Missed opportunity claim, as Government allows teachers to be members of BNP (From The Northern Echo)

What a great day for democracy. At last someone with an ounce of common sense. Well done Mr Smith!! The pendulum continues its momentum. Perhaps we can have the 'ban' on police and prison officers lifted next as there is no actual law which states that they too can not be members of the British National Party.

Oh come on if the government banned the BNP members from been techers they would have to ban every teacher who was a member of any other organisation.

Been a member of the Labour party in some eyes would in some eyes be the same as been a member of the BNP.

So let everyone live and be members of who and what they want without interference from Tom, Dick or Harry who doesn't agree with it., we are supposed to live in a free country.

...Police officers are supposed to be apolitical- it's a dodgy line having them openly affiliated to any political group or ideology, especially one as divisive as the BNP. For what it's worth, I think teachers should be the same.

Not all Unions are critical of this report. The ATL for instance made it clear that they thought behaviour not belief was the issue. Our own Union, Solidarity, gave both oral and written evidence to the enquiry. We made it clear that we were 100 per cent opposed to the poltical vetting of teachers. Teachers, like every other citizen, should have the right to freedom of association. Unison are very foolish to advocate giving the State the right to interfere with this right - they are cheerleaders for a new McCarthyism.

As to remarks about the Prison and Police bans, they are a stain on our democracy which will eventually be removed by the Courts - either here or in Europe.

He added: "Membership of the BNP is completely incompatible with delivering education to children.

"Schools should be at the forefront of promoting racial equality, not places where BNP members can spread their message of hate to impressionable young people."


Totally agree with this statement.

Many object to homosexuals teaching children but these aint banned.Common sense for once.

Many object to homosexuals teaching children but these aint banned.Common sense for once.

A victory for common sense

J.Moffatt wrote:
Many object to homosexuals teaching children but these aint banned.Common sense for once.

...how ridiculous!Being gay isn't a choice but the politics you follow are.I'd object to someone who held that belief being anywhere near a class full of impressionable children-the last people who should be teaching children anything are narrow minded bigots

Difficult one...I'm conflicted, to say the least, as I am now in the uncomfortable position of defending membership of an odious and pointless party on the grounds of freedom.
Even though there is nothing illegal about being a teacher and a conservative, I still don't want 'them sort' near my kids. LOL!!!!

Its the quality of teaching that interests me,not the tutors political leanings.After 13 years of trendy leftwing marxist claptrap indoctrination starting at school,i hardly think teachers who views are to the right of the political spectum,could do a worse job.

Well I also think what ever you do in your own time has nothing to do with anyone else.

AS I have said before our forefathers when to war so we had freedom of speech and freedom of movement, etc.

So if we are going to say you cannot belong to thi that or other organisation in your free time where does thi leave us in a communist country? Where we are govern by idiots!!!

oh what a pile of **** the usual suspects spout, good god, is it any wonder the north east is full of idiotic, uneducated, witless specimens such as you lot. Nevermind "New Labour" - its YOU that are utter poison

And so they should be allowed, i remember not so long back a teacher (or 2) were suspended for contributing to an internet forum, them low and behold a teacher from the same school as one of the afore mentioned was caught watching **** and phoning sex lines while teaching teenage girls and he kept his job!!

melwilson wrote:
oh what a pile of **** the usual suspects spout, good god, is it any wonder the north east is full of idiotic, uneducated, witless specimens such as you lot. Nevermind "New Labour" - its YOU that are utter poison

totally agree

I feel i have to take issue with Mel's remarks.If as you say the n/east is full of uneducated,idiotic specimens,perhaps they are the product of 13 years of pc,trendy leftwing indoctrination,or have they finally seen through comrade Browns misguided and divisive policies.If you find the n/east full of idiots and you choose to live amongst them,says something about your intellect-birds of a feather springs to mind.I am sure that various trains or buses are available to take you back to your socialist utopia.

well said paula, mel and colin seem to think that they are always right on any subject they speak.

