Brute Force

The Times | Monday, 15 February 2010 | Click here for original article

The British National Party voted yesterday to abandon its bar on non-white members. This was not a belated and humbled acknowledgment of historic bigotry but an expedient to avoid a court injunction under human rights legislation. Meanwhile, BNP security guards assaulted and expelled Dominic Kennedy, theTimes journalist who was reporting the party’s meeting.

Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, declared after the meeting: “We will carry on throwing The Times out until they report the truth. That’s all we ask.” The Times meets that request with journalistic scrupulousness and no little incredulity. If Mr Griffin wants the truth to be told about the BNP, we can recount it from direct observation. The BNP purports to be a legitimate party; yet its behaviour reveals it at every turn to be exploitative, cynical, xenophobic and thuggish.

Mr Griffin also said after yesterday’s amendment to the BNP constitution: “We have done it and now, for one thing, they can’t call us racist any more.” The BNP is racist. Racism is an attitude, not a legalistic nicety. Mr Griffin made clear that the vote was merely an acknowledgement of “legal reality”. The party does not throw off a history of ideological conviction by acquiescing in what the law demands.

Political parties by definition have a point of view. A newspaper’s responsibility is to report their actions and statements fairly but with critical detachment. When Mr Kennedy entered the BNP’s press conference, Richard Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London Assembly, demanded that he leave. Mr Barnbrook had taken exception to a profile of him published in Saturday’s edition of The Times. That was enough.

Mr Kennedy was not attending the meeting covertly. He had expressly been invited to report on it by Simon Darby, the party’s national press officer. On pointing this out, Mr Kennedy was physically ejected. His nose was grabbed, twisted and bloodied. A punch was thrown. He was pushed into a parked car outside the building.

Mr Griffin complained recently that the press would “go overboard to demonise and create an atmosphere in which lunatics will feel justified in physically attacking us”. The extravagance of his rhetoric betrays the ugly underlying reality. Even the BNP’s extremist associates in the European Parliament are at pains to present themselves as wedded to constitutional politics. The BNP, by contrast, just cannot help its lineage from showing. It affects a respectable and patriotic face, and a concern with popular welfare. But its ideology draws on extremist currents and its attempts at concealment are dishonest.

The most contemptible of the BNP’s tactics is to associate itself with the Armed Forces and Services’ charities. A group of generals expressed their concern last October that the party was hijacking the reputation of the Forces. BNP organisations have masqueraded as servicemen’s support groups. It would be an affront to public service for any political party to claim a special relationship with the Armed Forces. It is repugnant for it to be done by a party that reviles the values of fairness that the Armed Forces exemplify and defend.

The BNP now likes to pose as a normal British political party. In fact, they are no such thing. In this country, it is not normal for political parties to rough up journalists. In this country, it is not normal for people to disown racism for reasons of convenience, rather than conviction. In this country, it is not normal to hijack the birthday celebrations of a wounded soldier for electoral gain. The BNP like to boast their Britishness but seem to have forgotten the most essential British values: free speech and fairness, compassion and respect. Yesterday, the BNP showed they are many things, but not British.