Where now for anti-fascists?

Andy Newman


How bad was the result?


On 4th May 2006 far right parties (excluding UKIP) secured 248353 votes across 388 wards across England, within which the British National Party (BNP) received 238727 votes in 364 wards. The BNP gained 32 new councillors, taking their total to 48 across the country, and in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, they won 11 seats to become the largest opposition group. In Blackburn the equally unpleasant “England First” won two seats.



It is hard to compare votes in local elections to general elections, as there is considerable evidence that voting patterns are different, nevertheless the BNP will consider this year’s election to be progress over last year’s general election, where they put up 119 parliamentary candidates and took 192746 votes, and should be compared to the best ever election result of the National Front in 1979, where the NF fielded 303 parliamentary candidates who got 191719 votes.



Clearly this huge vote for an openly racist party is of great concern, but we do need a measured consideration of what it represents. How close are the BNP to breaking into the political mainstream?



Searchlight are correct to point out that the BNP failed to consolidate the ground it had made in earlier years in Bradford, where it lost in two wards it won in 2004; and in Calderdale where it lost a seat. This is not just putting a positive spin on bad news. As Billy Bragg has pointed out: “"if you want to really annoy the local Labour council and get them to sort shit out then the nuclear button to press would be to vote in a BNP council". However the BNP cannot deliver any solutions for the problems that generate their protest vote, which limits their possibilities for sustaining a base. In Burnley the presence of a block of BNP councillors paralysed the council and prevented an administration being formed in 2005, so the council was instead run by unelected officers.



What is more, the BNP failed to put up any candidates at all in major towns and cities like Bristol, Oxford, Reading, Portsmouth and Plymouth. This can only have been because they couldn’t find anyone prepared to stand.



But most importantly, we need to consider the degree to which the BNP’s electoral performance succeeds or fails in reinforcing the conditions for its own future advance. Although viewed from the perspective of minor parties the BNP’s performance is significant, when viewed from the perspective of the parties contending for government, or with ambition to win councils, the BNP vote is still marginal. Michael Howard’s use of the race card for the Conservatives in the 2005 general election is anecdotally credited with helping to bring out the Labour vote in many key marginal seats. There seems little prospect of David Cameron allowing the Tories to be dragged to the right to compete for the racist vote.



The press interest in the BNP is at least partially created by the convergence of the main parties, so that the BNP were the only sexy story in a dull election campaign. However the extremely low calibre of the BNP’s councillors and candidates means they will struggle to perpetuate that interest. Even a slightly more talented individual, like Cllr Richard Barnbrook, leader of the BNP group in Barking and Dagenham, is a one trick pony who can only talk about race and asylum.

 

Who votes BNP?

Two excellent studies have been published, based upon the detailed research of Professors Helen Margetts, Stuart Weir and Peter John. Every serious anti-racist should read them in their entirety, and links are given at the end of this article.


From the point of view of activist opponents of the BNP, the important points are:

How solid is the BNP vote?


I spent the last few weeks campaigning in a ward being contested by the BNP, and most of election day talking to people going into the polling stations. Although this evidence is anecdotal I was struck by the following:

The actual vote achieved by the BNP (319 votes, 16%) was much higher than the indication given by talking to people – very few admitted to intending to vote BNP, or having voted for them.

Even among those who said they were voting BNP, many stressed that they were not against immigrants, but were against what they perceived as special treatment for immigrants by government.
Some older voters made a clear differentiation between the National Front (bad) and the BNP (good)
Even among those who were very opposed to the BNP, there was agreement that the government gave too much help to immigrants and asylum seekers.

The BNP standing meant that many people who do not normally vote did so. Including a big increase in the Labour vote (while the Lib Dem and Tory votes were unchanged), and there was a swing from the Socialist Alliance candidate in the same ward to Labour. (Partly because the far left candidate spooked Labour out of complacency over the BNP threat, and Labour campaigned hard)

Most voters happily chatted with the Socialist Alliance activists outside the polling stations, but absolutely no one talked to the BNP goons standing there. This must have also included many BNP voters.

Polling evidence from the London Elections Study quoted by the Joseph Rountree report shows that 71% of BNP voters would consider voting UKIP, and 21% of BNP voters would consider voting Tory. Examination of the distribution of votes in Barking and Dagenham suggests that many voters must have given two votes to the BNP and one to Labour, or two to Labour and one to the BNP.



The Democratic Audit report highlights that:

Focus group evidence suggests that those who had vote for the BNP had tried different alternatives, such as switching between the parties, or trying the Liberal Democrats. A vote for the BNP was often seen as a wake-up call, or ‘kick up the backside’ for the major parties, which was safe as the party could only win a few seats.

