Uppfriskande kommentar till BNPs valframgångar

God, I am sick to death of the BNP. I don't mean the party - they only got two seats in the Euro Elections, for heaven's sake - I mean all the rival politicians and commentators and dinner party chatterers falling over themselves to say just how utterly disgusted they are by this victory for the racist "far right."

In yesterday's Twittersphere the talk was of little else and the subtexts of every Tweet could be loosely translated thus: "See what a caring, lovely, non-racist person I am?","Do you know just how many black people are close personal friends of mine? An awful lot, let me tell you"; "I have a West Indian supermarket near me. It sells all sorts of marvellous ethnic things: smelly dried fish, ackee fruit. The proprietor is a delightful fellow and we always have a jolly chat. Did I mention he's black? Well he is and it doesn't affect our relationship one bit"; "Oh, well I live next to an Indian restaurant and I so much prefer a lovely Sag Aloo to fish and chips with their awful racist Union Jack connotations. Kinder to the environment too. And the chap who runs it has taught me to say "two Cobra beers and some spicy poppadoms" in Gujerati." etc.

Next time, what I suggest these people do is come clean and Tweet the subtext. At least then we won't to have endure their half-baked, ill-thought-out, glib, bien-pensant inanities sullying one of the most important political debates of our age.

The people who voted BNP are on the front line of this debate. They don't have the luxury of being able to nip in and out of a cornucopia of simply marvellous ethnic food shops, and thrillingly directional Grime Bhangra clubs and delightful arthouse cinemas selling wholemeal samosas and showing seasons of Iranian cinema, before retreating to their lovely safe white enclaves. It's on their doorstep, all the time, and there's no escape: for the white working classes (of the North and North East especially) multiculturalism has been a disaster.

And this isn't, pace some tedious bien-pensant commentators, about racism pure and simple. It's partly about immigration numbers - far greater than the indigenous communities are capable of absorbing without disruption. Mainly, though, it's about assimilation.

The racial tension and unrest in Britain now would not be half so great if were not for the fact that thanks to the imbecilic liberal-leftist philosophy of "multiculturalism" two generations of immigrant communities have actually been encouraged by the apparatus of state and at taxpayer's expense NOT to assimilate. In some areas of towns in the north - Bradford, for example - white people are made to feel that they don't belong any more. And these white people whose families have been there for generations are supposed to go, what, exactly? "Ah! Bless! Bah gum I don't 'alf love living in this wonderful melting pot"?

However dangerous the BNP are - not, in fact, very, I don't think - they're not nearly so dangerous as the liberal commentators who write meaningless "Thought For The Day" drivel like "Far better would have been to enjoin our principal parties to get their act together and offer a viable politics of hope to eclipse the dark underbelly of society."

Every time a politician, media commentator, or glib dinner-party-chatterer bangs on about how disgusting they find the BNP, what they are unwittingly (at least I hope it's unwittingly) doing is shutting down the debate. "Here is a topic so beyond the pale of reasonable discussion that the only proper reaction is to pass the smelling salts, bury your head in the sand, and hope it all goes away," is what they are saying.

But it won't go away. Read Mark Steyn's America Alone: the Islamisation of Europe - it's one of the pressing problems of our age. (Why the hell do you think Geert Wilders did so well in the Euro Elections? You think, what, people just liked his crazy name?). Unchecked - and almost worse - unassimilated immigration is a threat to all Western countries.

And it's not "racist" to want to discuss this issue. It doesn't automatically make you hateful or a Nazi or the next Nick Griffin. It just means that you think.

The BNP rise is about identity

Mainstream politicians used to dismiss BNP voters with clichéd name-calling. Not now. It has taken the election of two BNP MEPs for those in power actually to look at why so many people vote for the far Right. It was about MPs' expenses, they explain. Or jobs and housing.

But the politicians cowardly ignore the obvious - it's also about identity. The white working class feels disenfranchised; sidelined by talk of a mythic multiculturalism that dismisses or demonises them.

I was born and raised in the street opposite the old Labour HQ on Walworth Road - a neighbourhood once defined by a civic culture born of the municipal socialism of the early 20th century. In that inward-looking working-class world many worked locally, married “in” and often remained in the same postcode (evacuation and conscription permitting) from cradle to grave.

By the 1960s, those of us within its rising generation would have willingly escaped as soon as puberty kicked in. I once wrote: “We arrived after the bombs brought people together and before the bulldozers pushed them apart. And for us it was merely the backdrop to the beginning of our biographies, not the beginning, middle and end.” Then as now, these neighbourhoods included the good, the bad and the ugly - it was far from idyllic.

Labour rejoiced in the collectivism of the working class as long as it could define them as “the workers”. But with constant mass immigration it suddenly became apparent that the collectivism of the white working class was defined by ethnicity too. Fear of immigration turned some to the National Front - from then on many a Labour voter used the lines “Enoch is right” and “We're second-class citizens” until they fossilised into cliché.

Labour has failed to assuage those fears - and too many feel that those fears have become reality. Many of its long-term voters believed the party was responsible for eradicating anything that linked the white working class with an identity and a history, because it was at odds with the modern creed of multiculturalism.

But you can't talk up diversity and inclusiveness while ignoring white working-class culture, and not expect dissent. With multiculturalism came heavy-handed anti-discrimination laws and the McCarthyism of a race industry that appears to attach no value to a racist crime when the victim is white.

All this has played a huge part in pushing voters away from Labour. It will take more than new homes and jobs to bring them back.

Ben, aged 16, who was white, was stabbed to death by three black men near a nightclub in north London; there was no apparent motive for the murder.

If you were a cynic you might argue that if a black kid had been stabbed to death by three white men in an otherwise motiveless attack then the community centre would already have been built by now and the grieving parents recognised in the honours lists.

It is good that we are quick to become enraged by violent white racism, that it appals us and makes us examine our society, claw away in an attempt to discover those subterranean causes. But what of this, apparently, non-racist murder? Just as much brutal honesty is required to confront it, I think. Maybe more.

The truth is, violent white-on-black crime is a rarity in Britain, by comparison – although white-on-Asian crime is rather less so. The overwhelming bulk of violent street crime in London is committed by young black men, and in numerous cases against white people, although one would not impute a racial motive; the statistics suggest that young black male criminals are quite happy to stab or shoot anybody who hoves into view with either a bulging wallet, a mobile phone or an assumed reflection of disrespec’ in their eyes.

David Furness, a BNP spokesman, told RT the bronze statue of the late president of South Africa should be removed from Parliament Square and placed in the South African embassy.