to think that people claiming that BNP voters aren't racists are being disingenuous?

[MrJustAbout]

I don't get the argument "that these people aren't racist, but they vote just BNP".

For me, If you vote BNP, you are a racist. I know this is guilt by association but I think it's fair. What's more, making excuses for those who choose to support these hatemongers makes it more acceptable for them to do so.

I know I wouldn't vote for a party when I didn't know their policies and if I did, I'd feel pretty ashamed that I voted without bothering to find out. To be honest, anyone who votes for the BNP and claims that didn't realise they'd just cosied up to facists needs to give up voting for good.

I think that Poles can accept lower wages because their living costs may be lower. Where we used to live there would be 10-12 Poles living in a house the same size as ours. The cost of running the house (per head) will be lower for the Poles. Obviously this is a generalisation but a possible explanation.

However I would probably prefer to employ a Pole. When our cable TV went I was so pleased a Pole came out to sort it out - he was early, polite, efficient. Yesterday when my son had his MMR jab the Polish nurse was on-time, pleasant and efficient. So, does this make me racist to prefer the foreigner or does racism only work in one direction?

I did not watch all of Question time. Bonnie Greer and Lady Warsi are 2 of my favourite panellist on the programme and I was hoping it would be a 'normal' programme discussing the issues of the day e.g the postal strike, all-women short-lists and which bisuit they prefer ) but it was just slagging off the BNP which is the oxygen they need to breathe - very dull.

Yes I can understand the associations with slavery could bother people, hadn't thought of that before. But it is a widely used term and this is the first time I've heard someone object to it. At the end when she was tailing off did she say she wanted to be called just Caribean or something?

The audience were fascinating, lots of them seemed to be nearly as nervous as NG but guessing it was that feeling of pure fury that I have when I shout at some of the panellists.

Sorry X-post Policywonk thanks for answering my question in advance!

It's a service I provide for a small fee Alana

That guy in the audience who was asking Griffin 'where should I go then?' - he was the best bit of the whole show I thought. Very articulate, funny and a bit handsome

Bleh - the Economist would say that, wouldn't they? Written by the educated middle classes for the educated middle classes. A fine title but I doubt very much the writer went out and listened to the sort of disaffected working class people who might be tempted to vote for the BNP.

In Barnsley, a traditionally stout Labour area, the BNP vote has gone up significantly because people feel Labour has turned their backs on them. Blair's stated philosophy was that he could chase the middle classes and ignore the party heartlands because they had nowhere else to go politically. Turns out he was badly wrong.

I saw a vox pop on the news when the BNP were standing in East London somewhere. Reporter managed to find several Black and Asian people who were voting BNP 'to keep the immigrants out'. Just because someone's parents were immigrants themselves, doesn't mean that person is happy to see a new wave of mass immigration.

Actually it's amazing that we've had the highest-ever rates of net immigration over the past decade without a huge backlash. Quite an impressive achievement.

As for birthrates, a significant factor is the birthrate amongst recent immigrants. This is higher than the birthrate amongst the settled population. It may have made short-term economic sense to encourage immigration during the boom esp. with an ageing population, but those immigrants who stay then have families, and in the short term those families put more pressure on the NHS, schools and transport etc. etc. etc. And the parents will obviously get old in their turn.

My local maternity hospital is under very severe pressure because the NHS was taken by surprise by the scale of the birthrate amongst recent immigrants. It's put real pressure on midwifery and on the budgets. Mate of mine is a Polish translator and is getting a LOT of work from the NHS, along with translators for Asian languages. Friend of mine who comes from that town but has lived abroad for 20 years (so is a migrant herself) came back and barely recognises her own town due to immigration. That sort of massive demographic change was always likely to cause tension.

I find it richly ironic that the BNP are held up as offering hope to the disenfranchised white working class "man-in-the-street".

Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that the BNP is the bosses' party. It creates a divide and rule policy among the available work force.

Non-Brits live in fear that they are unwelcome and feel forced to work for lower wages, while the Brits are allowed a chip no their shoulder - they're not out of work because they don't have the skills or willingness to work, it's becuase of those nasty Poles pricing them out.

One day the Poles will be ousted if Griffin's mob get their way. By then the wages will be nicely depressed, the skills level of the remaining workers will be at an all time low, and they will be asked to do dull repetitive work for peanuts.

Certainly in the USA the term 'Afro American' is not widely used or acceptable any more. It's African American - although I've always found that rather odd. What about the black caribbean population?

I imagine the objectors to 'afro caribbean' are taking their lead from the USA. But the Uk culture is different. The USA already had 'irish americans' or 'Italian Americans' so 'african american' made perfect sense.

very astute post edam!

African-Carribean instead of Afro-Carribean irritates me slightly on pedantic grounds - should be Afro as comparable to Ango-Saxon. But I'm prepared to overlook that as it obviously does matter to an awful lot of people.

She said African-Caribbean was the correct term. It seemed to me that she was simply objecting to the shortening of the name rather than the ellision iyswim.

x post.

(Friend of mine who objects to Afro-Carribean says it irritates people because it sounds like the 70's hairstyle i.e. vaguely trivialising people.)

Lenin, you are quite right. Depressing to see the 'let the poor fight amongst themselves and they won't notice us fat cats making off with all the resources' political tactic still works.

"The largest source of population growth in the UK is natural growth (that is, babies being born)."

Not really.

From National Statistics Online:

"Natural change was the largest contributor to population growth until the year to mid-1999 and more recently in the year to mid-2008. Between these periods, net migration has been the main driver of population change. In the year to mid 2002, net migration accounted for over 70% of the total population change.

