On Monday the 16th January 2006, an event will take place in the UK that should be outraging every native Briton and alerting everyone who values free speech anywhere in the Western World.
On that morning Nick Griffin and Mark Collett will appear in Leeds Crown Court charged with offences under the Race Relations Act, offences that carry seven year prison sentences.
Griffin is the leader of the small and much-persecuted British National Party and Collett is a publicist for that Party. Both are in Court as a result of speeches they made to their Party members in Yorkshire in 2003 and 2004, and as far as can be ascertained, their crime was to offer the opinion that Islamification of the UK was taking place and that this was dangerous for the British people. I use the term “ascertained” because in modern Britain there are now restrictions on being explicit about alleged offences in this kind of case. Whether, when the case begins, we will know the detail of what the two defendants said, remains to be seen, but do not expect the Media’s reporters to be explicit at any time, since they would prefer that these two go to prison on the basis of a general denunciation. My belief is that the Media will want the imprisonment to be well publicized but not the detail of the charges, lest ordinary Britons might ask why such speech is now illegal.
First, let me make the point that the British Media (which always justifies its existence on the basis that it defends free speech) has not exactly wasted ink on the preliminary legal hearings and there have been no editorials on the issue of free speech which is surely central to this case. Indeed, few UK citizens will be aware of this trial, thanks to the absence of Media coverage.
However, it would be a mistake to assume from this that the Media is not interested in the proceedings, since the case is based on secret filming carried out by BBC “investigators” who infiltrated BNP meetings. This betrays how interested the BBC is in the BNP, even though it avoids mentioning the Party in news bulletins. The resulting film was subsequently passed on to the Director of Public Prosecutions by the BBC with the hope that there was material for a prosecution. We thus have a Media-inspired political trial in which a taxpayer-funded BBC infiltrates a private meeting and records political speech with the intention of setting in motion a prosecution which will curb free speech.
Previous Race Relations Act cases that have resulted in convictions for similar political speech have revealed that under the new Race-Relations legislation truth is not a defense and opinions when voiced may be illegal. For anyone who reached adulthood in the UK more than 30 years ago, this should be a shocking revelation, since it was generally assumed that free speech was a Britons’ birthright. It is not difficult to foresee that just down the road it will be illegal for UK citizens to express criticism of same-sex marriage, sodomy, homosexual fostering and adoption and much else. Many opinions deemed offensive to some particular group or individual will be silenced. The attractive aspect of this legislation for the ruling class and its judicial agents is that it can be employed so selectively and not all groups will be entitled to feel sensitive. Traditional Christians, patriotic Britons and those who wish to defend traditional British values are unlikely to be included in the new protection of diversity.
It may transpire that the BNP “2” made some very insensitive and sweeping generalizations about Muslims and immigrants, but short of advocating violence, their free speech and opinions need resolute defending by all of us.
This website disagrees with much BNP policy, but we will be making a contribution to their legal defense fund (for details see their website) and we would be outside that Leeds courtroom on Monday 16th January to protest if it were physically possible.
It may be that the prosecution case will collapse or that jurors will find the defendants “not guilty”, but no one should be optimistic about the independence or fairness of the UK judicial system in 2006. Things are not what they once were. In any case, police questioning, police “warnings”, arrests, trials and confiscations of printed material are all now frequently employed against native Britons and are aimed at intimidation as well as punishment.
Were it not for the Internet the trial of the BNP “2” would take place as silently as any Soviet trial of the 1950’s. The explanation for this media blackout is that the Media Class is now in a position, not only to put its enemies in court and perhaps in prison, but to do so in relative secrecy. Tony Blair should not under-estimate the BBC and its power. It increasingly has him in its sights too. No politician is indispensable to the Media Class and having politicized the police and judiciary and legislated an end to free speech, Blair’s usefulness may now be exhausted.