Hain appeals for huge turnout to oppose ‘fascist’ weekend march

Fascism must be opposed in Wales this weekend when the Welsh Defence League (WDL) descends on the capital, according to anti-apartheid veteran and Labour MP Peter Hain

The former Welsh Secretary and Neath MP insists that the league, which plans to demonstrate in Cardiff on Saturday, is a racist organisation. The league claims it is a “peaceful protest group” but Wales Unite Against Fascism will stage a rival march in the city. Mr Hain, who is honorary president of the anti-fascist organisation, said the WDL would be “strutting its poison in an anti-Muslim demonstration”.

A peace vigil supported by Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan and the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Wales, Saleem Kidwai, will be held at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay tomorrow evening. The two men have described the league’s protests as “crude, dangerous and unhelpful”. The Senedd event is organised by the Interfaith Council for Wales and will celebrate the different cultures in Cardiff.

Mr Hain called for a “big turnout of people” to join the anti-fascist march on Saturday. A Facebook group organised by anti-racist Cardiff City supporters, Bluebirds vs the Nazis, yesterday had 122 members. Mr Hain believes Wales must be vigilant against fascism at a time of economic difficulty.

“After the BNP’s utter failure to make electoral headway in the General Election, racists and fascists are increasingly resorting to their age-old tactic of violence they deployed during the 1930s when Mosley’s Blackshirts attacked Jews, and again in the 1970s and 1980s when the National Front went on the rampage against black Britons. Now they are focusing on their latest scapegoat: Muslims.”

He continued: “And this is a fertile period for scapegoat extremism, with all the classic hallmarks for racism and fascism: the aftermath of an economic recession and a new government bent upon big cuts in jobs and public services. In the 1930s Welsh miners and others volunteered to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

“In the 1970s and 1980s the Welsh anti-apartheid movement mobilised a broad section of Welsh society, and in the same period the Anti-Nazi League took on and destroyed the BNP’s predecessor, the National Front.”

Describing a recent EDL event in Stoke-on-Trent in January, he said: “Hooligans rampaged through the streets. Prominent British National Party activists, and an assorted bunch of racists and fascists, joined them. Marauding thugs tried to attack a counter-protest called by Unite Against Fascism, smashing their way through two police lines, overturning riot vans, but were blocked by a third police line. They then directed their anger on the Asian community, smashing up shops and attacking Asian people and a local mosque. Much the same happened in Dudley last month.”

At the age of 19, Mr Hain became the chairman of Stop the 70 protest group which aimed to prevent the 1969-70 South African rugby and cricket tours of the UK. Saturday’s marches coincide with South Africa’s match with Wales at the Millennium Stadium.

He said: “If it were not so sinister it would be ironic.”

South Wales Police officers have attended EDL marches in Newcastle and Aylesbury to prepare for Saturday. Extra police will be on patrol but the force anticipates a peaceful day. It has contacted people involved on both sides and wants to see a “family-friendly event”.

Mr Hain said: “It is vital that the decent progressive majority in Wales rejects the poison of the Welsh Defence League which does not speak for, let alone defend, Wales.”

The Unite Against Fascism march will start at 11am at Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff Bay and is supported by leading trade unions including Unite and the CWU.

The emergence of the English, Welsh and Scottish defence leagues has fascinated and appalled opponents of fascism who fear that an alliance of football hooligans and supporters of far-right politics could be about to bring violence and intolerance to British streets. However, the English Defence League insists that people of all races and religions are welcome in its ranks and it is only opposed to militant forms of Islam. The EDL’s website refers to our “Christian, Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu friends”.

It blames violence at marches on “self-proclaimed yet clearly misguided anti-fascists and gangs of Muslim youth”.

The sight of street protests descending into violence has alarmed observers who fear there is the potential for confrontations on a scale not seen since the days when the National Front clashed with the Anti-Nazi League. Reports of former Welsh football hooligans joining a “ready-made army” in opposition to Islamist ideology will send a shiver down the spine of anyone who fears for social cohesion.

Anti-asylum badges are for sale on the Welsh Defence League website. Its Facebook page has a logo: “No More Mosques in Wales”. These groups have harnessed the internet to communicate. The question is whether a group with bigger political ambitions will harness this growing number of people who feel their society is under threat.

Wales Online

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Journalists launch campaign to challenge BNP in run-up to election

Campaigning journalists and media workers are to launch EXPOSE, a campaign aimed at "revealing the undemocratic and racist nature" of the British National Party

The new campaign will tackle the BNP's "attempts to construct a respectable public image" and support media workers who refuse to work on uncritical programmes or material, the group announced today.

EXPOSE aims to brief reporters and news editors to help them challenge the BNP's statements and spokespersons in the run-up to the UK election, the campaigners said.

