Opposing The Far-Right: More Downs, But A Few Ups…

The second article from me and Paul Stott on the BNP from last year, the first can be found here. This text was written just after the May eleections of 2008. The concentration on anarchists responses in one small section is due to the fact we were writing for Black Flag -  the points clearly have broader import though – both negative and positive points. Hopefully we’ll get back onto immediately current commentary now after these backgrounders.

Opposing The Far-Right: More Downs, But A Few Ups…….

The London Mayoral election and the national local elections of May 1st this year saw the BNP continue their steady progress of the last 6 or so years. They could justifiably claim a really significant breakthrough in winning their first ever London Assembly member when Richard Barnbrook was elected to that body on the top-up system. This was not a total shock to those who have been keeping a keen eye on the rise of the far right as they came within a whisker of achieving the feat in the previous election only to be undermined by an unexpectedly strong showing from UKIP. This time around, with the UKIP in public disarray in London, and a consequent collapse in their support, the BNP successfully met the minimum threshold by achieving 5.2% across London – 130 714 individual votes. To this total can be added the 18,020 (9.82%) votes picked up in the City and East ward, where they ran their only candidate. London-wide there was a 0.6% rise in their vote, not amazing but when placed against the across the board attacks from the mainstream parties media hostility, not to mention the resources pumped into ‘Don’t vote Nazi’ style campaigns this figure looks a little more impressive and suggests that they may be on the road to a sustainable vote.

The mayoral election also produced results that the BNP could only see as encouraging if not spectacular. Their candidate (Barnbrook again) picked up 69, 710 (2.84%), not a great performance but with some indications that certain areas are now returning a solid BNP vote on a regular basis (more on that below). Added to this total is 128, 609 second preferences – bringing the combined total of people prepared to vote for a BNP mayor in London to 200, 000. This years election is likely to have seen more people voting for one of the major parties due to the close nature of the battle between Livingstone and Johnson – a factor which also helped to increase turnout and so raised the number of votes that the BNP needed to pick up a top-up seat. This last factor being the main hope of mainstream anti-fascism of stopping the election of an Assembly member and the approach they based their whole London strategy around. Needless to say this approach doesn’t even begin to deal with the motivations of why people are voting BNP, merely seeking to outflank them in a mainstream political game – a tactic that can never and will never effectively deal with the far-right, but conveniently serves to add a boost to the declining fortunes of the Labour party.

A Fascist MP?
Worryingly, ward level data clearly demonstrates that there are now 2 constituencies (Dagenham and Rainham & Morley and Outwood) in which, when votes amongst all the parties are totalled, the BNP are the largest party. This opens up the possibility of a BNP MP being elected in the future in their vote holds up or expands. That said, peoples behaviour in general elections is noticeably different from that of local elections. Nevertheless, this situation would have been dismissed as an utter impossibility at almost any point post-war.

Nationally, the picture was slightly more turbulent with some disappointing regional results in areas that until recently looked very promising but with an overall gain of 13 seats and a further consolidation of votes in the wards stood originally in the 2004 elections. The national average being 13.4%
Again, mainstream anti-fascism argued that any successful candidates would prove utterly incompetent and driven from office at the first opportunity, and developed a strategy of exposing this incompetence (which undoubtedly exists). That people are prepared to vote for BNP candidates despite incessant media attacks is very telling and could indicate a hardening of attitude into a bloody-minded vote for someone who is becoming seen as ‘their’ candidate against the establisment, rather than a simple protest vote.

This might apply to Stoke for example where the BNP now have all 6 councillors in two neighbouring wards and 9 on the Council in total. Voters here seem impervious to the sort of tactics mentioned above, and which are still being put forward despite clear evidence of their ineffectiveness. Stoke is actually a rather good example of where a lot of other areas might be in a few years time if the current dynamics continue. A town where most traditional working class industry has collapsed, where local populations have all but been abandoned by the Labour party – written off as a safe vote or politically worthless and who are struggling to make ends meet, to meet their health needs, their kids schools are failing and so on. As pointed out many times, the BNP can easily enough racialise these frustrations. Locally this has all added up to a collapse in the Labour vote and the BNP successfully filling a large part of the vacuum this has left. This is a microcosm of what is happening in many areas across the county – a rise in inequality (and all that entails) coupled with political abandonment leading to a collapse in the Labour vote and the far-right moving in. We might see one, two many Stokes if this continues.

Going Down?

