Red Abbey View

Conspiracy Theories: The Da Vinci Code.

2004-09-30T21:01:00.000Z

I see that Paris is cashing in on the Gullibles who are flocking to France in order to re-trace the action in the best-seller "The Da Vinci Code." These include an American (now there's a surprise) who happens to own a pair of chateaux closely linked with events in the concoction, a tour leader (another American of course) and the venerable Louvre itself. It seems that the latter August body recently offered a group of potential American donors (who else) a continental breakfast followed by a tour of the places mentioned in the book.
Um, my first sentence needs to be revised. It is the Americans in Paris who are actually doing the cashing in. The poor old church of Saint Sulplice, which features in the novel as the vestige of an ancient temple and where a resident caretaker nun is brutally murdered, has had to put up a notice pointing out that it is a simple church with no ancient antecedents. This doesn't stop them coming and looking for clues of course.
So what is all the fuss about? Why has the publisher felt confident enough to claim that this is the bestselling hardback adult novel of all time. (The paperback has already become Britain's biggest seller at 29 weeks in the paperback lists so Random House are due to make another claim soon I suppose.) Well, the central thesis is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, escaped to France, spawned a bevy of kids whose descendants eventually became kings of France. Here we go – Blood and Grail all over again!
I was given a copy of this book for my birthday last year. I have to put my hand up at once and admit that it is one of the very, very few books that I never finished (the only other one that springs immediately to mind is the terrifyingly illogical Catch 22 which is also the ONLY book that I ever wilfully damaged – it was thrown across the room in frustration and, being a paperback, suffered somewhat from its collision with the coal scuttle.) But back to the Da Vinci Code.
It began, as all of these things do with a subtle softening up. It is a work of fiction, the author boldly declared. But before you get into it he says, you should read this disclaimer – it is, in fact, based on facts. Facts which are contained in secret documents kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale, at Paris. Fine, I thought, at least some basic historical research has been done here. Nothing wrong with an imaginative reconstruction so long as the basic facts are authentic. I should point out that at this point the basic thesis was still unknown to me, like all good novelists the author has voluminous sleeves. I settled down to read.
Very soon I became quite unsettled. My problem at this point was with the geography rather than the history. In the opening chapters we are treated to a detailed tour of the Louvre and the streets, or rather the roads, of Paris. To take the roads first. The author gives some very detailed accounts of driving through the streets of Paris. These are so detailed that they enumerate junctions and side streets in a kind of relentless touristy "I have been here" kind of way.
Which is the problem. I know Paris fairly well and after a few pages I was definitely of the opinion that our author was working from a tourist map. There was no sense that he had himself driven, or even walked, the routes he described – the normal problems of driving in Paris or, indeed any other large European city, did not make it in translation. So, I formed a vision of our historically accurate author skimping on the geography, and probably with an outdated map to boot.
And then there was the whole business of the Louvre, where it all begins. Here we are deep inside this solidly built beautiful building, with its gorgeous lead roof, and which is bristling with all kinds of electronic surveillance equipment – according to the book itself. Yet, mobile phones (cell phones) function with complete impunity! No, I think not. Then there is the matter of the alarm raised by the murdered curator Sauniere. In the novel he rips a Caravaggio from the wall to set of all those electronic alarms and closing of security gates etc. However, in the real Louvre, the painting is too high on the wall and too heavy for anyone, least of all an elderly man in the last throes of a hideous death, to "rip" down.
But OK, pedantry is my second nature and this is, after all a fictional envelope intended to contain and give coherence to a greater historical truth. The author practically says so in his preface. So how does the history shape up?
It doesn't. Central to the thesis are the Knights Templars – yes, here we go again! They had in their possession, it is claimed, the Holy Grail – in this case the grail is proof that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and set up his family in France. This the Templars acquired by long and painstaking and secret excavations at Jerusalem. The secret, thus unearthed, was jealously guarded and known only to four people at any one time. In their determination to destroy the evidence, the papacy and the Catholic kings of Europe, brutally suppressed the Templars and destroyed the Order, grabbing their wealth and property in the process.
Hold on a bit!. The author of the Da Vinci Code is extremely selective in his "facts" when he describes the suppression of the Order. He presents us with a "Grand Conspiracy" but fails to enlighten the reader with even the most basic facts of the case. There was no conspiracy of popes and kings. There was Philippe IV of France. And there was the huge wealth of the Templars themselves.
The Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon were established to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land. They became a most formidable and greatly feared military organisation. However, because of this very prowess they became masters of another field – Banking. Pilgrimage was a lucrative business and the order gradually amassed great wealth during the 12th century when the Crusades were at their height. They used this wealth to become Bankers and Credit Brokers to the kings and barons of Europe.
