A grain of truth

Following the vicious anti-BNP programme Secret Agent, shown on BBCI on the 15th July, the Daily Express printed a sneering report the next day headed "Destroyed by 60 minutes of TV." The theme of the report was that the programme, by its exposures, had well and truly scuppered the party's efforts to achieve 'respectability'. The report said:-

'Nick Griffin's five-year campaign to turn the party into a legitimate political force was destroyed by just 60 minutes of television last night.'

In the sense that the Daily Express writer meant it, this observation was of course utter nonsense. All that the programme revealed was that the BNP, like any other political party, had a few bad apples in its basket as well as a few blabbermouths who engaged in thoroughly stupid talk under the influence of drink. More on this subject can be found in our article on page 21 of this issue of Spearhead magazine.

But there was nevertheless a grain of truth in what the report said. For five years we have been treated to pious lectures by the BNP leadership to the effect that it was making a successful bid to change the image of the BNP for the better. Those with greater experience in the struggle for race and nation have known very well that this claim would in due course founder on the rocks of reality. Whatever the party tried in the way of image improvement, it would still end up by being damned with every smear-word in the media lexicon - for just as long as press and broadcasting were controlled by its enemies. The Secret Agent documentary, just like the Young, Nazi and Proud programme shown in November 2002, only underlined this.

We have said it before and we say it again: the 'public image' of the BNP is shaped largely by perceptions gained by people from media reports, which almost always will be grossly distorted. We can undo these perceptions by making contact with those people in the course of our campaigns and putting across our true image in front of their very eyes by presenting our policies politely and reasonably and through impeccable personal behaviour. But we are still going to get programmes like Secret Agent, whatever we say or do. And the impact of these programmes - which we would contend is a diminishing one - is not altered by parading Jewish candidates and Sikh broadcasters as evidence of our 'moderate' credentials.

Where the media are concerned, no 'image-changing' is going to appease them. When they smear us we just have to ride the storm and carry on. As stated many times in these columns, all possible efforts were being made to project the best possible image for the BNP long before Mr. Griffin came along and posed as the inventor of that idea. They ran up against the same facts of life in the real world as have his own efforts. Media control still largely dictates which parties and politicians have a 'good' image and which do not.

B...S... from Mr. Howard

Tory leader Michael Hecht, a.k.a. Michael Howard, said in Parliament last month following the Hutton and Butler reports on the lead-up to the Iraq war that had he known last year what he knows now he would never have endorsed the decision to go to war.

He's got to be pulling our legs!

From the beginning of this sordid affair it was perfectly plain to anyone with a modicum of common sense that the so-called 'weapons of mass destruction' that were cited as reason to attack Iraq were a product of the imagination of cynical propagandists who had their own particular political agenda and were only seeking excuses for the war on which they were bent. We said this again and again in Spearhead - long before the new evidence (or lack of it) came to light as a result of the investigations of Dr. Hans Blix and countless others. And the idea that a country like Iraq would deploy such weapons, even if she had them, at the risk of annihilation by US and other Western forces was something belonging to fantasy. We said this too - over and over again.

Are we supposed, then, to believe that a politician like Michael Howard, then enjoying a senior position in HM Opposition party and with far greater access to intelligence documents than this journal has, actually swallowed the nonsense that we had to attack Saddam because otherwise the latter could, and would, attack us?

Howard is coming out with this balderdash for one reason and one reason only. He has seen how public opinion against the Iraq engagement is hardening and growing, and he senses an opportunity to make personal and political capital out of it. His opportunism is contemptible, but it is also embarrassingly visible.

He would have been far better advised just to shut up.

Labour's latest obsession

A little while ago it was foxhunting. Now it's smacking. New Labour's legions of the politically correct in Parliament have been getting into a frenzy over the traditional corporal punishment administered to erring children over the centuries. Of course to these people, if it's old and traditional it has to go. There's just no reasoning with them.

A law forbidding smacking will achieve absolutely nothing. Normal parents, when administering a whack to badly behaved kids, know just how far to go. They do it hard enough to demonstrate their displeasure and breaking point of tolerance but not so hard as to cause injury. There are, or course, a few abnormal parents who will go beyond this and physically chastise their offspring far beyond reasonable limits. There have been a number of appalling cases coming to light in this regard over recent years.

But there are already adequate laws to deal with such people, and if Labour's 'luvvies' really think parents of this kind are going to be deterred by new legislation they are living in fairyland. Just as anti-gun laws do nothing to stop criminals having guns, anti-smacking laws will do nothing to stop this kind of child-abuse. In the meantime they will take away from normal and decent parents just one more necessary and time-honoured practice for maintaining order in the home.

