So I was watching the Channel 4 news today while eating dinner, and there was a report about the BNP and their constitution with regards to members only being white (as well as the belief that they won't do anything to help their non-white constituants).

This lead to a small row at the dinner table about the BNP. Mum's always been tempted to vote for them due to their "England for English people" declarations while me and Dad know exactly what "England for English people" means for those of us who aren't 100% Anglo-Saxon.

The fact of the matter is that the BNP are a nasty bunch. Nick Griffin was at one point stating that there is no such thing as a black Welshman. I believe there are a few blacks that were born in Wales and had a Welsh parent that consider themselves to be both black and Welsh. What Nick Griffin means is Welsh people whose ancestors were here long before 1066.

Except that this a country which is built on immigration. Even more than America is! We weren't Anglo-Saxon originally, we were all Celts. Then the Romans came along and pushed loads of people down to Cornwall and in to Wales, and the indiginous Welsh were pushed in to Ireland and the various little islands between the two. The Scots are technically Irish, the original Scotts were in fact Picts, and then the Scotii tribes came over from Ireland, beat the Picts, and settled down.

And then the Angles came along, and the Saxons, and Jutes, and a bunch of others, and they kicked arse and settled. And then William the Conqueror came along, with a large number of Normans and probably a fair few other french "tribes" and they all settled.

How many more people came over since then? How many Jews came to England to escape the persecution of the Spanish Inquisition? How many Dutch families came over when William of Orange was on the throne? How many Protestants fled Catholic countries and settled here?

How many of the people that the BNP would view as "acceptable" based on looks alone, are far less than 100% Anglo-Saxon?

Take me for example. On the outside I look as English as a bloody rosebush. I have pale skin, blondish-brown hair, green eyes. I talk with an accent that is part Hertfordshire, part Cambridgeshire, and part Londoner, and I can put on a passable Irish accent if I hear an Irish person talking for long enough. If Nick Griffin met me tomorrow he would probably shake my hand because I look, sound, and act English.

And yet I am not. My maternal Grandmother is Italian. She was born in London, raised in London, can barely speak a few words of Italian. She's a Roman Catholic but apart from that, no one can tell. But her parents were Italians. Her mother was called Maria Margiotta, whose father came from Italy to Scotland and then moved down to London, where he had a fleet of organ grinders (complete with monkeys). He married an Italian woman, they had 11 children, including Maria, and lived in a section of London that was pretty much a little Italy. My Nan's father was Michele Dragonetti, whose parents were killed in an earthquake in the village of Villa Latina. He lied about his age to join the Italian army, he fought on the Alps during the first world war, and as soon as he was discharged from the army he hopped on a boat and came to England, and London, to little Italy where he met and married Maria Margiotta.

They didn't scrounge off the state, living off benefits, sitting in the streets begging for spare change. They had an ice cream shop, which was mostly run by Maria, while Michele was a marble worker who I am told made some beautiful mosaics for various buildings (including a cinema in Edmonton which has since been torn down). They raised 4 children, who were Anglo-Italian, they spoke both English and Italian, continued to be Catholics, but they worked damn hard and none of their children went around smashing windows and shoplifting.

We have this little book that belonged to Michele. Whenever he wanted to leave the local area he had to go to a police station and tell them where he was going and how long for, and they wrote it down in this book. And when he left wherever he had gone to, he had to go to the police station there and get them to sign it to say he had been there and had left after however many days.

When my Nan showed me that book, I actually felt physically ashamed of this country. I've heard a lot about the abuse my Nan's family went through, the fact that they had to change their surname to something more English in order to get a job, the story of how my Nan was offered a secretary job after her Mum wrote to a company complaining that they were dscriminating against her for simply being the child of Italians and that they knew damn well she could do the job. Sometimes I wonder if my Grandad was ever bothered by my Nan being Italian, and I would like to ask him, except he's now gone, and I'll never get my answer.

I like to think it didn't bother him though. I like to think that he was open minded enough to not care that my Nan had immigrants for parents and grandparents, and that he simply knew she was the person he wanted to be with.

Until I saw that little book, I didn't realise how bad it was. And I know that if the BNP are ever fully elected, we will go back to those days. I believe the BNP states that if elected to full power they will initiate a "voluntary repatriation" program.

What happens when voluntary doesn't work though? What happenes when the Jews who have been here for 6 generations, the Hindus who have been here for 4 generations, the Muslims who have been here for 3 generations, who tend to run small businesses that are open all hours, who make sure their children are properly fed and don't run around in dirty clothes, vandalising property and swearing at people in the street, don't want to be repatriated? What if they want to continue living quietly as they have done, being part of Britain, without necessarily having to be totally British?

Would the BNP turn a blind eye? Would they go "well we got rid of the real trouble makers, the good ones can stay"? Or will it start with the propoganda. With blaming everything on the people that don't quite match the pure white image of the new Britain? And then there's the building of camps. Special prisons for those people that argue against the system. And then it grows, more people argue against the system because they don't agree with the camps, and so they are locked up. And then it's declared that a lot of these people that argue are of a certain religion, and so everyone from that religion needs to be locked away.

The National Socialist Party of Germany got in to power simply through protest voting. And look how that turned out, 6 million dead and a whole series of countries that still bear the scars. Not just Germany, but Poland, the Baltic states, England, France, the Scandanavian countries. Not because we condoned it, but because we didn't condemn it quickly enough. Because we didn't believe it was actually going on, until our soldiers got there, and saw it for themselves.

If the BNP ever come to power here then I will leave. It is something I have said before, and it is not an idle threat. I don't care who I am married to. I don't care if I have children. I will pack up my family and I will take them away, to Holland, or the USA, or Canada, wherever I will be welcome.

I will not live in a country that would have me feel ashamed of my heritage. I love pasta and pizza, I am happier in Rome than I am in London. I support Italy in the World Cup, especially when England don't get anywhere. I am proud that my great grandfather came over here to look for a better life, and found it. I am proud that my grand grandmother's parents came over here to look for a better life, and found it. I am a mongrel, and I am proud of it.

No one will ever make me ashamed to be part immigrant. Any political party that tells me I am worth less than a full English person, can shove their opinion up their arse. It is not blood that defines us, it is the mind and the soul. If you would shake the hand of a full blooded English person, who is also a rapist or a murderer, but spit on me, then you are worse than an idiot.

Political ranting, makes me feel better.