l1501.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/12/15/ixportal.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=74293″>editorial ( via Backword Dave) surely gets it right:
Until we hear the case against Mr Griffin – if any is to be brought to court – there are three observations that ought to be made. First, why did the West Yorkshire police think it necessary to send four plain-clothes policemen to arrest the BNP leader at dawn at his farmhouse on the Welsh border, in the week before Christmas? Here is a man who has never made any secret of his longing to be arrested, and to have his martyr’s day in court.
The police say that, since July, a team of officers has been working 10 hours a day, five days a week, watching videos handed to them by the BBC. Is there so little crime in West Yorkshire that they have nothing better to do with their time?
The second observation is that it is a very serious matter to arrest the leader of a political party for stating his opinions – no matter how unpleasant we may find them, or how misguided we may think the 800,000-odd voters who backed the BNP at the European elections in the summer.
The third is that there are surely far more effective ways of silencing Mr Griffin and his kind than the law and the threat of prison. The most effective weapons in the liberal arsenal are argument, scorn and public ridicule.
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