by Jerry Gordon
The United Kingdom, or as Daily Mail pundit, Melanie Phillips calls it, Londonistan, has been mired in massive demographic change and concomitant Islamization brought on by its recent "open door" immigration policy. This was graphically evident in the July 7, 2005 London underground and bus system attack by four British Muslim suicide bombers who took the lives of more than 52 innocent victims and injured over 700. It was also reflected in the condoning of the more than 85 Shariah courts by the UK legal system and controversial Church of England head, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Deeply disturbing has been the de facto creation of what former Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali called "no-go areas" where native Britons are not welcome, especially if they happen to be homosexual or Jewish.
The current government coalition, led by Conservative PM David Cameron, officially admitted the failure of the long history of Labour and Conservative governments’ multi-cultural policies. In February 2011, Cameron criticized30 years of failed multi-cultural policies that may have partially given rise to Muslim extremism. These policies have fostered massive immigration of Muslims who have rejected traditional British values of tolerance and fair dealing while placing an intolerable burden on the national health and welfare systems. During the past decade this has led to protests by groups such as the English Defense League, and most disquieting, the rise of racist, antisemitic leadership of the British National Party (BNP), founded in 1982 from what remained of the ‘whites only’ National Front.
The BNP leader Nick Griffin castigated Islam’s rise in the UK, as a “wicked, vicious faith.” He had previously engaged in anti-gay vitriol and Holocaust denial, alienating voters who rejected the Party’s leaders and their extremist views. He was convicted in 1997 for distributing antisemitic literature calling the Holocaust, “the hoax of the 20th Century.” Griffin was exonerated in 2006 from charges brought by the General Teaching Council for alleged religious intolerance stemming from his anti-Islamic views.
Recent polls in the UK expressed the hope that a more centrist party would emerge espousing traditional British values, while recognizing the threat of Islamization. These hopes were based partly on fears that current demographic trends if left unchecked might ultimately lead by mid-century to native Britons being eclipsed by third world, mainly Muslim immigrants, whose rising influence might foster ruling political coalitions in the Westminster Parliament reflecting what many British consider their intolerant demands.
A glimmer of that hope for mainstream Britons was realized in the fall of 2010, when several leaders of the BNP, Peter Mullins, Peter Staffords and Simon Bennet, broke ranks and resigned along with many party members. On October 18, 2010 these former BNP leaders registered the British Freedom Party.
The British Freedom Party mission is: to defend and restore thefreedoms, traditions, unity , identity, democracy and independence of the British people, to establish full sovereignty over all our national affairs by restoring the supremacy of the British Parliament, to withdraw from the European Union, to promote democratic British nationalist principles, to promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural interests of the British people and to preserve and promote the ancestral rights and liberties of the British people as defined in the British Constitution. · Leave the profoundly undemocratic European Union.
· Abolish the Human Rights Act, which benefits only foreign criminals/terrorists. · Halt any further immigration for a period of five years. · Deport foreign criminals, seditious dual nationality Islamists and illegal immigrants. · Abolish all multicultural and equality quangos (quasi- nongovernmental organizations financed by the government yet acting independently of the government). · Halt and turn back all aspects of the Islamization of Britain, including Shariah finance. · Drastically reduce crime – criminals should fear the consequences of their behavior. · Repair the damage wreaked by the progressive educational establishment.
Paul Weston is the current chairman of the British Freedom Party. He identified himself as a "classical liberal" in an increasingly illiberal country. He resides in central London where he runs a property development/investment company. Weston stood for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2010 general election for the constituency of Cities of London& Westminster. He left the UKIP in 2011 due to the party’s failure to confront Islam. Weston assumed the chair of the British Freedom Party in Nov 2011 after ensuring that any founding officers with previous BNP connections stood down.
Weston has conferred with many leading members of the trans-Atlantic counter- jihad network at the Brussels Counter Jihad Europa Conference in October 2007. He discussed their importance to Britain and the West on the Gates of Vienna website. He maintains friendships and a common ideological agenda with Freedom Party leaders on the Continent. He is a self- described fan of the Hon. Geert Wilders of the PVV, The Freedom Party in The Netherlands. Weston spoke at the Amsterdam Free Speech Rally in October 2010 on behalf of the International Free Press Society.
