"Democratic" BNP choose strange bedfellows

Despite their (sadly, slightly successful) attempts to persuade the British electorate that they are a legitimate, democratic, non-racist political party one does not need to delve far into the murky world of the British National Party to discover that they are friends with some very strange and unpleasant characters.

The BNP have long been seen as no more than neo-Nazi thugs

Party leader Nick Griffin loves to put on a sharp suit and appear on television, where he paints a pretty picture of the new image that the far-right neo-fascist party has been forced to adopt since finally realising that the British are - on the whole - a tolerant people who would never vote for a bunch of Nazi thugs. So power-hungry is he that under his leadership, the party has transformed itself into one that at first glance appears to be the only political group willing to tackle the public's fears over issues such as immigration. Meanwhile, the main parties are so obsessed with three minute soundbite politics and electioneering that they have entirely failed to take note of how widespread these misconceived fears are (to date, only Boris Johnson - G_d help us - has done anything to put these dangerous worries to rest), with the result that our peaceful, friendly, tolerant nation is now represented by a pair of fascists in the European Parliament. That's right - fascists. As in what Hitler, the same man many of our grandparents gave their lives to defeat when he threatened Britain and the British, was.

Under Nick Griffin's leadership, they have worked hard to give themselves a respectable image.

For all his faults (being a fascist and a racist with criminal convictions to match), Mr. Griffin is a clever politician. During his leadership, the BNP's image in the public eye has changed from that of booted skinhead hooligans to a party that can achieve a respectable share of the vote in elections.

However, you barely need to scratch the surface to discover that they're still the same racist yobs that they always were, and one of the most effective ways to demonstrate this is to look at those the BNP choose as their political friends. Mr. Griffin has faced problems in the past when photographs of him on stage looking distinctly pally with the Ku Klux Klan's Stephen "Don" Black were published. Not long after that, it emerged that James von Brunn - the gunman who opened fire in Washington's Holocaust Museum - had links to the party (Griffin calls the Holocaust the "Holohoax," incidentally). In 1995, William Pierce, founder and leader of the USA's National Alliance - a group which celebrated the 100th anniversary of Hitler's birth and referred to him as "the greatest man of our era" - spoke at the BNP's annual rally in London. Other members of the organisation have spoken on several occasions at BNP fund-raising events in the USA. And there are many others.

Yet another example comes to light in the wake of this year's Red, White and Blue festival. Red, White and Blue is an annual event organised by the BNP and held on land belonging to a supporter in Derbyshire; this year, it was attended by around 1500 people - worryingly, that's twice as many as last year. Highlights of the festival included talks by Mr. Griffin himself (including one on the subject of tracing your ancestors - and no doubt how to cover up the facts if you discover that dear old Granny was Jewish) and some no doubt hilarious comedy from Mad Frankie Waller (sadly, Mr. Waller seems to live in the same century his political leanings belong to - he doesn't have a website, so you'll have to do without a sample of his material).

Those festival-goers so inclined were given the opportunity to sit down and listen to speeches given by foreign guests - one of them in the shape of Roberto Fiore, the leader of Italy's far-right Forza Nuova and a man who once said that he is happy to be described as a neo-fascist, talking about the alleged threat Europe faces from what has become known as Islamic extremism (we say "what has become known as" because a five minute conversation on the subject with any well-informed, intelligent Muslim will reveal there is nothing Islamic whatsoever about attacks such as those carried out in London in 2005 and Madrid in 2004).

Roberto Fiore, leader of Italy's far-right Forza Nuova and a man who says he is happy to be called a neo-fascist, spoke at the BNP's Red, White and Blue festival last weekend.

Back in 1985, Mr. Fiore was sentenced to ten years in prison for being a member of the outlawed terrorist group Armed Revolutionary Nuclei who carried out the 1980 Bologna bombing which killed 85 people and wounded 200 (Fiore was tried in his absence, remaining out of Italy until the conviction was "timed out" under the country's statute of limitation laws, and returned home in 1999). The organisation also assassinated magistrate Mario Amato, who had been investigating far-right activities and groups and carried out another 33 murders during the four years that it was active.

You can tell a great deal about somebody according to the company they choose to keep, don't you think?

BNP beats up man outside pub?

Here's an interesting story. The BBC report that David Drew, the MP for Stroud, says that British National Party supporters gave a man "one hell of a hiding" after spilled beer on party leader Nick Griffin.