From 2002, natural change has increased and in the year to mid-2008 it accounted for over half of total population growth (54%). This was the first time in nearly a decade that natural change was the main contributor to population growth over a 12 month period.

...natural change contributed 220,000 to population growth in the year to mid-2008; this is more than a three fold increase from the mid-2002 figure of 62,000. This increase in natural change is mainly attributable to a growth in the number of births although a decrease in the numbers of deaths over this period has also played a part.

The number of births is increasing partly due to rising fertility among UK born women and partly because there are more women of childbearing ages due to inflows of female migrants to the UK."

In other words, over the last decade, the rise in population has been predominantly due to immigration. Only in one year did natural growth exceed the number of immigrants to the UK - and it is thought that the rise in natural growth is, in part, attributable to the inflows of female migrants.

I think the failure of any main parties to adress the issues surrounding immigration has played a major part on the rise in popularity of the BNP. I don't think the answer is to autromatically label anyone who expresses concerns as racist. I think the answer is the bring the issues into an open mainstream debate. England - as distinct from the UK - is already the most crowded country in Europe (population density 395 people per square kilometer).

Going of at a slight tangent here, but I also think that the policy of multi-culturalism can sometimes foster a sense of "us and them", and that in celebrating diversity we can sometimes emphasize the "otherness" of different cultures and communities.

We could learn a lot from Australia's immigration policy, unless you are useful to the country you don't come in. Why the heck do we have qualified Dr's from other countries working as cleaners and at the same time be handing out unemployment benefit to healthy young men who smoke pot all day and do the odd bit of petty crime to make ends meet ? The whole system needs an independant review and a damned good shake up.
If we're going to continue with this immigration policy then the infrastructure and public health services need to be put in place damned fast so nobody suffers and nobody is exploited.

Maybe if I stand up and admit to having ahd a 4th DC in the year to mid 2008, peoplecan demionise me and the BNP an disolve away unnotived 9and I can be canonised as a Martyr for the cause)

If only it were that easy!

The people I know who vote BNP do so becuase they are ignorant and beleive what they are told by authority figures. I can tell them all about Islam but if someone on TV nd in the papers says so (must be right, bloke on TV said it) then my explanations fade itno zero.

Edam - but surely those immigrants who are 'putting pressure' on the system are also contributing tax and national insurance by being in a job? Or do you think all immigrants are illegal, working cash in hand or living off benefits?

My DH's uncle voted BNP last election . He is a real racist and he thinks that the Brits are best at everything, hard done by, etc etc. He is intelligent otherwise, went to expensive public school, Cambridge Uni... But he himself is a quarter French and a bit of Italian (so, presumably, by definition an Untermensch). Unfortunately he does not see that he is being a liiiittle bit inconsistent there.

My point is: I think BNP voters have a blind spot about immigration and race; you can present them with facts and show them how wrong they are, but they will never believe you. It is almost like a religion that way.

We could start by getting the Borders Agency to count people going out as well as people coming in - atm the Govt has no idea how many immigrants actually leave when their visas run out. Ridculous (started when the Tories cut the number of workers, Labour have done sod-all to reverse this).

Look at that awful case of the men who raped their niece/daughter in S Wales - two of the people convicted were illegal immigrants. Should have been deported anyway, rather than allowed to hang around abusing a British girl.

NOT saying there's any link between immigration and sex crimes generally, it's just an example of our crap immigration/ deportation system not getting rid of the 'right' people. While on the other hand it's very cruel to decent people - suspect they are easy targets.

If you read the full article, it does go into why there are so many disaffected white Britons, one of the main reasons being lack of housing stock.

Yes, there has been an increase in immigration, but also an increase in emigration. As someone said earlier, the media misrepresents how easy/difficult it is to actually immigrate legally (from an non-EU country) into the UK. The law changes all the time. I previously did volunteer work for a legal advice clininc and it was INCREDIBLY difficult trying to figure out the current requirements. There is a points system, and there are a variety of different classes of individuals that are granted visas. The process is long-winded and expensive, and in the last few months, has become even more so. A friend of mine (american citizen) has been trying to sort out his visa for the last three years and is still struggling. He arrived in the UK as an student (in Scotland). As he graduated with a science degree, he was allowed to stay and work in Scotland for two years without a work visa, under a scheme the Scottish executive developed to try and keep skilled workers in Scotland. During that time, he was applying for a working visa. The Immigration dept.:

• Claimed he hadn't sent through all the correct paperwork. When his lawyer, who had a copy of all the documents the imm. dept had been sent went through the pack with them, he managed to find every document they claimed was missing
• they then lost his American passport during a move (but found it six months later)
• They then tried to reject his application multiple times, he appealed and it went to court. Nobody from the department turned up to court when the case went to trial. Last time I spoke to him about it, it was still on-going.

During this time, he was unable to leave the country, even to go home when his uncle and grandfather died within a few months of each other. To immigrate is INCREDIBLY difficult.

In that lamentable case DP, I refer you to the thread on whether voting BNP makes you a racist, and my answer of yes.

But on that tangent Scarlet, the French haven't managed any better with a kind of "fit in or else" policy. Not sure what the answer to that one is.

Should we be using terms like African and Carribean separately then? Although will then risk further offence when people are unsure what to say. When I was growing up it was very common to call all the immigrants in our street Indian no matter where they came from (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya) so a general term like Asian worked better. Perhaps I'm going off the point here, but there are enough people deliberately causing offence to all and sundry it would be good to know how to avoid doing it accidentally.

Would prefer not to have to use any of the labels at all but it would be impossible to discuss the BNP's arguments then.