A launch rally at the Amnesty UK headquarters in London on 23 February will feature Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist and broadcaster; Mehdi Hasan, political senior editor for the New Statesman; Sunny Hundal, editor of the Liberal Conspiracy blog; and Peter Hain, secretary of state for Wales.

"The political and media consensus appears to be that the way to tackle the BNP is to meet it halfway, by talking up tough anti-immigration measures (...) this conventional wisdom must urgently be challenged," said one its founding supporters, James Macintyre, political correspondent for the New Statesman.

"The BNP is not an 'ordinary' political party (...) So why does the media, including the BBC, give them so much time, space and opportunity to spread their bile?" added his New Statesman colleague Mehdi Hasan.

The campaign is also backed by the unions, with speakers at the launch event including Michelle Stanistreet, deputy general secretary of the National Union of Journalists; Pat Styles, national official for BECTU, the media and entertainment union, and Weyman Bennett joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism.

"Journalists have a duty to hold up to the closest scrutiny the claims and activities of those who would foment racial tension and violence. The BNP's inflammatory rhetoric about immigration cannot be taken at face value," said Stanistreet.

journalism.co.uk

Watchdog rejects BNP activist's 'ridiculous' complaint

A ridiculous complaint by a pointless buffoon about a ludicrous 'party'

The Press Complaints Commission has thrown out a complaint by a British National Party activist against a regional daily

Mark Walker, of Spennymoor, County Durham, objected to coverage of BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on the BBC’s Question Time by his local paper, the Northern Echo along with four national titles. He complained that the Echo together with The Times, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, and Guardian, had reported remarks by Welsh Secretary Peter Hain in which he claimed the BNP was an "unlawful body."

Mr Walker described this as a "blatant lie" by the Labour Cabinet minister and former anti-apartheid protester.

Writing on his blog, Echo editor Peter Barron welcomed the decision, describing the complaint as "ridiculous." He said: "The PCC's code of practice states that newspapers are entitled to present individual comment, provided they distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact. The comments were clearly attributed to Mr Hain so there was no breach of the code in any of the papers."

Hold the Front Page

Griffin TV appearance fails to lift BNP support in latest polls

The public is more balanced about the British National Party than Peter Hain and other alarmists. Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time last Thursday has had no effect on the BNP’s rating. There is a big difference between public anxieties that the BNP seeks to exploit and voters’ willingness to back the party.

Two polls since Question Time show no evidence of any BNP bounce. Its support remains in the recent 2 to 3 per cent range: and between 1.5 and 3 per cent over the past year according to Populus. (These ratings are below those recorded by the Greens and the UK Independence Party.) Small fluctuations at this low level do not mean anything because of the margin of error. Moreover, the number having a positive impression of the BNP has fallen from 11 to 9 per cent since June.

Anthony Wells, of UK Polling Report website, concludes: “Despite all the hoo-ha and protests, despite the millions of people who watched Question Time, it doesn’t seem to have made any significant difference to how the public view them, or how likely they are to support them (at least, not yet).”

Not yet is an important caveat. The alarmists have focused on last Saturday’s YouGov poll in the Telegraph identifying 15 per cent who say it was possible that they would vote BNP in a future local, general or European election, and the 7 per cent who say they would “definitely or probably” consider doing so. But the same poll showed BNP support still at just 3 per cent.

An analysis on the Political Betting website of a mass of polling data shows that two thirds of BNP supporters did not vote for any of the big three parties in 2005, and most did not vote at all. Only a fifth are former Labour voters. Overall, they are more likely to be working class than other parties’ voters. The BNP’s real success is in mobilising previous non-voters.

This is not, however, an argument for complacency. There are high levels of support for issues championed by the BNP. An ICM poll for the News of the World had two thirds believing that recent immigrants get more favourable housing and state benefits compared with “Brits”. Three fifths say mainstream parties have “no credible policies” on immigration but only 44 per cent agree that the white working classes have been abandoned by the mainstream parties, with 52 per cent disagreeing.

The BNP matters because it articulates and distorts the fears of the disaffected about being squeezed out of public services. The party will probably win votes in a few areas but it is not a serious electoral threat nationally.

Times Online

BNP: Thank you Auntie for giving us such a boost

Nick Griffin has thanked the BBC and praised the “hysterical” reaction of the political elite for giving his far-right British National Party unprecedented publicity.

In an interview with The Times, he said that the bitter row over the decision to invite him on to this evening’s Question Time had attracted record donations for the party.

Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, understood that his invitation was “a very important symbol”, he said. “I thank the political class and their allies for being so stupid. The huge furore that the political class has created around it clearly gives us a whole new level of public recognition.”

Although the BBC was “institutionally biased” against him, he believed that it had shown a degree of principle in allowing him to appear. “Thank you, Auntie,” he said.

