Glenda Jackson: How to beat the fascists? Build houses ...
There have been few more sickening sights in politics than the spectacle of Nick Griffin celebrating his election to the European Parliament.
But it's important we don't let our disgust overcome our reason. Last night wasn't the triumph Griffin and his acolytes had been hoping for. At the start of the European election campaign he had confidently boasted he would secure a minimum of seven seats. As the expenses scandal broke, he raised his prediction to 12. Even as late as yesterday morning, Griffin was estimating four gains, including one for his organ grinder Simon Darby, the man who described Archbishop Sentamu as a "spear thrower".
Make no mistake, one BNP member is shaming. Two is a moral catastrophe. But this is not the "breakthrough" that Griffin craved and many of us feared. The number of people voting for his unique cocktail of racism and hate actually fell compared to five years ago. The BNP share of the vote rose a paltry 1.3 points. And all this against the background of recession, expenses and ministerial resignations. At least the way ahead is clear. The days of arguing whether we should confront or ignore the BNP are over. We won't confront them. We will tear into them. We will highlight and expose and destroy their agenda of prejudice and bigotry and division.
We also have to realise that our political parties, however principled, cannot lead the fightback against extremists who take pride in positioning themselves beyond the political mainstream. The anti-fascist campaign group Searchlight, based in my constituency, constructed a unique coalition of faith groups, trade unionists, business people, celebrities and voluntary organisations to face down Griffin's storm troopers. They ultimately failed to prevent his election but without their campaign the nightmare of a dozen BNP victories could have become reality. Those who yearn for a "new progressive consensus" would do well to follow Searchlight's lead.
But while politicians cannot take the lead, nor can we abrogate our responsibilities. We must be tough on fascism, and tough on the causes of fascism. A social housing revolution; a renewed and sustained regional investment strategy; policy priorities that reach out to voters who have never stepped inside a focus group. These are the weapons that Nick Griffin fears most. Anything that undermines social, political and yes, racial, inequality undermines, fatally, his platform of extremism.
Within a year, we face our defining reckoning with the British National Party. Griffin believes the ultimate prize, a parliamentary seat, lays within his grasp. We have less than 12 months to prepare ourselves. That will be the moment that determines whether last night was after all, the BNP breakthrough, or whether it was the moment when the enemies of extremism drew a line in the sand. Nick Griffin should beware – after last night he crosses that line at his peril.
Glenda Jackson is Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited





Comments
There have been few more sickening sights in politics than the spectacle of Nick Griffin celebrating his election to the European Parliament.
Glenda Come on let us celebrate to all the victories. At least he bought one seat to UK. Have you seen how sportsmen throw the bottle of new fizzy whiskey over the shoulder not drinking a drop? Do I tell them to build the factory of bottles?
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
http://bnp.org.uk/2009/06/bnptv-intervi
Isn't it obvious that the attempt to bring down the government for not being pro Israel enough by the same Zionist controlled media is supported by "Labour Friends of Israel"? just look at the cabinet ministers who have resigned in the last week - Blears, Flynt, Parnell and Kennedy, all members of LFI.
Now we know what that meeting on Deripaska's yacht was all about. Remember that?
Let us recall that the cabal included Mandelson, Osbourne and Nat Rothschild, son of lady Rothschild who is one of the largest financiers of the Conservatives. Lady Rothschild, by the way, financed her friend Hilary Clinton's presidential bid, until she lost out to Obama and then financed McCain - so she is a racist as well as a Zionist, but the two go together.
What's is it all about? Maybe, the forthcoming attack against Iran with the U.S. on behalf of and maybe with Israel over Irans non-existent nuclear weapons programme.
People need to wake up.
But they did.
And the BNP do.
Why have you and your evil party done this? Quite simple give an immigrant a passport and they vote Labour, or at least 80% do. In 12 years you have changed the complexion of our society and made poor white people second class citizens without a voice. You Glenda Jackson and your rotten government have forced these people into the arms of the BNP, so I can only blame the nasty socialists you represent.