Philippe IV of France (Philip le Bel succeeded to the throne in 1285. He was plagued by financial difficulties and soon found himself borrowing from the Templars. To pay the substantial dowry for the betrothal of his daughter Isabella to Edward Prince of Wales (shortly to be Edward II) Philippe borrowed yet again from the Templars. He was becoming deeper and deeper in debt and resented the fact that the Templars in France were wealthier than their king. He needed to raise money to pay his debts.
At the same time he was looking for ways to exert his influence on the affairs of the Church and the French clergy. During the papacy of the infirm and senile Celestine V (who abdicated after less than four months) he schemed with his cousin Charles, King of Naples, to pack the college of Cardinals with Frenchmen. He was also determined to raise money by means of taxes on the French clergy. That brought him up against Celestine's successor Boniface VIII (1294 – 1303) who was determined that the clergy would be exempt from state-imposed taxes. Philippe promptly seized some of the church lands in France. He also sheltered one of Boniface's bitterest Italian enemies, Sciarra Colonna.
The dispute descended into mutual hatred and culminated in an extraordinary Council of all three Estates in France - Nobles, Clergy and Commoners. Led by Philppe's henchman, Guillaume Nogaret, the Council condemned Boniface as a usurper and laid twenty-nine charges against him including, blasphemy, sodomy, heresy, revealing the secrets of the confessional, stealing church property, the murder of Celestine V and, for good measure, the allegation that he had secret sexual relations with a filthy demon that lived in his ring.
On September 3 1303 Boniface was violently attacked at Anagni by Guillaume Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, with the sanction of Philippe. Public outrage saw Boniface released but he died within a month, a broken man. He was succeeded by the pro-French Italian, Niccolo Boccasini, as Benedict XI. The initial pleasantness between the pope and Philippe did not last long. The latter's call for the posthumous impeachment of Boniface was firmly rejected. Benedict went even further. He formally condemned the incident at Anagni and ordered the excommunication of everyone associated with it. A few months later Benedict was murdered by means of a plate of poisoned figs. No one has ever doubted that this was Philippe's doing.
The election of Benedict's successor took a year of stalemate, arguments and accusations. The Italians were split on party grounds (Colonna versus Orsini) which gave the French cardinals a strong levering position. Philippe himself proposed the final compromise. They should select a pope who was not a cardinal, thus freeing the members of the college of any vested interest. The French cardinals would, within forty days, choose the pope from three candidates proposed by their Italian brothers.
Philippe had his candidate ready. The archbishop of Bordeaux, Bernard de Goth, owed allegiance to England (which had jurisdiction over Bordeaux), not to France, and was openly critical of Philippe. But he wanted the papacy - for that prize he was prepared to promise much, and did so. In secret meetings with Philippe he promised that the French clergy would pay a 10% tax to the king, that he would cancel all decrees and Bulls of Boniface against Philippe, that he would lift all excommunications imposed for the Anagni incident and that he would institute a posthumous impeachment of Boniface. As surety, he was required to surrender his brothers and two nephews as hostages to Philippe. Bertrand de Got was duly elected pope on November 14 1305 and took the name Clement V.
Clement V never made it to Rome. Convinced that his life would be in danger, he remained in France under Philippe's protection. He finally settled at Avignon where he established what would be the papal seat for the next seventy-five years. He also displayed a genius for making money. The simple sale of indulgences, blessings, reversals of excommunications, reversals and annulments brought the money rolling in. With no initial outlay the profit was 100% and Clement was soon wallowing in wealth beyond his wildest dreams. Philippe was consumed with jealousy.
He soon hit on a scheme to make some money for himself. Secret orders went out to every Seneschal in France. At the same time on July 22 1306 every Jew in the country was arrested and imprisoned. All their records and property became the property of the crown. Once their goods and chattels were in the hands of the king, the Jews were expelled from the country, destitute and homeless. Their property was auctioned off to raise money whilst the seized documents were carefully sifted for instruments of debt. All documents which recorded debts owed by the crown of France were destroyed but all other monies owed to the Jews were declared to be payable to the king - and were ruthlessly collected.
The money raised was nowhere near enough for Philippe's needs and it was clear to him that the only way to write off his massive debts to the Templars was to destroy the Order. If the Order was suppressed, his debts would disappear. This would not be as easy as seizing the seizure of the property of the Jews (and the Italian Lombard bankers in France who also suffered the same fate). As a Religious Order, the Templars could only be destroyed if it was heretical. Philippe's solution was simple: Arrest the Templars, torture them into admitting heresy, and present the evidence to the pope, who alone had the power to suppress them. In this he was aided by his private confessor, Guillaume de Paris, who also happened to be the head of the Inquisition in France.
On September 14th 1307 every Templar in France was arrested. The charges listed in the national arrest warrant were the same as those which had been levelled against Boniface VIII four years before but far more numerous (127) and detailed. Once the Templars were imprisoned the inquisitors were brought in to