Mr Hain’s eleventh-hour attempt to prevent Mr Griffin from appearing on Question Time was rejected by the BBC Trust last night. He said that the corporation was culpable of a huge boost for racist and fascist politics, “which is totally obnoxious”.

Mr Griffin claimed that on Tuesday, after he compared Britain’s most respected military generals to Nazi war criminals, the BNP enjoyed its “best ever single day” with telephone donations. He said that the party’s website attracted 77,000 unique visitors, second only to the day that he was elected to the European Parliament in June. In the past, the BNP has been accused of overstating its level of donations.

The BNP leader hopes to present himself as a credible “mainstream” political figure and put his party on course to win its first Westminster seat in next year’s general election.

He predicted that “a whole crop of new, quite high-quality, serious political people” would sign up to the BNP after tonight’s appearance, although he admitted that his party could not even find a venue to hold an AGM to discuss changes to its whites-only policy, being enforced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

He repeatedly insisted that he had banished the racist and neo-Nazi elements from his party. He likened the BNP to dissidents who fought totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and Zimbabwe.

Mr Griffin accused President Obama of being an “Afrocentric racist bigot” whose comments about the legacy of slavery would encourage black youths to attack white children.

As Holocaust survivors prepared to protest outside BBC Television Centre in London, Mr Griffin said that Adolf Hitler was a “very bad thing” but had “no real relevance for Britain today”.

The BNP leader, who regularly receives death threats, said that his biggest concern about this evening’s event was “that I might get shot on the way in”. The BBC refused to comment.

Times Online


Lancaster Unity adds:

Getting his excuses in first - extracts from yesterday's missive penned by the highest quality and most serious of all BNP members:

...

However, members and supporters must be aware that this show will be a stage-managed farce organised in a specific way to leave several impressions:

The audience will be hand-picked and overtly hostile - thus giving the impression that the British people at large must be hostile to BNP views.

The panellists will be overtly hostile, even the non-political guests will be hostile. Everyone will be hostile - this will leave the impression to non-informed viewers that BNP views have minority status.

I will, no doubt, be interrupted, shouted down, slandered, put on the spot, and subject to a scrutiny that would be a thousand times more intense than anything directed at other panellists.

It will, in other words, be political blood sport.

...

Nick Griffin

BNP libels Hain

In a hysterical email sent out to thousands of BNP members this morning party leader Nick Griffin libelled Neath MP and life-long opponent of racism Peter Hain.

The email, signed by Griffin, is headed FORMER BANK ROBBER ACCUSES THE BNP OF BREAKING THE LAW!

It says:

Mr Hain, who was arrested in 1974 for a bank robbery in Putney after four eyewitnesses identified him as the suspect, is of course, lying. His claim that the BNP admitted that it is currently acting contrary to the law is based on a deliberate twisting of the original settlement letter handed in to the court during last week's case brought by the race Gestapo Commission for Equalities and Human Rights.

Mr Hain was indeed arrested at the time, and - as Griffin and the BNP are very well aware - completely exonerated.

Realising that the email contains a clear libel against Mr Hain, a few minutes later a panicked BNP fired off another email, this time entitled FORMER BANK ROBBER SUSPECT ACCUSES THE BNP OF BREAKING THE LAW!

However, the deed is done and there can be no doubt at all that Mr Hain has been libelled.

The body text of the second email is unchanged from the first, and is a transparent attempt to associate Mr Hain with a crime of which he was completely innocent.

We urge readers of Lancaster Unity in receipt of Griffin's email to forward it to Mr Hain at hainp@parliament.uk as soon as possible - a nice, costly court case might be just the thing to break the BNP's financial back.

Link to Peter Hain's website

BNP launches online assault on ethnic-minority Question Time panellists

The British National Party has launched an online assault on the two ethnic-minority members of the BBC Question Time panel who will take on Nick Griffin, the party’s leader, this week

A posting on the BNP’s website derided Bonnie Greer, the writer and broadcaster, as a “black history fabricator”, and said that Baroness Warsi, the Conservative spokeswoman for community cohesion, who is of Pakistani origin, was a “product of Tory affirmative action”. The remarks came as the BBC struck back at ministers such as Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, and Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, who have criticised the corporation for inviting Mr Griffin on to Question Time.

Ric Bailey, the broadcaster’s chief political adviser, said that the BBC was legally bound to include the BNP and that if Mr Johnson wanted to change that he should outlaw the party. Mr Bailey said: “If the politicians feel strongly that the BNP should not be on programmes like Question Time because of their policies, they have the ability to take things through Parliament and change the law.”

Mr Hain has written to the BBC warning that it could face legal action unless it suspended plans to have Mr Griffin on Question Time. Mr Hain argued that the BNP was “an unlawful body” because its whites-only membership rules breached discrimination legislation.

