How to handle racism
The government can - and should - stop BNP members joining the Civil Service
Nick Cohen
Sunday September 26, 2004
The Observer
Extremism is an affront to Britain's national myth. Extremism in either its fascist or communist forms was what excitable continentals embraced in the twentieth century to the horror of the temperate British who carried on muddling through in our endearingly commonsensical way, and were much the happier for it. The idea of dear old Blighty standing apart from a deranged Europe doesn't hold up too well today. Leaving aside the fact that no European country has been hit as hard by extreme free market ideology as Britain, the British can no longer pretend that fascism begins at Calais. In the summer local and European elections the British National Party received 800,000 votes. As there have been incessant exposés of the party's true nature, only the most dim-witted among that 800,000 could have failed to know they were supporting neo-Nazis. The rest knew, but didn't care.
The grim performance of the BNP was overshadowed by sensation of the political year: the UK Independence Party, which secured 2.5 million votes. Although anti-Europeanism was its main attraction, its anti-immigration platform helped too. It's not completely fair to describe Ukip as a far-right party, as many in the pro-European media do, but it's not completely unfair either.
Meanwhile, on what used to be considered the left an extraordinary and, in view of the murky turn much mainstream liberal-left thought has taken, telling pact between Marxists from the Socialist Workers Party and Islamic fundamentalists from the religious right, has created the Respect Party. It got nowhere in the local and European elections, but did very well in the by-elections in Coventry and Birmingham. Respect hasn't received anything approaching the critical scrutiny endured by Ukip and the BNP - liberals are hopeless at confronting the sinister forces on their 'side', or even admitting that they exist. But Respect's leader, George Galloway, was notorious for saluting the 'courage' of Saddam Hussein and spending his holidays with the tyrant's henchmen. As with the BNP, at least some of the people who voted for Respect must have known perfectly well that their party was unlikely to be an unequivocal supporter of the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.
With so many dark currents swirling, it's possible to sympathise with the Home Office's suggestion that far-right supporters should be banned from being civil servants. You can hardly expect a fascist to treat black and brown Britons fairly, and when he is given the coercive powers of a police, prison or immigration officer the results will be violent assaults or miscarriages of justice. The far-right likes nothing better than to dress-up in uniforms and exploit the benefit of the doubt given to law enforcement officers. A blanket ban seems a sensible precaution.
The strong counter-argument is that a civil servant's politics are only the government's business in wartime. Fascists were purged during the Second World War and communists were blacklisted during the Cold War. By saying that members of the BNP can't work for the state, the government is implying that racism and racial tension in Britain is so bad the country is close to civil war. Is it really so bleak?
As important is the question of how a ban would work in practice. Take the cases of the charming husband and wife team, Lorraine Hollick, an officer at Holloway women's prison, and Simon Thistlethwaite, an officer at neighbouring men's prison, Pentonville, which we cover on the news pages.
Evidence uncovered in the police investigation was pretty damning. But they deny being racists. To stop them having the power to control and punish black and Asian prisoners, the Prison Service must go through an elaborate, quasi-legal investigation which gives ample opportunity for lawyerly evasions. Their toilet was called 'Adolf Hitler's bunker room' and decorated with German helmets and SS memorabilia. Wasn't this the teensiest hint that the officers were fans of fascism?
Not at all, replied Thistlethwaite. It was a bit of a joke. Friends of his knew he liked a laugh and sent him presents of SS daggers and the like. No harm in the silliness.
OK, said the police, what about tags labelled 'national ****** hunting licences' we found in your filing cabinet.
Oh, I picked them up at a scooter rally and forgot about them.
And the framed Ku Klux Klan print?
Another joke, like the SS stuff.
And the photo of the burning cross?
Nothing to do with Ku Klux Klan. It was taken in France.
All right, how about the white hooded mask we found in your wardrobe.
That's nothing to do with the KKK either. Actually it's cream not white and was worn by convicts in Australian prisons when they went to chapel.
And so it went on. White Pride records and copies of Strike Force magazine were dismissed as junk collected and forgotten years ago. The Home Office has plans to deal with fascism in the Civil Service. Job applicants and civil servants would have to disclose membership of the BNP. Members looking for work would be refused employment, while BNP members already in the Service would be fired.
Like many other prohibitions, the proposed ban has a brutally simple appeal: fascists can't work for the Civil Service and that's the end of the matter. Ministers like bans. They allow them to appear tough and decisive in the few seconds the TV stations allow them to appear on screen.
The difficulty is that you can be an ardent supporter of the far-right and not be a member of the BNP or its splinter groups - our prison officers denied absolutely that they belonged to any racist organisation. Equally, neoNazis aren't the most honest people around and the Home Office can't guarantee that they won't lie when they fill in their job applications. Indeed, as an admission of BNP membership would guarantee a refusal, it's certain that they will lie.
For all the tough talk, there's no substitute for managers in the Civil Service and elsewhere going through the laborious task of interviewing job applicants carefully, monitoring their work conscientiously and taking claims of racism seriously. There aren't headlines in it and it won't win applause for Blunkett at the Labour Party Conference, but good management remains the best protection.
Unfortunately, the same backlash which makes Britain such a congenial place for the far-right has also led to a near doubling of the prison population in the past decade. Governors can't cope with the bulging jails and are barely in a position to provide good, bad or indifferent management. Back from a fortnight's holiday, I found my pigeonhole stuffed with review copies of the latest political books. Without exception, they were full-frontal denunciations of the Great Satan, George Bush.
One was worth reading - Seymour Hersh's account of how the American military sunk to the level of torturers. The other four varied from the half-witted to the semi-literate - on the evidence of his musings on Bush, Condé Nast must be glad it hired Graydon Carter to edit Vanity Fair rather than write for it.
I turned on day-time TV to watch Charles Kennedy lay into Tony Blair's Iraq policy without once describing the nature of Saddam's regime or paying his respects to the liberals and the democrats who were slaughtered by the tyrant in the past and are now being threatened by the 'insurgents'.
The shift of the left to the right appeared complete when I caught up with a controversy in New York about Naomi Klein, who cried rivers for the wretched of the Earth in her radical youth and now dries her eyes and makes excuses for the theocrats and misogynists of the al-Sadr movement in her dotage.
What has made the past two years so strange is the breakdown in international solidarity. In the past, it was fashionable Manhattan editors, Liberal Democrats and Naomi Kleins who supported the victims of what was and is fascism in its secular and clerical guises. I accept it was probably asking too much for Western leftists to at least acknowledge the existence of oppressed democrats and socialists at the time of the war.
Human nature seems to prevent people coping with moral ambiguity at moments of political passion. Now the war is over, the breakdown in fraternity is unforgivable.
Fortunately, the left that isn't that bothered about logos is showing signs of life. Free trade unions were ferociously persecuted by Saddam Hussein. They are back in business now and doing what they can to stop the 'insurgents' preventing elections. They are desperately poor, and have to rely on their comrades in the west to come to their aid. And, I'm glad to report, the Fire Brigades Union, Unison and the TUC are doing just that.
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26-09-04, 06:03 AM
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) and I dont see how my views will be distorted once I qualify to become a pharmacist.
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