In February 2012 Weston crossed the Atlantic and gave several acclaimed presentations in Nashville, New York and Toronto. (See Weston’s speech before a private audience in Nashville in the current NER edition). He was also recognized at a session of the Tennessee State legislature.
Watch this YouTube video of an interview with Weston by Michael Coren of Sun TV in Toronto during his recent visit there.
Weston has set the British Freedom Party on a course for fielding a party list of candidates in local council elections in 2012 to gain recognition for future general elections. While the Party’s expectations remain low about the outcome of these elections, the reception it has received has generally been favorable.
We had the good fortune to interview Weston prior to his leaving Toronto on the final leg of his return to the UK.
Jerry Gordon: Paul Weston, thank you for consenting to this timely interview.
Paul Weston: Thank you for affording me this opportunity.
Gordon: What are the origins of the British Freedom Party?
Weston: It was set up in 2010 as an offshoot from the British National Party. It was an offshoot because the four founders were expelled from the party because they rejected the whites’ only policy of the British National Party. They believed that culture, not color, was the important thing in Britain especially multi-cultural Britain. We can have one culture and it's not important about what color or race you come from. So they set this up having been expelled and we have rolled on from there. (Editor’s note: All original British Freedom Party founders from the British National Party stood down when Weston became Chairman.)
Gordon: What is the current relationship with the English Defense League and its leader Tommy Robinson?
Weston: We have been in talks with Tommy for a number of months now and we support the English Defense League in principle. We are not going to have some sort of signed alliance with them. However, in principle we support them because the working class in Britain has been completely betrayed by the Labour party. It's the working class of course who are protesting the loudest. Although the Labour party claims to act in the best interest of the working class in Britain, they certainly don't. We decided that if we were going to become political we would certainly support an unwritten alliance with the English Defense League.
Gordon: What is the present status of the British Freedom Party with regard to party registration, organization and preparations for fielding a slate of candidates in the 2012 local elections?
Weston: We are fully registered with the electoral commission. In terms of organization, clearly we are a very new party. Nevertheless, we already have some 20 regional officers working, and they are preparing a slate of candidates for the 2012 elections. These are the local council elections you are talking about, not the general election. We are going to stand for election. How many, we are not quite sure yet. We are going to get as many as we possibly can and hopefully gain some recognition. You know, we are not really expecting to do terribly well, because no one knows who we are yet, but this will be good for us in terms of getting our name out. Good for us in terms of making sure our policies are actually recognized by the electorate.
Gordon: You characterize the British Freedom Party as being centrist and affirming traditional British values. What do you mean by that and could you give us some examples?
Weston: We are determined not to be labeled far-right because there is nothing far-right about us at all. I believe we are centrists. I mean, for example, we want to introduce a U.S. style First Amendment guaranteeing free speech. There is nothing right-wing about that. It's a very central policy. We want to leave the undemocratic European Union which I think is a semi-totalitarian organization. We can't vote the commissioners out. We certainly didn't vote them in, so there is nothing far-right about that. In terms of affirming traditional British values we promote morality, marriage, the family and the community. All good healthy things, which is why I reject the far-right label. These are traditional British values and traditional British norms. As far as I am concerned we are centrists, and we refuse to be labeled far-right by the far-left that now control much of the media in Britain.
Gordon: What are some of the more significant points in the British Freedom Party platform?
Weston: It comes down to multi-culturalism and mass-immigration, which I think are the more significant ones. We are a tiny little island. Less than one percent of the world land mass, less than one percent of the world population. We have effectively opened the doors to billions of people who are poor. They come from the third world, and we have a very generous welfare state. If you do those things, if you open the doors to all of these people from around the world, you are going to be swamped. We say no more mass immigration. This is one of our central points.
Gordon: Do you think the platform of the British Freedom Party will attract voters in the UK?
Weston: They had a survey late last year which was aimed more at the British National Party than anything else, because we didn't exist then. They asked the question: If you had a political party that rejected multi- culturalism, that wanted to put an end to mass immigration and promote British values, would you vote for it? The majority of people said "yes", they would. They were then asked the following question: Why given some of the policies of the British National Party, would you not vote for the British National Party? They said the British National Party has a leader who is a Holocaust denier, and that it has a history of genuine racial bigotry. They would love to see a party that emulated some of the British National Party policies, but not these absolutely terrible, racist, antisemitic views that the British National Party leadership holds. Among the rank and file British National Party people there are some very nice people. However, the leadership is absolutely rotten and corrupt to the core and as I say, antisemitic and genuinely racist.