Thousands of protesters from groups such as Unite Against Fascism are expected to gather outside BBC Television Centre, in West London, when Question Time is filmed on Thursday.

Mr Bailey said that the BBC had a legal obligation to cover the BNP as it had won two seats in the European Parliament.If the party continued to enjoy similar levels of public support it is likely to be invited back on to the programme in the future.

A posting on the BNP website about Ms Greer focused on Radio 4’s In Search of the Black Madonna, which she presented in 2000. The party claimed that the show, which examined how European Catholics had worshipped in front of black icons, represented a “fabrication” of history. In an interview on Sky News Mr Griffin said of Ms Greer: “I think she’s a bit wacky when she sets out to say that Europeans, throughout the Middle Ages, worshipped black women,” he said. “So she’s got quirky aspects but the British like an eccentric so I’m sure we’ll get on all right.”

Times Online

Last-ditch bid to prevent BNP appearance on Question Time

Hain warns BBC of threat of legal challenge after inviting Griffin on to programme

A cabinet minister has launched a last-minute bid to block the leader of the British National Party (BNP) from appearing on BBC 1's Question Time. Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, who has already criticised the BBC for including the far-right party in this Thursday's programme, has written a letter to the corporation warning it will run a "serious risk" of a legal challenge if it allows Nick Griffin to participate.

The BNP leader apparently accepted last week that his party's constitution may breach race-relations legislation. Mr Griffin agreed to use "all reasonable endeavours" to change his party's rules barring black, Asian and Jewish people, after being taken to court by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It has agreed not to accept new members until its membership rules are altered.

However, its constitution will not be reformed before next month, while the case against it has been adjourned until January. In a letter to the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, Mr Hain said that the corporation would be offering coverage to an illegally constituted party by handing Mr Griffin a place on Thursday's Question Time panel. The BBC maintains that its decision to invite Mr Griffin was made to fulfil its obligation to offer impartial coverage after the BNP won two seats in the European parliament in June.

"Now that the BNP has accepted it is at present an unlawful body, it would be perverse for you to maintain that it is just like any other democratically elected party," Mr Hain writes. "If you do not review the decision you may run the very serious risk of legal challenge, in addition to the moral objections that I make. In my view, your approach is unreasonable, irrational and unlawful."

The Government's decision to send a representative to appear on the show opposite Mr Griffin has split the Cabinet, with Mr Hain and the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, refusing to take part. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, has agreed to go on after the Cabinet decided against simply leaving an empty chair on the panel. Chris Huhne, the home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the shadow minister for community cohesion, will also take part, along with the black playwright Bonnie Greer.

A BBC spokesman said that it did not take a view on the BNP's legality. "If there were to be an election tomorrow, the BNP would be able to stand," he said.

The media regulator, Ofcom, confirmed that the BBC was under no legal obligation to invite the far-right party on to the programme and was acting under its own interpretation of impartiality. "It is a matter for the BBC Trust [the corporation's governing body] if it wishes to invite BNP on to a programme," a source said.

The trust's chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, has told Mr Hain that he could take a view on the matter as a "last stage of the complaints process" should Mr Thompson fail to resolve the issue.

Dozens of BBC workers are planning to join a protest against Mr Griffin's appearance outside the BBC's Television Centre in west London, where it is believed the programme will be recorded on Thursday evening. The broadcasting industry union, Bectu, has also warned Mr Thompson that it will launch industrial action if members are forced to work on the programme.

Mr Griffin attempted to play down his Question Time debut yesterday, claiming that, while it signalled his party had "arrived in the British political system", it was "not hugely important".

Independent

A clueless BBC is giving the BNP the legitimacy it craves

The Newsbeat interview shows how shaky is the corporation's grip on the far right. It must rethink before Question Time

The BBC's invitation to Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party – a racist organisation with known fascist roots and values – to appear on Question Time is quite extraordinary. It flies in the face of all the BBC's core values as the world's most respected broadcaster: to promote diversity in the UK, tolerance, fairness and our parliamentary democracy. It's a bitter pill for me especially – as a regular guest over the years on Question Time, and having listened to the BBC World Service as a teenager in the 1960s, then the only reliable source of news in apartheid South Africa where my parents were involved in the freedom struggle.

BBC executives have told me of their obligation to respect the right of a minority who have voted for the BNP. However, that right is already adequately upheld in BNP party election broadcasts, and when they are interviewed on political programmes such as Today or Newsnight – although the recent Radio 1 Newsbeat interview with two "young BNP members" casts serious doubt on the BBC's grip of the subject.

If the content were not distasteful enough – descriptions of the London-born England footballer Ashley Cole as "not ethnically British" and "coming to this country" passed without proper challenge – even more worrying is the revelation that these members, still introduced simply as Joey and Mark on the BBC website, are key members of the BNP hierarchy. One, Mark Collett, is the BNP's director of publicity. Would the BBC allow any other party's spin doctors to appear anonymously? The interview was in clear breach of basic journalistic practice, and of official BBC and National Union of Journalist guidelines.

