BBC Question Time Protest

Went down to Ldn a couple weeks ago with about a dozen SWP comrades from Leeds to demonstrate outside the BBC in west London.

The decision by the BBC to allow Nazi Nick to appear on Question Time elicited a reaction from everyone and his sister, and for most people the arguments were fairly simple: As a democratic and democratically elected party, the BNP must be allowed the same public platform as everyone else. The reasoning behind this being that every time the BNP turn up in public, they bring along more than enough rope to hang themselves with.

The second train of thought was that the BNP shouldn't be allowed any kind of platform, which oddly enough seemed to see Peter Hain in agreement with those on the left who engage in a consistent policy of no platform for fascists.

However there are two problems with the democracy argument.

Firstly, the BNP are not a legitimate political party (in the sense that any of the bosses parties have a claim to legitimacy). It exists to advocate and bring about an all-white Britain, dragging the country back to where we were before half a century of anti-racist activism.

Not only do they want to recreate some idyllic snowflake Albion, but we must be in no doubt that as a fascist organisation, they will smash workers' organisations without the least hesitation, and will attack all the rights that workers have won over the past decades.

Secondly, all the 'political commentators' seem to agree that Nick Griffin was a pasty-faced, shifty-eyed caricature on Question Time - an embarrassment to himself and his party. However, this perception has been true of every one of Nick's public appearances. Far from demolishing the BNP's credibility as the bourgeois media gleefully proposed in Friday's papers, Griffin's QT appearance merely reinforced the BNP's public position as the victimised, anti-establishment party standing up to a nefarious Lib/Lab/Con multicultural conspiracy to deport the ethnic British population to Magaluf.

The BBC's decision to rehabilitate the BNP into the national consciousness just a short time after they ran an undercover show exposing them as an amateur gang of Nazi hooligans, should not have come as a surprise. The appearance on the show will doubtless mean that the BNP will feature with some regularity on the public broadcaster - even though the homophobic, sexist and racist BNP disagrees with just about every one of the BBC's ethical guidelines.

The demonstration itself like most recent UAF stunts was something of a farce. Taking place in London you'd think that with an A-Z and a bit of forward planning, they would have found out all the entrances/exits to the complex and organised spotters to make sure that we could respond quickly and prevent Griffin from entering.

In a word: no.

Instead it was left to the initiative of a few activists to storm the vehicle entrance when it was loosely guarded, and run into the main lobby. Again the lack of preparation meant that we didn't have a clue where to go, and the rest of the demonstration hadn't followed us.

There were about 30 of us standing there for half an hour linking arms, chanting with dozens of staff looking on from the galleries. Eventually the pigs and BBC security dragged us away one by one kicking and screaming etc.

Happily they didn't arrest us, they merely chucked us back out into the crowd to join the several hundred demonstrators trying to force open the gate again.

We tried this for several hours, with a melee of police and protesters; eventually we forced out way to the front of the gate, forcing the remaining police to scramble over the sides. We tried to force the gate for several more hours, until they used CS gas on the first few rows of demonstrators, after which no-one was particularly keen to get upclose and personal.

Nothing of any particular interest happened to be honest, apart from Martin Smith of SWP fame managing to get himself arrested (again).

Griffin was smuggled in through a back entrance, and smuggled out of the front entrance after we went round the side to stop him coming out. Despite the lack of organisation, there were never enough protesters to make a serious attempt at stopping him from getting in.

We left around 8 or 9ish, and went to Chicken Cottage where I picked me up a fuckin lush burger and chips for £3.

Fuckin sweet.