The BNP in the East Midlands has achieved 106,319 votes in the European elections and came fifth, so the Rev Robert West – who believes that the “mixing of races” is a sin against God due to divinely-ordained “physical, intellectual and character” differences – will not be going to Europe as an MEP. The defeat was not due to the Christian Party, which had preposterously declared itself to be the only party able to win against the BNP – they got a very un-macho 17,907 votes in the region, and appear to be cruising to irrelevance across the country.
Mainline churches made a clear stand against the BNP, with the result that the Church of England was targeted aggressively by the party – deputy leader Simon Darby mocked the Ugandan-born Archbishop of York as an “ambitious African”, and Anglican worshippers in Manchester were obliged to endure BNP activists who
gathered outside the cathedral on Sunday with loudhailers, playing tunes like ‘Rule Britannia’ and handing out leaflets that said: ‘Judas Archbishops Betray Ordinary People’…
West himself and some minions also showed up at St Faith’s Church in Gaywood, in a stunt to provide publicity for their view that
“The Holy Spirit must move within the congregation, I did not feel any of that in church.”
Meanwhile, one typically-vulgar BNP blog expressed its contempt for the national church with less pneumatological niceity, referring to
…the Church of England as a ‘vile perverts organisation’ and…to C of E Bishops as ‘pompous, self-righteous windbags … renowned for interfering with young boys’.
The actions of a couple of other churches have sadly been less impressive than the Church of England’s position: prior to the election, West was invited into the pulpit of a historic village chapel affiliated with the Fellowship of Independent Churches, but beyond a private assurance to a Messianic Jew that they were opposed to West’s views the FIEC declined to make any public statement. The Apostolic Church, which ordained Rev West in the 1970s, could also have done more to undermine West’s credibility: the denomination did repudiate any link to West a couple of years ago in an email to a blogger which I fortunately reposted (the original blog has gone) and I was able to mention this when the BBC asked me for a soundbite, but again no public statement was forthcoming – even after West displayed his ordination certificate on the BBC Politics Show.
UPDATE: The BNP won two seats elsewhere in the country: these went to party leader Nick Griffin, and to a former lecturer named Andrew Brons. Griffin gave a typically bombastic victory speech, while Brons (who, as Vulgar Marxism notes, has a remarkable physical resemblance to Davros from Dr. Who) decided to bore his audience with a boastful yet tedious exposition of his educational background and electoral knowledge. Griffin also made a point of wearing a cross on his lapel:
Both men have disreputable far-right and racist pasts; Griffin’s is well-known, and more about Brons can seen here. Brons has a background in Colin Jordan’s anti-Jewish “National Socialist Movement”, and in 1984 he “was convicted of behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace following his arrest in Leeds while selling papers in a shopping centre.” Although doubtless someone might suggest that such old political antics ought not to be raked up, I hope most people will agree that they are significant and belong in the public domain.
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