Following Blackburn Labour Parties twitter I came accross this story about The Conservatives trying to intice former BNP candidate to stand in the local elections in June under a Tory Ticket.
Nick Holt who lost heavily to Jack Straw in 2005 said that a long standing Tory asked him to stand for his party saying that both parties "sang from the same hymnsheet".
Who says the parties are all converging to the centre? This story may shock at first but it should not suprise us.
Compassionate , caring Conservatives? You are having a laugh!
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
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What a puzzling title!
ReplyDeleteThe BNP has more in common with socialism than Conservatism - they support nationalisation, economic protectionism, subsidies for heavy industry and workers cooperatives. Their 2008 Manifesto reads like something the Labour of old used to espouse:
"...to give workers a stake in the success and prosperity of the enterprise whose profits their labour creates by encouraging worker shareholder and cooperative schemes."
The dispute between socialists and fascists is one between brothers. Labour and the BNP will be competing for the same voters in June.
I think the poster has a little bit of a complex, i mean when has socialism ever been about nationalism and has the scottish tories not spent a year advocating the mutulisation of scottish water.
ReplyDeleteAs to the last point about labour and the bnp competing for the same votes, now there may be some truth to that but the difference between us and the tories is that we may be fighting the bnp as well as tories for votes but at no time are we activley trying to recruit fascists to be our candidates they tories can have them.
"i mean when has socialism ever been about nationalism."
ReplyDeleteTell that to: Sinn Fein, the ANC, Scottish Socialist Party, Solidarity, Zanu PF and dare I say, the German National Socialists.
I apologise from directly quoting from Wikipedia but, "historically, left-wing nationalism has had a significant influence in the political affairs of India, Italy, South Africa, and South American countries, among others. In South America, Simon Bolivar utilized left-wing nationalism to promote independence from colonial rule of Spain and Portugal. In India, the politics of Jawaharlal Nehru demonstrated a left-wing nationalist agenda. In Italy, authoritarian and radical left-wing nationalism breaking away from pacifist socialism by pressuring Italy to join World War I. One major left-wing nationalist at the time of the war was future Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, who eventually abandoned most of his left-wing influences upon rising to power and repressed leftists and promoted right-wing populism and nationalism."
Now here we have a comment that is attemeptint to link a mainstrem politcal party with the ultra extremists so let us answer the post.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all the ANC and congress in India were figthing oppression of a large majority population by a minority imposed on th nation by an empire. so there concept of nationalism was not about breaking apart the country.
Now Zanu PF is not and has never been a socialist political party it is however a communist party and here you fall into the trap of believing communism and socialism to be the same thing, they are not indeed it was a point that marx and engels themselves would argue over.
The lat one i will comment on is the use of the german national socialist, which as we all know were actually totally anti socialsist and fascist in nature, one of the first groups who the nazis targetted wetre the socialsit and the trade unionists to the point where it is estimated tah aover 2 million supports of parties and organisations of the general left were sent to the gas chambers.
To link the nazi's and socialism is like me saying that david cameron is nothing but an insult to the men and women who died fighting for a better german, a democratic germany and a germany free of war.
Its just a shame that the tories in britain at the time didnt listen more to the socialsit who told them what hte dangers of nationalism really were.
Ps as a university student i know the dangers of quoting wikipedia as it is a tool that should be used for research but not taken as fact.
I am proud of my country, and of my nation and i am proud of being a socialsist, can you as someone who is possibly of the right say the same.
The blog post implies, albeit implicitly, that the Tories and BNP are much the same. I do not regard the BNP as a 'right wing' party, which is always used to besmirch the Conservative Party.
ReplyDeleteThe BNP are, in my opinion, a left wing populist party.
The tories are left wing I have heard it all now, not even david cameron would try and spin that one.
ReplyDeleteNo, the article quotes a member of the BNP as saying that a Conservative told him that the Tories and BNP are fundamentally the same.
ReplyDelete"A" Conservative told him that they are fundamentally the same. This Conservative is an idiot who does not represent the views of the hundreds of thousands of members of the party he belongs to. Stop taking single people who don't represent the party line out of context, the Tories and BNP have nothing in common. Just because I say Labour is racist doesn't mean Labour is racist.
ReplyDeleteSo what you are saying is that one party members is not representative of the whole party.
ReplyDeleteWell i would accept that except that it was a tactic that margaret thatcher and her cronies used to great success in the 1980's by claiming that all of the labour party was like tony benn or ken livingston or bernie grant when in fact it was people who were working hard in communities fighting the worst excesses of a right wing fundamentalist government.
I eman at no time did anyone from th labour party pass a motion calling for the hanging of nelson mandela, shame the old young tories did.
I think what the author of the article was pointing out is that Nick Holt claims to have been asked to stand. Obviously we have no way of knowing whether it was just suggested to him by one of the many right wing nuts that infest the party or whether he was offered the opportunity by a party mechanic and it's entirely up to you to read into his comments in whatever way you want, just as it is the right of anyone else to interpret his comments as they think right. Clearly Mr. Holt was trying to give the impression that the member was ranking, however he could have been doing that to boost his own ego. Really, who cares, because with the lineup the Tories have right now, there's no real need to bother comparing them to other right wing parties.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with justifying pegging the actions of one party member on the whole party on the grounds of Thatcher having done it, because while the party hasn't changed much since, we're better than that.
Labour and the BNP may not be similiar ideologically, but an extract from a circular letter being sent by Labour candidates to voters in marginal seats in the West Midlands shows that you are certainly playing to people's fears on immigration:
ReplyDelete"People need to know that the rules for immigration are fair - that's why we are taking action to bring in an Australian-style Points-Based System [Labour criticised Michael Howard for proposing to do so in 2005]...Migrants will also be expected to support themselves, learn English, pay taxes and obey the law before they can become British citizens. On the other hand David Cameron's Tory London Mayor, Boris Johnson, is campaigning for an amnesty for illegal immigrants..."
How utterly pathetic.
And the tories have never played on peoples fears about foreigners.
ReplyDeleteI mean isn't the whole tory policy on europe based on the fact that they are not like us.
I for one am not going to be lectured on immigration by a supporter of a party that has systematically demonised immigrants, has through the pages of the tory supporting papers spread lies and a party that as has been shown is actvely trying to recruit racists.
Well done to the people who got this story out there