News From The Nutters: The British National Party – Because There’s A Vacuum Of Stupid, And Someone’s Got To Fill It!

Just to prove whatever Hope Not Hate can do in terms of stupid the BNP will match, take a look at this:

Brilliant idea. Their members will be delighted when they try out this one, and get the subsequent angry letter from their doctor’s surgery telling them that they have been taken off the practice books because they don’t want that crap putting patients off thinking the staff are BNP members (and you know how difficult it can be to find a doctor to register with in some parts of the country).

Since their electoral and membership collapse, the BNP has been crying all the way to the bank. Years of legacies left to them in thousands of Wills have been rolling in and those in control of the party’s piggy bank are happy to sit back and wait for ‘that perfect moment’.

The rest of Britain’s dumber than rocks far-right would love to get their hands on that money so they can spend it on more leaflets and booklets for the general public to throw in the nearest dustbin, and the way the National Front, British Democrats (British Democratic Party) and the rest of the right hand side of Britain’s aluminium foil milliners have all been singing from the same song sheet lately does appear to indicate than union – or rather reunion – is this year’s must have tin-hat for the Henley Regatta.

Most of Britain’s far right have all been in each others parties so many times (in some cases all at once) it’s a wonder Paris Hilton and the Kardashians haven’t appeared on the leaked membership lists, so union does make sort of sense. Trouble is that last time they tried it was back in 1967 with the famous National Front – almost now an international brand name for anti-immigrationism and ethnocentric nationalism – and what a monster it proved to be. To cut a very long story short, they discovered the hard way what happens when you let into your party people who claim to no longer be the same bigotted Jew-hating Hitler worshipping Daleks they were only five months before.

Also the BNP aren’t interested in unions (literally, except for their own fake ones – yes it is old joke day today). Why should they be? They hold all the cards – the money, the previous history of success doing everything their way, the money, the organisation, the money, the professional website – did I mention the money? They would rather people joined them on their terms (ie. picking and choosing whom they want – or more to the point don’t want), and are convinced once UKIP has finally destroyed itself, the way will be clear for them to sweep up what’s left of Britain’s ‘patriotic right’ (a term used highly advisedly).

This is the two prong strategy of the BNP’s cunning plan certain to end in more tears for souvenirs.

Since the days of the National Front, the main plank of Britain’s far right has been to stop non-white immigration, start non-white ‘repatriation’ (which really means throwing out everyone not meeting their race purity criteria to any country that will take them), opposing anything with a smell of Marxism to it and roughly everything else the Establishment parties did or believed in for contrary’s sake.

But even Britain’s former African colonies at their barbaric worst would not dare today to implement policies of ‘Africanisation’ by which the wholescale shakedown and expulsion of ethnic Indian and Chinese citizens (as happened in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda) were the part genesis of the ethnic enclaves in some British cities. Part of the success of UKIP over the BNP (and others) was its appeal to those British citizens from non-white Commonwealth backgrounds who objected to the European Union ‘open door for member states’ policy which made it next to impossible for Commonwealth citizens to gain work permits – let alone citizenship – because local services in far too many parts of the country were already strained to breaking point by Eastern European immigrants.

If one picture epitomised an athlete, this one from September 1982 did for Daley Thompson of Great Britain: triumphant over his rivals took weak to even stand after finishing the 1500m in the decathlon at the 1982 European Athletic championships in Athens, Greece with a new world record for the event. Mandatory Credit: Steve Powell/Allsport.

Moreover, the Britain of 50 years ago is a much different world to the Britain of today. For all the problems there be with occasional ethnic or ideological tensions, no political party wanting to have itself taken seriously comes out with such a ludicrous idea as expelling people (or even restricting their entry) according to skin colour – no one wanting to be taken seriously has been stupid enough to claim ‘there ain’t no black in the Union Jack’ since the days Daley Thompson became the toast in even the most hidebound white-flight pub bore, conquoring the athletics world at the height of the Cold War (with all its posturing – and cheating) with a brash cockiness rubbing American and Soviet noses in it every chance he got, winning the decathlon gold in their own backyards at the Moscow and Los Angeles Olympics almost fifty years after Jesse Owens made fools out of the last arrogant nation who thought themselves the world’s master race.

