The resistible rise of the BNP
The far-right, racist British National Party (BNP)
has been a growing force over the last few years. Going into this May’s
council elections with around 50 councillors, it looked set to win more.
NAOMI BYRON examines how the BNP has been able to build its position,
and what can be done about it.
THE BNP HAS won votes and supporters from a wide
variety of sources – from ex-Tory councillors who have joined the BNP in
Kirklees, Halifax and other councils, to winning working-class,
previously solid Labour seats, as in Barking and Dagenham in east
London, where the BNP is now the second-largest party on the local
council.
The BNP has developed an effective line in
pseudo-left propaganda to win disillusioned Labour voters, including
opposing privatisation of many public services and declaring support for
workers’ rights and trade unions. This, of course, is no change of heart
by the BNP’s leaders. It is a cynical ploy to attract support among the
growing layers of the population desperate for a party that represents
their interests.
The transformation of former workers’ parties like
Labour into parties completely at the service of capitalism was
initially celebrated by the ruling class as a sign of the triumph of
their system. But their arrogance after the collapse of the ‘socialist’
regimes of Eastern Europe and Russia (in reality, bureaucratised,
Stalinist states), and the ruthless drive of big business to increase
profits at the expense of the working class, have created an enormous
political vacuum.
All polls show that the vast majority of the
population in Britain is to the left of the three main parties on issues
like privatisation and the National Health Service (NHS). This enormous
discontent and political vacuum exist alongside the political confusion
created by the seeming ‘triumph’ of capitalism and the abandonment of
the working class by the parties it set up to defend its interests.
On an international scale, the desperate searching
of working people for a party that represents their interests has led to
an explosion in new parties and political formations. Some represent the
first, tentative steps towards trying to rebuild new parties of the
working class: P-SOL in Brazil, WASG in Germany and CAP in Belgium. Some
figures, like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, are
at the head of populist movements arising out of mass struggles against
privatisation, landlessness, etc, and have been pushed to the left under
the pressure of the masses.
In Europe, where political consciousness is not as
advanced as that of Latin America and where neo-Nazi and far-right
parties are ready to exploit any new bandwagon, the growth of populism
has often taken a rightwing form.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the most
radical-sounding phrases among the far-right in Europe are voiced by the
National Democratic Party (NPD) in east Germany where, in a poll in
2004, 79% (compared to 51% of west Germans) agreed that socialism was a
‘good idea’, but ‘badly implemented’. It is to appeal to these layers
that Peter Marx, manager of the NPD parliamentary group in the
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state legislature, says: "We are a nationalist
party with socialist concepts" which favours "the nationalisation of
economic assets". "We want social justice. Our economic policy is that
of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president". (On the March: How Germany’s
Extreme Right is Making Gains in the Blighted East, Financial Times, 9
January 2007)
Political vacuum
IN BRITAIN THE rebranded, populist-style BNP has
cleverly exploited the political crisis of the main three parties, whose
vote has been collapsing. Blair was re-elected in 2005 on the smallest
proportion of the popular vote ever.
The lack of major working-class struggles in Britain
that could show a real alternative to the establishment parties and help
in the formation of a new workers’ party, combined with the huge
political vacuum that exists, help explain how a rich, public-school
educated landowner like Nick Griffin has managed to pose as the saviour
of the working class (or how the Tories, led by rich boy David Cameron,
are now seen as more trusted on the NHS than Labour).
