour Prime minister Kevin Rudd, has close ties to the Chinese community in Australia and has an excellent record on defending the rights of migrant communities and workers.

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 the good of the country for over one hundred years until 1969.

The effects of removing children from their parents and their communities has had an enormous and dreadful impact on the lives and the culture of the Aborigine and Torres Straight Island people of Australia.

Griffin's attempted visit is a reminder that not everyone subscribes to this modern vision. Indeed, the sort of people that would be attracted to the BNP message are the thugs who took part in race-related rioting against Muslims in Cronulla New South Wales in 2006. In this country the BNP fuels racist tensions and violence by descending on areas of economic and social difficulty to turn dissatisfaction into racist torment and violence.

It is in the interests of both countries that Griffin is refused entry into Australia.

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.''

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