"examine the truth with care, using torture if necessary"

. This was illegal. If Philippe had any evidence of heresy against the Order (or any of its members) it should have been turned over to the Inquisition who would then have investigated and reported to the pope. Philippe got over this by including in the warrant the statement that it was executed at the "just request" of the Inquisitor General, Guillaume of Paris. There is no documentary evidence that such a formal request was ever made. Guillaume was in no position to object to his name to being used in this way.
Philippe then informed the pope of the fait accompli. He wrote to all of his fellow monarchs in Europe detailing the charges against the Order and urged them to arrest the all the Templars in their kingdoms. Edward II of England was dismissive and absolutely refused to arrest anyone. He could see nothing of substance in the charges and wrote to he fellow monarchs defending the Order and urging them, including his brother-in-law Philippe, not to persecute them. Likewise, James II of Aragon refused point blank to make any arrests. He wrote at once to the kings of Castile and Portugal in order to establish a concerted policy concerning the order in their relations with Philippe IV.
And what of the pope, Clement, the puppet of Philippe? Philippe was in for a rude shock. Clement refused to play the game. On October 27th he sent an indignant letter to Philippe complaining of the arrests. Because, on the face of it, the Inquisition was involved he could not rescind the arrest warrants, but he could delay. And delay he did. His authority was needed before any action could be taken against the Order, which was responsible to him and to him alone.
He stalled for weeks and then on November 22nd issued the Bull Pastoralis Praeminentiae which emphasised his own higher authority. As Malcolm Barber puts it in his The trial of the Templars:

"this marks a decisive point in the trial, for by this means Clement irrevocably committed himself to a central role and effectively prevented a hasty end to the proceedings which Philip would have preferred. If Clement had been prepared fully to accede to the coup of 13 October, then it is likely that some quiet, although undoubtedly disreputable, settlement would have been arranged to Philip's material advantage, and the Order would have been dissolved."

