Ask the Rabbi: The Rise of the BNP
Written by Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain Thursday, 12 November 2009
Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain of Maidenhead Synagogue addresses your questions. This week's question asks "in the light of the BNP's appearance on the BBC's Question Time, should we worry over its rise ?"It is worrying, but not a cause for panic. They are a party with unpleasant policies, but remember that they won their votes primarily at the European election, which most people do not take seriously, and so it was easy to back the BNP as a protest vote. Many of those who voted for the BNP were not necessarily racists or anti-semites; what prompted them was other issues: fears for their jobs in the recession, disgust over MPs expenses, anger over housing prices and unavailability. The BNP success was not so much due to their own merit but to the Liberal, Labour and Tory inadequacies. The odds are that many of those voters will return to mainstream parties in the General Election. Still, it is important not to be complacent and to ensure that an aberration stays an aberration and does not become a pattern.
Here is where you and I come in : that when discussing the BNP with others we are able to point out both the daft and the seedy nature of the party behind the smiling façade : how the rallying cry of the rights of "indigenous English people" simply does not make sense when even long-term residents here descend from Romans, Goths, Vikings, and French; how repatriating recent immigrants to this country would mean sending away Jews and Africans and Asians and Irish, and that also means Nobel Prize winners, heart specialists, business entrepreneurs, care workers, athletic gold medalists and film stars; that their promise to come down hard on crime looks odd given the disproportionately high number of BNP candidates who have criminal records. It is not enough to 'tut-tut' privately to ourselves, but we need to marshal our arguments and be prepared to actively speak out against them.
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