A few sources have been arguing that the BNP vote actually collapsed regionally, due not only to in-fighting but because of general lack of support and a growing realisation that the BNP will do nothing for those communities that have supported them. The full results show that whilst there was an inability to put up full slates in a couple of areas due to the internal problems, nationally the picture was nothing like that, and instead demonstrated, again, solid growth, and crucially in areas where the BNP were standing for the second or third time (the election cycle meaning this was their return to the seats contested in 2004). A number of new regional bases have appeared almost out of nowhere (Nuneaton and Bedworth, Tameside, Wakefield) and old centres of strength have at the very least consolidated their position. The re-election of councillors is also now more common, though still slightly outnumbered by those losing their seats (13 to 7).

Looking at England alone (London excluded as well) they had 343 seats where their vote was over 10%, the majority of them 15%+, and 82 seats in which they came 2nd. Here’s the city/town percentages in those areas where they’ve either had past success or stood large slates.

Figure in brackets = seats contested, followed by average vote across city .

Pendle (7) 30.43%
Rotherham (5) 27.9%
Amber valley (7) 26.25%
Stoke (11) 25.9%
Burnley (11) 21.89%
Tameside (8) 21.75%
Thurrock (19) 21.7%
Nuneaton and Bedworth (12) 20.77%
Wakefield (12) 20.48%
Barnsley – (21) 17.36%
Sandwell (12) 17.26%
Oldham (5) 16.8%
Carlisle (5) 16.3%
Calderdale (9) AV = 16%
Epping Forest DC (12) 15.5%
Epping Forest Loughton (14) 15%
Broxbourne (12) 15.35%
Sheffield – (8) 14.83%
Basildon (14) 14.6%
Dudley (11) 14.5%
Kirklees (20) 14.3%
Solihull (12) 13.47%
South Tyneside (13) 13.18%
Salford (9) 12.48%
Lincoln (5) 12.14%
Gateshead (12) 11.8%
North Tyneside (5) 11.56%
Newcastle (12) 11.37%
Leeds (34) 11.2%
Coventry (13) 11.2%
Wigan (7) 11.2%
Bury (8) 11.11%
Sunderland (25) 10.97%
Stockport (6) 10.5%)
Durham (30) 10.48%
Southend (17) 10%
Liverpool (11) 9%
St Helens (5) 8.5%
Birmingham (40) 7.5%

Note: we’ve also compared these figures to the results in the 2003 elections, these being the same wards that were up for election then. They bear out our general argument of consolidation or steady growth of level of vote combined with expansion into new areas and that steady vote then also appearing in the newly contested areas.

Where Next ?
The short-medium plans of the BNP now turn to the European and Stoke Mayoral elections next year. They have high hopes of picking up at the least one MEP in the former. They have been picking up 10-15% in local polls for the last few years (the average in the may elections was 13.4%). The highest % needed to pick up a seat in any region in the European election is circa 18%, the lowest around 6%, the others all around 11%.
The BNP picked up an average of 5% last time around, but the now struggling UKIP picked up 16%, a combined total well over every single regional threshold. The BNP in 2004 was just starting it’s upward climb as well – a BNP vote was still pretty much seen as a wasted vote then. Today a BNP vote is well on the way to being normalised. Again, how the UKIP performs is going to be crucial – and all the signs point to their internal disintegration being mirrored at the polls. The UKIP do have a habit of doing well in the European elections regardless of other factors though, so it should not be imagined that anything is writ in stone where they are concerned.

One MEP is do-able, maybe more. Griffin clearly thinks the North-West region is winnable as he’s selected himself to stand there and to make doubly sure of no internal problems has also appointed himself BNP North West England regional organiser – even though he lives in Wales! The three seats where it’s possible they could return MEP’s are:

North West – need 8.5%, scored 6.4% last time
Yorkshire and Humber – need 11.5%, 8% last time
West Midlands – 11.5% and 7.5%

All winnable if enough UKIP voters come across and the rise in a simple pro-BNP vote of the last few years continues.

The Stoke mayoral election is another opportunity for the BNP to put their name on the national map, and one where they have a reasonable chance of doing well. Of course it’s very easy to get caught up in just looking at election results and organisational politics – what happens beyond this, what’s driving these developments is the key. Economically, culturally and so on….