The Bull instructed Christian rulers to arrest all Templars within their jurisdiction and to confiscate their properties in the name of the pope. The property was to be held in safe keeping until the final verdict. If the Templars were found guilty their property was to be used only to finance activities in the Holy Land. This left people like Edward II with no option. However he delayed any arrests until January 1308 and made sure that they were well publicised in advance. There were only a handful of arrests in England as a result.
Clement's next move came in February 1308 when he ordered the suspension of all inquisitors involved in the affair of the Templars. This effectively put the entire process on hold. Philippe was having none of it. Clement was visited at Poitiers by a high powered delegation backed up by a large military force at his gates. He remained stubborn and appointed a Papal Commission to look into the charges. But Philippe's officials thwarted the work of the Commission and he himself continued to intimidate Clement. Finally, on August 12 1308 the pope submitted to the will of Philippe and issued a Bull proclaiming the full list of charges against the Templars. This was the watershed, the Templars were now as good as convicted. But the trial dragged on for another four years. At the end of the Council of Vienne, on April 3rd 1312 the Bull suppressing the Order was read publicly in the presence of Clement. At Clement's side stood Philippe IV.
The property of the Templars passed to their sister order the Knights Hospitallers. Philippe had his debts wiped out but also managed to wrest 200,000 livres from the Hospitallers - in compensation! The final act was the burning of Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Order, as a heretic on march 18th 1314. Clement V died a month later on April 20th and Philippe himself died the following November 29th.
The facts, therefore, offer Precious little evidence of a "Grand Conspiracy" to suppress the secret of the Holy Grail. The motive was human greed pure and simple.
Having struggled through this point in the book I persisted, alarmed and annoyed. Then I came to a passage in which the author describes how the Templars are supposed to have come into the possession of the Holy Grail. In secret and in the dead of night they dug into the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to recover the evidence hidden there by Jesus and or his contemporaries. For months, we are told, they painfully excavated deep into "virgin rock."
Whoa!!! If the Templars were digging deep into virgin rock they were on to a sure loser because, by definition, nobody had been there before them. It was logically impossible that they would find anything. Any first year student of field archaeology or geology could have pointed out this basic stratigraphic truth to the author!! At that point I laid the book aside and condemned it to the recycling bin.
But of course it went on to be a Best Seller and the Gullibles are stuffing the coffers of the author and, now, Americans in Paris! AND, of course, the big Hollywood movie is about to hit the fifteen screens near you! But Lo! The ghost of Clement V is amongst us. Somebody has thrown a spoiler into the works.
Legal action is looming on two fronts. Our author is now accused of plagiarism and alleged breach of copyright of ideas and research. If this reaches the courts then Harrison Ford will not be doing his improbable and impossible stuff in leaping from a non-existent Louvre loo window onto a non-existent delivery lorry (with a suitably soft cargo) at an impossible time of night and driving the wrong way through the traffic-laden streets of Paris.
Phew! What an escape!
Oh, forgot to mention the sources of the threatened legal action. One (plagiarism) is the author of a novel called The Da Vinci Legacy. The other is the original source of the conspiracy theory about the Templars and the Priory of Sion, the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail who accuse our author of stealing their research and ideas. Well, they would, wouldn't they. You cannot be a conspiracy theorist if you don't see a dastardly plot in every shadow, can you?
Waldstock
www.storyoflondon.com

History: A confusion of Faiths

2004-09-29T10:26:00.000Z

From time to time we are reminded that Prince Charles, heir to the throne and future Governor of the Church of England, would prefer to be known as Defender of Faiths rather than as Defender of the Faith (Fidei Defensor. The proposed plural is meant to encompass the kaleidoscope of religious beliefs that defines modern, multicultural Britain. The existing singular version is a title enjoyed by the present queen, his mother, and represented on the modern coinage of the realm as F. D.

In this context, an interesting anniversary comes up on October 11. On that date in 1521 pope Leo X conferred the title Fidei Defensor on Henry VIII. He did so to reward the king for his book Assertio Septem Sacramentorum "Assertion of the Seven sacraments."

Henry was a trained theologian, and proud of his theological knowledge, so when the controversy generated by Martin Luther's Protestant theses sprang up, the young king took it on himself to demolish Luther' arguments. His book was widely seen as having comprehensively succeeded in doing so. The Fidei Defensor title was confirmed by a Bull of pope Clement VIII in 1524, which has survived in the archives of the National Record Office.

It is a curious thing therefore that the title has been claimed by every subsequent English and British monarch to the present day, despite the fact that each of them, apart from Mary I, has been the head of the Protestant Church of England!
Waldstock
www.storyoflondon.com

Politics: Is the UKIP Bigoted?

