Are UKIP just a 'respectable' face of the BNP?

[vivizone]

The title says it really.

1 - are they more popular than Labour and Conservative?
2 - Lib Dems are still popular?!
3 - What are UKIP all about? The Daily Mail are crazy over them (including the people who comment on the paper)
4 - What is so bad about the EU? why is the Daily Mail so against it?

I hate politics but I am Labour through and through (hate all parties actually, but I can just about stomach labour)

1. What would the country look like under UKIP leadership?

Arrgh so many questions. Thanks so much

Yes, I thought there was some mendacious misrepresentation going on there from Westiemama.

"Choose" in this context invariably means "be forced to"

I go by what their candidates say. The odious Geoffrey Clark calling for compulsory abortions of disabled children. And offering euthanasia for the over 80's as they are 'expensive'.

Westiemama

"I have had a look at the UKIP website and can find nothing about this. Do you have a link?

Their education policy states:

'Abandon the policy of ?inclusion? and allow parents to chose special schools for children with learning disabilities'"

I think the operative word here is "allow", not "compel".

There is a real issue about whether SN children are better off in mainstream education or in special schools and there are valid arguments on both sides, advanced by people with equally good motives. The right answer might be different for different children. Certainly some special schools have been threatened by what some see as an excessive emphasis on the inclusion policy - isn't it better that they exist and parents have a choice?

What about your other claim - that they want "adults with SN removed from society as a whole and housed in enclosed communities"?

Do you have a link for that - or does "enclosed communities" just mean supported accommodation where those with learning difficulties can lead as autonomour a life as possible? If so, I don't see anything sinister here at all.

the BNP, like UKIP, is a far right party. Socialism is a left-wing doctrine. The BNP is keen to drag in disillusioned old-labour voters in key working class areas, expoiting their fears about links between low employment & immigration. Hence the grafting on of a very narrow selection of traditional socialist goals to an inherently fascist belief system. doesn't make them socialists any more than dyeing my hair makes me a natural blonde.

I think describing them as a respectable BNP is an oversimplification - the BNP is a bunch of thugs; football hooligans, ex cons, psychopaths.

UKIP is a bunch of ultra conservative little Englanders...I would never vote for them but that diesn't mean that they can't be right about some things some of the time and they seem to have managed to exploit the middle england grey vote and all it's anxieties and prejudices.

From Wikipedia and it seems a fair summation to me.

Nazism and socialism have variously been seen as integrally related and utterly distinct. Nazism is the short form for "National Socialism" and Nazi figures commonly declared the movement to be a revolutionary socialist movement that was anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois. The Nazis applied a racist völkisch German nationalist interpretation of capitalism being an economic system created by Jews. At the same time the Nazis opposed Marxian socialism because its founder, Karl Marx was of Jewish descent, and views in contempt both communism and other variants of socialism linked to Marxism or Jewish figures. Mainstream socialists have rejected Nazism and do not recognize Nazism as a socialist movement. The far-right conservative nationalist German National People's Party that competed with the Nazis for support from nationalists, denounced the Nazis for being socialist while the Nazis denounced the DNVP for being reactionary and bourgeois.

Nazism's founder and chief advocate the late Adolf Hitler, called himself "a socialist":

I am a Socialist, and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow. . . . What you understand by Socialism is nothing more than Marxism. --Hitler, spoken to Otto Strasser, Berlin, May 21, 1930 - Alan Bullock, Hitler: a Study in Tyranny, pp.156-7

ubik, I see UKIP as being classic small state libertarian conservatives. Not Little Englanders at all.

gimmeanaxe

"I go by what their candidates say. The odious Geoffrey Clark calling for compulsory abortions of disabled children. And offering euthanasia for the over 80's as they are 'expensive'."

And here was UKIP's prompt response, as reported in the Independent:

*A Ukip spokesman said: ?Ukip reject the abhorrent views expressed in the personal manifesto of Mr Geoffrey Clark, a candidate in the local elections. The party was not aware of these views when it allowed him to stand under our name.

?We can confirm that Mr Clark has been formally suspended as a Ukip candidate and will not be standing for the party again. We would like to apologise to anyone who has suffered distress as a result of this matter.?*

Anyone can join UKIP or any other political party and it's not hard to become a candidate in a local election. The key thing is not whether candidates come out with repellent views previously unknown to the party - it's how the party acts on it when they come to light.

Maybe one or two of the "nice respectable" political parties could take a leaf out of UKIP's book in their promptness to deal with inappropriate behaviour - and from people much higher up than some lowly local council candidate.