Responses To The BNPs Rise – Us

Any visitor to websites populated by Anarchists such as urban75.com or Meanwhile At The Bar will find hours and hours of debate and discussion about how best to counter the far-right. There are always plenty of people willing to talk the talk! Perhaps the most eccentric contribution from the Anarchist chattering classes came courtesy of an article in issue 2 of Mayday magazine “Anti fascism, the BNP and the local elections”. The gist of the argument here is that the BNP are over-hyped, anti-fascists are giving them and Griffin too much credit, and Anarchists are too sympathetic to the ideas of the Independent Working Class Association.

Apparently written to discuss the BNP’s 2007 electoral performance, Mayday actually came out immediately after the 2008 May elections – where the BNP achieved some of the best results ever by British fascists! Rather than reflect on this, the author has instead continued to work on a theory recognisable not for its sophistication or accuracy, but the dogged persistence with which it is made.

The evening of the election count saw a large attendance by Anarchists outside the Greater London Assembly building. This followed several weeks of hard leafleting and stickering to build a large counter demonstration under the banner “No to the Crook, the Toff, the Cop and the Fascist” reflecting the appalling choice offered to Londoners – Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson, Brain Paddick or Richard Barnbrook.

At one level the event was a success – the London Anarchist movement was back on the streets, and pretty much all the activists who are able to work with one another did so. A lively picket was held as journalists and politicians entered the GLA for their canapés prior to the results being announced. Significantly a series of all-London Anarchist meetings also emerged from the new found vibrancy.

That should not however deflect from the negatives. Putting Anarchists on the streets also results in large numbers of police officers putting themselves on the streets. Ever since J18 in 1999, the Met has shown itself committed to throwing what appears to be unlimited resources at countering us.

On the evening of May 1st, some 80 odd Anarchists were policed by 21 van loads of officers (yes we counted!) many from the Police’s ‘firm’ – the Territorial Support Group. Out muscled on the day, activists were soon dispersed, along with BNP activists who had come into the area spoiling for a fight.

The second failing is that for all the populist rhetoric, the Anarchist intervention in the Mayoral campaign was marginal. Whether the aim was to counter the Boris and Ken show, or to counter the support for Richard Barnbrook neither was achieved. The number of new faces on the evening of May 1st was also disappointing.

In specific anti-fascist terms, the loudest voices speaking against the BNP were to be heard from the ‘establishment’ anti-racist left – the trades unions, Searchlight and their fellow travelers.

Since Mayday the clearest public response from Anarchists to the BNP has been the campaign, with Antifa heavily involved, against the BNP’s Red, White and Blue festival held on the weekend of August 15-17 in Ripley, Derbyshire at the farm of BNP member Alan Warner. The RWB festival is certainly a pale imitation of that held by the Front National each year in France, but as the biggest gathering of British fascists it is a worthy target.

There is little doubt this years efforts put both the BNP and Derbyshire Police under real pressure. Opposition close to the BNP site on the 16th August saw some 33 anti-fascists arrested (all were bailed to return to Derbyshire Police in November) and by the time the BNP were packing up their belongings the local press was loudly demanding they never be allowed to return. It is tempting to speculate what would have happened had such robust opposition been applied to the RWB when it started……….

There are however limits to this approach. Rattled as both the BNP and Derbyshire police have been (BNP blogs in particular were noticeable for their demands of action on a police force that would clearly prefer them to go away) it is not yet clear to what extent such actions will damage the fascists overall growth, especially in terms of their success at the ballot box.

Take an example from South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the BNP’s town centre stall was smashed up by anti-fascists in October 2007. On another occasion the BNP carelessly lost their newspapers before they could even sell any. Come this years elections one of the other staple methods of countering the far-right was also used in the town – a detailed newspaper expose of Barnsley BNP candidate Simon Goodricke. Not only is Goodricke an ex-cop but he is an ex-cop with convictions for perverting the course of justice and swindling £1000 out of a Pensioner. Just the sort of person you want running services in your community!

Despite these two events the BNP emerged in May 2008 with a strong set of election results in Barnsley, even though the picture was complicated by the candidacy of BIG (Barnsley Independent Group).

Is it that anti-fascist tactics such as the above no longer work, that they do work but need to be sustained, or that they will only work if attached to a more detailed community presence?
Time will tell.

Responses To The BNP’s Rise – Them: The Established Left Wobbles
In June Searchlight published an open letter “Where now for anti-fascism?” Written by Nick Lowles, this recognised the redundancy of much of Searchlight’s political campaigning in recent years. “A simple ‘Don’t vote Nazi’ is an irrelevant slogan that needs to be discarded immediately” – this after years of Searchlight not only doing just that, but using their vast influence over the left and the mainstream media to ensure that others did just that as well!

