Gains but no major breakthrough

Nick Lowles and Sonia Gable analyse the BNP’s vote and the anti-fascist campaign

The British National Party won two seats in last month’s European election. Nick Griffin, the party leader, was elected in the North West with 8% of the vote and Andrew Brons took a seat in Yorkshire and The Humber with 9.8%.

The BNP succeeded because the other parties failed. While the BNP vote in those regions was actually lower than the last time round in 2004 the Labour vote dropped far more substantially. In Yorkshire and The Humber, the Labour vote fell from 413,213 in 2004 to 230,009. In the North West Labour’s vote went down from 576,388 to 336,831.

BNP 2009 Euro vote
Region	BNP vote	%
East Midlands	106,319	8.7
East of England	97,013	6.1
London	86,429	4.9
North East	52,700	8.9
North West	132,09	4 8
South East	101,769	4.4
South West	60,889	3.9
West Midlands	121,967	8.6
Yorkshire & The Humber	120,139	9.8
Scotland	27,174	2.5
Wales	37,114	5.4

Griffin just sneaked in. In the North West only 2,500 more votes for the UK Independence Party or slightly over 5,000 more for the Greens would have deprived Griffin of a seat.

Nationally the BNP vote share was 6.2%.That is a mere 1.3% more than in 2004. In terms of votes the BNP took 943,598 this time compared to 808,200 in 2004. The BNP did badly in the South East (4.4%), South West (3.9%), London (4.9%) and Wales (5.4%). Even in the East of England, where the party at one stage thought it might take a seat, it polled only 6.1%. In Scotland, where the BNP has never had much support, it came home with 2.5%.

In the West Midlands the BNP’s 8.6% was not enough to allow Simon Darby, the deputy leader, to join his colleagues in Europe. Likewise the East Midlands, which only has five seats, gave the BNP 8.7%, far below the vote needed. In the North East, which sends just three MEPs to the European Parliament, the party never had a chance of winning one, but its 8.9% was a big increase on its previous vote.

The strength of the BNP vote in a number of areas is a deep cause for concern and gives an indication of the key battlegrounds in next year’s local elections. The BNP polled 10% or more in 52 local authority areas, the highest being Barking and Dagenham where it took 19.5% of the vote.

This picture is even more disturbing when the UKIP vote is included. Almost as many UKIP voters voiced concern about immigration as BNP voters (see here). Many people who voted UKIP for Europe might vote BNP in a local election.

There were also a number of local authorities where the BNP vote went up dramatically compared to 2004.

Substantial increases in BNP votes took place in Wales but a change to the way the Welsh votes were counted means an exact comparison with 2004 is impossible.

However, as we discuss in our regional reports on pages 22-24, there were also areas where the BNP vote froze or even dropped. Among these are Burnley, Pendle, Bradford, Dudley and Sandwell.

This was the BNP’s biggest election effort ever. The party poured up to £0.5 million into the campaign, hoping the investment would yield all the funding to which MEPs are entitled and the chance to link up with nazis and fascists internationally.

Biggest campaign ever

Against the fascist party was the biggest and most professional HOPE not hate campaign we have ever staged.

We delivered 3.4 million newspapers and leaflets across the country in the two months leading up to the election. In the North West alone, 1.6 million HOPE not hate newspapers and leaflets were put out by approximately 1,200 supporters, an effort which dwarfed that of any of the political parties who contested the election.

In Yorkshire, 880,000 leaflets were distributed, including 200,000 targeting the large Muslim population in West and South Yorkshire. Across the Midlands 300,000 newspapers and leaflets were put out.

Even in London, which was never one of our key priorities, about 300,000 pieces of literature were distributed, including 50,000 newspapers in Hackney and a similar number of localised leaflets in Barking and Dagenham.

Biggest BNP increases
Local authority	2004	2009
South Tyneside	6.8	13
Hartlepool	6.2	10.3
Tendring	3.9	7.3
Thurrock	11.1	17.5
Copeland	5.7	12.4
Knowsley	5.7	10.7
St Helens	5.9	10.1
Barnsley	7.9	16.7
Rotherham	9.2	15.4
Nuneaton & Bedworth	7.4	13

Another success of our campaign was our press work. Throughout the campaign we worked with the media to inform the public about the real face behind the BNP’s lies and racism.

We worked with the online company Blue State Digital to reach hundreds of thousands of people in the biggest online political campaign in British history. We now have the largest and probably most active political email list in the country. It currently stands at 111,000, much bigger than those of Labour and the Conservatives.

