Channel 4's strand First Cut showcases original documentaries by up-and-coming film makers. Peter Beard's film, Young, Angry and White, is an attempt to understand what makes a young person, in this instance 19-year-old Kieren, think of wanting to join the British National Party.
Here, Beard explains his motivation for making the film, how he found Kieren, and what it's like to film a programme with such a controversial subject matter.
Your film's called Young, Angry and White. What's it all about?
Well, with the rise in support for the far right, I guess I wanted to try and understand why people were joining parties like the BNP. Young, Angry and White is my attempt at doing that. Through the processes of researching the film, I met lots of people, and I found lots of different reasons. But I thought Kieren's story was probably the most compelling, and for me, highlighted a story that I'd heard from lots of other people - possibly in a slightly less articulate way - about how vulnerable people can be drawn towards extreme ideologies like nationalism.
Kieren is absolutely at the heart of the film. How did you find him?
I'd been hunting around for ages, trying to get the right character. I found very quickly that people who are supporting parties like the BNP fell into two groups, really. The first group was people who had been won over by their new, slick appeal, I guess, and they tended to be quite normal people who were just a bit pissed off with the current political system. When you really questioned them, they weren't what I'd call nationalists, they were just people who were a bit annoyed, and believed the BNP when they said they were offering alternatives. And then there were a second group of people, who were the nationalists, and they were people who were very hard to get to talk to me at all. They've had contact with active nationalists, and they tend to have had drummed into them that speaking to the press was a very bad thing, and that the whole mainstream political system and media are just out to try and do them down. So most of them either wouldn't reply or were quite abusive. I was getting towards my wits end, and I just started asking around. And I asked my girlfriend's cousin, who's 18, and he said he played football with a guy he thought might be a member of the BNP or something like that. And that was Kieren.
What were his motivations for wanting to take part in the film?
He was very eager to talk. He believed that one of the problems that's faced by nationalists is that they're seen as being these inhuman creatures, because they stay in the shadows and never show their faces. And actually, what he thinks nationalism needs to do is get out in the open. And with things like the rise in support for the BNP, he felt more comfortable doing that. So he had heard of me, because in the nationalist world, the hardcore centre is quite small, so as soon as you start talking to a couple of them, they gossip quite a lot. So he'd certainly heard of me. The concern that he had, which I think quite a lot of them had, was that I was some kind of MI5 mole or was working for one of the far-left organisations. So because he had assurances from my girlfriend's cousin that I was a real person, he was happy to talk to me. So we took it from there, really.
Were you uneasy about giving him a mouthpiece?
It did occur to me. One of the things that made me think about that was that I was contacting a number of people on the Young BNP's Facebook Group. I came across this one guy, who I think was 14 when I sent him the email. I sent him an email with some questions asking how he felt about various things, and he said he'd been converted to nationalism by watching the film American History X. And I've seen the film, and got a completely different message from it. But it made me think 'Wow, if a film that is that strongly against that sort of thinking can convert people to nationalism, then anything that's put out there is going to have that affect on some people', which is obviously a worrying thing. But I think parties like the BNP and the far right in general have, as a rule, been frozen out of the media quite a lot. And I think that's a bad thing, generally, because it means that if people want information about what nationalists actually think, then they go on the internet. And on the internet it's completely unmediated - if you go on the BNP site, they just tell you want they want you to think. So I think it's a good thing to occasionally show what they actually think. But equally, this film is about Kieren, it's a portrait of him, it's not a portrait of the nationalist world in general. So I would hope it shows the danger of his views as well, and I don't think it's a film that just gives him a platform to talk unchallenged and air his views.
He's a thoughtful, articulate character - he doesn't really conform to the far right stereotype, does he?
Not at all, and that was another interesting thing about making this film. I quite liked him. I expected not to like any of the people I met making this, but with Kieren I found that if I didn't speak to him about politics, I got on with him. It was only when it came to his views that I found I really didn't like it. But he was thoughtful and sensitive in many ways. But I think that's what a lot of these vulnerable young guys go through - a form of brainwashing. If you take a vulnerable teenager and tell them horrible things until they believe it, then they start repeating them. It doesn't necessarily mean they're a horrible person.
His family don't share his views. Where do you think his political beliefs come from?
Lots of people I spoke to had first encountered these types of views on the internet, and that was certainly the case with Kieren. He was at a point in his life where, for various reasons, he was very angry. I think he was looking for some answers, and he found them on the internet, on websites for the National Front and Combat 18 and things like that. They give you a ready-formed group of opponents to dislike, and to blame everything on. It's a lot easier to blame other people rather than blaming yourself or the people you love. So that's where it all started off for him. Then he went to his first demonstration, and after that he felt like he'd found a place where he belonged. I think that kids between the ages of 15 and 20 are at such a vulnerable point in the development of who they're going to be and the ideas that they're going to hang on to, that it's very easy to sway somebody at that point, especially if they're angry or upset about things.
It must be quite isolating for him, holding opinions which his family, and so many others, find reprehensible.
Absolutely. I think it is, and I think that's one of the things that pushes you closer to the other nationalists, really. You have this genuine belief that what you're saying is right, and when everyone around you thinks you're wrong, all that does is pushes you closer to the people who do agree with you. And it's not just your family and friends, it's every facet of society, really, whether it's the newspapers, television, radio, what you see around you when you go to the shops. Everything about the country we live in embraces multiculturalism. If you absolutely disagree with that, it closes off most of society. I think that's a struggle for Kieren.
Do you feel a sense of responsibility towards him? He'll probably have quite a hard time after the film has transmitted.
Yeah, I do. He's an adult, and he entered into making the film knowing that there would probably be repercussions. Two years ago his picture was in The Daily Star on a nationalist march, and friends and family who didn't know he was a nationalist reacted quite badly to it. He's certainly had a taste of what happens when people find out. I talked to him about that. So yes, I do feel responsible for him, but he's happy to stand by his views.
Towards the end of the film, it appears that Kieren is moving away from the BNP and towards the even more extreme National Front. Do you think that's the road that he's going to go down?
I don't know. A lot of what he does is about trying to impress other nationalists. Kieren's always had this very fixed stance on what he calls race-mixing, and he sees the BNP becoming slightly more moderate in a couple of their policies as a backwards step. Certainly he recognises that a lot of nationalists, including a lot of his friends in the movement, see that as selling out. I think he's keen to not sell out. But the difficult point for him is that he wants to have a future, and the BNP, with their success, offer him a political future of some sort, however limited that might be.
How do you feel about Kieren now?
When I first met him, I hoped he didn't genuinely believe the things he was saying. And I kept that hope a lot of the way through, that he wasn't actually racist. But I think he is. That's the bottom line. He's got to the point where he genuinely believes all the things he's saying, it's not just an act. And that I dislike a lot - especially as I'm in a mixed-race relationship. But I still like Kieren, and I feel sorry for him in many ways. I really hope that one day he might be able to change the way that he thinks, and get some type of a future - because I think it's such a waste of what is an intelligent and likeable person.
By Benjie Goodhart