2004-09-26T14:43:00.000Z

British political parties are preparing their manifestos for a General Election which is widely expected to take place in May 2005. Amongst the topics which are currently uppermost in the agenda of the media (and possibly also that of the electorate) are immigration and the position of Britain in Europe. Until the recent elections to the European Parliament extreme views on the former ("throw out all foreigners") were largely associated with the British national Party (BNP)and on the latter ("take Britain out of Europe") with the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). It is no longer that simple.
In the European elections, the UKIP massively increased it share of the vote from 7% to 16% (pushing the Liberal Democrats into third place) and increased their number of MEPs from 3 to 12. They took votes from both the Labour party in its inner-city heartlands and from the Conservatives in the Shires. The BNP, on the other hand, increased their vote from 1% to almost 5% but failed to elect a Member to the European Parliament.
Hot on the heels of that spectacular success (dismissed by many in the media as a double protest vote against a distrusted government and in ineffective opposition) the UKIP began to expand their membership base and scramble to put together a nation-wide team for the General Election. So we need to ask just who, apart from celebrities such as Joan Collins, they are targeting and accepting as party members and potential parliamentary candidates. We also need to take a close look at how the party organisation is managing the hoped-for massive expansion in their membership base.
I found myself wondering about these things when I read the following letter in the North West Evening Mail on August 20th:

"EU eroding freedom of speech
"Just how far down the road must we travel before our basic rights are removed?
"This the EU intends to do with the right to protest, to free assembly and to free speech. All of these rights will be under the control of Brussels in the near future.
"An insight to this progressive venture is that we the indigenous people cannot pass comment on ethnic religious minority groups without being labelled racist. However, these groups can spout whatever comments they wish without fear of prosecution. In Europe people are being jailed for what they think, as an example being the jailing of a Christian Pastor Ake Green for preaching against homosexuality. He was sentenced to jail for quoting texts from the Bible in a sermon he gave condemning homosexuality. This is now considered as hate speech. The logic of this persecution is driven by the determination of homosexual activists to make all criticism of homosexuality illegal. Evangelical Christians and those who cherish civil liberties should be on their guard.
"Those who reject biblical truth are now set on silencing Christian pulpits, by silencing any opposition to advocates for the normalisation of homosexuality.
"This leaves defenders of biblical sexuality and the traditional family without a voice, risking prosecution and deemed offensive by the guardians of political correctness.
"Tony Blair when he repealed Section 28 state that "no unsavoury material will be allowed in schools", but are sexual minorities trying to impose their values on the majority?
"Mr Blair and his government when it came to power was awash with meaningless slogans like, 24 hours to save the NHS, education education, and family values.
"Mr Blair with the help of Brussels has done more harm than any previous prime minister to undermine family values.
"Of course, this is my own personal opinion.
"However, am I in the minority with my mode of thinking? Signed by a member of the Barrow branch of UKIP

What first struck me most forcibly about this were the references to "Evangelical Christians" and the "defenders of biblical sexuality." Here was a bible being thumped! The strident homophobia of the piece was the next thing to ring in my ears. Goodness, modern political parties tend to steer well clear of both of these areas and sometimes perform magical somersaults in trying to be all things to all people. Now here was a member of the UKIP quite unabashed in declaring that the bible is the fount of all truth and that its condemnation of homosexuality is therefore the only stance to be taken by all right-thinking persons.
To this thesis the following can be objected.

Many who reject Biblical "truth" do so because they see the bible as just one of the many mythologies invented by early humans to explain what they did not understand in the universe. As such, it has no relevance to the modern world.
There is no such thing as religious "truth." There is religious belief, which is altogether a different thing. The insistence by different groups of religious believers that they alone possess the "truth" has bred, and still breeds, violence. Of course, people may believe what they wish, but they have no right, whether they are in a majority or a minority in any one geographical location, to insist that everyone must share those beliefs or live their lives according to their interpretation.
On the question of homosexuality, the writer seems completely unaware of the fact that it is not confined to humans. Instances of transient and permanent homosexuality have been observed in many species. This, and the increasing evidence from science, suggests that mammalian sexuality is largely (or even wholly) determined by genetics. It follows that homosexuality cannot be "normalised.

