Not yet at least. It may seem like racist non-news, but I don't think it is, I think it raises some points that should be addressed. Give me an hour or two, wait until tommorow before you 'hide' it please.

I know this isn't a forum but the same points could have been raised and alloed to stand if they had been backed up with recent reports. The BNP are likely to get a candidate in my country for the first time this election and I'd like the chance to argue against that. If you delete this thread tonight, I'm going to make the same points myself as Devils Advocate tommorow. The negative side of british immigration policy should be addressed through argument and fact.

Give me an hour or two.

looks like some sort of wierdo undercover racist shit..braindead crap anyway thats for sure

Clairwil,

I had an apprentice once who was ostracised by the other apprentices for repeating some BNP leaflet he'd picked up at a football match. He was a nice lad but he was well on his way to the BNP simply as he had no rebuttal. He was easily talked out of it. You on the other hand have shown disdain for the BNP and put forward a far more mature argument than my apprentice, but you can see from Tim's reaction your comments will not be appreciated around here. Now I'm always being accused of being 'Politically Correct' around here, so this post will show how I'm far from it. In fact I'm probably going to get more hassle from this post than you will from yours, so I hope you at least take the time to respond to me the way I have to you. I am only going to talk to you on this thread however long it is allowed to stand (this isn't a forum as they keep reminding us, it is meant for news).

>From Little Britain, to newspaper opinion columns. The message is clear:
So don't read that crap, read here or other sensible sources of info. I know the mainstream is polluted, so ignore it.

>the white working classes are fat, lazy, thick morons and as such they can be spoken of in ways that would be unthinkable if applied to blacks or Asians.

True, but the blacks and Asians are the minority and they get abuse you don't see - you only see the abuse that is directed towards you. That is the upper classes shitting on you. It doesn't mean you should shit on someone else.

>The white working classes are given no credit for doing work that is dirty, tiring , often demeaning and almost always poorly paid, yet are blamed for all society’s ills.

The first wave of mass immigration in the 50's was at a time of full employment to fill crappy jobs people here wouldn't do. Even now i my my town which is almost totally white, the few balck people I see are sweeping floors in the shopping mall.

>To add insult to injury we are now told that immigrants do all that work better, unlike the ‘bumptious’ natives who fail to show gratitude for their minimum wage pittance.

No, most immigrants who are praised for their hard work are white, skinny, well-educated Eastern Europeans, and all immigrants work hard here as they earn much more than they would at home doing more professional jobs. Which is the same as a 'brain-drain' - those countries have to import even cheaper workers from other countries. If you got a job in the US paying 4 or a 100 times your wage you'd work hard and bite your lip too. I've worked abroad and been treated as a second class citizen, but I didn't complain as the pay was better than in the UK at the time

Yeah, here the minimum wage is shit, abroad it is better than doctors can earn in some countries. They live in shit conditions here and can't afford anything, live in crowed accomodation and send their cash home doing work they are over-qualified for. This trend won't stop until we unionise with the incomers and jointly refuse to work for crap wages, or until the global wage equalises - and until then expect more grief. You didn't think Globalisation was aimed at enriching you did you ? It is for making the rich even richer.

>The Dept for Work and Pensions website for ‘benefit thieves‘ for example provides information in a number of languages to help ensure no-one is missing out on their entitlement. Yet the only minority language provision on the section dealing with benefit fraud is Welsh. I am not suggesting for a moment that this is anything more than an oversight but why is it only important to be inclusive when handing out benefits?

Good point.

>Is benefit fraud exclusively committed by fluent English and Welsh speakers?

Most of the Hebrides could use a section in their language, but they are so tight-knit a community that they don't normally grass each other up. So why bother ? Same goes with all self-reliant communities. On the 'wee-free' protestant isles muslims fit in especially well - no alcohol, no work on the Sabbath, no sex before marriage - and they are whiter than white given the lack of sun up there.

>It’s fine with me that government departments are making efforts to make minorities feel included, it would be lovely if they would consider the feelings of the white majority while they did so.

You aren't dealing with government departments - you are dealing with the ruling elites, the super-rich, the bosses bosses, Blairs bosses. Blair is so much i debt on his 5 properties - you do't think his current salary could pay for that lifestyle did you ? Our political elite are just employees of the super-rich.

>The colour bias to be found in the attitudes of the liberal snob is breathtaking. Writer Michael Collins recalls attending a media party and hearing one white middle class woman complain that the working class area she’d moved to was ‘very white’.

