When I first heard that Buckingham Palace had decided to ban Nick Griffin from attending the garden party this afternoon, I thought "hmmm, bad move". However, having seen their reasoning I think they've done the right thing. Griffin had stupidly milked the invitation for party political purposes. If he had said nothing, attended, and then crowed about it, the Palace could have done nothing.
It shows what an amateur he is, in so many ways and the internal pressure on him to quit will become a little stronger as a result.
20 comments:
I disagree. He is an elected MEP and that is the end of it.
I think this move makes our monarchy look weak and politically compromised, which is a tragedy.
Who will they ban next?
Time we had a republic if you ask me
So, a bumptious mooncalf does not get to eat cucumber sandwiches at Buckingham Palace because the Palace says he might "blatantly politicise their attendance in this way".
Clearly this does not apply to Prime Ministers who instigate illegal wars that results in hundreds of thousands of deaths and a brand new home grown terrorist threat or leaders like Robert Mugabe or Ceaucescu who commit mass genocide.
That's all right then, dignity is restored and protocol has been observed.
Whose garden party is it anyway?
Oh but so very, very funny.
And who will Prince Philip have to talk to now?
Iain- While I disagree with you, I do believe the rules of invitations to these events should be challenged.
Just because a person has been elected an MP or MEP should not give them any special priviledge over members of teh general public.
I favour an approach similar to the register for jury service, if you are good enough to be on a jury then you should be eligible for an invitation to a Garden Party.
Invites should never be about politics.
I cant stand the oaf, but today I feel a little bit more republican.
Who pays for the garden party and the security, the civil list or HM from her so called "personal wealth"?
Is there any truth in the rumour that in a further act of spite HM will be serving Marmite sandwiches?
Nick Griffin could have explained to the Queen that Fascist parties have never come to power in countries with monarchies except in one (admittedly significant) case where they abolished that institution as quickly as possible, and that it is his own party's policy to depose her as apartheid South Africa did and as Ian Smith's Rhodesia purported to do.
When not discussing Her Majesty's own descent, both from the "negroid" Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and, via Elizabeth of York with her Moorish antecedents, from Muhammad. Queen Charlotte, after whom the city in North Carolina is named, is shown clearly with light skin but African facial features in contemporaneous portraiture, and was spoken of as "negroid" without any self-consciousness during her lifetime.
She was descended from the part-black Royal House of Portugal, a member of which, Catherine of Braganza who was the consort of Charles II but from whom no one is descended (unlike her husband...), is shown looking just like a mixed-raced Briton of today in a portrait displayed in one of the private areas of Durham Castle. I sat under it only on Monday, waiting for the champagne to flow and the Vice-Chancellor to speak at the launch of a friend's festschrift. It did, and he did.
This really would have been the last opportunity for Griffin and Her Majesty to have had that conversation. The BNP took barely half as many votes this year as last year, fought 38 council seats and lost 36 of them, and lost every seat on Barking & Dagenham Council, of which it had thought that it might take control. Like the NF before it and the BUF before that, the BNP was always talked up by its sectarian Left opponents, in order to make themselves appear more important than they really were. This remains very much the case with the teaching of the 1930s. Mosley was never really terribly important. Nor was Griffin.
Every 30 or 40 years, this tendency reappears to make a lot of noise before going away again. Thankfully, I will be in my sixties or older before it happens again. And thankfully, it would, once more, only last for a few years. That is how these things work.
Nick Griffin could have explained to the Queen that Fascist parties have never come to power in countries with monarchies except in one (admittedly significant) case where they abolished that institution as quickly as possible, and that it is his own party's policy to depose her as apartheid South Africa did and as Ian Smith's Rhodesia purported to do.
When not discussing Her Majesty's own descent, both from the "negroid" Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and, via Elizabeth of York with her Moorish antecedents, from Muhammad. Queen Charlotte, after whom the city in North Carolina is named, is shown clearly with light skin but African facial features in contemporaneous portraiture, and was spoken of as "negroid" without any self-consciousness during her lifetime.
She was descended from the part-black Royal House of Portugal, a member of which, Catherine of Braganza who was the consort of Charles II but from whom no one is descended (unlike her husband...), is shown looking just like a mixed-raced Briton of today in a portrait displayed in one of the private areas of Durham Castle. I sat under it only on Monday, waiting for the champagne to flow and the Vice-Chancellor to speak at the launch of a friend's festschrift. It did, and he did.
