The doubling of the vote for fascist candidates in the general election
should set the alarm bells ringing about the risk of a rise of racism
and fascist activity under a right wing Labour government. While the
extreme right, concentrated mainly in the BNP, remains a tiny political
force, such an advance — in a general election characterised
by a massive swing to Labour — should not be taken lightly. A
right wing Labour government which presides over the further dismantling
of the welfare state, drives down wages and attacks the most vulnerable
in society will create exactly the conditions which led to the breakthrough
into mass politics of fascist and far right currents in France, Italy,
Austria and elsewhere in Europe.
The BNP’s election manifesto explained it was making ‘its
strongest ever challenge, fighting seats in almost every part of Britain’.
Eighty-three extreme right candidates stood in the election, fifty-four
of them from the BNP. The average 50 per cent rise in the vote masks
a much greater rise in a few specific pockets. It also has to be taken
together with the rise in the number of candidates, up from 29 in 1992.
Therefore, while in this year’s election the 83 extreme right candidates
secured an average 1.4 per cent of the vote compared with 0.9 per cent
in 1992, candidates in east London consolidated a base of fascist support,
and in parts of the West Midlands and West Yorkshire won substantial
numbers of votes.
In the two Tower Hamlets seats — taking in the area where the
BNP’s candidate Derek Beackon was elected as a councillor in September
1993 — the BNP won 7.5 per cent of the vote in the Bethnal Green
and Bow constituency, or 3,350 votes, and in Poplar and Canning Town
the BNP won 7.3 per cent of the vote, representing 2,849 votes. In 1992
the BNP had taken 3.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent of the vote respectively
in these seats.
In other parts of east London surrounding Tower Hamlets the BNP won
2.7 per cent of the vote in Barking, 2.4 per cent in Chingford, 2.5 per
cent in Dagenham, 3.2 per cent in East Ham. In West Ham the BNP candidate
won 3.6 per cent of the vote. In Dagenham and East Ham the fascist National
Democratic Party took a further 0.5 per cent and 0.73 per cent of the
vote respectively.
Outside London, votes of particular note were Dewsbury where the BNP
candidate won 5.2 per cent of the vote, and West Bromwich West, where
the National Democratic Party took 11.4 per cent of the vote.
These votes put into context the BNP’s success in getting its
racist politics broadcast on the media and circulated in the free election
mail during the election campaign and underline the importance of anti-racists
having created a national campaign in protest.
Like its counterparts elsewhere in Europe, the BNP is seeking to render
itself respectable and to argue that it is a political party just like
any other. It argued along these lines in defending its right to an election
broadcast. Attempts by the extreme right to legitimise itself have been
aided elsewhere in Europe by the adoption of increasingly racist policies
by mainstream political parties.
Following the election, the BNP’s potential for growth will also
be helped by the degree to which Tony Blair imposes the kind of economic
and social policies imposed or supported by other European social democratic
parties, the consequences of which have aided the rise of the extreme
right — the maintenance of mass unemployment and the dismantling
of the welfare state.
Following the election it will be even more necessary for the anti-racist
movement to base itself on the understanding that stopping the rise of
the fascists means defeating the racism on which they feed.
The BNP’s election manifesto could not be clearer on the assistance
the fascists get from racist policies and rhetoric from within the mainstream
parties.
The manifesto approvingly quotes Nicholas Budgen, the former Tory MP
for Wolverhampton South East who, just before the election was called,
attacked Labour for being ‘lax’ on immigration and in his
election address stated that immigration has brought ‘substantial
social problems’. The BNP applaud Budgen for being ‘in a
minority of MPs of his party in being prepared to state it [racist anti-immigration
views] openly’ and for arguing his views against ‘the frantic
efforts of his party’s hierarchy to suppress debate on immigration’.
Budgen is quoted as saying: ‘In their schools, in their pubs and
in their shops, the British have felt like strangers in their own land’.
