Battlefield Barking & Dagenham

Searchlight Magazine December 2009 by Nick Lowles | Tuesday, 22 December 2009

The British National Party has set its sights on winning control of Barking and Dagenham council and even the Barking parliamentary seat in next year’s elections. Last month Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, announced his intention to stand in Barking in the general election and designated Richard Barnbrook to spearhead the BNP’s assault on the council.

The British National Party has set its sights on winning control of Barking and Dagenham council and even the Barking parliamentary seat in next year’s elections. Last month Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, announced his intention to stand in Barking in the general election and designated Richard Barnbrook to spearhead the BNP’s assault on the council. While Griffin’s campaign will receive the bulk of the publicity, at much greater risk is the council, where the BNP could easily emerge either in overall control or as the largest single party after next May’s election in which all seats are up for grabs.

Winning control of the council would bestow huge political capital on the BNP and give it control of a budget of hundreds of millions of pounds and a chance to carry out some of its racist and hugely damaging political aims. A BNP victory in Barking and Dagenham would propel the far-right party into the political mainstream and give it a boost before the all-out council elections in Stoke-on-Trent in 2011.

Barking and Dagenham was already the frontline for next year’s elections even before Griffin announced his candidature. The BNP currently has 12 councillors in the borough and would need to raise this to 26 to take full control of the council, a not impossible task.

It was probably only its failure to put forward more candidates that prevented the fascist party gaining control of the council at the last borough election in 2006. On that occasion the BNP fielded 13 candidates in seven wards. All but one were elected, with an average vote of 41% (compared to Labour’s 33%), making it virtually inconceivable that the BNP would not have had more councillors elected if it had had more candidates.

In the party list section of last year’s London Assembly election, the BNP came first in seven of the borough’s 17 wards and within a whisker of top in three other wards. The same vote in a council election would give the BNP at least 21 seats and place it neck and neck in another nine – putting the party within striking distance of taking overall control of the council.

BNP target: Barking and Dagenham Civic Centre

In this year’s European election the BNP’s 19.5% vote might appear a long way off the Labour vote of 31%. However the UK Independence Party took 14.8% and its vote generally does not stand up in local elections. Bearing in mind that the UKIP and BNP often attract a similar section of the electorate, the BNP’s support becomes much more challenging.

If this political situation were not bad enough, there are additional worrying factors. Factional disputes within Barking Labour Party have resulted in 13 sitting Labour councillors being deselected in the Barking wards. The internal conflict has been much reported in the local press and has made at least one seemingly safe ward suddenly vulnerable to the BNP as sitting Labour councillors threaten to stand as independents.

In a separate move, the Christian People’s Alliance is reported to be considering standing candidates in some areas of the borough. This could turn two other safe Labour wards into Labour/BNP marginals.

Game changer

All this is before the impact of Griffin’s presence is even calculated. His announcement has upped the stakes in this battle and made our job even harder. In one simple pronounce-ment he has upped the profile of the BNP and its threat in the borough. It ensured media interest way beyond what any other local council is going to receive ahead of next May’s elections and has taken the spotlight off the bunch of incompetent, lazy and foolish councillors who represent the party locally.

It is also clear that Griffin has increased morale among local activists and supporters, which is likely to help the party fill its current shortfall in candidates and will markedly increase activism.

Griffin and the BNP will be hoping that his involvement in Barking will generate the same media interest and frenzy that propelled the party’s 12 councillors to victory in 2006. Back then the daily and incessant media coverage – much of it talking up the BNP’s chances – became a self-fulfilling prophecy. While it is unlikely that the media will give so much attention to this one election – there is after all a far bigger general election taking place at the same time – there will certainly be a lot of coverage. This is likely to remind BNP voters and those dissatisfied with the mainstream parties that the BNP is an alternative and so increase the turnout among its supporters on polling day.

A close fight

On the surface it would appear that Griffin has a big hurdle to overcome if he is seriously to threaten to oust Margaret Hodge, the sitting Labour MP. In 2005 the BNP polled 17.0% in Barking. Although it was the highest BNP result ever in a parliamen-tary election, it was a long way off Hodge’s 47.8%.

However, events since then have moved in the BNP’s favour and Griffin will be starting the campaign not too far behind – if at all. The 17% was won before the BNP really took off in the borough and only a year later the party polled 41% in a large section of the constituency in the local elections. Boundary changes have also helped Griffin by bringing three strong BNP wards into the Barking constituency from neighbouring Dagenham. Griffin’s notoriety will also give him a boost, while Hodge will suffer from the national swing against Labour, currently measured at 8%.

