Questionable Time

Last Thursday's BBC Question Time programme (with Nick Griffin of the British National Party) has, not surprisingly, been the topic of the past few days. The QT viewing figures were the highest in 30 odd years; the episode was put on YouTube by a number of people within hours of being aired.

We noted earlier that we are not against the BNP having time to put their views and so disagree with Peter Hain and with the SWP and its front organisations, who protested outside the BBC studios. The point is this - even if the BNP were to vanish down a wormhole, the material causes that give rise to BNP ideas would still be about. Also, do the SWP and Hain think people are so bloody stupid they will turn BNP if they hear that racist politics?

What was lacking, as we also noted, was a socialist critique of the BNP. The socialist participant would also have examined the ideas of the other panelists.

Griffin was a complete fool, to put it mildly, so any worries that he may become respectable were amiss. His anthropological and biological nonsense on aboriginal English, his homophobic bigotry and his obvious lie about the KKK stick out. Within hours, he was saying QT was a sort of "Get Griffin" stitch-up (awww, diddums, he wanted the strawberry) and that London isn't English anymore, which is racist code for part of the population of the capital being non-white. The comment sections to the YouTube videos are awash with BNP'ers who are not as shy about making explicitly racist comments on the QT audience. Nor is the BNP legal advisor Lee John Barnes, who has been commenting and making an even bigger fool of himself and the BNP, on Harry's Place blog.

What has not been picked up is that the Libs, Labs and Cons are also just as anti-immigration. They differ simply because they do not look like boneheads or make (overtly) racist comments. Something else not picked up was Jack Straw yapping on about being from an immigrant family of "Jewish stock". Jewish stock? That is frankly an own goal! There is no more a Jewish stock than there is an English stock.