Which is true of course, but not how the Daily Mail and Express choose to frame it. They regularly conflate immigration with crime and immigrant flood with crime wave. Again there is a difference between reporting facts and stoking up fears. The Daily Mail have too often fallen into the latter, which is of course up to them, but makes it a little difficult to take them seriously when they do their token BNP-bashing.

As for the 169,000 - I wouldn’t class that as no-one, but I would class it as electorally insignificant (when spread over the whole population, that is). But it is the former, not the latter that was initially said.

Why do people keep dragging up this meaningless statistic ? Even if it’s true, its doesn’t counter the argument that increased immigration increases crime. I don’t remember reading any claim that migrants were de facto more likely to commit crime, but that increased migration, without any sort of management, puts pressure on enforcement agencies because they are dealing with more people than they are resourced for. Add to that cutural and language issues that go with a migrant population and the cost of law enforcement rises exponentially (or crime does without additional central funding). People commit crime, so the more people you have, the more crime there will be, it’s not rocket science.

Munro that is clearly not what I’m saying. As I said above, I read the Daily Mail myself. Otherwise how would I know about the articles I refer to? Does that mean I am calling myself a knuckle-dragger? The only people who have actually used the term are Barnbrook and the Daily Mail themselves.

‘It’s the politics of the 1970s sixth form at best, at worst it’s exactly the sort of in/out group dynamic that those you profess to hold in such disdain use themselves to poisonous effect.’

In/out politics is exactly what the BNP and the Daily Mail exercise on a regular basis, although they’re more keen on the out than the in of course.

Thank you Lee - electorally they are insignificant. If/when they take control of a council or get an MP I might start to worry, but 192k people at a general election is about as relevant as er the greens or something.

My comment was not based on contributors being critical of the DM and the BNP but that being critical (in the accepted academic sense) is patently not what this thread is doing, it’s simply saying that anyone who reads the DM or sympathises with the BNP is a “knuckle dragger” hardly the rational, informed debate that is normally deemed to be the aim of this blog.
I hate the way that the paper someone reads is held up as some sort of short-hand for their worth as a citizen. It’s the politics of the 1970s sixth form at best, at worst it’s exactly the sort of in/out group dynamic that those you profess to hold in such disdain use themselves to poisonous effect.

On your point about the main parties, they of course have a lot to answer for in the rise of the BNP. The BNP have risen in areas where people feel that the other parties have given up on them (in the case of the Tories) or taken them for granted (in the case of Labour). They have also done their fare share of bandwagon jumping and fearmongering themselves.

However, to say that the three main parties have played a part is not the same as saying that the Daily Mail and Express have not played theirs. In fact it is the very fearmongering and skewed statistics that they regularly use, that encourages the slavering ranks of the two main parties to jump on board. I have lost count of the amount of times Labour or the Tories have reacted with some statement or rushed out policy to the endless ‘Polish immigrant terrorists flood housing queues’ type stories that make up the bread and drink of your average Daily Mail edition.

Also, regardless of what policies the government of the day brings out, the Daily Mail and Express will always search for these stories. There was a case a little while back of the Daily Mail being discovered for hiring a company to find people who had been affected by Eastern European immigrant criminals. This is of course despite the fact that statistics show that immigrants commit no more crime as a proportion than non-immigrants. That goes well beyond reporting, into the grounds of stirring up fear and resentment and prejudice.

They will continue to do this of course as long as people continue to enjoy reading that stuff. Fear and prejudice are evidently contagious and profitable.

I must apologise for calling you intellectually ‘frivolous’ yesterday. That was a rather thoughtless and frivolous remark in itself.

But the thing is people don’t need the ‘Daily Mail’ or the ‘Daily Express’ to tell them that Britain has a very pressing immigration and integration problem. Dick Littlejohn might have on occasion produced some erroneous statistics, perhaps accidentally or deliberately, but I’m afraid that’s neither here nor there. Your decision to focus on the Daily Mail’s reporting prevents your readers (and perhaps you yourself, I’m not sure) from understanding why the BNP has made undue gains in areas where previously they would have been ignored or attacked.

The actual reason is the unyielding refusal of the three main parties to properly resolve the immigration issue in a rational way without recourse to either bigotry or political correctness.

Now, the chief purpose of our MPs is to transmit the hopes and anxieties of the population upwards towards government. But instead of doing what is expected of them, the respectable parties have chosen to deal with the problem by lying about it over and over again, while directing disgraceful, blanket-charges of ‘prejudice’ against those that complain. On the occasions when they do debate the matter in Parliament, it is only very shallowly; only in terms of immigration’s economic effects, or strictly on the issue of illegal immigration which is a slightly separate side-issue. A stale air of complacency pervades the whole subject. And people are very weary of this complacency, and such is their anger over being defamed as ‘bigots’ (when they are not) that when they see Nick Griffin attacked in a similar way, they conclude that the BNP must be on their side. But of course the BNP is not and none of this need have happened.

First of all, the trouble with our society is that it has very serious structural problems which will be difficult to overcome, but which must be overcome nonetheless. When we have a welfare state which pays a very large number of people rather generously to do nothing at all, and which educates many people so poorly that they are of little use to any employer, we will inevitably need a large supply of people to fill jobs nearer the bottom, which are disagreeable and low-paid, but which demand ingenuity and thoroughness even so. Another source of the problem is the strict minimum wage laws, the strict health and safety regulations and other rules which have been forced on employers by Westminster and by the EU. If we could effectively tackle these structural problems, we wouldn’t need very many immigrants in the first place. But a successful solution would require serious welfare reform and probably even EU withdrawal.

