A chilling threat from the BNP

One of my favourite hobbies at the moment is being rather horrible to the Tory PPC for Harrow, Dr Rachel Joyce. Rachel writes a blog and being quite an honest and worthy type, she often says things which a compulsive wind up merchant of the left such as myself rather enjoys having a genial poke at. Now I've never met Rachel, although I suspect that if I did I'd probably quite like her as a person, even if I disagree with her politics. I suspect that when she reads my comments, she doesn't think "Oh marvellous, Rog T is winding me up again". What's all this got to do with the BNP you may ask? Well both myself and Rachel are in the political arena, in our own way. She's contesting a marginal seat and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that people may conclude from what I've said that she could lose a few votes. This could be the difference between her being a politician for the next few years or carrying on her old career. How does she deal with it? She responds to my comments in a polite manner. Do I lie awake at night worrying that the Tory party will come round and duff me up? Of course not. The Tory party, for all it's faults are a genuine democratic party. They win arguements by logic and reason.

Which brings us nicely to the BNP. I was looking at the blog run by the deputy Leader Simon Darby. Every so often Mr Darby's friendly mask slips and we get an insight into what the BNP are really like. Mr Darby posted this comment there yesterday about his opponents

Well if these people do want to step into the political arena they shouldn't complain too much if just occasionally they get a taste of their own medicine. They will learn, as others have in the past, that the BNP bites back.

I've been rather horrible over the years to such people as Andrew Dismore, Matthew Offord, Mike Freer, Brian Coleman and Peter Mandleson. The biggest threat any of them have ever issued is Brian Coleman at his Mayoral inauguration. He said he was going to "Take on the bloggers". Did I quake in my boots?

During the Mayoral elections last year, I made some disparaging comments on the Times website about the BNP. The Times was immediately innundated with comments about me and my business, giving the address and telephone number of my company. Although I wasn't personally worried about this little bit of "biting back", I was concerned that my staff may be threatened. In the event, quite the oposite happened. Two people bought guitars as a result and about 10 people I didn't know rang me up to warn me about what was going on. As a result of my conversations with the Times newspaper, they then gave me a blog.

There are two schools of thought about the BNP. Some people think we should ignore them and hope they go away. Some people think we should lift up the stone and shine a light on them, so people know what they are like and how they operate. I believe the latter. That's why I posted the Link to Mr Darby's rantings.