I’m no fan of the BNP and my feelings about them parallel those of internet YouTuber Pat Condell:

“I believe the BNP has a racial agenda and is therefore a racist party so I would rather vote for nobody at all in fact I’d rather drive a garden fork through my own foot than vote for the BNP.”

Having grown up in Britain watching the National Front marching around and after seeing pretty much the same type of people morph into the more respectable-sounding British National Party, I don’t need to be constantly reminded that there are a few fascists in the woodwork. Nazis are Nazis and no matter what clothes or insignia they wear they are always easy to identify from their one-track agenda the general stink that surrounds them.

The BNP are bigoted people out there in the open for all to see, despise and ridicule and as long as they are permitted to remain in plain view then everyone can see them for what they really are. People are not stupid and don’t need to be continually reminded about the dangers. They don’t need government departments, quangos and self-righteous autonomous groups to be constantly keeping the BNP at bay in misguided attempts to provide  a “public service”.

I never thought I’d ever be writing an article or post defending the BNP but here it is. Let’s get it over with so that I can wash my hands of this keyboard all the sooner and rinse the sour taste out of my mouth.

I’m a libertarian and believe in the importance and power of free speech in any truly free society. My view echoes that well known saying:

“I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it?” (Attributed to Voltaire)

As I understand it, the BNP are a legal and legitimate political party. The British New Labour government (which happens to be in direct competition with the BNP) has already imposed what I consider to be unfair restrictions on its membership by forbidding police and members of the armed forces from joining. Members of these organisations and many others must at least declare openly their BNP interests.

Today we saw the Equality and Human Rights Commission commence a legal action against the BNP over “concerns about ethnic restrictions on its membership”. (The BNP restricts membership to those to whom it refers as “Indigenous Caucasians” and this, of course, is a crude euphemism for white people.)

Surely the Equality and Human Rights Commission exists to open doors for those people who find themselves discriminated against on the grounds of race. In this particular case however, it is not so much fighting for the rights of non-whites to join an elitist organisation; I mean really! How many non-white people or even white people actually want to join the BNP anyway? Are there hoards (if you’ll excuse the word) of non-whites queuing up to join the BNP. I don’t see the protest. It would be the equivalent of black African Americans having waited in line to join the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s. It didn’t happen then and it is not happening now.

What is happening is that the Equality and Human Rights Commission is using tax-payers money, as so many various different quangos and government departments have done in the past, firstly to try and make an example of the BNP and secondly to give itself a few “brownie points” and a big pat on the back.

There are many organisations that restrict membership. I’d be laughed at if I sent in an application to join the Women’s Institute and any serving white police officer would be refused membership of the Black Police Officer’s Association. Both women’s and men’s golf clubs litter the rural greens of England. Using the argument against the BNP is just an excuse.

So I say leave the BNP alone. Leave them to practice their own partitive brand of foolishness so that all may see how stupid they are. In a free society having obnoxious groups such as the BNP is the price we must all pay for freedom. There is no other way save authoritarianism.

See:
“Legal action over BNP membership” (BBC News 24.08.09)