While this episode underlines the corporation's shaky handling of reporting the BNP, Question Time – the BBC's premier political programme – falls into an entirely different category. There the BBC will be showcasing the BNP on a panel alongside the mainstream parties as an equally legitimate, respectable, democratic political party, when it is nothing of the kind.

Furthermore, there is a distinction between those who have voted for the BNP and the party itself. In June, at the European election that triggered this BBC decision, many voted for the BNP as a protest against the mainstream parties at the height of the MPs' expenses scandal. Few of these voters would recognise, still less endorse, the BNP's virulent racism and its discriminatory policy towards black people, Muslims and Jews in Britain. The number of people in the UK who accept the racist and fascist agenda of the BNP must be far less than 1% of the population and there is no justification for giving them such an important platform.

In considering whether to give the BNP this credibility the BBC should have weighed any rights of a minority against its obligations as the public service broadcaster to promote a tolerant society in the UK – and one that is free from racially motivated hatred or violence. Especially since the BBC's equality policy commits it to promote "equal opportunities for all, irrespective of colour, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origins, gender, marital/civil partnership status, sexuality, disability or age". Either this is hollow rhetoric, or the BBC's own policy compels the corporation to give more weight to a tolerant majority than to a racist minority.

Like his party, Griffin likes to project an image of besuited normality, speaking for the common citizen against the liberal establishment, and the BBC appears to have bought this travesty. In fact, the BNP constitution states that its membership is open only to white people. Furthermore, a raised profile and level of BNP activity in any community increases racist violence and fear among the groups it campaigns against, principally our black, Muslim or Jewish citizens. Griffin, referring to illegal African migrants, said: "Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats." He has also said: "Yes, Adolf went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem that the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image."

These odious views should not have been granted a platform on Question Time. Although my cabinet colleague Jack Straw has agreed to appear with Griffin on 22 October, my argument is not with him, but with the BBC for putting ministers in the impossible position of empty-chairing the Labour party.

Granting the BNP the legitimacy it craves is a fundamental error of judgment, and BBC executives have given me no convincing evidence of any legal or broadcasting imperative. So is the BBC really saying it operates in a moral vacuum, a values-free space? That plainly cannot be right given its published diversity and editorial policies.

Freedom of speech is precious, and nobody seriously argues for the BNP to be banned. Equally the BNP consistently abuses its own freedom to deny it to others. As history shows, giving racists and fascists a platform, treating them as equals with democrats, always leads to tragedy. They need to be confronted, not appeased.

Instead, the BBC is sadly succumbing to those who would, again in Nick Griffin's obnoxious words, "defend rights for whites with well-directed boots and fists".

Peter Hain
Comment is free

Show up BNP ignorance

Peter Hain’s announcement last week that he was boycotting Question Time in protest at the BBC’s decision to invite British National Party leader Nick Griffin on the show was passionate, hot-headed – and wrong.

“I was horrified when I heard about this, because it makes them appear as if they are another political party sitting on a panel along with democratically-elected parties,” he said.

Firstly – unless Mr Hain has evidence of election fraud, in which case he should hand it over to the relevant authorities – the BNP are a democratically-elected party. It probably hasn’t escaped him that Mr Griffin is now a member of the European Parliament. But he is right on the other count. The BNP are not just another political party. They are a ragtag bunch of yobs, mead-drinking pagan weirdos and boneheads. And yet their vote is increasing all over Britain. And one of the reasons for this is that they are able to play the martyr card.

We’re not part of the establishment, they tell the electorate.

Look – the big parties gang up to make sure we don’t get a fair crack of the whip from the media.

We’re the voice of the little man kept away from the top table.

But any half-decent frontline politician should be able to reduce the BNP to dust in a debate. From the top down – including Mr Griffin – the BNP are economically illiterate. Their manifesto, leaving aside the fact that much of it is odious by most people’s standards – doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny, even just pragmatically.

Let’s be blunt: the BNP are thick. The Question Time panel should be able to make mincemeat out of Mr Griffin, who gets away with it precisely because he never gets tackled on any of the big issues.

Rather than relegate the BNP to the electoral margins, as was intended, the “no platform” policy has had precisely the opposite effect, allowing the party to set its own terms without ever facing the kind of scrutiny other parties do.

What would the BNP do, given the chance? We know they’re not very keen on non-white people. But how would they tackle the black hole in the UK economy? What form of healthcare do they favour? What is their education policy? Where do they stand on regulation of the City? We don’t know, because we’re not supposed to ask.

