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BNP gains

08:50 / 02.05.03

The British National Party took 13 seats at last night's UK local elections.

They are now the second largest party on the council in Burnley, Lancashire.

At Bradford, where I was doing a colour piece at the counts last night, they missed out in some wards by just over 100 votes.

Voter disillusionment? A wake-up call to the big parties? Knee-jerk reaction to media demonisation of asylum seekers?

What do we think?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:08 / 02.05.03

I think we've got past the stage of voter disillusionment- in the past, most of the time the BNP have gained a foothold anywhere it's been largely (as far as I can tell) because people have wanted to register a "protest vote", not because they're all fucking Nazi scum. People seem to know now what it is they're dealing with- I think anyone who votes for the BNP knows exactly what they're doing and who they're in bed with.
(And I know I'm bound to say this, cos I read newspapers for a living so my perspective on life reflects this... but...) I think media demonisation of asylum seekers has everything to do with it. Not so much the over-the-top ludicrousness of such gems as the Daily Star's "Asylum Seekers Eat Our Swans", but the insidious racism that's slipped between the lines (as it were fnord).

Either way, it's bad news. I don't see the BNP having much chance of gaining any real power, but this kind of result will just encourage the bastards.

09:52 / 02.05.03

I think it can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that they have a better and more motivated local party management who do a lot of doorstepping etc; and postal vote systems can be used to, erm, encourage people into voting a particular way as well (I don't know whether this has in fact happened, but...). Also inflated press rhetoric about asylum seekers will definitely have made it easier for them to get their message through; and in areas with major problems such as Burnley they're more likely to have a foothold anyway.

I'm actually more concerned, perhaps, about the Tory gains - a much more widespread but lower-level illustration of the ability of the right to co-opt dissatisfaction with New Labour.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:03 / 02.05.03

I think it gives the lie to the Labour/Conservative claim "addressing the issue of immigration" - ie, initiating ever more repressive policies, joining in with and encouraging racist media demonisation of refugees - is necessary because, ahem, "if we don't 'deal with it' people will turn to the BNP". (I don't need to give examples of the rhetoric I'm paraphrasing here, right? They wheel it out by rote.)

Instead, the two main parties have adopted both policy and to a greater extent rhetoric inspired if not directly lifted from the likes of the BNOP, and I think this has been for both ideological and cynically pragmatic reasons - ie, we do on the one hand have openly racist politicians such as David Blunkett and innumerable Tories, but I think the majority of government policy and rhetoric on this issue is motivated by how effective a scapegoat the most vulnerable members of society always are, and how easy to it seems to be to make this island's population scared of a great influx of new, 'alien' inhabitants.

The result has been a general shift both to the right, and to the lowest intellectual common denominator, in terms of what is deemed acceptable 'moderate' political discourse on the subject: Blunkett (whose individual style of bully-boy, tabloid language is almost as ugly as the content of what is said) likes to label those who object to his policies and views as shrieking, namby-pamby, over-emotional, ivory-tower, "bleeding-heart" liberals (as has been said before, it's only a matter of time before he calls human rights groups like Liberty a bunch of poofs). Appealing to the idea of universal human rights is portrayed as needlessly emotive when people who are currently stateless are concerned... and so on.

In other words, this shouldn't surprise anyone: if the supposedly respectable, 'moderate', 'centrist' parties mimic far-right and racist groups, if they provide a platform for the views of these groups, *of course* these groups will come to seem more acceptable, more respectable and ultimately more appealing. That's what us "bleeding-heart liberals" have been saying all along...

12:39 / 02.05.03

True, but I've also heard it argued that the left tends to talk about rascism to the exclusion of the problems of immigration. I don't think it is entirely fair, but I do think the debate has a polarising effect on the participants. And one effect that this can have is that people with genuine concerns about immigration feel like they aren't being listened to. There are genuine concerns about resources in terms of schooling, housing etc. So, this may be a problem of perception, but it is one that the left needs to address.

Tryphena Absent

13:07 / 02.05.03

We have a major problem at the moment because our politics have suddenly become so extreme. We have three central parties to vote for, a very right wing vote but no left party and that basically means that there is no extreme competition for parties like the BNP. That's a blatant problem that needs to be addressed now.

Labour have shown themselves to be equally as bad as the tories- they've cut benefits, their position on Europe is non-existent, they've started an unreasonable war and alienated the UN in the process and their budget has been hopeless. A few tory gains hardly makes a difference but the gain of the BNP is frightening because people do know what they're about.

Yesterday three people in my house actively spoilt their votes and the other went for the Lib Dems because we have absolutely no one to vote for. It's sick. If you're OK with immigration but feel it needs to be addressed there is no left to deal with the issues at hand.

21:22 / 02.05.03

Now as far as I understand it the BNP is drawing a great deal of support from Labours core constituancy of the disaffected white working class who now have no one promoting their interests, have been utterly fucked over with the closure of the bulk of the countries manufacturing industries in the 80's, and are edgy about the whole race issue with the papers constantly harping on about asylum seekers. To my mind the really big problem here was new labour alienating so many diehard voters and I suspect that unless we are careful we will have a situation here.

21:49 / 03.05.03

What confused me the most was the fact that these were Labour supporters. Is there some lineage of racist fuckwittery in the Labour-voting working class that I didn't know about?

21:41 / 04.05.03

I think the idea is more that the BNP are professing to support the white working class who are, as a result of globalistaion and the relocation of the manufacturing economy, faced with a situation of reliance on benefits or working in shit low paid service industry jobs. I think the racism is more incidental. People aren't voting for the BNP because they are racist, racism is an aspect of a line they are pursuing: the white working class in the uk are an endangered species whose rights must be protected.

06:30 / 05.05.03

I think the racism is more incidental. People aren't voting for the BNP because they are racist, racism is an aspect of a line they are pursuing

Not sure who the "they" refers to, the BNP or those who vote for it. Just to make things crystal clear - racism is at the core of what the BNP are all about. Their chairman, Nick Griffin was convicted in 1998 of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred and their party number 2, Tony Lecomber has done time for the stabbing of a Jewish man (though I'm unsure whether his conviction for planting nail bombs had a racial component.) From time to time the BNP loses someone in their set-up when they are convicted of, say, fire-bombing an Asian business or glassing a black man.

18:56 / 05.05.03

Oh yeah take your point. 'they'was referring to the BNP. The BNP are most definately very racist but they aren't standing up and saying 'vote for us, we're racists'. They're putting forward a manifesto of defending whites who are becoming a 'minority in their own country' and slightly downplaying their traditional nazi worshipping, skinhead image. As I understand it most of those who vote BNP don't do it because they want all non caucasian uk residents shipped out a.s.a.p, but through of a sense of betrayal by mainstream politics and because they are being offered a useful scapegoat and hate figure in the form of the most prevalent local ethnic minority or the shadowy threat of SARS infected asylum seekers who 'get given free housing 'etc. Essentially the BNP are trying to rebrand and not doing half badly, unfortunately.