Hope wins over hate!

Nick Lowles | Sunday, 2 April 2006 Source: Searchlight

It was soon after one in the morning of Friday 11 June when Nick Griffin appeared on television. His face looked drawn, his hair even more greased over than usual and he was not in a happy mood.

The election had been fixed, he announced to the ITV interviewer. "The BNP has been the victim of the worst political gerrymandering in British history", he declared. Asked if he felt that he would still win a place in the European Parliament he looked doubtful. "There's still three days for them [the establishment] to rig the vote."

There was nothing gracious in the voice of the British National Party leader. There were none of the nice smiles we have come to expect from Griffin. No, this was the nasty Griffin reverting to form. He sneered at the interviewer and blamed everyone but himself. The BNP had failed to make its long promised political breakthrough and he accused the whole world of conspiring against it.

Griffin's sour mood was in sharp contrast to his party's high expectations entering the campaign. We had been told to expect a "political earthquake" with the party winning up to five MEPs and 60 council seats.

Even into the final week the BNP was forecasting success. Commenting on the BNP's poor showing in the national opinion polls, Voice of Freedom editor Martin Wingfield wrote on 5 June:

"Nick Griffin believes the national baseline of support for the BNP averages out at around 11%, a little less when taking into account Scotland and Wales. With pollsters now showing those prepared to 'own-up' to BNP support at 3 to 4%, this means our actual support is around 9 to 12% and in line with party predictions."

Four days later, on the eve of the election, Griffin himself told supporters: "The British National Party is on target to take between 14 and 16% of the Euro vote in our key regions, winning a record number of council seats, positions on the Greater London Assembly, and breaking through with three or four MEPs.

"We are on target, in short, for a political breakthrough!"

In the end it simply did not happen. The BNP failed to make any advance in the council elections and if anything slipped back in its key areas. It failed to get anyone elected to the London Assembly and, more significantly, it did not get a single person elected to the European Parliament.

It did secure a worrying 808,200 votes in the European election, just under 5% of the national poll. But without an MEP to show for it, and overshadowed by the phenomenal success of the UK Independence Party, there was no political earthquake.

The only two local councils where the BNP achieved anything like a breakthrough were Bradford, where it took four seats, and Epping Forest, where it took three. But these council victories only looked good when set against the party's more general failure. The BNP managed to get its three councillors in Calderdale reelected but this was way short of the ten it was confidently boasting on the BNP website in early June.

In other areas where the BNP already had councillors the party either stood still or, more commonly, fell back. In Burnley the BNP won one councillor but lost another. More significantly, its share of the vote fell from 10,000 in 2002 to 4,500. In Stoke, a strong BNP vote meant nothing as its one election victory was offset by the loss of its group leader Barry Cuthbertson. In Kirklees, the BNP came out of the elections with just the one councillor it had to start with, again, way below their expectations.

In Dudley, Sandwell and Thurrock sitting BNP councillors failed to get reelected. In Dudley, the West Midlands regional organiser Simon Darby lost his seat, as did the Black Country organiser John Salvage in neighbouring Sandwell. Nicholas Geri, the BNP councillor in Thurrock also saw his vote dramatically decline losing him his seat.

There were several areas where the BNP expected to have councillors elected but failed. In the North West this included Oldham and Pendle, in Yorkshire and The Humber it included Leeds and Wakefield, and in the West Midlands it included Walsall.

The BNP made no headway in Blackburn, an authority where it had previously had a councillor and across the North East it saw its vote down on last year.

Conspiratorial nutters

As a whole, the local election results were a disaster for the BNP and it has been quick to cry foul. Across the country the fascists are claiming that the "establishment" literally cheated their way to victory.

"I honestly believe we are now living in a time where the electoral malpractices of the third world 'many of them Marxist inspired' have been imported into our once truly democratic country," wrote Salvage. "The final results were obvious for all to see, as key BNP councillors lost their seats and many of those who came second and third last year, were suddenly reduced to fourth and fifth place. This was ridiculously unusual and almost impossible, until you look at the massive postal vote scandal … To say the British National Party is the opposition party to the WHOLE establishment may sound surreal, but I am afraid that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in alongside the general public."

The party also felt cheated in London. "The BNP will seek to prove that the 600 votes we are short for gaining a place on the GLA are certainly to be discovered amongst the 114,000 spoilt as a result of deliberate tampering with the ballot boxes sometime between 10pm Thursday, after close of the poll, and Friday around noon when counting commenced." Similar claims of malpractice were being made in Oldham and Yorkshire.

The BNP has even put down the rise of the UKIP as simply an anti-BNP plot, believing that the threat from UKIP was deliberately talked up to channel votes away from the BNP.

"It turns out that that this scam was agreed by the three main parties at their secret meeting in Halifax earlier this year, convened by the shadowy Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, at which they plotted various arranged schemes to prevent a BNP breakthrough at June 10th elections," the BNP website announced on 2 June.

"Hyping up the UKIP as a viable 'anti-establishment' political party serving to create a safety valve for voters who are genuinely unhappy with the three old gang parties' stance on Europe, Asylum and the Iraq crisis, was one of the main tactics discussed at that meeting and unanimously agreed.

"As many despotic regimes around the world know to their cost, it isn't possible to fool all of the people all of the time. Now the story about the rising UKIP bubble is being announced as nothing but pure fiction."