Before Thompson, British sport apart from football and rugby had been dominated in the media by posh people like Annabel Croft, Sebastian Coe, Sue Barker,  and the National Front’s very own Buster Mottram – famous for being the sort one would have for dinner and cocktails, the best of the breed, even if they largely won bugger all (except for Coe). Not only was the kid from pre-gentrification Notting Hill a proper winner, but had an infectious enthusiasm for athletics at grassroots (not the condescending sort British Olympians are prone to) believing not only could everyone else in Britain do it, but everyone else in Britain should do it. He made athletics in Britain ‘cool’ two decades before ‘gym culture’ happened. Britain may not have been saved from Napoleon’s Continentalism on the playing fields of Eton as per the myth, but it was most certain saved from pigmentation prejudice as a political option on track and field.

As to the rest of it, only a fool would deny Britain is certainly amiable to some sort of post-Trade Unionism communistic/socialist ideas (in so far as they share traits with Christian community ideas and thus were never unique) in the abrupt rise of Jeremy Corbyn within a nation sick and tired of a growing gulf between the rich and poor as never seen since the early horrors of the Industrial Revolution and a ruling class (in politics and the media) shedding public crocodile tears whilst privately advocating more ‘survival of the fittest’.

Yet what does the BNP bring to the table? The tired ‘Enoch Was Right!’ meme.

Alas! Poor Enoch!

You couldn’t make this up if you tried – awarding ‘honorary membership’ to a man dead for twenty years who had made it plain that he despised the BNP and all its predecessors on numerous occasions – on the one occasion Powell was asked directly what he thought of the National Front, he tersely replied that he was a “parliamentarian”. This has often been given by both those who idolise and demonise Powell as proof of his far-right sympathies – largely because subtlety is beyond them.

Powell was happy to work with individuals such as the likes of Beryl ‘Bee’ Carthew (of the Swinton Club, who later dallied between the Conservatives and the NF – as far too many who also dabbled with the Monday Club had done) in the same way he worked with Tony Benn, his ideological sparring partner (and friend as a fellow member of the Commons’ ‘awkward squad’ with Michael Foot and Tam Dalyell) on opposing both the Common Market and white minority rule in Rhodesia, but whilst he was happy to give his endorsement to Vivian Linacre of the Weights and Measures Association when he was the UKIP candidate for Perth and Kinross in at by-election in 1995, but he refused to endorse a certain Nigel Farage point blank despite (or perhaps because of) he’d met him several times when Powell had addressed Eurosceptic meetings.

To take the point further, on the 24th November 1994 he gave UKIP’s Malcolm Floyd the blessing to use his name ‘as you see fit’ at the 1994 Dudley West by-election. A certain Andy Carmichael (the Special Branch agent who was the NF candidate at the same by-election), wrote in turn to Powell nine days later seeking the same (with delicious irony, his letter stated ‘…todays National Front … a dynamic, forward thinking democratic party not afraid to tell the truth and with nothing to hide.‘) but received the response (from Powell’s secretary, not personally as in Floyd and Linacre’s cases – an intentional snub perhaps?), ‘Mr Powell has asked me to acknowledge your letter of 2nd December but to say that you will have seen in the meantime that he has sent a letter of support to the UK Independence Party candidate.’

Most pointed of all, on 6th June 1970, at a general election at Highfield School (during a speech solely about economics – ‘the rise in the cost of living is due neither to British trade unions, nor to British industry, nor to the British economy; it is due wholly and solely to the British government.’ ), some moron gave Powell an ironic Hitler salure and in a rare display of lost temper bellowed, ‘Some of us personally witnessed what was done on the continent under that sign and it is a symbol we shall never forget!’ – something to bear in mind considering many of those running the racist parties before and after 1970 were apologists for the Nazis and Holocaust deniers

Powell was a complex character and somewhat eccentric (as career academics tend to be – and career academics foolish enough to go into politics usually end up that bit more so) but for the BNP to attempt to seek reflected glory in someone whom largely opposed everything they represented – let alone stood for – isn’t only pathetic, it is pitiful.

To paraphrase Enoch, far from aggregating a foul, it is to aggravate the original offence, which was of the BNP putting words into Powell’s mouth in support of their own agenda since Griffin’s departure in 2014 – to wit:

When did Enoch Powell say ‘It’s never too late to save your country,’ let alone the context?

Never.

This is a recurring theme of the topic of Powell with both his so-called supporters and so-called detractors – who slap the prefix ‘Enoch was right’ or ‘Enoch was wrong’ regarding whatever they wanted him to have said to add greater gravitas to whatever premise they wish to establish, since Powell is regarded as someone carrying an intellectual and idealistic weight having effectively written and signed the writ of execution on his own career three times on points of principle.

You may as well claim that Enoch Powell said the following:

There’s actually more chance he might have agreed with some of it.