today : why we should worry about the BNP

A few weeks ago I made a statement that was pointed out as being racist. Or potentially perceived as racist. I was teaching and , in the afternoon, a couple of Afro-Caribbean boys arrived back in class in a giggly, distracted mood. I suggested to my co-teacher that they'd been smoking a bit of weed at lunchtime. A black guy who was assisting us pulled me up on it.
"Why assume they smoke weed just because they're black."
Of course, I was only making the connection between them smoking weed and being sixteen. I thought nothing of their race or colour.

But on the way home I started wondering if I actually had, unconsciously, made some connection between their race and their possible leisure activities. Maybe I did. Maybe if they had been white I would have accused them of drinking alcopops. I don't think I did. For the record they took about 15 minutes before they calmed down and got on well with their work.

I live in a part of England with a high immigrant population. When it comes to election time - like this weeks local elections - there is always the possibility that I will encounter racist politics. In fact I drove past a house the other day that was flying the Union Jack flag. In the USA flying the flag is fairly normal and often indicates nothing more than pride. In Britain, the Union Jack is used as a symbol of extreme nationalism (as opposed to the Cross of St George - the English flag which used to be the same but is now used as a symbol to show your support of the football team).

My area is where the British National Party tend to focus their activities. Occasionally one of their number will be elected to a local council. It is deliberate. The post-industrial North has a significant Caribbean and Indian sub-continent population, coupled with low levels of affluence and large patches of poor education. In short, it is a fertile breeding ground for the politics of hatred. The BNP exploit this. In recent years they have tried to smarten up. Their leader - Nick Griffin -portrays himself as a serious politician (despite his past convictions for racist attacks) and they are careful to appear suited and smart whenever they appear on the TV. They also play the fairness card, demanding to be given their fair share of media time and coverage. They have softened their views too. They no longer demand forced repatriation of all non-whites. Their policy now encompasses voluntary incentivised repatriation. The picture above is taken from the BNP web-site, a perfect illustration, despite their protestations of seriousness and maintreamness, of what they are really about.

What confounds me is that certain parts of the media seem to give them lots of coverage. For a party that is only contesting only a few of 3000 council seats their coverage is out of proportion. Last week one of the right wing papers published a survey that said a huge majority of British people share many of their views with Nick Griffin and co. Just yesterday I watched a feature on Sky News that dealt with the hoary old race/IQ debate. Someone somehere seems to think their views deserve a platform.

The problem is that I can easily believe the surveys. I hear casual and unthinking racism all the time from all areas of my acquaintence. Much of it is not mean or deliberate, but that's not the point. I'm someone who will argue back and refuse to listen to racism. It has caused me trouble sometimes and led to ugly scenes. Yet even I may have made a stereotyped racist assumption about the two black boys in class.

Practically we must stop the BNP. Plenty of people I know are like myself, aware of the problem, beyond a point where they see colour pejoritively. I worry that we might give in to complacency. We are not, as a society or a world far enough past simple xenophobia that we can give up fighting. Changing attitudes is still a difficult ongoing project and we cannot afford to slack off. The BNP will win some of their seats on Thursday by exploiting peoples' basest instincts and also by lying and misleading carefully targeted blocks of voters. Suddenly 20% of the population will be without representation. It's reminder that the ice is still thin. We aren't anywhere as near as we'd like to a moderate and tolerant society.