Questionable motives
How often do you watch Question Time on BBC1? Me neither. Of late they've tried to update it by including panel members from popular culture, comedians and the like. I think they figured that the general public were more likely to trust and engage with those individuals than they were with politicians. I still didn't watch it, I suspect that neither did you.
The invitation to a known and committed racist is a different ball game of course; it attracted far more attention and, inevitably, viewers. Even I watched some of it. What did I learn? Not much, really: that politicians - whatever their political hue - will try to weasel out of answering any question and always talk in general terms rather than specific ones. I already knew this from numerous news broadcasts and past editions of Question Time.
So, what was gained from the questionable appearance of a vile and hated figure on a prime-time political television programme? Whatever the BBC may say - and your eyes and ears may have agreed with them - the appearance of Nick Griffin gave his party credibility. They were seen to be accepted into the political sphere, to have their policies and opinions validated for debate.
It doesn't really matter that we all may have hooted as the odious little man was ridiculed on live television - we were not the ones ever likely to have voted for him. Those who are may have sympathised with his idiotic viewpoints and, if you're of that mindset anyway, the opinions of Jack Straw et al will hardly be of any import.
What of the BBC's defence? Their point was that the BNP has enough support in the UK, verified by poll results, to have a seat at the QT table. It seems to matter not that their victories were in elections with relatively low turn-outs for seats that most Brits considered irrelevant. It matters not that their victories were due to nasty, ill-gotten protest votes.
If this argument is to be supported we can look forward to seeing members of the Jedi religion popping up on the BBC's religious broadcasts, since - during the last census - they polled sufficient results to be recognised as a popular religion.
If we really wanted to ridicule the BNP it would've been better to dedicate a documentary to them, hosted by Jon Ronson or Charlie Brooker or Louis Theroux: intelligent people who would treat them to the scorn they deserve.
What was it all about? Inevitably, and perhaps cynically, I would have to say it was about audience figures. No-one watches political programming on TV, on average QT has an audience of 2.6 million, last night it was 7.9 - three times higher than usual. That's a lot of people to be exposed to an unapologetic bigot, 50% of the available television audience at that time.
The BBC is a public-service broadcaster but it likes to defend itself with popularity - and having enticed that number of people to watch a current affairs programme will do their quarterly viewing figures and annual self-importance report no harm at all.
Of course it's all about free speech, something we all should defend. Free speech is one thing, validating racists for the purpose of ratings is quite another.
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Paul Flower - Paul Flower works in the music industry, a promoter, critic, (self)-publicist and all-round consultant to clients.
The thing is, good politicians, however much we distrust them, have an admiral ability to weasel out of any awkward questions with a positive spin.
Mr Griffin wasn't even able to accomplish that. He couldn't weasel his way out of ANY of the questions, and couldn't even explain why he'd apparently changed his views later on in the programme.
My distrust of many mainstream politicians is due in part to that ability to skirt around awkward questions.. but Nick Griffin can't even do that, and still can't be trusted.
I think it was fair to let him have his place there.. our grandfathers fought a world war to defend his right to free speech, and our right to express our disgust at it.. It was also a good opportunity to hand him the metaphoric noose, which I think he made very good use of last night.
As for his comments on history - I didn't go to University like him, but I think I'm correct that Britain was essentially Pagan well before Christianity took hold... and heaven forbid what he'll do when someone points out to him that Jesus was Jewish.