It is hard not to see Lowles piece as a sign of desperation. Having hitched themselves to the Labour party (and in particular Notting Hill resident and Dagenham MP John Cruddas) Searchlight have worked tirelessly on opposing the BNP in local, national and European elections. They have backed a loser, and the harder they work trying to get the democratic (usually this means Labour) vote out, the more exhausted they are likely to become.

Discredited on much of the left by their admitted links to the police and security services, Searchlight has also been weakened by its historical Zionism. A brief falling out with Unite Against Fascism’s leadership was as much about Searchlight’s inability to tolerate Respect’s pro-Muslim stance as the ostensible fact that Respect is opposed to the Labour party.

Although Searchlight can still use its resources to mop up local anti-fascist initiatives (it seems, disappointingly Lancaster UAF is one example) and several ‘Together” groups emerged in time for the 2008 elections, Searchlight appear stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Unable to develop a radical critique of fascism, and wedded to a political party drowning in front of our eyes, Lowles, Gable et al are perhaps secretly hoping for a general election which repeats that of 1979 – a Tory hammering of Labour, with a collapse of the racist vote, as it heads to the Tories. It may happen, but no one can guarantee it will happen.

Searchlight on Griffin
In their analysis of the failure of the 2007 BNP split, Nick Lowles (Searchlight, July 2008 p.12-13) fails to recognise two of the most important reasons behind the failure of the anti-Griffin forces.

Lowles may be correct that the rebels over-egged their claims against Griffin, and failed to press the flesh with the organisation’s rank and file. Yes Griffin could not be defeated by blogging alone. But other factors were crucial.

The first is clearly Griffin’s high degree of national public recognition – his is the (rather bloated) face of the BNP. Matt Single hardly compares. Knowing this Griffin was able to simply ride out any ‘split’, content in the knowledge that the party would still be achieving some strong election results, membership enquiries, merchandise sales, donations and as many web hits as ever.

The second is the political confusion of the rebels. Although united by the fact they disliked Griffin, they came from both Nazi and euro-nationalist wings of the party. (Something Searchlight could hardly point out, given their eagerness to brief interested observers that the split was between those who wanted a Euro-nationalist party and those who were basically Nazis) Those dependent on Searchlight for their understanding of fascism (such as Unite Against Fascism’s Weyman Bennett) were to be heard repeating this line ad nauseum.

Building a coherent political strategy, or even a new organisation was always likely to be beyond forces as diverse the stiff right-armers in Scotland around Warren Bennett and those in the east Midlands, like Sadie Graham, who had always looked to modernise the party at virtually all costs.

Our Enemies In The North
One tactic for the BNP in towns like Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham, and even whole counties such as Durham or Cumbria may be to gradually build up support and to simply “wait out” the old left. Those radicalised by events like the miners strike of 1984-5, or the fight against Thatcherism in the 1980s are not getting any younger.

To many people of that generation the BNP will always be anathema – one of the few things worse than Mrs Thatcher’s Tory party. When the BNP tried to book the Thorne Social Club in Doncaster for a meeting in September 2006, the steward threatened to resign and the bar staff refused to work if the meeting went ahead. It was quickly cancelled. The same year the landlord of the Kings Arms in Maryport, Cumbria took similar action after the BNP booked his upstairs room without admitting who they are. Buy that man a pint!

Welcome as these instances are, only a fool would bet on such principled acts being the norm in 20 or 30 years time.

Labour is undergoing a catastrophic haemorrhage in its former heartlands. The wider left is in as bad a state, if not worse. This is evident not just in Labour by-election defeats in places like Crewe and Glasgow East, but perhaps more importantly in the long term in party membership. To take one example in Cumbria, membership of Workington Constituency Labour Party, was around 860 in the late 1990′s but is now approximately 140. That is a lot of canvassers to lose.

Putting aside the new Labour careerists, if you consider the core of the trades union movement and ‘old’ Labour, it is clearly ageing. This is particularly true of groups closest to the revolutionary left such as Durham Miners Association. Anyone hanging their hat on an old Labour/trades union revival to see off the BNP is certainly taking a gamble. There is not a 50 year old version of Dave Douglass out there, or a 40 year old version, nor a 30 year old version and there sure as hell is not a 20 year old version. That world has gone, and it is not coming back.

