From Europe News:
Why the British Freedom Party was Founded
British Freedom 23 January 2012
By George Whale and Michael Wood
The following article was first published in spring last year. We re-publish it now for the benefit of new members and supporters interested to know about the party’s origins. Why the British Freedom Party was Founded
By George Whale and Michael Wood
In Britain, the chasm between mainstream political opinion on the one side, and public opinion on the other, now gapes so wide that not even the staunchest party supporters can any longer skirt around it. Tim Montgomerie, editor of the ConservativeHome website, best summed up the situation in a BBC radio interview a while back:
I think there are a huge number of issues now where the main political parties in Parliament all think the same – Europe, the war in Afghanistan, prisons, climate change – there’s a whole range of issues where the public may have different views from the MPs but no mainstream party represents them.
The roots of the liberal consensus in Parliament and public estrangement from politics may be deep and tangled, but perhaps part of the problem is the remoteness of today’s professional politicians from normal life. Addressing the specific issue of immigration, newspaper columnist Peter Hitchens – old-fashioned Tory and fierce critic of the party’s leftward lurch under David Cameron – recently commented:
… the modernised Tory Party, just like its New Labour twin, actively favours large-scale migration. Rich young careerists in pleasant parts of London – who form the core of all our establishment parties – couldn’t function without the cheap servants and cheap restaurants that immigration brings.
Not for them the other side of immigration – the transformation of familiar neighbourhoods into foreign territory. Not for them the schools where many pupils cannot speak English, and the overloaded public services. Not for them the mosque and the madrassa where the church and the pub used to be.
Searchlight report
A report published 28 February 2011 by the Searchlight Education Trust confirms the existence of a substantial – hitherto all but invisible – section of the British electorate comprising people who are worried about the nation’s continuing transformation, but find themselves politically disenfranchised, stranded between the mainstream parties and those at the nationalist fringe.
Fear & Hope described a survey carried out by polling organisation Populus, who asked 5,054 people 91 questions on faith, ethnicity and national identity. Billed as "the most systematic study of contemporary attitudes to race, identity, nationhood and extremism available in England”, it found that:
• the English are sceptical of multiculturalism and deeply resentful of mass immigration
• they fear extremist Islam
• Black and Asian groups share these concerns
• negativity about immigration is linked to economic pessimism
• the British National Party (BNP) "is in decline”
• most people are traditional rather than "progressive”
• the vast majority reject political violence
• there is "popular support for a non-violent and non-racist” nationalist political party.
The report speaks of "an assertive nationalism”, of "a new politics built around… identity, culture and nationhood which transcends both an older class politics and even more recent debates around demographics and immigration”.
The British Freedom Party
It was in response to the need for a nationalism untainted by racialism and street violence that British Freedom was founded in November 2010.
The party takes inspiration from popular freedom parties in Austria, Switzerland, Italy and elsewhere, but especially Geert Wilders’ PVV in the Netherlands, which with 24 MPs is poised to turn back the tide of enforced immigration, to confront Islamic militancy, and to challenge the political elites who seem intent on that nation’s destruction.
Like its European counterparts, British Freedom espouses cultural nationalism, as opposed to ethnic nationalism. We believe that national identity derives primarily from the integration of individuals and communities into an established culture, their acceptance of and allegiance to the rich set of customs, values, political procedures, laws and understandings handed down by tradition.
We know that cultural and social integration is achievable, because so many have already achieved it. Integrated immigrant communities provide the strongest evidence of the essentially cultural character of Britishness. Because for every Muslim bomb-maker or honour killer living in Britain, countless numbers of his co-religionists are working hard, learning our language and history, paying taxes, obeying the law, raising families and doing their best to fit in. (...)
Posted January 23rd, 2012 by pk
Why the British Freedom Party was Founded
British Freedom 23 January 2012
By George Whale and Michael Wood
The following article was first published in spring last year. We re-publish it now for the benefit of new members and supporters interested to know about the party’s origins. Why the British Freedom Party was Founded
By George Whale and Michael Wood
In Britain, the chasm between mainstream political opinion on the one side, and public opinion on the other, now gapes so wide that not even the staunchest party supporters can any longer skirt around it. Tim Montgomerie, editor of the ConservativeHome website, best summed up the situation in a BBC radio interview a while back:
I think there are a huge number of issues now where the main political parties in Parliament all think the same – Europe, the war in Afghanistan, prisons, climate change – there’s a whole range of issues where the public may have different views from the MPs but no mainstream party represents them.
The roots of the liberal consensus in Parliament and public estrangement from politics may be deep and tangled, but perhaps part of the problem is the remoteness of today’s professional politicians from normal life. Addressing the specific issue of immigration, newspaper columnist Peter Hitchens – old-fashioned Tory and fierce critic of the party’s leftward lurch under David Cameron – recently commented:
… the modernised Tory Party, just like its New Labour twin, actively favours large-scale migration. Rich young careerists in pleasant parts of London – who form the core of all our establishment parties – couldn’t function without the cheap servants and cheap restaurants that immigration brings.
Not for them the other side of immigration – the transformation of familiar neighbourhoods into foreign territory. Not for them the schools where many pupils cannot speak English, and the overloaded public services. Not for them the mosque and the madrassa where the church and the pub used to be.
Searchlight report
A report published 28 February 2011 by the Searchlight Education Trust confirms the existence of a substantial – hitherto all but invisible – section of the British electorate comprising people who are worried about the nation’s continuing transformation, but find themselves politically disenfranchised, stranded between the mainstream parties and those at the nationalist fringe.
Fear & Hope described a survey carried out by polling organisation Populus, who asked 5,054 people 91 questions on faith, ethnicity and national identity. Billed as "the most systematic study of contemporary attitudes to race, identity, nationhood and extremism available in England”, it found that:
• the English are sceptical of multiculturalism and deeply resentful of mass immigration
• they fear extremist Islam
• Black and Asian groups share these concerns
• negativity about immigration is linked to economic pessimism
• the British National Party (BNP) "is in decline”
• most people are traditional rather than "progressive”
• the vast majority reject political violence
• there is "popular support for a non-violent and non-racist” nationalist political party.
The report speaks of "an assertive nationalism”, of "a new politics built around… identity, culture and nationhood which transcends both an older class politics and even more recent debates around demographics and immigration”.
The British Freedom Party
It was in response to the need for a nationalism untainted by racialism and street violence that British Freedom was founded in November 2010.
The party takes inspiration from popular freedom parties in Austria, Switzerland, Italy and elsewhere, but especially Geert Wilders’ PVV in the Netherlands, which with 24 MPs is poised to turn back the tide of enforced immigration, to confront Islamic militancy, and to challenge the political elites who seem intent on that nation’s destruction.
Like its European counterparts, British Freedom espouses cultural nationalism, as opposed to ethnic nationalism. We believe that national identity derives primarily from the integration of individuals and communities into an established culture, their acceptance of and allegiance to the rich set of customs, values, political procedures, laws and understandings handed down by tradition.
We know that cultural and social integration is achievable, because so many have already achieved it. Integrated immigrant communities provide the strongest evidence of the essentially cultural character of Britishness. Because for every Muslim bomb-maker or honour killer living in Britain, countless numbers of his co-religionists are working hard, learning our language and history, paying taxes, obeying the law, raising families and doing their best to fit in. (...)
Posted January 23rd, 2012 by pk
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