UPDATE: Interview with BNP candidate...

Gary Marshall, BNP candidate for North Devon, speaks to the North Devon Journal during the 2010 general election campaign

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:
“...the indigenous people of Britain are white...”, he says/ calls for a “British resistance”/ Immigration remains focus/ Candidate claims there is “nothing dark or sinister” about his nationalism/ Bring back the cane in schools, the death penalty for terrorists and murderers, and chain gangs for criminals, he says/ BNP wants to ban the import of some foreign goods and scrap foreign aid to stricken countries/ “To say I’m a Nazi, that I support Nazi ideology, or anything stupid like that, I find incredibly offensive.”/ Candidate denies BNP is a “pariah party” bu admits many people revile his leader/ Candidate remains cagey about RAF career/ “We don’t want to see any disorder or any violence”

Question: You are often accused of being racist, bigoted, fascistic even. How can you convince electors in North Devon, including non-white electors, that your party isn't those things you are accused of?
“The first thing I can say is I’m not racist, I’m not xenophobic, I’m not Islamaphobic, I’m not homophobic, or any other phobic you can think of.

“It’s very easy for what I call the old guard parties to try and keep the BNP as a small and what they would hope is an insignificant party by throwing at us words such as you're racist, you’re fascist, or you’re neo-Nazi.

“There is no getting away from the fact the BNP is still a young party and it was born out of something else. But like all political parties it has developed and it has grown.

“Yes, there was a time when the mainstream in the party, particularly under Tyndall, where they wanted to get back Britain back to pre-1948, which if that was still their policy now I wouldn’t be a member of it.

“What I hear about now is nothing to do with the colour of somebody's skin or what religion they are.

“For the vast majority of the people in the party, those aren’t the issues they are concerned about. The things they are concerned about when it comes to immigration are nothing to do with ethnicity or culture; they are to do with the number of people coming in, the mass immigration into this country.

“That’s an issue that neither Labour or the Conservatives or the Liberals are prepared to confront head on.

“Even UKIP, which shared policies similar to our own on some issues, isn’t prepared to meet it head on either.

“Everyone knows about the Equalities Commission court case; there's no doubt the constitution was saying you had to believe in certain things to be a member of the party and all right Trevor Philips was saying that was racist. That link has now been cut within the party.

“Even prior to that court case, although ethnic minorities or Afro-Carribeans who were from groups that had been settled in the country since the 1950s couldn’t have been a member but we did have supporters in those ethnic groups, also from Sikhs, Hindus and other people.

“I think it’s far better those people can now join the party. I’ve always thought it would be far better for people of any ethnicity to be able to join the party if their core beliefs and their core values were the same as our own, that being: Britain first, basically.

“Not about being ethnic British or civic British and I know that distinction has been made and I think that’s been made on common sense grounds, again which are called racist.

“It’s about supporting Britain, supporting British values and wanting to put Britain first rather than worrying about things like the EU.

“I can’t make people believe something they don’t want to believe.

“If you’re black, if you’re brown, if you’re white, whatever colour you are, I wouldn’t keep you out of my house just because of your skin colour or because of your religion or because you are not ethnically British, so how on Earth can I be a racist?”

Question: I was having a look at the BNP policies on your website and a few of them include the phrase "indigenous"; what does that mean?
“If you were saying this about any other group of people on the planet it wouldn’t cause a ripple on the water.“This is where people like Peter Hain say ‘what you mean is white’.

“It is inescapable that ethnic Europeans, whether they be French or German or from Scandinavian countries, they are indigenous white people. And yes the indigenous people of Britain are white; that is just a by-product.

“When we are talking about indigenous people we are talking about people whose heritage is either from the British isles or from Europe who have over, over the centuries, into Britain and integrated into British society.”

Question: Would you be opposed to mixed-race relationships?
“I don’t think politics has any place at all in trying to say who somebody should or shouldn’t love. That’s it, bottom line.”

