Dr Frank Ellis gives an analysis of Question Time

A personal view by Frank Ellis

Nick Griffin on Question Time, BBC 1, 2235 hrs, Thursday 22^nd October 2009

Chairman, David Dimbleby

Panellists: Bonnie Greer, Nick Griffin MEP, Chris Huhne MP, Jack Straw MP & Baroness Warsi

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being “pushed to an extreme”; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are not assuming infallibility, when they acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

© Frank Ellis 2009

As the leader of a party that has local councillors, county councillors and 2 MEPs, it was entirely proper that Nick Griffin MEP, the leader of the British National Party (BNP), be invited on Question Time. The attempts to apply pressure to the BBC to cancel the invitation say a great deal about the left and indeed the Conservative Party. You cannot deny your political opponents free speech and then insist on your own rights to same.

One of the first questions put to the panel was whether it was right and proper that a party like the BNP used Churchill in its campaign literature given that Churchill had led Britain in a war against a racist and oppressive regime. The assumption is that the BNP is a racist party therefore it must be wrong for the BNP to use Churchillian iconography. It must be made clear that Britain did not got to war against Nazi Germany because the Hitler state was racist or even oppressive. Had Germany not attacked Poland Britain would not have declared war, though given the aggressive expansionism of Germany war would have come sooner or later. In the summer of 1940 after the disastrous performance of the British Army in France, Britain was fighting for her survival. Freeing the world of racism was not a consideration. The obsession with racism comes after 1945. True, Asians fought in both world wars, so did Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Americans. Does this mean that all these soldiers (Asian or white) have a right of residence in the UK? Griffin made the excellent point that in World War Two we went to war to protect British sovereignty: we did not go war to allow our country to be transformed by legal/illegal immigration. Griffin’s point – addressed to Straw – that his father served in the Royal Air Force, while Straw’s father was in prison as a conscientious objector was a powerful blow against Straw. Griffin also pointed out that many of Churchill’s views on immigration and Islam were somewhat politically incorrect (indeed they were).

Ignorance or obmutescence regarding the crimes against humanity and the genocide committed by communist regimes worldwide are a characteristic of the print and broadcast media, and the left. Straw, for example, made much of the importance of race for the BNP, implying that the BNP was simply a clone of the German Nazi party. What he failed to point out is that race is deemed to be a very good thing for blacks who on both sides of the Atlantic are encouraged to celebrate their being black to the point of making all kinds of bizarre claims about black achievements. In the UK there is an organization called the Metropolitan Police Service Black Police Association. Now, it is not clear to me why blacks working in the public sector can create an organisation membership of which is explicitly racial whereas a political party, the BNP, must open its membership to non-whites. If blacks can celebrate being black, why are whites vilified when they seek to promote and to protect their own interests?

Straw also failed to point out that class war so beloved of communist fanatics and white middle-class revolutionaries in the National Union of Students (no platform for fascists, etc) has been responsible for millions more deaths than the Nazis managed to kill in World War Two. Stalin’s Final Solution of the Peasant Question led to the extermination of about 11,000,000 peasants six million of whom were Ukrainians cruelly put to death by starvation on Stalin’s orders. This genocide was completed 10 years before Heydrich and Eichmann convened the Wannsee conference in January 1942 during which they finalised the plans for the extermination of Europe’s Jewish population. Hitler was not the most terrible mass murderer in history but it clearly suits the left (Jack Straw) and many other establishment figures to have people believe that Hitler was uniquely evil because any opposition to mass legal/illegal immigration can be shouted down as racist when it fact it is rational, morally sound and quite normal.

When we examine the way communist traitors and supporters of the most genocidal and bloody party in man’s history are received by the BBC and other media organisations we cannot help but notice yet another glaring double standard. The former terrorist, Mandela enjoys saint status and the fact that the Labour Party was heavily penetrated by the KGB, Stasi and the Czech StB has not resulted in prosecutions. Ten years ago Robin Pearson, a lecturer at Hull University was exposed as a Stasi spy. MI5 concluded that Pearson had damaged British interests and that there was a very strong case for prosecuting him. Jack Straw – that man again – was Home Secretary at the time and rejected MI5’s recommendations to proceed against Pearson. Ten years later, as far as I am aware, Pearson is still in post. Somebody reading this piece might like to check out the Hull University web site and then ask the university secretary what is going on. One wonders whether Straw’s ideological allegiances informed his decision not to prosecute Pearson. Again, the same people who campaigned to stop Griffin from appearing on Question Time do not seem to mind Gerry Adams and colleagues who have now renounced their terrorist past. As far as I am aware, the BNP was not responsible for the deaths of 3,000 soldiers, civilians and members of what used to be known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The left prostrate themselves before Mandela, ignoring his terrorist past, whereas the Holy Father is the target of constant snide attacks because of his membership of the Hitler Youth.

