Defeated

Source: Searchlight Magazine May 2010

Defeated: BNP leader weakened after poll disaster

British National Party leader Nick Griffin is battling for his political future amid growing disquiet over his leadership, a disastrous electoral campaign and the overall running of the party. This comes after the BNP spectacularly failed in its bid to win control of Barking & Dagenham council, lost all but two of the 28 council wards it was defending and was humiliated in Stoke-on-Trent, a city recently described by Griffin as it’s “jewel in the crown”.

It had been an awful election campaign for the BNP leader. His former right-hand man Mark Collett had been arrested for threatening to kill him, the party’s website went down in the last few days of the campaign after the webmaster walked out, the party is being taken to court by the multinational company Unilever following the childish use of a Marmite jar on a version of its party political broadcast and its London organiser has been arrested for affray after being filmed kicking an Asian youth in the head.

He also had to face a far more sophisticated and determined opposition.

Deluded

It all looked so different at the outset of the campaign. The BNP boasted that it could gain as many as four MPs, take control of Barking & Dagenham council and make major inroads into Stoke-on-Trent ahead of next year’s all out local elections. Nationally, the BNP predicted that it would win dozens of new council seats.

With the economy worsening Griffin believed that voters would finally break with the mainstream parties and head in his direction. “The chickens are going to come home to roost in a monstrous way very soon,” he boasted to journalists as he announced his own candidature in Barking.

The BNP stood 338 candidates in the general election, a record number for a far-right party in Britain, surpassing the 303 contested by the National Front in 1979. The party also stood 737 candidates in the local elections.

Nick Griffin (2nd L), leader of the British National Party and Richard Barnbrook (2nd R), Representative of the BNP on the London Assembly oversee the count at the Goresbrook Leisure Centre on May 7, 2010 in Barking, England. After 5 weeks of campaigning, including the first ever live televised leader's debates, opinion polls suggest that the UK is facing the prospect of a hung parliament for the first time since 1974. (May 6, 2010 - Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images Europe)

Buoyed up by its victory in the European election last year the BNP leadership truly believed they were riding on a wave of public support and future success was probable. All across the country party meetings were held to raise the £300,000 required for general election deposits and leaflet costs. Members were told, once again, that this was going to be their year.

Although this strategy successfully raised the money, it also raised members’ expectations to a level that was unachievable. This was the BNP’s first of many mistakes of the campaign.

A year ago the far-right party polled 6.4% of the national vote in the European election but this time it achieved only 1.9%. While it only contested 338 of the 632 English, Welsh and Scottish seats, that was still over half and there was no real improvement on the party’s vote in 2005 bearing in mind the much larger number of candidates this time.

It was obvious that the BNP would get squeezed by the main parties in the general election, especially in the key seats where the main parties focus their efforts. However, the party hoped that it had established itself as a significant force in its heartlands to sustain its vote but this did not prove to be the case. If anything, its share of the vote in these areas slipped even further, which will be a huge disappointment given the rise of the party’s fortunes since 2005.

This was the case in the BNP’s two national priority seats, Barking and Stoke-on-Trent Central. Despite boasting that both were winnable the BNP share of the vote went down. In Barking, where Griffin was standing, its vote dropped from 16.9% in 2005 to 14.6%. In Stoke-on-Trent Central, where deputy leader Simon Darby was standing, its vote dropped from 7.8% in 2005 to 7.7%.

In other key BNP areas, such as Burnley, the BNP vote also fell. In the two West Yorkshire constituencies of Dewsbury and Keighley the BNP vote was less than half of what it was in 2005. [see table 1]

There were some quite significant increases in the BNP vote in some constituencies, which reflects the changing areas of support for the party. In Barnsley Central the BNP polled 8.9% compared to just 4.9 in 2005. In nearby Rotherham the BNP polled 10.4% as opposed to 6.6% last time. [see table 2]

The BNP increased its vote across Greater Manchester, Leeds and parts of the East Midlands. However, it did not do as well as expected in the North East and East of England.

The BNP had hoped to do better in the local elections, believing that local issues and a greater desire to register a protest vote would allow the party to take dozens of council seats. It not only failed to do that but lost 26 of the 28 seats it was defending. Among the losers were Chris Beverley (Leeds), Roger Roberts (Kirklees) and Russell Green and Carl Butler in Sandwell. The party also lost three councillors in Epping Forest, and two each in Burnley and Stoke-on-Trent.

Overall the BNP stood 737 council candidates and averaged 9.5% of the vote. This was well down on previous years and is another reflection of the party’s vote being squeezed.

Yet again, some of the biggest declines were in its target areas. In 2006 the BNP averaged 41% of the vote in the seven wards it contested in Barking & Dagenham. In these same seven wards the BNP average vote this time dropped to 23.3%. There was also a significant fall in the BNP vote in Stoke-on-Trent.

Despite the reduced support in Barking & Dagenham the BNP still received its highest average share of the vote here.