I'm more working class / peasant class and whiter than you, than anyone is. I love visiting my sister in London. I get to taste all these exotic foods I have never heard of straight from the market. I get to talk to people from places I've never be able to afford to travel to about what their country is like. As a single male I loved living in Amsterdam - they have had immigration, maybe too much for such a small, overcrowed country, but you walk down the street and t's like a 'Miss World' cometition passing by. You get the huge blonde Dutch girls, the petite Vietnamese and Indonesians , the gorgeous Caribbeans and the dusky North Africans. Then I came back to Scotland and all you see is 11 year olds dressed up as 16 year olds, 16 year olds pushing prams , and women my age with , quite frankly, one too many sauasge rolls in them. All the same colour, all the same lack of ambition, all the same prospects. I've seen four pretty women in my town in the past six months who weren't too young for me. One of them was Polish, one of them was Russian, one of them was married and the last one was related to me.

>If you doubt the influence these attitudes have, take a look at these quotes from members of the public commenting on the topic of asylum and immigration on this BBC website.

You are quite right, those were upper/middle-class privileged shits who were commenting. The upper classes do appreciate a subservient servant. And these foriegners are so impoverished and underpaid at home so take shit noone should have to take. It just increases the Rich-Poor divide locally and globally. So, if yo want a few solutions:
1) Increase living prospects in their own countries so fewer want to come here - which means consuming less here.
2) Support those who do come here to politicise and claim the rights they are due so that you aren't undercut
3) Uncontrolled and sudden mass immigration just causes ethnic and class tension - slow it down to sustainable levels
4) Don't pick nd choose according to skills, oly circumstances, don't creat brain-drains abroad or that just causes more migratio
5) Don't create refugees by allowing our rich to launch resource wars twhich displace people.

That is no excuse to attack refugees and asylum seekers though - half the politicians who slag off refugees came from refugee families - if we re going to repatriate anyone lets start with the ones that have been here the longest like Michael Howard.
The UN is saying the UK should take far more of the Iraqi exiles sitting in camps in Jordan and Syria - and I think we should as that was a war solely for the benefit of our upper classes. I think anyone who owns oil-shares or who voted Labour should be made to take at least one displaced Iraqi family into their home until it is safe for them to return. that'd soon end the war.

>Can you imagine the uproar if someone argued that UK born blacks were sub-literate lazy morons who should be deported to make way for hard working white immigrants? Yet the most vicious prejudice and contempt is considered acceptable if it’s directed towards the white poor. In reality immigrants and asylum seekers are just people from wide variety of cultures and social classes. They do not come from a planet where everyone conforms to the values of the middle class liberal and can no more be regarded a uniformly fine bunch of people than the native poor dismissed as scum.

And it isn't just ethnically caucasian Europeans who are racist - all ethnicities suffer from that stupidity- you'll never meet anyone more anti-Pakistani than a Sikh guy I worked with.

>Building up immigrants and asylum seekers at the expense of the white native population is more likely than anything else to provoke a racist reaction. I cannot see how simultaneously telling a whole section of society it is worthless scum and accusing them of racism is likely to improve race relations.

You do seem to be focussig on the word 'white' too much. You maybe don't realise you yourself are a mix of races. Did you see the programme 'How English are You?' It took a bunch of white English nationalists and traced their DNA and it found most of them were heavily mixed race.Even Thatcher was 25% Mongul if I remember correctly. Britain, like the rest of the world, has always been a melting pot, a mongerel nation. Our ancestors came from all over. I think the most racially pure peoples in the world are the Australians Aboriginal , the Japanese and the Icelandic, simply due to being 'cut-off' from the outside world on and therefore bred from 'family' - thats why Bjork is a bit mad. You should think and speak in terms of 'indigeneous' and therefore anyone in Glasgow who speaks with a genuine Glasgow accent, regardless of colour, is indigeneous.

>In fact if I were a BNP activist I’d be dancing for joy each time whites are trashed and I’d be over the moon as an issue white class hated is barely even on the radar. It’s about time anti-racists started speaking up, if not there are plenty thugs and racists who’ll be more than happy to do so.

You are quite right, they are doing so, and we do have to put a stop to that by addressing their arguments.

>One thing is for certain, if and when the backlash happens it won’t be the white middle classes or media snobs that bear the brunt of it.

You are right, it is and always will be against the most recent emigre community against the most dispossesed locals. The Blacks against Koreans in the US, before that though it was the Irish against the Blacks, the Italians against the Irish. The most dispossesed always have to fight amongst themselves while the rich get richer. You have got to have noticed though how the majority of the super-rich are white - even if some of the poorest are too. You earn more in the States the lighter you are regardless of your race. When 'poor white trash' like us are hungry, darker skinned folk are starved. When we have to stack shelves, they are forced to prostitute themselves to survive.

... your description of amsterdam makes me want to go there ... now!

You are perfectly right (in my opinion) to want to address and deconstruct the seductive arguments put forward by the BNP et al.