It is because of these arguments that serious mainstream political parties steer clear of religion and go out of their way to court the "pink vote." They assume, rightly, that these areas are minefields which would blow their political campaigns out of he water. Something like that has happened here. What, in fact, was the political message of the letter ? The creeping erosion of personal freedoms by the bureaucrats and law-makers in Brussels. Does the writer have a case?
Well no, actually. At least not on the evidence he produced in his letter. The fact is that the Reverend Green was prosecuted under the terms of an amendment to the Swedish Constitution which was passed by the Swedes in 2002. This included sexual orientation in a list of groups protected from "unfavourable speech." They were not forced to do this by Brussels, and the writer's claim that it represents the vanguard of an assault by Brussels on the rights to protest, to free assembly and to free speech is plainly wrong.
He also seems blithely ignorant of the fact that his own arguments based on "biblical truth" advocate the suppression of freedom of expression. Indeed, the letter amounts to a demand that the perceived threat to freedom of expression be met with the suppression of freedom of expression. This is incredibly illogical. It is also very worrying if this is the view current in the grassroots of a political party which hopes to break into the mainstream of public life.
So, I contacted the UKIP to ask for an official view of the substance of the letter. In an email copied to the national headquarters and to the regional office in the North-west, I asked the following:

Did the UKIP base its policies on the beliefs of Christian Evangelism?
Was the UKIP homophobic?
Were individual party members allowed to publicly express what might be controversial opinions without having these vetted by the party hierarchy?

I received an anonymous reply the following day. The writer informed me that they did not consider the letter homophobic and went on to say

"Sadly political correctness now means that disagreement with many things leads to you being unfairly branded some form of 'ist'. We in UKIP are tolerant of homosexualitybut oppose the militant politicisation of homosexuality."

I replied (with copies to the national and regional addresses) to the effect that my original point, that the published letter amounted to the militant politicisation of a particular religious belief, had been completely missed. The focus on the homosexuality issue was interesting however. The party's candidate in the recent mayoral election in London had refused to visit certain Boroughs which he considered to be "too gay." I asked the obvious question. What did this tolerance of homosexuality imply and how long would it last? Did it not mean that the party's view was that it was some "wrong" to be homosexual - but its members were prepared to put up with it? In other words, a benign, as opposed to evangelical, Christian stance. My rewards was the reply

"Sadly your attempts to impress merely highlight your ignorance."

In parallel with this exchange my anonymous interlocutor had informed me that they had

"now wasted more than enough time on your correspondence, especially having received two of each email you send, and will not be responding to any more of your emails".

