Provocative.
Here’s a question for you:
Earlier this week, the interwebs were buzzing with the leak of a list of members of the British National Party. It didn’t take long for a police officer who was included in the list to be suspended and investigated.
How do you feel about this man’s employer specifying that he can’t be a member of a particular political party? Or, how do you feel about his membership of a certain party precluding him from serving as a police officer?
“Chief Constable Bernard Hogan-Howe has reiterated our position that membership of the British National Party is totally incompatible with the duties and values of Merseyside Police.
“We will not accept a police officer or police staff being a member of BNP.”
While I would be very surprised to find anything at all from the BNP I could agree with, I’m finding this question a bit tricky.
November 21st, 2008 at 11:06 pm
They probably have various corporate statements about tolerance, equality, respect etc. Statements of which membership of the BNP is the antithesis. And yes, I worked hard to not end that sentence with a preposition.
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
That will be the case, but I’m not convinced it’s that simple.
Given that the BNP is a legal organisation, and given the the officer’s membership of the BNP is presumably an expression of attitudes and values he would possess whether he was a member or not, surely the relevant question is whether or not those attitudes have had an effect on his conduct and performance on the job?
November 25th, 2008 at 9:59 am
I don’t see any difficulty with the Chief Constable’s statement. I think many people don’t realise how extreme the BNP is. Its constitution, which you can download from its website, states that it “stands for the preservation of the national and ethnic character of the British people and is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples.” In passing, this means that the BNP rejects the relationships of some of my close friends and family members who have married non-white partners.
Furthermore, “it is therefore committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed before 1948.”
The key words here are “reversing” and “legal changes.” The BNP prefers not to discuss openly its policy on immigration, preferring just to toy with people’s views that the mainstream parties are ‘soft’ on the issue, but if pressed, they will state a policy of “voluntary repatriation” for non-white people. However the constitution makes it clear that its policy includes “legal changes,” ie introducing laws to restore the pre-1948 ethnic makeup of the UK.
If that doesn’t make it clear why no police officer – or public servant of any kind – should be permitted to be a member of the BNP, then I would just add that, even if a police officer privately holds these views, it is wrong for him to join an organisation which publicly promotes (to put it crudely) ‘kicking out the blacks’ and which seeks to legitimise such action.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:15 am
@John: you make good points. What I’m thinking, really, is that membership of the BNP is incidental to the question of the values it’s an expression of.