Nick Griffin - with some beer. We hope that it was only St***a Ar***s that was thrown over him - we'd hate to think of nice beer being wasted on a neo-Nazi.
Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license.

According to Deputy Leader Simon Darby, Mr. Griffin and guests were having a meal in the pub when an unnamed man spilled beer on him. Both Mr. Drew and Mr. Darby agree that there was an altercation in the pub and the man was asked to leave by the landlord, but at this point the stories differ. Mr. Drew says that the man was then taken out of the pub and beaten up by the holocaust denier's supporters, while Mr. Darby says that the man then lay in wait outside where he threw the beer over Mr. Griffin, at which point he was "restrained by our [the BNP's] security because he had a glass in his hand..." Mr. Drew is "trying to distort and warp the situation," he claims, adding that the party "have yet to decide whether to report it to the police." Notice the difference in the two stories over when the beer was spilled - was it in the pub, resulting in the man being ejected, or outside the pub as Mr. Darby claims? Was beer spilled twice, and if so why hasn't Mr. Darby emphasised this, if only to make his version of events watertight?

Hmm. Definitely worth keeping an eye on. Mr. Griffin is always, when in public, accompanied by group of rather large and tough-looking men: "I am not prepared to accept that any politician has a private army," Mr. Darby says. Bodyguards are one thing - even we would agree that Mr. Griffin - who is most certainly more likely to be attacked or even killed than most of us - has the right to exist, even if we do hate everything that he and his party stand for; but if it is shown that they really did give the man "a hiding" rather than merely restrained him to prevent injury, it shoots rather a noticeable hole in their claims to be a legitimate, democratic party.

There is no mention of whether or not the unnamed man is also considering pressing charges. If he does, however, it may well be the case that he has witnesses. If he does and the BNP do not, it will be very hard to believe Mr. Darby's claims. Like we say - worth keeping an eye on.

Griffin acts like an idiot

Maybe it's because of his failure to make enough political allies in the EU Parliament to from a far-right bloc, but BNP leader Nick Griffin isn't usually quite as moronic as he's being today. In an interview with the BBC, he proposed that the EU begins sinking ships carrying prospective illegal immigrants from Africa.

Mr. Griffin says that his party would support the deliberate sinking of boats packed full of poor, often malnourished men, women and children such as this one.

"Throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya," says the holocaust-denying fascist, who recently became one of two BNP officials voted in as British MEPs, "... the only measure, sooner or later, which is going to stop immigration and stop large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans dying on the way to get over here is to get very tough with those coming over. Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats."

The BBC interviewer, Shirin Wheeler, replied that she didn't think "the EU is in the business of murdering people at sea."

"I didn't say anyone should be murdered at sea - I say boats should be sunk, they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya," Mr. Griffin told her.

So what Mr. Griffin is proposing is that ships full of desperately poor people, many of them weak from malnourishment, some of them women and children, are deliberately sunk. Some of them would obviously die as a result - we don't even need to get started on the environmental cost of deliberately sinking a ship in the Mediterranean, which would release oil and other pollution into one of the Earth's most delicate ecosystems.

This is one of those occasions, rather like the events that led to his conviction for racial hatred, where Mr. Griffin shows his true colours (or colour prejudice) by allowing his thuggish, racist mouth to work more quickly than his weaselish, political brain. Anyone who has fallen for the BNP's lies about how it has changed as a party, is no longer racist and advocates democratic policies that are in Britain's best interests should pay very careful attention. Those of us who have not been taken in can look at his comments as amounting to little more than advocacy of the murder of unarmed civilians and as such use it as yet another reason to hate and oppose both him and all that he represents.

How long before his brain catches up, he realises he's just made another in a long series of BNP cock-ups and starts explaining in some convoluted and contrived way how his words were taken out of context and twisted by the BBC to support their own liberal ideals? Our money is on tomorrow by lunchtime.

BNP failing in Europe already

British National Party leader Nick Griffin has been travelling back and forth from Brussels ever since his election as an MEP, trying his best to find enough like-minded members to form a bloc of far-right MEPs so that he can take a central role within it. However, on Tuesday he was forced to admit that there is "no possibility" of finding that degree of support for his party. "We have failed to form a formal group," he says. "It's disappointing but not surprising." Especially not for the vast numbers of European citizens who are opposed to extremist politics, despite Mr. Griffin's belief that he speaks for a significant percentage of people who share his racist views.

