Published letters on BNP / Immigration

Hope not Despair - Nov 2009

Regarding the recent controversy around Question Time and the participation of the BNP, it was unfortunate the programme focussed on personalities and not on issues.

It is easy, as human history demonstrates, to stir up hatred and fear. A room with ten people in it will have at least ten opportunites to identify differences and set people apart from each other. If it is not skin colour, it can be hair colour, or height, weight, gender, disability, sexuality, religion, politics, or simply the size of a nose, the length of a skirt, or the hood on a sweat shirt.

The rise of the politics of despair is not about immigration, it is about wasted lives, about a nation that has turned its back on manufacturing and unskilled jobs, a nation that condemns an underclass to lives without work, without training, and without hope.

If real effort were put into transforming the lives of those who feel they have no future then the BNP, and others like them, would be an irrelevance.

If all people who ‘do not belong here’ [whatever that means] were sent back to wherever someone imagined they did belong, wouldn’t all other nations have a similar right to send back to the UK all the people they considered didn’t belong in their country? If you think our island is busy and overpopulated now, imagine all the people of white British origin in America,

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and elsewhere on the planet, being sent back to Britain. It makes no sense. Let us focus instead on tackling the real issues of creating a new economy, providing training, creating jobs, and bringing hope to those who feel frustrated, excluded and marginalised.

Published and promoted by Christian Vassie, 10 Blake Court, Wheldrake, York YO19 6BT