The UK is no place for Fascists

Hands up if you are one hundred per cent pure blood English. If your ancestors came over from anywhere, be it on the Windrush, with the Norman invasion in 1066, or in a Viking longboat, please proceed to Dover and leave immediately. That’s the mind-set of Tommy Robinson and Nick Griffin, leaders of the English Defence League and the British National Party respectively, and never mind that that would leave the UK with a population of about six people.

The events in Woolwich on Wednesday were horrible and have rightly been condemned by everyone from David Cameron to the head of the Muslim Council of Britain. However, I find it disturbing that any Muslim body has to distance themselves from lunatic extremists due to people not being able to tell the difference (you don’t see the Archbishop of Canterbury having to apologise every time the Westboro Baptist Church does something offensive) and what I find even more disturbing is that what happened in Woolwich has returned Britain’s far right groups to prominence. Despite the BNP being bankrupt and down to one MEP, Nick Griffin was on the front page of the Independent today. This incident has given Britain’s neo-fascist organisations, previously collapsing in on themselves, a foothold back into the national psyche.

The fact that these groups still exist is disappointing enough. But the fact that they would use the murder of a solider, a man who served and represented this country to the best of his ability, as an excuse to go “See. We told you we were right. You should have listened to us,” is not only disgusting, but goes against everything they claim to represent.

The United Kingdom has never been about one culture, or one race, or one group of people. We are an island nation, made up of all of those who down the centuries have come here, settled, and called it home, sometimes conquering, sometimes simply emigrating, and who have in time added to what makes Britain, Britain. If you try to take that away, by blaming immigrants for all the problems, or by trying to assert that Britain is only a place for white people, then you are taking away the very thing that makes us who we are, our diversity and our acceptance of diversity. That is why far right fascism has never caught on, and why the rise of UKIP is so terrifying.

The EDL claim that they are “defending” the English. But what does being English, or being British, mean? If you ask me, it is about more than just nationality, it is a state of mind, a state of being. If you believe that you are English, if you think of yourself as British, then as far as I’m concerned that’s all you need. Regardless of where you came from originally, if you think of England as your home, then you are more than welcome within the boundaries of what Shakespeare called “this scepted isle.”

                                                                                                                                                            

Bad Atmosphere

I didn’t think there was a more stupid government appointment made by the Coalition than making Richard Benyon, the Undersecretary of State for Natural Environment, Water and Rural Affairs. Put the richest MP, who also happens to be a massive land owner and a passionate hunter in charge of animals and the countryside? Great idea!  Until, that is, Mr Cameron appointed George Eustace as his new advisor on energy and climate change.  George “I hate Wind farms” Eustace.

Number Ten has suffered a bit of a climate change exodus recently with several of Cameron’s advisers chucking in the towel. It’s not surprising really. Despite Cameron attempting to make the Tories more green friendly– including changing the party logo to that ridiculous tree –, just like the other two major parties, the Conservatives attitude to the problem of climate change can best be summed up as “We’re not pulling out of the Kyoto Protocols. What more do you want?”

The answer is a lot more. Climate change is a major problem, and one that if not tackled will hamstring the planet within the next few generations. According to Greenpeace, if you scale down the age of the earth to forty six years, humans have only existed for the last hour and in the last minute we have destroyed or used up more of the earth’s resources than we can hope to replace. We are doing a bad job of safeguarding the planet for future generations and the government should be doing everything possible to ensure that in fifty years’ time we aren’t all walking around wearing smog masks like they do in downtown Tokyo.

But it probably won’t. It will take a lot to convince the government to get off its backside and do something because, at the end of the day, there is no profit in renewable energy research. In fact ,  it takes more money to set up then it would initially save, thereby costing people money. On the other hand, there is a lot of money in oil and other more proven energy sources. The government has to balance a need to save money with a need to save the planet and at the end of the day it’s clear which way that particular dice will fall.  When it comes to a choice between people and profit, profit always wins in the end.

One day, and maybe one day soon, we are going to have to face up to the mistakes we have made when it comes to the climate. I’m not saying we are facing a ‘Day after Tomorrow’ style extinction event, but whatever happens it’s not going to be good. Then we will realise what we should have been doing all along. Of course by then it will be too late. The time to do something is now, while we still have a chance to change things. But until something does happen, a bad atmosphere will still hang over Westminster. An atmosphere of inactivity and unbelief that will probably never go away.

 

The Green's Need Better PR

Okay. Pop quiz time.