Well, two emails eh? As I had diligently copied the entire correspondence to both the national and regional offices this could only mean that my anonymous correspondent was replying from one or other of those places. At my insistence, the writer finally identified himself as a senior official at the party's North West Region headquarters. Well, he could have spared himself the inconvenience of duplicate emails had he initially had the good manners to sign his replies.
So, nothing from the party's national headquarters then. There may have been a good reason for this. It transpires that around the time of my correspondence some little difficulty had blown up at HQ. It seems that within the National Party, sometime in August-September, a small group of gay members pushed for official recognition of a "gay Wing.". The Party Secretary who came out as a lesbian earlier in the year, twice refused to front a gay section of the party. Her refusal is to be seen against a backdrop of internal conflicts over the proposal. By all accounts, senior officials distanced themselves from the idea. According to the website, gay.com the Party Chairman told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the idea could "cause divisions and […] focus on all sorts of things we don't want to focus on." As and from September 1 "UKIP were no longer commenting on the idea of a gay group within the party."
So what are we to conclude about the UKIP from all of this? Let's be charitable. Until this year's European Elections they were no more than a small single-issue (anti-Europe) party who had managed to get three members into the European Parliament under the Proportional Representation system used in those elections. These MEPs included the very personable and able speaker Nigel Farage who has consistently put the anti-Federalist Europe case logically, politely and with great aplomb. This is good of course. The argument for complete withdrawal needs to be made in any debate about Britain's place in Europe.
However, in the past two years, the proposed Constitution for Europe surfaced. This has complicated matters somewhat. The stance of the Blair government has been bewildering to say the least. It started out as "a mopping up" of all the previously signed Treaties into one coherent Treaty. That became a Treaty for Europe to accommodate the new procedures required after enlargement. That became a Constitutional Treaty to allow for further enlargement. No problems at all for Britain in any of this, we were to be "at the heart of Europe."
But if we were right there at the heart, why did we not join the Euro-zone forthwith? Oh, comes the reply from Gordon Brown at the Treasury, we are in much better economic shape than Europe so they will have to satisfy our criteria before we allow them to accept us as fully-fledged Europeans. And so our five economic tests are failed by Europe. We will join but not yet. Maybe before the next election but probably not. Maybe under a Blair premiership but maybe not under a Brown premiership. And the one may give way to the other before the next election or two years into the third term and maybe never. This is fence sitting of prodigious proportions.
The result is that confusion is sown both in the inner city wards and the shires. And the further result is that these are both fertile grounds in which the seeds of bigotry and intolerance, visceral human instincts of perceived self-preservation, can be sown and richly reaped in the political field.
It is, no doubt, an accident of history that the surge in popular electoral support for the UKIP happened to coincide with the arrival of Robert Kilroy-Silk amongst it ranks. This followed his outburst against the Muslim Sharia law of judicial mutilation, execution and subjugation of women(repugnant as all of this is to any member of a western society. No doubt it is entirely coincidental that his unceremonious and sanctimonious (in the name of political correctness) dismissal from the BBC propelled him, a former Labour MP, into the arms of the UKIP.
Or is it? Throughout history we have always had examples of a happy concatentation of events which produced an unexpected political advantage for either an individual or party. (In Britain when, for example, William Rufus could grab the crown because his elder brother, and the rightful heir, Robert Shorthose was on Crusade when their father, William the Conqueror, died or when, more anciently, the stuttering Claudius became Emperor of Rome (and conqueror of Britannia) was acclaimed because he was the first member of the imperial family that the desperate Praetorian Guard discovered in the apartments of the murdered Caligula.
Is Kilroy-Silk, the popular face, if not the leader (yet), of the UKIP a modern Rufus or Caligula? It is not impossible but it does depend on the stance of the Tories and New Labour, in that order. And on the attitudes and voting intentions of supporters of the BNP. The latter are, of course, bigots under any definition. But they have been denied, even by popular ballot, a voice on the European stage.
(They have, however, been elected to local councils in democratic ballots in Britain. The refusal of established politicians to recognise the election of these members, and their right to speak on behalf of the people who elected them is, of course, wholly undemocratic. You cannot enthuse about democracy but refuse to speak to anyone of a different viewpoint who was elected under the rules which led to your own election. If there are bigots amongst the electorate the task of the main stream politician is to educate and enlighten their bigotry, not to condemn it and their elected spokesmen as being somewhere beyond the Pale of civilised debate.
However, neither is it the business of a mainstream political party to encourage them in their bigotry. This is what the BNP does and it is begging to look as if this is what the UKIP also do, at least at the grassroots level. One explanation for this might be that the trumpet call to join the party that went out after the European elections has attracted members who would otherwise have seen the BNP as their natural home. It may be that the regional organisations are filling up with hastily recruited members whose views are on the far right of the political spectrum.
Such a development would be politically dangerous for the UKIP. If, at the hustings during the general election campaign, the views of large numbers of their candidates echo those of the BNP it is very hard to see how they can repeat their spectacular success in the European elections. They would be more than likely to remain on the fringes without a single member of the national parliament.
If that is the outcome they will only have themselves to blame. It is already clear that their scramble to extend their membership base has propelled politically inept people into positions of authority in their regional offices. The problem will be compounded by the lack of party discipline which allows any member to publicly express whatever views they want and associate them with the party name. The fact that this is the case suggests that political ineptness may extend even into the hierarchy at party headquarters.
Perhaps, after all, the pundits were right. Perhaps the UKIP is no more than a single-issue-party, incapable of raising a realistic voice in national politics? If this is so, perhaps, too, the body politic in Britain have reason to be grateful.

Waldstock