The understandable anger and outrage that greeted the recent resurfacing of the detestable Ku Klux Klan in British Columbia has led some of our friends to oppose our defence of the group’s right to freedom of speech.

The BCCLA is unequivocally opposed to the ideology of the Klan and to many of its activities. We abhor the offensive racist views it propagates and deplore the disruptive effects its activities have on the community.

We also recognize that acceptance of the Klan’s philosophy would endanger our democratic institutions and the very fabric of our society. We will continue to combat the spread of the Klan’s ideas by exposing their worthlessness and by championing the principles of equality and justice for all.

But as citizens of a democratic country committed to the principle of freedom of speech, we also oppose the suppression of any ideas, however repulsive they may be to us. We must insist that we do not want the state or anyone else telling us which views we may hear and which we may not. We demand the right to hear all and to decide for ourselves which are worthy and which are not.

We believe our free society is strong enough to withstand and reject the churlish, ugly and bankrupt ideas of the Klan without having to abandon basic democratic principles.

The sporadic visits of the pathetic KKK “organizers” do not bring race hatred into British Columbia, and it does not leave when they slink away. Nor will attempts to suppress the Klan’s right to speak, even if successful, eliminate race hatred in the province.

Race hatred is here every day. We know, because we have been fighting it for years. Our members work constantly in various ways to counteract not only verbal but also active bureaucratic, legal and even physical abuse of racial and other minorities.

For more than ten years, the BCCLA has had a standing committee on discrimination which, among other activities, receives and deals with dozens of complaints every year from members of minority groups who feel that other British Columbians have violated their rights in one way or another. We do not merely take positions on such matters, but work quietly and as effectively as we can to secure redress for those who have been wronged.

When people say something we object to, our goal is not to shut them up but to prove them wrong. Thus, as soon as we heard that Ku Klux Klan material apparently had been distributed at a high school in North Vancouver, we got in touch with each high school in the district and offered to send a speaker on human rights. As a result, BCCLA vice president David Copp was to address students at Argyle High School, where the incident occurred on December 16, 1980. We have no doubt that this sort of activity is the best way to fight the poisonous ideas of the Klan and we are confident that the Argyle students will freely reject them.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association will continue to defend the right of unpopular groups to express their views, however distasteful those views may be to others in the community or to us personally. Whether we or others agree with such views, or whether we find them misguided, worthless or even dangerous to society, is irrelevant.