Frankly the BNP manifesto was probably scribbled down on the back if a fag packet in a police station custody suite.

There's nearly 100 pages of it cos I looked, must have been a bloody big packet of fags.

Must have taken years

BangOn

OK so we know you wouldn't regard Hitler as a socialist - despite his numerous pronouncements to the contrary and the naming of his party as the National Socialist German Workers Part (NAZIs).

Out of interest, which world leaders would you regard as socialist: Stalin?, Lenin?, Pol Pot?, Castro?, Mao?

Somebloke, Pessary.
In fact in the last two years, the wording on their manifesto has changed and it read along the lines of discontinuing the policy of inclusion.
However, Somebloke, you are obviously a UKIP representative, your arguments are along similar lines. I would prefer a socialist leader, the leaders you have quoted, somewhat hysterically are not socialist but communist leaders. Personally, I'd have gone for Hugh Gaitskell or John Smith. I would still go for Harriet Harman. Socialists with ideals and ideas that would work.

Oh, and by the way, we weren't, under the coalition ideals going to have a war on the disabled, university fee increases, a dismantling of the NHS. All of which have come about, so stating that something in a manifesto has been misconstrued is bollocks, at the end of the day, if the government in power chooses to do more than that which it has published in it's agenda, it is able to do so.
I predict a riot, or two if it continues.

Dawndonna

I'm flattered you think I'm "obviously" a UKIP representative. I assure you I'm not, nor even a member.

I genuinely don't see how my question above was "hysterical"? Did you imagine me foaming at the mouth as I typed it or something?

Hugh Gaitskell was a great man and his early death was a tragedy for this country. I would recommend his 1962 speech on what was then referred to as the Common Market. It still stands out after half a century as one of the clearest expositions on the subject and I don't see anything in it that UKIP would disapprove of:

www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1999/1/1/05f2996b-000b-4576-8b42-8069033a16f9/publishable_en.pdf

Harriet Harman I can take or leave - but she is in total agreement with UKIP about grammar schools (for her own children that is).

Times are different somebloke, very different.

LOL somebloke, Harperson as an idealistic socialist is pretty funny.

I am a UKIP member but I think my membership has lapsed. Subscribed one evening when particularly incensed by the 3 main parties.

Seems people are all too willing to accept the political spin on their policies. They state quite clearly that they will abandon the policy of inclusion. The policy of inclusion is the policy which parents of children fought for to give them the right to be included in mainstream school. 'Policy of inclusion' = 'right to be included'. Spin it however you like but abandoning that policy will mean that parents no longer have the right to have their children educated in mainstream schools. However they will give parents the right to choose which special school they go to.

Hmm. Only in the same way that Labour are the respectable face of the Revolutionary Communist/Socialist Workers Party and the Lib Dems are the respectable face of Respect!

I think we'll find that UKIP appeal to many Labour supporters as well. The type whose tribal allegiance is to Labour but whose views are extremely reactionary. Loads of them and they don't much care for Miliband.

"key decisions on our agriculture, industry, fishing, taxation etc etc should be taken by our democratically elected representatives in Parliament"

Oh, you mean those representatives who are supposed torepresent the 46 million registered voters? The coalition got around 17 million votes therefore 30 million either didn't vote, spoiled their vote or voted for someone else.

Even if you discount the 10 odd million who didnt vote out of the picture the coalition didn't even manage to reach 50% of the votes cast.

If you think this is democratic or that the westminster clowns represent the majority opinion view of people in the UK, then you have a very strange view indeed.

I think UKIP supporter include some racists who would historically have felt at home in the Conservative party, but not the BNP, which is much more of a street movement. I don't think there is a real BNP-UKIP crossover.

Of course every party has racist supporters, but the idea that UKIP are connected with the BNP seems like wishful thinking to me.

"I think we'll find that UKIP appeal to many Labour supporters as well"

Maybe so. Traditionally "Old" Labour was the anti-EU/Common Market Party.

People like Atlee, Bevin, Jay, Gaitskell (see link to speech above), Shore, Foot (though he changed his tune somewhat), Kinnock (though he totally changed his tune once he got his snout in the trough), Benn.

Nothing reactionary about it. It's just a matter of who you think should make our laws and if we don't like them whether we should be able to get rid of them through the ballot box.

Pendeen

"If you think this is democratic or that the westminster clowns represent the majority opinion view of people in the UK, then you have a very strange view indeed."

I do have a great deal of sympathy with your view that the Westminster system is deeply flawed, and more so in recent years.

