Should we keep FPTP to exclude the BNP?

Someone on the Weston Mercury discussion board argues that one advantage of the First Past the Post electoral system is that it closes the door on dangerous minority parties like the BNP.

The answer is that the BNP are a dangerous, anti-peace, anti-democracy party with views and policies that are repugnant and alien to the British tradition.

Many of them are criminals, and the law is forcing them to bring their membership policies into line.

BUT, despite the increase in hate-crimes in some areas where they have been successful, and despite the fact that the German Nazis were initially voted in, it is better on balance for them to be brought into the democratic discussion, where their views can be tested and argued against, rather than using a dysfunctional electoral system to exclude them artificially.

The Greens have been patient during our 30-year exclusion from the political process. The BNP cannot be trusted to be so patient. Exclusion is likely to make them more violent.

Homelessness and joblessness are the twin burners that lift the BNP hot air balloon. Both of these are unnnecessary, and maybe grey politicians will be stimulated to address these problems if the BNP makes progress.

Labour of Love, but BNP late with accounts,

Wondering where on the web I can find a record of corporate donations to the Labour Party, in pursuit of my research into the overweening influence of TNCs on governments. I stagger as far as the Electoral Commission's page on main political parties' financial accounts, but they are just boring local party details, chickenfeed. I try searching here, but come up with zilch results.

Then my attention is diverted by the following: The British National Party and the party’s Regional Accounting Unit were both granted an extension to the deadline for submitting their statements of accounts. Both have failed to deliver their accounts within the extended deadline so the party will be fined a minimum of £500 and the accounting unit will be fined a minimum £100, this figure will increase if the accounts are more than three months late.

Interesting. The natural reaction is to assume that their accountant has run off to the Bahamas with their funds AND their books, but that would be an unkind not to say libellous assertion. A second unkind thought occurs, that the BNP may not be able to find someone who can add up.

Anyway, back to corporate donations to the Labour Party. There must be some record of who gives what, and we really need to know who is driving their decisions, because it certainly ain't the interests of the common people. Aha, here it is. Top donors to the grey parties, quarter 1 2009. Companies account for 6% of Labour's income, compared to 16% of the Tories. (PriceWaterhousCoopers gave £102k to the Tories, so no need to expect any financial regulations from them when they are elected).

Sainsbury gave Labour £500k, Amin Hemani £51k, Alistair Knott £40k.

They're all clean as 3 penny whistles, afaik. In fact, the latter 2 are so obscure you can scarcely find them at all on a Google. They are just lovely peeps who love NuLabour. Heartwarming stuff.

A morning wasted, but not totally, because I took out a subscription to Private Eye - the only publication of integrity in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy imho.

Nick Griffin is a Nazi, and the BBC should balance its presentation of this fact

Nick Griffin has stated "I am not a Nazi", and this statement has been flagged prominently on BBC News.

Is this true?

Nazi is a contraction of the German for National Socialist.
Griffin is a Nationalist. The clue is in the title of his British National Party.
So is Griffin a socialist also?
It is easier to say what he is not than what he is.
He is definitely not a Marxist. But where does his ideology find itself on the individualist / socialist spectrum?
He is definitely not a libertarian, and they tend to associate with individualism.
He is definitely not a mainstream Tory/NuLabour/LibDem politician, who are all clustering around the individualist/authoritarian quadrant of the political compass.

Does he believe in the importance of a social group? Yes, he does. The social group he values is those who he deems to be in possession of the "British Gene" - a non-scientific shorthand that he uses for Celtic/Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian (and, presumably Roman/Italian) genes. This "British" social group is the one that he believes has a "superior right" to live in these islands. Note that he avoids the accusation of racism by declaring that "white Britons" have a "superior right" to be citizens of this country.

In this restricted, quasi-tribal sense, Griffin is indeed a socialist.

Specific confirmation of this view is found in the BNPs 2005 manifesto: Page 35:
Axiom 11: Owners should work, and workers should own.
If ordinary Britons increase their savings rate and invest the money in
British industry, it will over time transpire that they are the owners of
British industry. This has been called “pension-fund socialism,” and it
combines the efficiency of capitalist private ownership with socialism’s
ideal of worker ownership of the means of production. It also gives
workers an incentive to care about the long-term health of the companies
British National Party they work for, as they are part owners. It is also a pro-nationalist policy, as it tends to bring the ownership of British industry into British hands. The
BNP supports the gradual assumption of worker ownership through their
pension funds.

