I originally thought Ms Fiona Alexander, the hospitals Director of Communications, had replied and I had accidentally deleted deleted it or was sent but didn’t get to me for some reason. Now I think it was childish joke.
Thanks Fiona, for taking me oh, so seriously. That made you look sooo clever.
Moving on, because, I’m bigger than that, I’m not the snarky idiot, it appears a *real* journalist got a reply. No, really I don’t mind. Selly Oaks has refused the donation…
a spokesman for Selly Oak Hospital, which houses the army’s Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, said: “The British National Party is selling merchandise with the promise of donating the proceeds to the Selly Oak Hospital burns unit.
“Neither the University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust nor its official charity, UHB Charities, have been contacted by the BNP about this venture, and the Trust does not accept money from any political party,”
So. That’s a partial answer to the couple of questions in my email. That’ll do.
The BNP, typically, haven’t changed their article, or stuck up a new one, to let people know that the hospital won’t accept their donation, and are presumably still selling them under that guise (although I could be wrong).
The spin machine elsewhere has started to work. One of their top supporting blogs, Green Arrow, has a few words to say about it…
it seems strange that an hospital that is supposed to care for people would prefer them to suffer than accept money from a political party because they do not approve of its policies.
See what they did there? The hospital refused the donation not because the BNP are a political party but because the hospital doesn’t like it’s policies. The hospital though, doesn’t accept donations from any political party irrespective of policies.
I’m just surprised Selly Oaks hasn’t been called a communist organisation that’s part of the leftie conspiracy to replace the white man with in his own home.
I was going to post this once I got a reply, but I’m getting a bit impatient so I’m doing it now.
To: Fiona Alexander
From: Sim-O
Subject: BNP Donation
Good morning Ms Alexander,
The British National Party have launched a ‘Bring Our Troops Home’ sticker, declaring all the proceeds will be donated to Selly Oaks Hospital burns unit.
As you probably know, the BNP is a racist and divisive organisation that is “is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples” and is “committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration”.
‘Opposed to any form of racial integration’ sound strikingly similar to apartheid, doesn’t it?
‘Reversing the tide of non-white immigration’ is a term the BNP use for the deportation of people, British people to other countries. This would include, not just recent immigrants, but people born here, have had family in Britain for generations and which no other country has an obligation to take purely on the basis of the colour of the persons’ skin.
With this in mind, have the BNP informed you of their declared intention of donating money from the sale of these stickers to the Selly Oaks Hospital burns unit? If so, have they told you when that donation might happen?
What is your reaction? Do you have a statement?
Will the hospital be accepting the donation, which the BNP will no doubt use for political purposes?
Does the hospital have a policy regarding donations from political parties, as apposed to a campaigning local MP? If so, what is that policy?
Operation Freedom, the new campaign for er, something by the BNP have just made another cock up.
The latest email update libelled Peter Hain with the headline…
FORMER BANK ROBBER ACCUSES THE BNP OF BREAKING THE LAW!
Peter Hain has stated he may (or he is?) take(ing) legal action to stop Fat Nick going on the BBC Question Time as the BNP may not be a legally constituted party.
Peter Hain was arrested in the past, apparently, but is not a bank robber, obviously.
The email with the libel was sent at 11:31am, with a follow up at 11:47 with the word ’suspect’ added in the headline. Whether this correction will inhibit Peter from taking any action, I don’t know, but presume it does. Which is a shame.
Oh dear, BNP. You had better be more careful in future.
Over the weekend something called ‘Operation Freedom’ was launched.
I have heard or seen no news over the weekend and being a lazy arse, I’m just gonna go straight into it.
Well, according to the BNP, for it is they who have sent it, Fat Nick and his ex-NF buddy (whatever his name is) are going to be banned from the House of Commons.
Under a headline, in big, bold red type, they procliam…
ELECTED BNP PARLIAMENTARIANS BANNED FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS!