Fascists Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons will not be allocated an office in the EU Parliament building. Maybe they could find shelter in the bins round the back where they, their party and their policies belong instead.
Image by Zinneke, taken from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

This is a major set-back to both Griffin and the party's dreams of grandeur. If they remain unattached to a larger group, their two MEPs - Griffin and Andrew Brons - will lose out on an extra £1 million of funding, will not be allocated an office, will not get administrative staff and won't be permitted to take part in the European Parliament's main committee votes. Sajjad Karim, the Conservative MEP representing Griffin's North West England constituency, says that the organisation's failure is evidence of "how ineffective the BNP will be in the European Parliament." Karim's sarcasm is admirable. Griffin and Brons have been holding talks with officials from the French Front National, Belgian Vlaams Belang, Bulgaria's Ataka and Hungary's Jobbik parties. All share similar right-wing policies but can summon up insufficient MEPs between themselves to form a bloc which, according to EU rules, must number at least 25 people from seven different countries. Other groups, such as the Northern League of Italy, have similar views to those of the BNP but are hesitant to form an alliance with it due to its controversial reputation. With any luck, this is an early indication that the fascist BNP's recent electoral success is no more than a transient phenomenon and will soon be seen to be no more than an anachronism. Griffin, Brons and the rest of their hate-filled cronies are all too fond of tricking themselves into thinking they have widespread support - hopefully this will serve to remind them that they speak only for a tiny minority and as such will not gain the support they require to achieve any sort of real power.

Bernie Ecclestone? Shut up...

Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone has declared his preference for totalitarian regimes over democracies in a bizarre Times interview that appears to demonstrate his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Attacking today's politicians, who he says are too concerned with winning elections, he said: "Apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done. In the end he got lost, so he wasn’t a very good dictator because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it . . . so either way he wasn’t a dictator."

Ecclestone - not an anti-semite, just an idiot.
Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

Ecclestone also said that F1 fans who painted their faces to emulate Lewis Hamilton were acting in what he seems to believe to be an unintentionally racist manner (it should be pointed out that many were fans of the driver in particular). Recently he claimed that F1 needed a "black, Jewish woman who, if possible, wins some races." That he is neither racist nor anti-semitic seems obvious, so why say anything so ridiculously stupid?

A Board of Deputies of British Jews spokesperson replied, saying: "Mr Ecclestone’s comments regarding Hitler, female, black and Jewish racing drivers, and dictatorships are quite bizarre. He says, ‘Politics is not for me’, and we are inclined to agree." Denis MacShane MP condemned the 78 year-old billionaire's comments, as did the editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper.

Amongst other things that Hitler got done would be the murder of six million Jews, three million Poles, half a million gypsies, between 5000 and 15,000 homosexuals, between 2500 and 5000 Jehovah's Witnesses and an unknown number of people from other groups deemed undesirable by the Nazis - all in all, around 11,000,000 human beings (and if anyone is thinking about e-mailing us to dispute those figures, don't bother. We're not even going to bother linking them to Wikipedia, because if you do doubt them there's really no hope for you). Let's not forget the forced sterilisation of black people in North Africa, the countless civilians killed during bombing raids and at the hands of Nazi troops and the utter destruction of Germany and suffering of the German people as a direct result of his actions.

Maybe he did get the buses running on time, but I'd rather wait ten minutes at the bus stop than see 11 million people killed. Bernie, seriously - shut the fuck up, you idiot.

Irish Racism

How would you feel if, when you're on your holiday this year, the natives spat at you in the street? How about if a mob of them attacked the place you were staying in, chanting terrifying slogans that informed you in no uncertain terms that they hated you and wanted to kill you and your children? Imagine that they were so violent and so persistant that you took refuge in a church, certain that there you would be safe; but the mob threw bricks and smashed the windows, covering you and your children in shards of broken glass.

This symbolises the real Britain. Racist thugs do not - unfortunately, racist thugs are what one hundred Romanians will forever associate our nation with.
Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

It wouldn't take long before you forgot the photographs in the travel agent's glossy brochure and you became convinced that you were in an vicious, violent country inhabited by evil, blood-thirsty savages, would it? Would you recommend it to your friends when you got home, or would you tell them the people living there are nothing more than the very worst sort of barbarians? Would you hate them and their country for the rest of your life?

OK, let's flip things around a bit. The country is Britain - Northern Island, and it's not you, it's a group of people from Romania. They're not on holiday, but have become so entranced by the pictures and what they've read in the brochure that they've decided they would like to spend the rest of their lives in the country they thought they were going to; working, paying taxes, raising their children, becoming a part of the people and community they so admired.

