Saturday 8 April 2006

How white is white?

The front page of this weekend's Guardian sports a picture of the "non-white" British National Party candidate for a ward in Bradford, one of the northern towns which suffered race riots in 2001.

That's him, Sharif Gawad, to the right. His name sounds foreign, certainly, but he looks pretty "white" to me. But, no — as the Guardian put it, he's the Greek-Armenian "grandson of an asylum seeker". He's "ethnic".

The BNP leadership puts it somewhat differently. He's the grandson of a "genuine refugee" (the use of that term by the BNP might be a first) who came to Britain fleeing "Muslim persecution". He is "of Christian origin" and "the sort of chap" who'll attend BNP demos "whatever the weather".

It's interesting to see the reversal: the Guardian — revelling, I think, in a bit of BNP-baiting — pointing out his grandfather was an "asylum seeker", and the BNP — on the defensive — referring to that same person as a "refugee". Part of the distinction seems to be that Gawad's grandfather was a Christian fleeing Muslims: I wonder if the same arguments could apply to, say, Christians of Darfur fleeing Arab persecutors?

Whatever justifications their leadership can come up with, the Guardian reckon the BNP rank-and-file is upset by Gawad's candidature. The party admits that "his name alone" could "give rise to confusion". They suggest that "in hindsight" it might've been best not to put him up as a candidate. Apparently the lesson is that someone with a Muslim-sounding name shouldn't be a BNP candidate. It's okay, though, he's "known for his strong anti-Islamic stance".

This is the point: the BNP is at the moment focusing on Islam as the malign force invading our great nation. Their strategy is to capitalise on and/or create anti-Muslim feeling based on Islamic terrorism (New York, Madrid, London), making it a fight between the good, Christian west and evil Muslims from the east. Widespread lack of knowledge about Islam and a skewed conception of Muslims due to these recent events contribute wonderfully. (George Galloway is playing the same game from the other side: he is capitalising on Muslim reaction to anti-Muslim feeling.)

But the BNP is still an organisation committing to "shut[ting] the door" on immigration (including refugees, assuming they can find safe refuge in places other than Britain). It is a party that wants to want to "strengthen the traditional family" — that is, the patriarchal one. They are in favour of corporal and capital punishment (for "petty criminals and vandals" and "paedophiles, terrorists and murderers", respectively). Not to mention its economic policies which would, to put it frankly, cripple our economy.

The BNP claim to be defending British "traditions and values" — but I can think of at least one they are assaulting, a tradition of ours of which I am proud. The British tradition of providing a safe haven and openness to immigration is, despite tabloid hysteria, a long-running, beneficial feature of our society. A quote from the memoirs of a Russian who fled the Tsars in 1876 will suffice to illustrate this:
As I went to the steamer I asked myself with anxiety, "Under which flag does she sail, — Norwegian, German, English?" Then I saw floating above the stern the union jack, — the flag under which so many refugees, Russian, Italian, French, Hungarian, and of all nations, have found an asylum. I greeted that flag from the depth of my heart.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That was really interesting. I completely agree. That quote at the end was particularly nice touch.

7:55 pm  

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