Bonnie Greer made little contribution to the debate. Her attempts to undermine the notion that there were any indigenous British were grossly incompetent. Speaking as an Englishman, I found her attempts to deny the existence of my people insulting and, to ape the language of The Macpherson Report, unwittingly racist. She clearly has no idea of the evolutionary and geological history of Western Europe. Even if early humans first appeared in Africa – the out-of-Africa theory – the expectation that we should celebrate any African ancestry is sentimental and bizarre. There may well have been a time when we were all Africans, as it were but evolutionary pressures and natural selection have ensured that the basic African blueprint, if the early humans did indeed come from Africa, has changed at the superficial and deep structural level. Blacks and whites are now not the same: there are important psychological, physiological and intellectual differences, and these differences have real world consequences. She also failed to realise that Rome’s multiculturalism was one of the factors for its downfall. America may yet go the same way.

Griffin landed further telling blows on the rather lacklustre Straw when he pointed out that Straw denied the English the use of “English” as a category on the census form. Griffin landed yet another blow when he told Straw that he, Straw, would not go to New Zealand and tell the Maoris that they were not the indigenous people of New Zealand.

The audience had clearly been selected to be as hostile as possible to Griffin. Black and Asians, along with white PC types, were overrepresented and many of them came to shout Griffin down rather than to argue. One of the first to have a go at Griffin was a very emotional black. He was wearing glasses and sitting to the right of the panellists. One of the main themes of his tirade was that Griffin should accept the contributions that immigrants have made. The trouble with this of course is that none of us - the benighted, non-existing English - was asked whether we wanted these “contributions”. Immigrants can kindly offer them but we the owners of this land have the right to decline the offer. In any case the talk of contributions is a debating ploy. It removes discussion of whether these immigrants, or some of them, should be here in the first place and whether they have entered the country illegally so as to make these contributions. If the price of these contributions, whatever they are, is the racial and cultural dispossession of whites, the reduction of whites to a minority in some of our bigger cities, near permanent racial unrest and tension in many other towns and the desire on the part of what the BBC likes to call “British muslims” to kill us, then I suggest that the price is too high.

However, there were members of the audience who supported Griffin. One man pointed out that Griffin was saying the same things as Enoch Powell. Straw pointed out that when Powell was Health Minister he advertised for nurses in the West Indies to come to Britain. Subject to proper visa controls (in and out), an upper limit population control policy and a strictly enforced immigration policy driven by national self-interest, foreigners are welcome. A work permit must not be seen as conferring an automatic right of residence. Foreigners who lied on visa applications forms must be subject to immediate deportation

One member of the audience asked Griffin whether he had travelled. This bone-headed question was presumably intended to show that Griffin’s presumed lack of travelling was what supposedly made him such a bigoted individual. Travel does not necessarily broaden the mind. During the 1930s many admirers of Stalin and hordes of wealthy socialists made the pilgrimage to the Soviet Union. These Terror-Famine Deniers then retuned to the prosperous West and extolled the joys of socialism at the very moment when Stalin was engaging in genocide. A generation later the same types went to pay homage to Mao and came back with all kinds of nonsense about the joys of Maoism. Note, however, that these leftists returned to the West: they decided not to stay in the workers’ paradise. I am reminded here of the diversophiles among us who insist that “diversity is our strength” and then flee it at the first opportunity.