Question: The word British is in the name of your party. What does the word British mean to you?
“British for me is a people, a country, a culture, it’s based on fairness, acceptance, democracy, and a common goal for people, whether that be a neighbourhood, a community, a region.

“If you have a group of people and they have something in common with each other then that forms a community in society; that’s what Britain has always been.

“It doesn’t matter that the Romans have been here, or the Vikings or the Danes, and all this other rubbish that gets thrown up all the time.

“Britain is something which hasn’t happened overnight; it’s something which has developed over millennia and has created a race of people, just like it has in any other part of the world.

“Nobody would raise an eyebrow or make any derogatory comments if someone said something about native American Indians, or indigenous Indians, but because we say indigenous British all of a sudden that is supposed to be something rather racist and unpleasant. It’s nonsense.”

Question: I guess the difference that would be made is, as you've said, in the past the party has been linked to racism.
“It’s absolutely true. All right, there have been links with the National Front, the original leadership of the BNP came out of that area. That leadership has now gone and every political party has to evolve.

“There was a time when the Labour party used to have socialist values; now you couldn't get a cigarette paper between Labour and Conservative. The modern Labour party is more Thatcherite than the Thatcherites.”

Question: The BNP website is urging people to "join the British resistance"; what's the resistance against?
“The resistance is not against immigrants. I don’t blame immigrants for coming here. I blame a Government and an ideology who invite people into this country, promising them something which isn't here.

“They build up hopes for people from the third world on a lie. What happens to the vast majority of people when they come here is they’re exploited; they’re working for the minimum wage; they’re working in poor conditions and I’m not saying all employers, because that would be extremely unfair, but there are some employers which exploit these people.

“Whether you’re talking about indigenous or civic British people, I’m talking about everybody who is in this country legally now, and is contributing to this society, they’re not being given a fair deal because what is being done to this country; no one’s ever asked us.

“No one took the time to turn around to the people and say: is this what you want to happen to your country, is this what you want to happen to your culture. So the resistance is against those who have decided to go down a particular path without a mandate from the people.”

Question: When you say a particular path, can you expand on that a bit?
“Have a look at immigration for a start. Gordon Brown has been saying, and prior to that Tony Blair, for the last 13 years we have been told that immigration is good for business, is good for this country; they’ve never been able to prove that. When you look at the actual figures, what they are coming up with is a nonsense.

“They say we have to say in Europe because 70% of our trade is with Europe but it’s not accurate. This country does 40% of our export market to Europe but we import 60%. We have a trading deficit with Europe.

“We are one of the two major contributors to the EU. It’s ourselves and Germany. We give all that money to Europe and we get it back in targeted grants so it’s an inefficient way of using our own taxpayers’ money.

“There’s still £7billion of that money left in Brussels to be distributed to other countries.“Now, when this country is financially so close to bankruptcy, the last thing we need to be doing is contributing into a European pot which doesn’t benefit Britain at all.

“There is so much waste in Europe. There is so much fraud in Europe. And it’s being financed by the British people.

“We have as a surplus with the rest of the world and a growing deficit with Europe. It makes perfect sense to leave the EU, raise our taxes and use it on our own country and for our own people.

“In addition, Gordon Brown and the Labour Party say it creates jobs in this country. Well, again, not true.

“Trade deficit with the EU means there are 700,000 fewer jobs in the UK than there would be if we left the EU.

“Going back to immigration. We’ve totally lost control of our borders. They keep saying we can put a cap on things or we can do a points system. Two thirds of all immigration into Britain comes from Europe.

“The only way we can control our borders is by leaving Europe because they tell us what we can and cannot do.

“Farming. The amount of legislation which comes out of Europe is killing farmers. An example is the double-tagging you have to do on cattle and sheep.

“Same with fishing industry. We have fleets coming in from all over Europe and they are depleting our stocks at such a rate that we’ll have barren seas around our coats very shortly.

