Why Right is Beating Left: The Rise of the Nationalists

This is the first of two articles i wrote with Paul Stott that were  published in Black Flag last year, on the rise of the BNP (second to follow). It’s longer than the average blog post but we felt it was useful background for our continuing commentary on the far-right generally and the social condtions that produce them. It also leads nicely into the Give Up Anti-Fascism article posted earlier in the week.

Why Right is Beating Left: The Rise of the Nationalists

Six years ago the BNP appeared to be following in the well worn footprints of the post-war British far-right – pitifully small votes, a tiny unreliable membership with a very high turnover, and a public profile that either didn’t really exist (apart from some limited areas) or was on a par with that of Ian Brady. This is borne out by the fact that the whole far-right combined had only managed to win 3 council seats in total since 1945 and the total shock with which the last of these – the fleetingly famous Derek Beackon in Millwall in 1993 – was met.

Today they have around 50 elected councillors, a national profile that allows them to operate in areas previously closed to them, a steadily rising and far more reliable membership (around 7,000) and crucially, voting BNP is no longer seen as the action of nutters and misfits – it has become a normalised reaction to social conditions across many parts of the country, achieving around 800 000 votes nationally in the combined euro/local and London elections 3 years ago followed by the highest ever total for a far right far party in the 2007 local elections, with a very regular and healthy 10-25% vote being achieved in council elections in just about every region.

What has happened in those ten years to bring this situation about? Why have the BNP apparently shook off the various curses of the British far-right – the Hitler worship, the elitism, the overt anti-Semitism, the inept attempts at paramilitary games, the social pariah status etc and gone on to become the most electorally successful far-right group in this country’s history? Why and how have they managed to consolidate themselves and their politics in these last 10 years? What has changed, and why? These are the questions we’ll be looking at in this article. We’ll start with a brief historical introduction to the roots of the far-right following the formation of the National Front in 1967 in order to provide background and context for the differences between traditional British Fascism and the present day BNP before moving on to examine their latter day modernisation.

The National Front – united at last!

The National Front was born in 1967 out of the merger of The League of Empire Loyalists, a fast fading conservative group based on virulent anti-Semitism led by AK Chesterton, and the British National Party (not the same group as today) headed by John Bean (who recently popped up on the present day BNP’s South East list) and individual members of immigration pressure groups. The big hitters of the far-right scene at the time were Colin Jordan, John Tyndall and Martin Webster and all were openly neo-nazi, leading to them being refused membership of the NF for some years. The NF at that time appeared to be an incoherent mix of positions all joined together by the recognition that overt neo-nazism was never going to be a vote-winner in the UK after World War Two.

The public outcry around immigration at this time added weight to the idea that all on the far-right should be brought together in order to make political capital out of the issue. Tyndall accordingly toned down his rhetoric and was allowed to join, along with Webster, and the two quickly set about achieving control of the Party’s main bodies and forcing a series of internal challenges until Tyndall emerged victorious as leader in 1973. (Jordan on the other hand went ever further into neo-nazism and Hitler worship via his National Socialist Movement).

This 1973-78 period was the height of the NF’s influence – they claimed to have over 17 000 members, helped along by an influx of ex-Tories angry about what they saw as Prime Minister Heath’s liberal stance on immigration, particularly on the entrance of thousands of Asian-Ugandans into the country. These disillusioned Tories brought valuable electoral and organisational experience to the group which helped in achieving some noticeable election results including a 16.9% in a Parliamentary by-election in West Brom – the only time the far-right had saved an election deposit until that point.

Yet, in process that seems to be played out time and time again, the newcomers led by John Kingsley Read believed that they were largely behind the current success and so led a challenge to Tyndall, in which they won a brief pyrrhic victory but eventually lost, although not without taking 3000 members with them. They then formed the National Party which itself soon disappeared, after winning two council seats in Blackburn in 1976 – the only instances of electoral success the far-right had ever had. It should be remembered that the NF, at the very zenith of it’s size and influence never won a single council election, whereas the BNP now have around 50 elected councillors.

