BNP launches national socialist manifesto

| Sunday, 24 April 2005 Source: Searchlight

Sonia Gable analyses the BNP's general election manifesto.

The British National Party chose St George's day to launch a 54-page general election manifesto that attempts to show that the BNP is more than a single issue party. Entitled Rebuilding British Democracy, it is an eclectic mixture of racism, nationalism, policies filched from the Tories, nostalgia for an imagined golden age probably located in the 1930s or 1950s, fascist economics and populism. But in essence it is a national socialist document through and through.

The BNP's press conference was dominated by Nick Griffin, the party leader, going through each of the manifesto's 16 sections at length, against a backdrop which strangely included the same sun symbol that characterises Searchlight's anti-BNP Hope not Hate campaign, together with the words "hope" and "hate". What, if anything, was between those words was unclear from the fleeting shot of it in the BBC television footage. Had the BNP copied Searchlight's slogan in full or was it perhaps "Hope and Hate"?

What was the BNP thinking? It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or perhaps the BNP leaders have cracked under the strain of being on their best behaviour throughout the election campaign. Had they misunderstood the multiracial nature of the symbol or was it part of the BNP's attempt to woo black and Sikh voters against the "threat" of Islam?

Turning to the manifesto itself, it is no surprise that racism is the threat that runs all the way through it. The BNP espouses democracy, but it is democracy for whites only. "We will disband all government-sponsored attempts to exploit ethnic minority voters by means of such programmes as Operation Black Vote," it states, without explaining how encouraging people to vote amounts to exploitation. And although the BNP calls for the right to organise for "organisations and individuals who espouse unpopular opinions" – presumably the BNP itself – campaigning against the BNP would not be permitted. In a paragraph obviously directed at Searchlight, the BNP says it would, "instruct the Electoral Commission to deal as a matter of urgency with the way in which organisations which do not themselves contest elections are at present permitted to denigrate individual candidates or parties".

For a British nationalist party, the manifesto contains a surprising amount of admiration for certain foreign governments. Japan is praised for its strong border controls, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, the USA and especially Japan for various aspects of their economic policy, Norway and Switzerland for remaining outside the European Union, and Switzerland again for banning Kosher slaughter of animals (surely no one expected a BNP manifesto that did not have a go at the BNP's traditional target, Jews).

Above all the BNP admires Switzerland for its policy of arming all citizens who have completed their military service. The BNP would institute "compulsory National Service" which would include "full training with the citizens' assault rifle". Afterwards, citizens would keep their assault rifles and ammunition at home, ready to use against foreign invasion or burglars as they see fit. The prospect of violent, drunken racists rampaging through Britain's cities with assault rifles is too horrific to contemplate.

Conscientious objectors and others who refused to take part in military training would not only forgo "the citizen's right to be armed", they would also lose the right to vote. Again, democracy only for those who meet the approval of the BNP.

Nazis are national socialists, and the socialist element makes several appearances in the BNP manifesto. The word "worker" occurs 27 times. The BNP purports to champion British workers who lose their jobs to call centres in India, and believes it is "in the interest of the average British worker to minimize the supply and maximize the demand for his labor"– the BNP's admiration for the USA seems to include American English. It naturally follows that "the BNP will not allow immigration to Britain and will implement the orderly repatriation of past immigrants", all in the interests of British workers, who will invest their savings in British industry in order to own "the means of production. … The BNP supports the gradual assumption of worker ownership through their pension funds."

There will be workers' co-operatives, share ownership, profit-sharing and management board places under a BNP government (for new businesses – the BNP does not support expropriation of existing businesses as "we are not egalitarian socialists"), but the BNP also supports what it calls "personal private ownership" in industry and elsewhere. "The fresh food sections of supermarkets, in particular, are a prime target for conversion into owner-run 'urban markets'." Unlike most of the British population who shop there, the BNP does not like supermarkets: "the supermarkets are entirely legitimate targets for radical and legally enforced change" and the BNP will impose a special tax on them, that is if they have any profits left after the BNP has finished changing them.

Workers' and personal private ownership will both be subordinate to state control of the economy. The BNP does not believe in a free market economy, "we believe it is the duty of the government to proactively run the economy for the benefit of the nation". The government would also take control of monetary policy in a reversal of one of Chancellor Gordon Brown's better decisions. "It will be necessary for the British National Bank (based on the Bank of England) to be directly responsible to the pan-British parliament," says the BNP.

The BNP's enthusiasm for workers is also one reason behind its novel call for the abolition of income tax, which it describes as "a tax on people's labour". The other reasons are that there is too much tax evasion and too many people are employed by "Inland Revenue" (the BNP has not spotted that the Inland Revenue has merged with Customs and Excise to form HM Revenue and Customs). There are also too many chartered accountants and "untold millions of man-hours wasted by individual small businessmen struggling with the accountancy records". One rather suspects that the real reason might have more to do with Griffin's own dealings with tax collectors and accountants as a pig farmer and one-time second-hand car salesman.

In place of income tax the BNP would introduce "a consumption tax on non-essential goods" to be collected by "the present VAT authorities, who could do the relatively limited extra work with only a small proportion of the workforce currently employed one way or another by the income tax monster", in other words HM Revenue and Customs again.

A consumption tax is a tax on spending, in other words VAT or something similar. Let us pass over the strangeness of an anti-EU party embracing the one British tax that was imposed by Europe and look at how VAT is collected. The reason why VAT is cheap for the government to collect is that it is businesses who are the unpaid tax collectors. Small business owners hate VAT far more than income tax as administering VAT is a constant concern every time they sell anything to a customer. An additional network of higher rates of VAT directed at "non-essential goods" (what about services?) would be the final straw for many smaller businesses.

As for tax evasion, has the BNP never heard of traders who knock off the VAT for payment in cash? VAT evasion would become even more widespread with the enormously high rates that would be needed to replace income tax, which forms nearly 30% of the government's revenue receipts.

Most goods are "non-essential". A consumption tax of this nature would result in very high prices and people would spend less. Therefore British businesses would produce less. They would need fewer workers and would pay them less. Result: recession. At least a recession might reduce the attraction of Britain for immigrants. Perhaps that is the BNP's cunning plan.