“We need to take control of our fishing fleet and rest certain areas”.

Question: If you look at nationalism as a creed in an of itself, where can you look to history and see any examples of where this type of nationalism had led to a peaceful and harmonious society?
“There’s nationalism all over the world. There’s been nationalism in the past, there’s nationalism now.

“There’s only two types of politics: there’s nationalism or there’s internationalism.

“Internationalism goes down the route of globalisation. We’ve seen what a disaster that is.

“I know what a lot of people, our detractors like to say, is because we have the word ‘national’ in our party, ah national socialism, again an absolute nonsense.

“Nationalism for me and the party is putting the interests of your nation and your nation’s people first. There is nothing Nazi, there is nothing fascist about that at all. It’s common sense.

“You look after your own home, you look after your own family, your own people. That’s what nationalism’s all about.

“It’s about looking after your own industry, your own farming, your own fishing, your own people. There’s nothing sinister or dark about it.”

Question: BNP policy states there is an “overwhelming extinguishing of Britain and British identity under a tsunami of immigration”. Is that the case in North Devon?
“In North Devon we haven’t got a huge number of ethnic minorities or third world migrants but the very impact of immigration into this country, whether that’s from Europe or anywhere else, is having a knock-on effect, even down into the rural areas of this country.

“Once the cities are filled up and people want to move out. I know one term that’s used a lot is ‘white flighters’, I don’t think that’s a friendly comment, but people who want to leave an area, who don’t feel they identify with an area, move out into the rural areas.

“In addition you only have to look at the latest regional spatial survey over the amount of urbanisation that’s going to take place in the South West between now and 2026.

“They are talking about the South West having to build another 600,000 houses. They have already had to admit that somewhere between 84% and 86% of that new housing will go to migrants.

“The reason for that is quite simple: the South East is full. So they are having to move large numbers of people to other parts of the country now.

“The first stage of that is already in the process of coming to fruition in North Devon. We have draft proposals for another 10,900 houses to be built in North Devon between now and 2016.

“We need a plan for North Devon which will alleviate the housing problem we’ve got for local people. This plan for 10,900 houses isn’t going to do it at all.

“It’s an inescapable fact that the gap between house prices in the South West and wages has grown immeasurably and the boom and bust we have seen over the last few years has seen young people trying to save a deposit never getting any closer.”

Question: Where your opponents might pick you up on some of that is they would have concerns about the house-building linked into the regional spatial strategy but the reasons the BNP give for the need for that housing is immigration, whereas the reasons they would give are the statistics that people are living much longer, people are living in more single-person households, and there has been a collapse of housebuilding over the past few years. That’s why there’s a need for housing and immigration is balanced by net emigration.
“That’s a fallacy again as well. The fact of the matter is people are living longer now and that’s a good thing.

“That only accounts for a very tiny proportion. The majority of people that are living longer already own their own homes. People living in single households: yes, usually in the rented sector where prices are far too high.

“The old guard parties refuse to accept the fact the population of Britain is going up for one major reason and that is mass immigration.

“The legal population of Britain right now is between 60 and 61 million people. In the next 20 years we are going to see that exceed 70 million if we continue with the numbers of immigration we are seeing now.

“It doesn’t matter if you have a cap or a points-based system for that one third of people coming from outside the EU. The vast number come through the EU and until you get a handle on that you can never stop mass immigration.

“The figures they are giving about the numbers of people leaving the country balances out the number coming in is not true.

“Net emigration from the UK in 2008 was only 87,000 people. But you have in 2007 330,000 people coming into the country and 2008 250,000 people.

“Overall immigration figures are staying fairly consistent.”

Question: The BNP is calling for “voluntary resettlement whereby immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to the land of ethnic origin assisted by generous financial incentives”. What do you mean there by immigrants? Does that include people who were born here?
“Anybody who is legally in this country and doesn’t feel they want to remain will be able to go home with a financial incentive and that’s nothing new. That legislation already exists now.

