Party Vibe

being British Asian I am totally against extremism of any kind, and although my I consider my political views to be progressive I have found a lot of so-called progressive organisations (anti-fascists, animal rights, environmentalism) have been hijacked by angry young men what want to start physical conflicts with their opponents or simply damage their property.

Dionysus – I would suggest you buy a new map – the BGG has always been held in the West of England rather than Derbyshire!

What I think did however happen is that a “hippy” festival pulled out of an event in Derbyshire because the farmer was hiring the same site to the BNP and therefore they did not want to put any business their way – this IMO is a much more legitimate and effective way of protesting..

@DIONYSUS 345840 wrote:

also the freechspeech thing is a difficult one, but anybody preaching or spreading messages of hate and intolerance does not deserve a voice. whether they are the bnp or people like that abu hamza guy.

unfortunately the BNP have done a lot of PR work since the early 1990s when they first turned up on the scene, they will ensure that people at these events are not overtly advocating crime.

In 1991 they would stalk the streets of South London in pseudo-military uniforms (an offence in itself) looking for ethnic minority people to attack – now they have “respectable businessmen and families” at their events, with the younger footy hooligan crowd and young blokes such as disaffected ravers being used to carry out the “heavy stuff” like random attacks/vandalism, but this lot would rarely turn up at the festival.

“Democracy” is a lot more fragile than many realise – There is actually a lot of violence and crime associated with mainstream politics. My local councillor has been threatened a fair few times and has had his property damaged because of who he is and he is Labour (but the old style proper socialist labour). another friend of mine who was a councillor in the 1970s says that threats and actually fisticuffs were not uncommon until CCTV was installed and the Press got greater access.

@DIONYSUS 345848 wrote:

im not sure about the BGG conspiracy thing either, but the fact is that the police knew that there would be a lot of trouble surrounding the bnp festival because its happened every year that they’ve had one. Not caused as such by the actual festival, but by people protesting against it. The cost of policing this would have been shit loads, my mates said they had a drone up as well. I wonder if they passed on the costs of this to the festival or if its the taxpayer that foots the bill as its not really the people at the festival that cause that amount of police to be needed (although it is really..)

the BNP may be being charged a certain amount but because they are a legal political party they may be entitled to the same protection any other political partys gathering obtains. its also possible the net cost to the taxpayer of dealing with their festival (including policing the protests) is no more than a music festival or even less, as although its controversial, you don’t hear of overdoses and violence amongst the participants.. The BNP are anti-drugs and from what I’ve heard about the real hardcore right wing i.e the ones what actually achieve a lot (a friend infiltrated one of their forums) many only drink in moderation, and spend a lot of time in the gym or even studying…

I suspect as far as festivals go, the BNP festival is really boring, probably worse than a religious evangelists festival..