BNP teachers: it’s right not to ban them
Posted on Friday 12 March, 2010
Filed Under Civil Liberties, Far right
POLICE officers and prison workers are banned from becoming members of the British National Party. But teachers, the government has confirmed today, are not. Whatever happened to logical consistency here, I haven’t a clue. But on balance, I reckon Maurice Smith has made the right call.
Unsurprisingly, the decision has upset some on the left, who argue that the profession should be added to the list of jobs covered by what amounts to a slowly-expanding backdoor Berufsverbot. I would counter that support for a softly-softly version of the German system, which excludes members of outfits deemed extremist by the state from public sector employment, is essentially misconceived.
Let’s look at some of the considerations here. Is such legislation somehow OK if it applies to sensitive positions only, keeping the fash out of the classrooms and the cop shops while still allowing them to Sieg Heil to their heart’s content while emptying our wheelie bins?
Or perhaps all this is no skin off our nose if such restrictions apply to the far right alone, while exempting Trot social workers and local government officers?
The most obvious objection is a basic point of civil liberties. If a political party is legal, then a liberal democracy has no business restricting the employment prospects open to its adherents.
Supporters of a ban ask how a child facing racism in the playground could possibly turn to a BNP teacher for help. But this is simply a microcosm of what is set to become a society-wide issue.
If you were an Asian family facing constant racist abuse from a gang of sink estate thugs, would you turn to a BNP councillor for help? Would you lobby your friendly fascist London Assembly member or MEP for assistance with your plans to build an Afro-Caribbean community centre or a new mosque?
These difficulties will be exacerbated when the BNP secures Westminster representation, as it soon undoubtedly will. Now that the far right has an electoral base numbering hundreds of thousands of voters, these are genuine problems than cannot be ignored by the tokenistic targeting of individual supporters.
Any ban would amount to bespoke legislation designed to tackle a problem of minor proportions. The list of BNP members published on the internet last year contained the names of just 15 teachers.
If the object is to stamp out racism in the classroom – and that is entirely laudable – then it has to be recognised that racist sentiment is not the sole province of the BNP. Is it admissible for an Islamist believer in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to teach Jewish children, for instance? Why not legislate against that eventuality, too?
What about UKIP teachers? What about the Conservative Party’s grassroots golf club bigot tendency? And yes, I have even come across unpleasantly racist people in the Labour Party.
Moreover, any ban based on organisational affiliation would be almost impossible effectively to police. Who decides which parties and factions are blacklisted? Fringe political groupings come and go, and cliques of Hitler worshippers form and disband with the same regularity as their analogues on the far left.
How will the rules deal with a fascist teacher who isn’t in the BNP and signs up with some newly-formed whackjob six member neo-Nazi outfit that nobody has ever heard of instead? What about cases where people sidestep the regulations by not taking out a party card, but otherwise think and act just as a BNP member would?
But the biggest danger of all is that the BNP revels in portraying itself as the outsiders that the Establishment is desperate to silence because it ‘tells the truth’. Feeding that narrative is a sure way to enhance the racist right’s popular support.
In short, discipline racist teachers for racist words or deeds; disciplining them for their politics alone would be a serious mistake.
<<Go back
Comments
23 Responses to “BNP teachers: it’s right not to ban them”
Leave a Reply
Of course, it’s perfectly fine for the likes of Blair and the Millipede to send their children to schools where teachers with any aspirations to promotion are obliged to pretend to believe the following:
“The world, every living thing, and the entire universe was created by an invisible Deity who later impregnated a virgin, Mary, who bore a son, Jesus, who was simultaneously both his own father and an invisible spirit. We have immortal souls and will live forever in Heaven if we are good and love Jesus, truly repenting our Original Sin, which came about because a talking reptile persuaded a gullible woman to eat fruit from a magic tree.”
This is, of course, a very brief synopsis of what Believing Christians are meant to claim they believe; it omits the Flood, Noah’s daughters getting their drunken father sexually aroused and committing incest with him, Jonah’s whale, a talking ass and much more.
Surprising though it might seem, BNP members are not required to believe anything which is anything like so nutty.
Muslim teachers, assuming that they are True Believers and not slipshod pick-’n-mix Muslims, are obliged to believe that all the Kuffar will go to Hell for all Eternity.
It is written and quite clearly stated Hell is a very disagreeable place with only pus and boiling water on the drinks menu. Ask any Imam.
For those who enjoy the visual arts, Robert Crumb’s version of GENESIS is just the text that ought to be used in Christian schools:
http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/167
Some Muslim schools in Britain would be delighted to employ a Francophone Imam like Imam Hayiti:
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/1569/10/
I agree- if their being members of the BNP affects their ability to do their job in a satisfactory way, then they should go through the same channels as a teacher not doing their job satisfactorily for any other reason.
Like that copper who lost his job for being a BNP member- maybe I’m naive, but if his being a member of the BNP had impacted his job wouldn’t it have been detected during his years of service?
We’ve a tendency to demonise people who associate with the far-right, to completely cut them off as if they aren’t people anymore. I think that does more harm than good to everyone involved.