Big Dave wrote:
...Police officers are supposed to be apolitical- it's a dodgy line having them openly affiliated to any political group or ideology, especially one as divisive as the BNP. For what it's worth, I think teachers should be the same.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'having them openly affiliated'. Surely we are talking here of police officers as individuals having the same right as anyone else to hold personal poilitical beliefs, and to be able to join any legal political party - just the same as anyone else.
.
If you extend this ban to teachers, then why not the Armed Forces, the NHS, the Civil Service? In short, perhaps everyone? So the BNP will be a legal party but everyone will be banned from joining it. The Government don't have the bottle to ban the BNP of course, so are relying on heads of public organisations to impose their own bans - which is totally undemocratic and is unacceptable.
.
Why should very senior police chiefs, who are unelected and unaccountable, be able to lord it over their rank and file by dictating to them that cannot join a legal political party? I hope a police officer nearing retirement, whose pension is already in the bag, takes this issue to the European Courts - and wins!
.
I actually, for once, agree with the principle made by Shaky. The thought of a left wing loony socialist teaching my kids fills me with horror; but everyone is entitled to their own political beliefs.

...I think with certain professions it's best not to be openly political, irrespective of one's personally held beliefs. Most of the cops I know are extremely right wing in terms of crime and punishment however they are not bigoted, homophobic or racist in the main.Let's imagine you're an immigrant to the country and settle here and you need the police. You're not going to be filled with confidence if the cops who deal with you are BNP supporters...knowing that they don't want you in their conuntry and are actively voting for a party which would expel you.
As an extension of this, I wouldn't want a teacher who held any extreme views, be they creationism, facism, homophobia etc teaching my children

so come on "simmo", where in ANY of my postings have I ever professed that I am always right?? No more so than anybody else that posts on here.
Oh and in answer to Paula, I hardly think the North East is a place you would have found pc, trendy, leftwingers judging by the comments on here by the right-wingers would you?

Mel-in my job i have to deal with teachers and council officials and believe me some of the pc and leftwing rubbish i have to listen to defies reasoning.This country reminds me of the soviet union ,vast ammounts of public servants whose onlyrole in life is to create more jobs for themselves or to come up with more petty rules or regulations tojustify their own jobs.It appears the more pc you become the higher you get and the harder it is to be removed. .

simmo3578 wrote:
well said paula, mel and colin seem to think that they are always right on any subject they speak.

what?? haha, why make a comment if you don't think you're right? Now that IS STUPID! LOL Even the Walker sisters at least BELIEVE what they say ffs! jeeeez some people!!

We are told that ‘nazism’ is once again on the march in Europe. The recent success of so-called far-right political parties has inevitably evoked many such sensationalist reactions from journalists, and perhaps none more so than in the case of BBC correspondent Angus Roxburgh's Preachers of Hate, which evokes the image of SS Jackboots pounding throughout the continent. Roxburgh's book uses the term ‘neo-nazi’ sweepingly, to encompass just about everybody from the SS-praising Jorg Haider to homosexual libertarian Pim Fortuyn. They, and the groups they apparently embody, are all lazily accused of being modern ‘nazis’ - key players in the politics of ‘hate.’

Of course, one of Roxburgh's problems is that he is unable, or unwilling, to define what ‘far-right’ or ‘nazi’ actually mean, allowing him to use these emotive terms entirely unquestioned. So perhaps we should think for a moment about this point. What defines ‘nazism’ for most people? I would suggest it is the projection of hatred and fear onto certain groups, scapegoating these groups; the smearing and dehumanising of opponents; and suppression of free speech and the desire for a One-Party State. Now, if this is so, then ‘nazism’ would indeed seem to be ‘on the march’, but this is not embodied in Haider or Fortuyn. It is embodied in the ‘anti-fascist’ movement, which has been marching through Europe (including Britain) evoking fear and stirring up hate wherever it goes.

Dehumanising opponents
The Nazis are famously reputed to have dehumanised their opponents. Jews were compared to a plague of rats in a film by Dr. Goebbels. Schoolchildren were taught in an equally notorious story book that the Jew was The Poisoned Mushroom. But in Britain the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League, the magazine Searchlight and many in the Labour Party portray their opponents in an equally dehumanised fashion. Referring to the latter as ‘nazis’ clearly has this purpose in the context in which the term is understood. Even though the BNP, for example, is clearly not ‘nazi’ - because nazism was a German ideology of the 1930s - associating the BNP with Nazism, and by extension the various atrocities of which the Nazis are accused, massively assists in dehumanising the BNP's members. They are portrayed not as individuals but simply as an indisputably evil collective force.

