If you haven’t seen last night’s Question Time, you probably should. You can find it all on YouTube (UK residents, look on BBC iPlayer). Nick Griffin (whose ancestors were apparently travellers, not that that matters), was shown to be not the cunning demagogue that some feared, but rather the slippery, dissembling, sweaty fascist you and I already knew he was. I don’t think the BNP deserves a platform on primetime TV but I imagine the BBC got good viewing figures.
Over at Vice, there’s a bit of video about the Welsh Defence League marching in Swansea. I can’t embed the video, but you can see it here. The WDL/EDL are the street thugs of the BNP. Performing Nazi salutes, shouting racial threats and promising violence, these people are the real face of the BNP’s politics.
As a side note, it’s nice to see Andrew Fitton, SWP and Unite Against Fascism organiser in Swansea, on the video. I haven’t really thought much about Andrew or any of the other SWP activists since I left Swansea more than seven years ago… but seeing him on that video reminds me of both the joy of discussing and marching for something I believed in, and the bitter-sweet frustration that comes from being involved in a small political group. Seeing Swansea UAF on video reminds me that I need to get back to that kind of direct action right now.
So thanks, Vice, for that.
So were you part of the WDL or the SWP? As a long-term Plaid boot-sandal-boy, it’s not like I can tell the bladdy difference anyway between two supposedly opposed bunches of shaven-headed totalitarian English centralists, except my impression is that a lot of the SWP are getting past it. Yourself excluded, of course.
I watched it and it was revealing in many ways.
He bottled it, came across as a lightweight. Could not answer any question with any sincerity or conviction. If I was a BNP activist I would be seeking a change of leader.
Such a hoo-ha about his appearing in Question Time would help the BNP and it completely backfired. Now when are the Greens going to get invited?
Both: I was a kind of frozen horse.
No, I was a fully paid up (half rate) member of the SWP. There were generally fewer shaved heads and, from what I could tell, a lot more cups of tea and sandwiches.
Elements within the SWP still represent the most coherent and eloquent leftist critique in the UK. I no longer attend meetings, so I don’t know what the situation is like ‘on the ground’.