I don’t think anyone, and that includes teachers, should be sacked on the basis of their political beliefs – even if they are BNP members. This whole episode sounds like the sort of nonsense that the ‘Equality’ Commission would support, in order to justify the £65 million a year,they cost to run. As a social democrat, I wouldn’t be too pleased with the possibility that my kid’s teacher might be a Marxist. However, I wouldn’t wish them to lose their jobs over that fact.
“As a social democrat, I wouldn’t be too pleased with the possibility that my kid’s teacher might be a Marxist.”
What really?
The report is worth reading in full. You can find it at:-
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/mauricesmithreview/index.shtml
@ Former Neo Liberal. Absolutely. I don’t go a bundle on either fascists or marxists, and I loathe the Conservatives. I’m a Labour supporting Roman Catholic – and that determines the kids education.
“I’m a Labour supporting Roman Catholic – and that determines the kids education”
So not much of a social democrat then.
“I don’t go a bundle on either fascists or marxists”
Equating Marxism and Fascism, what a prick.
@ former neo liberal (whatever that means ). First of all, sticks and stones. I am quite clear where I stand; if you don’t like it, tough. The ideologies of Fascism, and specifically,Stalinism, were responsable for untold misery and death in the 20th Century. Where was the successful ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’? No where.
Fnl. I am a pagan Labour supporter. Sad that you are part of the RC fascist movement. All that buggery against young children must sicken you. But I suppose forgiveness is the get out clause for any criminal organisation.
Pat Harrington, long time neo-fascist scumbag is posting here, wow.
Self-evidently neofascist members of the BNP are a danger to children and the educational system which should treat all children is equal, irrespective of their ethnicity and skin colour.
If someone chooses to join a neofascist grouping such as the BNP, which has links to the EDL, and various neofascist bombers, then they are be on the pale, they should receive a warning, be told that neofascism is incompatible with a modern education system and if they continue then they should suffer the consequences.
There’s no use pandering to fascists, they will only take advantage of your weaknesses and exploit them.
There should be zero tolerance towards neofascism and the BNP.
@KevB: It’s understandable to be against Stalinism- most people who consider themselves Marxists nowadays would agree with you.
I don’t think there was ever anything substantially Marxist about Lenin and his lineage- with their professional revolutionaries and penchant for terror they seem more like a continuation of the Nechayevan Russian Nihilist movement with a Marxist brand, and Marx had a very low opinion of the Nihilist movement’s authoritarian “barracks communism”.
The character of the Leninist far-left today seems very Nihilist-movement, especially the sectarianism!
I see Marxism in the First International and Jean Jaures- international coordination of workers’ organizations and trade unions.
“Noah’s daughters getting their drunken father sexually aroused and committing incest with him”
That was Lott…
No, Simon!
Back to Sunday School with you!
Lot turned his face against the saucy and sinful gay hanky-panky goings-on in the Cities of the Plain and left.
Despite being explicitly warned, Lot’s wife was unable to resist the temptation to look back and watch the Cities of the Plain being annihilated by the fire and brimstone hurled down by Jehovah and was turned into a Pillar of Salt.
If one believes the local tour guides, her pillar may be seen to this day.
Not exactly about the BNP but here is Frank Foeld being praised:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257613/The-politician-guts-speak-immigration-Frank-Field-reveals-candid-opinion-future-Britain.html
And some here may not be up to date on Alibhai-Brown’s Adventures …
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2010/03/13/yeah-right-yasmin/
Simon was right:
http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title=Robert_Crumb&printable=yes
Lot and NOT Noah!
Mea culpa
The problem with banning people from certain professions because of their political views (not *acts*) is where does it stop?
Dave gives some good reasons relating to the far-right, but they are wider issues about racist groups – which extend to Islamism, a variety of ultra-nationalist bodies (eg,. the Turkish Grey Wolves), some form of indigeneous far-right nationalists in Wales and Scotland, weird religous sects (Scientology for exampel), 9/11 Troofers, and so on.
Anti-democratic and often racist groups there are plenty. As well as individuals with these opinions who are not members of anything.
I would have thought this is pretty obvious. But apparently some people are working themselves up into a froth about the BNP – which to my knowledge is no more racist than say, the Jamaat-I-Islami which some former leftists think is a strategic ‘anti-imperialist’ ally. The BNP has also killed rather fewer people than the Jamaat.
It seems that one reason to huff and puff about the BNP is to avoid really confronting racism – as it forms the basis of the anti-foreign migrant worker campaigns of the press.
And the Conservative Party:
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/ben-gummer-plays-the-race-card/
Andrew Coates refers to the Grey Wolves, allegedly linked to at least one political murder in Germany.
One yarn, truthful or not, is that supporters of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves in Belgium, Holland and Germany are urged to join Leftist parties in their host ountries, not on the grounds of ideological affinity, but on the far simpler grounds that immigrants are welcomed into such parties with few, if any questions, asked and are, for that matter, urged to stand for local elected office.
Did the I.F.E. steal the playbook from them?
The problem is much simpler and political:
how do you stop the normalisation of the BNP and British neofascism
That is the question.
Andrew Coates mentioned the Grey Wolves:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Wolves#Grey_Wolves_outside_of_Turkey
Comrades,
Here is a copy of my article on the subject:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1003849
wcg,
Edward Ford