Why we have to stand up to the threat of racists and fascists

Speech by Diana Wallis MEP delivered to Yorkshire & the Humber Liberal Democrats Regional party Conference, Scarborough on Sat 17th Feb 2007

In 2004 the BNP were just 70,000 votes away from winning their first seat in the European Parliament: a seat in this region, our region. It was their best result in the UK.

We know that and they know that. Over the last months they have been standing candidates in most council by-elections in this region. Some where we have failed to stand candidates. They are clearly preparing themselves for 2009 and the next elections to the European Parliament. It will likely be their leader, Nick Griffin, who stands here.

It is up to the mainstream political parties, indeed it is up to us, to stop them. And it is not that they threaten our seat in this region. It is that they threaten our values and everything liberals stand for. Oddly, there is some evidence to suggest that where we fail to be active in this region they step in. This is the risk or the challenge. Why should we rise to it? Why should we stop them?

Let's be absolutely clear who and what they are. They are fascists. You can trace their unbroken line of development from Mosley's Blackshirts, through the League of Empire Loyalists and the National Front, down to today. Of course, it is not just a name, a label or a set of political ideologies that should worry us. It is what they mean for us, what they do to the society we live in and what they are already doing.

Let me share with you some scenes from the European Parliament this week. It was the first full sitting with our new President. He chose to invite all the former Presidents of the European Parliament, including Madame Simone Veil, the first president in 1979. A woman and a liberal. A passionate European, but also a Jew who still carries indelibly marked on the skin of her arm her detention number from a Nazi concentration camp. Through the mere presence and testimony of people like her we can never forget why we have the European Union that we have with the values of liberty and democracy and the charter on human rights enshrined in its treaties and values. This year the Union will celebrate its fiftieth birthday which is even more reason to champion the values it stands for.

Of course you could equally turn to me and say well what is going on in the European Parliament because isn't there actually a new far right group there. Yes, there is and they have to be defeated by argument and exposure. Look who is in it: Mr Le Pen and his cronies, some who of whom espouse holocaust denial as an intellectual argument. Then we have Mrs Mussolini - yes the name gives away the heritage. The call themselves ITS: Independence, Tradition and Sovereignty.

These are dangerous people. These are not the grumpy old men of UKIP. This is something much more sinister and they need to be fought and shown for what they are. They are a minority and they must stay a minority. We owe it to Europe in its birthday year. We owe it to people like Simone Veil.

Yet how do we respond on the issues that should define as liberals? Are we prepared to stand up against decisions that go in a racist or fascist direction?

This January saw the enlargement of the European Union to take in Romania and Bulgaria. That in itself brought in new fascists from those countries to the European Parliament that allowed this wretched group to be formed. Fascists from political parties that are overtly against minorities, like the Roma. What is our response? Well of course the first of January should have brought free movement for all new EU citizens. There should be no second class citizens based on nationality or race but of course for the Romanians and Bulgarians there are and our party allowed it in this country - for pragmatic reasons, because everybody else did. You cannot be pragmatic about decisions that veer towards the racist. These people have gone through every test and hoop to become full members of the EU. Those who came to seminar we held in Huntington last December will remember the description by my Bulgarian colleague of how they had to elect a constitutional convention umpteen times to make their constitution acceptable for EU membership with the right separation of powers. I'm pretty sure that our unwritten constitution would not stand that kind of scrutiny!

To this should be added the harsh economic change they are and will go through. A change that means, for a while, many of their best educated young people will seek work elsewhere (possibly here), genuinely contributing to our economy and often where we have no one to do jobs. They are tax payers not spongers. They are our fellow citizens with equal rights. But how do we treat them in a country where elements like the BNP are able to peddle their message about fear of foreigners? With fear. A fear of difference and diversity.

Let me mention another birthday. This year is the celebration of two hundred years since the abolition of slavery. We do not have many heroes in Hull but William Wilberforce is one of them. Last week I had the privilege to visit a research institute in Hull working on slavery issues. We might be celebrating the 200 years of abolition, but that is not the reality and that is not the reality in our region. Twenty-first century slavery is alive and flourishing under our noses and will continue to do so unless the message peddled by the BNP and their like are taken on.

EU citizens who come here quite legally and legitimately are being exploited in cities like Hull, Goole, Selby, Barnsley and Sheffield. These young people are coming here hoping to earn money to make a better life for themselves and their families back home. Or often they are just plain eager to take advantage of what the EU offers us in terms of mobility. Instead of their idealism, they are exploited by agencies and gang-masters. Their passports are taken away. They are forced to live in houses of multiple occupancy, where they pay extortionate rents. Often there is no privacy, with both sexes thrown together in the same rooms. Some intolerable pattern of shift working which has introduced us to the phrase 'Hot-bedding' where one person takes the same bed another has just left. They are transported to different places of work, be it in the fields or on production lines, paying for the transport at some inflated price while the travelling time is not counted as part of their working time. Then they are paid a miserable wage out of which all the accommodation, transport costs are deducted before they see it. They are, of course, threatened with violence should even think of leaving; violence to them or their family back home. Disorientated, abused, alone and probably unable to communicate in our language they are caught in a vicious circle from which there is no prospect of escape.

I find it odd that it was a senior policeman who pleaded with me that this country should sign the UN Convention on Human Trafficking. You might have expected it would be a politician, someone with a thought for the victims in our society. No, it was a police officer who knew that it was right in terms of common human dignity that trafficked people should be given time to tell their story, be treated as victims who themselves need help and who can help others by assuring the prosecution of their tormentors. They are not as this government has tended to view them just irritating additions to the illegal immigration figure that gift headlines to the tabloid writers. Thank goodness the government has now agreed to sign up.

What else has this government done? Well of course we have a Code of Conduct for Gang Masters! Well what gang master is going to take any notice of self regulation, of a voluntary code of conduct? No, sorry you have to get really tough with these people. Regulation is not a dirty word; tougher action against the gangmasters might allow more of the legitimate and genuine agencies to flourish.

The people who are exploited are fellow EU citizens. They have exactly the same rights and expectations as we do they should be treated no less differently than we would expect to be treated on visiting their countries.

Ends.