The BNP gains its electoral support from all three of the largest parties, and not just Labour; and in fact that it gains most from the Conservatives and least from Labour.

Many BNP voters are embarrassed about the party’s stance on some issues.

All of this suggests that although the BNP have built a significant electoral base, it is unstable, and could rapidly disappear. It is an expression of a racist protest vote, with only a slight specific allegiance to the BNP itself.

 

Where is the BNP going?

It is important to understand that the BNP are an openly racist not an openly fascist organisation. The interplay between its fascist and populist elements is a source of weakness for it.



The shared aim of its membership is to reverse the trend of Britain to become a multi-cultural society, with the aspiration of becoming an all white country. Certainly the leadership of the BNP exhibits continuity in personnel and ideology from Oswald Mosley’s, Colin Jordan’s and John Tyndall’s organisations. Both Griffin and Lecomber have links to political violence and open fascism in the past.



The programme of the BNP could only be achieved by a huge level of repressive state violence. What is more, the BNP could only gain state power by first removing the obstacles that stand in its way – which would mean physically confronting the trade unions, and BME communities. So the objective direction that the BNP follow is fascist, irrespective of the ideological make up of its membership.



But knowing that the BNP is decades away from forming a government, Griffin is hoping to play the long game. It must seem very galling that a post-fascist like Gianfranco Fini can be deputy Prime Minister in Italy, while Cambridge educated Griffin is talking to 20 numbskulls in a pub skittle-alley in Keighley.



In the medium term if the BNP could win a swathe of councillors across the country, it might be able to shift the political agenda so that race and immigration are part of mainstream debate. If it could distance itself from its fascist past it might be able to join coalition administrations in councils, it might get MEPs, and members of the London Assembly elected. With this higher profile it might become a permanent part of the political landscape, a much better foundation for launching a future openly fascist party.



But there are a number of problems for Griffin and the BNP with this scenario. Not least of which is the activity of anti-fascists in continually exposing the fascist connections of the BNP.



What is more, any sustained organisation requires a cadre of activists that are motivated by an ideology. The current leadership and cadre of the BNP come from fascist backgrounds, and have the criminal records to prove it. This creates a complex difficulty for Griffin. To turn out the existing cadre to work in elections requires sufficient concessions to them that the BNP is not just a racist, but an active race-hate organisation, which is an obstacle to gaining greater respectability. What is more, the party is unable to have a truly candid debate about the need for a shift without revealing the Nazi ideology of many of its supporters, and even exposing them to prosecutions for incitement to racial hatred.



The fascist core of BNP supporters are correct to fear the possibility that the BNP could become what it is pretending to be. If Griffin could get elected to the European parliament he would be mainly interested in sustaining his own electoral career.

 

Triangulation and Political Correctness

The most significant contribution to the debate about the BNP has come from an unlikely quarter. Former Blairite loyalist, Jon Cruddas MP, writes a brilliant epilogue to the Joseph Rowntree report. In this he argues:

“The originality of New Labour lies in the method by which policy is not deductively produced from a series of core economic or philosophical assumptions or even a body of ideas, but rather, is scientifically constructed out of the preferences and prejudices of the swing voter in the swing seat. It is a brilliant political movement whose primary objective is to reproduce itself – to achieve this it must dominate the politics of Middle England. The government is not a coalition of traditions and interests who initiate policy and debate; rather it is a power elite whose modus operandi is the retention of power.”

“ … At root the gearing of the electoral system empties out opportunities for a radical policy agenda. On the one hand, policy is constructed on the basis of scientific analysis of the preferences of key voters; on the other, difficult issues and the prejudices of the swing voter are neutralised. Labour have become efficient at winning elections and being in government yet within a calibrated politics where tenure is inversely proportionate to change. As a politician for what is regarded as a safe working class seat the implications of this political calibration are immense. The system acts at the expense of communities like these – arguably those most in need. The science of key seat organisation and policy formation acts as a barrier to a radical emancipatory programme of economic and social change.”



In other words, Labour’s policy objectives are set by the desire to win elections, not from the objective tasks of government. The real concerns of working class voters in areas like Barking and Dagenham are not even acknowledged, and certainly no solutions are offered. As Cruddas explains: “The national policy agenda is calibrated for a different type of community which actively compounds our problems locally. For example, social housing is not a priority for swing voters in Middle England but is the burning issue locally.”



It is this ignoring of real social problems by New Labour that allows the BNP (and to a lesser extent UKIP) to talk about “political correctness” – the idea that a metropolitan elite, distant from the real issues of working people, is setting their own agenda. This is an important point to acknowledge, because opponents of the BNP must not be seen as trying to stifle debate about the real issues, even if those issues are being given distorted expression in racist language, without running the danger of consolidating the BNP’s position as the only ones who speak up for the white working class.