The mood of capitalist triumphalism that followed
the fall of the Berlin wall helped push back socialist and class
consciousness. Though the experience of life under capitalism is
reawakening socialist ideas, a lot of political confusion remains. A
growth in support for reformism – the idea that the state can intervene
to make capitalism work more ‘fairly’, without ending private ownership
of the dominant sections of the economy – will only be overcome through
experience when the masses move into action. In the meantime, the BNP is
doing its best to exploit the ideological confusion of the times when it
argues, for example, that: "The BNP does not believe socialism is the
effective solution for running all or most of the economy. But this is a
matter of empirical experience, not abstract ideology, so we absolutely
support socialism for those parts of the economy where experience has
shown it to be effective. This basically amounts to social and physical
infrastructure: things like schools, roads, and the NHS". (BNP
Nationalist Economics Bulletin, 28 May 2006)
This shows the importance of genuine socialist ideas
as a weapon to combat the growth of the BNP, to be able to explain how
nationalisation under democratic workers’ control is different to both
Stalinism and the bureaucratic, top-down nationalisation of public
services in Britain in the past.
Socialist ideas also hold the key to exposing BNP
propaganda on migration, which ranges from crude racism to a
pseudo-class or ‘caring’ position: for example, when the front page of
the BNP’s paper has the headline, Only Big Business Benefits from Cheap
Foreign Labour (No.80), or when a BNP NHS leaflet (July 2006) states
that "millions of African children die each year from curable diseases
because Labour policy has stolen their nurses".
Joe Priestley, a writer on the BNP’s website,
criticises the Tory-supporting columnist Sir Max Hastings for supporting
immigration in the following terms: "What Hastings means is that British
working-class people won’t do what immigrants will do for the price
immigrants are prepared to do it – or rather what the likes of Hastings
are prepared to pay. He doesn’t want a working class, he wants a serf
class, and whether it consists of white British people or sub-Saharan
Africans is of no concern to him and his ilk". (The Establishment Right
and Immigration, 7 April 2006)
Yet however loudly the BNP shouts that it is
pro-worker, the issue of migration shows that it has no solution. The
new ‘Solidarity union for British workers’ that the BNP and other
far-right groups have been pushing, argues that trade unions should not
try to recruit or organise migrant workers because they might go home if
they lose their jobs, and too many of them have been working less than
twelve months and "during this twelve-month period what a union can do
for them is limited": "49% of those registered are in casual jobs, often
as agency temps [who] do not have full employment rights". (Migrant
Workers Q&A, Solidarity website)
In fact, it is only the socialist policy of
recruiting and organising migrant workers into the trade unions,
alongside other agency and casual workers, which can successfully fight
against the bosses’ ‘race to the bottom’ in pay and conditions.
Organising the most ‘precarious’ workers was how many of the non-craft
trade unions were originally set up, with the significant involvement of
socialists and Marxists.
As soon as workers actually move into struggle the
BNP supports the bosses. In 2005, when millions of low-paid workers were
defending their pension rights against government attack, the BNP
claimed: "The fundamental cause of Britain’s looming pensions crisis is
the fact that the average Briton is not saving enough money for his or
her retirement", and that "a gradual increase in the retirement age...
is reasonable". (BNP Economics Bulletin, 5 December 2005)
It then tried to blame civil service workers – whose
average pension is £4,800 a year – for government attacks on local
government workers’ pensions: "Having given central-government employees
a sweet deal of retirement at 60, the government is having difficulty
forcing local-government employees to make up the loss by accepting a 65
retirement age". (BNP Economics Bulletin, 26 March 2006)
When a huge movement began in France in March 2006
against the CPE (a law which allowed employers to sack young workers
without giving a reason for the first two years of employment) the BNP
backed the French government. "Laws creating employment rights beyond
what businesses can afford can be counter-productive. France is
notoriously burdened by such laws, which is why the French government
has been trying to change them". (BNP Economics Bulletin, 12 March 2006)
What is fascism?
THERE IS NO question that the BNP’s leaders and key
activists are convinced neo-Nazis who, if social, political and economic
circumstances allowed it, would attempt to build a mass fascist party.
However, the current political and economic situation makes building a
fascist or neo-Nazi party of any significant size impossible.
