Dave Hill seems rather to be complimenting BJ on his high standards!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/23/boris-johnson-ian-clement

This is the kind of thread where people normally bring up the previous administration – it’s worth noting that Lee Jasper was exonerated in two enquiries commissioned by Boris of all accusations of corruption.

Not that this made much difference following the Standard’s unfounded, bigoted hate campaign, but worth pointing out before the mouth-breathers arrive. Also a parable for people who think they’re going to vote in the next general election to replace a Corrupt Labour Government with an Honest Tory Government…

Good to see you defending Boris again cjcjc – true to form.

And what do you think about Boris hiring so many PR people on such high salaries, while cutting funding for rape centres (and going against a campaign promise)?

I’m not defending him – just linking to Hill’s piece!

Im not usually one to take an ultra-lib position on far-right scum, but I don’t think the government should go anywhere near telling political organisations what membership policies they can and can’t operate.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Standard will give this any significant coverage – are they still giving GIlligan airtime? It’ll be a good litmus test of whether they are getting a bit less partisan …

(personally, I don’t believe a word of it and I suspect Geordie Greig will use the new “positive about London” spin to mean “positive about the Mayor”)

PS Not sure about Bercow (although the Speaker’s influence is limited on a lot of Parliamentary issues – it’s more about the mood music) but Dorries in a seethiing fury is always a heart-warming sight…

As for the BNP, the less said about them, the better. I have a nasty feeling that this will actually play well for them – they get more headlines while getting to play the victimised martyr-to-PC card…

I am, it goes completely against freedom of association. We’ve had this argument before, but basically as long as the organisation has proper procedures to remove members that are not holding the same beliefs, or more importantly work against the beliefs, of the organisation then there should be no entry level restriction to who may become a member.

No-one should be able to be excluded because of a potentially irrelevant factor of their being, such as their skin colour, party membership, sexuality, wage bracket, etc. If those factors end up being relevant and against the interests of the organisation THEN get rid of them.

@6 – wonder no longer.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23710876-details/Axed+Boris+Johnson+aide+lied+over+lover/article.do

“Axed Boris Johnson aide lied over lover
by Andrew Gilligan and Paul Waugh”

“No-one should be able to be excluded because of a potentially irrelevant factor of their being, such as their skin colour, party membership, sexuality, wage bracket, etc. If those factors end up being relevant and against the interests of the organisation THEN get rid of them.”

The problem is (and I’m categoricically NOT defending the BNP) there are lots of organisations that make precisely such exclusions e.g the Black Police Officers Association or even the Womens Institute ? It seems ineqiatable that you may have “non-whites only” or “women only” organisations but not “whites only” or “men only” ?

Interesting that you’re now pushing BNP talking points without actually doing any research Matt Munro

The National Black Police Association, which the BNP keeps referring to, does not have that position.
http://www.nationalbpa.com/

Furthermore, these orgs are not set up to discriminate against others and fuel hatred against them.

#8 Heh, spun to make Boris look decisive in firing him. If they start digging out this stuff before resignations occur then I’ll be rather more impressed….

So why is it called that then ?? How many non-black members does it have ?

“Furthermore, these orgs are not set up to discriminate against others and fuel hatred against them.”

Intent is irrelevant, every totalitarian fascist and bannana republic mass murderer justified their actions on the basis that they sought to improve society.

I reckon it was the lover that shopped him. One thing lovers do not like is being treated as a business expense.

Ahhh yes, intent is irrelevant. That really is a brilliant response.

The fact that those totalitarians said they intended to create those utopias by ethnic cleansing was, I presume, irrelevant?

I’m not sure that they did, Stalin certainly didn’t and nor did Pol Pot. Unless you are saying that mass murder is ok as long as it’s intra racial.

No one with any intellect would argue that intent has any meaning.

I actually think it is entirely that womens organisations and black organisations might wish to exist. Even as a white middle class man I am aware i have been in enough organisations to see the distribution of social and cultural power within society at large recreated within meetings and other interactions. At the end of the day if you disagree, nobody is forcing you to join. It is hard to imagine that the BNP can be moved against in this way without it opening the door to challenges being made to ethnic minoirty/women’s orgs.

Lee Griffin @ #7. That is a complete perversion of the idea of ‘freedom of association’. Freedom of association refers to ability of citizens to mutually and *voluntarily* come together and organise, free from governmental interference. People should be free to associate politically with those who choose to associate with them. Freedom of association does not mean that people have an a priori right – backed up by the state – to join which organisation they choose.

You argue that ‘No-one should be able to be excluded because of a potentially irrelevant factor of their being, such as their skin colour, party membership, sexuality, wage bracket, etc. If those factors end up being relevant and against the interests of the organisation THEN get rid of them.’ The question is, who decides what is a good reason or a bad reason for excluding someone. As I said on my blog, the chartists declared themselves an exclusively working class organisation. I am interested that you see ‘party membership’ as potentially illegitimate grounds for excluding somebody. Such decisions should surely by be up to organisations themselves. If you don’t like their membership policy you don’t have to join them, and if they stand for election you dont have to vote for them.

