May 11 2009
My Enemy’s Enemy Is Still My Enemy
One of the proudest moments of Grandpa Fred Wood’s life was when he played overnight host to the great 20th century British Labour Party figure, Aneurin “Nye” Bevan.
How did the founder of the National Health Service fetch up at Selwyn Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham? It was because Grandma Gertie and Grandpa Fred rented the top floor of their house as a flat and their tenant was Bevan’s party agent.
In those days most British Jews were ‘natural’ Labour supporters and it became a standing family joke when in latter years Grandpa started to vote Tory. May be it was because his elder son, my Uncle Lionel, was a Tory councillor who went on to become very senior in local civic life.
But all of this is by way of preamble to my thoughts about the forthcoming European elections and the debate within the Anglo-Jewish community about how to counter the rise of the British National Party and its attempt to present itself as the acceptable face of extreme right wing politics.
I am just as frightened at the thought of its thuggish leader, Nick Griffin representing the north west – where I live – as I am at the very idea of Islamist radicals able to impose Sharia law on the way I conduct my daily life.
The ‘Hope Not Hate’ website which is leading a worthy campaign to highlight the threat posed by the BNP, warns:
“The BNP’s main target will be the North West, where the party would need just 9% of the vote to be guaranteed a seat, though it could get one MEP elected with as little as 7.5%, depending on how the votes are distributed among other parties. Griffin has already announced that he will top the party list in this region. In 2004 the BNP polled 6.4% of the vote and did so with little campaigning outside its traditional East Lancashire and Greater Manchester heartlands. Since then the BNP has grown significantly in new areas, such as Cumbria and Merseyside, and is polling well in parts of Greater Manchester, including achieving votes in council elections of over 20% in Manchester itself”.
This is an extremely worrying trend and typical of what happens during a recession.
Moreover, Griffin, an educated man who studied at Cambridge University, is not only friendly with the Ku Klux Klan hierarchy but is a convicted Holocaust denier who stated during his trial in 1998:
“I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the Earth was flat … I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria.”
I don’t think more needs to be said. Just use your vote against the BNP and in favour of Europe remaining a democracy.
msniw