It is the duty of every mainstream politician to go up against the BNP in debate and expose them. Not just expose them for their extreme views – but as being incapable of running a shoe-shine stall, never mind the most minor community council. Their councillors, when elected, frequently fail to show up to meetings. People such as Stoke councillor Steve Batkin, who attended none of a possible 30 committee meetings in nine months and spoke twice in his first two years as a councillor – once to ask what “abstain” meant.

Are these the sort of people Mr Hain and his fellow Labour ministers are worried about debating with?

Allied to this is the unspoken belief among ministers that the British public cannot be trusted – that as soon as Mr Griffin appears on TV, his poll ratings will soar as viewers up and down the country nod in agreement. Actually, they might be pleasantly surprised. They might find that, when in the full glare of the media, forced to answer questions on policy by opposition politicians, the public may see the BNP for what they are: a bunch of louts who have been getting away with it for far too long.

Wales Online

Hain to boycott Question Time over BBC plan to invite BNP

Welsh Secretary Peter Hain is to boycott the BBC’s flagship political debate programme Question Time over proposals to invite the British National Party to take part.

Mr Hain, a regular panellist on the weekly question-and-answer programme, last night urged other Cabinet ministers to follow his lead and decline to appear alongside BNP members. Labour has long refused to share a platform with the BNP, arguing that to do so would give legitimacy to the party’s far-right views. But the BNP’s performance in June’s European elections – it won two seats – has forced broadcasters to re-think the coverage they give the party, and handed mainstream political parties a similar dilemma.

The BBC said it was bound by law to treat all properly registered political parties with “due impartiality”.

Mr Hain – a veteran of the anti-fascist campaigns of the 1970s – insisted the “no platform” policy should remain in place. He said: “I was horrified when I heard about this, because it makes them [the BNP] appear as if they are another political party sitting on a panel along with democratically-elected parties.”

The Neath MP said the BBC was “the best and highest-quality broadcaster”, but on this occasion had made a “shabby, shameful decision” it should reverse. Some campaigners and MPs have questioned whether the “no platform” strategy needs to be re-thought in the wake of the election results. In Wales the BNP came seventh with 5.4% of the vote, winning none of the four seats on offer. But the party won a seat in the north-west of England and a second in Yorkshire and the Humber, where it achieved 9.8% of the vote.

Mr Hain is seeking an urgent meeting with BBC executives in an attempt to persuade the corporation to re-think, and said he rejected any watering down of the “no platform” approach.

“I make no bones about it, this is personal for me,” he said. “The BNP have broken up ordinary public meetings that I have spoken at in previous years, and their like have thrown rocks through my front window when I lived in London.”

The BBC has yet to issue a formal invitation to the BNP, but the corporation is understood to be planning an installment of Question Time from London this year. Labour is reviewing its position, but Mr Hain said: “I don’t think any Labour minister should go along with this quisling stance.” The Conservatives have indicated they will make a senior figure available for the programme, as have the Liberal Democrats.

BNP leader Nick Griffin has already been interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and has also appeared on the Andrew Marr show on BBC1. A spokesman for the BBC said: “The BBC is obliged to treat all political parties registered with the Electoral Commission and operating within the law with due impartiality. Due impartiality is achieved both by ensuring appropriate scrutiny for each party and by the appearances of a range of politicians across a series of programmes. Our audiences – and the electorate – will make up their own minds about the different policies offered by elected politicians.”

Wales Online

We need to wake up and tackle BNP poison head on

This racist party stands on the brink of electoral breakthrough. We must fight them as we did the National Front in the 70s

Unless the rest of us get our act together, the British National party could easily win three seats - and quite possibly six or more - in June's European elections. To win in the north-west it needs just 8% of the vote, barely 1.5% more than it got in 2004 - the days of near full employment and before the credit crunch; in the West Midlands only an extra 1.6%; and in Yorkshire and the Humber just 4.3% more. Recently the party has won council seats in byelections, polling - according to the BBC - an average of 14% in 60 wards: close to the threshold necessary to get a seat in almost every European constituency in Britain.

Electorally the BNP has become the most successful fascist party in Britain, gaining 800,000 votes in the 2004 European elections and 238,000 votes in the 2006 local elections - up from 3,022 six years earlier. And last year it won its first seat in the London assembly, doubling its support to 130,000 votes. And now the BNP is looking to benefit from a collapsing Ukip vote; in 2004 the combined BNP-Ukip vote stood at 21%.

Winning European seats would secure an unprecedented platform, and entitle the BNP to draw hundreds of thousands of euros from Brussels indirectly to buttress its full-time personnel and organisation. At the moment, apparently, the BNP's sole London member has to spend much of his time building up support for the party outside London.

It would also be able to work with other far-right and fascist parties in Europe, as Jean-Marie Le Pen's party has done from its base in France since winning 10 European seats in 1984.