Fascism is a mass movement that aims to smash the
working class and its organisations. Classical fascism came to power in
Italy and Germany after world war one, financed by sections of
industrial capital, such as the Ansaldo metal trust in Italy and Krupp
in Germany, and supported by huge armed militias. In October 1920,
Mussolini assembled 30,000 Blackshirts and 20,000 members of fascist
‘unions’ in Naples for his ‘march on Rome’. At the end of 1930, the Nazi
SA militia (the ‘Brownshirts’) had over 100,000 members.
Fascist movements came to power during a major
economic and political crisis in capitalism. Economically, capitalism
was in a catastrophic position but the working class had not succeeded
in taking power because of the betrayals and mistakes of its leaders.
Profits had plunged, particularly in manufacturing.
Fascism used radical language to attract support
from the ruined middle classes and the unemployed. It even used
pseudo-socialist demands to attract sections of workers. At a meeting
organised by the SA soon after Hitler had come to power in 1933, one
member declared: "Our revolution... has only begun. We have not yet
attained any of our goals. They talk about a national government, and
national awakening... What is all that? What matters is the socialist
part of our programme... We have only one more enemy to conquer: the
bourgeoisie!" (Quoted in Fascism and Big Business, Daniel Guerin) These
elements in the Nazi party were brutally crushed, beginning with the
‘night of the long knives’ in June 1934 when the leadership of the SA
was murdered by Hitler’s regime.
Industrial capital financed fascism’s rise to power
not only to smash the working class to save capitalism, but specifically
in order to increase their profits and power in the economy. Fascism in
Italy smashed national wage agreements and forced workers to accept
wages fixed by their employers. Even the Italian press under fascism
conceded that nominal wages were halved between 1927 and 1932. In the
first two and a half years under the Nazis in Germany wages were reduced
by between 25-40%. Four hundred thousand unemployed workers assigned to
public works in 1934 received only a few commodities in kind on top of
their unemployment allowance. Around 250,000 young men conscripted into
the labour service were paid just over 15 marks a month (when on average
wages varied between 80-150 marks a month).
Labour passports in both countries meant that no
worker could get another job without the agreement of their previous
employer. Fascism also supported an aggressive foreign policy, fed by
nationalism and racism, but which also assured massive profits to
industry through rearmament.
Fascism is a particularly brutal form of capitalist
dictatorship. Its mass base allows it to atomise and demoralise the
working class for a whole historical period. But it is also a means of
last resort for the ruling class, which fears losing control of its
state to a fascist party. This is particularly true today, after the
experience of Nazi Germany, whose territorial claims began to threaten
the interests of other European powers and plunged the world into world
war two.
The capitalist ruling class much prefers to rule
through the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy where possible, with
the ‘checks and balances’ it imposes on the state executive through
elections, the media, and an independent judiciary. Its reasoning was
revealed, once again, in a discussion in The Economist magazine after
the death of the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in December
last year. In 1973, when Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected
Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, The Economist supported
the military coup (The End of Allende, 15 September 1973). But on
balance, an Economist editorial concluded 33 years later, "most
dictators are economic bunglers. A few get the economy right, as Spain’s
Franco did after 1958", but democracy has the "ability to bestow
legitimacy" on pro-capitalist policies. Pinochet rolled back the gains
the working class had won under Allende, but "elsewhere in Latin
America, free-market reforms were enacted by democracies" without the
‘mistakes’ of Pinochet and his economic advisors who "could work as if
they were in a laboratory" without any checks. (The Economist, 16
December 2006)
If parliamentary democracy proves inadequate to
defend the interests of the ruling class, however, it would rather turn
to elements in the army – such as Pinochet – which it thinks it can rely
on to protect the interests of big business, than turn political power
over to fascism. Of course, in extreme circumstances where it comes down
to a choice between socialist revolution and fascism, big business would
choose fascism every time. Clearly, we are nowhere near such a situation
at the moment.
Today, the ruling class is exploiting the lack of
workers’ parties and fighting trade union leaders to massively intensify
the exploitation of the working class. Company profitability in the UK
is at record levels – over 15% for the non-financial sector including
10% for manufacturing. All over the world the percentage of gross
domestic product (GDP) that goes to corporate profits has been rising.
