We Want Our Country Back (2015 TV Special) User Reviews

A Sad Yet Insidious Group of People

[l_rawjalaurence · 5/10 · 24 October 2015]

Filmmaker Miles Blayden-Ryall follows the Britain First movement for four months during 2015 as they plan demonstrations in Luton and Rotherham. The driving forces behind their activities are former British National Party (BNP) press officer Paul Golding and 29-year- old law graduate Jayda Fransen.

One of Britain First's main claims is that they are different from any other far right movement insofar that they are not "racist" and admit supporters irrespective of age, sex and religion. Yet such statements seem extremely hollow in view of their rabid Islamophobia. Some of the things that Golding and Fransen say are quite shocking in their combination of sheer ignorance and prejudice.

Eighty years ago the British Union of Fascists under Sir Oswald Mosley preached similar doctrines, leading to regular clashes between members of his group and anti-Fascists. In the Seventies there were similar conflicts between the National Front and the anti-Fascist movement. Britain First seem hell-bent on causing similar social disorder, despite their protests to the contrary; the two leaders manipulate social media with deliberately provocative videos to emphasize their points.

What is abundantly clear is that the Britain First movement deliberately harass ordinary people for their own self-interested ends. They never listen to others and refuse to answer questions that might appear too difficult to answer. Even filmmaker Blayden- Ryall ends up realizing that they really are not worth listening to. The film ends with the two leaders refusing to allow him to continue his documentary, which seems a very good idea.

Despite their allegations to the contrary, the Britain First movement attracts only a few people to its rallies - a maximum of two hundred a time. Most of their attendees are white working class men spoiling for a fight, with little or no understanding of anything, least of all the importance of multiculturalism. Blayden- Ryall claims that the leaders' views are potentially insidious, especially if they are embraced by others; but this documentary suggests the opposite. Britain First is a marginal movement led by two paranoiacs to be pitied rather than listened to.

Dealing with the deluded

[Prismark10 · 4/10 · 1 November 2015]

This documentary opens with the line. 'This is a Christian country' from a member of Britain First.

Let us pause for a moment of reflection. Britain is a country that follows a religion that comes from the Middle East. If you want me to pinpoint it further, Palestine. So how can Christianity equate to Britishness?

Christianity only arrived in Britain about 1500 years ago. Before that it was a pagan country and was pagan for a lot longer than it has been Christian.

Britain First is a fascist splinter group. An off shoot of the British National Party, English Defence League, heck even from UKIP. That is the trouble with fascists, they cannot even get along amongst their own narrow minded kind.

Britain First have in their sights Islam and the supposedly Islamification of Britain. Islam is another religion from the Middle East just like Christianity.

Islam is not a race, you have black, white, brown or yellow Muslims. So these fascist groups have realised that focusing on Muslims rather than Indian, Chinese or Pakistanis means they can circumvent equality discrimination legislation.

Britain First and its ilk could target Jewish kosher meat, Jewish religious practises and dress codes but because Judaism under UK law can mean religion as well as an ethnic group or race means that fascist groups will be in breach of the law. So it is easier to attack the selling of halal food rather than kosher food. In this documentary Britain First argues you fund terrorism by buying halal food which is very bizarre claim.

Britain First we are told is a fast rising political group that concentrates on social media networking. Their YouTube videos have a high hit count and has a female law graduate as one of its leaders. Big deal, Nick Griffin, former leader of the BNP was also a law graduate. Maybe someone should make a documentary as to why so many white law students go on to join right wing groups later in life.

This documentary is called 'We want our country back.' If the British media were honest in the first place and stopped perpetuating the myth that once upon a time before World War 2, Britain was some exclusive white Christian country things may be different. Even Shakespeare wrote a play where the central character was a black moor. Queen Elizabeth 1 had made remarks during her reign about the increasing number of black people, Moors and people from the Bengal in England.

In fact you can go as far back to Roman Britain when black Roman soldiers arrived with the Roman legions.

So what is the country these people want back? The programme never asks? What Britain do they want back? Increasing number of Scots do not want to be part of it and Irish Catholics from Northern Ireland never had much time for it.

Britain First claim not to be racist but it is not long before they tell someone to go back to the desert.

This documentary starts off by building up Britain First, following them around for some weeks and basically give them enough rope to hang themselves. It is not long before you see their racist and thuggish sides. It is difficult to be anti Islamic but non racists. We see the leaders of Britain First going to areas provoking people even harassing them and videoing it all but somehow they never get arrested. I would go as far to say that if a Muslim acted like they did they would probably end up in jail for a very long time.

Britain First claim to be welcoming of other religions but why? As they say in the opening of the film, 'This is a Christian country.' Why would a Sikh male be welcomed as a member unless he is a deluded one. Their ancestry originates from India, the male wears a turban and must carry a dagger of some sorts. How is this integration?

