The British National Party Newsroom
The European Commission has unilaterally ruled that any questions about the extremist Communist background of its president, José Manuel Durão Barroso, are “inadmissible” and will not be discussed.
The shocking refusal to answer a simple set of questions over Mr Barroso’s background was made in a letter to the British National Party Member of the European Parliament for North West England, Nick Griffin.
The questions which Mr Griffin asked related to Mr Barroso's college days when he was one of the leaders of the underground Maoist MRPP (Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party, later PCTP/MRPP, Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers/Revolutionary Movement of the Portuguese Proletariat) in his home country.
There is a video clip of Mr Barosso, recorded in 1976, where he criticises the “bourgeois education system” which "throws students against workers and workers against students" and which displayed his ultra-leftist and Maoist sympathises.
With the title “Marxist connections of Commissioners,” Mr Griffin’s written questions ran as follows:
“Given that the Commission does not consider the extremist, totalitarian political affiliations of unelected Commissioners and officials — who initiate legislation — to be of significance to the people they govern, kindly advise in specific regard to Commissioner Barroso:
1. For what duration was he a member of a Maoist party?
2. Whether, given the elimination of between 60-1 00 million persons in Maoist China, Mr Barroso will condemn Maoism?
3. Whether Mr Barroso has ever expressed regret for his past affiliations, which many persons will consider to have been distasteful in the extreme?
4. Whether Mr Barroso will apologise to the people of both Europe and China for his previous membership of such an organisation and, if not, why not?
5. Whether Mr Barroso considers his previous affiliations an error of judgement?
6. Whether Mr Barroso will condemn, outright, both the organisation to which he was affiliated and its policies?”
After a lengthy wait, Mr Griffin finally received a response from the European Commission in which he was told that the “President” (that is, Mr Barosso) “has deemed it [the questions] inadmissible.”
Mr Griffin said later that patriotic politicians are forced all the time to apologise for youthful indiscretions and for silly things they have said or done in the past.
“Everyone can change, but it is always reassuring to hear from the horses’ mouth that such youthful dalliances are no longer applicable,” Mr Griffin said.
“It is therefore worrying that Mr Barosso, whose salary package is now larger than the president of America, will not even discuss his extremist Communist past, never mind apologise or repudiate it.”