Even until election day the BNP was convinced that the threat from the UKIP was simply a mirage created by Labour spin doctors and Tory newspaper editors. "The Clifford Poll hoax may run for a few more days but any editor who takes the Clifford hoax seriously is going to end up with egg on their face when results of the real polls are known on June 13th and UKIP is consigned to the dustbin of British political history."

Quite apart from the BNP's inaccurate reading of the political landscape and the nonsense about the Rowntree meeting (as one of the event's organisers I can assure readers that the UKIP was not mentioned at all) the conspiratorial approach is typical of Griffin but politically counter-productive. Any ordinary voter would view the ranting of the BNP leadership as bizarre and ungracious. Politically too, any serious observer would see that the BNP is simply trying to deflect attention from the real source of its defeat, namely itself.

Outfoxed

It is quite true that the anti-BNP campaign united political opponents, the churches, trade unions and local people. This was not some conspiracy organised in smoke-filled rooms but the result of a general revulsion of the politics of hate.

In truth, the BNP was outfoxed by anti-BNP campaigners particularly in its key target authorities. While the BNP ran a lacklustre and fairly incompetent campaign, anti-fascists used more sophisticated and targeted techniques to defeat the fascists.

Everyone was surprised with the poor quality of BNP literature, especially the appalling European election leaflet that was distributed to every household. Its tiny typeface made it barely readable. Even in the key target areas there was little local literature and where there was any, such as in Kirklees, its quality was simply awful.

More significantly, the BNP appeared to do little actual campaigning. There were only a handful of reports of any canvassing or door-to-door work. There were none of the stunts that have characterised previous election campaigns and importantly, in the regions with all postal-ballot elections, the BNP appeared to stop campaigning after the ballot papers were sent out to voters.

Much of the fault must lie at Griffin's door. He failed to give a proper lead and made many of the most crucial mistakes himself. The party's decision to launch its Euro campaign with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French fascist leader, was a gift to anti-fascists. While his presence might have gone down well with party activists, to some voters, especially given the violence associated with his visit, it simply confirmed that the BNP was still extreme.

The decision to target Muslim fundamentalism in the BNP's election broadcasts also seems to have backfired. In doing so the BNP not only digressed from its strongest subject, asylum abuse, but adopted a more racist approach by insulting a whole religion. There are many voters who might be uneasy about asylum but would balk at linking the entire Muslim community with terrorism. The more the fascists talked of Muslim fundamentalism the more they portrayed themselves as the other extreme.

The second version of the BNP's election broadcast, which claimed that Asian gangsters were drugging, gang raping and then pimping out young white girls, shown only on Channel 5, was also a tactical mistake. The broadcast was so full inaccuracies and clear incitement that Channel 5 insisted on serious editing before it was shown. The result was that large parts of the broadcast were silent or the soundtrack was overlaid with wind noises or bleeps. While BNP members saw this as the political establishment silencing the truth, ordinary viewers saw a political party whose message was so extreme that it could not be broadcast. In fact the whole broadcast was based on a fallacy, as police say the gang consisted of both white and Asian men.

Nick Griffin has only himself to blame for his failure in the North West European constituency. Another 32,000 votes would have taken him to European Parliament. His first problem was a lack of local election candidates. With only 55 BNP candidates, only a slight increase on the 2003 figure, the BNP lost considerable media coverage and activism.

More importantly, he took voters for granted. During the entire campaign Griffin only spent a handful of days campaigning in the region. It is quite clear that if he had pounded the town centres with the media following dutifully behind, he would have found the extra votes.

None of this takes away the UKIP factor. Without the appearance of Robert Kilroy-Silk the BNP might have ended up with three or four MEPs and certainly representation on the London Assembly. However, the UKIP made little difference to the defeat of the BNP in the local elections.

Heroes

The BNP is now pointing to its European election vote as proof that the party is still moving forward. It is undoubtedly true that it received a huge and deeply worrying vote but what really matters is that it failed to get candidates elected. The BNP vote has already been over-shadowed by the UKIP and, as polls clearly indicate, 74% of those who voted BNP in these elections will probably switch back to a mainstream party in a general election.

The BNP will also never have a better opportunity to break into the political mainstream. A European election contested under proportional representation, all-out local elections where the BNP only needed to come in the top three, a deeply unpopular govern-ment and asylum dominating the tabloid press for much of the past year all made these elections ideal for the BNP.

The BNP is now demoralised and, having raised expectations to such an extent, Griffin's own position is weakened. At present there is no alternative to Griffin but slowly, as serious operators within the BNP begin to realise that its defeat was down to poor leadership, questions over his position will grow. This, combined with the many BNP members who have become increasingly uneasy at the continuing compromises he makes, his media stunts and his disregard for internal democracy, means the BNP is heading for difficult times.

Anti-fascists cannot ignore the BNP's European election result and must address the problem, but we have time to do that and do it seriously. For the BNP these elections were a disaster and this is in no small part to the small army of local anti-fascist groups, particularly in the key target areas that saw off the biggest BNP challenge, who enthusiastically and tirelessly espoused Searchlight's strategy of localised campaigning. Much of this work went largely unnoticed and most of it was unglamorous but it was essential to seeing off the biggest fascist challenge in our recent political history.