What prospects now for the BNP?
As the British National Party (BNP) celebrate their three
new council seats in Burnley it seems that BNP leader Nick Griffin's drive to
make his party appear more modern, respectable and credible is paying off. This
success will strengthen the hand of those who want to turn the BNP into a
British version of far-right populist parties like Haider's 'Freedom Party' in
Austria. But is the BNP capable of escaping its neo-Nazi roots and becoming an
electorally credible far-right alternative? NAOMI BYRON writes.
THERE IS NO doubt that there is potential for a reactionary
English nationalist force to develop to partially fill the current political
vacuum. An opinion poll carried out by the Sunday Times this April - in the wake
of Le Pen's vote in the first round of the French presidential election - showed
that 53% of those questioned agreed that 'the British political establishment
needs the same kind of kick as Le Pen delivered in France'. Twenty-two per cent
said that they would vote for a credible party that stood for British withdrawal
from the European Union (EU) and imposed 'far-reaching' anti-immigration
policies.
Support for 'little England' policies is also shown in the
core Tory vote, which has remained solid despite the scale of the defeats
suffered by the Conservative Party at the last two general elections. On low
turnouts the Tories have been able to outpoll the Labour Party, such as in this
year's local elections where 34% of votes were cast for the Tories, or in the
Euro elections of 1999 when they polled 36% with a strongly 'Euro-sceptic'
campaign. Another indicator was the support won by James Goldsmith's Referendum
Party in the 1997 general election, which polled 811,852 votes, and by the UK
Independence Party (UKIP) which won three seats in the European Parliament (MEPs)
on an anti-EU platform in 1999 with a 7% share of the poll (696,000 votes).
The increased volatility of elections in Britain, as more
voters choose either to abstain or vote against the mainstream parties,
increases opportunities for socialists and the left. But it also opens the door
to the development of reactionary and nationalist forces.
Nick Griffin, who took over from John Tyndall as leader of
the BNP in 1999, is doing his utmost to make the most of these opportunities. As
part of this attempt to shed the BNP's neo-Nazi image they have officially
dropped their policy of forced repatriation in favour of one of 'voluntary'
repatriation. The BNP have also changed other elements of their programme to try
and make themselves more acceptable. Defending the dropping of their previous
policy of a total ban on homosexuality, for example, the BNP's magazine,
Identity, argued that: "As much as the BNP wants to drive homosexuality
back into the closet where it belongs, such a policy is wholly unworkable and
totally ridiculous. Worse still, it betrays a totalitarian mindset which is
badly at odds with the essentially individualistic and live-and-let-live
attitude of most Britons".
Their manifesto for this year's local elections, in a
cynical attempt to appeal to the increasingly radical consciousness in Britain,
claimed that the BNP "oppose the privatisation of council housing and will
work to reverse the privatisations Labour have already forced through" as
well as opposing "any proposed sell-offs of municipally owned properties
such as parks and playing fields".
Contrast this to their previous position on privatisation,
from the BNP's newspaper in May 1994, which argued "that the private
enterprise system is the one which functions with the greatest dynamism and
efficiency. We therefore favour most parts of the economy operating under
private ownership and control".
This 'modernisation' strategy is aimed at consciously
targeting working class ex-Labour voters. Paul Golding, the BNP's director of
publicity, wrote in a guide to the BNP's local election campaign this year that
local branches "must find a ward that is - or used to be - rock solid old
Labour. One where the Tories are strong contenders, or where the
Liberal-Democrats have used their own pavement politics to dig in will be no
good - unless the Lib-Dems got elected on a subtly 'racist' ticket and are now
running a pro-immigrant council.
"There are thousands of white working class wards with
high levels of poverty, job insecurity and council neglect that show better than
any academic political study the way in which New Labour has abandoned its
traditional supporters. This is the political space in which we will get our
first electoral breakthroughs. Don't even consider well-to-do middle class
wards, or an area with a high immigrant population, as most whites on our
wavelength will already have left".
This approach, combined with the increasing anger against
New Labour and other mainstream parties, helped the BNP to get one of its best
votes ever in May 2002. The BNP's highest votes were in Oldham and Burnley
(although their best result in Burnley was in Cliviger-with-Worsthorne, a
better-off ward where the Tories are strong contenders). But their successes
were not confined to ex-mill towns in the North of England. In Castle &
Priory ward in Dudley the BNP got 26%, while in nearby Sandwell the BNP got 24%
in the Princes End ward. In Sandwell's Tipton Green ward the combined vote of
the BNP and the 'Freedom Party' (a BNP split-off) was 31%. In Lewisham's Downham
ward, in south east London, two BNP candidates got 19% and 18%, while in the
Newham mayoral election in East London the BNP candidate got 2,881 votes (7%).
Can the 'modernisation strategy' succeed?
DOES THIS MEAN that the BNP can succeed in breaking out of
its neo-Nazi past? While they have made some progress towards this, particularly
in a small number of local areas, it will be very difficult for them to maintain
these successes or achieve them on a wider scale.
