with spoons?
Spoons? No. I don’t follow.
JO BELL, NEWCASTLE
Vice: How old are you?
Jo: 19
What do you do for a living?
I haven’t got a job at the moment. I used to work in a call centre for TalkTalk. It was fun, but we got retrenched.
What attracted you to the BNP?
I just liked what they were saying. I think they’re talking the truth, standing up for what they believe in, not just saying what they think people want to hear.
Are most of your friends BNP?
Some of them are. I kind of got into it through my friend Danny. He’s really racist. Everyone calls him “Nazi Danny”. He started telling me about them, and it made a lot of sense.
When people say the BNP is a fascist party, what do you think?
Some people don’t understand what the BNP is about. I’ve had rows with people—not fights, just big arguments. I probably am a bit racist, mind.
What, to you, symbolises Britain best?
Um, I’d say maybe St George’s flag, partly because my favourite film is This Is England—it’s about skinheads, but they’re not really racist, because one of them is a black kid. They turn on him in the end, but because he was one of the gang they’re not really racist. They just believe in what they believe in.
Fish or chips?
Chips.
Alan Carr or Jimmy Carr?
Alan.
Princess Di or Jade Goody?
Jade.
Ant or Dec?
Dec.
Brown shirt or black shirt?
Black.
Bird in the hand or two in the bush?
Two in the bush.
Fred West or Stephen Fry?
Stephen Fry.
Morrissey or Eric Clapton?
Morrissey.
What do you think the BNP could do to improve its appeal to minority voters?
A lot of people have got an opinion against the BNP that they’re racists or bullies. I don’t think the BNP are a mainstream party that everyone should follow. I think they believe what they believe. I think if we came across more to the people, because I’ve spoken to people before, and they’ve been like, “Well, what is the BNP?” and they couldn’t even say what BNP stood for. A lot of people don’t really know much about it unless you’re quite racist or quite nationalist. So if they could explain themselves to people more clearly, a lot more people would listen.
Do you think Nick Griffin has concentrated his manifesto enough on the problem of falling house prices?
Not really, but I don’t think anyone is. I don’t think there’s anything that can really be done about it.
In terms of the BNP’s repatriation policy on immigration, if you had to choose, who would you repatriate first, Dizzee Rascal or Tinchy Stryder?
Dizzee Rascal. I know this is gonna sound horrible, because he’s the one who’s the most, like… because my problem is that when immigrants come over to this country, they try and bring in their own churches and languages. And I think he expresses himself more as like an African or whatever he is, whereas Tinchy Stryder is more American. That’s the difference.
Which do you dislike more, Muslims or Hindus?
Muslims. They’re the ones who’ve got the most attention, they’re the ones who are kicking off about things the most. They’re more in the public eye as troublemakers.
If, as a hypothetical solution to the problem of immigration, we turned over one city to immigrants and made them all live there in a sort of ghetto, what city would you choose?
Birmingham, because it’s full of them anyway.
What if immigrants could prove their usefulness—should they then be allowed to stay? For instance, by selecting only immigrants who were extremely good-looking?
No. I just don’t think there should be any. You see, just because they’re black, I haven’t got a problem with that. If they’ve lived in the country for a long time and they’re working, and say they’re a doctor or they’re actually doing something. It’s when they’re getting benefits that I have a problem, ’cos there’s plenty of people in our country who need our money and plenty of people who are British who are homeless, and they are just being given our money.
Is the problem one of culture, not ethnicity? For instance, would you be prepared to accept Muslims in your community if they all converted to Christianity, took part in maypole ceremonies on St George’s day, took elocution lessons and dressed solely in Harris Tweed?
You mean if they weren’t trying to imply their own religion [sic] and if they acted like us? Well, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem. There’s a school in our town, and everyone jokes about it, like it’s spot-the-white-kid school. In the town now, they’ve got a religious school, and they’ve got lots of prayers in Arabic on the wall, and I think that’s just totally wrong. Yeah, they should learn our language. I find it really insulting. Like, in the call centre, people would ring up, and you’d ask to speak to the account holder and they’d go, “The account holder doesn’t speak English.” It used to really, really annoy us.
Peter Andre—hero or villain?
Aw, hero.
Jeremy Clarkson—hero or villain?
Hero.
Enoch Powell—hero or villain?
Hero.
Nelson Mandela—hero or villain?
Villain.
