A commentary on the BNP in British politics, written for the Independent by openDemocracy associate editor Kanishk Tharoor last week...

If the first casualty of war is truth, the first casualty of domestic skirmishes is perspective. After last week's furore over the far-right and immigration in Britain, doom and gloom stalked the headlines. It seemed that the BNP and its odious "politics" had truly arrived, that the country will be forced to face, one way or another, its mono- and multicultural demons. But missing among the outrage and pieties of the past few days was a modest, but necessary, concession to reality: things in Britain are really not that bad.

Serious problems certainly remain to be tackled. The threats of radicalism among alienated Muslims and far-right bigotry among the "white working class" are very real. So too are the social tensions generated by immigration and the economic downturn. But in general, British society has handled (and continues to handle) the cultural convulsions shaking Europe in the 21st century with no small amount of grace and reason.

This is made particularly evident by a brief tour of other Western European countries that wrestle with similar issues of diversity and immigration. Look at the Netherlands, a state with a far older tradition of tolerance than Britain. There, the bleach-blond, anti-immigrant demagogue Geert Wilders and his "Freedom Party" led Dutch polls as recently as this March. Could Nick Griffin and his politics win a plurality of British public support? Not now, and probably never.

The appearance of the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, on BBC's Question Time would have been unthinkable a few years ago, yet that is what happened last Thursday. Despite the controversy surrounding his appearance on the show, there is no denying the fact that his party has achieved a certain amount of success lately. While some people, like Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, a veteran anti-Apartheid campaigner, were opposed to giving Mr Griffin such a prestigious platform, opinion polls showed that the majority of the public were in favour of him appearing on the show because, after all, the BNP had done well in the European elections in June, getting nearly a million votes. Indeed, the BNP is now able to get enough votes that it can no longer be ignored.

Copyright Demotix/teamsojourner

Hundreds of anti-fascist protestors, most of them white, vented their disgust and anger outside BBC TV Centre in west London before the show began. Griffin was exposed for the racist, homophobic, anti-Islamic, Nazi sympathising bigot he is as he came under intense scrutiny in front of a largely hostile audience. In other countries, the appearance of a politician or spokesperson from the political far right does not cause such outcry. In India, for instance, it is quite common for members of the extremist Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to appear in the mainstream media. However, in such countries, there is a greater acceptance of views deemed to be at the far right of domestic public opinion.

An opinion poll soon after Question Time showed 22% of people ‘might' vote for the BNP. This should not be interpreted as a surge in support for the party as similar polls over the last few years have consistently shown that around a fifth of people are attracted to vote for the BNP. As research shows (see "The British National Party: the roots of its appeal" published by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and provided online by OurKingdom), there is support for the BNP's message, rather than the party itself, from a significant portion of the white working class. Apart from the BNP's anti-immigration and anti-Islamic stand, which resonates with them, there is the anger about the perceived failure of mainstream political parties to engage with them. Over the last couple of decades a deeply unequal society, in which social mobility is the lowest since the 1920s, has emerged. At the bottom is a group of people dependent on benefits or surviving on low wages in which levels of family breakdown, educational underachievement, crime, alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and voluntary unemployment are rife.

OurKingdom on Nick Griffin and the BBC: What is the BBC's game? Anthony Barnett >The BBC and the BNP, Anthony Barnett > After Nick Griffin and Question Time, Gerry Hassan> Get over it, better to flush out the whole affair, David Elstein > This post

The current panic over support for the BNP, and the extraordinary wish to blame the BBC for raising Griffin's profile, has to be put into a context that shows how unwilling the political class was to take the wretched party seriously five and more years ago and its absurd over-reaction now.

Back in 2005 and 2006, Democratic Audit published the findings of a State of the Nation poll and other psephological and focus group researches in an article in the New Statesman and then a full Audit report, The BNP: the Roots of their Success, now provided online by OurKingdom. We warned then that up to one in five people ‘might' vote for the BNP in the future, rising to 24 per cent in London. Saturday's polling evidence suggesting that 22 per cent of the electorate would consider voting BNP, therefore, reflects an underlying pattern in British politics and provides further, worrying, confirmation that the party has entered the mainstream but not evidence of a new surge in support caused by Griffin's BBC appearance.

In 2005, Helen Margetts, Peter John and I were fiercely attacked for drawing attention to their electoral support, most especially from political scientists who were ‘experts' on far-right extremism in Europe. ‘Don't talk them up' seemed to be the basic objection; our right-wing extremists were nothing by comparison with their mates on the other side of the Channel.

