Say no to No Platform
A 17th century catholic exorcism. Something more temporal is needed to address the rise of the BNP
A FEW days after the European elections which saw two British National Party MEPs returned and a substantial increase in their national vote, I received a round robin email from a well-known writer entitled ‘Not In My Name’. Needless to say, this ‘Not in my name’ email was being sent in my name, and apppeared to me to summarise all the worst traits of the bien-pensant Left of which I am myself a member: say something resoundingly brave, then go home.
It was a declaration signed by writers and artists expressing their outrage at the election of the BNP MEPs, and was, as they say in shops, ‘for display purposes only’: to make clear that we had not voted BNP, that the BNP were a racist and fascist party, and that we were angry and ashamed of their electoral success. I agreed with all these sentiments as sentiments, but I was and remain suspicious of the motive, and cynical about the underlying issues that the ‘Not in my name’ mentality masks. It is the political equivalent of compulsive handwashing. That mentality is related to but crucially different from the ‘No Platform’ mentality, about which I also have reservations but which I respect: No Platform is a form of activism, and it involves energy and commitment and an element of personal risk from many of those involved in front line anti-fascism. But if ‘No Platform’ has been succesful in denying the BNP a normalising forum, it cannot be said to have succeeded in stopping people from voting BNP. Indeed it has certainly, in some areas, increased the BNP’s outsider status and victim image in an era where mainstream politicians have never been so unpopular. And what is it that we really want: to stop the BNP from speaking, or to stop them getting votes? The two outcomes are not the same, and we have confused them for too long.
So I’ll say it straight out: the BNP are here, they exist, they are growing; they breathe the same political air as the mainstream parties, often attract the same voters, and function in the same contexts at local, national and international level. They feed off the same events, the same economic uncertainties, the same cultural factors. The press endorses many of their values: from the Daily Mail running a front page headline on the ‘rocketing’ birth rate of Eastern European immigrants and Muslims against a ‘declining’ so-called ‘indigenous’ population, to the local paper that conflates asylum-seekers with economic migrants, by way of the English tabloid media’s routine xenophobia and immigrant-bashing. The BNP is not an irrational force we can just consign to some extra-political realm with a few medieval-style exorcism ceremonies like ‘Not in my name’ letters or petitions. As for No Platform, Freud knew that when you repress the unconscious and irrational parts of yourself, they find their way back to the surface, often stronger and always better disguised, to wreak their havoc on the conscious mind.
The BNP are a feature of the political landscape we all inhabit and recognise, part of a world we have created as much as we have been created by it. I am not suggesting that we have collective responsibility for them, but rather that the political world we have made is also theirs, that they are as much the product of it as any other party is. The big mistake is to think the BNP come from somewhere else. Their politics may be irrational, but it is a serious, not to say irrational, error to pretend that their existence cannot be explained rationally, that they cannot be fought rationally, and above all taken on politically. In other words they need to be treated as the political party they are and not as an unnatural monstrosity to be kept at bay with spells and fetishes.
The issue of how to deal with the BNP (and how ambiguous, distasteful, and freighted with cautionary historical baggage that phrase ‘deal with’ appears in the context of fascism…) has become topical because Nick Griffin will appear on Question Time, and politicians have been understandably cagey about sharing the platform with him. The rumour at first was that this ‘BNP QT’ would take place in Llandudno because the BBC were afraid of staging it in the Midlands or in the North West of England, where the BNP is strongest. ‘Stick him on in Wales, no-one will notice’, they must have thought. Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood wrote to the BBC arguing, quite correctly, that the BNP had no elected presence of any kind in Wales and that they should not be invited here. Whether this persuaded the BBC to change the venue to London, I do not know, but it saved Welsh politicians a lot of difficult decisions about sharing a forum with Nick Griffin. Phew!, we might say, problem gone. Well, problem passed on at any rate…
Actually, it was problem deferred: the BNP will get more and more airtime, more and more radio and TV coverage. We can’t help that. The decisions about whether to invite them will not be made by politicians, but politicians need to have a response, and it is no longer adequate to refuse to turn up, to leave an empty seat on the stage or have the radio announcer say ‘no-one from XXX party was available’. When I voted for my AM and my MP I did so hoping that they would take on unpalatable but nonetheless political tasks, deal with political reality and not consign the ugly bits of that reality to some occult realm where rational thought never penetrates.
