Waking up to a different London

posted by: Nick L | on: Saturday, 3 May 2008, 08:29

So the BNP has one person on the London Assembly. If someone had offered us this two days ago, coupled with a net gain of just ten councillors across the country, we would have jumped at it. The media's one-sided obsession with immigration and migration and in particular the BBC's and Channel Four's fascination with the anniversary of Enoch Powell, together with the obvious collapse in support for Labour, meant we entered polling day fearing the worst.

Even the BNP was predicting 40 new councillors and three on the London Assembly.

That they didn't achieve this was down to the hard work of literally thousands of activists across London and the rest of the country. We have never had so many people involved in the anti-BNP campaign before. Against the odds, both political and climatic, decent people took to the streets and campaigned for HOPE not hate.

We suffered a few defeats but overall we held back the BNP, and in many areas we actually reduced their vote.

Even in London, their biggest prize, we succeeded. In 2004 the BNP polled 4.8%, just missing out on a seat by 0.2%. In the same election UKIP polled over 8%. Since 2004 the BNP has grown significantly in outer East London and generally become a household brand. With the collapse of UKIP we really believed that the BNP were on course for two, if not three, seats.

In the end they just got one. They polled 5.4%, hardly increasing their share of the vote. Obviously, the BNP getting anyone elected is bad but we can all be proud that we helped keep them to just that. Indeed, for much of the day we actually thought there was a chance that we were going to stop them altogether.

The campaign against the BNP will continue. We will expose the incompetence of their councillors, we will highlight the extremism of their politics and we shall work to bring hope instead of hate to communities.

There are several new fronts around the country where the BNP has now emerged and we have to start working. Next year we also have the European Elections where they will pose a serious threat in several regions. However, we feared that London would act as a springboard for future success but with just 5.4% we have shown that the vast majority of people continue to reject the politics of hate and that there is still everything to play for. And in many of their heartlands, such as Sandwell, where the BNP vote has halved in two years, we have shown that we can beat them anywhere.

I would like to finish be reiterating my thanks to everyone who got involved in this campaign. There are lessons to be learnt and techniques to improve but we can safely say that we did our bit to prevent the BNP making a major breakthrough and I look forward to continuing the fight together.

HOPE still won out over hate.

Nick Lowles, (nick@stopthebnp.org.uk)