BNP; A Barking disaster but no national breakthrough
Dave Landau
First, a health warning about this article. It is not based on an in depth
analysis of the BNP result in England at these local authority elections. I
have not looked at the distribution of where they were placed second or third
party around the wards throughout boroughs or districts or the social-economic
state of their successes or failures outside of East London/Epping. Rather it
is an initial view of the situation to meet the Briefing deadline, so I hope
my conclusions do not turn out to be too superficial.
First the good(ish) News
In most parts of the country the BNP's results are disappointing (for them).
For all their efforts in the West Midlands where they put up 86
candidates they had a small handful of gains and within that, Birmingham where
they put up 40 of these candidates, they won no seats at all.
In the North West they made a gain in Burnley and in Pendle, failing yet again
to make it in Oldham. In Yorkshire they did badly in Bradford, but did make a
gain for the first time in Leeds.
Whilst the gains they have made are of concern, this is certainly not the
result which they hoped would place them on the map as a serious electoral
contender. You would not think this from the way the press have bigged them up
based on the Barking & Dagenham results. The worry is that this enhanced
public profiling of the BNP as a success story, speaking up for the ordinary
working people, could help them reach that level in the future.
'Foreign Criminals'
For the couple of weeks leading up to the elections the news was dominated by
the 'foreign criminals' story. The response of the mainstream politicians and
the media was nothing short of a disgrace. They all accepted without question
a discourse in which foreign criminals were somehow worse or more dangerous
than other criminals. The only question that mattered was how culpable Charles
Clark was and whether he should resign.
This is racist. If someone has served their sentence and is released into the
community then it matters not one jot what the immigration status or
nationality of that person is. If some of these people are dangerous then how
many more dangerous British people are released into the community every day!?
And should we be dumping dangerous people onto other countries? None of this
was questioned.
This is precisely the atmosphere upon which the BNP thrives and must have
boosted their support so the fact that they did not make their promised
breakthrough nationally indicates their weakness.
The South Eastern Cluster - the Hodge Factor
But certainly what has happened here is a disaster. The eleven seats they won
in Barking & Dagenham made the headlines but actually their success was wider
than that they made gains in other parts of a sub-region:- They won a seat in
Hainault ward in the London Borough of Redbridge getting the largest vote
(they only stood one candidate and there were three seats), they won three
seats in the Loughton wards of Essex District Council joining sitting BNP
councillors thus controlling these wards. And they won a seat in the London
Borough of Havering also. As an anti-racist in this area this very
frightening.
How can we account for the difference with these results and their relatively
poor showing elsewhere? I have little doubt that the Hodge factor was
significant. Her statement and the media interest in the BNP this area that
followed meant that many who previously thought that a vote for the BNP was a
wasted vote, cast their votes for the fascists.
Another factor in Barking & Dagenham may well have been the fact that there
were two anti-fascist campaigns. This was not the case however, in Redbridge,
Havering and Epping Forest.
Fear and Fascism
But are there crucial socio-economic differences? Recent studies into
potential BNP voters seem to indicate that there is no correlation between
deprivation indices and support for the BNP. Furthermore support, or potential
support (amongst white people) tends not to be great where there is a great
mix of people, but rather the opposite. This confirms what I have always
believed that fear and insecurity drives people towards the fascists. Fear of
the unknown in terms of newcoming people. And insecurity about precarious
relative privilege.
This perspective gets some support from the results in Hainault and Debden
(Epping Forest). These are predominantly upwardly mobile working class areas,
where the previous generation has moved out of the East End. Predominantly
white areas with very little experience of refugees and asylum seekers. At
last count there seemed to be one asylum seekers in the whole of Epping Forest
District.
However Barking & Dagenham itself is somewhat different from these areas in
that the material conditions are worse. Health indices are not good,
especially pollution related health such as asthma and the closure of most of
Fords and therefore of many smaller employers related to the car industry
leads to an economic downturn not experienced in many other parts of the
country.
But the fear of incomers remains a factor. The borough as a whole is quite
mixed but many of the wards in which the BNP has been successful are not very
mixed and the fear and resent of the other is significant.
Dangers
The success of the BNP in these areas will increase the confidence of racists
throughout the East London and Essex Regions and we must brace ourselves for a
likely increase in racist harassment and racist attacks.
Across the country there is a danger of a further racist lurch in the
mainstream parties as they draw the wrong lessons from Barking & Dagenham –
namely that they have to accommodate to racism in order to stop the BNP's
success being duplicated elsewhere. Look out for yet more immigration controls
internal and external and a competition between the parties on who will be
harder. We have already seen this happen with the criminals issue.
The Struggle Goes On
The need for anti-fascist and anti-racist campaigning is as strong as ever.
New questions are thrown up by Barking and Dagenham with so many councillors.
Will they be allowed to function? What should local authority unions do? How
can Labour Councillors make them ineffective?
Campaigns need to have a strong relationship to the Labour and Trade Union
movement but they must keep their independence from parties in power who are
often despised rightly by the communities they are supposed to represent and
serve.
Postscript
The situation does appear to be worse than I first realised because it turns out that the BNP came second, or more correctly, next one after the lowest winner, in about 70 wards. Whilst this is still a long way from the national breakthrough they hoped for it strengthens the necessity for a strong and effective anti-racist and anti-fascist movement and for a political alternative to the mainstream parties.
May 2006
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