I can't really add much to your points, except to touch upon the notion that the [artificial] divisions of race are a tool by which the ruling classes negate the aspirations of the working classes (a bit marxist in its analysis but nevertheless true).

The process by which immigrant workers are sweept up from their mother country and deposited here to work the shifts and jobs that (supposedly) the indigenous workers won't is merely cover for a process that actually seeks to undermine the indiginous worker by removing job safety. Its all part of the globalization process that seeks to ensure the rich and super rich stay that way.

I believe it was nelson rockerfeller that put forward the idea that it was much better to be a rich person in a poor country (can't find the original quote) and thus [his] class has been engineering the worlds financial systems to fullfill this desire.

The bnp argument is falacious and dishonest because it is based on a false premis - namely that a] there is such a thing as a 'race' and b] that the white 'race' is disadvantaged in its indiginous habitat by a process that seeks to destroy 'it'.

This argument suitably shifts the attention onto territorial disputes between the slaves (wage) and safely ignores the exploitation of all people and the worlds natural environment by a rapacious fascistic elite (want to be a member? get rich any how any means, they won't reject you on the basis of your skin colour - but god help you if you try and upset the apple cart with too much compassion and rational problem solving).

Having said that, it is probably true to say that the white people of this land are being targeted for 'wind up' - the reaction therin can be used to further divide and mess around any opposition to imperialist designs - just think daily mail, sun editorials and imagine if they actually give a flying shit for working class communities!?

On the subject of censorship [here] of the bnp - on the one hand it amuses me to see them[the bnp] get their knickers in a twist trying to balance their natural tendencies to lie distort and hide the truth against this new found desire to debate openly[sic], and on the other, I recognise that allowing their arguments to fester in the half light ... on the fringes of society .. only gives power to their unquestioned arguments.

I am confident that ... given the quality of thought demonstrated by some posters here ... any argument of theirs [bnp] put forward here will be quickly and publicly deconstructed and destroyed ... and what the hell, it's so much fun to run rings around these par-illiterates.

Now ... where is that dutch ferry timetable ... ?

[Written listening to Natacha Atlas - Mish Maoul ... lovely]

I'm extremely glad that someone has posted up an article on the issues surrounding the white working class and although I hate the word, the underclass, its about time. It has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with certain middle class guilt, snobbery and elitism and of course ‘official anti-racism’. There is a new cultural and in many ways political snobbery in the air: its suddenly ok to discriminate against the poor- TV shows like Little Britain make it clear that its ok to laugh at our ‘underclass’. As Claire says, its ok for Little Britain to lampoon 'council estate scum’ or Catherine Tate ( who in many ways is brillliant) to have a go, but will they mock a black person or their culture?, no they won't. The left as well has been failing this group with its obsession with the 'culture wars and of course, The War(tm) with really only the dreadful former RCP lot, Spiked Online raising concerns about it, sad isn’t it?

In Michael Collins book, s' The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class
(Though really a biography of an historical South London community) while a flawed work, he makes some very salient points which of course the liberal/far left will reject or scream racism.

In his book, he tells a story of the woman at a party in the early 1990s who had just moved to Elephant and Castle (one of the advance party of gentrifiers from north of the river) who complained that she couldn’t find any aubergines in the local markets, and that this was a symptom of the “fear of diversity”, declaring finally that the root of the problem was that “the street is very white.” Of course, she meant white working class: “Her multiculturalism made her colourless; her class made her superior.”'

and this

'Collins also recounts an old timer perusing a glossy brochure extolling the Elephant’s attractions to outsiders. It listed the various immigrants over the centuries, including Germans, the Dutch, the Flemish, Irish, Afro-Caribbeans, West Africans, Chinese, Cypriots, Vietnamese, Somalians, Ethiopians, Bosnians and Croats, and boasted that “over 100 languages are spoken by our children”. The old fella remarks: “They don’t mention us English. You wouldn’t think we’d ever existed would ya?” '


All this, , the sneering, the undermining of community, the lack of support/ignorance from the left, etc, has direct political effects making it easier to demonise the poor as ‘scroungers, feckless, lazy, not deserving of our sympathy’. It also makes it easier to implement draconian welfare and social policy: for politicians to launch ‘crackdowns’ on benefit fraud, repeat ASBO’s and cut benefits such as with the Welfare Reform Bill and even bring in lie detectors. It also makes white working class people more defensive, more insular, thus not recognising the similarities it has with other embattled groups in the U.K and beyond.