“No one will be forced out of the country. Anyone who wants to stay and contribute to British society is welcome; it’s their home too.

“People who have come to the country and don’t want to integrate with society, they want to change it, they don’t feel they can assimilate into society, and they don’t like the fact a Government would be there that is going to say ‘no, this is Britain and if you want to be here you have to sign up for the British ideals of democracy and everything that goes with that.

“If they say ‘we want to go home’, then, yes, they would be given financial incentive. It’s not a Draconian measure.”

Question: How would it work in practice, though? How would people know about it?
“The vast majority of people know about it now because the biggest publicist of that sort of policy are the Labour Party and the Conservatives trying to say it’s a terrible, Draconian policy and yet it’s their Governments who put it on the statute books in the first place.”

Question: I mean would you write letters to people and say this exists?
“I have no idea how it would be brought to people’s attention. How would you write to people? Would you just target people because they have a foreign-sounding name? That sounds a bit silly to me.

“An advertising campaign maybe or perhaps in the simple fact that people would know this is here because it would be discussed.”

Question: The BNP wants to reintroduce corporal punishment. How would that work and for which crimes?
“It should be an option which is available. Why shouldn’t it be?

“Society has got to a point where if someone points at you in the face that can be classed as assault. How can that be assault? It’s ridiculous.

“If a teacher points at a child there’s so many things that can happen. There are people who take advantage of that situation and it makes common sense that a teacher has that as an option.“Anybody who abuses their power or their position needs to be dealt with.”

Question: Would that be the cane?
“Yes, why not? When I was in school once or twice maybe when I was a little out of hand I got the cane and I tell you what, you didn’t want to go back and do it again.”

Question: The BNP believe the police are constrained by a “politically correct straightjacket”. Can you give some examples of that straightjacket?
“A perfect one is if a police suspect an illegal activity is going on in a house and they want to launch a raid they can go in and do it.

“If they feel there might be an illegal activity going on in a Muslim household, first they have to go to their community leader to let then know what they are going to do, then they have to make sure what time of day they go to make sure they don’t interrupt prayers or that they don’t catch female members of the family in their bedrooms or anything like that.

“They can’t take dogs in there. I mean this is political correctness gone mad.”

Question: I’ve not heard of that before. What other sort of things do you think are constraining them?
“There’s a lot. You get directives from individual police forces where they will tweak the rules and say ‘don’t approach certain ethnic groups of people because it might create racial tension.

“What it comes down to is it doesn’t matter what skin colour you’ve got or what religion you are, if someone is breaking the law or is suspected of breaking the law, then the police should be allowed to do their job, not worry about sensitivities.”

Question: The BNP wants the death penalty and chain gangs. Which crimes for?
“We’re not talking about an automatic death penalty. What we’re talking about is once someone has been found guilty and only when there’s incontrovertible DNA evidence to support a conviction, the judge should have that as an option.“One of the things for that would be terrorist activities, like the London bombings. Child murderers. Police murderers.”

Question: And chain gangs?
“If you have people who are a low security risk in prisons, why not make them work for the country? It’s all part of them paying something back to society and it’s far better for them to be out doing something for the community.

Question: Your policy talks about “non-indigenous crime” as a specific category. What’s that?
“Are you talking about non-indigenous people committing crime in this country?”

Question: I don’t know. The policy talks about specifically about measure to deal with “non-indigenous crime” and I wasn’t sure what it meant.
“I think what you’re talking about is people who have committed crimes in this country and get custodial sentence. Once they have completed that custodial sentence, why should they be allowed into our society? They should be immediately deported.

“Nobody is saying immigrants are more prone to criminality than people in Britain. We are quite capable of growing our own criminals. But why would we want to import them?“

Question: Where would that policy begin and end? Would that be for illegal immigrants?
“Illegal immigrants shouldn’t be in the country anyway.

“We have an underclass of people being exploited in this country working in the black economy.