Since he is both a nationalist and a socialist, it is reasonable to infer that he is a national socialist, and is therefore a Nazi.

This inference is borne out by the Political Compass placement of the BNP, at the authoriarian extreme, but slightly left of centre on the social/individualist scale.

Political Compass says:
It's muddled thinking to simply describe the likes of the British National Party as "extreme right". The truth is that on issues like health, transport, housing, protectionism and globalisation, their economics are left of Labour, let alone the Conservatives. It's in areas like police power, military power, school discipline, law and order, race and nationalism that the BNP's real extremism - as authoritarians - is clear.



Griffin said he is loathed by the Nazis, because he has taken the BNP from being an anti-semitic party to one that can win parliamentary elections. To be loathed by Nazis does not prove that he is not a Nazi, since Nazis, like Marxists, are prone to schisms. Griffin's strategy has been to modernise or "respectabilise" the BNP, so that his position might be accurately described as "crypto-Nazi".

The BBC news has had up a flag advertising Griffin's claim "I am not a Nazi" for a long period during this evening's news.

In the interests of truth and balance, the BBC should give equal prominence to the argument that proves Griffin to be a liar and a Nazi.

We can make representations to the BBC here.

Griffin storm: BBC passed up the Question Time get-out

I am not going to boycott tonight's Question Time. I expect to see a disorderly, ill-tempered row, with the possibility of scuffles in the audience. I do not expect to see Herr Griffin confounded, just insulted, and I fear that the ratings for his National Socialist party will rise as a result.

The BBC's insistence on giving him an airing in view of the BNPs 2 MEPs is at variance with their obstinate refusal to give the Green Party air time in proportion with our vote. We can be damn certain that the BBC managers would not have stood up for the Greens in the same way they have stood up for the BBC.

The icing on the cake is that they have a perfect get-out clause from their problem. They could have said that they would not let Griffin until he has legalised the BNP's constitution by making membership open to non-whites.

This they have chosen not to do. If we choose, we can infer that there are Nazi sympathisers high up in the BBC.

This, coupled with the equally ugly decision of the BBC not to screen the DEC appeal for Palestinian aid after Israel's psychotic onslaught on Gaza, should make us think long and hard about whether to pay the BBC license fee. The very least we can do is to cancel our Direct Debit, so they have to scrabble around and send us reminders.

The only problem with a license fee strike is that it could bring an end to public service broadcasting, which is exactly what the megacapitalists like Rupert Murdoch want. So, from that point of view, we should continue. From a personal point of view, the only programmes that I really enjoy is Have I got news for You, and the wildlife programme, and overall, I would have a better quality of life if I had no TV at all. Oh and I caught a brilliant programme last night by Becca Wilcox about Who Made me Fat?, which is worthy of a blog all to itself.

So, it hangs by a thread, but I will probably pay my license fee, but maybe a few pence short of the full whack.

Kaminski Row warms up; should the Tory Frog clamber out of the ECR cooking pot?

The row over Dave Cameron's decision to leave the mainstream European political bloc and transfer his allegiance to a Eurosceptic groupuscule, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) led by a homophobic holocaust sceptic, Michael Kaminski, is warming up nicely.

William Hague is in the US hoping to ramp up the Special Relationship in anticipation of being the UK's Foreign Secretary next year, talking about important things like how to prevent AfPak turning into an unmitigated disaster (as he would put it), but his US counterparts are more concerned that their chief ally in Europe has wandered off the European centre stage and is clambering into an unemptied dustbin of right wing extremists.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, "a prominent Holocaust survivor has called on the Conservative party to reconsider its alliance with Michal Kaminski, the Polish MEP who leads the Conservatives in the European parliament, citing his "unacceptable" views".

So Dave is still struggling with the Euroscepticism in his party. He gave in to them over joining the ECR, and is now picking up the pieces in a strained relationship with his prospective US bosses.

I saw in a poll yesterday (sadly unable to find it today) that the Brits are neatly divided 50/50 over whether the EU is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Given the massive, sustained anti-European propaganda by the Mordoch Press, and other right wing organs, this shows that on a level playing field, Europe would be welcomed by a majority of Brits.

