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.

Not quite. WalesHome.org featured an article on this before the Euro elections.

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…

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.