Question: Just to clarify. The policy talks about deporting immigrants if they commit a crime?

“If they have committed a serious crime which brings a custodial sentence then once they have completed that custodial sentence...we’re talking about foreign nationals who reside in this country. We’re not talking about people who have been granted a British passport.”

Question: On the economy, you want to exclude certain foreign imports from our markets. How would that be organised and policed and could that not just cause mayhem and confusion or make the country a bit of a laughing stock?
“Not at all. We have a trade surplus with the rest of the world. We only have a trade deficit with Europe. By coming out of the EU and investing heavily in our industry again, not to produce cheap and cheerful, but high-quality industry, whether that be in the new technologies or energy production.

“We’ve got some great minds in this country. What we haven’t got is the investment in the industries.

“What we’re talking about is by becoming an independent, sovreign nation again, building up new industries, and entering into trade agreements with individual countries, and saying there would be certain items we would produce for ourselves and that we wouldn’t want to be imported but we can come to a reciprocal arrangement with those countries.”

Question: The BNP wants to end the foreign aid budget. That could have several consequences for people in very impoverished places in Africa. Babies die of malnutrition, that sort of thing.
“What you have got to remember is what we’re talking about is a budget which is £9billion...this is at a time when we are constantly listening to these politicians on the radio or TV scrapping over where they’re going to find another £2billion or £3billion from and how many jobs they are going to have to cut and what efficiency savings they are going to make.

“Every time we have a financial shortfall we’re told we can find that money in efficiency savings. We must have been incredibly inefficient because we have one every year.

“We still have child poverty in this country and we also have an incredible amount of pensioner poverty.

“What we’re talking about is we put things right at home first. We’re not saying to hell with the rest of the world.

“When the books are balanced again that’s the time you can say we have a surplus of cash we would be willing to give to other parts of the world.

“We have been giving aid to Africa and other parts of the third world for decades and nothing is seeming to get better. It comes down to the governments in those countries.”

Question: Last year there was some fury from Second World War veterans over the appropriation of imagery, Spitfires and Winston Churchill specifically, and some of them said things like “the BNP were the people we were fighting against”, accusing you of being Nazis. How do you respond to that?
“There were some people who made those allegations. At the same time there were people who had fought the Nazis who are members of our party. I’ve been to a meeting last year in Exeter where a benefactor of our party was a Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot.

“It’s very easy to pick on people who have fallen for the lie that we are a racist, neo-Nazi party, and people will have their own political views and are quite entitled to those.

“I have got no objection with people having their own beliefs. It’s just a shame that a lot of the people who say these things, they’ve never actually read our policies, never actually spoken to any of us and tried to find out what we’re trying to do for the country.

“They’ve just taken it as read.

“I find it quite offensive to be called something like that. My grandfather died in World War Two fighting the Nazis. My great uncle was sent to the far east and was captured at Singapore by the Japanese and had to spend the war working on the Burma railway. He survived it.

“To say I’m a Nazi, that I support Nazi ideology, or anything stupid like that, I find incredibly offensive.”

Question: Another thing often put to the BNP is about the Holocaust. Nick Griffin has been linked to comments calling it a “hoax”. What are your views on that?
“Nick Griffin, a long time ago, long before I ever spoke to him or met him, said that he didn’t deny the Holocaust, I’m not going to support him because they’re his comments, he questioned the numbers.

“He has since retracted that, so if you want to know what Nick Griffin thinks I think you should talk to Nick Griffin.

“I have never denied the Holocaust, never thought it was a bit of propaganda.

“It’s quite evident the Holocaust did happen, for the Jews and for a number of other people, political dissidents as well. There were a number of groups of people affected by mass exterminations and I don’t support that and I don’t defend that and I have never, ever denied it happened, and I never would.”

Question: Comments are made on the right that there is some sort of media conspiracy and that’s linked to a Zionist element. What are your views on that?
“A Zionist element, no. I think there are a very few number of people that control an awful lot of the media that have their own political agendas and they are quite happy to propagate rather outlandish stories about the BNP.