You have traded on our sense of fair play, and abused our traditional tolerance. Instead of bemoaning Nick Griffen you should look in the mirror to look at the ugly sight of Britain today. If you and your party wanted to stop the BNP you could do it overnight by taking away their ammunition. You could stop all immigration, stop all arranged marriages, and throw out all the illegal immigrants tomorrow, but you will not do this because it cuts off your supply of voters.
So do not feign disgust over the BNP when they provide you with a political distraction away from the appalling mess you and your government have made of this country. Remember you have made our poor poorer, you have made our streets more dangerous, you have taken us into an illegal war, you have failed to give our troops the right combat equipment and you have ruined our economy.
There is no more sickening sight in politics than to see a socialist PM groveling to keep his job.
The rise of the BNP has been caused entirely by the contempt politicians have had for the concerns of ordinary people. For years people have been trying desperately to raise concerns about massive amounts of immigration and it consequent effects on the very fabric of our society. Good people have been branded as rasists (and worse) by Labour and their trendy left followers, simply because they have been concerned about the seismic effects that Labours immigration policy has had on our communities. One only has to walk down the street to see the sheer magnitude of the effects that Labours unfettered immigration policies have yielded. Untold hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been let into our contry by Labour, many of whom are unskilled, poor (unable to support even themselves, let alone contribute to the economy), unhealthy (no medicals are required to immigrate to the UK and are therefore a burden on the NHS) and have religious convictions which are incompatible with modern society. these people have been let into our borders without even the most cursory of checks. They are not even required to speak English (unlike immigrants to Australia and New Zealand).
Labour has FAILED even to deport FAILED asylum seakers.
Labout has FAILED to accept the need for any immigration control whatsoever.
Labour has FAILED to deport criminals that have committed serious crimes such as murder of UK citizens. Remember those damning statistic published 2 years ago about this very matter?
Labour has FAILED to develop an immigration policy that benefits the citizens of the UK.
Labour has FAILED to insist that immigrant integrate into our way of life - and now we are seeing the results of that little experiment, arn't we!
But most of all Labour has FAILED - no REFUSED - to listen to the repeated calls from the people to halt unfettered immigration. Instead it chose to denigrate those people who were raising the concerns. Well they now have their answer. Someone IS listening and it is the BNP. All of us have New Labour to thank for THAT little gem.
NOTE LABOUR AND CONSERVATIVE POLITICIANS - deal with peoples concerns about immigration or the BNP will continue to succeed. For too long, from your crystal towers, you have ignored british people - and now you have seen the result.
The British people demand and end to immigration by means of arranged marriages (an outmoded primitive religious custom). They demand an END to all immigration from people who are unskilled or unqualified or whose professions are not required from an economic perspective. They demand that all immigrants have a medical exam and if they are unhealthy their residency refused on the grounds of public cost.
The left-leaning media have treated the BNP appallingly - most noticeably the treatment of their leader by Dimbleby on the TV. And before the carping whining bleating lefties start on their usual path of denigrating people who have opinions like this - NOT I AM NOT A MEMBER OF THE BNP NOR WOULD I EVER VOTE FOR THEM. GOT IT! I am just echoing the concerns of the huge majority of British people abouit the seismic changes brought about by unfettered immigration into the UK - and the sickening behaviour of politicians when people raise their legitimate concerns.
Did you write this to demonstrate just how unfit to govern you and all the other champagne socialists are?
If our MPs (whose standing in the community is hardly unblemished) brand the BNP for racism and hatred, people will nowadays see that as a diversionary tactic to stifle argument about their own crimes. Then we have large sections of the media who are equally vehement and who again, are not always regarded by the public as the paragons they like to be thought as.
And together they make unfortunate bedfellows.
To many people a coordinated campaign by politicians and the press is something to treat with the gravest suspicion ... and at times like this, a very good reason to raise two fingers. It was hardly unexpected, I suggest, to a bullying and dictatorial and seemingly deaf executive.
People will usually respond to honesty and decency but they'll mock you, as they did on Thursday, otherwise.
You reap what you sow, Ms. Jackson.