Maybhe its attitudes like all the above, that is helping the ascendancy of the BNP: its
is clear that one part of a very big answer to why they are growing is the lack of interest in everyday issues that affect people by 'progressive people' How many people on IUK have been on a national 'save our council houses' demo? indeed, has there been one. The recent anti -welfare reform bill protests were untroubled by the presence of the left, crime is the bane of many lives in inner city areas, yet just as recently 60'000 people marched against a war they can't do anything about. The scale of mass immigration is raising genuine fears in many deprived communities, yet the many barmpots on the left just think shouting ‘refugees welcome here’ or even the more militant ‘bashing the fash’ is enough Maybe, priorities have to be re-addressed.

Of couse we shouldn’t lionise the white working classes or make excuses for them, they are also not a static unmoving element of society, but as the Aussies say, they should have a fair go and not be ignored or worse patronised

Don't you think that that will be a wasted vote?

Don't you think that you may have been manipulated into that position in order to prevent you from seeing who is really fucking you over?

Whatever your concerns about your place in this world and what it 'means' to be be white working class, the bnp have nothing to offer you ... an experience shared by every single nationalist/fascist/racist party that has ever come into power anywhere on this planet.

'White Trash' - no one who has posted here has expressed any hatred of immigrants so how can you say 'That's why hate immigrants'? You haven't said why.
Hating middle class snobs of any colour is perfectly okay. But do you hate all immigrants or do you mean just the coloured ones coming here ? Do you just hate the economic migrants or the asylum seekers and political refugees too ?
Do you hate non-white Britons whose familes have always lived here ?

Do you also hate seeing white British immigrants living in Spain, the US or Hong Kong ? Cos it has always been a two-way process. There are more Britons living abroad than non-white Britains. So what is the BNP solution to that - send out snatch gangs to those countries to forceablly return them to the UK ? Say migration was banned worldwide, where we get the housing to put the extra ?

Population of the UK = 60,609,153
Non- White population of the UK = 7.6% = 4,606,295
Britains living abroad = 5,500,000

I'd rather live next to anyone who wanted to live here rather than someone who would rather be elsewhere. And to be honest, it's the middle class snobs who are more likely to leave and it's working class folk who are more likely to come here. Now, the BNP aren't going to get power, but the SNP might in Scotland. 8% of the population of Scotland is first generation English. So how would you feel about some anti-English ethnic cleansing up here - cos that would leave some room for us to take more refugees and asylum seekers. And if Scotland and Wales get independence will you finally stop calling yourselves BNP cos there won't be a Britain left - and you can take the Saltire out of the Union Jack while you are at it.

There has been some racist attacks in Glasgow recently, poor white kids attacking anyone foriegn being inspired by BNP leafleting. And part of the reason for that is the way the asylum seekers are ghettoised in a small already deprived pockets with the worst housing stock in Europe. No wonder some of the locals are resentful. If the incomers were spread around each and every town in Scotland they would barely be noticed. And the new EU states migrants, NuLabour estimated 30,000 would come, deliberately vastly underestimating the scale of workers movement. That was so the government didn't have to increase services nd housing to maintain the existing working class standards of living, while still pocketing the extra tax revenue.

And even if workers didn't migrate, jobs and capital still would, our jobs have been exported for decades to places with poorer wokers nd poorer workers rights - ending migration won't stop the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Ending the inequalities of wealth distribution would, and that is a class issue not a race issue.

Danny - you may have some race analysis, but boy, do you need to get up to speed on sexism!
You just threw almost every single woman in your community on the scrap heap because you don't find them attractive. Maybe they don't give a shit what you think. Maybe their lives are fucked up by being raised in a system which has no role for them - not educated for the few decent jobs that are available, exploited in short-term McJobs, sedated and distracted out of self-organising politics by TV and tabloids, shat on by men who think women only exist to be shagged - any wonder they breed at sixteen to give some meaning to their lives? But they're not pretty, so who cares, eh Danny? (The men themselves are fucked up the same way, incidentally - they just shit on the next one down the pile.) And I know lots don't fit these stereotypes - you'll find them in your town if you look - but let's try not to deny what they're fighting against.

As for the 'immigrants flooding working-class communities' argument, much of this is a problem manufactured by government. Until the early 1990s, central government was responsible for the costs of supporting asylum seekers, then the last Tory government pushed this cost off onto local authorities, effectively putting asylum seekers in conflict with locals for resources in a way they weren't before. Similarly, central funding for helping non-English-speaking schoolkids has been slashed, leaving this money to come out of local funds. This is all about tax-cutting for corporations and the rich (see the last budget - those in the poorer local authority areas keep paying through council taxes), but also nicely keeps the British-born working-class in conflict with their newcomer neighbours and not blaming the source of their problems - the corporate-driven government.

Divide and rule!

See clairwil ? I knew I'd get my wrist slapped.