Our eve of poll email was sent out to almost 600,000 addresses, making it the largest single political email in British domestic political history.

And above all, in a time when the credibility of all the political parties suffered because of the expenses scandal, thousands of people, many who have never campaigned politically before, got involved in the campaign.

Shaping the narrative

We were always faced with an uphill struggle. The European election, contested in most of the country with no coinciding local elections, and against the economic recession and an increasingly unpopular government presented a perfect storm for the BNP, even before the expenses scandal blew. Once that happened it was always a matter of damage limitation and one of our most important successes was in preventing the anti-establishment protest vote going to the BNP.

Top BNP votes
Local authority	BNP	Con	Green	Lib Dem	Lab	UKIP
Barking and Dagenham	19.4	13.9	3.8	4.6	31.5	14.8
Stoke-on-Trent	17.6	17.7	3.8	9.7	20.5	22.0
Thurrock	17.5	22.7	4.2	5.2	18.2	21.6
Barnsley	16.7	15.8	6.2	8.7	24.7	18.7
Rotherham	15.4	16.4	5.3	8.7	24.8	20.7
Havering	14.8	29.6	6.0	6.7	6.2	26.9
Burnley	14.6	17.0	4.3	22.7	17.8	14.8
North West Leicestershire	14.5	30.0	5.4	9.9	15.8	16.3
Bolsover	14.0	16.2	4.6	8.1	31.4	14.8
Ashfield	13.5	18.7	4.5	16.4	20.7	15.6

Our media strategy was designed to set the narrative for the campaign, to highlight the stories and issues that we wanted the media to talk about, such as Griffin’s links with fascists across Europe, rather than allow the BNP to set the agenda on its terms.

The MPs’ expenses scandal blew us off course and for two weeks in May we had to change tack and play defensive. Over the second weekend of May it appeared that our nightmare scenario was about to take place when the BBC’s Nick Robinson began linking rising support for the BNP with the expenses scandal. Employing a professional press officer for the first time, Searchlight lobbied the BBC and other news outlets showing how polling indicated that the UKIP was in a better position to exploit the crisis.

Within a day the media began switching attention from the BNP to the UKIP, as was most vividly exemplified by the BBC News report of the BNP campaign launch. Less than 24 hours after Nick Robinson was reporting that the BNP could be the beneficiary of the expenses scandal, so another BBC reporter was quoting the latest opinion poll which showed, correctly, that the UKIP was well ahead.

That helped set the tone for the rest of the campaign and positive reporting of the BNP began to dry up.

In the final fortnight we went on the offensive placing dozens of articles in the press, including almost weekly stories in the News of the World and daily articles in the Daily Mirror.

It is clear both from the results and from the extensive YouGov election day survey of voters that the BNP did not pick up the protest vote. The BNP hardly increased its share of the vote nationally and the YouGov survey demonstrated that the BNP only turned out its hardcore support. Those questioned had almost uniform views on race and immigration, indicating there had been no movement to the BNP of people who had more moderate views but wanted to cast a protest vote.

Another success of our campaign was increasing the turnout of anti-BNP voters. Nick Griffin, in the North West, actually received the lowest percentage vote for the BNP in any of its key regions. In several cities, such as Manchester and Liverpool, the Labour share of the vote remained the same as 2004, bucking the national trend, suggesting that Labour managed to turn out a significant section of its traditional vote but also new voters, determined to stop the BNP.

On election day Michael Crick of Newsnight was in Blackburn, an area of traditionally strong BNP support but where the local anti-BNP group had delivered the East Lancs version of the HOPE not hate newspaper to 56,000 of the 58,000 homes. Crick reported long queues of people, both Asian and white, at polling stations, many stating clearly that they were there to vote against the BNP.

There was also unusually high voting at the polling station closest to Manchester University, suggesting that students were coming out to vote against the BNP.

Similarly, in Birmingham, while some traditional Labour voters were staying at home, the party’s support was boosted by the high turnout among the city’s minority communities.

Anger, hope, action

Two BNP MEPs are two too many. We believe that the HOPE not hate campaign limited the BNP gains (and almost prevented Griffin from winning in the North West) but now we must face the new challenge ahead. The BNP now has a platform and resources with which it can greatly expand its activities but they will also be under the spotlight as never before and their election has generated widespread anger and revulsion. Over 80,000 people have signed our “Not in my name” online petition, the vast majority totally new to us. Our job, to coin an organising phrase, is to turn this anger into hope and finally into action.