BNP: product of reformism's failure
Just what is it about the BNP that the vast majority of British workers
find so nauseating? In the run up to the 2004 local and European
elections, all manner of people, organised in their respective
groupings, mobilised against them, from the Labour and Conservative
Party activists and the myriad left-wing groups, to student bodies,
church groups and unions like the CWU who informed members that their
“conscience clause” gave postal workers the choice not to deliver BNP
material if they found it objectionable. The anti-nazi organisation
Searchlight even produced 28 versions of a newspaper targeting the BNP
election campaign and distributed 1.5 million of them in areas where
the BNP were most active.
Many were clearly panicked at the thought of widespread BNP victories
and this afforded the BNP media coverage which was out of all
proportion to the size of their organisation. An eve of poll message
from Nick Griffin, the party's fuehrer, on the BNP website of 9 June,
stated that they “were on course for a political earthquake”,
that the BNP would be “breaking through with three or four Euro
MPs”. Yorkshire, the BNP claimed, was to be their "jewel in the
crown.” Two days earlier the same website had this to say: “Today
in London a Monk came up to us. He said he had voted for the
Conservatives all his life but this year he was voting for the
BNP. He informed us that most of the Monks in his monastery were
also voting BNP.” One wonders whether the fascists of the BNP had
been taking tips in humour from their favourite comedian Bernard
Manning.
And so it came to pass that the BNP managed to gain four new
councillors in Bradford in four wards. This ‘jewel’ was out of a record
101 candidates they fielded across Yorkshire.
Elsewhere, the BNP made a breakthrough in the south of England, taking
three seats in Epping Forest in the local elections. And in Burnley,
the BNP gained one seat but managed to lose the other seven in which
its candidates were standing. In the North East, where the party stood
a full slate of 25 candidates in Sunderland, they failed to make any
promised gains.
Leader Nick Griffin, who in April had invited over Le Pen, the Nazi
leader of the French National Front, to plan how they could work
as a team (or rather comedy duo) when Griffin became MEP for the north
west of England, failed to take the seat he hankered after. No
BNP candidate succeeded in getting elected to the European parliament
and in the London mayoral elections the BNP ended up in sixth place and
failed to secure the votes required to get representation on the London
Assembly.
Regardless of how much these smiley-faced fascists claim to have
changed their image, booting out the boneheaded troublemakers of
yesteryear, they still represent the politics of hate – and their
writings and statements still contradict the respectable shirt-and-tie
image they try so hard to project. This was much evident from their
election manifestoes, especially that used for their London Assembly
campaign and entitled London Needs the BNP.
The manifesto began with a subject the BNP are famous for – the strange
obsession with the colour of human skin. It opened: “Within another
generation, without political change, London will not even be
recognisable as a European city”. Considering the diversity of cultures
existing peacefully side by side in most European cities London, in a
generation, would very much be like any normal European city. It
asserted that the “remaining British people in London are faced
with progressive marginalisation” because there are too many
non-whites, neglecting to mention the way capitalism itself
marginalises, atomises and alienates not just individuals but entire
communities.
There then followed the usual rant against asylum seekers, “both legal
and illegal” and Ken Livingstone and the Labour Party were said to be
responsible for “this new influx that is about to engulf us.” Here
again, no mention of the fact that within the EU alone, the UK was
recently ranked 10th in number of asylum applications compared to the
country's population or that the government has recently brought in
measures that make it far more difficult for people from a variety of
countries to claim asylum in the UK – together with a reduction of
appeal rights for a host of countries. Neither does the BNP acknowledge
that the Home Office itself has recognised that asylum seekers,
refugees and immigrants have made a huge contribution to the economic
and cultural life of the UK, bringing with them a wealth of skills and
knowledge.
The ugly docrine of fascism
hides behind a respectable facade,now as then
Law and order, another BNP favourite was then tackled. Having informed
us that recorded crime has risen by 1000 percent (how they love nice
round figures) since the 1950s they go on to cite the president of the
Association of Chief Police Officers as claiming that mass immigration
had “brought new levels of organised crime, drug dealing, gun crime,
prostitution, fraud and kidnapping,” before advocating the
reintroduction of the birch and the death penalty and a policy of zero
tolerance. Again, no mention that one BNP London Assembly candidate was
a reputable soccer thug, that the BNP National Development Officer,
Tony Lecomber, has twice been imprisoned or that BNP leader Nick
Griffin was given a suspended sentence for incitement to racial hatred.