The BNP describe this as ‘nothing more nor less than the truth’ and
that ‘In fact, his words are representative of a viewpoint which
the BNP has held since its foundation 15 years ago’.
For his part, Budgen, during the election campaign, explained ‘It’s
better for a half-respectable politician like me to raise the issue than
leave it to the National Front and others who will discuss it in far
less measured terms’ (Guardian 14 April).
The BNP’s manifesto implicitly agrees, noting that the impact
of Budgen’s push on immigration was that the ‘Tory Party
hierarchy... grudgingly consented to individual Tory candidates venturing
into the immigration field to the extent of criticising Labour’s
latest proposals for even further relaxation of the immigration rules’.
Part of Budgen’s aim was to head off any fascist candidate standing
against him and taking away racist votes. Although he succeeded in this,
he was defeated by Labour’s candidate on a 9.9 per cent swing.
Those in the liberal establishment who defended the BNP’s right
to a media broadcast did so on the basis of defence of ‘free speech’ and
opposition to censorship. Workers Liberty added the twist that calling
for a ban on the BNP’s broadcast would mean putting faith in the ‘establishment’,
when in fact it was the ‘establishment’ which was defending
the broadcast and the black and Jewish communities and anti-racists who
were mobilising against it.
Defending the BNP’s right to broadcast means elevating the interests
of a fascist organisation which would ban not only freedom of speech
but the right to exist of black and Jewish people, gay men and lesbians,
trade unions, would reverse the social gains made by women and so on.
As National Assembly Against Racism vice-chair Lee Jasper pointed out
in a letter in the Guardian, ‘freedom of speech’ is already
limited by the Public Order Act by ‘prohibiting incitement to illegal
acts including racial hatred’. Indeed, he added, the ‘British
government claimed in a 1997 paper presented to the UN Committee for
the Elimination of Racial Hatred that the Public Order Act is a sufficient
instrument to control racist parties in Britain’, yet no action
was taken against this blatantly racist propaganda.
Or as Guardian journalist Mark Lawson argued, offensive sections of
the anti-abortion group, the ‘ProLife Alliance’, had been
cut by the BBC but ‘nothing of Tyndall’s poisonous address
had been threatened’. Therefore those who ran it ‘might like
to explain the reasoning by which viewers are protected from upsetting
images but exposed to racist rhetoric’ (Guardian 29 April).
The BNP’s explicitly racist broadcast followed the themes of their
manifesto. This calls for forcible repatriation of all ‘non-White’ people
living in Britain and a total end to asylum rights. It states: ‘Future
immigration of non-Whites must be stopped’; ‘Non-Whites already
here must be repatriated or otherwise resettled overseas and Britain
made once again a white country’.
The manifesto continues:
‘
BNP policy with regard to immigration is simple and straightforward.
We place applicants to settle here in three basic categories:
‘
(a) Those who can prove wholly white and predominantly British ancestry
and are of sound health and good character should be allowed to settle
here as they please.
‘
(b) Those of wholly white but not British ancestry should have their
applications to settle here treated each on its individual merit, but
in most cases should be accepted, provided the same rules of health and
character are observed.
‘
(c) Wholly or partially non-white applicants to settle in Britain would
be refused except in cases where they can provide evidence of some strong
occupational necessity to reside in this country, such as membership
of some diplomatic corps or positions of representatives of foreign countries
trading in the UK.’
‘
They propose a ‘resettlement’ scheme for all ‘ethnic
minorities’. This would ‘begin on a voluntary basis’ but ‘it
would be made clear to the ethnic minority members that it was the first
part of a two-part programme of resettlement, the second part of which
would be organised on a compulsory basis’.
That is, the BNP stand for the expulsion of millions of black citizens
from Britain. Such a policy could only be imposed by massive fascist
terror of the kind Hitler employed after 1933 in Germany.
The section dealing with refugees is entitled ‘Refugees no exception’ and
explains ‘It would not matter to us whether ‘refugee’ claims
were genuine or not; we would make the decision as to whom to admit to
this country on the basis of whether the claimants in question were the
kind of people we wished to welcome here and integrate into our population.
