After spending a couple of hours in Cambridge this evening with the Guardian’s political cartoonist Steve Bell, I shall head home and be glued to the BBC watching BNP’s Nick 
Griffin on Question Time.
We might find him and his party’s views vile and grossly distasteful. But as a democracy – and with an electorate choosing to vote them in on local councils and the European Parliament – we need to know why voters are listening to them, and like what they hear.
Trying to ban Griffin’s appearance will only fan the flames for BNP and we can’t be accused of censorship. I have every confidence in Sayeeda Warsi, the Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion, making mincemeat out of him. She can stand her ground brilliantly.
This is Steve’s timely cartoon of the BBC allowing some BNP supporters to attend the live studio debate this evening. Brilliantly astute, as always.
Now that the BNP has been ordered, quite rightly, to open membership to all races and ethnic groups, will the same order be given to groups such as the Black Police Association, the Society of Black Lawyers and even open up MOBO to all colours?
Completely agree, hopefully it will be car crash TV with Griffin as driver. Every faith in Sayeeda but worry about the Griffin-Littlejohn partnership – will it be spot the difference? looking forward to what the political blogosphere makes of it
Steve, in an ideal world, the answer is yes. But whether it would mean anything is another matter.
Darren, hopefully, Griffin will fall on his own sword. Let’s not make a hero of him by censorship.
Darren, P.S. I remember buying one of your books when I was studying for my CIPR PR diploma. It is a great honour to hear from you. 🙂
This makes for intersting viewing. I shall be glued to my TV.
Di.x
I imagine most of the politicial blogosphere will miss the point.
Which is to honestly answer why the BNP are getting so many votes. they don’t need to be exposed for goodness’ sakes – does anyone think people will watch it and suddenly realise the BNP are racist?
I expect there will be a lot of hand-wringing from the main parties but no admittance of the fact that they have all left the working class high and dry.
We don’t need to ask why the people are listening to the BNP – they aren’t but there is no-one else addressing their most serious concern – immigration; so they protest vote instead. We need to be asking why the politicians aren’t listening to the PEOPLE.
Official figures forecast a population growth in the UK of ten million over the next twenty years. We are already the third most densely populated country in the World behind China and Bangladesh.
People are desperately unhappy about this situation. Poll after poll puts uncontrolled immigration as the top concern and yet not one major party has capping as a major manifesto policy. They’ll all deny that generous welfare is part of the attraction but those of us at grass roots know the truth as to why Britain is such a draw.
How can we take seriously any party’s economic policy if they don’t even know how many people there are going to be in Britain ?
Labour have lied to us consistently. The Tories are lying to us as well and are not worthy of our vote until they put this issue top and challenge the BNP rationally. We – the British – are always smeared as being small minded racists whenever we raise this subject and it hurts. It really hurts and it’s an issue that keeps me awake at night as I know it does many people.
It’s not just the working class that have been left high and dry. It’s the middle class too.
Pedigree Chumps (from blogger Electro-Kevin)
Nick Griffin (the racialist British National Party leader) made a prize chump of himself on the BBC’s much awaited Question Time last night. He would have been far better off not trying to worm his way out of past statements such as “I want an all white pedigree Britain.” (or to that effect.)
The point has been missed entirely by the BBC if they think that defectors to the BNP don’t know what they’re signing up to. The political class use Griffin as their bogey man, “This is what we’ve been trying to tell you all along. We have an open immigration policy because of people like Griffin. This is what you get if you don’t vote for us.”
Wrong. People are turning to Griffin in large numbers out of protest. The peoples’ chief concern (open immigration, according to polls and what I hear in messrooms) is ignored by all major parties – especially the Tories who signed up to Maastricht, the act which opened our borders to every Stanislave, Wan and Abdab. They have betrayed us and they betray us still. And we are about to replace one chump (Gordon Brown) with another – David Cameron whose social and economic policies simply have to be bollocks because he’s clueless as to how many people there are going to be in Britain. I’m already sick of the sight of him and he’s not even in power yet !
The temptation to vote BNP to get these bastards to listen is very strong indeed.
Jack Straw wasn’t very impressive, was he?
Yes I’m seriously considering voting BNP after watching that prog.
As the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
The BBC failed in making all the other panellists and chairman, plus the audience hostile to Griffin. It made some people sympathetic to him. A balanced debate would have been far better.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by miltoncontact: Ellie Seymour has a new article on The BBC and BNP: http://bit.ly/17JOuO…
Kevin, I think you are right about the protest vote, which is very worrying all round.
Pip, do you think there will be a next time for him on Question Time?
The whole program and all its participants were useless .
The chairman seemed to think he was just there to rabble rouse and the rest thought it was fine to lower themselves to gutter politics of personal abuse and self denial, and Jack Straw used it as an excuse to show the audience his PC credentials .
We even had Baroness Warsi ( bless her heart a lightweight ) coming up with the ridiculous claim that ” there are no such thing as false asylum seekers ” and Bonnie Greer trying to give us a history lesson on Ancient Roman culture !
The audience was so obviously hand picked as to be a joke .
They can just thank themselves lucky that Nick Griffin was such an obvious plonker . Had he been a skilled politician like Le Pen hed have been able to take it all apart.
E Kevin is again right , people already know what he is when they decide to vote BNP, the problem is that for whole tracks of the white working class and now the white collar workers he appears to be the only one either interested or listening to them ( of course he isnt , his ” sortng out ” would not be a sensible but tough immigration policy )
And I dont see Cameron being any diffferent to Browns gang .
By the way didnt you all feel sick hearing Ken Livingstones condemnation of the BBC , this a man who used to sit down with the IRA when they were still killing people and who used to invite to London a man who called Jews pigs and wanted to stone women to death .
Ellee – I hope there will be a next time if only to remind the panel why the BNP have support.