 

The Media and Margaret Hodge

There is no doubt that the intense media focus on the BNP, by national and local news organisations, helped them electorally. There has also been some anger at the unguarded comments of Margaret Hodge MP, who suggested that 80% of the people she spoke to were thinking of voting BNP, a claim she repeated more than once.



The important point to acknowledge here is that Margaret Hodge merely gave the media a pretext to report a very real story. Given the triangulation of the main parties on an increasingly convergent agenda, the issue of race and immigration – boosted by the fiasco of Charles Clarke’s handling of the deportation issue – was the form of expression that allowed other substantive issues concerning housing, decaying services, the crisis in the NHS and government sleaze to surface.



We might have hoped that the news organisations would choose to instead responsibly report the campaigns to defend services, but their failure to do so is really a reflection of how marginal the labour movement has become to setting the political agenda. Instead bulging post bags to local newspapers praised the BNP, and it would be a strong willed editor who would resist the tide.



Nevertheless Margaret Hodge’s ill judged comments had a disastrous effect. Andrew Gilligan’s expose of BNP election fraud in the Evening Standard had led to the BNP abandoning campaigning in Barking and Dagenham to concentrate instead on Thurrock and Debden. But as soon as Hodge’s remarks were publicised the BNP descended again on Barking and Dagenham, and Hodge’s apparent legitimisation of the BNP vote helped the BNP reach out to a layer of backward and disposed people who do not normally vote.

 

The rise of racism


The Democratic Audit report includes the following fascinating graph showing the proportion of people who regard race and immigration as the most important issue. It is impossible to look at this without noting the correlation between Labour governments between 1974 and 1979, and from 1997 to today and the rise of racism.



At an obvious level while there is a Tory government, the prospect of a Labour government provides a readily digested alternative. And the experience of Tories in government tends to reinforce a class based, rather than race based, explanation of the problems of working class communities. The disappointment of Labour in government can give an audience for racists.

 

But John Cruddas MP brilliantly explains how New Labour exacerbates the problem still further:



“The government has never attempted to systematically annunciate a clear set of principles that embrace the notion of immigration and its associated economic and social benefits. Yet at the same time it has tacitly used immigration to help forge the preferred flexible North American labour market. Especially in London, legal and illegal immigration has been central in replenishing the stock of cheap labour across the public and private services, construction and civil engineering.

“Politically, the government is then left in a terrible position. It triangulates around immigration and colludes in the demonisation of the migrant whilst relying on the self same people to rebuild our public and private services and make our labour markets flexible. Immigrant labour is the axis for the domestic agenda of the government yet it fails to defend the principle of immigration and by doing so re-enforces the isolation and vulnerability of immigrants. The government helps in the process of stigmatising the most vulnerable as the whole political centre of gravity moves to the right on matters of race.”



We need a clear message on the benefits of immigration, but this will not be done because of the process of triangulation, as it might scare the undecideds of Middle Wallop. As a result, several mainstream, or even left, commentators are prepared to collude when working class people express their concern about housing and service provision in racist terms. For example, the Young Foundation's recent study of social changes in the East End, “The New East End: kinship, race and conflict”, which legitimises racism by accepting the argument that Whites in the East End have lost out as the welfare state provides for Bengali immigrants.



As Arun Kundnani has written: “At its most effective, campaigning against the far Right has targeted not just far-Right parties but also the wider racism from which they drew support. The racist message was considered as disreputable as the far-Right messenger. But nowadays, there are few pundits or politicians who are prepared to say loud and clear that blaming Britain's problems on immigration is a racist lie. The predominant approach is to seek to 'recognise' the 'legitimate' and 'rational' concerns of far-Right sympathisers. This is a large-scale shift from the situation ten years ago, when it would have been unthinkable for anyone on the Left to endorse a message that held immigration responsible for housing shortages.”



There is also increasing evidence that in some of the traditional blue collar skilled jobs (e.g. plumbing, HGV driving etc), employers are becoming more active in using immigrants to suppress wages. As a result the Trade Unions must intensify their attempts to organise migrant labour in a way that makes common cause with the indigenous workforce.
 

Unite Against Fascism and Searchlight


In response to the BNP’s election result, Weyman Bennett, Joint Secretary of Unite Against Fascism said: "The election of an open Nazi organisation as the official opposition in Barking is warning to all of us. Just as Hitler singled out minorities to blame for the economic crisis of the 1930s, the BNP want to scapegoat black and Asian people for existing housing and economic failure in Barking and Dagenham . We need now to bring about an enormous mobilisation of those that are against fascism into a unified opposition. We need black white to unite and fight against those who would usher the fascist politics of Hitler and Mussolini into this century. Our slogan is ‘Never Again’."



