The Charming Mr Griffin

September 4, 2009

griffin

Here at Swordplay we pride ourselves on political neutrality. Well, most of the time. Some things provoke us to depart from our Swiss-style middle ground. For example, Nick Griffin and the British National Party.

We don’t much care for Mr Griffin. We are sure that, to some, he is the epitome of charm, but his values, predicated as they are on racism, do not sit well with us.

Which is why we can’t help but chuckle over his preposterous condemnation of Britain’s “undemocratic Orwellian equality laws”. We were unaware of Mr Griffin’s interest in literature but that it exists does not get him off the hook. He’s upset because the BNP is to be forced to abandon its whites-only membership rule following a legal challenge by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which says, not without reason, that the BNP’s rules contravene the Race Relations Act. Mr Griffin says that to fight the case would bleed the BNP dry, a prospect which he refuses to countenance.

The Times reports that a spokesman for Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, said: “The fact that Griffin has been forced into this cosmetic change will fool no one. The BNP remains a viciously racist organisation. We do not expect to see legions of members of Britain’s black and Asian community queuing to join Nick Griffin and his agenda of hate.”

Which is fair enough, but, departing still further from our avowedly non-partisan position, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Searchlight spokesperson was wrong? Jose Saramago, in his occasionally obscure but curiously compelling novel Seeing, invokes a similar usurpation of the expected, when he posits the majority of the population as casting blank votes in an election, an act of political diffidence which throws the government into disarray. Saramago’s electorate can, at last, see, and what they see is the absence of a reason to vote. Perhaps it would be both democratic and visionary if Britain’s black and Asian community were to apply to sign up to the BNP.

Then again, they’d have to rub shoulders with a bunch of people like Mr Griffin. And for such a fate, not even a literary chat about Orwell would be an incentive.

Image of Nick Griffin under fire courtesy of Robin Goodfellow2009.

 

Comments

Please submit comments to Swordplay below.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.

Not so right said Fred

February 2, 2012
fred hat

So Farewell, then, Sir Fred Goodwin.

Now you are just Fred.

Not Right Said Fred, but plain Fred.

The Forfeiture Committee did for you.

No one had heard of it before,

But Dave said it had to act, and it did.

Trouble is that no one knows what to think.

Is it ‘Alas, poor Fred‘,

Or ‘Hurray! Sir Fred is dead!’?

We don’t know.

Do you?

By A. Mob, aged 1,378 and a half.