"You just threw almost every single woman in your community on the scrap heap because you don't find them attractive...The men themselves are fucked up the same way, incidentally - they just shit on the next one down the pile."

Did you hear not that 'whoosh' Laura, going right over your head ? I never claimed the men in my town were any more attractive, I just don't notice them. And being ugly isn't the same as being on the scrapheap, that is an awful thing to say - 'You don't have to be a super-model to do the animal thing'. I was bemoaning the lack of cultural diversity in a way designed to appeal to the original poster. And in Amsterdam Jackslucid, the stunningly pretty women didn't benefit me much as they had stunningly attractive men to chose from. I found a nice girl who looked a lot like me. I've found all my ex's attractive but most people wouldn't - there is nothing better than a partner you find gorgeous and no one else does, it alleviates jealousy. After a few weeks of being with the plainest or prettiest person you just see them for who they are but strangers keep chatting up the pretty ones. The only thing all my partners had in common is that they were all very intelligent - which rules Laura off my list of prospective partners !
That's too harsh Laura, you made some good points about local authority funding and if you know who the following quote is I'd consider one sympathy-date.

you rhapsodize about beauty
and my eyes glaze
everything that i love is ugly
i mean really, you would be amazed

I was being held at knife point by a white power gang and trying to make small talk, so, appealing to their machismo, I asked one of them if they would shag an attractive asian, and he said he had, so I asked which asian country she came from and he said Cuba. Even then, with my life being threatened, I couldn't constrain my sarcasm or button my lip. If I ever do get cut up I'll die with a cutting remark.

IMCistas, feel free to hide this post if you wish, or any of mine as I am zig-zagging off subject.

I did a search on googlenews to see if the report of the M1 activists being arrested for their 'thought-crime' had hit the mainstream. I just typed in "M1" and hit news. Carelessly I clicked on a BNP link on googlenews. I'll include the text so I don't have to link to it. I fnd this disturing for two reasons - first when did the Google deem the BNP to be an acceptable news source ? The report is just cropped from a BBC report.

Plus as Laura stated, Divide and Rule. The BNP are trying to boost inter-ethnic tensions with their own veneer of delighted disgust. It must be hard to be in the BNP - doubtless their members hate Jews, so it must be hard to support Israel just to put down Muslims. Doubtless they hate asians, so it must be hard to promote them as victims of than blacks. There are just too many races to hate and half of them seem to hate each other - it must get confusing. No wonder they think Cuba is in Asia - Asia starts at Calais for them.

"Disturbing incident on the M1
An incident on the M1 caused the motorway to be blocked for a while after an attack on a car and its passengers by a gang with baseball bats. Four Asian men in a Ford Focus on the M1 in Northamptonshire were flashed by the driver of a Rover 200 and had missiles thrown at them before being forced to a halt in the middle lane of the northbound carriageway after being surrounded by four other vehicles near Junction 15 (Northampton). Two occupants of one car got out and proceeded to assault those inside the ford Focus with baseball bats. A Northamptonshire Police spokesman said they believe about 15 black men, some armed with knives, baseball bats and bottles, were involved in the attack which was described as "unprovoked". The vehicles used to block the motorway were a green Rover 200, a black Audi A3, a black Toyota Prius and possibly a red Audi A3. The disturbing thing is this attack was made in broad daylight on one of the countries busiest roads on a bank holiday weekend. " - BNP

PS Jackslucid, two more song lyrics to sum up why you shouldn't go the Nederlands for the reason I gave, unless you take someone with you.

People are strange, when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked, when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven, when you're down


This could be Rotterdam or anywhere
Liverpool or Rome
Cause Rotterdam is anywhere
Anywhere alone
And everyone is blonde
And everyone is beautiful
And when blondes and beautiful are multiple
They become so dull and dutiful

i can spot a nazi troll when i see you, with racist shit like this

post your home address,and you will find out soon enough what happens to nazis

“..it is and always will be against the most recent emigre community against the most dispossesed locals..”

Perhaps that’s why Nick Griffin is standing in the Welsh Assembly elections in South Wales West…? Bridgend to Swansea is full of dispossessed locals.

Amazing! A discussion worth reading on indymedia (despite tim and af's attempts to bring it down to the usual level.)

I'm one of those 5 1/2 million British living abroad - who left when I realised that no matter what, 99% of British people would either hate or despise me the moment I opened my mouth. Women may be judged on their appearance (like everywhere) but men are pigeonholed by their vowels. British culture is so full of bullshit about class, sex and race that you're swimming in from birth, until you actually live abroad, or educate yourself some other way, you just don't know it doesn't have to be that way. There's bullshit everywhere, of course, but the concentrations of it in the UK are exceptionally high, I think...

