I am a democrat. A realisation of being a democrat is accepting that other people will not always agree with you and to combat them at the ballot box. Another realisation is also that some within a democracy will have abhorrent views to be argued against and combated. I am no supporter of dangerous radicalised political Islam, just as I am not a supporter of the isolationist and largely bigoted BNP, but they exist and they are competing factors in the UK’s political economy.
We have some fundamental problems with our democracy in the UK and the wider western world. These are questions we find difficult to answer without trawling through the writings of John Stuart Mill or other libertarians. One such problem is what happens when a party that appears to be opposed to democracy uses democratic channels to gather support? This is very similar to the National Socialists of the German Weimer Republic. What I am trying to say is how do we work with competing political economy agents when everyone does not play by the accepted rules of the game? With radicalised clerics such as Omar Bakri Muhammad the warping of impressional minds and incitement of violence is the means to acquire political support and power. With Nick Griffin, the BNP and the facist elements of our democracy, it is now increasingly by the ballot box.
It is undeniable that Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories play by similar rules and we accept each others legitimacy. The BNP would say that the ‘old guard’ parties, the ‘LibLabCons’, have created a political class that is detached from ordinary people and has a whiff of arrogance about it. I tend to agree. You only have to look at the media to see the bad apples in each of our parties. However, I think getting to the root cause of this and finding a solution is more beneficial to our political system and our people than to permit political support and power to go to extremists, in whatever form they may be.
There is also a growing problem with the BNP. I don’t think their undeniable growth in support can simply be put down to the global credit crisis or localised issues, but also because we have ignored them. The BNP put a leaflet out in my ward with a picture of Sara Payne on it and the words your local Labour councillors support paedophiles. Without stating the obvious that this is not true, the problem I encountered was how to deal with this situation. If you rebut these allegations you are giving the BNP credibility as a real democratic entity. If you ignore them you allow falsehoods to be propagated at your own expense. I sought advice from the national party and I was sensitively told to ignore them, which I did. I now believe this advice was wrong. I also believe there was no ‘line’ on this issue.
Political economy agents like the BNP are real and they are winning elections. I am not scaremongering or claiming they are on the verge of taking the country at the next general election as some of their deluded supporters believe, but I am saying that it is likely they will win a seat in the European parliament and their support is growing. The reason why is because we have ignored them for far too long.
We have to decide if the BNP are a legitimate force in our democratic system or not. If they are not, make them illegal. As a democrat I would have difficulty with this. If you don’t make them illegal then we have to accept their democratic legitimacy and combat them as we do any other political party. If we don’t they will grow in strength. As Edmund Burke said, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”