One frequently-encountered and dangerously arrogant view is that the BNP are thick, and that if we let them onto Newsnight, Question Time etc, they will look so dumb that no-one will vote for them. History is littered with examples of politicians who thought they could beat fascism by denying it existed, and then thought they could tame it by giving it the rope it needed to hang itself. The BNP are not stupid, and mainstream political parties will need to field their best arguments and their most persuasive politicians.
For now however, the legacy of refusing to engage with BNP politics means that mainstream parties are dangerously behind in their anti-BNP narratives, and that they are now playing catch-up to a fearsome cluster of BNP lies, distortions and fear-politics, all of it delivered with a topspin of professionalism and carefully-moderated rhetoric. ‘I hope they won’t just ask about immigration’, Nick Griffin has said of his imminent Question Time appearance, ‘we have other policies as well’.
They do, and that’s the problem. The moment the BNP becomes known for policies other than their anti-immigration stance is the moment they will have joined the mainstream. Unfortunately the mainstream parties have until now believed that the mainstream was some sort of club, and that they made the rules about who was allowed to join. It’s not a club, it’s a treacherous and unpredictable terrain, and it’s shifting under their feet.
Our politicians – Plaid, Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem – should get on that platform and take on the BNP forcefully, forensically and without ever underestimating them. Now that’s something they would be doing in our name.
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There is no choice in the matter. We live in the Age of Cyberspace, where No-platforming isn’t an option (well, outside of China anyway).
The Ryan writes blog also covers this topic today:
http://www.ryanwrites.co.uk/
Thanks for the link through
The ‘No Platform’ campaign has been disasterous as it has led to the left ‘No Platforming’ itself!
The refusal to appear at public meetings, televised or other, and debate with the BNP has led to a lack of counter arguments. And if anyone doubts the true negative effect of the ‘No Platform’ campaign they need only look at the inexorable rise of the BNP – which has in part been assisted by the notoriety given to their views by anti-facist campaigners. Agreed – time for a change.
Rob’s quite right. It assists the BNP in its perception by many people that it is distinguishable from the mainstream. I’ve always thought that many members of the four main parties, who are intelligent and articulate and pasionately convicted in what they believe, would take almost no time to reduce their opposite BNP numbers to the stuttering, foaming fascists they are through nothing more than good, old-fashioned debate. This grandstanding, as Rob points out, has not harmed the main parties and not their intended target.
We get to test my theory in just under two weeks, when Nick Griffin appears on Question Time. Let’s hope that anti-fascist campaigners, the audience and fellow panellists give him the opportunity to let him hang himself with his own prejudiced words.
It is wrong to say that ‘no platform’ has been a failure. It has just been one of many tools to deal with organised fascism. It would I believe, also be very unwise to encourage organisations other than one’s who have a public mandate, to give the BNP a platform. What you are not stating here is how intimidating they are to many minorities, by just being present at an event.
However, I do not see how the ‘no platform’ position can now be held on every occasion , as their relative electoral success in England effectively means that they have created their own platform. Where organisations are forced to share a platform with them, then we need to do our homework as the BNP are no mugs anymore. They have spokespeople who are both intelligent and media trained and a few BBC journalists who took things for granted, have already been caught out.
After all is said and done, do not make the mistake of treating the BNP like just another party. Of course there is the risk of making them the anti-establishment vote at a time when politicians are hated, but I’m afraid that’s down to the ineptitude of the main parties and not the efforts of fascists.
Yes Ian, I agree pretty much with that: No Platform has not been an out and out failure, but I think it longer works.
You also raise an important point I should perhaps have clarified: there’s a big difference between the BNP appearing on BBC and them demanding, and getting, a stall at a civic event. In the latter case it is absolutely clear that they should be prevented from attending on the grounds that they intimidate and harass people. That is a documented fact and I have no problem with raising these objections to event organisers.
However, as we saw in the Glamorgan Show, the organisers let them in anyway. This is what I mean about the choice of not giving a platform not being ours. The lack of a coherent response from political parties means that those parties then spend more time debating with each other about what to do next than taking the BNP on head-on.
