Chris Huhne: Why I will debate with Nick Griffin
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Nick Griffin of the [British National Party] has been gagging to appear on Question Time, because it is a test of his continental-style strategy of normalising and legitimising the extreme right. On the model of the Italian National Alliance, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National and Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, Griffin is attempting to yank his party into greater acceptability and live down its Mosleyite roots of confrontation and street violence. Since the BNP’s objectives have not changed – and they remain racist – that is a very good reason to be sceptical about the BBC’s decision to give him a platform. However, the issue is one of thresholds. The BBC has judged that two MEPs in a nation-wide election entitles the BNP to a voice on Question Time, just as previously a similar threshold elevated Ukip and the Greens. The BBC’s duty of impartiality is too important to have broadcasting executives decide that some opinions are acceptable and others are not, providing of course that those opinions are within the law (notably in avoiding incitement to racial hatred or violence). Therefore I do not myself criticise the BBC for making the invitation, even though I am acutely aware that extending such democratic rights to a party that does not respect them is paradoxical. [...]
The issue here is different to the old “no platform” policy. I would not appear at a meeting organised by the BNP, and nor would I extend an invitation to them. It is no part of the business of an elected liberal to drum up larger audiences for our most reviled opponents. They are welcome to their freedom of speech, but they can choose their own street corner and their own soapbox without my help. But the BBC has decided to invite Griffin, and I fear that Thursday night’s excitement would not have been called off just because the Liberal Democrats decided not to participate. Better surely to champion the great British values of moderation and tolerance rather than give bigotry the only say.
Article continues at link, with much to recommend it. I am not a member or supporter of the BNP, and I don’t expect them to fare well on the television show Question Time. I am a supporter of public debate. I believe people’s words and actions speak for themselves. I believe accurate judgments are best gained by access to source materials and not second-hand opinion. The contradiction of offering a debate platform to someone who would not do the same to you is an important one. It is exactly the reason the tradition of debate is superior to the ‘no platform’ policy. If you can articulate why it is superior, you will have advanced in your defense of free speech.
Having said that, a few comments on Huhne’s article. Huhne compares the BNP to the Italian National Alliance, Front National and Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands. But only the BNP has limitations on the race of who can join, so the comparison is not entirely accurate. Huhne writes about confrontation and street violence and incitement to racial hatred or violence. Are these all the same thing, or points along a continuum, or actions that always and only appear as a set? The heart of public debate is confrontation, and there’s no getting around some of that confrontation being awful. Incitement to racial hatred is illegal in England and in much of the world, but not in the USA. I do not support ‘hate speech’ laws for the same reason I do support public debate. I do not believe hate speech leads to violence (in the street or otherwise) any more than I believe love songs lead to love. Huhne talks about Mosley and Pin Fortuyn, who did know about street violence. Watch a film of Mosley in 1936 trying to march down Cable Street. Look at a photograph of Mosley in 1962 as he speaks to a crowd. Marching, speaking, violence – but who is committing the violence, and against whom, and for how many decades? Free speech has its contradictions, and Mosley had some practical lessons in these contradictions by being put in prison (along with his wife) for years without charge or trial. Pin Fortuyn had fewer experiences with street violence, but one was enough. Again, who is committing the violence and who is speaking their mind?
No matter your beliefs, at some point in its evolution it got in your head because you or someone else proposed it at a time when it was a heresy. All religious founders are by definition people who were heretics of their time. Science progresses by questioning what has come before, not by observation of what is. I sometimes feel frustrated (even confronted and incited) by other people, but the knowledge that belief is a market of ideas and not a battleground of ideas gives me calm. I am glad the BNP will appear on Question Time and that has nothing to do with my general dislike for the nationalists, racists or television.