Tyndall then lead the NF to a crushing defeat in the 1979 election in which Thatcher stole the populist clothes of the entire far right. Tyndall was ousted and after falling out with his old Lieutenant Webster he formed the New National Front which in 1982 merged with some elements of the British Movement, the old NF and the British Democratic Party. The present day BNP was born.

Tyndall kept the BNP on a fairly straight political path throughout the 80s – battling with the NF (and usually losing) for the mantle of being top-dogs on the far right. He maintained the traditional Mosley derived protectionist policies (mixed with a brief and internally contested turn to free market liberalism in a belated populist attempt to catch the Thatcher wave) allied with the covert neo-nazism and anti-Semitism that was essential to appeal to the younger elements of the movement in this period. But they were merely treading water and Tyndall was finally deposed from the leadership by Nick Griffin who had joined in 1995 after time leading the ‘political soldiers’ wing of the remaining NF – ironically enough by shamelessly adopting the same approach as Tyndall has utilised against Jordan and others back in the 60s, arguing for an up-to-date presentation and change of emphasis. Griffin then set about the modernisation process that will be the subject of the next section.

Learning the lessons?

Griffin emerged as Party leader after a gruelling and vicious battle with Tyndall in September 1999 and almost immediately used the momentum of his victory to introduce a series of constitutional changes that made the Party Leader’s position significantly more secure, effectively writing his modernisation plans into the party structure for the foreseeable future. This also had the added bonus of keeping a lid on any serious internal dissent by ensuring that any challenge to his position would almost certainly split the party permanently – a step many of those who would like to challenge Griffin have been unwilling to take. To date only Chris Jackson has challenged Griffin’s leadership and he was comprehensively beaten with Griffin receiving over 90% of the vote.

Griffin decided to grasp the nettle and focused his first big changes on the issues that would cause most controversy – race and repatriation. The BNP abandoned one of their, and the far right’s historical core commitments – the compulsory repatriation of all non-whites from Britain. The scale and importance of this change cannot be under-estimated. At a stroke it undermined one of the core arguments against the BNP – the injustice of blanket, compulsory repatriation. It allowed people to vote BNP who had black friends, got on well with their local Asian newsagent, or who quite fancied the woman at their local Chinese takeaway, without believing they were sending such people to their deaths. The whole point of racism is that it is contradictory and hypocritical – by adopting a policy that was partial and would inevitably mean different things to different people, Griffin advanced the cause of racism far more successfully than the “Send ‘Em Back” policies of Tyndall.

This also demonstrated the fast developing political nous of a core of key strategist around Griffin who were learning lessons about political representation and how to appeal to different groups on different issues from the mainstream parties. On top of this it allowed the BNP to oppose immigration on what they could claim were non-racial grounds – they were merely defending the culture of the indigenous population – and in a country where a substantial proportion of the population consistently report that they are opposed to mass immigration but who wouldn’t necessarily think of themselves as racist, this opened up a very useful new seam of potential supporters.

Tied to this change was the move away from a position of explicit racism to one of emphasising cultural difference and using arguments developed by the top down multi-culturalist approach of the political establishment (left and right). If everyone ‘belongs’ to a particular culture and that culture needs and deserves defending or ‘understanding’ then surely so did the culture of the white people of this country – to deny this was to deny the logic of the official multi-culturalists or to give non-whites privileges over and above those the ‘white community’ could expect. Different but equal – the far right finally grasped hands with elements of the left. This move allowed the BNP to both argue that they were not racist, they were in fact entirely mainstream on the issue and to tie their opponents up in knots thereby exposing the assumptions behind their approaches – unfortunately, unlike others, this was in order to agree with those separatist assumptions rather than to highlight the anti-working class nature of them.

The floundering of the political establishment when faced with this approach was highlighted perfectly by the Newsnight interview Jeremy Paxman conducted with Griffin in 2001 – the liberal left’s favourite attack dog was left lost and mumbling to himself after suddenly finding himself out of his depth and drowning – like many of his type, he clearly hadn’t been following the evolution of the far right and lazily expected to be tearing apart some bonehead moron with a swastika tattooed on his face.