Gordon: The UK has an unwritten constitution. How can you implement a U.S. style First Amendment with what we value here, freedom of worship and guarantees of free speech?
Weston: You know, we don't have a written constitution, but we do have legislation. It is quite simple just to introduce and pass legislation saying that you will not be censored for speaking the truth, no matter that the truth might offend other people. If you do say these things, you will not be tried under hate crime laws, you won't go to prison. Nick Griffin of the British National Party was tried for saying that Islam was a wicked faith. He predicted the bombings which actually occurred in 2005, the London transport suicide bombings. He predicted that the bombers would come from an area within 20 miles of where he was making his speech, and sure enough, they did. Nevertheless, he was still tried for inciting racial hatred. When they couldn't get him on that charge, because the defense was Islam is not a race, it's a religion, they introduced a new law about inciting religious hatred and they tried him again. These are not the marks of a free and democratic country. Roger Scruton, the philosopher, said some time ago that “when words no longer have the desired affect, then words will be replaced by deeds.” Freedom of speech is an outlet; it is a pressure relief valve that allows us to state our views, and to do so in a calm, rational and non-violent manner. If they clamp down on this, and they push us under the normal levels of discourse, then you are going to get huge amounts of pressure building. It is absolutely imperative that we introduce legislation that guarantees our free speech.
Gordon: The British Freedom Party believes that there are troubling demographic and economic trends in the UK. What are they?
Weston: This all comes from the last Labour government, that essentially just opened the doors completely, and the resulting demographics are one of these touchy subjects. EvenThe Guardian newspaper is now admitting that by 2060 the traditional native British are going to be an ethnic minority in their own country. They talk about this across all age groups. The majority of the native British are aged over 50 and the vast majority of the new immigrants are aged under 50. Below the age of 40 we may become an ethnic minority by 2030. To me, this is population replacement and in non-polite terms it is a bloodless genocide. It is ethnic cleansing. A deliberate dilution of the native population by political means.
Gordon: What motivated the UK Labour and Conservative parties to open up immigration leading to the influx of Muslims?
Weston: The Labour party really did it for two reasons. The hard-left favorably viewed completely opposite cultures such as Islam. They thought they could use these people as political pawns to further their longed for desire for a Communist revolution. That was the hard-left position. The softer left thought, well this is good, because 90% of immigrants vote for Labour. If we manage to get enough of them in we'll never be out of power because they are always going to vote for us. The Conservative party was going to reduce immigration down to the tens of thousands. However, last year 500,000 people came into the country and the Conservative party refused to talk about it. They know it is not a vote winner with the immigrants. There are so many immigrants it is important that you appeal to them, and they refused to talk about it. They even manipulated the figures when they said there were 250,000 net immigrants last year. When they say net immigration, what that means is 250,000 presumably native Brits left the country fed up with multi-cultural Britain. Perhaps, a quarter of a million native Brits leave, 500,000 third world people come into the country and the Conservative party say net immigration therefore is only 250,000.
Gordon: Has the influx and growth of Muslims in the UK contributed to both domestic and international Islamic terrorism?
Weston: Yes, of course, it has. I don’t think first generation Muslims that started coming into Britain in the 1960's, were coming here with the view of taking over the country and imposing the doctrine of Islam and Shariah law on us. However, the second and third generations have been indoctrinated in the mosques and in the madrassas by Saudi Arabians, the most hard-line Wahhabist, Islamic funded imams. Saudi Arabia has funded radicalism with huge reserves of petro dollars. I think the CIA came out a few years ago and said that ninety-billion dollars had been poured into Europe and the West to promote fundamentalist Islamic ideology, with a view to eventually enforcing their global Caliphate. The second and third generation Muslims have been radicalized, and yes they are a tremendous threat. We see our security services saying they are thwarting four, five, six terrorist attacks a month on the mainland. In America, an ex-CIA officer, Bruce Riedel, came out and said that the greatest threat to a mainland America terrorist attack came from Britain under the Visa Waiver Program. Pakistani Muslims can travel without any prior vetting to America and this is now seen as a threat. Britain now poses the greatest threat of terrorist attacks to mainland America than any other country in the world - and they're British. It's quite astonishing. The answer to your question is "yes" domestic and international Islamic terrorism has been driven purely by the influx and growth of Muslims in the UK.
