In the wake of the BBC’s decision to allow the British National Party’s (BNP) leader Nick Griffin onto the show ‘Question Time’, there is serious need for debate as to how mainstream politics should handle fascist extremists in the UK.

To recap, the BNP are an extreme right-wing political party whose constitution states that they are: ‘committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948.’

Their leader, Nick Griffin, has openly stated that he doesn’t believe the holocaust took place. He has attended Ku Klux Klan rallies and has previously been found guilty of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred.

The BNP would be an unfortunate sideshow were it not for their slight increase in electoral fortunes which has seen them grab two seats in the European Parliament with 6.26% of the overall vote largely due to widespread public apathy (only 34% of the electorate bothered to vote).

This is the context for the BBC’s decision to invite the BNP onto Question Time which was due to the ‘demonstrated evidence of support at a national level.’ While this may look like a principled stand for free speech this is not the case. Rather, it was a poorly thought-out publicity stunt. Fascists like the BNP are always a source of perverse curiosity. The UK media regularly laps up any story regarding them as they are an easy target for journalistic vitriol.

The BBC made clear that they expected the BNP to be rightly shown up in the public eye. Unfortunately, the people who need convincing the most (the newer BNP voters who are undoubtedly racist but possibly not outright Nazis) will see the exact opposite. They will see a political underdog being pilloried for his ‘sincere’ defence of their country.

Part of the reason for the BNPs recent improvement in performance has been its ability to hide from public view its unrepentant fascist ideology. This has been combined with a focus on anti-immigration and anti-Islamic policies, which sadly tend to be far more mainstream views in the UK. Instead of talking about ‘white people’, the BNP now talk about ‘indigenous people’, thus attempting to shift the debate from ‘race’ to ‘ethnicity.’ By putting the BNP on Question Time, the BBC has further added to this veneer of respectability and pretence that the BNP is a normal political party when it is not.

This is not to say that the BNP should not be allowed to voice their opinion, just that they should not be subsidised by the British public (who pay the license fee which supports the BBC) to do so.

There is a place for the BNP on TV. The BNP should be exposed for their true colours. Indeed, undercover investigations reported in the media have successfully linked high-ranking BNP members with neo-nazism in Britain.

The BNP still thankfully represent a small minority of the UK’s popular support. This is underlined by their poor showing in the European election, which was made possible only through an extremely low turnout. However, the BNP should not be allowed public platforms to espouse their hate, as this will only help to legitimise them and their fascist politics.

One of the ways in which the BNP has been challenged is to address the fundamentally racist part of its party constitution. This is as a result of a legal challenge by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission on the grounds that the BNP’s racist policies contravene anti-discrimination legislation. This is exactly the kind of action that is needed to undermine the BNP’s ability to spread its message of hate.

Rather than provide a stage for these extremists, the BBC and other public institutions should adopt a policy of ‘no platform’ that defends the public’s right not to have to accept fascism and racism in public.