These two policy changes combined to allow a crucial organisational change to be put in place – the removal of the bonehead element and the silencing (in public at least) of the Hitler-worship society who still remained in the party in substantial numbers. Those who wanted to continue down that road were either forced out of the party or put on notice that they should be except to be disciplined if they stepped out of line in the future and jeopardised the new direction.

These measures were key first steps to repositioning the BNP as a respectable non-extremist common sense party speaking up for those the mainstream parties had abandoned – an approach which was then applied via a new electoral strategy. The first run out for the new approach was the 2001 General Election which saw a targeted campaign with fewer candidates, identifying a number of areas and key issues which would then be returned to for further work after the national election. The results were encouraging. Despite standing nearly half the number of candidates as the previous election they raised their total vote by around 300% and increased their average votes per candidate from 640 to 1428 – a sizable jump. Griffin had passed the first test and now they moved onto putting the local strategy in place as widely as possible.

Griffin had been very impressed by the performance of Le Pen’s Front Nationale during the 1980s and 1990s and had taken much of his inspiration from them, particularly their use of local elections to build up power bases and national legitimacy. This was now the BNP’s tactic – identify an outstanding local issue, set up a front campaign around it, talk to locals and uncover what other issues were worrying them, and adopt them as your own. Simple – the BNP can then pose as the only real defenders of the local community on these issues. The fact that the mainstream parties have no intention of sorting out these issues means that they’re actually acting in combination with the BNP and providing the conditions for their future growth. The BNP then racialises these and other social issues and colonises the non-mainstream space.

So how has the local approach worked? The BNP in the 2007 local elections achieved the highest ever vote for a far-right party in this country and have achieved a 97-fold increase in total vote since 2000 – up from 3022 to 292 919 and now have around 50 seats with at least 100 other seats in which they’ve come a close second. It’s fair to say that this localised approach has been very effective despite the limitations imposed on what elected BNP councillors can practically achieve as councillors – this isn’t the point of the tactic though, as the main aim is to normalise a BNP vote and bump the BNP into political respectability in the eyes of the electorate. This, combined with concentration of resources on winnable seats and local elections being used as a group building exercise for the following round of elections means that there is considerable mileage left in this approach yet.

A few facts and figures should emphasise this:

Votes in local elections:

BNP votes: local elections 2000-07

Nationally the picture is not quite so rosy but still shows a clear upward trend in every important area:

The European elections of 2004 also saw the BNP score 808,200 votes nationally – 4,9% of the total vote. At the same time in the London elections they achieved 4.8% with 90,365 votes in the Assembly election and 3.04% with 58,405 votes in the mayoral election – plus 70,736 (3.68%) 2nd preference votes.

Who’s Voting BNP?  Where?

The image of the BNP voter amongst the left is often that of a tattooed yob – infamously characterized as ‘scum off the estates’ by Julie Waterson some years back. This is by no means the case though. Research has established that the BNP does better the higher up the social scale in the area they’re contesting and that the poorer the ward the worse they do with ‘a significant positive correlation only for group C1’ (traditionally the lower middle class). The BNP seem aware of this fact as well – after years of targeting wards at the lower end of the social scale, they are now targeting previously ignored middle class areas. This fits in well with the long-term aims of the modernizers to make voting BNP ‘respectable’- and importantly, having support in well off areas can bring in much needed financial support.

The BNP were trapped in a few regional strongholds for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Traditionally the far right had been able to rely on residual levels of support in areas of east London, the west midlands and Yorkshire. Today those area still retain their importance but have been joined by a raft of other areas – the east Midlands, east England and the north west have all had councillors elected and seen the formation of numerous active local branches. Even previously impregnable areas like Wales have seen rises in BNP votes and activity. In the last round of national elections the BNP missed out on gaining Assembly members in North Wales, South Wales East and South Wales West by 0.6%, 0.9% and 1.3% respectively.

