How mongrelised we are now, everyone and everywhere! The sight of a British Nationalist wearing the flag of St George as sarong just like a Malay, as I saw him heading towards All Bar One in Leicester Square with his companions after the BNP procession in Trafalgar Square, was bemusing to say the least. There was even a skinhead who more typifies the mental image of a National Fronter or British nationalist most people have of the “Far Right” - but he was perfectly pleasant when I asked him to turn his head so that his tattoos could be photographed to greater advantage.
My crystal ball is not giving me a clear picture as to whether British nationalism is a force for good or evil, but it has been awakened and will no longer be quiet, as the increased support for the BNP is showing and will continue to show. It will have to be managed very carefully by those within the party and those of us outside it who find quite a few of their policies appealing. At any rate it will have the effect of making politics a little more interesting, which must be a Good Thing, as I run an opinion-polling direct democracy website - http://www.1party4all.co.uk/ that runs on a paradox of unity and diversity. (Yes, it is a virtal one-party state that I run as my very own fiefdom. All are compelled to think independently ...)
British Nationalism is a misnomer and nonsense if it equates nationality with race, surely? There is a difference between race and nation. One is how you look, the other is where you think you belong, what you do and how you think. Nation transcends race - being a concept, while race is just a set of physical characteristics - they are not mutually interchangeable, as the BNP apparently believe.
The unexpectedness of an Afro-Caribbean who wanted to be in on the picture was a delicious irony. I do not know if he knew with whom he was being photographed, but Richard Barnbrook was obviously delighted at this unexpected turn of events.
The BNP mayoral candidate as St George on a white charger was a crowd-pleaser, though it was quite a small crowd. When it merged with the over-priced British Food Festival in Trafalgar Square it was in effect swallowed up, so to speak. A jousting competition in St James’s Park with the mayoral candidates as contestants would have been the perfect entertainment on a sunny spring afternoon.
These are the ones I took.
Photos taken by David Hoffman, a professional photographer, can be found at:
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