Halloween is a funny time of year. Essentially it involves dressing like an idiot, and then knocking on stranger's doors and asking for sweets.
This year halloween was combined with the lovely Dan's housewarming (he has been in the house 6 months, but who's counting?)
Bit of background on Dan. We lived with him during the undergraduate years at Warwick. In my house there were 7 of us - 5 girls, a camp and a gay (not very PC but a more than adequate description). And Dan was the camp. And also the only one able to save us from the hazards of bugs, electrical dilemmas, plumbing problems, TV tuning situations, and the scariness of living down a very dark alley.
So. Dan is having a house warming/halloween. I am going as a pink santa. Not scary I know, but cheap, reusable, and goes perfectly with lots of glitter. Dan was a scary clown. And given any other day, I would put this down as the scariest of scary outfits. But not this year.
Another friend turned up wearing a suit. And a black wig. Not very scary (unless he was going for the banker look - scary in some contexts I suppose). And then he pulled out the finishing touch. A BNP badge (made himself - for the record, no he is not a racist).
And after that, the scary clown was no longer the most feared person - he had been usurped by none other than Nick Griffin.
Now I say a lot of this tongue in cheek. He did not look like Nick Griffin. Not even a little bit. But the concept was definitely far scarier than any other at the party.
Because Nick Griffin, while held in low esteem, ridiculed, and openly hated by many (you only have to see the riots outside TVC before Question Time to agree) is the head of a legal political party. And it is a party that have got not just 1 but 2 MEPS. It is a party that seems to be enjoying better success than it has done in previous years (although, incidentally, not because it has more supporters, but because of the complacency of other voters. If anything BNP support has declined, but fewer people voted in the last election, hence the entrance of BNP members).
It seems to me that the only people who vote for the BNP are
1. Racist
2. Stupid
3. Seriously disillusioned.
I think that 3 is probably the most likely. At least, I hope so - I'd rather live in a Britain full of lost, and disillusioned souls, rather than racist idiots.
But regardless of the motivation for voting for this bigotted party of racists (and yes, there can be no other label for a party who only allow white, indigenous - whatever that means - Brits to become members. Sorry Ashley Cole, Lewis Hamilton, Amir Khan, Meera Syal, to name but a few prestigious and valued members of the British celeb culture - no, you may hold a British passport, be allowed to vote, be third generation British, whatever, but that is not enough for the BNP to see you as a Brit) the voting has been a success. And this is really frightening.
If indeed, they were voted in by people that feel lost and disenfranchised by the British political system (and sadly a lot of this comes down to those MPs that claimed for bath plugs, blue movies and duck islands) then what can we do? Surely there is an option that is less radical than voting in racist holocaust deniers?
Maybe we need to suspend opinion in our voting system. Maybe the only way, not only to banish the BNP, but also to restore faith in the entire political system is for us all to follow the example of a certain Tony in Norwood - a texter I came across this week, who suggested an inspired approach to voting. We should interrupt our usual voting policy by voting, not for the party and the policies that we believe in, but the people that we feel we trust. For the MPs that didn't swindle the public. For the MPs that truly seem to be in the job to make a difference, to look out for their constituency, to do their job not solely for financial gain, but also on an ethical level?
Although, the one loss for us if we were to lose Nick Griffin is that poor Pearse would have just been another guy in a black suit. And lets face it, compared to a scary clown, that is poor.