No Platform is not a solution, it is a tactic. Like all tactics there will be times when its effective and times when it isn’t. Sometimes it’s the opposite. to Anti-fascist activists should use it when it is necessary, and my article made clear that I respected such activists. But elected politicians have a responsibility to deal with the political side of it because it is a matter of politics.
My article could also have raised the issue of how the BNP will now be demanding more and more stalls at civic events, festivals, even the Eisteddfod. They should be refused these, of course, but on what grounds? And what if the organiser of such an event decides to let them have that stall, what then?
I was certainly not encouraging organisations to give them a platform, and you cannot infer that from anything I wrote. I was saying that we need to be prepared to deal with people giving them a platform, which is a very, very different point, and that the choice is not ours.
You may have seen a QT last month with Harriet Harman, in which an audience member described some policies and then said ‘As the BNP have demanded…’. Harman dealt with it well: she attacked first the policy on political grounds (anti-immigration policy of course) and then made clear that the BNP were racist and fascist. She made a good point, and she got stuck in.
The BNP don’t just work by having visible people like Griffin at QT, they work all along the channels of respectable politics, get their stooges onto shows and radio phone-ins. That’s their platform, and we can’t any longer ‘No Platform’ that.
I’ll say again: local festivals and civic shows, etc, are very different from a BBC Question Time. But will Plaid, or Labour, or the Tories, or the LIb Dems, refuse to attend the next Royal Welsh Show if there’s a BNP stall there? I wonder…
Spot on – however, me and Peter Black were quite lonely voices on this matter weeks ago, good to see others taking up the mantle.
“me and Peter Black were quite lonely voices on this matter…”
Not quite. WalesHome.org featured an article on this before the Euro elections.
Yes indeed, and I should have made reference to that article by Adam Higgitt in my own because it is the first serious piece in the Welsh media (that I know of) to discuss in specifically *political* terms what one does as a political culture about fascists who are a *political* party. It also raises the issue of the consequences of not doing so.
Right ok, for the pedants here, me and peter black were the lonely bloggers talking about this, specifically around the issue of Question Time.
Patrick,
I agree with much of what you say and most (not all) of the anti-fascist movement have either accepted this or will inevitalby do so.
What concerns me more at this stage is that certain elements of the anti-fascist movement still believe that the ANL tactic of the 1970′s will defeat the 21st century fascists. I think that this is a fundamental mistake and while there is a time and a place for a vibrant public protest, Griffin and co will not be defeated with a few eggs outside Westminster.
The responsibility for defeating the BNP and others lies with the legitimate political parties, who are frankly ignoring many of the poorest estates that the BNP are targetting and skipping over some of the thorny subjects that deliver them votes.
Some good comments guys.
The rather sickly subject we are often unwilling to tackle is the reason the BNP are there in the first place – the people who vote for them.
I know it seems perverse for parties to think about questioning voters so strongly, but why are we not ‘blaming’ the people who vote the BNP? They are not confused, mental or having the wool pulled over their eyes – anyone who actively votes for the BNP know what they are getting.
In terms of the European Elections, the ‘fault’ of the political parties was that it did not have the programme to get people out to vote for them, not that they could stem any significant growth in the BNP vote. The BNP’s vote was merely proportionally, rather than actually higher.
There is always a duty on those involved in political debate to be honest about people’s fears over immigration – for too long anyone who dares question our current immigration policy is dismissed as a racist. Immigration is of course a subject prone to huge distortion, but it is also something that cannot be ignored as a source of political debate. Of course the BNP’s take on immigration is inherently about racism, but the sense of fear that it taps into is something worth debating without resorting to straw man politics.
Regardless of the objective evidence behind it, people out of work who point to immigrants working locally in (what they see as) ‘their jobs’ do have a sense of grievance that I dont feel is properly tackled by our political class. It reminds me of the debate around Europe, which is left to the anti lobby because the pro lobby feel they have more success by merely ignoring, rather than passionately advocating the other side of the story.
This of course is not to say that we offer the BNP take on things, but we must offer an objective and understanding view of that issue.