Quite apart from the ‘nazi’ label, various figures on the left use highly emotive language in referring to the BNP. Roy Hattersley termed the BNP ‘evil’ on a recent edition of Question Time. And how often has the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League been recorded chanting ‘scum’ at members of the BNP? BNP members are portrayed as not human but as ‘filth’. And there is only one logical thing to be done to filth!

The second way in which the ‘anti-nazi’ movement dehumanises its opponents is subtler. It involves deliberately alienating the BNP from those whom they wish to prevent voting for the party: the sprawling middle class. This includes just about everybody from office managers to barristers. As such, they make numerous false allegations against those they oppose. They suggest that only uneducated and often unemployed people living in deprived areas vote for the BNP. Roy Hattersley made exactly this claim on the edition of Question Time from Burnley to which I have referred, despite the fact that there were high BNP votes in many middle-class areas of Oldham, Burnley and elsewhere at the 2001 general election and in subsequent local government elections. Such an allegation cleverly manipulates the well-known phenomenon of ‘Rank Concession Syndrome’ - that people will emulate their perceived socio-economic superiors and reject the lifestyle of those they believe to be ‘failing’. Hattersley's viewers would obviously, and perhaps over-simplistically, associate unemployment with failure!

The ‘criminal’ cry
Hattersley's next argument was that many people in the BNP are ‘criminals’. This would again invoke ‘Rank Concession Syndrome’ for many of his viewers. But what he fails to point out is that most of the ‘crimes’ committed by BNP members have amounted only to breaches of the law in pursuit of political motives, sometimes involving the use of freedom of speech in a society in which freedom of speech has been a sacred national tradition (though now a ‘crime’ in certain respects). Hattersley also suggested that top BNP members have convictions for violent behaviour, again forgetting the violence against which they frequently have to defend themselves from the far left.

Hattersley's final tactic was simply to claim that if you vote BNP you have been ‘brain-washed’ by the far right and you are an ‘insecure person.’ Of course, no-one would wish to feel that either of these things applied to themselves, so that the intended effect was to alienate them from the BNP. In the process of all this, of course, Hattersley was essentially alienating many ordinary people, implying that they are incapable of having an intelligent opinion. Moreover, the refusal of politicians like Hattersley to debate with the BNP is intended only to assist this dehumanisation process further - his opponents become a dark, shadowy group with whom it is dangerous even to talk!

Projecting hatreds
The Nazis, of course, were regarded by many as projecting their own insecurities - in a time of national crisis - onto the Jews. The Jews were scapegoated for everything from unemployment to the degradation of the national character. But do not ‘anti-nazis’ project their own hatreds onto their political opponents? Recently, the ANL in Guildford used threats of violence against members of the public to cancel a BNP hustings.

We have already explored the accusations of ‘nazi’, ‘evil’, and ‘scum’ and the way in which ‘anti-nazis’ refuse to debate with their opponents but simply seek to lock them up for speaking their minds. One councillor in Wiltshire said he wouldn't want to be in the same room as a BNP member. The BNP are essentially blamed for anything for which their opponents can find to blame them. One commentator argued that racist attacks had increased in Burnley since a BNP councillor was elected. But these attacks would almost certainly have occurred regardless. Such an accusation is thus, again, scapegoating and totally irrational. The Jews were legally persecuted for their race and religion in Germany; the opponents of the ‘anti-nazis’ are persecuted for their patriotic views today. In both cases, of course, the legal system prevented, and prevents, them from fighting back.

Indeed, much of this loathing derives from the insecurities of the ‘anti-nazis’ themselves. Who are the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League? Overwhelmingly, they are white and middle-class. They are also, in a socio-economic sense at least, failures. They do not belong to the affluent middle-class, but are mainly what they might themselves call wage-slaves: teachers, nurses and so on; and they are politically on the left. They dislike being white and British, I would suggest, because of the tremendous sense of post-colonial guilt with which today's young people have been inculcated through their education. And, needless to say, they dislike their lack of affluence, their lack of self-determination and their relative lack of achievement. The BNP, therefore, embodies all of the aspects of themselves that they despise. It is unashamedly in favour of preserving the British Nation - its culture, its own special way of life and once again ensuring that we are proud, not guilty, to be ourselves.