Gordon: How would the British Freedom Party change the UK immigration system to reduce the rate of Muslim growth in the population?
Weston: We want to stop mass immigration completely. We are going to say if you are an American, or a Canadian, or an Australian, then you are welcome to come into the country. You are welcome to come in and marry and you can become a British citizen. However, if you are coming from hard-line Islamic countries like Pakistan or Afghanistan, then you are not coming in anymore. It is going to sound terribly unfair. Why are we stopping only you? Well, we are stopping you, because you pose a long term threat to us.
Gordon: How has the UK Welfare System been abused by Muslim immigrants?
Weston: This is a huge issue with the working class in Britain. Can you imagine that your parents and your grandparents fought and died for your country? You have hit hard times personally, you have two children and you lose your job, there is supposedly a safety net that says that you will be housed and fed by the state. The state in Britain now sets a priority on the number of children you have. If you are a Muslim family with eight children you will go straight to the top of the housing list and you will be housed in a palatial sized building to accommodate your eight children, all of which is paid for by the state. Even worse than this, is that polygamy is illegal in Britain. However, it is not illegal if you married your third or your fourth wife, or indeed your first and second wife in an Islamic country and then brought them over. Thus one Muslim male can have four wives and 16 to 20 children, and live in four different houses, all costing thousands of pounds a month. It is simply unsustainable. I believe these statistics are correct when they say that 50% of Muslim males do not work and are claiming welfare, 75% of Muslim females are claiming welfare. (Editors note: Figures are correct, sourced from Equalities Commission.) You have to bear in mind that we are already a bankrupt country. We are over a trillion pounds in debt. In 2008 the government statistics office said that the Welfare Bill was 170 billion pounds and the PAYE (tax deducted at source from employees) for that year was 150 billion pounds. There are obviously more stealth taxes that come into play, but the amount of money raised in taxes in that year did not even cover the welfare payments let alone our armed forces, education and the hospitals. It's totally unsustainable.
Gordon: There are more than 85 Shariah courts in the UK. Why did the UK legal system recognize Shariah and how could that be reversed?
Weston: The UK legal system did recognize Shariah, and yet again it was the Socialists and the British Labour Party that recognized it. We simply have to stop it. We have equality before the law in our country. Everybody is equal before British law. We are not going to have Shariah law courts operating in the UK. It is that usual thing of going down the slippery slope. They say today that they are only going to be legislating, if that's the right word, for applying Shariah on divorce, marriage and financial settlements. However, that is only the beginning. What are they going to do in ten years time? How long is it going to be before we start seeing the more violent elements of Shariah law entering into our liberal democracy of Britain? How can it be reversed? We simply say equality before the law. That is it. The Shariah courts are closed out. This is Britain. It is not Saudi Arabia. It's not Pakistan. You are in our country and you adhere to our laws which incidentally are the best, most humane laws. You know British common law is famous for it is the most decent moral system of law recognized in the world today. If you don't like it then go somewhere else.
Gordon: Why did the Church of England support Shariah?
Weston: I don't know if you are aware of Baroness Cox, who sits in the House of Lords. She initially fought against Communism and is a very brave woman. She is now fighting against Shariah. My mother met her some years ago. She was telling my mother that when she (Cox) was a university lecturer, the lecturers coming into the universities back in the 60s and 70s were hard-line committed Communists. She said exactly the same thing was happening in the Church of England. Now we have Archbishop Rowan Williams, who not only supports Shariah, but also supports a Socialist state. He is not actually a Communist Party member, but he supports that sort of thing. The Church of England, like pretty much every single institution in Britain has been infiltrated by the hard-left. The left supports Shariah because Shariah operates against the interests of traditional Britain.
Gordon: The former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, had warned about so called "no-go areas" where Muslims exert self rule under Shariah. Why has the national government in the UK tolerated it and how would the British Freedom Party change that?
