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BNP election broadcast tonight

  
 
Cat Chant
09:42 / 28.05.04
The BNP have fielded enough candidates in the Euro election to qualify for a party political broadcast. Channel 5 are showing a version which was not cleared for broadcast by the BBC and Channel 4: some details here (BBC) and here (Independent).

I actually started this thread because I'm going to be staying with some friends tonight and probably won't feel comfortable about saying "Hey, do you mind if we just pause the Johnny Depp marathon to watch some racist crap?", so I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who does see the broadcast. In the meantime, also, what do people think about the BNP's attempts to cast themselves as a viable mainstream political party - will they work? What can be done about it? Should we all be emailing the BBC and Channel 5 to protest against the broadcast, or is that counter-productive?
 
 
sleazenation
11:09 / 28.05.04
channel 5 won't being showing it now it seems -

Apparently the broadcast was to include the testimony of a a mother whose daughter was apparently gang-raped by a group of asian youths.
 
 
Sax
13:55 / 28.05.04
Well, almost. The BNP were going to use the Channel 4 documentary Edge of the City which was pulled last weekend on the insistence of Colin Cramphorn, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, on the grounds that it would inflame an already delicate situation in Bradford. The documentary allegedly showed gangs of Asian youths "grooming" white girls as young as 11 for prostitution. I haven't seen the documentary, but one report I'd read said it was all a bit ambiguous. The problem of grooming is an issue in Bradford (well, Keighley, really) and there are apparently Asian men involved, but it all seems to be anecdotal evidence, really. It's something the Labour MP Ann Cryer has been investigating along with forced marriage (which is, of course, a lot different from arranged marriage).
 
 
Not Here Still
11:57 / 29.05.04
Well, the grooming thing is a pretty well-rehearsed tactic of the BNP - find something where there are some perceived or actual problems, hype them up to a massive extent, and if they either don't get covered as news stories or are treated the way in which the election night broadcast was by channel five, the BNP 'wins' as it can claim this is Political Correctness Gone Mad and the like.

The BNP thrive by expoiting situations like this, which is one reason why I think protesting against allowing these broadcasts to be shown is counter productive, as it allows accuastions of censorship to be made and for them to say, as they now do on their website, that "only the British National Party are prepared to help those unfortunate and desperate children living under this shadow."

This is patently bollocks, but the BNP's stock in trade is peddling vaguely convincing-sounding lies and distortion, with a side of tabloid-friendly "what is the world coming to?"-style incredulity. But little mention of their true racist agenda.

I remember after the riots in Wrexham last year they turned up, claiming to offer solutions to all the estate's ills - not just the 'racial tension' as they saw it. They vowed they would be putting candidates up in the local elections this year, but they didn't - there is one BNP candidate standing in Wrexham, 20 miles away from the estate, and the BNP's kneejerk soapboxing has, surprisingly, come to nothing.

The current broadcast is the same kind of thing, offering a kneejerk response to a situation which ignores some facts, bends others to suit the BNP, and has about as much relevance to the truth as you might expect - ie none. But if you call for it to be pulled, you give it a forbidden cachet which it doesn't really deserve, allow the BNP to claim censorship, and give them yet more publicity.

By the way, they are also claiming that it is BNP electoral surges - rather than some of the more obvious possibilities - which have led to Abu Hamza's arrest. Another load of opportunistic bollocks.
 
  
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