It is also the case that some of the ‘old Labour’ heartlands targeted by the BNP lack the sort of multi-cultural social scene that so undermined the National Front in the late 70s and early 80s. Instead of an easy interaction of young black and white people around music and football, many such towns either have tiny ethnic populations, or Asian communities with far lower degrees of integration, interaction and inter-marriage than we saw between white and West Indian communities thirty years ago. What will undermine the BNP culturally in old Labour heartlands?

There is some hope, but so far it comes from outside of the revolutionary left, and outside of the Anarchist movement. Cumbrian blogger Duncan Money makes the point that in the previously staunch Labour town of Barrow, the May elections saw four seats fall to the local Socialist Peoples Party, and another four to the Our Schools Are Not For Sale group. Significantly the BNP flopped in the midst of this activist wave. Could such developments, coupled with well placed militancy from groups like Antifa, plus continued exposure of the fact that the BNP are not a radical alternative, shift things significantly away from the fascists?

Lost In The Wilderness
For the neo-Nazi right, 2008 has so far been a disaster. There appears no steady stream of recruits seeking refuge from a ‘reformist’ BNP. Although the National Front performed well electorally in the London Assembly elections totalling 26,901 votes in 5 constituencies, with two votes over 5%, (outpolling the SWP’s Left List front by 10 000 votes in one seat and by 5000 in two others in their three head-to-head contests)
This appears to have been based solely on the historical appeal of the groups name in certain parts of the city, but also highlights that even unrepentant racist groups are capable of profiting from the ongoing disgust and alienation with mainstream politics. Other political interventions appear unlikely – a march by NF Youth in south London on April 19th pulled in less than 20 people, and the NF appears incapable of functioning as anything like a political organisation. Those wishing to pursue electoral politics may as well join the BNP and be done with it.

Under pressure from opponents such as Antifa, the British Peoples Party has at least been consistent – consistently second best. On the same day as the National Front were humiliating themselves, the BPP were turned over by anti—fascists in Victoria. As usual with the flakier elements of Nazism, bitter recriminations soon followed, as did needless arrests of Nazis seeking ‘revenge’.

With former head honcho Sid Williamson pushed out, Adrian Brookes led an attack on what he claimed was “Anti-Fascist Action” in Manchester, but was in fact the Marxist-Leninists of the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), selling their newspaper Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism! Even this was far from convincing as the RCG fought back, and the police grabbed the retreating Nazis. A BPP ‘show of strength’ in London on 27 July merely resulted in a days harassment by the Met, plus further time in the cells, with Antifa wisely allowing the BPP to roam London in a huff.

Most disastrously of all for the neo-Nazi right was the conviction of BPP member Martyn Gilleard. Receiving 11 years for bomb making may have been expected to boost the BPP’s credentials, but for the 5 years also received for possessing 39,000 indecent images of children. This later conviction was skilfully kept quiet until the end of Gilleard’s terrorist trial, resulting in several fascists making even bigger fools of themselves than usual by attaching their wagon to Gilleard right up until the moment he was found guilty of the terrorist charges.

The last few years have now seen a steady trickle of fascists being arrested and/or convicted for terrorist offences, most notably the BNP’s Robert Cottage in October 2006.

What is not clear yet is whether such incidents represent isolated cases of oddballs attempting to fulfil their fantasises, a response to political hopelessness from a position of abject defeat and weakness, or that a small minority of Nazis are responding to a more charged racial atmosphere by looking to carry out terrorism as a viable tactic. Should Nazis look to match the involvement of British Muslims in terrorist outrages by successfully carrying out attacks of their own, things could become very unpleasant indeed.

Conclusions
It is not hard to find apocalyptic tendencies within the BNP. Usually these concentrate on race, but they also centre on issues such as peak oil and environmental collapse, and, as the credit crunch bites, on the economy. Certainly the BNP themselves see great opportunities unfolding.

In April their newspaper Voice of Freedom (sic) commented “The awakening of the British people will spread across the country in direct response to the decline in the availability of easy credit. Once again money will have to be earned and the fact that migrant workers are taking the lion’s share of the jobs available will become the political issue of the day. Then there will only be one political party that will have the policies that the British people will be demanding – the British National Party”.

Those predicting imminent economic collapse often make themselves look idiots (look at any old issue of the WRP’s Newsline paper from the late 1970s to see this) but there is little doubt we are heading for some difficult times with rising unemployment, inflation and ever more pressure on affordable housing.

The BNP’s solutions to these issues are, in our opinion, wrong. But they do actually propose solutions. The question is, apart from a vague call for revolution and solidarity – do we?