I am angry today and all the appeals in the world to me to be "nice" are not going to make me less angry. Even someone quoting the text from the bible that tells me not to let the sun go down on my anger is not going to make me less angry. And the reason for my anger is that a political party that can write this in their constitution have just had two representatives elected to the European Parliament.

"The British National Party stands for the preservation of the national and ethnic character of the British people and is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples. It is therefore committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent, the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948."

I am not going to apologise for quoting this in full. You can find it on the front page of their website. They don't try to hide it. And I am not going to apologise for being political on the front page of a diocesan website. You see for me it has already gone long past the luxury of deciding whether to get involved in politics or not. The godparents of my younger daughter are an African priest and a Swiss woman who are married to each other and whose children hold British passports and my wife and I are godparents to their children as well. The only way that I could ever offer active support to a policy like this, or even the tacit support that one offers by saying nothing, would be to betray friends that I have known for over twenty years.

Someone might argue that there is little chance that the British National Party will ever hold power in this country, but two things become a little easier to do as a result of these elections. One is that it is a little easier for people to hold racist views and to behave in a racist manner. This makes life harder for all people of colour in this country. The other thing is that it gives permission for the government to behave in an illiberal manner, to enact legislation in the name of social order that restricts the freedom of people of colour. Our own asylum legislation is an example of this kind of lazy action on the part of our government.

That leads me to my final point. It is the duty of every single one of us to make it easier for our neighbours to be good. That is one of the main ways in which we obey Christ's command to love our neighbour as our self. That means that it is my duty to help my government behave in a way that helps all citizens of this country to be good; in other words, to make it more difficult for racism to gain a foothold here. I need to find ways of making my voice heard on behalf of my friends and on behalf of a just society.

Rev Stephen Winter,

Assistant Director of Development (Discipleship)