The story in Thursday’s Guardian about the BNP has already been covered elsewhere so there does not seem to be much point in adding to the debate yet. I think I’ll wait and see what tomorrow’s paper contains – the story so far does not have much in it for 7 months’ undercover work.
I think we already knew that the BNP members were lacking in charm, but it appears they are also entirely lacking any sense of irony: just look at these two examples:
The person who says that Asian immigrants are a “bloody bore”, black people are “ghastly” and admits “I’m a racist. We’ve got to keep little UK basically Anglo-Saxon.” is a director of the London Tourist Board. (But for how much longer?)
The first BNP activist the reproter met regards immigration as the greatest problem facing Britain. “The whole world is pouring down on us”, he says. The fact that he, himself, is an immigrant from Australia does not seem to be a problem for him, nor the fact that his girlfriend is Brazilian. His concerns about immigration also don’t stop him wanting to help his girlfriend bringing her sister to Britain.
What is the situation of this Australian and his Brazilian girlfriend and her sister – if she ever gets here? In the BNP’s view they can only fall into two camps: they are over here taking ‘our’ jobs, or they are sponging state benefits. To which camp does he belong?
This is just a wild guess, but I bet he even has the cheek to point at the Brazilian girlfriend as ‘proof’ that he is not racist.
So far it looks like the BNP’s efforts to attract the middle classes are just an update of the old Greek story: the middle classes will be the trojan horse and people like Nick Griffin, Annabel Geddes, Steve Tyler and the rest are the shit which will pop out of its backside if it ever gets beyond the gates of Westminster, and stink out corridors of power.
I just cannot see the infatuation that some people have with the BNP.
To the vast majority of the country they are totally irrelevant – they only gain ‘power’ in very specific areas where there are a significant number of disgruntled Labour voters who want to register a protest – and those would not support the BNP if the Labour Party took more notice of their problems.
The amount of newsprint and media time devoted to the antics of the BNP is far and away out of proportion to their power or support.
Ignore the BNP at your peril. If you ignore them, they shrivel up through lack of publicity – but they won’t let you ignore them. In that case, fight them hard – very hard indeed.
They are a wolf in sheep’s clothing – and they are planning a big push for May.
Let history speak – lest we forget.
Ash, I think you oversimplify, and that is part of the problem. The BNP do not just get the votes of disaffected Labour voters. They also picked up the odd council seat in Tory areas too, and they appear to have benefitted from the collapse of UKIP in some areas.
What is clear is that they are targetting the ‘middle class’ and trying to behave all responsible. One reason is to counter your (non) argument that they are an irrelevance outside the white lower class. They want power, any power, and while the veneer of respectability is there, they are still racists under all that.
I’m suprised that Skuds didn’t highlight the membership of another ‘useful idiot’, Simone Clarke. A ballerina with the ENC. Married to an immigrant, and yet decrying immigration and its effects. Mind you, she’s already well publicised.
The danger is, Ash, that it becomes ‘acceptable’ to hold the same racist views as the BNP. It’s a short step to then supporting racist policy.
I do have sympathies for what Ash says but we cannot ignore the BNP. Ash probably thinks the Guardian is giving the BNP the ‘oxygen of publicity’? And I understand that point, but overall it is much more dangerous to ignore them and think they will go away. We need to expose them.
The quote from John Cruddas about the tower block ‘where nobody votes’ is very telling. Our electoral system encourages these sorts of ‘electoral vacuums’ and encourages the bland politics of the main parties.
The main parties can get away with ignoring the inner city electorate in safe seats and this means resentment and frustration (coupled with ignorance of policy fuelled by a Tory media trying to discredit Labour through slagging off immigration, multiculturalism and political correctness – policies that have overwhelmingly made our society a better more tolerant place to live) this allows the BNP to grow. John Cruddas has recognised this, which is why he is now in favour of PR, so the parties will fight for every vote equally.
Danivon – of course the BNP will ‘pick up the odd seat’ just as Respect do, but the problem becomes serious when they pick up more than the odd seat and become the official opposition in places like Dagenham and Barking – and they will only do that when the core Labour vote in those areas feels disenfranchised because Labour have ceased to represent their views.
They will never get anywhere targetting the middle class, their brand of racism and 1970’s socialist policy’s will never attract any great swathe of middle class voters.
Neil – I have a lot of respect for Jon Cruddas but with PR you only encourage all these small extremist parties – do we really want to end up like France where their version of the BNP is more powerful than their Green Party.
Returning to Ahs’s original comment, there is a dilemma of whether tackling the BNP is counter-productive as it gives them more publicity and perceived importance or whether ignoring them lets them claim their arguments canot be countered.
In a way, the BNP are doing us a service. The example of those tower blocks in the East End is a good one. The residents there had been ignored by all the other parties. Bit of a Catch-22: nobody there voted so no parties bothered to canvass or call. No contact or interest from parties encouraged the non-voting. Knowing that they, or other extreme groups, can take advantage of that might lead to our parties paying more attention to everyone.
Neil is, of course, referrring obliquely to the fact that the major parties spend so much time trying to appeal to the relatively few voters who are un-committed in a few marginal constituencies while taking their own safe seats for granted and writing off the opposition’s safe seats that the majority of teh country feel un-engaged. At least thats what I think he is referring to, and I think its a valid point.
As for the BNP, I actually support their right to hold their views, much as I dislike and disagree with those views – but I think they are trying to mask their real views and under-play them. It is our right (or duty?) to do our best to make sure that those who are tempted to support them are made aware of what they really think, and what they would really want to do.
