He or she states that the party is far from far right wing and that as the Tory party is a right wing party and is opposed by the BNP and states: '100% on mass immigration, Europe, privatisation and their utter contempt of British workers. Far right? Far from it, complete opposite'.

So is he or she claiming the BNP is a left wing party, or what? I have seen very little in reports to state what the BNP stands for and what it would do in power, only what it is against. Nick Griffin certainly didn't have much chance on Question Time to say what he stood for.

Dating from the French Revolution those representatives who sat on the left of the assembly were the left wing and stood for The Rights of Man (to quote Tom Paine's work) and were anti-monarchy, church, and authoritarian control.

The right were supporters of the monarchy, church, social hierarchy and the aristocracy, The Ancient Regime.

Since then a lot has changed and the British Left claims to also have embraced socialism, control of free markets, racial tolerance and individual liberties; and the Right, unrestricted capitalism, anti European nationalism, cultural conservatism.

Now that the main parties have accepted, as a fact, capitalism, Europe, family values and a multicultural Britain where do they stand on the continuum?

It is interesting to adopt a model with, say, the horizontal axis ranging from Left to Right as we understand it and a vertical axis ranging from authoritarian to anarchistic. If we represent that as a cross shape and put the parties in the appropriate four spaces where would they lie?

Fascism and National Socialism were not identical in the 1930s but they shared racism, authoritarianism and nationalism and cultural conservatism with the Right. They did not care for individual freedoms and weren't anti-capitalist in practice.

New Labour isn't anti-capitalist any more but I maintain that the BNP can't claim to be a left wing party as G Ellison seems to suggest (he/she reckons that the BNP stands for no immigration, withdrawal from Europe, public ownership and workers' rights).

I don't think the old Left/Right distinctions apply any more and we need some clear unambiguous manifestos on which to make voting choices.

Mike Wild, S2

IF you want to cut through the smokescreen and find out what the BNP really stands for just read their website carefully. The rantings of the party`s semi-literate supporters are particularly revealing.

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