Out of the 11 council wards that make up constituency, the BNP will be considered frontrunners in five, neck and neck in one and close to Labour in a further two. In only three wards will the Labour Party begin the campaign comfortably ahead of the BNP, though these are areas where we would normally expect a higher turnout.

Taking all these factors together Griffin goes into this election not too far behind Hodge and there is certainly little room for complacency.

Dagenham

Jon Cruddas has a slightly easier time against the BNP in the new neigh-bouring constituency of Dagenham and Rainham. The further from the heart of the Becontree estate one travels the lower the BNP vote. Of the six Barking and Dagenham wards in his constituency the BNP pose a very serious threat in only two. For Labour, winning all six wards on the Dagenham side is a necessity if the party is to retain control of the council. However, Cruddas faces a three-way battle with the Conservatives and the BNP in the three large Havering wards that come into his constituency.

Anti-BNP campaigning

While the Labour Party will be fighting its own battle against the BNP, the job of anti-fascists is to highlight and expose the true nature of the BNP and mobilise the anti-BNP vote. Given the size and seriousness of the threat, town centre stalls and leafleting at stations are fairly pointless. What is required is targeted and intelligent campaigning among the voters who will decide the election’s outcome.

The council election will be decided in four or five key wards. While we will try to circulate material as far and wide as possible, we also have to be realistic about the resources we have at our disposal. It is far better to leaflet a target ward (one that could swing either way in the council election) two, three or even four times, than attempt to leaflet the entire borough once. Of course there will be a place for mass leafleting of the borough and for that we will team up with the Daily Mirror as part of a national day of action at the end of March, but in the meantime we will be focusing on six to eight key wards.

And our aim is simple. To find 1,500 anti-BNP voters in each ward on the premise that 1,000 votes should be enough to win most of the wards. These voters will be identified through a massive online Voter ID operation that we shall launch in the new year.

Over the course of a few weeks in early 2010 our supporters will be encouraged to canvass voters in our key areas to identify those who dislike the BNP. We will seek to develop a relationship with these voters to ensure they turn out on polling day. In a tightly fought contest whichever side turns out more of its supporters will win.

The beauty of our system is that the canvassing can be done from anywhere in the country and from the comfort of our supporters’ homes. All they need is a computer with internet access and a telephone. Once they have become an approved canvasser they will be given access to an internet page showing ten names and numbers at a time, a simple script and useful notes to help them through a conversation. In this way every HOPE not hate supporter can make a vital contribution to the campaign without feeling the need to spend hours travelling to and from east London.

In addition to general canvassing we will also target the growing BME population. With as many as 20% of the borough’s residents being from a minority community, increasing the turnout of these voters will be crucial in ensuring Griffin et al do not win. The HOPE not hate campaign has already begun pushing the anti-BNP message through the black African churches, which in turn are spreading the message to thousands of followers across the borough.

Just as Griffin will be a major attraction to BNP voters, so we will be using his presence to turn out the anti-BNP vote. This proved a successful strategy in Keighley, where Griffin stood in the 2005 general election and received a paltry 9% of the vote. The threat of Griffin was almost enough to stop him in the North West in the recent European election. On that occasion we distributed 1.6 million newspapers and leaflets, more than double the number distributed in any other region, and Griffin only sneaked in by 1,200 votes.

The campaign will be long, difficult and unpredictable. There will be a temptation to chase the BNP, to hold demos and protests wherever Griffin raises his head, but this would be a distraction from the job at hand. The election is going to be won or lost in a few polling districts well away from the glare of the media, the shopping centres and the main transport hubs. Identifying and turning out the anti-BNP voters in these localities has to be our main priority, not chasing Griffin around the streets on the other side of the borough.

There is also a wider political reason why we must stay focused. Many of the people of Barking and Dagenham, especially those on the giant Becontree estate, share the same sense of victimhood as those who sympathised with Griffin after the Question Time fiasco or believed the Africans for Essex myth despite evidence to the contrary. Chasing Griffin around and holding constant demos against him is more likely to alienate us from ordinary voters than a policy of engaging with them and addressing the issues of concern.

It is going to take a huge effort to stop the BNP from becoming the largest party on the council let alone take complete control and even win a parliamentary seat. It is going to require the hard work of local activists, whether they be in the political parties or not, but it cannot be left to them alone. Just as the BNP will be organising on a regional basis so must we, and we will be calling on all our supporters across London to donate time and money to help the campaign.

The stakes have never been higher but so too we have never been so organised.

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