BNP rally brings poisonous message as Pollokshields recovers from

IT'S a dreary Saturday afternoon on Glasgow's Paisley Road West. The only colour around comes from the array of tattered Union Jacks fluttering outside a few local pubs.

Down the road, in the bar of The Swallow Hotel, just over 100 people - mostly men - are finishing their pints and their cigarettes and passing through an ad hoc security cordon to get inside one of the conference rooms.

After a sweep with a metal detector by the burly security guards, they take their seats.

On the walls there are Union Jacks, Saltires and banners promising a better life for the Scottish people.

This is the BNP's Scottish end-of-year rally, held at what is a difficult time for Glasgow's southside. The area is still scarred by the brutal, racially motivated murder of Kriss Donald, the teenager from Glasgow's Pollokshields area who was killed by an Asian gang which set out to abduct and kill a white youth.

To most people in Scotland - both whites and ethnic minorities - the BNP's actions are contemptible. Many feel the party are exploiting a tragic death for political capital. They also see the very presence of Nick Griffin, the BNP's controversial leader, at the rally as enough to undermine any attempt to build racial harmony in Pollokshields.

There are those who argue that to give the party any publicity encourages the politics of hate. Others, however, believe that ignoring the BNP takes away the spotlight of scrutiny.

Although the BNP say the rally is a belated nod to St Andrew's Day, the prospect of racial tensions in the area is obviously very much on their minds. When Nick Griffin was asked if he was using Kriss's murder for politically opportunistic ends, he replied:

"Suppose the last piece of manufacturing industry closed on the Clyde next week. The SNP or the Conservative Party would be there saying, 'This is a bad thing.'

"All political parties - when an event is happening which pertains to their core issues - are going to talk about it."

The BNP's central message is that multiculturalism doesn't work and immigration should be reversed. The party believe Kriss's murder is evidence of that. "Far from racism being something evil that only exists when people like me stir it up, it is a fundamental part of being human, " says Griffin.

"So when you get different groups side by side in a place that is, by Western standards, quite poor, you are going to get that kind of thing happening."

Griffin's argument is that inter-racial hatred is tribal and buried in our DNA. "There is a deep-seated primal hatred of the other which you can see coming out here in Glasgow."

At the rally, a show of hands reveals that this is the first BNP event ever attended by about 60per cent of those in the room.

Griffin says party membership has grown from 1300 when he took over five years ago to 8000 today. The BNP have also made small electoral increases, and now have a number of council seats, primarily in the north of England.

One of the first speakers is a former young Conservative, reflecting the party's attempt to scrub out its street-fighting past and replace it with a more acceptable image.

"Fundamentalist Islam" is the party's main target, and Griffin raises the spectre of Britain developing the kind of violent ethnic strife which is now gripping the once liberal bastion of Holland.

The leader, the party hierarchy and voices from the floor return again and again to the theme of the white children of today becoming a racial minority in the future.

This is a party in which the concept of fear is key. The fear of militant Islam, the idea of "the sound of church bells being replaced by the call to prayer" and the terror of an alQaeda strike are all central messages during the rally.

But the party themselves seem fearful of what their members see as an increasingly antagonistic state. Members feel persecuted. They believe that the Labour Party will one day ban the movement, and they talk of losing their jobs because of party membership.

The rally venue was organised in secret for fear of left-wing groups picketing the event. As a result, many of those attending were only told at the last minute where it would be held. Meanwhile, Griffin has a permanent bodyguard of heavily built men around him, and security ensures every entrance and exit is closely watched.

On the floor, members speak of their hatred of the IRA, paedophiles and Europe, and their love of the flag, the right to dissent and their country. The party faithful denounce the "liberal media" for its "lies" about the BNP. "Why do they hate us?" one activist asks.

"They hate us because we love our flag and our nation."

Political correctness is damned along with "spineless" politicians and police chiefs who fear being seen as un-PC. One speaker says:

"What I'm saying to you is just what we talk about in the pub. Yet they call us racists and extremists?"

Another speaker, to cheers and applause, says of Muslims: "They are not our people, and they never will be our people." He equates the killing of Kriss Donald with the moors murders. A litany of violent black-on-white crime is recounted.

"Are we going to allow Kriss Donald to die in vain?" a speaker asks. The crowd shout back: "No!"

The party want all imams - Muslim preachers - to be "Western born and have Westernised moderate attitudes", and "preach in English so everyone can understand them". While Griffin accepts these policies could provoke a violent backlash, he claims:

"That would be further proof of the fundamental idiocy of multiculturalism."

Griffin believes Britain has the choice "between a sort of Islamic IRA operating out of ghettos in Britain, or the, still at present unthinkable, option of a massive reversal of immigration". He says there would be no forced repatriation in a BNP Britain, but all immigration would cease.

Life under the BNP, Griffin admits, would be "culturally less comfortable" for Muslims.

Halal meat would be banned leaving Muslims the option of "either becoming vegetarians or going back to Pakistan".

The BNP leader says a "fully integrated British Asian", should be accepted in Britain.

But would Griffin allow such an integrated Asian to marry his daughter?

"No, " he says. "And I wouldn't expect him to accept his daughter marrying my son.

Either God or nature created human beings as different races. If worldwide racial integration is to be encouraged, then the end result is a world with no difference."

Copyright 2004 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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