Give him enough rope...

I was one of those who watched Question Time avidly last night – I’m fairly sure the viewing figures must have shown a huge upturn, although I have been guilty of not just watching the programme before but of actually taking an interest in the debates that go on there.

Last night though was, as pointed out by many people, less ‘Question Time’ and more ‘The Nick Griffin Show’. One would have thought the leader of the BNP would have relished the opportunity to publicly explain his real policies and thoughts, and defend himself and his party from the scurrilous things that have been said about them in the media. A media that is, they claim, biased against the BNP because by their own admission they are not part of the mainstream. There is a lot that is not ‘mainstream’ that I like – music, comedy – but right wing non-mainstream politics is rather different.

And Griffin may now be reflecting on his decision to submit himself and his beliefs – past and present (he says unconvincingly that these are two different things) – to public scrutiny. He has had to attempt to defend the indefensible. Which is, of course, impossible.

As for his wonderful take on “English” history, if so much hate and poison did not arise from it, I would have found his views hugely amusing. There are many countries which have identifiable indigenous races – the Maoris, Native American Indians and Aborigines are just three examples. In each of these areas of the world, at a relatively late period of human history, a foreign power marched in and took the land away from that indigenous population, usually violently, by force and with no heed for their cultural history or the thought of compensation for their loss. Although certainly not the only nation to act as usurpers in this way, the British were one of the most notable.

However, if one looks at the history of our own country, the earliest accepted inhabitants were Celts, most of whom fled in the face of wave after wave of foreign conquerors – Saxons, Britons, Norse, Romans: even the Angles, who according to some gave their name to England, were actually Germanic. If there are any true descendants of the Celts left (which I doubt) they would reside in the farthest corners of Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. The rest of us, according to the BNP, are all immigrants. And that’s without the Normans, Huguenots – I could go on. I wonder what Mr Griffin’s family background is? But perhaps he would not have a problem with the mix of races above in view of the fact that they all share a similar (but not identical) skin pigmentation. Yet I stand corrected – Griffin declared on the programme that colour is not the issue.

Even I cringed at times as he was loudly (and deservedly) ridiculed for claiming that he couldn’t explain why he had denied the Holocaust nor why he had changed his mind – even when given complete dispensation by Jack Straw! And his declaration that everyone would agree that gay men are ‘creepy’ had to be heard to be believed.

But I thought it was right of the BBC to give him a public platform in this way, and while I respect and understand their motives, I believe those who protested outside the building were misguided and simply gave the BNP more publicity, and of a more sympathetic nature than Griffin achieved. Quite apart from the issue of following their own rules, the BBC would in refusing Griffin a place on Question Time, have created a martyr, allowing the BNP to claim unfair bias against them. And before the programme was aired I believed that if given enough rope, Griffin would publicly hang himself and his party – and I think he effectively did so last night.