…a bit like that, really, there is an awful lot of waffle about Marxist state and totalitarian experiment and a fucking big history lesson, which also includes Simon de Montfort, which according to my l33t Wikipedia skilz was either a French nobleman, a son of a French nobleman or the grandson of a French noble man.
Just recently, crooked diabolical MP’s led by the arch-traitor Harriet Harman voted in favour to BAN the recently elected BNP MEPs, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, from the House of Parliament!
Hahahaha! Cunts.
Aw, fuck it. I wasn’t gonna swear in this post.
As far as I was aware, MEPs’ had traditionally had access to the Houses of Parliament, or at least the commons areas, as a favour. Y’know, they’re all working to the same ends, making Britain better etc, but never any formal right to go anywhere more than a normal prole does. I am prepared to be corrected on this point.
This effectively means they have banned 1 MILLION British voters and two democratically elected parliamentary representatives from the highest democratic institution in the country! They have banned YOU!
A little bit of confusion in the teeny-tiny minds of the racist fuckwits.
Because Fat Nick and his sicko side-kick are democratically elected representatives, but not to the House of Commons. Those one million voters already have someone that they can go to, representatives that were actually elected to the House of Commons in the last general election. Their MPs’. (Once again, lazy shit that I am, you’ll have to find out for yourself who them MPs’ are, but rest assured, each and every one of those one million voters will have an MP that they can got to.)
Fat Nicks’ and what’s-his-names’ arena is the EU parliament, not Westminster.
One little bit of success, that wasn’t even down to the them, and it’s gone right to their heads.
BNP leader Nick Griffin has agreed to ask his party to amend its constitution so it does not discriminate on grounds of race or religion, a court heard.
The UK’s equalities watchdog had argued the BNP broke the Race Relations Act by restricting members to “indigenous Caucasian” people.
The court heard Mr Griffin had agreed to use “all reasonable endeavours” to revise its constitution.
BNP members will be asked to agree to the changes at a meeting in November.
Either the begging letters didn’t raise enough or Fat Nick thought it would be better spent in the upcoming general election.
Will the disgruntled party faithful accept these changes? Who knows, but according to the current BNP consitution (pdf) says…
SECTION 14: REVISIONS TO THIS CONSTITUTION
1) Consideration will regularly be given to changes in this Constitution for the purpose of improving the functional efficiency of the party. Final authority to determine such changes, however, will rest with the elected National Chairman – saving those Sections protected by Section 13, Sub-section4.
So, the Chairman can change most of the constitution as he sees fit. What does Section 13, sub-section 4 say?
Any changes in Sections 1, 4, 5 or 13 of this constitution must be approved by a two thirds majority vote of members attending a General Members’ Meeting.
Follow the number. Follow the numbers.
Section 1 is Political Objectives
Section 4 is Elections to the Party Leadership
Section 5 is Advisory Council
Section 13 is General Members’ Meetings
All the above sections need a two third majority vote of the membership.
Section 2: Membership, doesn’t. Fat Nick, being the Chairman, has the authority to change that section of the constitution all by himself.
So where does that leave the BNP?
Fat Nick has no choice but to change the constitution because the law requires it to be changed and the Chairman has the authority to change it. The party faithful has no say in it. Either the constitution changes or the BNP stop being a legally* legitimate political party.
*Whatever, they will remain a morally illegitimate party.
One member offers me a drink as he says: “We’re not intimidating are we? We get a lot of bad press but we’re not thugs.”
But I don’t like what I hear next as around six people put their hands up to request an application form to become a BNP member. One convert shouts: “I’ll have an application form, but not a coloured one!”
It was greeted with laughter by most in the audience, and was a deeply unpleasant reminder of where I was.
…
While inside the building the recruitment drive was in full flow, it was a different story outside as four people got turned away. All were either black or Asian. There were no members of the ethnic minorities inside.
As I left a security guard told me: “After a while it was getting full up so we decided it had to be members only.”
Strange that, as I was given a seat all to myself and I’m not a member. And I swear there was plenty of space.
