The Times has this:
Leaders of the far-right party believe that their hardline message will chime with voters when, as expected, crime rises during the recession. They can be expected to exploit fears of crime caused by migrant workers in places where immigration from eastern Europe has been high.
Winning seats on police authorities would give the BNP influence over forces’ budgets, the appointment of chief officers and the allocation of resources.
Senior officers and police authorities are alarmed at the proposals for direct elections, which are supported, in differing forms, by Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. They fear that elections for police authorities would frequently have low turnouts, leading to the election of extremists and single-issue campaigners.
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24 Comments
Given that it was BNP policy to scrap the police powers of arrest I’m not sure how the “tough on crime” line actually stacks up.
Just goes to show why these are such a bad idea – you will inevitably get people standing on a political ticket for positions where there should be no political interference.
If we are hunting for criminals, the BNP membership might be a good place to start.
Dear me, Democracy actually at work! Can’t have that – not when the wrong people might get elected!
As it happens, most people in Britain agree with the BNP on mass immigration and related matters. The BNP represents the people. No one else does. Teh potical class represents – the political class.
What exactly does ‘exploiting’ the public’s fears on immigrant crime mean? Is it the suggestion that the BNP should simply ignpore it or pretend that it doesn’t exist, like the other parties? ie simply let it to continue and to grow?
There were at the last count some 25 immigrant criminal gangs working in London alone.
With that sort of contempt for the people, it’s no wonder that BNP support is increasing in leaps and bounds.
As for scrapping police powers of arrest – what nonsense.
If the BNP have some criminal supporters, is it the suggestion that there are no criminals in the other parties? Strange, I can think of several individuals in New Labour alone who have been or ought to have been behind bars, including some in the House of Lords.
If we already want elected Health Boards and now we’re talking about elected Police Authorities – why can’t we go the whole hog and transfer all these quangoes to a single tier of elected regional authorities?
It would result in far more accountable services and save millions on duplication – each region could have one set of people we voted for claiming allowances and running our lives rather than hundreds of panels we’ve never heard of.
On the BNP – they’re wrong, they’re clearly wrong and if we have the courage to tell people how wrong they are then people will get it. Democracy is nothing to be scared of, you just have to stop pussy-footing around and tell it like it is. If someone’s spreading rubbish to try and win votes then say so.
.They’re wrong, they’re wrong’… wrong they may be, but the disintegrating divided, strife-riven hell-hole with the morals and the slimy lifestyles of the slum which liberalism has made and is making of our country says they are more right than are their critics.
Never mind the adolescent utopian vision – see the reality.
The reality is that the BNP are winning support by spreading lies and fear.
There is crime committed by immigrants – of course there is – but there is no reasonable person who is saying immigrants commit more crime than anyone else.
What we need are policies to tackle all forms of crime whoever commits them and perhaps even more importantly, which allow the police and local communities to prevent crime in the first place.
We need neighbourhood policing rolled out and reinforced.
We need the police to be an integral part of the community again working with local people – especially young people – again.
We need governments and councils which have a positive attitude to the poor, the excluded and the young rather than seeing them as problems to be managed.
We need investment in and focus on projects that will enhance community cohesion and opportunity. That means schools, transport, environmental improvements and jobs.
That’s how you reduce crime, not by trying to blame minorities who – in fact – are much more likely to be victims of crime than to commit it.
Britain hasn’t had nearly enough Liberalism – we’ve had decades of Socialism, which aims to divide and conquer communities by class and race for electoral gain and Conservatism which wants to preserve the status of the few instead of improving the lot of the many.
A good dose of equality, liberty and community would go down rather nicely after all that, Tim.
The BNP will address crime more realistically than the other parties, I think, so I hope they win these elections. They may re-institute stop-and-search by the liklihood of detecting offenders, rather than giving everyone an even chance of being stopped. I hope they do, because then the police won’t be spending my taxes on stopping little old ladies to search them for knives, and so on! Or for drugs! When there are KNIFEMEN on the streets, who NEED to be dealt with!
Also, they may stop ‘discussing’ ‘public sex areas’ that gays want, and simply put a stop to them. I hope they do! We shouldn’t have to take part in sex acts, by witnessing them against our will, to please gays. This makes us sex slaves! Even our children are being used in this way! It is horrific, and it should be stopped! At least the BNP would stop it!
The same goes for ‘dogging’! Those merely going for a walk are made to witness things which they find disgusting and intimidating! They shouldn’t have to! It never used to happen, before the liberals made everything up for discussion, when some things are OBVIOUSLY WRONG!!!!!!
The BNP still have some sanity left in them in this mad world, and I am glad of that! None of the other parties have! I will vote for them, and I hope they get in!!!!!!!
Having done two years on a Police Authority I’m completely in favour of direct election to them in there current form failing merger into wider multi purpose authorities. We happily have the armed forces under democratic control so I have never really bought the political interference line about policing.
PS already have reasonable “hand on the tiller” powers which would frighten most chief constables to death if they were actually used. They aren’t because part quango / part indirectly appointed bodies with a single purpose go native, are accountable to no one them selves and have no constituency. It will be unfashionable of this website but I gave Boris Three cheers for having the guts to do what umpteen other politicans should have done years ago. Sack Blair.
As for the BNP getting elected or single issue independents? Well thats an arguement for running the country by a brains trust and abolishing elections altogther.
I suspect such groups would get some limited success before dragging the political class back to reality over how much utter life destroying misery “low level” ASB actually causes.
“Lucy” is a pisstake, right?