A great deal of the BNP's support is from honest, working-class, white people whose position reflects an aspect of the lifestyle of the ‘anti-nazi’ that he loathes. Moreover, the BNP challenges the identity of the ‘anti-nazi’ by highlighting the utter failure of his left-wing ideology to help anybody in the working-class anywhere. Even some of those in Britain's de facto underclass are likewise beginning to vote nationalist, challenging the certainties of the ‘anti- nazi’. No wonder, then, that the ‘anti-Nazi’, insecure in terms of his ideology, economic position and national identity, projects his self-loathing onto the BNP!

Violence and suppression
And like the real Nazis, the ‘anti-nazis’ are attempting to achieve a One-Party State. They use violence in place of democracy. They suppress freedom of speech. They smear and imprison their opponents. They even interfere with the democratic process by, almost unbelievably, marching against the democratically expressed will of the people and rioting in the streets, as we saw in the wake of Jean-Marie Le Pen's first-round success in the French Presidential Election. Some - such as Dutchman Volkert van der Graff - will even go as far as murdering their opponents; despite the fact that the victim in this case, Pim Fortuyn, clearly had the backing of a vast number of the Dutch electorate, van der Graff assassinated him. Many ‘anti-nazis’ will argue that they believe in freedom of speech but they still shout for the BNP to be banned!

I have even heard some ‘anti-nazis’ question whether the kind of people who vote BNP should be allowed to vote at all. One of them mooted the idea that one shouldn't be allowed to vote without a university degree. If the BNP were suppressed, Britain would effectively become a One-Party State. The three main parties are, at least in theory, agreed on the desirability of a multi-cultural society. So without the BNP where would the voice of dissent and opposition be? On many issues our so-called ‘anti-nazis’ are essentially of one voice and one party. And like the Nazis of legend, they have an absolute intolerance of anyone who dares to disagree with them.

Angus Roxburgh is quite right in one thing. The ‘politics of hate’ is indeed a significant force in modern Europe - from the left-wing fringes to the heart of the Labour Party. The hate of the ‘anti-nazi’ movement is central to modern European politics. Europe is stalked by a modern version of the nazi movement (or at least as it was perceived), which dehumanises its opponents and is so intolerant of them that it won't even debate with them. This movement uses violence, imprisonment and murder against those with whom it disagrees. And it has no respect for democracy or free speech. It scapegoats and it projects its own insecurities and hatreds onto a minority. Such a movement is dangerous, and it must be fought relentlessly. Thankfully, that fight is succeeding. Once again freedom, democracy and pride in history and nation are on the march all over Europe, including here.