Why This Success?

There is no single over-riding factor that has allowed the changes mentioned above to met with success, rather, it’s a coming together of a series of ingredients to create a toxic mix, some of the most important include:

The BNP have been able to articulate feelings of a general unease about Islam in Britain to outright opposition to it. It is worth noting that these feelings pre-date both 9/11 and 7/7 e.g. the conflict over schooling in Dewsbury in the late 1980s, that led to a major riot in the town in1989, or the racial violence between whites and Muslims in various northern towns in the summer of 2001.

It might not be something that people from Anarchist or Socialist traditions are comfortable with, but the fact is huge numbers of people (of all colours) are deeply uncomfortable with the development of Islam in Britain. Allowing those views to be largely articulated by the tabloid press and the far-right has benefited no one – save the BNP and those British Muslims who wish to live as separate an existence as possible.

Only certain voters count – mainstream politics now revolve around what is euphemistically called ‘middle England’ – that is, a core of swing voters in a handful of well off seats whose vote is crucial to the winning of a General Election. The need to appeal to these voters above all means that their needs are those at the top of the political agenda. Social housing, well funded non-segregated education, a functioning health service and the whole range of social services that most of the working class rely on in one way or another is rarely what these key voters are concerned about, and consequently they’re no longer what the mainstream parties are concerned with either. This abandonment leaves the BNP room to move in and claim that people’s communities are being run down, not because of Labour’s obsession with the rich, but because Muslims or some other group have been allocated all the locally available resources. A class issue is once more racialised.

No credible left challenge to Labour has emerged. The Socialist Alliance came and went. Respect has only really flourished in two cities, and then has been largely dependent on Muslim voters. When queries were raised about selecting slates entirely consisting of males of Pakistani origin in Birmingham, the party began a process leading to a split.

The Greens successes have been partial and largely dependent on middle class votes in cities like Oxford and Brighton. The IWCA, despite remarkable success in one working class area of Oxford, has not spread as a model, and indeed remains smaller now than its creator, Anti-Fascist Action, when it slowly imploded. # Anarchist groups have remained at broadly the same level over the past 10 years, or arguably progressed slightly. None have the prominence now that Class War did 15 years ago. The BNP has swept up protest votes.

No credible right challenge to the BNP has emerged. The implosion of the National Front and the continuing obsession of the remnants with racial purity and Hitler has meant that for serious far-right activists the BNP is today the only show in town.

The BNP has also profited from the Tories shifting to the left, and Labour shifting to the right. On economic issues, the protectionist BNP can say it is more left wing than New Labour. The Conservative party traditionally mopped up votes on certain issues – capital punishment, anti-European Union, opposition to gay rights etc, without actually implementing the views of many of its voters. Cameron’s Conservative Party no longer even pretend that they wish to bring back hanging, reinstate Clause 28, or lead Britain out of the EU. Voters who wish to choose those policies are left with either UKIP, the BNP or parties further to the right.

Success Breeds Success. Once the BNP started winning seats, and getting strong votes in previously uncontested areas, it became clear they were a party worth joining, and worth voting for. Fascists who had largely dropped out of politics – such as Martin and Tina Wingfield, or John Bean have returned to the fray. NF splinter The Third Way began to forget the efforts they had made to distance themselves from fascism, with Patrick Harrington heading the BNP’s Solidarity ‘union’.

The BNP vote has proved brittle. Despite a strong base, the BNP has failed to win council elections in Oldham and Sunderland. In places like Bradford and Burnley, electoral successes have not been maintained, and seats have been lost. Three explanations emerge here:

Firstly the prospect of a BNP councillor can harden local opposition, bringing out the Labour and ethnic minority vote that might otherwise stay at home. Secondly many BNP councillors have either proved to be poor in office (cite examples) or when elected have clearly had little idea as to what their agenda actually was. The startling success in Barking and Dagenham resulted in 13 councillors, many of whom appeared to be astonished by their own election. Thirdly, having been elected, the question of “What Now?” has loomed large, and it appears to be one the BNP has been unable to answer. Whilst local authorities arguably have less power than ever before, the BNP has not been able to manipulate the levers of power that remain to achieve anything. The whole point of a protest vote is once the protest has been made, people move on. At least some of the BNP’s voters appear to have moved on and whether they return or not remains to be seen.

