They're At It Again

Peter Hain when will you ever learn ? He's on about the BNP again in the papers and he's the latest New Labourite to blether the same old rubbish about Nick Griffin's European election success in June.

Mr Hain has a great record in fighting racism, so you would expect him to know more about identifying it than most of us. But there he is in The Guardian telling us that folk who voted BNP only did so as a protest against the big parties in the wake of the Westminster expenses farago.

What's more, he says voting BNP is, in such circumstances, not an endorsement of racism, per se.

He's not the only Labour politico to fall into the same trap of refusing to accept that some outwardly upstanding British people have some sympathies with racist thinking. If voting for a party at an election is not an endorsement of their policies then what's the point ? Is he saying the very act of voting has all the foresight of a sticking the tail on a donkey contest ? If people who voted BNP in June aren't racist then why didn't they vote Green, or Lib Dem as a protest ?

Labour have tried to come back by saying they chose BNP simply for its power to shock. Certainly they did that if that was the objective. But no person who rejects racism would ever commit such an act.

So Hain, and his friends, have to at least admit those whose X went next to the BNP on the ballot paper were at least prepared to countenance being represented by people with racist and extreme right-wing views. Don't kid yourselves, and us, that the Great British Public have clean hands when it comes to viewpoints on nationality, identity and race, irrespective of how they vote at elections. The truth says something different.

They can congratulate themselves all they want about changing attitudes everytime a TV presenter is told off for saying golliwog but that kind of gesture is not based in the reality of the everyday. Not every Briton is racist, far from it. Most are probably don't have to think about race in their daily lives. But those who are suddenly confronted with race as an issue can sometimes deliver a viewpoint which can chill you to the bone and shock you, simply because you have never heard them ever say such a thing.

Mr Hain says less than one per cent of people in Britain harbour racist opinions. He should correct that to say "admit to" racist opinions. It's the ones who keep it to themselves we should worry about because the day may come when it will rise to the surface.