Chickens Come Home To Roost

The news is full of reports, and repeats of the video clip showing Gordon Brown calling a woman, who had confronted him, a bigoted woman.



The woman was reportedly a Labour voter, yet the way she assailed Brown shouting "Are you going to deal with the deficit today, Gordon?" did not give that impression! She then went on to assail him, in discussion, with comments about Eastern European immigration. Brown dealt with the comments in the way all the mainstream politicians have dealt with this issue - by slimily accommodating to it, by attempting to show how tough they are on immigration. In private, Brown gave his real views, the views he should have expressed publicly in replying to the woman's bigoted views.

For years, the main parties have tried to portray this ridiculous picture in which Britain is a most tolerant society, where racism is restricted to just a few extremists. But, anyone who talks to ordinary people everyday knows that the bigoted views this woman came out with, about immigration, are common coin. The fact that they are so widely held does not make them any less reactionary, any less bigoted! And its not just in relation to immigration that such bigotry and intolerance is widespread. Britain is riddled with intolerance, whether it is sexism, racism, homophobia, and even intolerance of disabled people, as recent programmes showing how attacks on disabled people have been swept under the carpet, demonstrates.

And attempts to legislate that intolerance out of people's heads has clearly not worked. Nearly 40 years after the Equal Pay Act was passed, women continue to be discriminated against both in pay and jobs, for instance, and what applies to women applies even more to other forms of discrimination.

But, the mainstream parties have responded by sweeping it under the carpet, by trying to perpetuate this ridiculous myth of a tolerant society. In relation to immigration, they respond by accommodating to it, by vying between each other as to who can be seen to be the toughest on immigration, rather than pointing out that race is not a problem, racism is! Even when reaction takes the form of organised child abuse within the Catholic Church, rather than confront that reaction head on, they respond by giving an official invitation to the Pope to visit!

In this election, it was known that one of the elephants in the room would be the BNP, but instead of confronting those ingrained bigoted views, that are rampant in British society, like those expressed today, and on which the cancer of the BNP feeds, the main parties have attempted to keep the discussion within narrow bounds.

Nick Clegg is presenting himself as something different. He isn't. When people quickly realise that fact, who are they going to turn to next? It will not be the various left sects, who delude themselves even more about the real nature of the British working-class than does the Labour Party. Either these bigoted ideas are confronted here and now - and there is no reason to doubt this woman when she says that she did not see what was bigoted in the ideas she put forward - or else the main parties are simply driving large numbers of people into the hands of the BNP, the EDL and possibly at some point even worse.

Brown should stick by his words. The ideas put to him were bigoted, he should explain why, and in the process begin to undermine those ideas within society in general, and thereby undermine the basis for the fascists to benefit from them.