If the BNP are trying to drum up support in either East End tower blocks or amongst Knightsbridge estate agents it would be wrong to tell those people what to think (or rather what not to think) but absolutely right to give them an alternative point of view. The BNP can explain why they think they are right, normal people can explain why they think the BNP are wrong – we should have enough confidence in the soundness of our arguments and moral position and ability to put them across.
If they ever had control it would be like Maurice Ogden’s Hangman poem.
Ash: “with PR you only encourage all these small extremist parties – do we really want to end up like France”
France has a majoritarian system like ours.
Yes they did briefly have PR and yes the far right vote did rise under PR in France.
The explanation for this is as follows.
Changing the electoral system is a major change and it can take several elections for the new system to bed down and PR wasn’t ever given this time to develop in France.
Also PR does not change people’s views overnight. The far right views of the electorate in France had built up over decades under FPTP (just like it is building up in the UK).
Places that have had PR for a long time like Germany, Scandanavia etc have much fewer people with far right views and consequently fewer representation for the far right than France or the UK does.
In Germany the far right win fewer than 1.5% of the vote (and that is mainly in the transient turbulent economy of East Germany which has had PR elections introduced more recently).
There are almost a million people in the UK who have recently voted for the BNP (so this is significant – we can’t just pretend this is not a problem). This has been built up under the present system. This is largely kept hidden by FPTP (which is partly why BNP support has been allowed to grow so large).
Of course, these voters would show up in the immediate aftermath of a change to PR. But PR would allow us to confront these views head on in debate and most of the BNP voters would for the first time be confronted with how stupid the BNP position is on all sorts of policy areas. People vote BNP mostly to stick two fingers up to the establishment (and yes also because they are racists – but there are millions of racists out there who don’t vote BNP). People will soon realise that under PR their vote WILL count and they can vote for the policies they like the best and they will be less likely to register a protest vote because of this.
PR would reduce BNP support in the following ways;
PR would make the main parties campaign for EVERY vote and not get away with ignoring those in safe seats. Electoral vacuums allow the BNP to step in.
This extra campaigning will increase turnout (or at least slow down its decline – PR countries have on average around 10% higher turnout than us). Also most of the rise in turnout will be amongst the poorer inner city electorate who would tend to vote more for Labour, Green and other left of centre parties (This is what happened in New Zealand when they switched from FPTP to PR). A lot of Labour supporters don’t vote in Labour’s safe seats because they know their vote makes no difference to the result – Labour will win the seat anyway. Low turnout makes it easier for the extremists because they need to win less votes to win seats. Under PR this will be different.
The Tory media would no longer have an incentive to bash Labour with their encouraging of far right views on immigration and political correctness etc. They do this to reduce the Labour vote which under this system leads to Tories winning more seats without winning any extra votes themselves. Under PR it would be much more important for the press to increase the Tory vote than reduce the Labour vote so the media will become less negative.
All the parties would have to campaign more positively about their own policies rather than just bash the opposition because there is little benefit unless you can increase your own parties share of the vote. This will improve the level of political debate and hopefully reduce the level of political ignorance and frustration that leads to people voting BNP. The BNP rely on negative campaigning. I don’t believe the BNP have anything positive to offer people, so they would struggle in this new climate.
Of course all this wouldn’t happen overnight. There would be difficulties in switching to a PR system initially and it might take several elections for the far right vote to fall away. But overall the far right would find the political climate more difficult for them in the long term under PR.
There is a myth that it was PR that led to the rise of the Nazis. If we remember the depression, unemployment and hyperinflation in Germany at the time, and the level of desperation and the resentment of war reparations of the German people it is clear what led to the Nazis rise and it wasn’t PR.
The Nazis came from nowhere to became the largest party in the space of a few years – this would have happened under any electoral system (for instance the Labour party went from nowhere to power under FPTP in a similar time frame in the 1920s). The Nazis reached their peak at 44% of the vote – under FPTP they would have won every seat in parliament. Under PR they had to rely on the German Tories to form a coalition administration. So it was the Tories who were responsible for putting the Nazis in power. The Nazis then took over in a sort of coup (the enabling act backed by the Catholics party) – their vote was beginning to fall and they knew they had to act fast. So it is a complete myth to blame PR. The fragmentation of the political system in the extraordinary circumstances of 1930s Germany would have been just as likely under FPTP.
Ash, the middle classes are not so superior that they won’t fall for the fascists.
After all, it was through middle class support that the Nazis, Italian Fascists, Spanish Falangists, Pinochet et al either gained ot maintained power.
neil – you say that “Places that have had PR for a long time like Germany, Scandanavia etc have much fewer people with far right views” – well sorry but that is nonsense.
Austria has PR and they voted in a Far Right government that had the EU tying itself in knots trying to find ways of not working with their democratically elected government.
Israel also has PR and has a long history of far-right parties being voted in and joining the government.
The idea that a change of electoral system will stop people voting for extremist parties (of either shade) is plainly wrong.
Danivon – the middle class like mass immigration, it keeps the prices down for their childcare, builders and other services, its the working class who suffer from it with lower wahes and more competition for housing, healthcare and schooling – so I dont see much support from the middle class for the BNP.
If there is a deep economic crisis on the horizon – which appears to be the case – the ‘middle class’, ‘working class’, and many others from that ‘school’, will go running to the BNP…unless the main political parties can ‘get their finger’ in time.