The attempts BNP members have made to build a broad party
have come up against problems very quickly, particularly new people being put
off joining by the party's associations with neo-Nazi ideas and violence. Even a
layer of their new membership, recruited on the basis of their changed policies,
can be repulsed by the real views of long-standing BNP activists.
An early example of the difficulties that will occur can be
seen in Burnley itself, where the BNP have built a certain local base. After
watching Panorama's exposŽ of the BNP last year, particularly the section
dealing with the BNP's previous policy of compulsory repatriation, Jim Cowell
(the BNP's candidate in the Rosehill-with-Burnley Wood ward by-election that was
then underway) publicly denounced the national leadership and declared he would
consider leaving the party.
Arguing that "I am quite happy with the people over
here", he went on, "it is unrealistic and unfair to suggest that they
should be repatriated. They have as much right to be here as anyone... the only
thing I want is for further immigration to be stopped". He added, "I
don't believe in the politics of those in control of the party... the local lads
are not extremist, it is the leaders I am concerned about".
Cowell has not left the BNP; in fact he stood in the same
ward for them this May and came within 200 votes of winning. However, whether
the BNP will be able to withstand this type of pressure in future, particularly
the layer of newer members, remains to be seen. Mass demonstrations and
campaigns against the BNP can increase this pressure and push many BNP members
out of activity altogether.
This problem is particularly acute for the BNP given their
organisational weaknesses. According to the anti-fascist magazine, Searchlight,
less than 20 local people helped in the BNP's general election campaign in
Oldham. Of the small layer of key BNP activists, most are hardcore neo-fascists
with convictions and past histories that are extremely embarrassing to the BNP
leadership and their new 'squeaky-clean' image. Many leading BNP activists still
have links with Combat 18 (the neo-fascist paramilitary group set up by the BNP
in the 1990s which continues to have a love-hate relationship with the
organisation). This was underlined by the presence of Chris Jackson (BNP North
West organiser) and other leading BNP activists at a C18 party in Oldham in
January this year.
Nick Griffin was himself one of the most hardline opponents
of the so-called 'modernisation' strategy until he decided to challenge John
Tyndall for the leadership of the party (a battle he won in 1999). In 1995, for
example, he wrote in the neo-Nazi publication, The Rune, that "the electors
of Millwall [where BNP member Derek Beackon was elected to Tower Hamlets council
in September 1993] did not back a post-modernist rightist party but what they
perceived to be a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up
its slogan 'Defend Rights for Whites' with well-directed boots and fists. When
the crunch comes power is the product of force and will, not of rational
debate".
Griffin's second-in-command and apparently an enthusiastic
supporter of the BNP's new credibility drive is none other than Tony 'Bomber'
Lecomber, the BNP's 'Group Development Officer', who was convicted on five
counts for offences under the Explosives Act for an attempt to bomb the offices
of a left-wing organisation in 1985. He was also jailed for three years in 1991
for attacking a Jewish teacher.
However, the BNP's shortage of activists will make it
difficult for it to break out of its current position, making it even more
crucial for Nick Griffin to keep a majority of the hardened neo-fascist members
of the BNP 'on side'. This limits how far he is able to dilute the BNP's
programme from its neo-fascist roots.
Big business and fascism
FASCISM IN ITS original form in the inter-war years was a
mass reactionary movement, based on an enraged and desperate middle class and a
section of the most downtrodden and despairing of the working class, which acted
as an extra para-military wing to the capitalist state forces in smashing
working class opposition to capitalism.
Historically, classical fascist movements have arisen in
Europe at times of extreme economic and social crisis in capitalism, where the
preferred methods of rule for big business - parliamentary democracy combined
with often brutal state repression - were no longer sufficient to hold back
workers' movements, yet mass movements had failed to overthrow capitalism
because of mistakes or betrayals by the leaders of the workers' organisations.
In this situation of an unstable 'equilibrium' between the classes, significant
sections of the capitalist class have in the past been prepared to fund and
politically back fascist movements to save their system, for example in Italy in
1922 and in Germany in 1933.
However, fascism saved big business at a price. The
experience of fascism in Europe, particularly Hitler's role in provoking the
second world war, made the ruling class as a whole much more wary of backing
fascist movements.
Today the ruling class does not feel so much under threat.
Also, more importantly, the potential social base of fascism is much smaller.
The working class is much larger and many sections of what was considered to be
the middle class (such as teachers, civil servants etc) have been pushed much
further towards the conditions and consciousness of working-class people by
neo-liberal policies.
Reactionary movements which can act as strike-breakers and
attempt to split the working class are something that sections of the ruling
class will look to support at some stage in the future, in conditions of
economic crisis and political and social tensions far greater than those that
exist today. At the moment, however, the BNP is an irritation and an
inconvenience to the establishment in Britain and its political representatives.