Weston: The Labour government of course not only tolerated it, they promoted it. The Conservative government we have today also tolerates no-go areas. When Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali came out and said this, he was immediately issued with death threats. He was told that having warned about no go areas, if he ever went into one, they would try to kill him. How would the British Freedom Party change that? What you have to do is get the police out of their police cars and back on the street. To make sure that everybody in this country obeys the laws of the land. Simple as that.
Gordon: Muslim immigrants in the UK have been active in the international Class A drug trade. How would the British Freedom Party bring this illegal drug trade and money laundering by Muslim immigrants to a halt?
Weston: Interesting that you say Muslim immigrants, because the worst of the drug problem is heroin. Heroin kills an awful lot of people, and I believe this is driven principally by Turkish gangs in Britain. How do we stop it? It's incredibly difficult. I think we have to make a two tier system. If you are caught dealing marijuana and cocaine, I think you deserve a lengthy prison sentence. If you are dealing in heroin, we believe that you should go to prison for life.
Gordon: UK prisons have become a fertile ground for conversion of inmates to Islam. What would the British Freedom Party recommend to curtail that?
Weston: I think you should lose all your rights the moment you go to prison. If you happen to be a Muslim, then I'm afraid to say that when you go to prison you will not find separate prayer rooms. We are a Christian country. We will have a prayer room. If you don't want to use our prayer room then you are not going to have your own. The idea that we allow hard-line imams in all of our prisons is unfortunate. Muslims are very much over represented in British prisons, and we have got to stop imams visiting prisons. You know, you can have a priest, you can have a Christian padre, but we are not going to allow any more imams proselytizing in British prisons.
Gordon: To what do you attribute the rise of antisemitism in the UK and how would the British Freedom Party combat it?
Weston: We have 250,000 Jews in Britain. I mean it's a very small proportion of the population. When you read the newspapers every week, you never see stories about violent Jewish gangs dealing in drugs, or Jewish gangs stabbing Pakistani gangs. You know, the Jews in Britain have integrated utterly. They were very poor, and they've risen mostly to the middle class now. They get on with their lives. They get on with their jobs. They pay their taxes and they're wonderful people. There have always been antisemites in any country. How do we combat it? I don't believe that the native British are antisemitic in the slightest. If they are, then there are not very many of them. The rise of antisemitism in the UK comes from Islam. We now have Shariah enforced no-go zones in various parts of the country, and they actually say "no Jews allowed." No homosexuals, no alcohol, no Jews. “Judenrein” I believe is the expression, meaning free of Jews. What do we do about it? We prosecute imams in the mosques who are calling for the murder of Jews. We close down the mosques that are doing this. We should go all out to make sure that if these Muslims want to live in our country, they accept the Jews in exactly the same way that the native British have accepted Jews.
Gordon: The British Freedom Party has adopted an anti-EU position, akin to that of the UK Independent Party. What are the British Freedom Party's reasons for holding that position and how do they differ from the UK Independent Party platform?
Weston: In terms of the anti-EU position, we don't differ from the UKIP at all. The only difference between UKIP and ourselves is that we are taking it to the next level and confronting Islam and mass immigration. The European Union is a totalitarian organization. If you look at Italy now, their elected politicians have been replaced by European Union apparatchiks who have never been voted into a position of power, and here they are now running the country. I didn't vote for Mr. Juan Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission who is an ex-Maoist Communist from Portugal. He is apparently unashamed, despite Mao's great leap forward that took tens of millions of lives. Mr. Barroso is the most powerful man in Europe. I didn't vote for him and I can't vote him out. They are incrementally taking every single piece of power and sovereignty from my country. Vladimir Bukovsky describes the EU as being equivalent to the Supreme Soviet and the Politburo. The people who are doing this are, in the main, Socialist and Communist sympathizers, so we have to get out of it. It's not free. The British Freedom Party believes in freedom and democracy. We do not see that with the European Union, so we want out.
Gordon: What relations do you have with leaders in the various European Freedom Parties?
Weston: Over the last two or three years I have met with all of them. Geert Wilders of The Netherlands, Rene Stadtkewitz of Germany, Heinz Christian Strache of Austria and Filip Dewinter of Belgium - at various conferences around Europe. We get on well. We share the same views. We share the same aspirations. It is an alliance of ideology. I hope that between all of us in Europe, we are going to be able to do something about it.
