Bad News from Britain
June 8, 2009
The news that Britain has elected two members of the far-right British National Party to the European Parliament is surely bad news for all. Any observer of the political scene in Britain over the last twenty five years can be in no doubt about the violent and racist underpinnings of what is, in many ways, just another neo-Nazi party.
Its success is strange on one level. While Britons are no doubt as vulnerable to the sin of racism as anybody, race has rarely galvanised much political activism in British elections: Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930s was never more than a whacky sideshow of Mussolini wannabes in black shirts who couldn't get themselves elected to a parish council, let alone Parliament; the National Front of the 1970s proved unstable, with half heading off into a strange mix of New Ageism and politics drawn from Colonel Gadaffi (who -- forgive the name drop -- happened to be taught English literature by the same schoolmaster as myself), and half forming the BNP.
Up until a few years ago, the BNP seemed like your typical bunch of skinheads and thugs with no more chance in elections than Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Looney Party (for American readers, yes, this man and this party really did exist and stand for election many times). Then, with the advent of slick, Cambridge educated, Nick Griffin as leader, the party cleaned up its public image, stared focusing on local issues (`we can get the council to sort the drains for you, grandma, don't worry!') to build an electoral base. A classic move: build support locally, on local issues, to launch what was always intended to be a national campaign. Then, in more recent times the BNP has been able to capitalise on the crass corruption of the major parties, the veritable intellectual disarray of the British Left, and the fear generated by immigration and the radicalising impact of fundemantalist islam on young British Muslims. Labour and Conservtive parties are clearly not connecting with a significant section of the British population; and people who feel functionally disenfranchised are easy pickings for fringe parties. Disillusionment, frustration, and fear are a heady electoral cocktail; and the cheap and cheerful `can-do' approach of the BNP front men makes them an attractive option..
The significance for Christians is that much of the BNP rhetoric no doubt ties in with legitimate Christian concerns: a mythical rural England of pubs, cricket on the village green, and parish churches can easily get tied in with notions of a pleasant and rural Christian past; political fear of Islam, connected to immigration patterns, resonates all too easily with the religious and theological concern that Islam will squeeze out what little is left of Christianity in the culture or, worse still, will provoke a vicious secular reaction against religion in general with which Christianity in Britain is ill equipped to deal. The temptation in a time of disillusionment is to look to the people with the sound bites that sound like ours; to see in the face of everyone who shares the same alleged enemies our own reflections staring back at us.
Christians must resist the temptation to be taken in by the easy charm of the Nick Griffins of this world, and we should have our agenda set, not by political fear but by biblical priorities. It is not militant Islam that is the greatest threat to Christianity in the West. I suspect more likely contenders are greed and materialism. Of course, militant Islam makes better copy and scarier (more entertaining?) programs for the television; but greed is the one thing the New Testament specifically identifies as idolatry. But we need our bogeymen, and we prefer them, if possible, to be external to ourselves. Easier to blame `them out there' than to look inward to our own hearts. Then, on the closely related issue of immigration, it is surely not `immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs' that are the problem. I suspect more to blame is the fact of the fundamental incompatibility of falling birth rates and ever-increasing and unrealistic economic expectations -- the things which ultimately drive immigration policy.
As corrupt and morally bankrupt as the British political system appears to be at the moment, the answer is surely not to elect to the European parliament a bunch of neo-nazi racists who happen to be able to get the local council to sort out the drains when asked. Populism of this sort has often, historically, ended in much worse than tears.
Its success is strange on one level. While Britons are no doubt as vulnerable to the sin of racism as anybody, race has rarely galvanised much political activism in British elections: Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930s was never more than a whacky sideshow of Mussolini wannabes in black shirts who couldn't get themselves elected to a parish council, let alone Parliament; the National Front of the 1970s proved unstable, with half heading off into a strange mix of New Ageism and politics drawn from Colonel Gadaffi (who -- forgive the name drop -- happened to be taught English literature by the same schoolmaster as myself), and half forming the BNP.
Up until a few years ago, the BNP seemed like your typical bunch of skinheads and thugs with no more chance in elections than Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Looney Party (for American readers, yes, this man and this party really did exist and stand for election many times). Then, with the advent of slick, Cambridge educated, Nick Griffin as leader, the party cleaned up its public image, stared focusing on local issues (`we can get the council to sort the drains for you, grandma, don't worry!') to build an electoral base. A classic move: build support locally, on local issues, to launch what was always intended to be a national campaign. Then, in more recent times the BNP has been able to capitalise on the crass corruption of the major parties, the veritable intellectual disarray of the British Left, and the fear generated by immigration and the radicalising impact of fundemantalist islam on young British Muslims. Labour and Conservtive parties are clearly not connecting with a significant section of the British population; and people who feel functionally disenfranchised are easy pickings for fringe parties. Disillusionment, frustration, and fear are a heady electoral cocktail; and the cheap and cheerful `can-do' approach of the BNP front men makes them an attractive option..
The significance for Christians is that much of the BNP rhetoric no doubt ties in with legitimate Christian concerns: a mythical rural England of pubs, cricket on the village green, and parish churches can easily get tied in with notions of a pleasant and rural Christian past; political fear of Islam, connected to immigration patterns, resonates all too easily with the religious and theological concern that Islam will squeeze out what little is left of Christianity in the culture or, worse still, will provoke a vicious secular reaction against religion in general with which Christianity in Britain is ill equipped to deal. The temptation in a time of disillusionment is to look to the people with the sound bites that sound like ours; to see in the face of everyone who shares the same alleged enemies our own reflections staring back at us.
Christians must resist the temptation to be taken in by the easy charm of the Nick Griffins of this world, and we should have our agenda set, not by political fear but by biblical priorities. It is not militant Islam that is the greatest threat to Christianity in the West. I suspect more likely contenders are greed and materialism. Of course, militant Islam makes better copy and scarier (more entertaining?) programs for the television; but greed is the one thing the New Testament specifically identifies as idolatry. But we need our bogeymen, and we prefer them, if possible, to be external to ourselves. Easier to blame `them out there' than to look inward to our own hearts. Then, on the closely related issue of immigration, it is surely not `immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs' that are the problem. I suspect more to blame is the fact of the fundamental incompatibility of falling birth rates and ever-increasing and unrealistic economic expectations -- the things which ultimately drive immigration policy.
As corrupt and morally bankrupt as the British political system appears to be at the moment, the answer is surely not to elect to the European parliament a bunch of neo-nazi racists who happen to be able to get the local council to sort out the drains when asked. Populism of this sort has often, historically, ended in much worse than tears.