Worryingly though, there have been recent cases of the BNP actually increasing their vote in wards where they were expected to lose support following the poor performance of their councillors – most notably in Gooshays in March.

The BNP has failed to impress the establishment. In the 1970s a certain section of the British ruling class actively considered that a military coup may be necessary to stop the country’s decline. Individuals like Peter Wright of MI5 and George Kennedy Young of MI6 considered acting against the Labour government, producing a sense of fear in Harold Wilson that never left him. (We should not call it paranoia, because they really were out to get him). There was however no party for them to attach their wagon to, and they were to decline in influence even before Margaret Thatcher arguably met one of their main objectives – defeating the unions.

A reliable far-right party, with serious support at all levels of society, was lacking then, and it is thankfully still lacking now. In France, the Front Nationale has serious support in sections of the police and military. In the UK, no matter how unpleasant some of our cops may be, it is hard to imagine there are thousands of BNP card carrying members in uniform. At leadership level, the Police, like much of the establishment, prefers to court ‘community leaders’ rather than antagonise them. Business and City leaders know full well how much they have benefited from the cheap labour of migrants. Fascism may well be a threat held back by the ruling class to attack the working class but Mr Griffin should not expect a call from the CBI any day soon.

The BNP has been prone to arguments, and air of sleaze hangs around Griffin. Rumours of Griffin’s financial untrustworthiness have been circulating for years and have proven fertile ground for those inside and outside the BNP who would like to see him toppled. This generally is hinted at rather than substantiated, but the range of areas in which it’s claimed he’s had his fingers in the pie must surely make some of those involved with the BNP think twice – from setting up ‘print farming’ operations where the party rips off it’s own groups for printing that they’ve had done cheaper commercially, to party money being spent on improvements to Griffin’s farm. The BNP annual accounts are unfailingly late in being supplied to the electoral commission and appear to leave out substantial donations. This air of sleaze that has hung around Griffin since the mid 1980s at least will probably not dent their electoral hopes at this point, it will however mean that internal and external opponents have a ready made issue on which to base their attacks, extending the infighting into the foreseeable future – but unless some real dirt appears in public, these are unlikely to have the potential to do terminal damage.

The Winter War

In December of 2007, Sadie Graham and Kenny Smith, two of the brightest young stars of the party. Were expelled for setting up a ‘treasonous’ blog, which among other things, featured a vicious profiling of leading member Mark Collet. Their expulsions triggered a purge of malcontents within the party, and several resignations as a fight broke out within the party.

The winter 2007/08 divisions in the BNP have to seen in the context of two other factors. Firstly the contradictions inherent in nay far right organisation, and secondly, the sustained attack upon the BNP by the secret state/Searchlight.

Griffin’s BNP has been under sustained attack from Searchlight and its associates. Indeed before Griffin was even appointed The Cook Report got together a scam, in association with Searchlight, to attempt to lure Griffin into creating a series of kickboxing gyms across Britain for nationalists.

It is tempting to conclude that having made a huge mess with the Secret Agent fiasco, the state/Searchlight/Labour nexus got it right next around with the winter 2007 ‘split’.

Either way, genuine anti-fascists should take note that the BNP has not been seriously weakened by an attack by progressive forces , but by its own divisions, contradictions and quote possibly secret state shenanigans.

The material conditions that led to the BNP’s relative success remain in place. Indeed if we are dependent on the likes of Searchlight and MI5 to ‘protect’ us from fascism those conditions are arguably now stronger, not weaker.

Where now?

