BNP - tartanised

Since the BNP got 2 MEP's at the start of the month there has been a lot of soul searching amongst all political parties about what should be done about them. Infinitely more importantly though is the issue of their voters and why they vote for a racist party.

It's inevitable that we get into debates of freedom of speech and how we deal with them but it's looking at the motives for voting which is most important and it's something which we have to look at throughout the UK.

Scotland has a very proud traditions of being a very tolerant multicultural society but the fact that over 27,000 people voted for them in the European elections is something which should distress any decently minded person and this is why Jim Murphy has raised the issue.

It's not the first time the Secretary of State for Scotland has warned of the issues of bigotry in Scotland and he closed Scottish Labour Conference by warning against credit crunch racism. And to those who blame the expenses crisis on a lack of trust in mainstream political parties remember that 25,000 people voted for the BNP in the Scottish Parliamentary election.

And now the News of the World have an exclusive which I have contributed to where some members of the Scottish Youth Parliament have been exposed as members of the BNP from the infamos 'BNP list' a couple of months ago.

Now I've never had any involvement in the Youth Parliament but I know some people who have and they speak very highly of it and I'm sure that it's a very useful tool to help engage young people within politics in a non party political manner and I don't think for one moment that these people are at all representative of young people in Scotland.

I've canvassed strangers across the Scotland for years and I've encountered all sorts of emotions. People are angry, happy, upset, apathetic and occasionally enraged but what I've never encountered is any form of bigotry; it's because most Scots just like most Brits are not racist at all.

So why do people vote for the BNP? Do they feel that no one else listens to them? Is it the ultimate protest vote? Do they like the far left economics of nationalising the means of production? Do they just feel that they don't 'belong' in their own country and that immigrants are somehow 'stealing' their houses and jobs?

What's interesting in the NOTW piece is that they say that it was the policies of the BNP that they were interested in rather than some desire to protest. It's the answers to these questions which will ultimately teach us how to fight the BNP and what's gone wrong.