oh, you are so funny Colin, that really made me wet myself

Colin Wood wrote:
We are told that ‘nazism’ is once again on the march in Europe. The recent success of so-called far-right political parties has inevitably evoked many such sensationalist reactions from journalists, and perhaps none more so than in the case of BBC correspondent Angus Roxburgh's Preachers of Hate, which evokes the image of SS Jackboots pounding throughout the continent. Roxburgh's book uses the term ‘neo-nazi’ sweepingly, to encompass just about everybody from the SS-praising Jorg Haider to homosexual libertarian Pim Fortuyn. They, and the groups they apparently embody, are all lazily accused of being modern ‘nazis’ - key players in the politics of ‘hate.’ Of course, one of Roxburgh's problems is that he is unable, or unwilling, to define what ‘far-right’ or ‘nazi’ actually mean, allowing him to use these emotive terms entirely unquestioned. So perhaps we should think for a moment about this point. What defines ‘nazism’ for most people? I would suggest it is the projection of hatred and fear onto certain groups, scapegoating these groups; the smearing and dehumanising of opponents; and suppression of free speech and the desire for a One-Party State. Now, if this is so, then ‘nazism’ would indeed seem to be ‘on the march’, but this is not embodied in Haider or Fortuyn. It is embodied in the ‘anti-fascist’ movement, which has been marching through Europe (including Britain) evoking fear and stirring up hate wherever it goes. Dehumanising opponents The Nazis are famously reputed to have dehumanised their opponents. Jews were compared to a plague of rats in a film by Dr. Goebbels. Schoolchildren were taught in an equally notorious story book that the Jew was The Poisoned Mushroom. But in Britain the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League, the magazine Searchlight and many in the Labour Party portray their opponents in an equally dehumanised fashion. Referring to the latter as ‘nazis’ clearly has this purpose in the context in which the term is understood. Even though the BNP, for example, is clearly not ‘nazi’ - because nazism was a German ideology of the 1930s - associating the BNP with Nazism, and by extension the various atrocities of which the Nazis are accused, massively assists in dehumanising the BNP's members. They are portrayed not as individuals but simply as an indisputably evil collective force. Quite apart from the ‘nazi’ label, various figures on the left use highly emotive language in referring to the BNP. Roy Hattersley termed the BNP ‘evil’ on a recent edition of Question Time. And how often has the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League been recorded chanting ‘scum’ at members of the BNP? BNP members are portrayed as not human but as ‘filth’. And there is only one logical thing to be done to filth! The second way in which the ‘anti-nazi’ movement dehumanises its opponents is subtler. It involves deliberately alienating the BNP from those whom they wish to prevent voting for the party: the sprawling middle class. This includes just about everybody from office managers to barristers. As such, they make numerous false allegations against those they oppose. They suggest that only uneducated and often unemployed people living in deprived areas vote for the BNP. Roy Hattersley made exactly this claim on the edition of Question Time from Burnley to which I have referred, despite the fact that there were high BNP votes in many middle-class areas of Oldham, Burnley and elsewhere at the 2001 general election and in subsequent local government elections. Such an allegation cleverly manipulates the well-known phenomenon of ‘Rank Concession Syndrome’ - that people will emulate their perceived socio-economic superiors and reject the lifestyle of those they believe to be ‘failing’. Hattersley's viewers would obviously, and perhaps over-simplistically, associate unemployment with failure! The ‘criminal’ cry Hattersley's next argument was that many people in the BNP are ‘criminals’. This would again invoke ‘Rank Concession Syndrome’ for many of his viewers. But what he fails to point out is that most of the ‘crimes’ committed by BNP members have amounted only to breaches of the law in pursuit of political motives, sometimes involving the use of freedom of speech in a society in which freedom of speech has been a sacred national tradition (though now a ‘crime’ in certain respects). Hattersley also suggested that top BNP members have convictions for violent behaviour, again forgetting the violence against which they frequently have to defend themselves from the far left. Hattersley's final tactic was simply to claim that if you vote BNP you have been ‘brain-washed’ by the far right and you are an ‘insecure person.’ Of course, no-one would wish to feel that either of these things applied to themselves, so that the intended effect was to alienate them from the BNP. In the process of all this, of course, Hattersley was essentially alienating many ordinary people, implying that they are incapable of having an intelligent opinion. Moreover, the refusal of politicians like Hattersley to debate with the BNP is intended only to assist this dehumanisation process further - his opponents become a dark, shadowy group with whom it is dangerous even to talk! Projecting hatreds The Nazis, of course, were regarded by many as projecting their own insecurities - in a time of national crisis - onto the Jews. The Jews were scapegoated for everything from unemployment to the degradation of the national character. But do not ‘anti-nazis’ project their own hatreds onto their political opponents? Recently, the