Griffin remains their best bet and the more serious members of the far right know this. Whilst the internal faction fighting might well rumble on (though the expulsion of the main rebels earlier this year has undermined the structural basis for a real damaging internal fight) Griffin’s position is secure. Past far-right breakthroughs have invariably been undone (in part) by the existence of a handful of ‘stars’ all fighting each other for the credit. Griffin can credibly claim that he and his team have single-handedly dragged the BNP into the political mainstream and at the minute very few of his disgruntled members want to undo this despite their personal dislike of Griffin and key members of his team (yes Collett, we do mean you). If they do, Griffin has already introduced a system of ideological training and two tier voting in order to harden the centre around him and ensure continuity of approach.

Demographic factors might help the BNP vote in the future. Thus far their most successful area has been Barking and Dagenham, a classic ‘white flight’ area of the type that is now springing up around many towns and cities – middle and upper-working class areas. This is important as it’s been established that it is in exactly these areas with this type of social mix (Social groups C1 and C2 in the government’s own classifications) in which the BNP votes are highest.

There is also significant evidence of a hardening of popular opinion on race and immigration. In a period in which the Tories are emphasizing their liberal credentials and moving away from old school, conservative social authoritarianism, those people who might traditionally have been expected to vote Tory on a covertly racist basis have nowhere else to go than the BNP, a wasted vote or inactivity.

Demographics – non-white majorities are emerging in certain cities. This is a change that has occurred even though many mainstream politicians in the 1960s and 1970s ridiculed such a possibility as nonsense – there is potential there for the BNP to make hay around social fears.

The May elections (London Mayor and Assembly and 1/3 of local council seats) is going to be crucial testing ground for the BNP’s new approach. The local elections are the 2004 cycle of seats being fought again – that time they stood 312 candidates, this time they‘ve managed to double that to 625. The 2004 elections was where the BNP vote really took off, so these seats are ones where they’ve done well in before and would have been trying to put down real local roots in. This time we’ll see if they can move onto the 2nd stage of their local strategy. The splits discussed above seem not to have negatively impacted on their ability to stand candidates too much – the only area in which there appears to have been any disruption in Yorkshire which has effectively lost its status as the most important area to Eastern region and the East Midlands.

In London, they are very confident of gaining at least one seat on the London assembly. They only require 5% for one member and came very close to that with little effort last time around – the momentum they’ve picked up in the intervening years should see them over the threshold easily enough – the real question is whether they can pick up a second or even a third member – 8% and 11% being targets.

Learning Lessons

It is ironic that the ‘nationalists’ of the BNP arguably have far more advanced international links with like-minded organisations than the ‘internationalist’ Anarchist organisations do. Given the dramatic rise in importance of English– to the status of being the world’s second language – UK based anarchist organisations and websites should really have far more influence internationally than they currently have. The Libcom website could have been a valuable resource here, but within the UK at least has all too often proved to be controversial at best, divisive at worst. Whilst dozens of Anarchists travel to Britain for the annual London Anarchist Bookfair, only a handful of Britons make the journey to bookfairs in continental Europe.

The above factors can only lead us to the conclusion that there is great potential within the existing social situation for the BNP to expand upon their current social success. Mainstream parties are not suddenly going to start representing working class needs. The danger is not that of the BNP forming a government but of establishing themselves in precisely those areas that anarchists and communists recognize as being key to social change – once this happens it will take years to remove them and even longer to deal with effect of their racialisation of social issues – this is where the real danger lies, not in hyperbole about death camps, but in acting as a block on effective independent working class political organization.

The method to combat this is pretty straightforward but requires actual real life on-the-ground-application. The traditional negative methods of disruption of far-right activities, of physical no-platform, of making it unsafe or counter-productive for the far right to operate openly must be allied to positive methods of political activity, of methods of directly intervening in working class struggles in ways that cut the ground out from the BNP and occupy the political space that they’ve made already inroads on. This requires dedicated work in our communities and workplaces around working class needs and encouraging working class communities to act for themselves in pursuit of those needs. And that means taking on small activities to win confidence building measures as well as spectacular ones – it means being concerned with local issues as well as what’s happening in the middle east, and it means serious long term political commitment to those working class communities. As things stand there is no other option – this is where we are today.