The New Labour government are determined to stem any further
growth in influence of the BNP because such a development would be a major cause
of political instability and increased racial tensions. They are terrified that
even the limited current successes of the BNP could provoke a massive
counter-movement, as Le Pen has in France and, on a lesser scale, the BNP did in
Britain in the mid-1990s.
It was this movement of tens of thousands of people that
defeated the BNP and shut their headquarters in South East London. New Labour is
desperate to prevent a new generation of radicalised young people becoming
politically active as a result of the threat posed by the BNP. This is why they
are attempting to use the BNP as a bogeyman to scare people away from supporting
'extremism' - by which they mean socialists and the left, as well as the
far-right.
In their short-sighted fashion, the government have been
trying to make difficulties for the BNP. In conjunction with the Commission for
Racial Equality (CRE), New Labour have been looking into legal ways to curtail
the BNP's activity, for example the possibility of banning BNP councillors from
voting on issues such as housing, regeneration, and education policy, unless
they publicly renounce core BNP policies.
We would call for the council workers' unions, for example,
to refuse to service the BNP councillors, denying them access to tenants'
records, employees' details and other council facilities. The type of legal
measures proposed by the CRE, however, implemented from above in isolation from
a mass movement against the BNP (and alongside continuing Tory policies from New
Labour councillors), could only increase support for the BNP. Imagine the
impact, for example, of BNP councillors protesting publicly that they have been
legally banned from voting against the proposed privatisation of council housing
stock that New Labour is trying to push through.
Filling the vacuum
WHAT IS NEEDED to cut across the BNP's support and
marginalise them politically are mass demonstrations against the BNP organised
in combination with a major campaign to politically expose them and their real
agenda. In the long term the only way to prevent them or another far-right force
growing is to build a strong socialist movement to give genuine answers to the
social and economic problems capitalism has created.
The lack of a new mass workers' party, that could unite the
existing left alongside newly radicalising layers of young and working class
people, has given the far-right extra opportunities to grow. If the miners'
leader Arthur Scargill, for example, had taken the decision to develop an open,
inclusive and democratic party when he launched the Socialist Labour Party (SLP)
in 1995, that could have helped prevent the current growth in support for the
BNP. Instead, with a closed and undemocratic structure, and with policies that
failed to reach out to the new layers, the SLP became a wasted opportunity.
Class struggle is, however, beginning to re-emerge in
Britain. A strong and militant trade union movement would help cut across the
racist prejudices that have been developing and hardening, demonstrating that
class unity is necessary to win struggles.
Even then, however, the problem of the far-right would not
go away altogether. The inability of capitalism to provide security and good
living standards to the majority of the population is increasing. The embracing
of capitalism by New Labour and other ex-workers' parties throughout the world,
and the political vacuum on the left that this opened up, has created a more
confused or mixed consciousness. There will be movements where progressive and
class conscious ideas could gain wide support but, without a strong socialist
force or in the absence of workers' struggles, reactionary ideas could also gain
a wide hearing.
In Britain one such issue could be the euro, although it is
still far from certain that the Blair government will risk holding the
referendum that is necessary before Britain could join the single currency.
Opposition to the euro could become a rallying point for the left. Cuts in
public spending, privatisation and other neo-liberal measures are a central
plank of the euro project. Movements against these could crystallise opposition
to the EU and to New Labour in a class-based, progressive direction.
However, given the number of wealthy businessmen who oppose
British entry into the euro, and the nationalist slant of the anti-EU coverage
of the media, it could also be hijacked by the right and become the issue around
which a broader, populist far-right force develops in Britain. This possibility
can only be helped by the pro-euro position taken by many trade union leaders,
including John Monks, leader of the TUC.
The Referendum Party collapsed after the death of its
creator James Goldsmith, a wealthy businessman and establishment figure, while
the UKIP is also an unstable formation. One of its three MEPs resigned from the
party in March 2000 and it has been continually consumed by ego-clashes and
arguments about infiltration by the BNP and other far-right groups. However, the
large protest vote attracted by the Referendum Party and UKIP showed the
potential for a more serious 'English nationalist' party. The 'up-to-£10
million' figure spoken about by multi-millionaire businessman Paul Sykes when he
discussed funding the UKIP during last year's general election - and the £2
million offer made to the UKIP to withdraw from key seats by Tory peer Lord
Rannoch - shows the money that a section of the ruling class would be prepared
to use to defend their interests, even against the rest of the establishment.
In the event of big class movements challenging big business
and the government in Britain how much more money and influence would be
forthcoming to a new populist far-right force, perhaps built around the
'personality' of a big business leader or public figure, like Berlusconi's Forza
Italia movement or the Pim Fortuyn phenomenon? Certainly, in that situation a
much larger section of the British ruling class would be ready to fund a serious
right-wing alternative than would contemplate doing so at the moment. But the
strength of the movement that develops against the 'new, improved' BNP now will
be an important factor in limiting how far they will go.
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