The BBC giving airtime to the British National Party is a form of appeasement

[Written 22/10/2009. Updated 30/10/2009.]

Standing on repugnant policies, Hitler's National Socialist Party was initially successful in democratic elections. In power it implemented these policies, through deportations, and eventually through the "final solution".

My grandmother was gassed in Auschwitz. My grandfather and great grandmother perished in Terezin. For all my life the Nazi Holocaust, and the political developments that preceded it, have been in the background for me.

So I felt physically winded to read the BBC's chief political advisor Ric Bailey's statement that the decision to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin onto Question Time was "based on the party's success in June's European elections, at which it won more than 940,000 votes and two seats".

Had the BBC's reasoning been that it wished to discredit the BNP and negate its influence, then I could have understood its logic, though I'd have disagreed with its decision.

But by its stance the BBC appeases racism: it publicises and makes respectable the BNP's ideas; it ignores the distress and fear that the BNP evokes amongst those it targets; it grants the BNP valuable exposure. Whilst I hope that David Dimbelby, and the panel in Question Time will expose Griffin, and reduce his standing, it is not mainly amongst the viewers of Question Time that the BNP's policies hold sway: so the net effect of the BBC's decision will be to boost Griffin and his party's popularity.

Since when was that supposed to be the purpose of the BBC?

Added 30/10/2009. This letter by Paul Rees appeared in the Independent Newspaper on 26 October. He makes my point far more effectively than I ever could.

Talk of BNP 'rights' fuels violent racism

As a black reader, I was revolted by your paper of 24 October. In his piece, Sholto Byrnes bemoaned the way the panellists on Question Time treated Nick Griffin as a "pariah"; and your leading article claimed "the BNP needs to become a regular feature of political discussions".

The basis for both of these disgusting articles was that the BNP "have a right to be heard". Well, what about my rights? What about the rights of the millions of black, Asian, Jewish and mixed-race people?

As a young man, I worked on national papers covering race issues, such as the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The BNP's newspaper encouraged its members to write to me and I regularly received letters saying things such as: "Good, fucking niggers shouldn't be here in the first place!"

An anti-racist academic with whom I co-wrote an article on racism in football had to go into hiding after the BNP published his home address.

As a child, I was regularly beaten up by boys who openly supported the National Front. As a teenager, I witnessed white youths racially abusing black men, such as John Barnes, who had the temerity to play professional football in a "white man's country".

I was recently called a "fucking black bastard" and assaulted by a group of men outside a working-men's club, near which there was graffiti on a street sign, including a swastika and the letters BNP.

Mr Byrnes starts his article with the words: "I am the son of an immigrant". Spare me, Mr Byrnes. To the moronic, violent racists of the BNP you are white, because you look white. I am a "fucking nigger" because I look black.

If the BNP manages to secure a place in the political mainstream, which is likely if middle-class white liberals become fixated on the idea that it must be treated as a legitimate party, Byrnes will be able to rest assured that he has nobly upheld Griffin's rights.

But millions of law-abiding members of the ethnic minorities will suffer increased racial abuse and physical assaults as the BNP membership swells and becomes increasingly confident. Whose rights are more important?

Paul Rees

Comments

[twitter.com/cullaloe]

No it isn't, Seb. I am stunned by the blindness that falls over people's reason sometimes, and your article is an example of this. My response.

24/10/2009
Nick
I am with Peter Hain, Howard Jacobson, and Diane Abbott on this one.
Seb

[Kevin Donovan]

Good for you, Seb. The BBC was wrong and the format of the programme then, unfortunately, produced unintended consequences. Nazis are nazis and don't deserve air time.