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The Guardian, 29th April 2009
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/29/bnp-peter-hain-european-elections
Unless the rest of us get our act together, the British National Party could easily win three seats and maybe more in the June European elections.
To win in the North West they need just 8 per cent, barely 1.5 per cent more than they got in less favourable times for them in 2004, the days of near full employment and before the credit crunch. In the West Midlands and Yorkshire/Humberside they need an extra 1.6 per cent and 4.3 per cent respectively.
Recently they have won council by-election seats, according to the BBC polling an average 14 per cent in 60 wards across the country – close to the threshold necessary to get a seat in almost every European constituency in Britain.
The BNP has been polling the highest ever levels for fascist candidates in Britain: 800,000 votes in the 2004 European elections, in local elections up over six years from 3,022 to 238,000 in 2006. In the 2008 London Assembly elections last year their vote doubled to 130,000 and they won a seat for the first time.
Winning European seats would secure an unprecedented platform, and entitle the BNP to draw down potentially hundreds of thousands of Euros from Brussels indirectly to buttress their fulltime personnel and organisation.
They would also be able to work with other far right and fascist parties in Europe, as Jean Marie le Pen’s Party has done from their base in France won two decades ago.
With unemployment and job insecurity rising across the country, with some major construction sites appearing to bar local unionised labour, and affordable housing in short supply, these are classic conditions for the BNP’s racist and fascist politics to thrive.
Thirty years ago rising unemployment and economic difficulty saw the BNP’s predecessor, the National Front, also do worryingly well in elections. In response I helped found the Anti-Nazi League in 1977 to target the NF.
A mass campaign quickly developed which helped put the NF out of business a few years later. ANL supporters took their own initiatives with Miners Against the Nazis, Students Against the Nazis, Skinheads Against the Nazis and many more. There was even a Skateboarders Against the Nazis.
With its sister group Rock Against Racism, the ANL organised huge national carnivals and local gigs, as rock music culture reaching millions was effectively fused with radical politics traditionally reaching only thousands.
The lesson of the Anti-Nazi League’s success is also that the BNP still need to be confronted wherever they march or appear in public, and also denied platforms to spread their hate. It’s the same lesson from the 1930s when Blackshirts led by Oswald Moseley targeting Jewish communities were physically stopped in Cable Street in London’s East End in October 1936. Real action is needed, not just letters to editors or speeches in Parliament.
But the challenge today is tougher. The BNP is more sophisticated than the old National Front. They wear suits rather than flirt with Nazi regalia as NF members did. They sound more smooth and plausible on radio or TV.
Yet their politics are fundamentally similar: the sinister scapegoating of blacks, muslims, jews and foreigners, for the social and economic problems experienced by everyone, but especially their target group: working class whites. Whenever they are ascendant locally, racial violence and racial hatred is barely beneath the surface.
Although desperate to conceal their fascist and racist instincts, that should not fool anybody. They are the National Front reincarnated for modern times albeit using modern spin, the internet and community politics.
To confront their threat, the priority must be grass roots campaigning. In Labour’s case winning back trust by standing candidates rooted in their communities and pledged to deliver on local issues. That was successfully achieved in Keighley and Telford for example where seats were won, but sadly not in Sevenoaks in late February where the BNP won a ‘safe’ Labour seat.
All the main parties, Labour especially, must now shake off their complacency and take on the BNP directly. Their poison should be combated on the doorstep, through leafleting and campaigning. Local Labour election candidates and campaigners should work with those from Unite Against Fascism which has mobilised a new generation of young activists and includes Anti-Nazi League veterans.
The aim should be simple but clear: to stop the BNP gaining seats anywhere in Britain, but especially in Europe on June 4th.
www.uaf.org.uk/news.asp?choice=90429
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