Of course after the big build up the documentary quickly knocks Britain First down. The leaders have stopped cooperating with the crew, I think they knew they have been rumbled as another rag bag of racist thugs with the same people going to different towns on marches every few weeks.

As documentary it is not very well made. A lazy build them up and knock them down type based on selective editing from hours of footage. It never critically analyses in sufficient depth and asks them the questions I wanted answers for. It is deliberately designed to be provocative and garner newspaper headlines.

It was just a shallow programme.

Hit Piece

[now-67631 · 1/10 · 8 October 2015]

Perfect documentary for in-class notes on constructing POV. In this case a hit piece against brave warriors. It's done by a millennial of course and as we all know, they've proved to not be the brightest lot. The Fifth Column (The Enemy Within) aspect should have been explored better to have any remote legitimacy. When the Warriors finally discover the filmmakers hate toward them, they naturally stop their participation as a direct result of his betrayal. Being a millennial the director is surprised that his actions somehow provoked a justifiable response. Most millennials and obviously in this case are unattached and unaware of not only history but his(their) own actions and how they will have consequences. The filmmaker as history shows(and will show)us is on the wrong side of history but he is so far gone in the conformist millennial mindset he like most of that generation live in a pathetic non-critical diminished fog.

Biased as per usual. Typical BBC then.

[eddie052010 · 3/10 · 28 February 2021]

Before I start here, I must this make this known; I am not a supporter, member of or a sympathiser of Britain First. I feel that they are a violent rabbling rousing football hooligan organisation, similar to their counterparts in the English Defence League. They make (or should that be made, given how little relevance they now hold) important issues surrounding immigration and radical Islam hard to talk about or discuss, allowing for corrupt globalist politicians cover to further ignore them. With that out of the way, here goes.

They could have at least tried to make a less politically biased, simplistic and often misleading piece about this organisation, as opposed to using it as a convenient springboard to act like anyone who cares about similar issues is akin to such fools and violent thugs. Instead, this is what we have; a biased and intellectually lazy programme, of which is a far cry from the BBC's best on similar subject matter.

And it starts out so promising; the first half of this show is rather good as it gives you a fascinating and in-depth look in to this group and what it stands for, and their minor popularity as well. Admittedly a lot of it is ugly, but that isn't the point; showing what such groups are like and how they come about is worthy journalism in and of itself, and the first half at least is a good demonstration of that.

However, from the second half onwards, the thing collapses quicker than paper on a wet day, and it is utterly embarrassing to watch. This is because it becomes so overtly slanted to left-wing talking points and ideology that it borders often on propaganda.

All the usual and sadly expected viewpoints and bullet points are ticked off: blunt refusal to be critical of some of the more problematic elements of Islam let alone its more radical sect (#NotAll, right?), full blown blunt manipulation of footage (showing 'violence at an event', of which was simply a bit of pushing) and supposed 'hypocrisy' that never comes to pass (the group apparently 'censors' the documentary filmmakers, although they just don't walk to talk to him, which given the slant this thing takes, you can't really blame them).

It even goes for really low blows too; the most obvious example is that it situates the horrific grooming gang scandal of Rotherham in a weird way, by claiming that it was mainly British Pakistani men who have committed such acts, of which while true ignores possible religious elements, as explored by other scholars and MPs. Or there is the nasty other elements as well. The implications about Jayda Fransen (the former co-leader of the party) being controlled by Paul Golding (the leader), which seems to contradict how clearly independent she is as a person who isn't stupid (as much as you can being a member of such a group any way) with a law degree in tact (now admittedly, this is before the recent domestic abuse allegations against Golding by Fransen, but this show came out long before such things were revealed).

Meanwhile, there are other odd things too. The prominent example of this is that the show explains that the Zakat meat tax that is implemented in some part of the country of which BF are doing their usual is being used for charity purposes. This may very well be true, and if so, fair enough. But there is no actual evidence shown here for it, and given how sympathetic the show is towards Islam as a whole and how anti-BF it is, it comes across as odd that such evidence isn't shown. It shows how poorly produced and made this documentary is that a simple fact can't be trusted at face value, given how openly biased it is in one direction or the other.

And again, I don't support or back this group, as shown above. That being said, any group deserves fair representation regardless of how abhorrent their views are, otherwise you end up with angelic hagiographies or ghoulish slander. The latter is definitely the route taken here, and while this group is contemptable, portraying them as a major threat, and using them as a microcosm to pretend that anyone who shares their views are as well, is utterly deplorable and ridiculous. It echoes Neil Postman's wise warning about turning public conversation into baby talk would lead to culture death, and there is no better example of such a prophecy being fulfilled than with legitimate rot like this, and the several other serious 'exposes' of similar groups, which are good for a laugh, but little else.

No wonder BBC Three was cancelled shortly after this.