As the BBC prepares to host Nick Griffin, what of the real silent, forgotten voices of British politics?

The Labour movement column

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

Last week I gave one of a series of talks on President Obama as part of Black History Month at Lewisham Library. Once the discussion got onto the situation in the UK, things really sparked. The audience was almost exclusively black British.

Innocently, I suggested that we have become very conceited in the UK about race relations. My experience was that the US was definitely more segregated than the UK but they had grown used to discussing issues of race and having a public dialogue – a positive thing.

Many expected the presidential election to be racialised. In fact, it rarely was so. While the media here seemed at times to be obsessed with race and the race for the presidency, over there it played only an occasional role. The time I had spent there persuaded me that though there was still enormous racial inequality, they had found a way of having a mostly sensible way of dealing with issues of race in public discourse. In fact, where the US has had full public discourse, we have largely become complacent that we’re more integrated than we really are.

Almost every single person in that room in Lewisham – certainly the ones who spoke and at least half did – felt that they experienced racial discrimination. Mostly, they felt it was at the hands of the institutions they dealt with on a day-to-day basis.

In the Evening Standard the following day, it was reported that Ken Hinds – a man who has received a commendation from the Metropolitan police for his “courage, tenacity and dedication” in fighting knife crime and acts as a gang mediator for the Met – has been stopped and searched over 100 times over two decades. My Lewisham friends reported similar experiences. It left them feeling categorised, isolated, and like foreigners in their own home.

Any sort of categorisation brings about suspicion. The DNA database was mentioned more than once. Racial profiling is not just straining the image of the police, it has a wider and corrosive impact on the feeling of belonging within certain communities.

As Ken Hinds says:

“Young black boys hate the police because every time they are stopped, it makes them feel like outsiders in their own community. Enough is enough! There has to be a more intelligent, fairer way.”

It was a sentiment that was spookily reminiscent of the complaints that I had heard the previous night.

Then came a complaint about the constant monitoring of race and ethnicity in public services. My feeling was that this type of monitoring was a positive thing but that view was met with a degree of resistance. Just a few days later, Nick Cohen reported from Dagenham on conversations he had with some BNP supporters.

“Nemo” said to Cohen:

“Every form I get has a box I have to tick saying I’m ‘white British’. I’m not British, I’m English, and the BNP is the only party that stands up for people like me.”

Switch the races and delete the bit about the BNP and that is pretty much exactly what was said to me last Thursday night in Lewisham.

It seems that feelings of isolation, alienation and voicelessness cut across races. It would appear that class is still a prevalent factor in the experience and opportunity of British people – but race and identity intersect with class in dangerous and toxic ways. Somewhere along the way, things got racialised. Alienated communities compete with alienated communities. People compete with people for scarce resources and all involved become losers.

The government tries to intervene but processes become very clumsy very quickly. We divide people by wards and from just across the road the resentment swells. This all gets swept under the carpet.

We have spent the last few weeks talking about the BNP. Somehow the BBC manages to see the BNP as voiceless and gives it a platform. Meanwhile those who are genuinely voiceless – whether in Lewisham or Dagenham – still remain silent: the forgotten voices of British politics.

There was no public or political discussion about whether this was right. The Labour party was effectively bounced into ending its no shared platform with the BNP policy. Any Labour person refusing to do so in the future is risking being empty-chaired. The precedent has been set. However Nick Griffin performs on Thursday, this is a step-change in the profile of the BNP. And there will be further opportunities.

The BNP continues to insist that certain citizens are ‘purer’ than others. They make an intriguing distinction between the indigenous British (white) and civically British (well-behaved, ethnic minorities) and others (Muslims in the main.) They would deny rights to anyone they saw fit.

At another talk at an Arts Fesitival in Liverpool a few months ago, I shared a platform with a guy who was writing a black history of the city. It’s a history that goes back over two hundred years. He had traced his own roots in the city to the early nineteenth century. In fact, his roots in the city trace back almost a century longer than my roots: ancestors who came over from Ireland from the late nineteenth century onwards. Now, does that make him indigenously British and me civically? Are we both indigenous? Both civically British? Who can say? It’s just nonsense but it’s nonsense that feeds on dejection and converts it into venom.

And yet, this is the gibberish that the BBC has unilaterally decided to place alongside mainstream political parties who believe in civic equality. The BBC exists to serve the public interest, according to its Charter. We could debate whether that means giving a platform – beyond that required by freedom of speech – to those who seek to deny sections of their British audience the full rights of citizenship. It would have been healthy to have had that debate.

Do I think that Nick Griffin should not appear on the BBC ever? No, that would be absurd. Do I think he should enjoy a platform of parity with mainstream political parties? No, I do not and for a very simple reason: by enabling that legitimacy, you amplify a party that has a platform that would deny rights to others should it ever, God forbid, get the opportunity.

Instead of amplifying the voice of those who are way too loud already, perhaps the BBC should have concentrated its energy of giving voice to those who feel ignored in Dagenham, Lewisham and elsewhere.

British politics will change on Thursday – but I won’t be watching. Luckily, I’ll be giving another talk on President Obama. I’ve always been a sucker for hope over hatred.

Searchlight and Hope not Hate are requesting that people send a message of hope about Britain to David Dimbleby in advance of Thursday’s Question Time.