But even though the coalition may only have got 17 million votes, that at least is 17 million more than the EU Commission did, which initiates EU law. (The EU Parliament is a rubber stamping farce.)

A major part of Westminster's decline and atrophy, I would suggest, is that it has so few powers, so many of these having been given away to the EU. That plus the fact that the whipped MPs are unable to challenge the government of the day very much. Most of them are mainly lobby fodder.

There's little else for many MPs to do now than fiddle their expenses and sexually harass their underlings.

If our elected representatives were able to make our laws, maybe more of the population would think it worthwhile get off their arses and get down to the polling booths.

How can any woman join the socialist party when they do this?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ranks-of-the-socialist-workers-party-are-split-over-handling-of-rape-allegation-8448429.html

sorry long cut and paste

he Socialist Workers Party was engulfed in crisis tonight over allegations that it set up a ?socialist sharia court? to investigate rape allegations against a senior member instead of reporting them to the police.

The scandal, which has opened up deep splits within Britain?s largest far-left party, emerged this week when disaffected members leaked minutes of a controversial disciplinary meeting which exonerated the official accused of rape and sexual assault.

The furore has led to the expulsion of key members and multiple resignations.

Today Tom Walker, a journalist at the party?s paper, Socialist Worker, became the most prominent member to quit the party in disgust.

In a devastating critique published on the rival Communist Party of Great Britain?s website, Walker excoriated the SWP?s handling of the rape accusations, alleging that the hearing as a ?kangaroo court? and ?amateur justice that was doomed from the start?.

The minutes of the disciplinary meeting, which was held during the party?s December conference, detail how SWP leaders were determined to keep the matter away from the police and official authorities ? with one member stating that the party had ?no faith in the bourgeois court system to deliver justice?.

The row is just the latest sexism scandal to tarnish the reputation of Britain?s radical left which tends to portray itself as a fierce advocate for women?s rights. In September, the Respect Party?s former leader, Salma Yaqoob, quit in protest over comments made by its founder, George Galloway, that the accusations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange simply constituted ?bad sexual etiquette? and not rape.

The highly detailed minutes, which run to 27 pages, were first published on Socialist Unity, a left wing blog run by Andy Newman, a Swindon-based Labour Party member. He told The Independent that SWP members contacted him anonymously because they were furious about the way the party had handled the rape allegations.

?I believe that the SWP think they?re outside the law,? he said. ?It?s quite clear reading their account of what?s going on that they sort of see themselves as an alternative group in society that is not part of mainstream society. They think someone couldn?t or shouldn?t go to the police because it would damage the party.?

Mr Newman likened the SWP?s disciplinary hearing to an extrajudicial ?sharia? system or the much criticised investigations by the Roman Catholic church into clerical abuse that bypassed reporting allegations to the authorities.

The minutes detail how the party?s disciplinary committee met to discuss allegations that had been levelled against ?Comrade Delta? ? a senior member who sat on the party?s central committee.

The allegations came from an unnamed female party member who claimed she was assaulted over a six-month period between 2008 and 2009 but did not want to go to the police. The disciplinary committee exonerated Comrade Delta with six of the seven panel members backing his version of events. However, in an indication of the huge concerns over how the case was handled, the panel?s findings were only narrowly accepted by 231 votes to 209 votes when they were put to party members.

The minutes show how party activists attacked panel members for admitting that they knew Comrade Delta personally. One panel member conceded: [We] all knew Comrade Delta. We knew his important role in the party and on the central committee and none of us knew W or knew her well.?

In his resignation letter, journalist Tim Walker wrote: ?Though I believe they took the case deeply seriously, this was not a jury of his peers, but a jury of his mates.?

According to the minutes, friends of the woman ? who was not allowed to attend the meeting ? stood up to say she felt betrayed by the party. One supporter said: ?She thought that if she put in a complaint to the party it would be dealt with in line with the party?s politics and our proud tradition on women?s liberation. Sadly her experiences were quite the opposite.?

The Independent contacted the SWP head office for comment on the allegations but received no reply.

The party?s national secretary, Charlie Kimber, did not dispute the veracity of the minutes in a letter to Socialist Unity demanding they be taken down from the internet.

?I do not believe you are motivated by any considerations apart from a desire to damage the individuals involved and the SWP and to achieve tawdry publicity,? Mr Kimber wrote.

Mr Newman denied the allegations, saying he deliberately redacted the names of those who spoke to protect their identities. What was said in the disciplinary hearing was of public importance and justified publication.

The SWP, formed in 1977 out of the International Socialists, describes itself as a ?revolutionary socialist party? in the tradition of Leon Trotsky.