Election: The BNP is a danger to our democracy

It was with great sorrow that I watched a political broadcast by the BNP. I am a Scot, born in the middle of the first world war and served throughout the second world war in the British army. This included four years with the Indian army, which expanded on the outbreak of the war with Japan to approximately 2.5 million, all ranks, the largest volunteer army in the world. This was at a time when the UK armed forces were at the limit of their manpower resource. That Indian army won many VCs and lost very many Indian officers and men killed in action in what was a war against extremism. Its Indian officers and men looked for, and received at its end, independence from British colonial rule.

Those Indians and Pakistanis who are their sons and grandsons emigrated from the Indian sub-continent to take a rightful place in British society today, as have, at last, the Gurkhas. Men of many other races, including East and West Africans, also fought on our side. The war was a global war and many European peoples also fought alongside the British against the German and Italian fascists (some of whose views, sadly, appear to have been adopted by the BNP). Outstanding were the Polish fighter squadrons of the RAF. Our war dead were as we of today, people of nations and opinions many and various. But the majority thought of themselves as fighting against fascist dictatorships. Few of the fallen would have sided with the BNP today.

As for jobs, as a person of 92, I clearly remember that after the war certain vital jobs were unpopular with native-born British and to solve the manpower recruitment problem London municipal services organised the recruitment of Afro-Caribbean people to fill many of the vacancies. I recently much enjoyed travelling for an hour in a London bus beside an African lady of my age and talking to her about that experience. I have been and remain a lifelong supporter of the European Union. Its present over-bureaucratic attitudes require review and moderation, but its continued existence has removed the cause of European wars.

The BNP is an organisation whose actions and beliefs are in my view totally un-British and are potentially dangerous to our democracy in which they are free to express their views.