The Big Ambush

Well, if the BBC and our opponents think that the sort of attack they launched on Andrew Brons and the Reverend West yesterday is going to deter viewers from finding out more about the British National Party, they have made a serious mistake.

After a personal rant from the 'three members of the panel', and tirade after tirade from selected members of the audience, any right thinking person could have been forgiven for asking 'where's the balance', or even 'let's hear from someone in the audience who does not come from an ethnic minority.'

Andrew and Robert did very well indeed in a hugely difficult situation and, as I said yesterday, would have won the plaudits from any uncommitted viewer. Very well done to them both.

Here's a report from the Sunday Express which I think is worth drawing your attention to.

I have removed the predictable and unnecessary anti-BNP rhetoric to make it acceptable for this blog.

"WHEN anti-fascist activists threw eggs at Nick Griffin, the BNP leader and newly elected MEP, the only people left with egg on their faces were this Labour Government.

For it is the Labour Party that has, over 12 long years, ignored the concerns of the people it claimed to represent and forced them to turn, in desperation and fear, into the arms of the BNP in last week’s European elections.

Unite Against Fascism claimed they want to prevent the BNP from pretending to be a respectable party but you don’t defeat the British National Party by resorting to violence to stifle free speech and legitimate political debate.

When you disrespect a democratically elected politician – you disrespect the voters who elected them.

How dare mainstream politicians say it was a “sad day for democracy” that the BNP were elected! It’s not for them to tell voters whom to elect.

It is not an outrage that the BNP has been elected. How can it ever be an outrage that people chose to vote for a legal political party in a free and fair election?

The real outrage is that those people felt their needs were not being represented by any of the mainstream parties. The BNP didn’t make this happen. The Government did. Mr Griffin and his party have simply benefited from the Government’s failure to tackle the issues that matter to ordinary people.

The 943,000 people who voted for the BNP are desperate and afraid.

Labour has spent the past 12 years telling the country that mass uncontrolled immigration has not changed the face of Britain or affected job opportunities for British workers, or that it hasn’t had a knock-on effect on overstretched public services.

But the reality for ordinary people in many parts of Britain is very different than it is for the Hampstead types who run our country (and much of our media) and for whom immigration just means cheaper builders, cleaners and nannies.

Labour ministers don’t send their children to schools where most pupils don’t speak English and where nativity plays are banned as “racist”; they don’t languish on council-house waiting lists, take crowded buses or wait in NHS hospitals; and they don’t live in streets where English isn’t spoken, where women cover their faces with burkhas or where shop names are in a foreign language.

Yet that is the reality for millions in Britain today. Are they all racist or just afraid that their country has changed beyond recognition?

What Labour has to ask itself is why people are so fearful.

If anything, the election of two BNP MEPs might even end up being a positive thing because it will finally force Labour to face up to the real world out there.