Gordon: What is your assessment of the Honorable Geert Wilders and why the Freedom Party, the PVV in the Netherlands, has garnered such popular support?
Weston: I'm a huge admirer of Geert Wilders. Holland, I don't think, is as far gone as Britain, but Holland has huge problems. We saw Pim Fortuyn speak out about this and get murdered, and Theo Van Gogh speak out about it and get murdered. They have huge problems, and the people in Holland recognize that someone like Wilders is able to articulate the worries, the concerns of the Dutch, in a civilized manner, and this is why he has such large support. He is essentially a liberal until it comes to Islam. You can't be a liberal that supports Islam because Islam is itself illiberal. Wilders is appealing to the basic decency of the Dutch people and the inherent liberalism that we've always associated with Holland. He is pointing out that their liberal society is threatened by a totalitarian illiberal ideology called Islam, and the people have reacted to this, hence his amazing popular support in Holland.
Gordon: You spoke recently in the U.S. and Canada. What venues did you speak at, and what was the reception like for the British Freedom Party?
Weston: We spoke in Nashville at the Tennessee State Legislature. It went down very well. I was astonished by the reception that we received. We were introduced the following day at the Senate, and it was an astonishing and humbling experience. I'm not up to speed on American state politics, but I assume they are basically comparable to our local governments', our councils in England. We started our visit in the House with the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, and an invocation by a priest. When these Americans stood there, they put their hands on their hearts, they took the pledge and their backs stiffened, I thought, you know, what I would give to have British people behaving like this. They received us with great warmth and said they agreed completely with what we were doing. It was an absolutely inspiring and humbling reception.
Gordon: What future would you see for the UK if the British Freedom Party becomes part of a ruling coalition in the Westminster Parliament?
Weston: First and foremost, I see a peaceful future. I have spoken about the illusion of permanency that Samuel Huntington wrote of in his Clash of Civilizations. Th e illusion that tomorrow will be the same as today, and next year will be the same, and the year after that will be the same. However, civilizations do collapse. The aggression, violence and desire for a global Caliphate that is being instilled in the minds of our growing Muslim community in England signals the likelihood of possible Civil War before 2050. For me the most important thing is that we do not get dragged into a horrific Civil War similar to that of Lebanon - the Civil War in Lebanon - and the breakup of Yugoslavia which of course fractured on racial, religious and tribal lines. I would also like to see our children educated properly as they used to be back in the 1950's and 1960's. I would like to see morality re-introduced, because what they (the left) did in Britain was undermine religion and come up with moral relativism, which said there is no such thing as morality. Now if you take away religion and its guiding moral principles, and you declare morality to be null and void as well, you end up with what we get in British towns and cities every Friday night. This out of control, decadent group of young people who have no conception of honor and decency, of patriotism, civility and appropriate behavior. It is quite awful. We are the worst country in Europe for this. It is like hell on a Friday and Saturday night. People are frightened to go into town centers. I see the basically good British people betrayed. Now the young have been betrayed. It is not their fault that they are like this. They have been essentially raised to be like this. I would like to completely reverse that. I would like to see morality reintroduced. Now, I'm not going to say I want to see Christianity rammed down everyone's throats. I just want to see the morality of Judeo-Christian values re-introduced and linked to the 10 Commandments. It is almost like wanting to take Britain back to the 1950's but without some of the more overt problems that we had back then, such as the anti-homosexual laws. We were not perfect in the 1950's, but dear Lord we were so much nicer people then than we are today. I would like to see us go back to the standards of the 1950's.
Gordon: I want to thank you Paul Weston for this engrossing interview and the message of pushing back against Islamization in the UK.
Weston: I know exactly what you mean. We can't do it just by ourselves. We need all the help we can get. We are up against possibly something that we can't beat. We're going to give it a damn good try and the more help we can have the better, so are grateful for what you are doing here.
Gordon: Well, consider this as a multi cultural version of Dunkirk.
Weston: Britain's finest hour.
Gordon: Yes.
Weston: Thank you so much for that.
(British Freedom Party Chairman, Paul Weston)