I seek representation in Parliament, not the installation of whipped-into-shape media luvvie ciphers who seem to have the odd notion they are there to 'rule'. And misuse this privilege to obsess about trivia. It's not like you and your ilk are even being very effective in your core mission of seeking out and destroying those you don't fancy, even if they are rather unattractive. The only ones you can get rid of seem to be such as Ms. Kennedy. Way to go!
That your Leader has 'triumphed' again in some eyes, thanks to some odd, sycophantic internal popularity contest against the wishes of 85% of the electorate and the clear interests of the country, is something I will make those who made selfish, careerist choices NOW suffer for WHEN I eventually get my real chance at the next ballot.
To paraphase Orwell, I suspect that if we "looked from Griffin to BNP voter, and from BNP voter to Griffin, and from Griffin to BNP voter again... it [would be] impossible to say which was which."
When did a Labour government NOT try to build its way out of trouble? Witness the ghastly tower blocks thrown up for the labour voting masses, and the soulless estates built for proletarian workers ,going back to the sixties brave new 'liberal' world and beyond.One can almost date the labour party's occupation by this architecture.
The arrogance of the old regime,which is schooled in race hatred reflected in Anglophobic laws,shines through with every sentence. One million voters,one million opinions about the divisive,politically correct,revisionist wreckage the far left have left tells our 'representatives' nothing- except to keep up the empty rhetoric.
The trouble is that the English population( the ones who are voting for the BNP) are abused daily with similar comments seen here.If you disagree with being treated as a second class citizen.If you don't want mass immigration or 'positive discrimination' practiced against your school leaver son or daughter
you are either a fascist and need to be re-educated in a state scheme, or you are a racist and need to be hauled before the CRE and prosecuted. Glenda, you are a hypocrite and traitor to your own people.
You represent the ugly reality of living under Labour's reign of terror.You have tried to intimidate us,suppress our freedoms and continue to imagine you inhabit the high moral ground.
I thank you that your rotten, corrupt and divisive party and its extremist agenda have finally awoken the sleeping English .We could not have started the rebirth of our country without you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNEIprfX
We are not fascists in this country, but we are bloody fed up being told by those at westminster who live in the suburbs with nice salaries, pensions, expenses, gravy train mates, and light as air backgrounds what and why we have voted for certain groups. It is all window dressing and a way to keep the plebs in their place.
We the electorate (who are mostly to blame for voting for the same rubbish decade after decade) are led through the nose by the media, colunmists, tv broadcasters, political lobbyists, champagne socialists, the gentry and the now ubiquitous bloggers (or should that be blaggers).
We know we are lied to daily by the press (who have to sell papers), politicians (whose only aim is their self preservation at all costs) and local government.
If we choose to vote for the BNP then it is because we are fed up with illegal immigrants using the human rights act against us, mass immigration to an already over crowded island, islamists telling us what we can and cannot watch, read or comment on whilst a morally bankrupt cadre of MP's look on, a failed social experiment called multiculturalism, an NHS that counts managers and targets over patient care and honest delivery of services, and an education system that is so corrupt that frankly my labrador could get into one of the universities now, a public transport system that a clown from Hull talked up in 1997 and then subsequently went to further undermine,a policeforce that is so driven by mindless targets that the figures are so unreliable even the police don't know what they mean anymore, a building policy that even a moron (what the hell does that say for what is proposing and supporting the current building fiasco) could see was slowly, but surely stangling the south east causing further problems with transport, health, education and policing, back gardens designated as developed sites for pleb developers to knock up some eyesore under the guise of "executive" homes. The list is almost endless as to both zanulabour and tory gents inability to provide true meaningful leadership and sensible policies, not just the morally bankrupt and easy option ones we have had for decades.
I'll take no journalistic lectures from an ex-luvvie representing a party who could not find their backside with a map or both hands.
Take a very good hard look at youselves before casting any attempt at the post labour wipe out side swipes please. The political stage is much like the theatre as both depend on entertaining the audience with real substance, only the tickets for your show are and have proved to be too expensive for there lack of content.
I notice that Blair has not put any of his brood up for service in the army to show his commitment to the cause.