The BNP: No Platform, No Exceptions

By Ellie Levenson / @EllieLevenson

I posted a message on Twitter recently, in the midst of discussions in the news about whether Labour would put people forward to share a platform with the BNP. My message was simple. It said: “For the record, I would not share a platform, Question Time or other, with BNP representative.” One of the responses I got was from a Conservative Party member who lives in the same constituency as me. His response: “would they share one with YOU?” (His capitals not mine). And you know what, I suspect they wouldn’t. Because I am Jewish.

There is a very simple reason why no other political party should share a platform with the BNP. That is because they are racist. We can make other arguments too including arguments about lies and intimidation – but that they are racist should be enough.

When we argue against other mainstream parties we disagree on points of policy and on ideology. They might want us to have a different type of relationship to the state, different levels of access to public services, different types of education or even different types of relationships. But they do not wish some of us to be second class citizens, exiled or worse based on our ethnicity. Whatever we think of the individual policies of other mainstream parties, their policies are not racist policies. That is why our system works, because to take part in it all parties have to sign up to some basic moral tenets. The BNP does not do this.

If the Labour government, and other mainstream political parties, share a platform with the BNP they give the message that the BNP has policies you should listen to and think about and then decide whether to give them your support. What they should be doing is saying supporting the BNP should not be an option, because whatever the non-racist policies they have are, whether you like the sound of their ideas about tax or justice or health (and some of their policies on this can come across as attractive) the very fact the party has racist policies at its core is enough that we should deny them the right to discuss anything else.

This alone should stop any decent politicians from any party sharing a platform with the BNP. But more than that; if we did share a platform who would we ask to do this? Whoever we choose there is a problem. Either we choose someone from one of the groups the BNP hate – neither appropriate or fair. Or we choose someone from the one group that the BNP do not hate – someone white and ethnically British, whatever that may be. And we end up with a platform that looks just how the BNP would like the country to look.

Both scenarios disgust me and they should disgust every member of every mainstream party. That is why Tom Flynn, an anti-BNP campaigner and Labour PPC for Southend West, and I have set up a Facebook group ‘BNP – No Platform. No Exceptions‘. We want supporters of all parties to join and for MPs. Councillors, journalists, commentators, campaigners and anyone who might ever be asked to share a platform with the BNP to publicly give their support to the group. Because if we all refuse to share a platform then we show the BNP to be the marginal party that it is.

Ellie Levenson is a freelance journalist and a member of Tottenham CLP.