Life, the Universe and Everything

With voting in the local elections due to take place on the first of May it is no surprise that all parties are putting forward policy proposals. It is also no surprise that the British National Party is centring its policy on the Islamification of the country. Playing on the public’s fear of further terrorist attacks and playing to the lowest common denominator is simple scare tactics. What did surprise me was that they are using this policy to play on the historical enmity between Jewish and Muslim communities to actively campaign for the Jewish vote. The BNP have wheeled out the party’s only Jewish councillor, Pat Richardson, to force their point. On one party leaflet, distributed in north London last week, Richardson is quoted along with a picture of a Muslim protester holding a placard that reads: “Butcher those who mock Islam.”

Just as one swallow does not make a summer, one Jewish counsellor does not end your party’s links with an anti-Semitic past. The BNP’s leader, Nick Griffin once wrote in an essay about the Holocaust: “I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter-day witch-hysteria.” Perhaps somebody should furnish Griffin with a copy of Rudolf Hoess’s autobiography: where he tells of his time as commandant of Auschwitz and the efficiency of the gas chambers and the guards removing hysterical inmates from the lines to dispatch them with a pistol shot to the back of the head.

The threat that the BNP pose is particularly apparent in the election for the next London mayor. Four years ago the BNP polled 4.7% of the vote - just a few thousand short of the 5% needed for a member to sit on the London assembly. At that election, the UK Independence party polled 8.2% of the vote, and has subsequently hit self-destruct. If turnout on May 1st is low, then the BNP could benefit: 5% would translate as one assembly member, 8% as two and 11% as three.

By campaigning to different religious and ethnic groups, the BNP attempts to portray themselves as a party of diversity and to shake off claims of racism. Just as people who make racist comments usually preface their comment with: “I’m no racist, but…” voting for the BNP is also a racist action, no matter how you try to camouflage it with respectability.