If only enough of us could have told them: "Don't worry about the people who hate you, they're not representative of most of us. We are not violent people, we are not full of hate, we do not deliberately seek to injure or kill children, and we will protect you and your children from those that would. We will help you set up homes here, get jobs and contribute to our country, since you love it as much as we do. This is the real Ireland and the real Britain, not that. We are better than Nazi Germany."

If only we'd made our point of view known, before the racists won. If only the rest of the world could see that the vast majority of us are kind, generous, welcoming people. It's too late now.

BNP may be forced to change admission rules

The British National Party may face a legal injunction over its descriminatory membership policy, which allows only white people of certain ethnic backgrounds to join. The far right organisation, which won two seats in the European Parliament in the recent election, has been contacted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), informing it that changes to bring the admission policy in line with British racial equality law must be made by the 20th of July this year.

Are you happy to see our nation's flag hijacked by fascists?

"There is no place for a political party in this country to have an apartheid constitution and the equality bill will prevent this from being the case," says Harriet Harman MP, leader of the House of Commons. The equality bill aims to consolidate all of Britain's anti-racism laws into one single piece of legislation.

Currently, if you want to join the BNP, you must be white and of European stock. According to the EHRC, "This exclusion is contrary to the Race Relations Act which the party is legally obliged to comply with. The Commission therefore thinks that the BNP may have acted, and be acting, illegally."

But here's an idea: if they are forced to change this policy, how about all those of us who are opposed to them - be we black, white, Asian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, humanist, left wing, right wing libertarian, democrat, anarchist, anti-racist, anti-fascist, native, immigrant or merely a true patriot, all of us with any reason to take issue with what the party stands for and those who simply oppose their policies - join up?

Joining the BNP will cost £30, £15 if you are a senior citizen, unwaged or a student, per year. After your second year of probationary membership, you will be made a voting member, giving you the right to attend the Annual Conference and to vote in decisions that concern party policy and future. We'd need to do this just after elections, so that our memberships fees couldn't be used to help them win more votes. Once we've been accepted, we sit tight, not becoming involved in their activities...apparent silent supporters.

And then, once there's enough of us who have been members for the two years to outnumber those members that really do support them, we all go to the Annual Conference and take over, putting into place a new manifesto prior to disbanding the party?

Anyone know enough about law to comment the feasibility of such a plan? Could it be done, if enough of us tried? Who would be willing to try?

Royal British Legion request Griffin to stop wearing poppy

The Guardian reports that the Royal British Legion, the charitable organisation that provises emotional, financial and social support to people who have served or are serving in all branches of the British Armed Forces, have written to British National Party leader Nick Griffin requesting that he no longer wears a poppy.

Paper poppy flowers are sold in their millions every year in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday to commemorate those who - regardless of nationality, faith or creed - have been killed while serving the British nation. In an open letter to the newspaper, they say that they are appealing to Mr. Griffin's "sense of honour" (good luck with that one, chaps) in asking him not to wear the badge or any other symbol that can be associated with them.

Mr. Griffin is frequently seen wearing a poppy, both in public and in the news.

"The poppy is the symbol of sacrifices made by British armed forces in conflicts both past and present and it has been paid for with blood and valour," they state in the letter, which will be published in tomorrow's Observer, the Sunday edition of the Guardian, "True valour deserves respect ­regardless of a person's ethnic origin, and everyone who serves or has served their country deserves nothing less …"

The charity says that it first wrote to Mr. Griffin a month ago to make their request. However, Mr. Griffin - recently elected to a European Parliament seat, representing the North West of England - has been openly wearing one when seen in the news during the run-up to last week's elections and since. In the letter, the Legion inform him that they "appealed to your [Griffin's] sense of honour. But you have responded by continuing to wear the poppy. So now we're no longer asking you privately. Stop it, Mr Griffin. Just stop it."

Whilst seeming to wish to make it clear that they do not support the BNP's brand of politics, the Legion also take care to make it clear that they are not associated with any political group or persuasion. "It is vital that everyone - the media, the public and our beneficiaries - know that we will not allow our independence to be undermined or our reputation impaired by being closely associated with any one political party," they say, indicating that they are solely concerned with supporting all servicemen and women, whether active or retired, regardless of their own political beliefs.

