refugees from stupidity

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Okay, so we all know that there was a big swing to the right in the European elections. (It wasn’t just the UK.) The analysis I’ve seen has been limited, unfortunately, to whether this is like the 30s with the rise of Fascism – which of course it isn’t, though there are some very interesting comments in this round-up of historians’ views on the subject. It’s worth contemplating this admonition from Michael Burleigh, who wrote a book on the Third Reich:

Don’t turn them [the BNP] into martyrs by banning them from the airwaves. Ask them about their other policies: how they would get us out of recession; what their foreign policy is. Launch an assault on the BNP brand, and don’t let them appropriate symbols of Britishness – such as the Spitfire they were using on their posters in this election.

I was thinking this election result might be more like the 80s and the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and no one’s addressing that that I’ve seen – except for David Stevenson, professor of history at the LSE:

The parallel I would make is not with the rise of fascism in the 1930s but with the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France in the 1980s. He made his breakthrough in areas where the French communist party had been strong. As the communists collapsed, Le Pen’s Front National came in and took over. Now, in the UK, a portion of the vote that traditionally went to the Labour party has gone to the BNP. When Nick Griffin talks about the country being full and immigrants taking British jobs, he strikes a chord.

But in any case the pundits are all agreed that what we’ve seen is a protest vote, against the perceived corruption of the main parties rather than for intolerance and scariness….

I always wonder this – why do people think protest votes are such a good idea? It’s like in my old neighbourhood, when all the Muslims voted against Oona King in the local elections because she had been in favour of invading Iraq. A colleague told me with sanguine certainty that he knew he liked his new MP - because he wasn’t Oona! Of course, the sight of his new MP, the ever-lovable George Galloway, prancing around in the Big Brother house with Rula Lenska wearing a lycra catsuit was a real balm to the Muslim constituency… they also loved it when he blocked their new housing project, and bullied and patronised the locals at a jumped -up local meeting.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. So the BNP have two seats in the European Parliament. Today their leader Nick Griffin had to abandon a press conference when he was pelted with eggs by protesters shouting, “Off our streets, Nazi scum!” There is also is a concerted Not in My Name web campaign that you can sign, upload pictures to, etc. All well and good. And there’s another thing you can do.

With beautiful timing, it is Refugee Week 2009 next week. From the 15th to the 21st of June you can hitch yourself to a campaign to raise the profile of the plight of refugees, and show the world what Britain really thinks. The activity campaign is called Simple Acts –  a countrywide programme of events including concerts, film screenings and exhibitions that celebrate the enormous contribution refugees have made to life and culture in the UK.

This year the celebrations take on a new twist as people are invited not to raise funds, or make huge gestures, but to choose from 20 Simple Acts to bring them, and the people around them, closer to an understanding of refugees. The acts include simple acts of kindness, acts of curiosity, and cultural acts we might have done without even realising it – like reading a book by a refugee, or cooking a dish from another country.

Organisations from Oxfam to Amnesty will be supporting Simple Acts. There is a website where you can add your Simple Act to on an online total, so people can see the impact they are making collectively.

The impact will be an accruing of understanding, thought and insight. This is something the BNP is counting on people not having, and the absence of which harms the lives of refugees and others every day.

Baroque Mansions being what it is, my Simple Acts will be to write posts about related matters, including books written by refugees, who might include Dr Freud, for example. Coming over here taking over all the top genius psychiatrist jobs. I just don’t know.

Incidentally, I was going to commit an act of kindness to the descendants of refugees, too, by covering tomorrow night’s poetry workshop for his great-granddaughter, Annie Freud, tomorrow. But due to the poxy strike of the poxy tube union, who are only asking for a 5% pay increase and guaranteed no redundancies – in this climate! - it will be cancelled. Damn. I was going to get paid for that, too. Will the poxy strikers give me back the pay I lose because of them? I bet not. But it was still kindness, of course, as Annie needed the cover. Damn.

I was going to give them James Merrill, too.

It won’t be out in time but, incidentally, in the next issue of Poetry London I review three poetry collections, two of which are by people who were once asylum seekers from the Soviet bloc. I mean, these people are everywhere.

Nick Griffin says the BNP is not racist, even though its membership is restricted to “indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘Indigenous Caucasian’”.

Asked yesterday how he could tell who qualified as British, Griffin said: “You just look and you just know.”

Not so sure there, Nick! But then you knew that.

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