ANL in Guildford used threats of violence against members of the public to cancel a BNP hustings. We have already explored the accusations of ‘nazi’, ‘evil’, and ‘scum’ and the way in which ‘anti-nazis’ refuse to debate with their opponents but simply seek to lock them up for speaking their minds. One councillor in Wiltshire said he wouldn't want to be in the same room as a BNP member. The BNP are essentially blamed for anything for which their opponents can find to blame them. One commentator argued that racist attacks had increased in Burnley since a BNP councillor was elected. But these attacks would almost certainly have occurred regardless. Such an accusation is thus, again, scapegoating and totally irrational. The Jews were legally persecuted for their race and religion in Germany; the opponents of the ‘anti-nazis’ are persecuted for their patriotic views today. In both cases, of course, the legal system prevented, and prevents, them from fighting back. Indeed, much of this loathing derives from the insecurities of the ‘anti-nazis’ themselves. Who are the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League? Overwhelmingly, they are white and middle-class. They are also, in a socio-economic sense at least, failures. They do not belong to the affluent middle-class, but are mainly what they might themselves call wage-slaves: teachers, nurses and so on; and they are politically on the left. They dislike being white and British, I would suggest, because of the tremendous sense of post-colonial guilt with which today's young people have been inculcated through their education. And, needless to say, they dislike their lack of affluence, their lack of self-determination and their relative lack of achievement. The BNP, therefore, embodies all of the aspects of themselves that they despise. It is unashamedly in favour of preserving the British Nation - its culture, its own special way of life and once again ensuring that we are proud, not guilty, to be ourselves. A great deal of the BNP's support is from honest, working-class, white people whose position reflects an aspect of the lifestyle of the ‘anti-nazi’ that he loathes. Moreover, the BNP challenges the identity of the ‘anti-nazi’ by highlighting the utter failure of his left-wing ideology to help anybody in the working-class anywhere. Even some of those in Britain's de facto underclass are likewise beginning to vote nationalist, challenging the certainties of the ‘anti- nazi’. No wonder, then, that the ‘anti-Nazi’, insecure in terms of his ideology, economic position and national identity, projects his self-loathing onto the BNP! Violence and suppression And like the real Nazis, the ‘anti-nazis’ are attempting to achieve a One-Party State. They use violence in place of democracy. They suppress freedom of speech. They smear and imprison their opponents. They even interfere with the democratic process by, almost unbelievably, marching against the democratically expressed will of the people and rioting in the streets, as we saw in the wake of Jean-Marie Le Pen's first-round success in the French Presidential Election. Some - such as Dutchman Volkert van der Graff - will even go as far as murdering their opponents; despite the fact that the victim in this case, Pim Fortuyn, clearly had the backing of a vast number of the Dutch electorate, van der Graff assassinated him. Many ‘anti-nazis’ will argue that they believe in freedom of speech but they still shout for the BNP to be banned! I have even heard some ‘anti-nazis’ question whether the kind of people who vote BNP should be allowed to vote at all. One of them mooted the idea that one shouldn't be allowed to vote without a university degree. If the BNP were suppressed, Britain would effectively become a One-Party State. The three main parties are, at least in theory, agreed on the desirability of a multi-cultural society. So without the BNP where would the voice of dissent and opposition be? On many issues our so-called ‘anti-nazis’ are essentially of one voice and one party. And like the Nazis of legend, they have an absolute intolerance of anyone who dares to disagree with them. Angus Roxburgh is quite right in one thing. The ‘politics of hate’ is indeed a significant force in modern Europe - from the left-wing fringes to the heart of the Labour Party. The hate of the ‘anti-nazi’ movement is central to modern European politics. Europe is stalked by a modern version of the nazi movement (or at least as it was perceived), which dehumanises its opponents and is so intolerant of them that it won't even debate with them. This movement uses violence, imprisonment and murder against those with whom it disagrees. And it has no respect for democracy or free speech. It scapegoats and it projects its own insecurities and hatreds onto a minority. Such a movement is dangerous, and it must be fought relentlessly. Thankfully, that fight is succeeding. Once again freedom, democracy and pride in history and nation are on the march all over Europe, including here.

Nowhere on.....?? forgot what I was gonna say now!

..."Nazi" is just a contraction of National socialism; you're confusing the etymology of a word with its connotations. Nazi-ism is on the rise across Europe, with a number of political parties stating desires to "re-patriate" their respective countries if elected. Anti-Nazi groups are therefore, quite naturally on the rise in a misguided attempt to fight fire with fire. To try and suggest far right parties are not "nazi" is ludicrous and misleading...no one's suggesting they support Hitler's nazi party (though I'm sure his ideas on eugenics and a "master race" go over well).