This really would have been the last opportunity for Griffin and Her Majesty to have had that conversation. The BNP took barely half as many votes this year as last year, fought 38 council seats and lost 36 of them, and lost every seat on Barking & Dagenham Council, of which it had thought that it might take control. Like the NF before it and the BUF before that, the BNP was always talked up by its sectarian Left opponents, in order to make themselves appear more important than they really were. This remains very much the case with the teaching of the 1930s. Mosley was never really terribly important. Nor was Griffin.
Every 30 or 40 years, this tendency reappears to make a lot of noise before going away again. Thankfully, I will be in my sixties or older before it happens again. And thankfully, it would, once more, only last for a few years. That is how these things work.
Did you get your invite yet, Iain?
Grim, Garden parties are not really my thing...
Anyway, I have met Her Majesty at the Palace before...
Let's be honest, banning Griffin was due to his party and nothing else. If an MEP of any other party had done the same thing as Griffin in regards to this garden party he would still have gone.
Gosh, this posting is bringing out the nutjobs. It proves yet again (as if we needed more!) that many of your "readers" are the sort of people whose parents would probably have been put in charge had Hitler succeeded in defeating this country.
You must sometimes feel a lonely guy Iain, when you sit back and look at your comments. Thank goodness for Sky TV which attracts so many of them over here for a quick snort of right-wing ramblings.
Hitler was a left wing authoritarian
Nothing right wing about him or Griffin
I don't particularly like Griffin or the BNP, but it raises a few questions, such as, are you seriously suggesting that you agree with a legally and fairly elected British politician being refused entry to Buckingham Palace for a garden party?
Forget what he stands for, the above question is valid.
Would you, along with your Westminster elite friends and acquaintances sucking on the public teet, care to enlighten us as to who and what is acceptable, in your eyes, in a politician?
It's disgraceful and an affront to British democracy, and probably the most ironic thing is how the Queen fetes and meets with all kinds of undesirables of a foreign nature regularly.
This is also a PR coup for the BNP...and you call him an amateur?
I mirror some other comments here.
The Monarchy MUST be beyond politics.
Whatever you may think of Griffin his party receives support from a not insignificant proportion of the electorate. THEY must not be ignored and he should not have been excluded. Who next one wonders.
I met up with an old friend today. HE was a Tory activist (I'm largely apolitical and he knows that) but has now left the party. Like me he set off in life as a socialist when that was sensible and respectable.
To my absolute surprise he actually started mentioning the BNP. It is clear that their PUBLISHED policies are attractive to him now. Not that he has joined but he clearly IS thinking. We didn't explore it but just had a nice lunch. HE is highly qualified academically. No fool.
I seriously suspect that a majority of the population are thinking similarly but dismissed the BNP as a "non runner" at the recent election and just wanted Labour out and voted accordingly.
It may well be different next time. I think people are sick of the sameness of Tory and Labour which gives them little real choice.
Maybe the coalition will deliver but if it does not I suspect the patience of the electorate will be exhausted and the BNP could very suddenly become a major player. You repeatedly play the 5 and nothing improves then why not play the 9? So to speak.
Cameron and Clegg seriously need to consider this and start to correct all the expensive nonsenses which Labour enacted. If they do not then ???? The initial momentum must be maintained.
@ David Lindsay
Apart from repetitively publishing your quaint views all over the blogosphere, you now choose to publish in duplicate here.
Why?
Have you run out of things to say? Are you suffering from a particularly exotic form of Tourettes? Or are you just a very lonely person?
I do hope the palace ban Spellbound from appearing at the Royal Variety Show. Everyone knows that Twist & Pulse were better and it just goes to prove the foolishness of letting the proletariat vote on things.
I suspect that Spellbound are just going to use their invitation to appear at the show for shameless self promotion.
"Gosh, this posting is bringing out the nutjobs. It proves yet again (as if we needed more!) that many of your "readers" are the sort of people whose parents would probably have been put in charge had Hitler succeeded in defeating this country."
What, like Lloyd George?
Didn't King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy sack Mussolini in 1943?
If Griffin kept quiet until afterwards and worn a burka he'd have got in no problem.
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