“The same goes for ‘dogging’! Those merely going for a walk are made to witness things which they find disgusting and intimidating!”
I know badly controlled dogs can be unhygienic and even alarming to the timid, but I really don’t think the majority of responsible dog owners should be made to suffer because of that.
‘No reasonable person says that immigrants commit more crimes than anyone else.’
Thanks to liberalism and the leftist deculturalisation of the British post the 1960’s, while Britain had some 220,000 reported crimes at the height of the second world war, and barely 100,000 at the beginning of the twentieth century, a few years ago there were well over 5,000,0000 crimes reported in England and Wales.
So yes; There has been a massive increase in crime in Britain with or without immigrants. That said, immigrants and their ‘communities’ are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime.
Knife and gun crime in London is an Afro and Afro -Caribbean youth speciality, as is mugging; the streets of the city are infested with romanian pickpockets and beggars, albanians and east europeans now seem to dominate the prostitution and white slave rackets; with them come middle eastern and asian drugs rings, Vietnamese marijuana growers, chinese tong- backed immigration, gambling and other scams – And so on and so on.
Not to mention the third world election frauds and other scams which have been imported along with the third world.
I’m afraid that immigrants do indeed add to our miseries when it comes to crime in Britain, apart from their very presence here greatly helping to break down that sense of community which once kept crime in check.
I should also have said that if there is no sense of community, no moral absolutes, no sense of right or wrong by which people can judge the conduct of others (and there isn’t in liberal, neo-marxist Britain – being ‘judgemental’ is unacceptable), crime will follow as night follows day.
Alix, you’ve apparently forgotten your VMs.
“It never used to happen, before the liberals made everything up for discussion, when some things are OBVIOUSLY WRONG!!!!!!”
Remember, some 20% of the population would agree with what is a classic settler statement 🙂
In this discussion we should also bear in mind that 83.7% of statistics are made up on the spot.
“The BNP will address crime more realistically than the other parties, I think, so I hope they win these elections. They may re-institute stop-and-search by the liklihood of detecting offenders,”
The BNP advocate scrapping PACE 1984 which contains most of the police stop and search powers.
There’s some sort of variant of Godwin’s Law that means whenever you mention the BNP on the internet, their racist supporters turn up to comment.
You know benjamin I actually disagree with you on one issue. That immigrants commit the same amount of crime as everybody else, I think because immigrants are more likely to come into society in Britain at the bottom and face the sharp end of the wealth disparity stick then they are therefore more likely to commit crime.
Perhaps a better statement is ‘Immigrants are probably not more likely to commit crime than working class white people’.
I would also like to point out to Tim and Lucy that if we tried to make comments arguing with the BNP on one of your websites then they would almost certainly not be published…believe me ive tried, free speech is a wonderful thing yes?
The already questionable statistics Tim brings about rises in crime are made ignorant of a typical folly.
The idea that classification of ‘what is a crime’ has stayed the same since the war is ridiculous. The law is so much more complex and so many more things are crimes (not necesarily a good thing) that this rise means nothing.
Considering the advances in police techniques shouldnt we also expect more crimes to be recognised and recorded.
Tim (and all) I would greatly appreciate it if you would respond to me point by point as I do love that sort of rational debate 🙂
Joe Donnelly assumes: “[immigrants] are therefore more likely to commit crime”.
—
I do love this sort of ‘rational’ assumption, backed up by, er, nothing.
I do agree on your other points though! 🙂
Well I thought I had given a brief back up to that assertion actually. That the majority of immigrants coming are coming in at a working class level.
People at the bottom of the social scale tend to be more likely to commit crime for various reasons.
Its a bit of a tenuous back up but it seemed evident to me that the assertion is correct based on my logic. Maybe I’ve missed something?
Lucy wrote:
“They shouldn’t have to! It never used to happen, before the liberals made everything up for discussion, when some things are OBVIOUSLY WRONG!!!!!!”
Dogging didn’t used to happen? Not in the good old days, eh?
What about the guardsmen who allowed men to perform fellatio on them in Hyde Park for half a crown? That happened in the 1930s, didn’t it?
I first heard about “dogging” (though it was caled something else in those days) in 1968, when someone at school told me how he had witnessed people having public sex while cycling across Pyrford Common at dusk.
You need to check your facts, Lucy.
Yes of course that would have been a better phrasiology but when there are just so many ways in which someone like Tim is totally wrong, it would take me all day to post if i didn’t use a little shorthand!
Not that it really matters since the BNP’s hatred of immigrants doesn’t come from any real or imagined likelihood that they will commit crime, it comes from small-minded bigotry.
Crime has causes – poverty, deprivation, lack of opportunity and the breakdown of communities. The BNP position is much like the traditional Tory idea that there is some kind of Criminal Class and if only we could just round them all up we could be rid of crime. This is simply not the case.
As for “Lucy” – you are right, some things are JUST WRONG. I would probably put racism near the top of the list.
As for “public sex areas”, why not? The state’s job is to help all members of society get on together. If some people, gay or straight, want to be able to SHOCK HORROR have sex outdoors then the main criterion ought to be whether it is disturbing anyone, not your outraged moralising. If people know that within a certain area they are likely to see things they may nmot want to see then they can avoid that area, just as if they also know that if they want to have outdoor sex then it is restricted to a specific area then that surely helps everybody live alongside each other without conflict.
Which, of course, would be quite against what the BNP stands for. Can’t have different types of people getting on. What would happen to the master race?
exactly society should be kept free from comformity! Who are you Lucy to say what is right or wrong.
and benjamin I think nothing is intrincily JUST WRONG everything has to be relativised