With unemployment and job insecurity rising, some major construction sites appearing to bar local unionised labour, and affordable housing in short supply, there are classic conditions for the BNP's racist and fascist politics to thrive.

Thirty years ago rising unemployment and economic decline under Labour saw the BNP's predecessor, the National Front, also do worryingly well in elections. I helped to found the Anti-Nazi League in 1977 to target the National Front, and a mass campaign helped to put it out of business a few years later. Anti-Nazi League supporters developed their own initiatives, from Miners Against the Nazis to Skinheads Against the Nazis. There was even a Skateboarders Against the Nazis. With its sister group Rock Against Racism, the ANL organised huge national carnivals and local gigs, as rock music culture reaching millions was successfully fused with radical politics that traditionally had reached only thousands.

The lesson of the Anti-Nazi League's success is that the BNP needs to be confronted wherever its supporters march or appear in public; and they must also be denied platforms to spread their hate. This was the lesson of the 1930s when Blackshirts led by Oswald Mosley targeting Jewish communities in London's East End were physically stopped in Cable Street in October 1936.

But the BNP leaders are more sophisticated than the old National Front. They wear suits rather than openly flirt with nazism. They sound smooth and plausible on radio or TV. They are exploiting alienation from Westminster politics, particularly among the white working class.

Yet their politics are fundamentally similar: the scapegoating of black people, Muslims, Jews, foreigners, gays and lesbians for social and economic problems. Whenever they are ascendant locally, racial violence and racial hatred are barely beneath the surface.

Although desperate to conceal its fascist and racist instincts, the BNP is the National Front reincarnated - albeit using modern spin and the internet, coupled with a community-based politics that thrives on grievances about "British jobs for British workers".

To confront the BNP's threat, the priority must be grassroots campaigning. Labour must win back trust by fielding candidates rooted in their communities and pledged to deliver on local issues. That was successful in Tameside, Keighley and Telford, for example - but sadly not in Sevenoaks last February, where the BNP took a "safe" Labour ward.

All the main parties, Labour especially, must shake off their complacency and take on the BNP directly. Its poison should be combated on the doorstep, through leafleting and campaigning. Labour candidates and campaigners should work with those from Unite Against Fascism (uaf.org.uk) and Stop the BNP (stopthebnp.org.uk). Both organisations are mobilising a new generation of activists and concerned people from trade unions, churches and other organisations.

The aim should be simple but clear: to stop the BNP gaining seats anywhere in Britain, but especially in Europe on June 4.

Peter Hain is the Labour MP for Neath

Comment is free

Time to unite, act and stop the BNP before Euro poll in June

The fight against the far right in Britain has never been harder – or more important. That is the message that came over loud and clear at the Unite Against Fascism national conference at Congress House in London on Saturday.

More than 400 politicians, trade union activists, members of Muslim, Jewish, black and Asian groups, and lesbian and gay organisations got together to sound the alarm about the rise of the British National Party.

The BNP has been winning council seats and polling record votes for a neo-fascist party in Britain and the fear is it could gain seats in the European Parliament unless a vigorous campaign is mounted this spring.

Ken Livingstone, chair of Unite Against Fascism said: “The BNP’s and fascists’ targets change. First it was the Jews, then the Irish, then the African, Caribbean and Asian communities. Today the prime targets are Muslims. The Muslim community is one of the most integrated communities in Britain. Opinion polling showed more Muslims in London felt patriotic towards England than the average Londoner. There is no Islamic enemy within.

“We must unite together against the BNP and forms of bigotry. Just like the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism fought the National Front in the 1970s, Unite Against Fascism is bringing together a movement to stop the BNP.”

Peter Hain, Labour MP for Neath, said: “The most important lesson of history is of unity against the BNP. Today’s fight is harder than the movement in the 1970s, with fascists polling high votes and attempting to present themselves as a legitimate, normal political party. I campaigned against apartheid in South Africa, and now I campaign against fascism, racism and Islamophobia.”

Glyn Ford, Labour MEP for South West England, said: “The BNP is emulating France’s Front National strategy. By June 1984 the Front National made a breakthrough and France has since then never been able to get rid of them. If the BNP get elected here it will be the start of a permanent presence. Our job is to stop the BNP. We must get out there, organise and mobilise the vote. People not voting will give fascists an electoral breakthrough.”

Those calls came in the wake of the shock BNP victory in a by-election for Sevenoaks council in Kent. The BNP won Swanley St Mary’s with 408 votes pushing Labour, which had held the seat, into second place with 332. The Tories came third with 247.

Paul Golding, the BNP candidate, called it “an outstanding result” and “a historic day for the BNP”. He said: “It has implications far beyond Sevenoaks and bodes well for the entire south east and the upcoming Euro elections.”