There have been a couple of posts on this blog recently, debating the policy of No Platform with regard to the BNP.
I am of the mind that not to be involved in the debates in various arenas along side the BNP and to challenge them as and when their bullshit is being spouted is to miss an opportunity to challenge their propaganda at the time of its seeding in the mind of the listener, at the best time to challenge it.
This view is challenged by the opposing thought that to go along with any appearance of the fascists is to give them credibility, a respectability that they do not deserve.
The two ideas are both, I think, valid. The No Platform policy does have some history to back it up, against the National Front, but I just cannot get my head round leaving those fuckers to bleat on about how we are under an invasion that is ethnically cleansing the indigenous population with out challenging it at the time. it feels a little like letting them get away with it.
I confess, I do not know what to do. Do I carry on with my attitude of trying to refute them, or go for the No Platform policy.*
Until now.
(*I have never been in a position where this decision has actually affected anyone or anything directly, but you never know what’s gonna happen in the future)
What the policy of challenging the BNP needs, is not just someone opposing them in debates, which I am sure there are many people who could rip them to shreds, but chairmen of those debates and interviewers that are willing and able to challenge them and let the anti-fascists challenge them and follow up the BNPs’ responses with something more robust than is currently happening.
Until the people challenging the fascists in these arenas are able to go at them harder, and deeper in to the fascists answers to expose the real truths behind what is being offered as real by the BNP, then the BNP are not just being given a platform, but are able to turn it into a form of propaganda.
It’s not going to happen though, is it? Getting real scrutiny of the fascists in debates and interviews? When you have stuff like this interview and supposedly intelligent people fucking up so royally, it’s gonna be interesting to see how Jack Straw, David Dimbleby and whoever else is going to appear on Question Time handle Fat Nick and his lies, but I fear it is just going to show how the media and such are just not up to the job.
The decision is made for me. No Platform it is then.
From the latest BNP mailing list updating their members on the Equalities Commission court case about their membership rules…
A few weeks ago we received an anonymous letter, supposedly from a CEHR insider, telling us that one of their senior executives had called a tele-conference in which he asked various members of staff to find ’sympathetic’ members of ethnic minorities who would agree to try to join the BNP. His idea was that this would provide fabricated evidence of our alleged membership discrimination. CEHR would then use taxpayers’ money to fund their legal actions against us and the individuals would be rewarded by getting damages from us.
Scarcely able to believe that even CEHR would be so cynical, corrupt and desperate, we submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to establish whether any of this is true. Last week we received our answer: Yes, it is! We have forced CEHR to confirm that they regard this as a very serious matter and have already launched an internal investigation. We will be given more details shortly. Once our lawyers have these, a whole new line of counter-attack will be open to us.
*bangs head on desk very fucking hard*
If this is true, then stupid fucking cunts. What the fuck are the Commission playing at?
If you gonna play the game like that you make sure it’s deniable, non-traceable. For fucks sake, take the cloak to the dry cleaners and polish up the dagger. If you’re gonna make such basic mistakes as this, why fucking bother in the first place.
I have been kindly invited to respond to a previous blog that argued the No Platform policy advocated by UAF is not the correct approach. Whilst I understand why many believe the way to stop the BNP is to share every platform with them, and enter into debates with them whenever they appear in the media arena, there are a number of difficulties with this tactic. I will try and make this response as short as possible.
Firstly, there is the question of historical evidence. If you are arguing that the BNP should be allowed to exist as a democratic political party, participate in elections, engage in debates alongside all the other political parties, and have their racist propaganda treated as a ‘view’, and that this is the best way to stop them, then the gaping hole in your argument is Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany. Hitler’s rise was through the democratic machinery of the state, starting out in a small extremist party, and ending up as a Fascist dictator. I need not spell out the details of the holocaust again, but the sheer scale of these horrific acts should serve as a warning to us all. The only thing that did work in the end was direct physical confrontation in the shape of one of the (if not the) bloodiest wars in human history. Democracy was no safeguard to these crimes, it enabled them. The BNP should not be given a platform. History shows us what can happen when Fascist parties are. By sharing a platform, you begin to create the legitimising conditions that can lead to the most extreme consequences imaginable.