Matt Muntro: If the BNP openly discriminate against people from ethnic backgrounds which are not white-european, they are completely different from the NBPA, who are openly inclusive. Just because they may have a higher % of non-white members doesn’t make them racist.

My take here: http://stirringupapathy.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/the-bnp-on-trial/

If Boris and call me Dave walked down a high street in London and gunned down 25 people the media would turn a blind eye. Such is the love in with the current Tory party. If Call me Dave does not win the next election with all the money, and all the media support it will be the greatest political failure of all time.

Another interesting story is the cost of Prince Charles. Our increasingly right wing political head of state in waiting cost £3 million last year. What a waste of money. But it does show how the public gets all in a tiss about a few Mps claiming a few quid, but turns a blind eye to the huge welfare system for the Winsor family, and the aristocratic land owners of this country.

As for the speaker thing I think the Tories have shown their true colours over this. They don’t want an independent speaker. so all the hand ringing by Ian Dale and the Telegraph about parliament for the last 1 month is the biggest crock of shit going. The Tory party, as usual want total power over everything. No surprise there then. Dorries makes herself look the fool she is every time she opens her mouth. Does she really believe that Labour Mps were going to vote for a Cameron yes man? The speaker is elected with the Commons as it is now , not how Dorries thinks it will be in a years time. The Tory party instigated the removal of the speaker, so they should quit complaining that we have a new one. Dam it all, there were 2 Tories in the last vote in a Parliament that has a huge Labour majority, and they are still not happy. It just shows you can never appease the brownshirts.

If we are to force parties to accept those who disagree with their fundamental principles (and I’m probably being unduly optimistic about ethnic minorities here: maybe there are those who WANT to be repatriated) then the Tories should open their doors to Socialists.

After all, Labour handing over control to those who opposed every one of its principles didn’t do any harm, did it?

What exactly is the point of forcing the BNP to accept non-white members? They’re a racist party, why would non-whites want to join them?

Just because their views are reprehensible that doesn’t mean they should be prevented from existing.

Love it when the brownshirt trolls show their support for the Nazi’s.

As usual with all Tory trolls, scratch the surface and a Nazi is revealed.

What exactly are you referring to Sally?

Godwins law duly invoked……
For your information sally I’m probably less “English” than you are. It doesn’t follow that because you refuse to swallow muti culti/porous borders/lets deify anyone who isn’t white/male/christian that you are a frothing anal retentive flag waver. The left really are going to learn that lesson the hard way.

I simply don’t understand why the Equality and Human Rights Commission feel that BNP membership or employment practices are important. A Guardian article cites “The commission said it had received around 50 calls from members of the public about the BNP’s membership policy in recent weeks”. So what. Were any of those calls made by non-white people who genuinely wanted to join the BNP or to work for them?

If the BNP want to be a white-only party, let them be so. It only demonstrates what sort of organisation they are. If the law says that non-whites should be allowed to join the BNP against the party’s wishes, the law is wrong and should be changed. If you believe in free association, you have to let Nazis congregate in white-only enclaves.

Furthermore, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has limited resources, and should be using them to create “a fairer Britain” (one of their aims, proclaimed in big letters on their web site) rather than posturing against the BNP. It may be argued that it only cost them £500 or whatever to draft the letter sent to the BNP today; that’s £500 or whatever that can’t be spent on somebody’s discrimination case.

The only winners from this act of idiocy are the BNP who have received bucket loads of publicity today.

16. As I said, I’m not against organisations having their own stated beliefs, and the ability to not have associated with them people that don’t share those beliefs or wilfully act against them…but to *as a starting point* not let someone in because of a preconception you make about their character because of something they are (from your perspective), that is not acceptable.

If a someone wishes to join the BNP because he genuinely believes in their policies on immigration, repatriation, Holocause denial and the racial superiority of White people, but finds his ambitions thwarted because he’s Black then of course we should rally round and support him, poor thing; in the meantime this is yet another stunt designed to make the BNP feel more of a threat to the mainstream parties than they actually are.

@26, the point is, nobody’s trying to get the BNP to do anything other than what you describe. At the moment, their membership policy says you’ve got to be white, which is illegal. They should be forced to change their membership policy to say you’ve got to be a white supremacist of any colour, partly because it’s funny, but more importantly because that would force them to be more honest about their beliefs…

every totalitarian fascist and bannana republic mass murderer justified their actions on the basis that they sought to improve society.

Sounds like the BNP…

Maybe the EHRC can take a look at organized religion next.

I mean, is it coincidence that all the Popes so far have been Catholic or is there something going on there we don’t know about?