Maybe the understanding that the US wants the UK to be at the heart of European decision making, and not at its fetid and unwashed little toe will mean that Dave will cave in, and return, tail between legs, to the European mainstream.

PS There is a sorry excuse for an interview with Michael Kaminsky on Total Politics. Kaminsky weasles his way out of any direct answer on his homophobia and racism, as you would expect from any right wing politician being interviewed by a right wing journalist. But hang on, the journalist involved is none other than Iain Dale, the UK's top blogger. Is his patsy approach anything to do with the fact that he is trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get selected as a Tory MP?

I pause for thought before hitting the Publish button, as Iain Dale runs the polling for the Blog Awards (see top right of this page). However, what is the point of blogging if any consideration of personal advancement is taken into account? Publish and be damned.

Evidence that the BBC has BNP sympathisers on its staff

From Question Time: Does the panel accept racists? - The Guardian: "...The BBC's case for allowing Griffin to appear on Question Time is challenged by New Statesman political editor, James Macintyre, a former producer on the programme. 'Question Time are being dishonest about having him [Griffin] on. They've always wanted him on and I went to meetings where I had to argue against that position. They lost the battle with management then and now, after two years' lobbying, they have won.'

Question Time's editor, Ed Havard, did not respond to requests for an interview to confirm or deny these charges, but Bailey tells me: 'There was no battle with management. Every year we would ask whether smaller parties such as the BNP or the Green party had enough popular support to warrant appearing on the show. Until they won the seats in June we decided they didn't warrant time on the show according to our guidelines.'

Macintyre disagrees: 'It's not about the election victories, that's an excuse. My worry is that the show is going to give the BNP spurious legitimacy.'

That theory received support last month when two BNP apparatchiks (one of them party publicity director Mark Collett) appeared on Radio 1's Newsbeat and, during a two-minute interview, were able to claim, unchallenged, that black London-born England footballer Ashley Cole was not "ethnically British" [the BBC did not reveal their officers of the BNP, just introduced them as two young people.]

Question Time for the BNP

Griffin being attacked by an egg. From Channel 4 news

Nick Griffins's hero preparing to catch an egg in his mouth. Stock footage.

The BBC is determined to give the BNP a platform in Question Time next week.
A regrettable decision, especially in the light of their refusal to give the Green Party a fair share of the airtime over the years, proportional to the vote we have received in elections over the years.

However, given the situation, and given that Question Time is a programme where the audience gets to set the questions, here are a list of questions that occur to me that should be put to the Griffin. You can add more questions in the comment slot. We should hope that all the questions supplied by the audience would be of this type, because for Griffin to be given the opportunity to answer straight questions on the week's news would be to give him a platform to pretend that the BNP is a normal political party.

Questions:

1. In your opinion, ws Hitler right, and if not, why not?
2. When did you give up believing that the Holocaust was a hoax, and why?
3. What do you understand of the psychological ego-defence mechanism of projection?
4. How do you feel about the Britons who lost their lives in 1939-45 in the war on Fascism?
5. Why did you choose a Polish Spitfire to illustrate your election leaflet?
   
6. How do you feel about the veterans who accuse you of exploiting their sacrifice in WWII?
   
7. What is the scientific basis for your beliefs about the existence of a "British gene"?
8. Would you describe yourself as a national socialist?
9. Do you believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in conflict against the weak?
10. How many of your candidates and members have criminal convictions?
11. Since you are so concerned about immigration, are you concerned about the poverty, wars, torture, dictatorships and human rights abuses in the world which lie behind immigration?
    

And so on. You get the idea. I'm not an anti-fascist specialist, so the Hope not Hate website should provide material for scores of other questions.
There is more on this blog about refuting BNP arguments here.

PS I have just seen that the Guardian's Sunny Hundal has the same idea. His 20 questions are here, and they are better than mine, frankly. Well, a bit better, anyway, but that's his job. Pity the British journalists generally are not up to putting tough questions to politicians, instead of dumb questions put in a tough way.

BNP candidate for Europe elections arrested on suspicion of selling illegal firearms

BNP candidate for Europe elections arrested on suspicion of selling illegal firearms - Mail Online:
"A BNP candidate for the European elections has been arrested on suspicion of selling illegal firearms.