First question. Can you name the leaders of UKIP and the Green Party of England and Wales? I imagine you can name Nigel Farage fairly easily, but I doubt Natalie Bennett is the first name that springs to your mind. Now second question. Which of those two parties actually has an MP? The answer to that would be the Greens, who have held Brighton Pavilion since the 2010 election.

This raises a serious question. Considering that the best UKIP can claim is a some local councillors and a smattering of MEPs, while the Greens have councillors, two London Assembly Members, some MEPs and a Member of Parliament, how come Farage gets so much more coverage? You can barely turn on the TV nowadays without seeing Farage’s face on your screen, while we’re lucky to see Caroline Lucas (the Green Party’s MP) once in a blue moon.

For starters this puts an end to any claims that the media – and especially the BBC – has any sort of liberal bias. If that was the case, then we would be seeing a lot more of the Greens (who are a left wing party after all) and a lot less of the party consisting of what Ken Clarke called “fruitcakes and clowns”. However, it can also be seen as a scathing indictment of the Greens’ PR strategy, or rather lack of one.

For all their faults – and they have many – UKIP do a very good job of getting their message across and tapping into their core constituency of dissatisfied middle Englanders. And while they may once have been seen as a single issue party, they have recently done a very good job of developing and presenting a wider manifesto. The Greens, by contrast, haven’t done and are still seen as the party of hippy liberal tree huggers, who put the environment before everything else and think homeopathy should be available on the NHS. It also doesn’t help that recently all the major parties, have started to address environmental concerns in their manifestos, thereby competing with the Greens on the one point where they have the most expertise. It also doesn’t help that while UKIP have benefited from a split in the right wing of the UK political spectrum, whatever their differences, the left has done a solid job of rallying around Labour, denying the Greens an opening.

One may be coming though. Come the election in 2015, there may be some left wing voters who, while desperate to remove the Tories, still don’t trust Miliband with the keys to the kingdom. While previously these voters may have voted for the Lib Dems, their behaviour over the last three years in government has more or less ruled them out as a potential protest vote. This is where the Greens have a chance. If they can improve their PR and widen their message, then they may have a chance to pick up dissatisfied left wing voters who are unhappy with the parties on offer, in the same way that UKIP have been able to pick up dissatisfied right wingers.

The Greens have two years to get themselves noticed and to get their voice heard. They’d better get a move on.

Where Are UKIP Taking Us?

I have been saying for a while that the UK is currently trapped in some sort of time travel scenario where we’ve been zapped back to the eighties without realising it. This week’s local election results confirmed this.

In the past three years, we’ve had a royal wedding, several union strikes, an economy floating slowly down the toilet bowl and a Tory government taking it out on the poor and defenceless. So far, so eighties. And this week one of the major parties faced a major challenge from a fourth party threating to split its vote. But this wasn’t some sort of reborn SDP, pulling apart the Labour Party. This was UKIP, the respectable middle-class face of English nationalism claiming 25% of the national vote in the county council elections, and pushing the Tories into third place in the South Shields by-election.

I have written before about how the Conservatives have a lot to fear from the rise of UKIP and the displeasure of their grass roots supporters that propelled the fourth party to claim over 100 council seats. But the rest of us have a reason to be afraid as well, maybe an even better reason than the Tories.

The rise of the SDP in the late eighties forced the Labour party, - formerly drifting its way to the extremes left and into the arms of the militant tendency – to modernise and move towards the centre. With UKIP we face the opposite problem. Cameron has been trying desperately to drag the Conservatives towards the middle ground, hence his positioning himself as the heir to Blair. But UKIP, made up largely of disillusioned Thatcherites, appeals longingly to those who remember the bygone days of three solid election victories and who look sceptically upon a leader who can’t even provide them with a parliamentary majority.

In order to counter the rise of UKIP Cameron is going to have to listen to those on his right and move the party back to where it was. If he doesn’t, he is going to face sniping from his right flank for the next two years. But considering that a “moderate” Conservative party has already part privatised the NHS, gutted benefits and welfare, punished the poor and disadvantaged for the mistakes of the rich, while protecting those who are actually to blame, and is shortly to try and introduce one of the most imperialistic curriculums of the last hundred years, what on earth can we expect from a party catering to its hard right faction, other than the complete and utter destruction of all that is good about this country?

We are a country and a people that prides itself on not listening to far-right nationalism. In fact the BNP were almost completely wiped out at the elections just gone. But what about far-right nationalism with a moderate face? The Tories may be afraid of UKIP, but the rest of us should be afraid of exactly where their rise will take us as a country.