The BBC handed the BNP a propaganda coup on Thursday, as 8 million people tuned in to the heavily publicised edition of Question Time. I have no doubt the BNP will gather more support than it loses as a result of Nick Griffin's appearance, despite his rather under-whelming performance.

But don't blame the messenger entirely. And don't be depressed by the turn of events. Whatever my other criticisms of the BBC, it was inevitable after the European elections that Griffin would at some point be invited onto Question Time. The BBC kept Churchill off the air in the thirties, and Enoch Powell in the sixties. For decades before 1968, there was no mention on the BBC of gerrymandering and discrimination in Northern Ireland. All these suppressions were acknowledged as counter-productive in retrospect.

It was also inevitable that a Griffin invitation would create a ballyhoo. He could not be eased quietly into one of the chairs. We therefore had a furious build-up to what turned out to be a highly-charged programme. Nor could the BBC treat Thursday as if it were just a standard QT session: that would "normalize" Griffin, the very charge the BBC was so keen to avoid - hence Mark Thompson's use of the word "challenge" in his defence of the invitation.

Unfortunately, this back-fired. As David Dimbleby observed at one point in the exchanges, if all the other guests were trying to put aggressive questions to Griffin at the same time, he could avoid answering any of them. As it turned out, he floundered two or three times, but the overall effect of the programme was of an unpleasant person being swamped by a sea of self-righteousness. Even the casting - Sayeeda Warsi and Bonnie Greer - was an implicit editorial swipe at Griffin. The only time the programme resembled a normal QT was when Jack Straw was forced onto the back foot over the government's immigration policy.

OurKingdom on Nick Griffin and the BBC: What is the BBC's game? Anthony Barnett > The BBC and the BNP, Anthony Barnett >This post > Get over it, David Elstein

The evening after the day after. It still feels that something has shifted. That we have passed through some as yet unidentifiable watershed. One which affects our politics, the media, the nature of their relationship, and how our political system lives, breathes and operates.

Like a large part of the British population I tuned into BBC One's Question Time, but unlike most I watch it most Thursdays. I listened to the post-programme discussions, read the papers, and scanned the blogs.

It felt like this was part of a defining and vital national conversation; a nation trying to say that for all its problems, crises and breakdown in trust with authority, it recognised some things were still serious and worthy of adult attention. Although at the same time it did feel that Kelvin Mackenzie comparing it to Frost/Nixon was a bit over the top! The real event, the play, the film, or all three?

OurKingdom on Nick Griffin and the BBC: What is the BBC's game? Anthony Barnett > This post > After Nick Griffin and Question Time, Gerry Hassan > Get over it, David Elstein

OurKingdom on Nick Griffin and the BBC: This post > The BBC and the BNP, Anthony Barnett > After Nick Griffin and Question Time, Gerry Hassan > Get over it, David Elstein

As a good part of the nation prepares to sit down and watch the leader of our New Fascist party on Question Time, we need to ask what the BBC is up to? The argument about 'whether or not' Nick Griffin MEP should be invited to take part is less important, indeed it can play the BBC's game.

It is necessary and important to stress that Griffin is an English Fascist. This means he wears a cloak of reasonableness wrapped around his prejudice. We had a widely read encounter with this kind of politics in the early days of OurKingdom which you can read here. Choice phrases give the game away. Yesterday Griffin was interviewed by Martha Kearney on the BBC's World at One.

In the course of his answers he referred to prisoners in British jails as "vermin". She seemed to think this acceptable and let it pass. Of course, there are some very evil men behind bars in the UK. There are also over 4,000 women (in 2006, the last date given on the Prison Service website) and many sad, dyslexic short-term prisoners. To describe any of them as "vermin" is to fundamentally dehumanise some of our own citizens and part of the human race. Rats and cockroaches are vermin. You trap, kill poison... or gas them. The word was no slip, it occurs in official BNP communications. It gives permission to dream of extreme violence. It signals the real Fascism behind the New Fascism.

In these circumstances as the moral failure of the political class brings forth demons, the BNP has to be confronted. Stuart Hall got it right: they need to be engaged with by the media when they are part of a news story, but they should not be on Question Time giving us their views about everything as if they are an acceptable part of fireside conversation.

So what is the BBC up to? I refer to it in the singular as having an approach and an attitude. Of course, it employs a lot of people with minds of their own who have differences of view. But with over 40 people earning more than the Prime Minister and executives looking after its 'vision' paid over £500,000 a year, it is also a machine with a commanding perspective of its own, however this may be arrived at.