But let’s be honest about why immigration has had such a bad reputation among a large section of the population.

Firstly, with regard to the Hari/Littlejohn dispute, Littlejohn and other tabloid commentators can hardly be responsible for creating a “BNP culture”. Many people in this country, in particular the white working classes have always assumed that the welfare state established after World War II was for them. But now they can see for themselves that its benefits are given to many newcomers. Undoubtedly, a great deal of acrimony has been caused by changes in the council housing queue, which in the past, kept familiar working-class neighbourhoods together, but which has had to be changed to meet the needs of foreign strangers. Because our economy requires fairly large-scale immigration, (though nothing that even approaches the current inflow) it is difficult to see how this could have been avoided.

But certainly much of this resentment could have been mitigated if only the government had chosen not to follow stupid policies that worsened the problem.

Firstly on the matter of culture: Both xenophobes and many non-xenophobes fear that immigrants will ‘swamp’ Britain to the extent that it will soon be unrecognisable to its settled population. Essentially, they fear the balkanization of Britain. Now these fears may indeed be realised if there continues to be no real long-term effort made to integrate newcomers. Many MPs and councillors have had a vested interest to keep immigrant communities in distinct districts so as to court ethnic constituencies. Others have used the the immigrants as an excuse for imposing multicultural education in the schools, which prolong and intensify the separation between immigrants and the indigenous people.

Now here is where the xenophobes and racialists such as Richard Barnbrook differ from the non-xenophobes; commentators such as Richard Littlejohn, Melanie Phillips; most of the general public in fact. Unlike Littlejohn, Barnbrook does not honestly want to see the successful assimilation of immigrants because he believes that British culture can only be passed on through the blood instead of through the mind.

But funnily enough, this view is also held by many on the Left who cling to the doctrine of multiculturalism. They too believe that assimilation is wrong and impossible, but for the opposite reason; they wish to preserve the otherness of foreigners, this in turn provokes the very racism they claim to hate. Many on the left still hold that all cultures are equal, excepting their own of course, which is bad and ‘imperialist’. Cultural assimilation, is therefore another contemptible example of ‘cultural imperialism’

I hope that you will agree that this is a decadent system of thought.

But another thing that has exacerbated the problem is that many features of our immigration system are irrational almost beyond belief. Often the most productive immigrants are deported and potentially productive asylum-seekers are turned into parasites through an enforced dependency on the state.

This irrational policy stems from the sentimental view that the principle purpose of immigration is to grant relief to the downtrodden rather than seeing immigrants as a source of enterprise; that we can do good only when we act selflessly. Unsurprisingly, the silly demand for refugees produces a large supply of “refugees”. There is of course no reliable way to tell between the genuine cases and the sham ones. But this of course is of no concern to our self-righteous elite; they want to FEEL caring, not necessarily BE caring.

The rational answer to this problem would be to allow immigrants into Britain, but to offer them no government assistance whatsoever, except the permission to work, until they have paid taxes for a very long time. Those who were truly refugees would surely accept this deal, and civil servants would no longer have to discern the undiscernable. Asylum for the truly persecuted would be perfectly accessible and only hardworking and enterprising foreigners would arrive. Bitterness over immigrant parasitism would melt away and support for the BNP would similarly evaporate.

But as I said, in the long-term this dependency on large-scale immigration must be broken.

These are all good ideas - so of course they won’t happen.

So, why are you a member of a socialist party? And you can reject socialism without rejecting immigration.

Matt, yes I know this a left wing blog but even I’m not that much of a recluse. The Mail is the most powerful paper in this country.

The Daily Mail has on average a circulation of over 2.25 million.

In terms of votes cast in the General Election in 2005, the BNP was the eighth most popular party with 192,745 votes. Barnbrook himself was fifth place in the London mayoral race with 69,000 votes.

Around 2.5 million people regularly buy the paper and many more millions read it. Millions also vote for the BNP across the country.

“For a bunch of “liberals” you guys seem to have a serious problem understanding the concept of free (as in free to everyone and anyone) speech.”

Do I say anywhere in the post that the Daily Mail or the BNP should be banned or that their members should be stopped from speaking? In fact, if you look through my articles on this site, you will see that I have argued specifically against that and the so-called ‘no-platform’ policy.

Would it be more liberal for me to not be allowed to write about and criticise the Daily Mail and the BNP?

You just might have had a point there if I had written an article called ‘3 main parties are definitely not selling the country down the river.’ But seeing as I didn’t, would you like to explain your argument as to why the BNP are more tolerant than the Daily Mail (which is at least semi relevant to the original post)?

Not really….especially considering most of the planet isn’t exactly gay friendly.

Try and learn to read will you? There are stack loads of non-derogatory meanings for the term “brown people” - but there is *ONE* amongst many innocent, that is not, therefore to avoid any trouble, I said I would swap “brown” for “non-white”.

I’ll explain how the BNP isn’t bigoted when you explain how the 3 main parties aren’t selling the country down the river.