hgblue said:
I would hazard a guess that there are racist individuals in every political party. Does that make those parties racist also?
Perhaps there are those individuals in other parties , we don't actually know.
Why don't we know ? Because they haven't naively opened their mouths and espoused racist views leaving voters with the impression of a racist party, or a party with racists in it who feel comfortable expressing their views.
If politically motivated racism was part of my philosophy , I don't think that I would feel that the Labour , conservative or Libdem parties would be my natural home , but if I made it so , then the moment I expressed those views , I would expect to be expelled from any of those organisations.
I assume the reason that UKIP prohibit former BNP members from joining them is because they fear being associated with racists and their views , but thanks to their existing members , the genie is already out of the bottle on that one and it can't be put back in.
Of course , Ukip can't stop odious people like griffin from expressing his support for them , but as I said previously , people don't read manifestos or watch political broadcasts ,so they are left with the sight of an arch-racist endorsing a certain party - nobody really knows what his policies are on health and education etc. are, or if agreement with Ukip on those particular aspects are his motivation - they only see him as a racist siding with a certain political grouping.
I also said before that if you took a straw poll on any high street in Britain and asked specifically which of the major parties ( I'll include Ukip under that heading for obvious reasons ) was perceived as the most racist , then Ukip would be runaway winners , they can argue till they're blue in the face that they aren't , but public opinion is very difficult to shift.
In terms of public perception , and that is the essence of this debate, it is a PR disaster, and these days sadly, PR is as important as policies.