Blaaady Frogs

As a Europhile and Anglophile I am becoming ever more anxious about what the EU elections will bring next month. I have just spent the last 20 minutes or so going round in circles on YouTube watching Nick Griffin interviews, commentary and BNP rallies. Every time there is a local election there is always a tabloid driven fear that they may grab something, but in the end it never happens – that is, until the BNP got a seat on the London assembly. The number of candidates and the number of voters are on the rise – both have risen slowly since the mod 80s – but have really swelled under the leadership of Griffin. I’m interested in the BNP for many reasons and I am interested in the attraction – ultimately what type of people vote for them. Why do they do it? What do they hope to achieve? Do they really understand the BNP and what it stands for? My favourite grenade to throw in to a talk is the story of Nick Eriksen, one of the candidates for last years London Assembly election. Nick, writing on his blog stated that Rape is pure poppycock – ‘women are like gongs, they need to be struck once in a while’. Nice.

When the membership leak came out last year I nearly wet myself with pleasure. Who are these people? I immediately searched the list for old primary school teachers, friends and family. I searched street names, towns and postcodes. No one came up of course but then this list was all but a few of BNP membership. Now though I am scared. Unlike a lot of people I mix with I do know some semi BNP supporters, wannabe Nicks I call them (at the very least I know a fair few people who will defend Nick Griffin). My fascination comes from here. I know the mindset of the BNP supporter. Maybe not the average mindset, but it’s certainly a popular and growing one: ‘I don’t like foreigners coming here, stealing the jobs taking the benefits and faaahking off back home’. BNP supporters in my eyes have gone beyond race (whatever that is) and colour. It is about nationality and culture nowadays. The second root of my interest is that I know these blaaady foreigners. I am the only English person living in the 4 floor house I reside in. I went to multicultural university where, again, I was the minority. I have heard first hand what people think about England and more importantly the experiences they have had in England. With these two mixed together with a general understanding and belief that 90% of the British media is corrupt I am scared that the BNP will grab a seat in the European Parliament.

Last week I went to see English People Very Nice at the National Theatre. The central theme to the play that’s set in Bethnal Green is that the UK is built on immigration -from the Romans to the French - from the Russian Jews to the Commonwealth countries and EU free movement of today. Everyone in the audience (including me) slapped their knees and laughed loudly with their big teeth at the anti French jokes that were made by one of the central British characters. I laughed at the Jewish jokes and stereotypes of the Indian and Pakistani characters that cavorted on stage. The mainly middle class white audience however drew eerily silent when the play reached the 1980s, which took on the birth of the National Front (one of the main characters falls for an Indian man). It grew even more still when the topic of post 9/11 came up (daughters of immigrant moderate Pakistanis turn fundamentalist). I too went quiet and realised that the play was not a simple satirical jab at immigration or a grotesque stereotype fuelled script - it was an excellent reflection of what we are witnessing today. It confirmed in my head all that I have ever believed about being English. I understood that we, as a collective, who were just 20 minutes ago laughing at the cheap French gags were watching a razor sharp manifestation of the current climate. On the one hand we are of course a lovely, quiet, reserved and gentile nation (‘after you love’) and a frustrated and disillusioned nation on the other. We don’t mind ‘them’ coming over here – just as long as they don’t live next door to us.

Bringing this back to today and the BNP - this is what is worrying. The ‘just as long as they don’t live next door to us’ is not the only issue of today, it is beautifully combined with recession, immigration (on a scale that the UK has never witnessed before) and most importantly with a disillusionment with politics and England itself.