David Lucas, 48, who supports capital punishment and makes gallows for sale abroad, was arrested at his mother’s home in Suffolk on Thursday.

He has been released on bail. BNP officials said Lucas would still stand in the election on June 4."

And here's another one.

Whole lot more here.

Why vote for expense fiddlers when you can vote for real criminals?

Refuting the BNP arguments

Everyone wants to sideline the BNP (except its supporters), but the best way to do so is to refute their arguments.

Briefly:


1 The BNP is very close to the authoritarian position occupied by the Nazis on Political Compass.

2 The BNP is using the same scapegoating techniques on immigrants as the Nazis used against the Jews, Romanies and Communists.

3 Their ideology is the politics of hate, and will end in intercommunal violence if is does not die away, as it surely will, when they have their next schism, as the incompetence of their elected members becomes more widely recognised, and as their arguments become exposed to analysis.

4 The British people have recently shown themselves sympathetic to the position of one special group of immigration applicants, the Ghurkas, and many other immigrants have also done, and are doing, great service to Britain.

5 Giving asylum to people fleeing oppression is an honorable British tradition, which the BNP seeks to end.

6 Going for global economic and political equity, as the Green Party seeks to do, and the Index of Human Rights, is the only humane and civilised way to stem the flow of refugees into this country.

7 Government must address the lack of housing and jobs, so that the BNP cannot claim that migrants are "taking our houses and jobs".

More on Hope not Hate
and Searchlight.

Here is a neat video explaining the voting system and why the Green Vote is necessary to keep the BNP Griffin from becoming an MEP in the North West.

Vote BNP or Vote Green Party

The official Green Party position is that we will be boycotting any platform that includes the BNP. Although I can see the rationale, and feel the same repugnance as others at sitting alongside authoritarian candidates, we could find ourselves to be self - excluded from the political debate, and could play into their hands, by associating ourselves with the self-satisfied political elite of the Westminster parties if they also boycott, and on the other hand, if the ConLabLibdems do show up at hustings platforms, we would simply lose out.

Euro elections are regarded by the electorate as unimportant, and so present a chance for them to make a protest vote. We benefited from this in the 80s, UKIP had their boost last time, and now it looks as if the BNP is going to cash in this time. There is a phenomenal disaffection with conventional politics at present, with the credit crunch, bonuses, MP allowances, police brutality and surveillance, not to mention really big things like climate change. Greens should be positioning ourselves as the valid, constructive alternative to the mainstream parties, and to do this we have to challenge the BNP head on. We are diametrically opposed to their approach: we stand for wide democracy, they stand for authoritarianism. We stand for social inclusion and they stand for social exclusion.

In any debate, their strength is in the popular opposition to immigration (built up by the daily drip-drip of right wing press reportage), and they will make political capital by characterising our policy as "open door".

We should open any debate by regretting that we are having to reopen discussion on a matter that was settled in 1945, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of British lives, and expressing our regret that the sacrifices of patriotic British servicemen who were injured and died in WWII in the fight against fascism is being set aside. We should be ready as we do so to make a precise and detailed comparison between Nazi and BNP policies.

The sound psychological analysis of the BNP and Nazis is that they both use the psychological defence mechanism of projection to load all the negative things in their lives onto an identifiably separate group, in Hitler's case, the Jews, and in Griffin's case, the immigrants.

Greens make an uncompromising stand for the absolute rights of political asylum seekers to come here, and make no apology for our desire to speed up and simplify the acceptance process for asylum seekers.

We should emphasise that our global approach to politics means a preventive solution to immigration. Why do people leave Afghanistan to come here? War. (Our solution to Afghanistan - buy and use the opium) Why are Iraqis coming here? War. (We opposed the BushBlair invasion) Why Somalis? War (We seek a comprehensive UN/OAU solution in Somalia).

Repression, torture and political imprisonment drive people to leave their homes and families and come here. We propose a Global Human Rights Index.

Endemic poverty drives "economic migrants". We advocate global equity and non-violent resolution of conflict. Global warming will increase the wave of migration, as people flee flooded and arid lands. We should be calling for an amnesty for all illegal migrants (for their own sake, and to take them out of the hands of the criminal gang masters). We should be calling for a big drive against the criminal, exploitative people traffickers. We should set up refuges and channels for sexually exploited migrants to escape their captors.