But things are different now I hear you say. That would never happen here! Well, I imagine that the majority of the German population would never have thought that it could have happened there! If things are so different, why are we still having to deal with the threat of fascism and racism nearly 70 years on?
On the basis of evidence alone, the policy of sharing a platform and allowing Fascists to participate in democratic life must be discarded. If this was a scientific theory one was testing, it would be immediately negated, but there is a general reluctance to suggest that we should marginalise them and use direct action to prevent them being heard. This is Fascist itself isn’t it? People have a right to their own views?
The real issue at hand, and the one that places constraints on the choice of tactics that we should use, is the issue of free speech (I have argued previously on this blog site about this - please address it if you disagree). Allowing racist and Fascist parties to spout their propaganda, and defending it on the basis of freedom of speech is a complete misapplication of the notion of ‘freedom’ to ’speech’. If we were in favour of freedom of choice, or freedom of action, we would not expect these ‘freedoms’ to include choosing to murder someone, or the freedom to rape someone. We understand freedom as bounded by some form of basic moral framework, and expressed within a social context.
Why then do we think that when applied to speech ‘freedom’ means saying whatever we want? We would not apply it in the same way to other ‘freedoms’. ‘Speech’ and ‘action’ are not isolated spheres. Saying whatever you want is not harmless, it does have consequences. Inciting and promoting racial hatred leads to physical acts of racial violence. Ask any victim of a racial crime, or the many people in this country that have to put up with racist abuse. Freedom of speech does not mean that you should have this right.
It is this misapplication that paralyses the current Government in allowing the party to exist, and also the many millions of opponents of the BNP who mistakenly believe that outlawing the party would somehow be anti-democratic. What actually happens is that a Fascist party, once in power, get’s rid of democracy and most freedoms.
Secondly, and following on from the point above, I also want to address the way that debate manifests itself, and to show the limited potential of engaging in debate with them. I watched the previously posted clip of the Nicky Campbell show. After 10 whole minutes of debate, I did not see the BNP being shown up hugely. There was the odd moment where Brons was not comfortable, and avoided the question, but this is behaviour we see from all politicians. The Reverend also brought in the notion of free speech I have previously addressed, and quickly the topic became derailed and muddled. By even having him on the show, Bron’s racist hatred has been presented as a ‘view’, and has not been treated with the contempt it deserves.
And if you are in any doubt about how giving Fascists a platform will not help show them up, then watch this clip of Andrew Marr interviewing Nick Griffin:
How brilliant was Marr at showing Griffin up?
Griffin may be many things, but he is not stupid. He knows what he can and can’t say, has been carefully rebranding the BNP, and will anticipate many of the questions that come his way. If he were to appear on question time, any audience questions would be made available upfront, giving him time to prepare. Sitting him alongside the leading members of the three main parties would confer status on him, without any guarantee that they would be able to show him up – we don’t trust them to do anything else right, so why this?
The only solution is to refuse to share a platform with them, and confronting them with direct action, whether that is trying to stop their festival of race hate, or standing up to the EDL in the streets of Birmingham or the Mosques of Luton.
To recap why:
Racism and Fascism is not a ‘view’ to be debated.
Sharing a platform legitimises these ‘views’.
There is a very limited potential for ’showing up’ the BNP for what they are. Both mainstream TV programmes referred to above certainly do not show the BNP in a particularly bad light.
Allowing Fascist parties to participate in a democratic system was a contributing factor in creating the conditions in which Hitler rose to power.
We cannot risk making the same mistakes again.
There is much more that could be said on this matter, but there is hard evidence, from history and the present day, that shows the limitations of an approach to defeating the Fascists based on engaing them as a political opponent.