The Financial Times pointed out: "If profits are gaining their share of
GDP, some other sector must be losing. And it is labour that has
suffered". Goldman Sachs estimates that around 40% of the increase in
profits over the past five years has been taken from labour compensation
(wages and benefits). (The Wages of Growth May Yet Be Too Costly,
Financial Times, 29 July 2006)
While the working poor struggle on the edge of
disaster, "the super-rich – the thousand richest individuals in Britain
– have seen their liquid assets increase by 79% in five years, to an
average £70m each". (Super Rich, James Meek, The Guardian, 17 April
2007)
Democratic rights in Britain have been massively
curtailed over the last 25 years. Britain has the most repressive
anti-trade union laws in the OECD countries. The Criminal Justice Act
2001 made it an offence to ‘disrupt lawful business’, such as picketing
your own workplace or protesting against the actions of the company.
‘Anti-terror’ legislation allows the police and government to place
‘suspects’ under house arrest virtually indefinitely. Police powers are
handed out to private companies along with profitable immigration
service contracts. When they can do all of this through parliamentary
democracy, why would they need fascism?
The BNP’s role
THE BNP IS an embarrassment to the ruling class, not
a useful tool. While the ruling class is quite happy to use racism in a
controlled way, it fears that the BNP’s presence could stoke up tension
and lead to political instability – like the riots in 2001 – which would
harm its profits.
The only far-right group which so far has received
any substantial business backing is the UK Independence Party (UKIP),
which has just been rescued from potential bankruptcy by another wealthy
donor. However, at this stage, most UKIP backers are from the
Eurosceptic wing of the Tory party and support it mainly to exert
pressure on the Tories rather than encouraging it to develop as a party
in its own right.
While the BNP plays a significant role in stoking up
racial and religious tensions anywhere it has a base, it is the policies
of New Labour and the prejudices whipped up by the media that are mainly
responsible for the rise in racism and attacks on asylum seekers,
Muslim, black and Asian people.
The ruling class is also opposed to the BNP because
it is terrified that its growth could provoke a counter-movement which
could act as a radicalising force in the way that the movement against
the BNP did in the 1990s. Instead of a section of the ruling class
financing the BNP and encouraging it to attack workers in struggle and
stir up prejudices, it has attempted to discredit and marginalise the
BNP. But the methods chosen have actually helped the BNP.
New Labour’s attempts to win disillusioned voters
back from the BNP have only shifted the political debate to the right
and given the BNP more room for growth, for example when the former
minister David Blunkett said that schools were being ‘swamped’ by asylum
seekers’ children.
The prosecution of BNP leader Nick Griffin and Mark
Collett for incitement to racial hatred after both were recorded making
racist remarks in a BNP meeting – describing Islam as a ‘vicious, wicked
faith’ and comparing asylum seekers to cockroaches – was a political
battle that the BNP was bound to win however the case went. If they were
convicted it would make them martyrs. If they were acquitted they could
parade as being persecuted by the state but found innocent by a jury of
ordinary men and women. Then, after they had been acquitted once, the
prosecution was relaunched, giving them the opportunity to be acquitted
again!
The media, while they denounce the BNP, have given
it enormous publicity. They have also prepared the ground for its growth
by whipping up racism even more openly than the BNP. Even when former
BNP candidate Robert Cottage and his friend David Jackson were arrested
in Burnley in October 2006 for possessing explosives ordered on the
internet, the coverage was minimal compared to the blanket coverage
given to any official allegation of ‘terrorist plots’ by Muslims.
So, what is the BNP and how much further can it
grow? The leaders of the BNP are neo-Nazis and white supremacists who
have temporarily abandoned the strategy of building a neo-Nazi party in
favour of gaining wider influence through a party that is far-right,
populist and racist. They have partially succeeded and are likely to
continue gaining support and councillors at a local level – even
possibly representation in bodies elected by proportional representation
like the Greater London Assembly – particularly in the absence of a
credible working-class alternative.
