Just finished watching the BNP’s leader Nick Griffin on Question Time and I’m happy that, in the end, he was on the show.
For any non-Brits out there QT is a regular political discussion show on the BBC which has four guests plus a moderator, the guests usually a mix of politicians, politicos, cultural commentators and the like. Over the last few days there has been a massive storm over Griffin’s proposed appearance and whether it was giving the BNP a platform which they didn’t deserve but thankfully the BBC stuck to their guns and it went ahead.
Griffin was met with protests at the studios and was always going to be having a hard time of it on the show – whilst many agree that he should be allowed to have the platform, very few would say he should be given a free ride – and in the end I thought he came off pretty badly. He was obviously making a sincere effort to appear as rational as possible and thereby making it seem like it was the others who were the irrational ones but this in itself was undermined by Dimbleby and Jack Straw’s references to the BNP manual which guides its members on avoiding incendiary language and framing themselves in a more approachable way. (Rule #1 – The BNP is not a ‘racist’ party. Yes apparently, they even have to put it in quotation marks). In fact Griffin sweated and wriggled his way through most of the latter half of the show and his attempts to seem calm and reasonable actually, in the end, meant that he seemed pretty weak in his convictions. He gave in to any questioning very easily in an attempt to avoid being too confrontational but all it meant was that he pretty much stepped down from the platform he had been given of his own accord.
One of the better moments was when Dimbleby moved the questioning away from that of race politics and onto Stephen Gately’s death and the Jan Moir article which was outright homophobic and has prompted a massive amount of complaints. It was almost as if Griffin had been concentrating so hard on what he had been saying up until that point (“don’t be racist, don’t be racist, be racist, SHIT, no, DON’T be racist”) that he let his guard down a little too much when the subject matter changed and he just came straight out as a homophobe.
The questions will no doubt continue to swirl about whether he should have been allowed on or not but I think given the performance not much will come of it. Griffin did his best to seem reasonable but thankfully the other guests and the audience were also pretty measured in their treatment of him, avoiding the risk of going over the top and it feeling like this guy was a fox thrown into the hunting dogs’ shed. The fact is it’s not about whether he deserves a platform or not. He’s the leader of a party that now has two MEPs that were voted in by the people of this country – he already has been given a platform. The question is do we belittle him and his supporters or do we try to understand why people would vote for him and how to counter his arguments (hint: with about five minute’s effort researching his claims…)
What makes me feel good is that there has been such a furore over his appearance and that pretty much everyone is hostile to him whereas I do wonder if he was in the US that he might well have his own primetime show on the Fox Network. The day that he appears on Question Time without the fuss is when we really need to start worrying.
So go for it. Go check out what they are saying – here, I’ll make it easy for you. Just click here – http://bnp.org.uk/. But don’t stop there. Read what they have to say but then read further, question it all, just as you should for any viewpoint being presented to you. Check out Unite Against Facism. Check out Stop The BNP’s website. Check out the profile of Nick Griffin here or even here but not here. Check it ALL out.
