Yes, the BNP is unpleasant and hate-filled. But why does everyone feel the need to say it so much? Or rather, why don’t people say it about all the other hate-filled organisations in this country, as well as about the BNP? The Socialist Workers Party is hate-filled; so is Respect, so is Hizb ut-Tahrir, so is Sinn Fein, so are some in Greenpeace and some in Ukip, and so is John Prescott in relation to field sports and Ken Livingstone in relation to Israel, America and Britain’s imperial past. The BNP, like the now resurgent old Labour party, finds the basis of its support in resentment. Old Labour expresses that resentment in terms of class, the BNP more in terms of race. But I don’t see a big moral difference between someone who wants to destroy the rich by tax and the confiscation of land, and someone who wants the compulsory repatriation of Pakistanis. Both make hatred their ruling passion, both in the name of fairness to a particular section of the downtrodden. Gordon Brown attacks David Cameron simply for being an Old Etonian, just as Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, attacks people simply for being Muslim. It is a real merit of Tony Blair that he does not use the language of hatred in politics. This helps explain why his party directs its large reserves of hatred at him.
Although Nick Griffin went to Cambridge, one is unlikely, in educated middle-class circles, to have friends who vote for the BNP. The only person I have ever known who said he did so was the late Alan Clark. While he was a Conservative minister, he told me that he voted for the National Front (as it was then called) at council elections. I never knew whether or not to believe this.
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