It’s been over a week since the British National Party leader Nick Griffin appeared on a shamelessly hyped edition of the BBC’s television show Question Time. A long time in politics. Though not as long the First World War, the Roman occupation of Britain, the Ice Age – all mentioned by the poppy-wearing panelists on the programme.
Race was, unsurprisingly, the hot topic, with Griffin claiming that the ‘indigenous people’ of Britain had suffered ‘genocide’ through immigration policy. Bonnie Greer (introduced as ‘an American-born playwright and deputy chairman [sic] of the British Museum’) questions the word indigenous. ‘What sort of a political party is based on an idea of indigenous people?’ She asks. ‘It just doesn’t exist’.
Greer later critiques the BNP’s website and the history it presents.
‘on his [Nick Griffin’s] site he starts his history largely in 700 AD; where’s the rest of British history? Where’s the Romans? There’s a reason the Romans aren’t there, because they were a multicultural society. Anybody could be a Roman citizen, and there were armies here of Africans and Asians and Europeans and when Rome left they were left behind. Now what happened with them? Do you think they hooked up with your indigenous Ice Age Britons, Nick?’
Responding to criticism of his use of the word of indigenous to describe Holocene Britons, Nick Griffin retorts:
‘Jack Straw wouldn’t dare to go to New Zealand and say to a Maori, ‘what do you mean indigeous’? … The indigenous people of these islands – the English, the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh – the colour is irrelevant. It is the people who have been here overwhelming for the last 17,000 years. We are the aborigines here. .. the simple fact is that the majority of the British people are descended from people who’ve lived here since time immemorial.’
Prehistory crops up again later in the programme
Bonnie Greer – ‘Look, the term indigenous: first of all there was an Ice Age here. There were no people here in the ice age because they couldn’t live in the ice.’
David Dimbleby [presenter] – ‘Let’s not go too far back. We’ll be here all night if we start at the Ice Age.’
Bonnie Greer – ‘No, Nick Griffin calls his party for indigenous, Ice Age people, am I wrong?’
Nick Griffin – ‘The people largely descended by people who came here, when the ice melted, 17,000 years ago.’
Bonnie Greer – ‘When the ice melted, 17,000 years ago, people came up from the south, didn’t they? They couldn’t come from the north. Where would they have come from the south? All of us […] are descended from Africa. You wouldn’t disagree with that, would you? Now, the only people who were here on this continent, and I’ve got a lot of books, in fact, I brought a lot of stuff for you to read Nick, because you need it… The only people who were here, and I call them people, were Neanderthals, those were the people who were on the European continent. Now if you don’t believe that, you can come to the British Museum, we’ve got lots and lots of information for you, I really wish you’d come, because the history you’ve got on your website is a joke. It’s wacky, and anybody who would seriously get upset by it …’
Wow, I knew this would be a circus, but it turned out to be more entertaining than expected!
There’s a serious point though (apart from the need to read books and not websites). The words ‘indigenous’, ‘aborigine’, ‘heritage’, are being appropriated by a racist political party to oppose immigration and multiculturalism. This highlights an awkward paradox in liberal thinking and language that derides the concept of race in some contexts and embraces it in others. Even while the concept of ethnicity as constructed, unbounded and mutable catches on, identification on the basis of ‘biological origins’ remains popular.
Tags: BBC, BNP, Bonnie Greer, indigenous, Nick Griffin
November 8, 2009 at 3:41 am
Surely the important thing about the use of the word indigenous is that it means what the person using it understands it to mean.
What is the point of engaging in long winded discussions in order to show that you are better educated or informed than the person using the term. Pedantic point scoring .I know what a BNP supporter means when he or she uses the word and that`s all that really matters. Perhaps you could find time to reply when you have finished checking your local shop window signs for errant punctuation.
Let`s show shop assistants and stupid BNP people what superior brains are for.
November 8, 2009 at 11:24 am
of course indigenous means ‘white’ when the BNP uses it. But it’s not just the far right and fascists that are using the term – for example neo-pagan groups, and crofters in Scotland. This use of the word and concept indigenous is a point worth discussing, not just pedantic point scoring.
November 9, 2009 at 6:46 am
Hmmm….this is something I’ve blogged about too (http://outlandish-knight.blogspot.com/2009/10/archaeology-and-bnp.html). It is particularly interesting to see the BNP using the work of Stephen Oppenheimer
November 9, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Hi, thanks and I liked your post,though the link above is faulty – http://outlandish-knight.blogspot.com/2009/10/archaeology-and-bnp.html
It’s interesting that the BNP’s line on ‘indigenous Brits .. since time immemorial’ claims a scientific basis. I think the way to counteract racist nonsense such as this is to undermine the whole emphasis on race rather than engage with it as this can end up with confused accounts and it gives unfounded propositions legitimacy.