Or more seriously, why not take the Catholic Church to court and force them to ordain women and homosexuals?

The only winners from this act of idiocy are the BNP who have received bucket loads of publicity today.

Not really – that bucket loads of publicity states that the BNP doesn’t actually allow non-whites in. Many people don’t actually know that about the BNP – so this is negative publicity for a party that cannot be ignored any more.

Shatterface that’s ridiculous logic. If you don’t like the pre-conditions of being a catholic (or muslim or jewish or whatever) then you don’t join the organisation, if you are already in it then you leave.

If you are going to enact legislation which says “anyone must be free to join any organisation” then you may as well do away with all politics and religion.

It’s like me saying

“I don’t beileve in socialism but I have the right to join the labour party, therefore they must renounce socialism”

(I’m not trying to start a debate about nulabour and socialism just illustrate an argument)

“It’ll be interesting to see if the Standard will give this any significant coverage – are they still giving GIlligan airtime”

Gilligan’s very late to the party here, the story was broken by Dave Hill, continued by Adam Bienkov and eventually picked up by Paul Waugh, who made a decent job of it. The initial story was then credited to ‘Paul Waugh and Andrew Gilligan’, the second to ‘Andrew Gilligan and Paul Waugh’ and the third (which isn’t given top billing on the website today, although I’ve not seen the print edition yet) is ‘Andrew Gilligan’ acting alone, and concentrates on the sex (titillating!) instead of the expenses (makes Boris look as shifty as the House of Commons lot). It has all the hallmarks of a PR operation trying to wrest back control of the story, I suspect at the behest of Sir Simon Milton.

It appears that Gilligan gets interested in the story when the Tories have decided to drop Clement overboard, and call their old mate in as a rodent exterminator (Rent-O-Gill?). He wasn’t involved in the original story at all, because it wasn’t the Standard’s story.

The mistake people are making is to confuse ethnicity with race. AIUI, the point is that the BNP are breaking the law (and, incidentally, their own constitution) by refusing to allow members of certain *races* to join. It is perfectly possible for organisations to limit their membership based on ethnicity, but not on race.

Constitutionally, the BNP limits membership by ethnicity and is entitled to do so. But in practice, it refuses to let non-whites become members – and that includes non-white members of those ethnic groups. So, people of mixed race can’t join, even though by virtue of one of their parents they are members of one of the ethnic groups the BNP limits its membership to. The problem is that the BNP refuses to recognise that a mixed-race person can still a member of, say, the British Anglo-Saxon ethnic group – and therefore its definition of ethnicity is different from the law’s.

Nadders was going nuts on the Today programme yesterday morning.

Then Alan Duncan tried to be reasonable, and didn’t really pull it off.

was quiet funny.

A note that we have a piece on this coming out in the morning.

>Constitutionally, the BNP limits membership by ethnicity and is entitled to do so.

Seriously, I have yet to see any convincing argument that ethnicity as defined in the BNP constitution has any basis in reality. Can you show me how any of their categories are
meaningful?

If they were meaningful, then we could move on to a serious debate as to whether an ethnically based political party is acceptable, but at the moment I can’t see that the “definitions of terms” exist to make such a debate possible.

Rgds

Seriously, I have yet to see any convincing argument that ethnicity as defined in the BNP constitution has any basis in reality. Can you show me how any of their categories are
meaningful?

I admit, I’m just assuming their cateogries are meaningful. I have no idea, and re-reading them, the “folk community” bit makes me wonder. But still, they operate a ban on anyone who isn’t white, even if those individuals are part of the ethnic groups they claim to represent.

>I have no idea, and re-reading them, the “folk community” bit makes me wonder.

>But still, they operate a ban on anyone who isn’t white, even if those individuals are part of the ethnic groups they claim to represent.

Indeed, and the rhetoric is based on “we are just doing the same as the Black Police Association and the Jewish Chronicle”. They aren’t, since none of the groups they compare themselves to are political parties trying to discriminate against others.

But – even if the comparison were valid – their basis for their own position is logical and scientific bullshit, so they fail even on those terms. I’m looking for someone who has debunked the “queer as folk” stuff authoritatively.

It is the linking of real problems to rhetoric that is one way they recruit – people believe the surface. As well as attacking the politics locally, we need to make it clear that the foundations are nonsense.

>I admit, I’m just assuming their cateogries are meaningful.

Sorry missed a bit.

One thing I like about the Harman move (even though I have some doubts about it) is that it refuses to let the BNP set the framework for debate.

Matt Munro (31): I think you missed a level of sarcasm there.

I wasn’t seriously arguing that the Catholic church should be prosecuted for acting like, well, Catholics, I was suggesting prosecuting the BNP for being racist was equally absurd.

You can’t legislate an irrational organization into behaving in a rational manner without destroying the organization’s reason for being.

It would be like ‘modernizing’ the monarchy.