Hodge: why I debated with the BNP
Updated on 21 October 2009
As controversy builds around BNP leader Nick Griffin's forthcoming appearance on Question Time, Labour MP Margaret Hodge explains why she went head to head with the BNP live on Channel 4 News earlier this year.
The MP for Barking, who represents a constituency with a strong BNP presence, said it would seem "barmy" to her electorate if she refused to engage with a democratically elected party.
She joined a live discussion with the new BNP Euro-MP for Yorkshire and Humber, Andrew Brons, to discuss the European election results with Channel 4 News in June earlier this year.
"I know this is a really tough question, and it is a contested area, but I represent a constituency where I have a large number of BNP councillors, and from my experience in fighting the BNP locally I have come to the conclusion that we have to move on from the position we held quite properly in the seventies and eighties," Hodge said.
"Firstly, the BNP have been democratically elected and, vile as they are, I think that in a democracy you cannot ignore the fact that you have democratically elected representatives and refuse to engage with them. I think it's a tenet of democracy.
"The second reason is that in my own patch, because people are voting BNP, if I refused to engage with their representatives locally, I don't think my electorate would understand that. They'd think I was barmy not to engage with them.
"And the third and most important reason, and I think that's bearing truth in what's happened over the last few days, if you do engage with BNP directly, that is the best way of exposing the reality of what they are, what their party's about, and what their purpose is – a deeply racist, divisive purpose which we don't want in British society. So by engaging with them you can expel them from the democratic arena."
Hodge said that, although Question Time may "not be the best place for [the BNP] to start" making TV apperances, she rejected the argument that allowing the party airtime gave them the oxygen of publicity.
"I just know that if I weren't to engage with them directly in my own constituency, I would lose credibility with my electorate," she said.
"At a time when I'm trying really hard to reconnect with people who've become disillusioned for all sorts of reasons with the Labour party - and in my patch we don't have really a Tory or Lib Dem opposition, so the only opposition is the BNP - if I don't engage with them directly, I lose credibility, and when I engage with them directly, I win, and therefore I bring people back into mainstream politics."
She also welcomed the exposure that the extra publicity around the Question Time appearance had given the party.
"That exposure has exposed the false prospectus that they put forward and the way they always use a kernel of truth to build a big lie," she said.
"You can see it on their membership – they're lying about their membership. You can see it in my own patch, one of the BNP councillors claimed there had been a rise in murders in the borough – it was just blatantly untrue, and that was exposed," she said, referring to the a YouTube video issued by London Assembly member Richard Barnbrook earlier this year.
"You can see it in the attitude of the generals now – the generals have said they don't want our national institution to be dragged down into the politics of racism and division and that doesn't hold with the values of the armed services and the nation. And what does the BNP do in response? Calls them Nazis and wants to hang them. "And I think in an odd way, by exposing them to media, we are showing them for what they are.
"But a lot of those who vote BNP are voting as a protest vote against mainstream parties, not because they support this racist intent and the racist nature of the party itself.
"And I think the more we can expose the BNP for what they are, the less likely people will find them as a haven to put their anger, and the more likely they are to come back to mainstream politics."