Swanley St Mary’s has, traditionally, been a safe Labour seat on a Conservative-controlled council. Swanley has a lot of social housing and little in common with the leafy lanes and commuter belt wealth of its near neighbour Sevenoaks.

It is the second council seat the BNP has taken in the south east of England outside London – Emma Colgate was elected to Thurrock council in Essex in May last year.

Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, said: “With UKIP faltering and the economy hurtling into recession we need everyone who opposes the BNP’s message of hate to play a part because a BNP victory will change the political landscape in Britain.”

Tribune

Don't play BNP's game, warns peer

Government told it must defend foreign workers

Politicians must start defending foreign workers to prevent extremist parties gaining sway during the recession, Britain's new European commissioner says today, in what will be seen as a veiled warning to the British government not to whip up nationalist sentiment.

Lady Ashton, who was until last autumn leader of the Lords under Gordon Brown, acknowledged in an interview with the Observer that there was a risk of significant advances in this spring's European elections for extremists in the present economic climate. She said mainstream politicians must be careful not to fan the flames: "In any kind of economic downturn, it is incumbent on us all to be putting across exactly the same message about the value and importance of having... diversity in communities; about the value and benefit of people from different countries coming and creating wealth.

"There are reasons we have to support that and not to get trapped into what the extremists would like, which would be to take their simplistic approach and fit it into a very complicated situation. So I hope that people will just reject as nonsense the idea that the solution lies in some kind of xenophobic attitude to people who live, work, study or travel in our country, because they bring the economy far more than they take out. The extremists have always relied on economic downturns ... as a way of recruiting people to what can be seen as a simple message, but actually is just hatred."

Her intervention comes amid warnings that the British National party could snatch a seat in the European parliament in June's elections, when Labour MEPs are privately predicting losses of up to three or four seats as voters respond angrily to job losses. The BNP took a council seat in Swanley, Kent, last week from Labour in a shock victory, suggesting it has begun to penetrate the southern English counties. It could profit in June both from a collapsing Labour vote in working-class areas hit by unemployment and the implosion of the hard-right Ukip, which took 16% of the vote at the last EU election.

Brown has been accused of fanning tensions by talking of "British jobs for British workers", a slogan promptly adopted by the BNP, despite the UK's obligation as an EU member to allow EU citizens free access to Britain to work.

The home secretary is expected to announce next week a reduction in permits for non-EU citizens to work in the UK. Brown's approach has caused private distaste in Brussels, but Ashton insisted it had been taken out of context and her former boss had been misunderstood. But in a warning to leaders tempted to pull up the drawbridge in a bid to protect jobs, she said Britain had traditionally benefited from bringing in workers to fill skill shortages, from Caribbean immigrants in the 1950s to Polish plumbers in the last decade.

Governing parties across Europe are braced for a backlash in June because of the economic crisis, and Labour MPs are concerned that in the UK the campaign for the local and European elections - being overseen by Harriet Harman, the deputy leader - needs a tougher strategy to combat attempts by the BNP to capitalise on the new nationalistic sentiment.

Yesterday the former cabinet minister Peter Hain warned that rising unemployment was a "heaven-made" scenario for extremists.

Observer

Hain hits out at BNP bid to boost recruits

The British National Party has come under fierce attack from Neath MP Peter Hain after it set up stall in the heart of his constituency.

BNP members were in Neath town centre at the weekend, handing out copies of the party's newsletter - which heavily criticises Mr Hain and calls for him to be sacked - as part of an ongoing national recruitment drive.

Party official Brian Mahoney said: "The reaction has been very positive. We have had the occasional bigot, but most people have been very sympathetic and interested. There is dissatisfaction with Labour in particular, but also Plaid and all the old gang. Those political parties have become disgraceful in the way they have let this country down and sold us out. We are getting more and more support in South Wales, Mid Wales and North Wales, and all over the country."

Mr Hain said he was very concerned to hear the BNP had been active in Neath.

"They are a force that has to be confronted and defeated whenever they appear from beneath their stones," he told the Post. "Their poisonous influence is disastrous for any community where they gain a foothold. We have seen where it has happened elsewhere. We have seen hatred spread and in every possible way. It's terrible news for any community - especially a God-fearing, respectable place such as Neath, which has a fine tradition of community caring, of respect for people whatever their background, whatever their beliefs and whatever the colour of their skin. I will be consulting party colleagues and others to make sure they are confronted wherever they appear next."

Mr Hain dismissed a BNP assertion that it was gaining ground on Labour as a fantasy. He was also dismissive of its newsletter, which features his well-publicised failure to declare election expense donations on time. It says the requirement to apologise to the Commons is not punishment enough and calls for Mr Hain to be sacked.

"I'm treating that with the contempt it deserves," said Mr Hain. "The support I have had from the people of Neath has been absolutely magnificent."

This is South Wales