British National Party

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Two years ago Democratic Audit and two of our partners, Helen Margetts and Peter John, provoked a storm when we suggested that the British National Party had a far larger potential electoral support than specialist political scientists believed.  The conventional view was that far-right parties in the UK were an insignificant political force. We compounded their ire by getting a front-page article in the New Statesman and a great deal of media coverage (but see our report, The BNP- The Roots of its Appeal, for the full story up to then).

Now Stuart Wilks-Heeg, joint author of Whose Town is it Anyway?, has published a cogent article in Parliamentary Affairs, that builds on our analysis and takes the story up to the 2007 local elections where the BNP secured 300,000 votes for 754 candidates.  There are currently 55 BNP councillors, spread across 22 local councils. While the BNP’s overall share of the vote was small, at around 1 to 2 per cent, geographical concentrations of their vote have enabled the far right to establish unprecedented levels of representation in local government.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): As the Guardian 's Michael White notes, the leak of the BNP's membership database raises many of the same issues as recent losses of personal data by the Government. If anything, it has provided a much more dramatic illustration of the potential impact on individuals.

The episode has also proven to be a true 'wikileak', in the sense that it has highlighted the power of Web 2.0, with a Google Map of the data briefly appearing before its creator decided to take it down in favour of a somewhat less informative heatmap.

openDemocracy's own Tony Curzon-Price has produced an analysis of the titles of individual BNP members which provides an interesting social snapshot of the party:

Number of BNP members by Title

Mr    11688
Ms    556
Mrs    1419
Miss    410
Prof    1
Rev    5
Sir    1
Cllr    74
Capt    2

Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): Upon reading Frank Field’s Speech to the University of Hertfordshire one Campaign for an English Parliament member told me that “the fact that Frank Field had made the threat of the BNP central to the article taints the English Question in the way we have fought so hard for it not to be”.

For a pressure group like the CEP, who make the constitutional case for an English parliament to represent all the people of England as one people, it is obviously disappointing to have our cause linked to immigration and the rise of the BNP. But for Frank, who looks through Labour eyes, The English Question is about addressing the practical results of devolution and Labour’s failure to discuss English issues. For Frank The English Question is not so much about a popular sovereignty that allows the English to decide how they are governed, in fact he barely mentions that. Instead it is a list of English grievances, symptoms of Labour’s failure, and the rumbling discontent that will cost Labour votes.

The dangers for Labour of failing to lead the debate are perhaps even greater. That conclusion may come about not simply by the Tories being generally accepted by voters as the English Party. An even worse outcome would be for Labour to concede to the BNP yet another issue – along with immigration – with which to appeal to Labour’s core voters. If this was allowed to happen we would then begin to witness what a future historian might call The Unnecessary Death of Labour England?

My first contact with the BNP came at eighteen, as a young dreadlocked and politically naive student at Leicester University, when I went down to Leicester market to demonstrate against a stall that was selling denial of the Holocaust books and distributing white supremecist literature. Leicester Market promoted itself as the largest permanent open-air market in Europe, it was a congenial and fun place to shop, a place where people of different races and religions set up shop alongside each other to trade. And as far as I was concerned this stall was most definitely not welcome. Our demonstration took the form of a human barrier between the public and the BNP stall. It was a disruptive but peaceful demonstration. Until, that is, a van load of booted and suited - and frankly very scary - thugs turned up in a van and the police were forced to intervene, disperse the combatants, and eventually close the stall down.

GJ Harris (London): On 1 May 2008, the British National Party won its most high profile office to date with the appointment of the party's mayoral candidate, Richard Barnbrook, to the London Assembly. He came fifth in the contest for mayor but then won his assembly seat through the top-up list, allocated by proportional representation with 5.3% of the vote. Whilst the BNP only narrowly met the 5% threshold needed to secure a place on the London Assebly, the result is perhaps all the more significant, considering the high turnout that was hoped would put the seat beyond their reach. The seat was solace for the party’s failure to capitalise on anti-Labour sentiment in competition with a revitalised Conservatives in the local elections outside London where the party increased its number of councillors by 10 to take its total to 55.

The far right in Britain usually provoke one of two responses: a complacency bordering on neglect, given the barrier to small party success by the British electoral system, or the hysterical ringing of alarm bells at the rise of a resurgent neo-fascism. Both are equally misguided. The BNP's recent political gains pose a problem to the democratic pretensions of a progressive opposition, as Barnbrook was quick to point out in his post election speech. The seat is potentially a stepping stone to gains in the forthcoming 2009 European elections, again allocated through PR. Success here would bring significant publicity and access to public funding, which could offer a real electoral breakthrough on the model of some of its continental cousins. It is a dangerous strategy to rely on the flaws of the democratic system as a bulwark against the illiberal democracy of the Far Right. As the BNP gains an increased pres-ence within the political arena this is a fundamental paradox for their opponents.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Once upon a time I used to read the North London newspaper Ham and High regularly as part of my job at The Times. The then editor Gerry Isaaman was something of a legend. I found him rather condescending on the few occasions when we met, but he ran a very lively, liberal and cosmopolitan weekly that drew inspiration from North London's Jewish intelligentsia. Much to my surprise I found an advertisement for the British National Party in the current issue when I came to London at the weekend to cheer my wife on in the London Marathon.