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.
We have been here before; similar worries were aired in the heyday of the far-right National Front after a strong showing in the 1977 elections to the then Greater London Council with, again, 5.3%. The vote of the NF evaporated in the 1979 elections, partly as a result of Margaret Thatcher's rhetoric about the "swamping" of Britain which helped her to win. The present drift to the Conservatives could produce a similar effect, though it smacks of voting by default and an appetite for change rather than any positive content. It remains to be seen whether Boris Johnson's subsequent performance will continue to convince disenchanted Labour voters.
This is not the time for complacency therefore. The BNP, despite the “Nazi” name calling by its enemies, is a very different creature from John Tyndall's National Front. The party has made significant headway through distancing itself from its "boots-and-braces” images; strong local candidates and old-fashioned campaigning have engaged with the demands of voters on local issues. This approach has struck a chord with sections of the electorate who feel abandoned and betrayed by the major parties. The description of housewives in Sussex as knuckle-dragging Nazis just does not wash.
If lazy name calling is no answer to the democratic dilemma that the BNP poses, attempting to ‘exclude’ it simply does not work eitherwitness the ineffectiveness of the "cordon sanitaire" on the popularity of Vlaams Blok in Flanders. A refusal to engage with party officials in public office can be interpreted as an attack on the cherished British value of free speech which the party is adept in using to its advantage. The depiction of the BNP vote as a negative protest ignores the material concerns of people who have been left behind in our increasingly polarised society. It has campaigned on the solid issues of social housing, employment, linked by a diatribe against immigration.
This is hardly their preserve as the mainstream has equally jumped on the immigration bandwagon; Gordon Brown's exhortation of "British jobs for British workers", the media's current Enoch Powell fest and Islamophobia have helped to legitimise the BNP's message. The distrust towards politicians and cynicism that pervades British politics is something that the BNP is well served to exploit; claiming "to say what the people think", whilst exercising an appeal to the values of the common man against the corrupt and disengaged political elite (the “LibLabCon Trick”).
The London Labour group leader, Len Duvall, has promised to make a pariah out of Barnbrook. But this profoundly misunderstands the nature of the BNP vote: the BNP garners support precisely because they stand apart from mainstream politics. I could not help but feel unease at the departure of Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, Brian Paddick and Sian Berry from the podium at City Hall, as Barnbrook made his post-election speech.
Even though he has denied he is a racist there's an element of double-standards at play when meanderings about ‘picanninies’ of the bumbling "Boris” are forgivably charming, whilst the racism of the "chavvy" working class is considered unforgivable. 130,714 people voted for Barnbrook to take his seat, to dismiss their concerns so churlishly is to exacerbate the vein of disen-chantment that the BNP is keen to exploit and further their status as the people's champions against the metropolitan elite. The entry of the BNP into public office poses an enduring problem for progressives: how do we accommodate the opinions of those we find loathsome within the democratic process? By ostracising them from political debate are we not deepening the democratic contradiction of which their populist appeal is symptomatic?