This is not the first time that the BNP have been in news stories connected to the Legion. In 2005, Martin Gleason -a trade union representative - positioned a floral wreath on top of one placed by the BNP at a Holocaust memorial event (Griffin is, unsurprisingly, a Holocaust denier, referring to it as "the Holohoax") leading to a court case, later dropped, in which Mr. Gleason was charged with allegedly damaging the BNP tribute. In April this year they sparked anger once again when they laid another wreath at a Scottish memorial to war fatalities - likewise at Wells in Somerset during December last year.

It's a great pity that we cannot ask those who gave their lives defending Britain and freedom for the British people - especially those who died in the Second World War fighting Hitler and the Nazis - how they feel when a fascist political party attempt to hijack symbols used to commemorate their bravery. People of many different races, ethnic backgrounds, colours and religions have risked or laid down their lives because they believe that this nation is worth fighting for - from the Polish RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain to the 205,000 Indians who volunteered, creating the largest volunteer military force in history, to fight for Britain in WW2 and earned themselves 30 Victoria Crosses in the process; from the Gurkhas to the Muslims and Jews and people of various colours and races who are right now serving in the British Army, many of whom have seen active service in Iraq and Afghanistan. All of those brave people, alive or dead, would probably feel rather insulted by Mr. Griffin's poppy and the BNP's wreaths, don't you think? Although most politicians across the spectrum wear poppies in the weeks running up to Remembrance Sunday, the Legion has never in the past asked them to stop which suggests that they too feel that Mr. Griffin's wearing of one is an insult.

Mr. Griffin says that he wears his poppy to demonstrate his solidarity with British soldiers who have served in Afghanistan and that he will stop if they no longer have to pay to watch television while recovering in hospital from injury sustained as a result of battle. Of course they should not be expected to pay, but regardless of what Griffin and the little paper flower each represent, his use of the symbol - little more than holding it hostage in light of what he says about the television charge - to make a political point is nothing other than disgusting. He ought to feel ashamed.

BNP: Racist? Us?

Here's Andrew Brons, the British National Party's new MEP who'll be representing the good people of Yorkshire and the Humber on last night's Channel 4 News.

Let's have a little bit of background on the man to start with. Brons has been active in far-right politics for many years, having started out in the National Socialist Movement when he was just 17. National Socialist...hmm...sounds a bit Nazi-ish, doesn't it? Back in those days, the far right weren't so keen to distance themselves from Hitler's fascism as they currently are now, probably because they hadn't cottoned on to the rather obvious fact that the vast majority of the United Kingdom's electorate are highly unlikely to vote for any group resembling the very people that many of our grandparents (and, back in those days, parents and even friends) gave their lives to defeat. During the 1960s, members of the NSM - an organisation formed from a splinter group of the original 1960s BNP on Hitler's birthday by one Colin Jordan who died in April this year. Jordan advocated "pan-Aryan universal Nazism" and openly used Third Reich symbols - were responsible for a campaign of arson against British synagogues and Jewish property.

With the NSM in turmoil following the departure of John Tyndall, Brons left to join the 60s BNP, which later merged with the League of Empire Loyalists - a group led by Arthur K. Chesterton, who had served under Oswald Mosley in the British Union of Fascists - to form the National Front. Brons stood as an NF candidate in both of 1974's General Elections, winning 2.3% of the vote in both instances and became leader of the party following its poor performance in the 1979 General Election. During this time, he and a group of NF supporters conducted a leafletting campaign in Leeds and were heard to shout slogans including "White Power" and "Death to Jews" - when a policeman of Malaysian ethnic origin asked the group to disperse, Brons called him an "inferior being." This event led to his appearance before magistrates and he was convicted with abuse and breaching the peace, for which he was fined £50 (a reasonable sum at the time).

Brons put his political life on a back burner in the mid-1980s, concentrating instead on his career as a lecturer in Politics and Law at Harrogate College. He retired from this position aged 61, and a number of articles attributed to him have subsequently appeared in Identity, the BNP's magazine (warning - that link connects to the magazine's website, so don't click it if you're likely to feel offended by the contents). During this month's European Election, he won 9.8% of the vote in his constituency, making him the BNP's first (and so far one of only two, the other being BNP leader Nick Griffin) MEP.

That's all we're going to say on the man himself and his political leanings (for the moment, at any rate) - it serves as an introduction for those not previously familiar with him and readers can probably guess the opinions of a blogger called Acid Rabbi when it comes to groups such as neo-Nazis. What we want to take issue with here is the interview from last night's news.