These considerations aside, we might ask a question: with so many grave national ills which Parliament should be addressing - transport, hospitals, schools, immigration, the collapse of manufacturing industry - haven't these people anything better to do?

Sporting also-rans again?

The number of British competitors in the track and field events in the coming Athens Olympics will be the smallest in nearly 30 years. The total number will be 50 - a third smaller than in 2000.

Why? Because only that number have managed to achieve the standards required for qualification.

This is a retrograde step from the Games in Sydney four years ago. Then Britain, while not punching its full weight, did at least land a respectable number of medals. It seems that since then, instead of building on this moderate success, we have gone back.

There seems to be a fair amount of unanimity about the cause. Sport in schools is in a worse state than ever. Facilities, instead of being improved, have declined. Playing fields are being sold off to developers, despite Labour's promise to stop this process for which the Tories were originally responsible.

And where there are the required facilities there is the politically correct bias against competition. In many educationalists' minds there must be no winners or losers. Two years ago Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, typical of the breed, supported a move to replace traditional events with 'problem-solving' exercises, whatever that may mean.

And at the same time obesity among our young is getting worse, due to lack of exercise and junk food.

No wonder we are, as a headline in the Daily Express on July 18th put it, "a nation of losers."

We can see no likely change in this situation in the foreseeable future. We are just stuck with politicians who care little for the physical condition of the British people. Only a revolution in our national thinking is going to change this, and that is not going to come from the ranks of Lib, Lab and Con.

Dwaines not doing well

The Mail on Sunday published a rather coy report on the 4th July in which it lamented that performance in school exams seemed to be related to the first names of the pupils. "What's in a name?" it asked. "The difference between success and failure in school exams, according to official research revealed today by The Mail on Sunday."

The report went on to say that:-

'The Government survey has found that pupils with middle-class names such as Katherine and Duncan are up to eight times more likely to pass their GCSEs than Waynes and Dwaines.'

But then listen to this. Speaking of the exam results, the report said:-

'...they are said to be so embarrassing to New Labour that the Department for Education and Skills has been ordered not to publish them.'

We wonder why!

A little further on in the report a clue is supplied. In addition to the Waynes and Dwaines, three more names which were connected with bad results were Duane, Jermaine and Lance. According to the MoS, "children from black families are still near the bottom of the class - a situation the Government would like to reverse."

You bet it would! But how?

Heresy in the Highlands

Tom Forrest runs the Cromasaig guest house in Wester Ross in the North of Scotland. In late June two male lovers endeavoured to make an e-mail booking of a room there with a double bed. Mr. Forrest was none too pleased. He refused on the grounds that he did not approve of unnatural acts being performed on his hotel premises; which were also his home.

What happened next will not surprise the reader. All hell broke loose. The 'gay' lobby went into action and wrote to the tourist board VisitScotland, which in its turn tamely buckled in the face of the lobby's agitation and wrote to Mr. Forrest asking him not to discriminate against future guests on the basis of their sexual orientation.

The latter stood firm, saying he would not be told which visitors to accept on his own property. He added, just to infuriate the homo lobby still more, that he had never gone along with the word 'gay'. "I called them poofs and will continue to call them that," he said.

How will this affair end? A report in the Daily Mail quoted a spokeswoman for VisitScotland as saying that "an investigation was under way."

For our part, we can only say: Bravo Tom Forrest! And we hope that when the 'investigators' turn up at his door he tells them curtly where to go. Two short and ancient Anglo-Saxon words spring to mind.

Chutzpah beyond belief!

The Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, has just produced a bill that would enable Israel to demand the extradition to its own shores of anyone, anywhere, who dared engage in 'Holocaust' denial. The bill was approved unanimously in its first reading on July 20th.

That denial of the 'Holocaust' should be an offence under Israeli law will surprise no one. But the Israelis are not satisfied with this. What they now want is that a person who writes an article or makes a speech in, say, the United States, France or Britain which calls into question the truth of any part of the output of the 'Holocaust' industry may be prosecuted under Israeli laws and forcibly taken to Israel to face trial.

In the case of France, laws already exist which make 'Holocaust' denial a crime there, but such laws have not yet been passed in this country or America. No matter! The Jews will have us prosecuted under their own laws anyway and taken to their country to be tried for an offence which does not exist in our own countries. In other words, Eichmann-style kangaroo courts in which anyone who offends them can be hauled up!