“I’m not saying all journalists tell lies at all.

“There have been a number of occasions when retractions have had to be made.

“I know there are certain rules journalists have to work by and unfortunately I think that does push people towards negative responses rather than just having an unbiased reporting”.

Question: One more thing which has been in the news which has been on people’s minds. Your former publicity director, Mark Collett, he was arrested on April 1 on suspicion of threats to kill. That’s the sort of thing that doesn’t happen in a serious political party, isn’t it?
“He has been expelled from the party and he has been released on police bail and my personal view is: good riddance.

“He has made some incredibly inflammatory comments in the past and he is exactly the sort of person who we need to get out of the party and fortunately there are very few of them left.

“The sort of comments he would make were the old BNP not the new BNP.

“He has been arrested and questioned for making threats to kill; the party chairman, yes. He wasn’t talking about going and killing members of the public.”

Question: Can I ask you about Nick Griffin, your leader. How would you describe him as a man, as a politician?
“I’ve met Nick Griffin on several occasions and I’ve also had dinner with him in a public restaurant, not on my own, with three or four other party officials, on a couple of occasions, and I’m still trying to see where this monster is that our political opponents try to portray.

“He’s a perfectly decent married man. He loves his wife, he loves is kids, and he loves his country and I don’t see that’s a terrible thing.

“I’ve had perfectly normal conversations with him. He laughs, he jokes. He’s just a normal guy. But he’s got strong beliefs.”

Question: He is reviled, isn’t he, by a lot of people?
“A lot of people, yes, but reviled by people who have never actually spoken to him or met him.”

Question: It is fair to say that the BNP is something of a pariah party, isn’t it?
“No, not really, not any more. We have still got the same old lies coming out of the same politicians. We have been given Europe, we have been given mass immigration, by successive parties who have never asked the British people their opinion.

“Political parties might come from one place and they have to evolve and the BNP has done that.”

Question: Can I ask you about local support? What is the sort of network you’ve got in North Devon?
“It’s growing very rapidly. We have an awful lot of members down here. Devon has more party members than any other county in the South West and it’s growing.”

Question: What sort of numbers are we talking about?
“I don’t want to tell you numbers. It is considerable and on top of that we have an awful lot of people who actively support us who haven’t become members as yet. There have been a lot of people who wanted to join and couldn’t because of the membership suspension; a number of those people have now joined.

“There are other people who are at that half-way house stage, where they like our policies, they want to help us, maybe they want to see how things run for a little while, and for example, during this campaign, I’ve got an awful lot of people who have offered to help me with the campaign.

“There will be leafleting teams out on the streets and we will be making our presence known in the area, in a good way.

“We don’t want to see any disorder or any violence. There has been an attempt by certain anti-BNP groups, and the UAF, that would like try and turn it into some kind of a circus sideshow. I have already spoken to the area commander and said we are here and we don’t there to be any violence or any trouble caused and explained how we are going to fight the campaign.

“We want to be treated the same as you would any other political party. You don’t have to agree with us but you should respect the people who are part of the BNP or support the BNP.”

Question: You’re a sales manager, can I say who for?
“No. I don’t want to put my employers in a position of being questioned about things. I think it’s unfortunate that anybody who is simply just standing for a political party has to be careful that the people around them don’t get hurt or affected by it.

“I do my job extremely well. I don’t discuss politics in work. Obviously the people I work for know I’m standing for election. I keep my private life and my work life as two separate entities.”

Question: About your previous career. You were in the RAF. Can I ask about that; where you a pilot?
“No, I wasn’t a pilot. I was trained in intelligence.”

Question: Intelligence. Can you tell us any more about that?
“No, I don’t really want to talk any more about it. I left the RAF with an exemplary conduct record.”

Question: And how long were you in for?
“I don’t want to talk any more about the RAF.”