Mind you. If you want to know what Scotland would be like under the SNP, or England under the jackbooted jackasses of the BNP, come and visit Bilbao, where the Basque National Party (PNV) in a variety of coalitions has held onto power for over 25 years.

Basques are another of those genetically-pure groups you're talking about - or at least there's a minority of pure-blood Basques. Basque language and culture are mostly but not entirely correlated with genetics. (Actually someone sent me an article recently saying that the first British settlers post-ice age supposedly came from the Basque country, and weren't Celts like most people think. So watch out for Alex Salmond proposing Basque as an official language any day now.)

In fact the majority of Bilbao people never were pure basque, since we're on the western border of the Basque region, plus there were massive waves of immigration coinciding with industrial booms in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, and another one happening right now.

But under the PNV fluency in Basque has become essential to work in government or education, while the majority of powerful positions in the region are held by people with Basque surnames on one or both sides. There's an unofficial two-tier system of schooling, with more than half the schools taught 100% in Basque. Remember this is a language spoken _at all_ by under a third of the 3 million population. Meanwhile the poorest neighbourhoods get crappy schools taught in Spanish.

So, if you are an immigrant and your children can get into a good school, become fluent in Basque (impossible for the parents, since it's not the language spoken on the street in most places) and get a good job, they still won't be in the power structure because they don't have the right surname and connections. Meanwhile, their mobility has been seriously compromised by schooling in an obscure minority language.
After one generation, you've got permanently excluded non-Basque speakers doing the shitty jobs, plus a captive population of working/middle class, indoctrinated "Basques" who aren't likely to up sticks for better prospects elsewhere - sounds like a capitalist's dream. The lower end of this Basque-speaking group provide the rent-a-riot bus burners and slogan-daubers with identical haircuts, who hope one day to graduate into bomb-planters, for the radical end of the nationalist movement. And judging by the number of clandestine meetings coming to light between the PNV and the leaders of Batasuna or whatever they're called this week, I really think you can call it a single movement.

OK, I admit this analysis isn't particularly profound, but I guess what I mean to say is - nationalists are selling myths about purity and identity, but what they really mean is: be just like us, but oops, you never will. And of course, practically all political parties use nationalism to some extent, just some use it in a purer strain (and none purer than here).

What would an anarchist say to all this? Well, I guess education should be done by communities and families, even if that results in a messy language patchwork (the reality in most places) rather than a neat map with well-marked borders. Our daughters actually are home educated in English (they get Spanish from friends and family, Basque from the playground)... curiously enough the area we live in is a former port district where English was the second language up until the 1970s and Basque hardly spoken at all.

I don't know whether they will end up being "indigenous" (as in "we talk like that round here") as Danny says. To the Euskonazis they never will anyway, since they don't have 16 Basque surnames. They will, however, be part of our respective families and cultures, also of the community where we live (whether that may be here in Bilbao or elsewhere), and will, I hope, be empowered enough to ignore people who try to make them feel like they don't belong, wherever they may be in the world.

emigre

 http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/1091

And Google News have carried the BNP's crap for a couple of years or more, I'm sure it's been on this site before and the fact that they (then, do they now?) don't carry UK IMC...

Can be found here:  http://clairwil.blogspot.com/

Searcher,

Well done spotting the reprint. I guess the thread should have been aborted, I had hoped I was talking to the author and may have talked them around.

Emigre,

Basque of one of those difficult Uralic languages isn't it ? Like Finnish and Hungarian. The only Finnish I learned was how to say 'beautiful' and 'I don't know', that seemed to cover most situations since they all count English among their many tongues. So I sympathise. I lived in the Nederlands too and they speak estuary-english, so I was pigeon-holed by my vowels there too - they told me, don't learn dutch, learn english. I love the Spanish and may be coming there soon to interview a pal returning from Oaxaca.

Far fewer Scots speak Gaelic / Gàidhlig than Basques speak their native language, though Doric and Low-land Scots should cont as languages in their own right.. I'm an anarchist who will be voting SNP I should say at the outset. I was joking about the SNP ethnically cleansing the English, that won't and shouldn't happen. The SNP is not comparable to the BNP - they are a fairly moderate slightly socialist party imo. You get some racists who 'play the Scottish card' but even they are generally anti-English rather than anti-everyone else. Most Scots really do offer Ceud Mile Failte, or a hundred thousand welcomes. There are a plethora of pro-independence parties in Scotland, Solidarity and the SSP to name but two others. They would call the SNP a 'business party' which is fair enough since they have the backing of most high-profile business leaders. There is a sizable right-wing working class vote in the West of Scotland ( ironically where the asylum seekers have been dumped ) due to 'loyalism' and the historical links to Troubles in the North of Eire. the BNP may just get a single elected member from that list due to proportional representation. There is a new right wing party in Scotland that could split the BNP vote though, I can't even remember their name but their slogan is 'Proud to be British, proud to be Scottish' . The SNP aren't like that, their equivalent slogan would be 'Ashamed to be British, proud to be free at last'. I am only voting for them as it seems the most pragmatic to end the British state, get out of NATO and those stupid wars, and get Trident further away from me.