However, we have to caution against complacency. Any BNP vote of above 20% in 2010 is, in my view, a potential winning vote in a non-general election year, especially with a declining economy and massive cuts among the lower skilled end of the public sector, which we are likely to see over the next couple of years. The BNP managed to obtain above 20% in 25 council wards, seven of which were in Barking & Dagenham. [see Table 3]

Around the country there were some areas where the BNP advanced. The party solidified its strength in South and West Yorkshire. Half its top ten general election results were achieved in the county, as well as four of the top ten average local authority votes. It re-emerged organisationally in Bradford but dropped back in Keighley and Kirklees.

Pendle, in the North West, produced the top and third highest BNP council ward votes in the country and across the borough the party averaged 16.9%, second only to Barking & Dagenham. Elsewhere in the region, the BNP averaged 15.8% in Burnley, 10.2% across 15 wards in Tameside and 8.3% across 19 wards in Wigan, including 20% in one ward that it had never contested before and where it did little this time round. Even in Manchester the BNP had some credible election results. [see Table 4]

Stoke-on-Trent was an utter humiliation for the BNP. It failed to improve on its vote in the 2005 general election and managed to field only six candidates in the local elections, all of whom were roundly beaten. Quite how the party can pick itself up here ahead of next year’s all out local elections is unclear.

BNP members are right to be disappointed with the results but the blame must lie largely with its own leadership. It created an expectation that was never going to be realised and it ran a disastrous election campaign.

It went into the election with an expenses scandal hanging over its head. Most of the BNP leadership were on the EU payroll, despite not living anywhere near the two regions that elected BNP MEPs, and there was a distinct lack of transparency over the expenses of Griffin and his fellow MEP Andrew Brons.

Griffin’s virtual absence from Barking throughout the campaign gave us an easy hit. The BNP was telling its supporters that a victory was possible, but sent out the exact opposite message to the media and through them the electorate. Our “Where’s Griffin?” slogan was picked up and ran by television and newspapers alike.

Further disaster was to hit the BNP election campaign when Mark Collett, the party’s former publicity officer, was arrested for allegedly “threatening to kill” Griffin. With the active assistance of our press officer the media were soon awash with stories of political infighting, violent threats and internal turmoil. Coming on the back of resignations and recriminations inside Stoke-on-Trent BNP, it was clear that all was not well in the party and soon the entire electorate was reading about it.

This disharmony dogged the BNP throughout the campaign and even overshadowed its formal election launch which, for some strange reason, was held in Stoke-on-Trent. In an absolutely diabolical piece of media management Griffin, accompanied by some idiot dressed up in a Crusader outfit, received very little media attention. The BNP launched on the morning after a national leaders’ debate and in a city 150 miles from London. Unsurprisingly, the BNP message was largely ignored.

In London Richard Barnbrook’s St George’s Day parade, consisting of himself on a horse and six burly supporters on a flat bed truck following behind, was similarly ignored.

The BNP’s capacity for scoring own goals never ceases to amaze and so it was that Griffin thought it amusing to superimpose a jar of Marmite over his shoulder on the party election broadcast. Quite how Griffin thought the multinational that produces the black stuff might react is a mystery but it generated another couple of days of negative publicity and an expensive day out in the High Court.

And it only got worse for the BNP. Simon Bennett, its webmaster, refused to take the blame for “Marmite-gate” and walked away from the party, taking the website down as he went. London organiser Bob Bailey added to the leader’s problems by violently attacking an Asian youth in Barking.

It was the end of a miserable campaign.

HOPE not hate activists prepare to distribute anti-fascist literature in Stoke-on-Trent

HOPE crushes hate

Despite its record number of candidates the battleground was always going to be in Barking & Dagenham and Stoke-on-Trent and it was there that the BNP was undone by a resurgent Labour Party and a strong anti-fascist campaign.

As explained in more detail elsewhere in this magazine the HOPE not hate campaign ran its most intensive, expansive and sophisticated campaign to date. Over 500,000 pieces of literature were distributed in the two areas this year alone, 1,500 people got involved and thousands of phone calls were made.

Even in Stoke-on-Trent, which has received a lot less media attention than Barking & Dagenham, the HOPE not hate campaign was huge. Linking up with local anti-fascists from NorSCARF we distributed two editions of a tabloid newspaper, local leaflets and a women’s booklet to every woman in the city.

The BNP’s failure in these two areas was its undoing. The party invested so much political hyperbole into the prospect of a major breakthrough here that its crushing defeat was equally dramatic in the negative effect it had on the party.

Griffin is now in a very weak position. Too many of his key lieutenants have left and others, such as Eddy Butler, now have the confidence and ammunition to speak out openly against him. Darby has gone to ground and Griffin is looking increasingly exposed and isolated. He will probably hang on because the party rules that he created make it very difficult for anyone to stage a successful challenge, but the question now is will his party stay with him. While he admits that the results were “disappointing” his complaints about wider political conspiracies and media bias are sounding increasingly hollow, even among his own supporters. Finally, a growing number of BNP members realise that the buck must eventually stop with their leader.

The 2010 elections were a disaster for the BNP, and the thousands of people who took part in HOPE not hate activities across the country can take credit for their part in this. The BNP will continue and the reasons behind its rise have not gone away but it will go into the next round of local elections in a far weaker position than it would have hoped.