"People who support the BNP are without exception racist scum"

So sayeth Alex of Recess Monkey, who has a CiF post up about the BNPs use (if any) of the social networking software Facebook.

I disagreed and gave reasons as best I could. Sorry for regular readers if I repeat myself. A lot of this is cut'n'paste.


"Alex - you really are urinating into a Force 10 here. All this well-meant stuff is unlikely to have the effect you want.

Let me attempt to explain why.

In 2001 the Observer reported a demographer (who I’m presuming with zero evidence was David Coleman of Oxford University) as saying that on current trends for immigration, emigration and birthrate, whites would be a minority in Britain by 2100. I’m not sure if he’d taken into account the million-odd Poles who have come over since EU enlargement, and I’m not sure talking of ‘whites’ is helpful either. I prefer the term ‘Native Britons’, which distinguishes the indigenous people from Albanians, Poles, Frenchmen and other Eastern Europeans.

Since then immigration has increased dramatically, and emigration of natives likewise. Brits are leaving at a rate not seen for 100 years. More than half the babies born in London and 20% of those born in England have mothers who were themselves born overseas.

The latest forecast is that "on present trends, by 2073, the majority population of this country will either have migrated here, or be the child or grandchild of parents who did so. No past wave of immigration has ever come anywhere near having that kind of consequence."

Two points here.

First, it may be that the demographers and the ONS people are fabricating the stats. But people on the Left don't seem to want to discuss them. The absence of any attempt at rebuttal is itself IMHO significant.

The second is that apparently this change is not worthy of debate or discussion. The Observer said that "It would be the first time in history that a major indigenous population has voluntarily become a minority, rather than through war, famine or disease."

Most people on the Left are instinctively sympathetic to an indigenous people who find their land occupied by strangers. Those who resist are heroes. Native Americans, the native Irish, Aborigines, Palestinians, the Indians of South America. All these peoples may have ended up belonging to much richer nations as a result of immigration, but they didn't necessarily appreciate the favour.

I cannot understand what's so special about the English, that they, uniquely among the nations and races of the earth, are apparently expected to acquiesce in their own replacement.

Most people don't spend their time studying ONS stats. They just notice the changes in their area, or when they visit a city. The problem is that those who are concerned about immigration, and who feel that social cohesion demands an immediate stop to immigration while those who are already here integrate, have an extremely limited voting choice. None of the three major parties have the slightest intention of halting mass immigration. Because to do so would be racist.

The native British are a demoralised bunch, and have generally reacted to immigration by voting with their feet rather than for people who like Odin and dislike Jews. But as the incomer population grows, the English are finding that there’s nowhere (emigration apart) to run to. This may be why the BNPs vote of nearly 5% in the 2004 Euro elections was around four times their 1999 vote.

This trend may not continue - as children of all cultures grow up together they may unite and reject communal politics.

But Bradford, Oldham, Burnley aren’t terribly hopeful pointers. It seems to me more likely that as the Native Brit population declines, and natives become the minority in more and more areas, politics will almost inevitably become split on ethnic lines, as for example in Fiji. The demographics are still pointing all one way, the Tories are unlikely to to make major changes if and when they do ever win power.

So in 20 years or so there'll be a nativist British party, representing a substantial proportion, if not a majority, of the native English. The only question is what the name of that party will be.

At the moment, for good or ill, the only party that seems to many natives to be for 'people like us' is the BNP.

So Alex, as long as demographic change on this scale continues, banning the BNP from Facebook, harassing and sacking its activists, "duffing them up in the street" (copyright B.Bragg) are in the long run not going to make a difference.

The BNP may have many idiotic ideas. They may also have some very nasty ones at the heart of their ideology and among their senior people.

But that isn't why people are voting for them. The native Brits haven't suddenly become swivel-eyed types with obsessions about black IQ, Jewish conspiracies and the other things that make a BNP ideologues eyes light up. The English don't do fascism. They just don't want to be a minority in their own country.



UPDATE - Alex Hilton's response :

"Labantall - you're the scariest person to have commented so far. Would you mind telling me what a native Briton is to you? Picts, Celts, Norse, Angles, Britons, Scots, Danes, Normans, Saxons, Gaels, Huguenots? But you know this. You know that you could pick a different date in history and find a different group of outsiders to hate."

makes it pretty clear that the last thing he wants is to think about is why people are voting BNP. And the combination of ad hominem and wild assumption implies that he's operating on the principle noted by the historian AJP Taylor. Discussing the Katyn massacre of Polish Army officers (blamed at the time by the Poles on the Russians and by the Russians on the Germans) he said words to the effect of "as the Russians have discovered, the best way of sustaining an argument is never to put any evidence forward to defend it".