(updated)
MediaWatchWatch draws attention to the latest protest by the “Christian Council of Britain” – a front-group of the far-right British National Party formed to capitalise on the Jerry Springer Opera controversy. The Leicester Mercury reports:
People for and against Jerry Springer: The Opera staged demonstrations to mark the musical’s arrival in Leicester.
…Wayne McDermott, 31, a Christian from Coalville, carried a placard stating “Defend Christian Values”. He said: “I have read reports about the musical and it is blasphemous. I wanted to come and show my opposition. We are very concerned that this kind of thing is allowed to be shown.”
Worryingly, the Leicester Mercury fails to mention that the banners were printed by the Christian Council of Britain (see the photos on MWW), and that Wayne McDermott is a BNP activist (as a simple Google search demonstrates).
MediaWatchWatch, however, links to Lancaster Unite Against Fascism for further details:
The Christian Council of Britain, replete with one or two hundred rabid members of the BNP (who also happen to be Christians), was set up by the BNP as a so-called balance to the Muslim Council of Britain. They claim to represent the Christians of Britain, which of course, they don’t. They actually represent a racist though supposedly Christian offshoot of the BNP formed solely so that the party could almost-legitimately jump on the back of the anti-‘Jerry Springer – The Opera’ campaign. The real Christian group who actually are organising the campaign have stated clearly that the BNP is unwelcome.
MWW has been noting this trend since a couple of months ago, when members of the BNP in Plymouth first tried to muscle-in on anti-Springer protests being led by Stephen Green of Christian Voice.
But the Christian Council of Britain remains somewhat mysterious. There is no website, and the only individual explictly associated with it is a certain Reverend Robert West. Last month the BNP placed online a video of a speech by West (as noted by a commentator at Pickled Politics), who tells us that a multiracial society is
…a transgression of God’s will…Adam and his descendants were commanded by God to fill the earth, not to come to one part of it, namely England. The refusal of Adam’s surviving descendants through Noah to spread out led to God’s judgement at Babel, and his confusing of the tongues…The blossoming of what I call the proto-race…into many nations was to be a manifestation of God’s glory, like light passing through a prism.
The Reverend is all in favour of diversity, as long as it is a distinct diversity of God-ordained separate nations and races.
West (see pic below) is an obscure figure. He is not a Church of England clergyman; one source (see my entry here) states that he is an elder with the “Apostolic Church”. West commended two newspapers to his BNP audience: the British Church Newspaper and the English Churchman. Both are fundamentalist Protestant papers from Northern Ireland, although West’s accent places him as from the south of England.
UPDATE (18 March): See today’s entry for more on West, including a better photo.
UPDATE 2 (29 March): More today.
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