The BNP is still a threat to the working-class,
aiming to "weaken its ability to fight and resist" (Fascism and Big
Business, Daniel Guerin). At this stage though, it plays the role of
sowing division and spreading ideological confusion. And its presence
helps to encourage racial tension and attacks, for instance, the brutal
murder of Asian taxi driver Mohammad Parvaiz in Golcar, Huddersfield, in
July last year. It is no coincidence that this happened in one of the
areas of Huddersfield where the BNP has been doing most work.
We need a new workers’ party!
AS BOB CROW, leader of the Rail, Maritime and
Transport union, said after the 2006 local elections: "It is clearer
than ever that New Labour is turning working-class voters away in droves
because it is trying to out-Tory the Tories. Working men and women need
policies that put their interests first, not the failed Tory policies of
privatisation, PFI and giving big business everything they ask for".
(The Guardian, 6 May 2006)
Working people need a new political voice that
stands for our interests, not the big business interests of the main
parties or the racist, right-wing con of the BNP or UKIP. The growth of
the far-right is a warning that should not be ignored. New parties, of
course, cannot just be declared. The WASG in Germany came out of the
massive protest movements against the ‘Hartz IV’ social cuts. The CAP in
Belgium was launched in the wake of a general strike against government
cuts including restrictions on the right to early retirement, as well as
the need for a left alternative to counter the extreme-right,
nationalist Vlaams Belang.
But to passively wait for conditions to be perfect
for the launch of a new workers’ party in England and Wales would be a
huge mistake. Socialists, trade unionists, anti-cuts campaigners and
anti-racists should be taking every opportunity to build a positive
alternative to the anti-working class politics of the main parties and
the far-right, including putting up candidates in elections.
Votes for socialist and many anti-cuts candidates
are more conscious than votes for the BNP, which is an easy protest
vote. But the local elections in Kirklees in 2006 show the potential for
left, anti-cuts candidates to cut across the BNP’s support. Jackie
Grunsell, a Socialist Party member standing for the Save Huddersfield
NHS campaign, won a seat on Kirklees council with 2,176 votes – more
than any BNP candidate in Kirklees. The BNP candidate standing against
her was pushed into second-last place with 564 votes – 9% of the vote
compared to the BNP’s average of 18.4% across 23 wards in the area.
The BNP claims to be recruiting record numbers of
people – its annual statement of accounts reported a membership of 6,008
in 2005 (down from 7,916 in 2004). But it will be even more difficult
for the BNP to keep new people attracted by its ‘left’ face as active
members.
However attractive some of its slogans may appear,
anyone who reads the BNP’s material regularly will quickly realise that
it is pervaded with an obsessive racism. Undercover BBC journalist Jason
Gwynne filmed BNP members, including one election candidate, in 2004
admitting to a violent assault on an Asian man, pushing dog excrement
through the door of an Asian takeaway and saying that they wanted to
kill Asians and attack mosques. (Going Undercover in the BNP, BBC
website) Even elected BNP councillors, like Maureen Stowe in Burnley,
have become disillusioned and left once they saw what the BNP was really
like. But the difficulty in retaining new members does not mean it
cannot still win votes, or even continue to grow as an electoral force.
How can the growth of the BNP be halted?
Bureaucratic measures or legal bans will only help it pose as radical
and anti-establishment. Appeals to vote for the main parties to keep the
BNP out are also not working. Likewise campaigns that depend on ditching
politics in order to get the ‘maximum unity’ against the BNP become just
a cover for New Labour, the Tories and Liberal Democrats to look
anti-racist and democratic while continuing the same pro-big business,
racist policies that opened the door to the BNP in the first place.
Effective criticism of the BNP needs to be linked to
a positive alternative based on opposing the policies of the main
parties and campaigning on the class issues – jobs, wages, defending
public services – and opposing racism and other divisive ideas.
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