A visit to the Searchlight website will reveal that the BNP has a
membership full of unsavoury characters. Moreover, in the year
following the first BNP council victory in Milwall in 1993, racial
assaults increased by 300 percent. It seems crime will only be
tolerated when it is the BNP and their supporters who are carrying it
out.
Next was the issue of “security” with the BNP promising to “make London
safe from the threat of terrorism”, by deporting “Moslem
fundamentalists”. Their TV election broadcast, which was edited, though
downloadable later from the BNP website, was similarly Islamophobic,
blatantly hinting at a hyped threat of Islamic terrorism.
Significantly, the last terrorist bombs to go off in London which
killed and injured members of the white working class were set off back
in 1999 by one-time BNP activist David Copeland, who, when apprehended
, said his aim had been to start a race war which would lead to a BNP
government being elected. And the BNP National Organiser has a
conviction for setting off a home-made nail bomb and possessing
hand-grenades and electronic detonators. Moreover, Griffin’s political
mentor is the Italian Nazi terrorist Roberto Fiore; the very same
Griffin who once went to Libya to gain support from Colonel
Gadaffi and who was all too ready to share a platform at a
Cambridge seminar in July 2002 with Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri,
the despicable Muslim fundamentalist, currently awaiting extradition to
the USA for alleged terrorist crimes.
And so the manifesto continues, each statement showing the BNP to be
the intolerant, narrow-minded, racist bigots they have always
successfully presented themselves as, before closing on a subject
covered in the May issue of the Socialist Standard (‘The Beauty Trap’),
namely the forthcoming erection of the statue of Alison Lapper: “Just
as Ken Livingstone dislikes anything English he equally disapproves of
anything British, which is why we are now to have a sad limbless body
on the vacant fourth plinth rather than a British statesman or woman. A
BNP Mayor would have this dreadful thing removed.” In this
regard the BNP are in keeping with their beliefs on the white master
race. Indeed, their National Organiser considers people with learning
difficulties to be "sub-human" and those with disabilities to be
"genetically inferior". As true heroes of the white working class they
claim to be the BNP have said they will introduce a GM programme to get
rid of those they consider "inferior".
The 800,000 workers who fell for this sort of rubbish across Britain
and gave the BNP their votes in the European and Local elections on 10
June are the misinformed products of the demoralising system we know as
capitalism, deluded into thinking that one main issue – a total halt on
asylum – would suddenly improve their miserable lives. In truth, a
shortage of council housing and poorly maintained housing estates, low
wages and pittance benefits are no more the fault of asylum seekers
than is the hole in the ozone layer. At the end of the day the BNP
promised voters little more than extra space at the trough of poverty
and tens of thousands wanted it.
Of course, the BNP were fortunate to ride a wave of patriotism—a tool
they can use to great effect when it suits—in the run up to the
election, with voters going to the polls as the 60th anniversary of
D-Day was being commemorated and rammed down our throats every night on
TV, and the English football team were gearing up to compete in Euro
2004 and when manufacturers were reporting sales of 4 million St George
flags. And neither is their raw brand of nationalism that unique in
today’s climate where the UKIP can make huge gains in the European
elections on a “say no to Europe” platform, proclaiming the merits of
British sovereignty, and where the Labour Party is all to ready to send
British troops off to far away lands to protect the interests of
Britain’s ruling elite.
Furthermore, we can only wonder at the mainstream parties fears of a
surge in support for the BNP. Considering the views of the Labour and
Conservative parties on asylum (Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech
springs to mind) and the former’s part in upsetting the Islamic world
so much recently, their objections to the BNP do seem a little
hypocritical. They may genuinely abhor the racists of the BNP but have
been unsuccessful in confronting them where they have made political
gains because to do so would mean acknowledging the shortcomings of a
system which they champion and which gives rise to the politics of
racism.
If anything the BNP are the product of the total failure of all the
reformist parties to make capitalism a fit society to live in. And this
is not the fault of the mainstream parties, for they are controlled by
the system and not vice versa despite their claims and promises. When
capitalism fails to deliver, when despondency and shattered hopes arise
from the stench of the failed promises and expectations that litter the
political landscape, is it any wonder that workers fall for the
scapegoating lies of fascists and the quick fix they offer?
JOHN BISSETT
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