Free speech, free range

So today some activists pelted BNP leader Nick Griffin with eggs as he held a press conference outside the Houses of Parliament and screamed that he was Nazi scum until he had to abandon his conference and was bundled into a car by his heavies.

This is satisfying on some levels but very, very disturbing on others. Here’s why.

Like it or not, Nick Griffin and his fellow BNP member Andrew Brons were democratically elected as MEPs last week. This doesn’t mean that Britain is becoming a nation of fascists, it simply means that enough racists turned up to vote in comparison with the rest of us lazy whingers to give the BNP two seats.

Harassing politicians like Griffin and Brons won’t silence them, and it’ll make it easy for them to claim – rightfully – that they are being persecuted. The egg-hurling, abuse-hurling activists, who have been reported to be members of Unite Against Fascism and include UAF’s national secretary Weyman Bennett, have the best of intentions at heart. Few people doubt that Griffin’s opinions are vile and that he’s a far nastier person than he presents to the mainstream media.

But what they’re actually doing is restricting the BNP’s freedom of speech, when actually if he’s allowed to speak for long enough he will spout all the nasty shit that’s needed to totally alienate the vast majority of voters.

The British public is not stupid, and it’s not racist either. The presence of horrible voices like Griffin’s in political debate could serve a valuable purpose, motivating a painfully apathetic electorate to get more involved and actually vote. To assume that if people hear what Griffin has to say they’ll all go out and vote BNP is pretty patronising.

The bottom line is that freedom of speech means hearing things you disagree with, as well as things you like hearing, and it’s a fundamental right. This is a good thing, but nobody said it would be easy. And egging Griffin off the platform when we should be asking awkward questions about Brons’ Nazi sympathies, his own very dodgy past, and what exactly their policies are, is going to achieve nothing.

I hope the egg was free-range, at least.