I am sure that Weyman is well meaning, but the BNP are not an openly Nazi organisation, as even the most cursory reading of its literature would reveal. Indeed recent issues of the BNP newspaper “Voice of Freedom” have praised William Morris, and Henry Hyndman, and the BNP even claim to stand in the tradition of the Social Democratic Federation, an early British socialist party.



What is more, whereas in the 1970s calling the NF Nazis had a large resonance for those who had fought, or like me whose fathers had fought, rifle in hand, against fascism. Today Hitler is just someone from history.



I cut my own political teeth in the Anti-Nazi League, and they were rough times characterised by a very different type of fascist threat, and a much stronger labour movement. The BNP are more fly than the NF, and resist physical confrontation with the left, at the same time they have become adept at representing themselves to the media as the victims of censorship.



Although the UAF’s leaflets against the BNP are poor, the Love Music Hate Racism campaign could become a useful campaign in creating a climate of anti-racism. For LMHR to succeed it needs to learn the lesson of Rock Against Racism by seeking to attract artists who themselves have an audience amongst the far right’s own constituency, as RAR did with Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69. There is no point in organising LMHR carnivals if they only attract those already won to the benefits of multiculturalism.



Searchlight has taken a very different approach, of targeted campaigning based upon intelligence. This means leaflets and tabloid newspapers that specifically target the BNP in the wards they are actually standing in, and aimed at people who are thinking of voting for the BNP. It has also meant identifying and targeting BME voters, or other anti-fascist voters, to get them out to vote for whichever candidate is best placed to beat the BNP. This needs sensitivity, for example immigrants from Africa are more likely to be responsive to arguments based upon the BNP's support for apartheid, rather than reference to the second world war.



A few labour movement activists have been unhappy with some of the arguments from Searchlight that for example criticize the BNP for being unpatriotic. I think these criticisms of Searchlight are unfounded, as it is legitimate to expose the hypocrisy of the BNP supporting Denmark in the 2002 World Cup.



A more founded worry about the Searchlight approach is that it failed to prevent the Dagenham and Barking breakthrough. Again, I don’t think this proves the Searchlight strategy is wrong, just that on its own it is insufficient. Without Margaret Hodge’s intervention Searchlight’s targeted approach would probably have thwarted the BNP in Barking and Dagenham as it successfully did in the 2005 General Election.



Both Searchlight and the UAF play a valuable contribution in containing the BNP, and ensuring that the BNP are regarded as a tainted organisation, that even racists feel embarrassed about voting for. Given the social exclusion in many areas it is not surprising the BNP gain a protest vote, the question is how can we undermine the social conditions that the BNP are exploiting

 

Undermining the BNP’s base

Working class communities are facing a housing crisis. But because this is not experienced by the swing voters in marginal seats it is not a priority for government. Of course housing is only one policy area, but the complete inaction of the Labour government on the issue has been exploited by the BNP. Councils are obliged to give precedence to families with the most points for social housing, and given inadequate stocks, and long waiting lists this is bound to be perceived as immigrant families jumping the queue over those white people who have less points, (but may have been in the queue longer)



The answer is for there to be more social housing. Of course, campaigning groups like Defend Council Housing, community activists, and far left parties can seek to offer long term campaigns over the housing issue – but these will not reach the potential BNP voters.



The only agency that can solve the problem is the Labour government. What is more, while we socialists would prefer the social housing to be provided by the state sector, through allowing the “fourth option” of building council houses, what matters is the service provision not the mechanism. If a Labour Government facilitates a major house building scheme through the Housing Associations then so be it. This is an important point, because while Gordon Brown is as tainted by PFI as anyone in the Labour Party, he may not be so averse to pushing the policy agenda towards benefiting Labour’s traditional voters.



Jon Cruddas MP has provided the valuable arguments about how New Labour has created the conditions for the BNP to grow. The Trade Unions have a responsibility to take up those arguments and force a change in Labour policy.



 

 

 

Sources:



Far right election results:

http://www.stopthebnp.org.uk/articles/Elections2006/2006BNPresults.php



The BNP: the roots of its appeal

Peter John, Helen Margetts, David Rowland and Stuart Weir

Democratic Audit, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex

http://www.democraticaudit.com/download/breaking-news/BNP-Full-Report.pdf



The Far Right in London, a challenge for local democracy?

Peter John, et al.

http://www.jrrt.org.uk/Far_Right_REPORT.pdf



How the BNP entered the political mainstream

Arun Kundnani

http://www.irr.org.uk/2006/may/ak000011.html
 

 

 

May 2006

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