Christians and the BNP
I have just received the following news feed from the Jubilee Centre and to be honest I am quite relieved to see a balanced approach to the BNP rather than the mass hysteria from the media that we have become used to.
As we demonize the BNP we also demonize all those who voted for them and it may come as a surprise to some but not everyone who voted for them is a skinhead thug!
The BNP have received support because the main political parties are generally perceived as inept, self-interested, greedy and corrupt.
Issues such as immigration, the rise of Islam, freedom of speech and civil liberties are on the BNP agenda, unlike any other party. These issues are important to folks and until the Christian party begins to deal with them vocally, they will not make any inroads.
‘Questions of asylum and immigration will only become more important as the new century progresses. Many believe these issues will be major battlegrounds in future general elections … Fear and ignorance will persist until dispelled.’ [Ram Gidoomal, in Asylum and Immigration: a Christian perspective on a polarised debate]
Last week’s European elections saw two of the UK’s 72 seats go to the British National Party. The media has attempted to dismiss this ‘racist’ vote by patronisingly suggesting the public didn’t realise what they were voting for, that it was only a protest vote, and that it really reflected disillusionment with Labour and/or all the main parties.
It is true that, as we warned last week, at times when there is ‘a deep suspicion of all established parties,’ proportional representation makes us far more vulnerable to ‘a flight to new parties on the political fringes’. So, given that overall turnout fell from 38.2% to 34.5%, there is a degree of truth to say the BNP’s success was caused by disaffection with the established parties. However, although the Labour and LibDem shares of the vote both fell, the Conservative share of the vote increased by 1.0% nationally and by 1.5% in the North West, where the BNP’s leader Nick Griffin was elected. The BNP share of the vote increased by 1.3% nationally, by 1.6% in the North West, and by 1.8% in Yorkshire and The Humber, where they won their other seat.
So the media is disingenuous and wrong. If the public had simply wanted to register a protest vote, they had plenty of other minority parties to choose between. UKIP’s vote share, by contrast, increased by just 0.3% (gaining one MEP), while the under-reported Greens increased their share by a not insignificant gain of 2.4% (albeit resulting in the same number of MEPs as previously).
The media should also reconsider its portrayal of the BNP as ‘far right’. Most of Europe’s ‘far-right’ are not as extreme as Hungary’s far-right radical party Jobbik, with its paramilitary wing, the Hungarian Guard. In fact, with their socialist manifesto, a good case could be made for describing the BNP as a ‘far left’ party – indeed Lord Tebbit recently described them as ‘that awful socialist party’ and ‘Labour with racism’.
My point is that the political elite need to take seriously the concerns of the 6.2% of voters who gave their support to the BNP last week. Anecdotally, when voters told TV interviewers why they supported the BNP, their main concern was immigration. According to the most recent polling, race and immigration is now the greatest concern to voters after the economy – and it has consistently been one of the greatest concerns since January 2003
Tags: Christianity, Politics