Global Citizen Watch: Racism

“The British National Party represents the collective national, environmental, political, racial, folkish, social, cultural, religious and economic interests of the indigenous Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse folk communities of Britain and those we regard as closely related and ethnically assimilated or assimilable aboriginal members of the European race also resident in Britain.” (quoted from Section 2 (1) on membership of the BNP constitution).

The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) recently issued county court proceedings against the British National Party (BNP) concerning its constitution and membership criteria. This is not (as the BNP argue) a politically motivated move simply because the BNP won two seats in the European Parliament at the last elections (in fact right-leaning parties gained significantly more seats in June in many European countries). The Commission believes that the party’s constitution is in violation of the Race Relations Act as it excludes ethnic groups and ironically the court case was adjourned because BNP leader Nick Griffin had to be in Brussels for his first week of work since being elected. The travesty is that this man was elected in the first place, after all the reason the EHRC is seeking an injunction against the BNP is that the party’s constitution only allows white British people to become members. Stories have also emerged recently of a BNP campaign inspiring violence after a Muslim councillor was kidnapped in an attempt to intimidate him into not standing for election. As we can see from the Guardian article, the party’s response (“kidnapping is not British”) was far from endearing…

As Ian Dunt from politics.co.uk points out, “when the BNP are asked to justify this policy they always revert to the same argument. ‘The National Black Police Association are set up to represent a particular race so why can’t us whites do it?’ As it happens, the NBPA accepts members of any colour, but that’s beside the point here. (Moreover) the NBPA represents a race within a profession. The BNP is a political party, and therefore represents a country. Anyone represented by the NBPA would by definition have to be black and working in the police. Anyone represented by the BNP, if it gained power, would merely have to live within the UK. A black police association doesn’t affect me, but a black supremacy government would affect me.”

Interestingly, Dunt hints on another point here inadvertently, check out this video of Kamau Kabon, a former African studies lecturer who has similar views perhaps to some members of the BNP, although he sees the problem with a different ethnic group. To place all the blame for a particular situation at the feet of a racial, religious or ethnic group is to simplify an issue and seeks merely to direct anger and aggression in the wrong place. Maybe we are doing an injustice by publicizing these people but if we do not speak out against idiocy then we fail to exercise our freedom of expression, something that people are fighting and dying for across the world. However, we should bear in mind that these people represent extreme minority opinion; Mr Griffin and Mr Kabon do not speak for the entirety of their respective racial groups. Racism is often a result of ignorance and unfortunately ignorance is indeed everywhere, a global problem some might say.