Great Big Melting Pot - Thu May 28

I watched the BNP Euro-Election Party Political Broadcast on TV t’other night, and read Eddie Izzard’s impassioned rebuttal of it in the Daily Mirror at lunchtime yesterday. And – following on from a discussion we were having at a picnic at the weekend where I had to confess how little I actually believe in, deep down – I thought I’d have a bit of a think about what I believe in on this.

Cos the Euro Elections are next week – and though I’ve already done my vote by post (I voted Green, if you’re interested. Voting Green actually seems to count in the format of the European Elections!!), you may not have done, and you may not even be planning on voting. I’m with Eddie on this. Try and vote, if you can, and try and vote for anyone but the BNP.

Their EEPPB the other night relied heavily on the fact that our grandparents and great-grandparents fought and died in wars so we could have the country we have today. Eddie makes the valid point that most of those wars were against the rise of Fascism: a political viewpoint not a million miles from that of the BNP. This is one of the things that irks me most about these people – that they try and tell me that their way of feeling English is the truth of what it is to be English.

I am English. Not only am I English, but you’d have to clamber a long way back up my family tree to find any hint of any other nationality. Many of my friends and acquaintances have at least one grandparent or great-grandparent from another country – if they’re not from another country themselves! Not me though. I think as far as I know I may be one-sixtyfourth Scottish, but that’s a tiny drop in the ocean of my all-encompassing Englishness. I like lists, the Lake District, football, being embarrassed, Stephen Fry and the monarchy. Je suis un Englishman. For real.

And still – I don’t care, I do not care about “foreigners coming over, stealing our jobs and scaring our children”. I can’t share the BNP’s blinkered, paranoid worldview. In fact, I welcome them. I’m all for that great big melting pot. Come, Thomas. Play your French jazz funk upon my stage unmolested. ;-)

For (way historical) example, the greatest thing this nation has ever produced – the English language – would be nothing without the influence of these “foreigners”. Old English is the Anglo Saxon tongue (illegal immigrants themselves, of course – despite the BNP’s wish to teach Anglo-Saxon poetry in our schools), which developed into Middle English with the influence of further Viking and Norman foreign job-and-land-stealers. Modern English (the language of Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Kipling, Alf Garnett and many other things the BNP would hail with misty eyes as being quintessentially “English”, gor bless em) is based on this polyglot descendancy*. We absorb, we develop, we move on. Evolution is a necessary facet of existence.

Nick Griffin and his ilk would probably dismiss me as a middle-class Sainsburys-ethnic-food-aisle-shopping liberal. And they’d be right. But still, it’s my country too – and I like it full of foreigners. I’m not advocating unmonitored open access immigration for all – but then none of the political parties are, when it comes down to it. That’s not what’s happening. It worries me deeply that these last few years have seen their political stock rise and reach a level where they’re treated almost as a serious political party by many and not just a bunch of far-right Little Englanders. These people are The Baddies from where I’m standing…

Fact. The BNP’s constitution bars all but “indigenous Caucasians”. I did not know that.

Fact. In their 2005 manifesto they use such snazzy taglines as “Abolishing multiculturalism, preserving Britain” and “Multi-racialism – a recipe for disaster”. They also propose the re-introduction of “capital punishment for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers”.

So. What a relief. There's something I genuinely believe. I don’t dig on the BNP. I suppose I have to acknowledge their right to say and think what they choose – within non-violent parameters – but… don’t vote for ‘em, eh? Ta.

* My spellcheck doesn’t recognise the word “descendancy”, but I’m pretty sure it’s right. Hey, I’m English! I can make up what I please! ;-)