Most importantly, if Scotland is about to become independent, come and live here and you will have full citizenship no matter what you speak like or where you come from. You won't need to learn Gaelic to fit in, and once global warming kicks in we might be able to promise you some sunshine in a few years time.

Anyway, it was good to read your post, enjoy the sun and undertsnad the extremists even if you cn't sympathise. It sounds like you are living in the turmoil of a region struggling to reassert itself as a country once more, which can often be violent. There are some tensions here too, but we currently have every chance of doing so through the ballot box. There was talk on Channel Four news tonight of the Tories and Labour joining together to keep the SNP out of power - now that could inflame the situation to the point of violence. Even talk of it exposes NuLab as the flipside of the Tories.

I sort of hope this thread does get hidden, I've already been accused of being a poor feminist, a fascist and next will come the outraged anarchists asking why I am recomending voing for anyone at all - one word for those folk, Iraq.
And no, environmentalists, I don't think this global warming is a good thing, I shun the sun and hate heat, I'll need to migrate further north, maybe have to learn some more Finnish.

If the rich middle class will not bear the brunt of the backlash then make them.


Attack middle class freaks like New Labour, Tory, Liberal, Indymedia, the shit thick scum of the police.

You know what to do, so do it!

Basque is neither Uralic nor Indo-European, they say it's an "orphan" language unrelated to any other.

"Business party" describes the PNV precisely. The only equivalent of the BNP would be the (very rare) Spanish right-wing skinheads here, so I was really mixing two disparate things up.

"Far fewer Scots speak Gaelic / Gàidhlig than Basques speak their native language" - I think one of the points I was trying to make is that by accepting the use of simplistic labels like "Basque" (or "Scottish" for that matter) we are playing into the hands of nationalists. They can play with those definitions very cleverly to both include and exclude people. For instance, Basque is not actually the native language of the majority of people born in the Basque country, however you define that physical territory - there are several different ways - and never was; even before the first wave of immigration in the 19th century there were lots of places were people spoke Spanish, my neighbourhood being one of them.

I strongly suspect the SNP will play the same sort of games with the Scots language and identity that the PNV are doing with Basque, so watch out.

"It sounds like you are living in the turmoil of a region struggling to reassert itself as a country once more, which can often be violent." - Well, not really - Scotland was an independent nation 300 years ago, the Basque country never was (at least, not since the medieval Kingdom of Navarre which was not contiguous with any of the present day definitions of the Basque country.)

Voting's your own affair, I guess that being an anarchist means you appreciate voting for what it really means, i.e. very little if anything. Don't like Trident? You'd probably be better off spending polling day on the Faslane blockade!

when you say your devideing the Ak47's out gimme a shout.,

Out of personal interest I do have to ask what is it about where you live that keeps you living there if the region is going downhill ? There are other places you could go. I'd guess the sun or a local partner.

You said only a third of Basques speak Basque. Less than 2% of Scots speak Gaelic so I can't see anyone playing the same sorts of games with the Scots language. You'd need to ask Dai if it was the same in Wales. NuLab play some quite shameful games with the Scots identity already - sending Jack McConnell in a kilt with William Wallaces sword to Tartan Week in New York is an all-time cringeworthy low. In truth, independence for Scots now means 'Independence from America' as Britain is barely a soveriegn nation. The Scots look up to the Norwegians, the Swedish, the Finnish, the Icelandic and the Irish as suitable political and social role models and would probably try to emulate their success. If there is a pro-independence administration in the Scottish Parliament then it will act cautiously to inspire confidence before any referendum. If there is then a successful referendum, there will be enough administrative upheaval to keep the country focussed for the forseeable future.

There isn't a blockade planned for Faslane for polling day. If memory serves I was there last polling day, or maybe in a pub, I certainly wasn't in a polling booth.
 http://www.faslane365.org/en/event/2007/05/20/month/all/all/1

I was once on a block at a base in England where all the Scots were blocking one gate - the only one successfully blocked ;-) There was a young man waving a 'black flag' and a young man waving a Saltire and both were chanting 'No Borders!' without any irony. Proud to be citizens of the planet and glad they live where they do. In nations which consider themselves oppressed or occupied nationalism can be equated to group liberation as opposed to racial suppression.