Joblessness and housing shortage are the burners that lift the BNP hot air balloon.
GND+ and Right to Rent, with re-use of empty properties and new build of eco-homes is our answer.

In summary, the debate with the BNP offers us a chance to set out our relevant and radical policies clearly, a chance to give leadership to the grey parties on how to defeat the BNP arguments.

It is a difficult question, and I accept that the majority position of the GP is to boycott, but there is a strong case for us to go on the platform and challenge the BNP, setting out our claim to the vote of those who are angry and disaffected by the mess that grey politicians have made, and making clear that there is a humane, constructive and Green way of expressing that disaffection in the ballot box.

To avoid the debate is to deny ourselves the chance to put ourselves forward as the sensible way to make a protest vote, and may well be exploited by our opponents in all parties as political priggery, cowardice, and laziness (because those, sadly, are the kind of terms that are used in the electoral debate).

Blears blahs BNP

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears is giving advice about how to defeat the racist BNP.

"We must recognise that where the BNP wins votes, it is often a result of local political failure," she says.

Here is her list of diagnoses:

1 "Estates that have been ignored for decades"

Yes. So why has the Government not provided each estate with a funded community leader and a community meeting space? These act as a catalyst for local solidarity and empowerment. Click this link, scroll down to Stimulating the sense of community. The money invested will recoup itself many times over in money spent on trying (or indeed, not trying) to combat crime.

2 "Voters taken for granted"

Yes indeed. So why does the government not bring in a democratic electoral system, where every vote counts, instead of the ridiculous 18th century first-past-the-post system that prevails in this backward country, in which the Government is determined by swing voters in a handful of marginal seats, and in which voter turnout is inversely proportional to the majority enjoyed by the sitting MP. (Scroll down to the graph).

3 "Local services that have failed"
Which is an admission that after 11 years in power, the Labour Government has failed to stimulate local services.

3 "White working-class voters who feel politicians live on a different planet"

Which, of course, they do; in Planet Westminster, isolated from reality in a glazed environment dominated by Civil Service briefings, market dominance, lobbyists, and tradition.


What is lacking from Hazel Blears' paper thin 3-point diagnosis is jobs and housing.

While these are in short supply, the BPN can rally support by shouting, "Immigrants have taken your houses and your jobs" - irrespective of the truth or otherwise of their claim.

Shortage of housing and work lights the flame of anger that lifts the BNP balloon.

Homelessness is a failure of the State to provide responsibly for the basic material needs of the citizen. Joblessness is a failure of the State to provide an economy that works. Both of these result from Labour's shameful and mindless adoption of Tory free-market economics.

In Bills of Health I showed that it costs 10 times as much per year to put a family in temporary accommodation than it does to build a house, and that the reason for the failure is that the Treasury does not understand the concept of a mortgage. I also showed that there is no need for unemployment when so much good green work needs to be done.

Hazel Blears has in effect admitted the failure of Labour to tackle electoral reform, public services, political alienation, housing, and employment. The only choice we are presented with electorally is either more of Labour, or even worse, a Tory Government. No wonder that people are turning in anger and disillusionment to the heirs of the political ideology that plunged the world into an orgy of destruction and inhumanity in 1939.

A Green vote gives the same message rejection of the LabLibCon political consensus, but in every way is the opposite of a vote for the neo-fascists. Where they are hateful, we show political inclusiveness. Where they scream about symptoms, we advance preventive measures. Where they dream of right wing military coups, we dream of real democracy. Where they are given handsome media coverage, we are effectively airbrushed out of the political process.

Local Election Results: Today toady to BNP, tardy on Greens

I start the day with email To the Today programme (today@bbc.co.uk)

In the 7.00 - 7.30 am cycle, covering local election results, you were pleased to mention the BNP and have its leader on to speak, unchallenged, yet made no mention of the Green Party.

For your information:
The Green Party has so far added 18 more Pricipal Authority Councillors to its previous figure of 71, giving an overnight total of 89.

I would remind you that the politics of the BNP led to genocide and huge destruction of life and property in this country and throughout the world between the years of 1939 and 1945, while the Green Party offers the only political and economic programme designed for a sustainable future.

What conclusions am I to draw about the mindset of the Today programme planners and decision makers from this state of affairs?