The panel were asked to consider whether a misguided immigration policy has contributed to the BNP’s electoral success. Straw refused to answer the question. He then came out with the slogan that “diversity is our strength”. Straw should ask the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians whether they believe – whether they ever believed – that nonsense. For good measure he should also ask the ANC whether they appreciate the presence of white people in multiracial South Africa. This question prompted other panellists (Warsi and Huhne) to lay into Straw. There was a consensus that the Labour government’s immigration policy had been and still is a disastrous failure. Huhne pointed out the huge discrepancy between the Labour government’s estimates about the number of migrants that would come to Britain from the Eastern European states newly-acceded to the EU and the vast flood that actually came. When Straw tried to evade government responsibility and said that the government had introduced an Australian points-based system and were going to do this and that, one member of the audience shouted out: “Just do it” (indeed). During this phase of the programme it turned out that when visas are issued to foreigners to come to the UK the government does not know whether the visa holder has left the country when the visa has expired. One can assume that applicants intending to violate the conditions of the visa are aware of this lack of control as well. One black member of the audience (not the emotionally incontinent one noted above) made the measured and rational point that immigration has to be tackled. The failure to control immigration and the very high birth rate of immigrants is the main factor contributing to the dramatic rise in population. It was pointed out by Dimbleby that Frank Field had called for a population limit to be set and maintained. Straw argued that you could not stop people having children. Well, as a first phase you can cease to provide generous incentives. Here are some suggestions. First, stop all child benefits. Those who want large families have no right to expect those who are sexually responsible to subsidize their procreation experiments. Second, consider the compulsory sterilization of a man who deserts a woman he has inseminated and who has earlier refused when demanded to make financial contributions to the upkeep of his child. Women who decide quite deliberately to lead a life based on welfare by having children with multiple fathers should have to live in custodial hostels and be subject to a strict control regime. Third, immigrants who come from countries with a tradition of large extended families (polygamy) shall not be permitted to bring them to the UK and shall receive no financial assistance from the public purse. Fourth, recognise that in a country in an earlier age where the population was 8 million and the mean life expectancy was about 50 years, having lots of children was not a problem. In the same country with a population of 60,000,000 and an increased life expectancy, aggressive breeding, exacerbated by uncontrolled immigration is unsustainable. Having children under these conditions is no longer a right it has become a privilege. Governments can do something. If they do not act nature will impose her own solution. The outcome will be collapse and the descent into something very nasty and Hobbesian.

There is no doubt that the standard procedure for the conduct of Question Time was abandoned and that Dimbleby and the other panellists ganged up on Griffin. They may even have colluded with one another in advance. It was not a pretty sight; the BBC has some explaining to do. I was left with the impression that too many of the audience – the tree-huggers and save-the-whale types – would have been quite happy to see Griffin murdered. The BNP, often in the face of violence and vicious media lying, has consistently championed the cause of the white indigenous majority who are quite rightly alarmed – and should be – about the scale of legal/illegal immigration into the United Kingdom. This issue is now critical to the survival of the United Kingdom. For having doggedly exposed the catastrophic immigration policy of this Labour government (and previous Conservative governments as well) or rather the lack thereof and the damage this policy has inflicted on the indigenous population Nick Griffin and the BNP deserve our gratitude. However, Griffin was very obviously and clumsily evasive when challenged about the Holocaust. His answers to accusations of Holocaust denial were patently insincere. It may well be illegal in Germany and France to say anything controversial about the Holocaust but Britain, fortunately, has no such laws and Griffin should have come clean and apologised about having denied the Holocaust. Dimbleby was right to have reproached him for smirking. The Jewish lad who challenged Griffin was hurt and could not understand why Griffin wanted to deny what Hitler had done. It is a wicked thing to deny suffering on such a scale. The evidence for what the Nazis did is overwhelming: we know it happened; what good comes from denying the Satanic purposes of Hitler’s Final Solution? As a matter of urgency Griffin needs to issue an unreserved and sincere apology for past denials (BNP web site). So play the man, master Griffin and do it.

How do we rate the performance of the other panellists? Jack Straw looked and sounded nervous, even frightened. He was fatally wounded by Griffin’s devastating aside about his father and never fully recovered his composure. Chris Huhne’s was an average performance, no more. He seemed more concerned to demonstrate the purity of his anti-racist credentials and lacked the grasp of detail. The same can be said of Baroness Warsi, the affirmative action appointee. As for the delightful and engaging Bonnie Greer, she set a low standard and conspicuously failed to achieve it.

Frank Ellis
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Editor's note: I am honoured that Dr Ellis is a contributor to Sarah Maid of Albion. As many will ba aware Dr Ellis was an eminent lecturer at Leeds University (now retired) who received considerable press coverage in 2006 on account of the outrageous way he was treated, and the efforts which were made to destroy him and his career, merely for having the courage to express unpopular and politically incorrect views.

Dr Ellis's review of Qustion time is reproduced here in full out of respect for Dr Ellis and for his right to free speech. I am also in strong agreement with the majority of what he has to say, however, this is a personal view, and Dr Ellis's views do not, in their entirety, represent the opinion of this blog.

Sarah: Maid of Albion