Egg Head's cussin' Red Neck's cussin' hippies for their hair.
Others laugh at straights who laugh at freaks who laugh at squares.
Some folks hate the whites who hate the blacks who hate the Klan.
Most of us hate anything that we don't understand.

'Cos everybody's got to have somebody to look down on.
Who they can feel better than at anytime they please.
Someone doin' somethin' dirty, decent folks can frown on.
If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me.

The Welsh Assembly is only a talking shop, it has no real power and so can not really be compared accurately to the Scottish parliament.

Having said that, very few people in Wales spoke Welsh a generation ago. Now even English and some immigrant settlers can speak Welsh. Even the spoof candidate in the Assembly elections, Captain Beanny is calling for all Tattoos to be bilingual…!

If there isn't a blockade planned for Faslane for polling day, you could always come and boo Nick Griffin and the three other BNP candidates at the counting of votes in the Afan Lido Sports Centre, Aberavon Seafront, Port Talbot at 10:15pm on Thursday, 3rd May, 2007.

>Welsh Nationalists no longer burn down the homes of English settlers
The old British Gas slogan 'Come home to a real fire' could have been co-opted by the Welsh Torism Board in those days.

>The Welsh Assembly is only a talking shop, it has no real power and so can not really be compared accurately to the Scottish parliament.
Is it not getting the same powers next year as Holyrood has - health, education, all the soft-stuff ?

>Having said that, very few people in Wales spoke Welsh a generation ago. Now even English and some immigrant settlers can speak Welsh.

Which is an amazing reversal. I think Scotland will always speak English, as far as it does. That's maybe being negative but I do like English. See, we never had a Scottish language, there was always regional tongues. In Ulster, they put up dual language signs, English and Irish-Gaelic for Catholic areas, English and Ulster-Scots for protestant areas. The protestants mistook Ulster-Scots for Gaelic so they burnt their own signs down. Some signs in Scotland are now in Polish and the locals assume it is gaelic.

>Even the spoof candidate in the Assembly elections, Captain Beanny is calling for all Tattoos to be bilingual…!
haha - what is 'slippery when wet' in Welsh ?

>If there isn't a blockade planned for Faslane for polling day, you could always come and boo Nick Griffin and the three other BNP candidates at the counting of votes in the Afan Lido Sports Centre, Aberavon Seafront, Port Talbot at 10:15pm on Thursday, 3rd May, 2007.

I hope some people go to meet and greet him. I'll be a polling booth up here as there is a local BNP gang who may be tempted out to vote by a regional BNP candidate- only I can identify them. They left some stuff at my house so it'd be nice to return it to theirs.

sorry if it sounded that way. Just clarifying a few things. I certainly wouldn't diss you for voting your beliefs - that would really be bullshit; just expressing my own cynicism about what good voting does. By the way, I think there's a Faslane blockade every day of the year -  http://www.faslane365.org/ Good on you if you've been there, I haven't!
I wouldn't say Bilbao is going downhill - going the same way as everywhere else in Europe, maybe - corporate-friendly government serving its own and capitalist interests. Why do I stay? As well as the reasons you point out I happened to land up in a community where I think I can make a difference. Or maybe I just can't stomach going back to the fascist UK. The Republic of Scotland sounds like a decent place though! If you're coming over to visit your friend then drop me a line (google zorrozaurre)

Sorry Emigre, I didn't think you were looking down on me, your conversation was most enjoyable. The Kristofferson lyrics just seemed apt to the subject and he just played Glasgow so it was in my mind. I'd love to meet up with you but I am going to the other end of Spain and am seriously broke. If you ever come to Scotland though you and your kin would be housed, watered, whiskyed, chauffered and fed.

There isn't a Faslane blockade everyday - check the diary link I provided.  http://www.faslane365.org/en/event/2007/05/20/month/all/all/1
I won't be on any of the blocks that are planned for F365 but that is a long story I'll save til I meet you, though I do applaud activists who do block it. If you make it to Scotland then I'll take you by there. We could block a gate on our own for fun, a night in the cells. I'll even guarantee to get you inside the base if you don't mind up to a £5000 fine and up to 11 months inside ! It has got a bit draconian here lately.

I'm not sure about the Republic of Scotland - the loyalists would be trying to lynch me again if I suggested that and a president is hardly much better than a primeminister. The Free State of Scotland has a nice ring to it though, but I'd settle for any form of independence to start with. I know several Catalans, wild, beautiful people, but I've never met any Basques. I hope you do make a difference there but if you don't, try here instead. The Firth of Forth is full of filth but the sun sometimes shines on Leith.

if you're in Edin the first week in August I'll take up your offer, not sure about the night in the cells though (the only house in a slave state where a free man may dwell with honour - Thoreau) and I insist on paying for my drinks!