Free speech and the shaven-headed mob


Watching Nick Griffin chirruping smugly about free speech on the news last night, I couldn’t suppress a sickly smile.

Once again, the age-old arguments about free speech resurface. Just what does our incontrovertible right to freedom of expression entitle us to? Is it OK to suggest that Muslim paedophiles are targeting ‘British’ children? Of course not. Is it legal? According to a jury of Griffin’s peers, yes.

As hateful as the BNP are, I cannot help feeling that the right verdict was delivered. The reason that these quasi-Nazis are such a minority faction is precisely because of their right to free speech. Many Britons are sceptical about asylum seekers, but the majority balk at the suggestion that they are ‘cockroaches’, as Griffin’s sidekick Mark Collett was revealed to have said.

As long as bigots like these are allowed to express their views in a public forum, they will never succeed in this country. The average British voter is repulsed by the voracity of it all. We like our politicians to be drab utilitarians or lovable rogues. The merest suggestion of radicalism results in instant marginalisation.

Take a look at Griffin’s mob. Standing at the front are he and Collett, the acceptable faces of the BNP. Both boast a full head of hair. Neither of them sports a (visible) swastika tattoo.

Now let the eye sweep over the assortment of minders and minions gathered behind them. A more petrifying assortment of bouncers, boxers and bulldog-faced bruisers is rarely seen. This is the true face of the party and thanks to free speech, the one which anyone with half a brain recognises as the true image of the party.

Constrain the BNP’s right to say what they like and you drive the extremists underground. If the skinheads are denied their soapbox, it will surely lead to an explosion of Nick Griffins. Sharp-suited, mild-mannered, innocuous-looking men, who apparently present no political danger.

This is a worst-case scenario. The right to free speech means we can keep people like Griffin where we can see them: at the head of a group of thugs. Deny that right and you force the racists to hide their true persona.

And the only thing more dangerous than religious hatred is religious hatred with a palatable disguise.