Interviewer Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked Mr. Brons for his thoughts on racism (01.01): "What about racism? Do you think racism is a terrible thing, or do you quite like it?" Brons replied with a bit of bluster on how the term is a Trotskyist invention, adding that "racial hatred of any kind is unpleasant and must be condemned. We don't wish people to hate other races."

Nick Griffin, leader of the "non-racist" BNP, received a suspended prison sentence in 1998 for... wait for it... incitement of racial hatred.

Er...right. So what about that bit in the 2001 General Election BNP manifesto where it states that native Britons - who, according to the party, can only be white people - being given priority in the jobs and homes market, effectively making non-whites second class citizens? What about Nick Griffin's statement to Wales on Sunday back in 1996, when he said that "All black people will be repatriated, even if they were born here"? What about his conviction for inciting racial hatred in 1998? Not forgetting your party's gloating in 1991 when a group of your supporters stabbed that African immigrant at London Bridge Station, you know the one - your newspaper claimed the victim had had his kidney surgically removed during the attack?

Or the part of the BNP constitution that says the party is "committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration" - "immigration" could be construed as non-racist, but not "non-white immigration." What about Richard Edmonds' reply in 1993, "We are 100 per cent racist" when asked if the BNP was, in fact, racist by Duncan Campbell of The Guardian? While we're on the subject of Mr. Edmonds, who is a high ranking BNP member and served as their National Organiser, what about his time in custody in 1993 over a racially-motivated attack? Or his conviction for deliberately smashing the statue of Nelson Mandela on the South Bank in London? OK, so he was expelled from the BNP eventually - but then he was brought back in by Nick Griffin and given a job on the Advisory Council. That's a very strange thing for a non-racist party to do.

Richard Edmonds, who serves on the non-racist BNP's advisory council, is a veteran of the far right who was convicted of a racially-motivated attack. Image from Hope Not Hate.

Brons offers an absolute delight of an idiotic statement when he claims that (07.00) "...many parts of this country are almost unrecognisable to the original inhabitants." Well, they would be. After all, we have cars, houses, science, televisions, microwaves, aircraft, medicine, domestic animals, farming, money and literature nowadays; we also cook our meat and don't cower overnight in trees to escape the attentions of things like bears. We're now an island too, no longer connected by a land bridge to mainland Europe. All of those are big changes to have taken place in Britain since the original inhabitants set up home here sometime before the last Ice Age.

Most of us can see straight through all the BNP lies, Mr. Brons. Right now, it seems you have succeeded in convincing a worryingly-high number of people that your party isn't racist. It is obvious that this was necessary if you were to gain any power - let's face it: you're so desperate for power you'll all say just about anything in order to get it, won't you? - because the vast majority of people in this country are proud of our long and honourable tradition of offering asylum to those who need it and our tendency to accept anyone, no matter what colour they happen to be, if they're decent, hard-working people. That's why so many of us admire Gandhi. That's why so many of us maintain friendships with the peaceful, hard-working Asians who have contributed so much to our society. We also know that we have benefitted enormously from the cultural contributions made by immigrants to this nation - Britain would be a far poorer place without reggae, rap, drum and bass, the blues, rock and roll, jazz, bhangra, belly dancing, steel drum bands, samba bands, the Notting Hill Carnival, curry, chicken chow mein, fish and chips (an adaptation of the traditional Jewish dish gefilte fish) and many more; not to mention the many British sportsmen and women who are of immigrant stock. You know, don't you, that the reason the far right have never enjoyed any real success in Great Britain in the past was due to your overt racism and because the British people are, with few exceptions, quite simply not racist. You also seem to have finally worked out that it'd be a good idea to try to hide your admiration for the policies of the Third Reich, because no patriot in their right mind would ever vote for a group who align themselves with the Nazis when countless brave men and women risked their lives and our country's future existence to defeat them. You took your time on that one though - are you really all so stupid?

If - and God forbid it ever happens - your party achieves its aims, allowing you sufficient power to start shaking off the sheep's clothing you're all wearing and to once again display your true selves, you can be sure that, overwhelmingly, this nation will turn its back to you. You represent none of the aspects of Great Britain that make us proud to be British.

Andrew Brons will be taking up his seat in the European Parliament on Tuesday 14th July 2009. Following that date, he'll be easy to contact via the UK Office of the European Parliament website - this link will take you straight to the relevant page - so, if you love Great Britain and are proud to be a part of it, make sure you take a few moments to let him know what you think.