Balls to the BNP

Last week at the Labour Party conference Ed Balls’, the Schools Secretary, proposed a ban on teachers belonging to the British National Party, the BNP. So far as I am concerned this is a dangerous move, touching on some really fundamental issues, issues of civil liberty and issues of negative discrimination. Beyond that it touches on freedom of conscience.

The proposal itself, which I suspect will come to nothing, was little more than a gimmick, made by New Labour’s uber-geek, the man with the silliest hair-cut in politics, to a desperate and unhappy conference. Personally I have no time for the BNP. But anyone, anyone with the lest degree of political sense, can see that it has flourished under the present regime precisely because the concerns of thousands of working-class voters over issues such as housing and immigration have been ignored, not because the schools are full of ‘racist teachers’.

Yes, racism should be kept out of the classroom, but this is not about racism; it’s an intrusion into private areas of thought and belief. It would give further momentum to the BNP, allowing them to depict themselves as martyrs, victims of political oppression. What we are seeing here is scapegoating of the worst kind. Indeed, the need for scapegoats of one kind or another is something wholly identified with political extremism, or movements pushed to an extreme. This is a symptom of the nadir of New Labour.

Where does such a thing begin and where does it end? Racism, discrimination and negative perceptions take all kinds of shapes. What about Muslim teachers who consider non-believers to be ‘kafirs’? Does that not also carry dangers? What about those who sanction wife-beating and vilify homosexuals? What about those opposed to gay weddings or civil partnerships? What about teachers who embrace Marxist forms of thought, with all of the historical baggage that happens to carry? What about members of the Socialist Workers Party, an organisation that repels me personally far more than the BNP?

Yes, there have been regimes in history that have sacked teachers not for what they said but for what they believed, regimes like Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. Are we to join them? We will if Balls and Chris Keates, the general secretary of NASUWT, the teacher’s union, have their way. Let me make one simple point for these men and all who would follow them into the tactic of the purge: it is quite possible to be a good teacher and-shock! horror!- a member of the BNP at one and the same time. Private political beliefs should be no more than that.

Let me put it this way. Ed Balls is retreating to the failed, inflammatory tactics of legislation and regulation which will only create more resentment amongst the dispossessed, more martyrs among Griffin’s rag-tag army and take Britain closer to a police state. Yes, I agree with that but this is a sentiment that I lifted from a site dedicated to exposing the BNP for what it truly stands for. You will find it here http://www.nothingbritish.com

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it…unless you happen to be a nationalist, a Muslim, a socialist, a Marxist, a Christian a Jew and on and so on and so on.