Non-Whites of all categories would not be admitted’.
The way in which the manifesto is able to exploit much of the racist
rhetoric about ‘bogus’ refugees used by government and mainstream
party political spokespeople during the debates on the Asylum and Immigration
Act illustrates the impact of such debate in legitimising the views of
fascist and far right groups. In much the same way as government ministers
motivated the Asylum and Immigration Act and defended their treatment
of refugees in Rochester Prison, the manifesto states that ‘the
vast majority of so-called “refugees” pouring into Britain
every year are not real refugees at all but simply people seeking to
better their living standards’. Its talk of ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘genuine’ or ‘bogus’ claims
has been rendered more commonplace by the racist tenor of mainstream
debate.
The experience of the fascists and far right growing on the back of
racist policies and rhetoric from more mainstream political parties has
already advanced much further elsewhere in Europe.
In France the National Front’s election win in Vitrolles in February
secured the fourth town hall controlled by the Front, adding to Toulon,
Orange and Marignane. In the parliamentary elections called for 25 May
and 1 June, the National Front plans to stand 566 candidates for the
577 assembly seats and hopes to poll the 12.5 per cent necessary to proceed
through to the second round. Le Pen says he is aiming for a parliamentary
group of 20 deputies.
The Front has risen to prominence in the context of record unemployment
in France — currently 12.8 per cent — and the implementation
of brutal racist legislation, most recently the attempts by the French
government to conduct mass deportations under the racist Pasqua laws
of non-EU citizens refused a renewal of residence or work permits, which
provoked the ‘Sans Papier’ struggle.
In Italy, while the local elections in April saw advances for Communist
Refoundation, the extreme right National Alliance also advanced, taking
votes from Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.
The electoral advance of the extreme right took place after the decision
in early April by the Italian parliament to send troops into Albania
and the killing of at least 90 Albanian refugees when a ship in which
they were fleeing was sunk by an Italian naval vessel, which have helped
continue to legitimise racism. Irene Pivetti, a former speaker of the
Italian house of deputies, followed the death of the Albanian refugees
by saying that refugees should be ‘thrown back into the sea’ and
that Albanians were ‘invading’ Italy. She added that ‘the
government has done nothing. Fortunately the navy is doing an admirable
job.’
The centre-left parties are whipping up racism to divert attention from the impact of their economic policies, particularly the impact of trying to secure Italian membership of EMU, which has necessitated the imposition of a ‘Euro-tax’ and attacks on the welfare system by Romano Prodi’s Olive Tree government.
The rise of racism and of the extreme right on this scale demands an
anti-racist movement that is as broad and united as possible and which
bases itself on fighting not only the fascists and far right but the
racist policies from the mainstream which give them greater purchase.
In the general election campaign this political approach, together with
unity on the basis of leadership of those most affected by racism, was
developed further through the National Assembly Against Racism.
The National Assembly Against Racism’s campaign against the BNP
and the decision to allow it broadcast time — including pickets
of the BBC and independent channels in London and cities across Britain — was
conducted alongside campaigning against Budgen. The anti-BNP campaign,
furthermore, took place after the National Assembly Against Racism had
led the national campaigning against the Asylum and Immigration Bill — establishing
the central campaign against the bill — and had focused national
public opposition to the government’s inhumane treatment of asylum
seekers held in Rochester and other prisons.
In conjunction with this campaign the National Assembly Against Racism
had, over the last year, formed a national alliance against black deaths
in police custody — Operation Justice — involving MPs, Liberty,
Inquest and religious organisations. The black leadership of the National
Assembly Against Racism had set an agenda of demands for the general
election campaign by launching the Black Manifesto at the highly successful
National Assembly Against Racism conference on 1 March. Support for the
National Assembly Against Racism and for the protests against the BNP’s
campaign were secured at the TUC Black Workers Conference in April. The
campaign’s student wing led the formation of a new alliance of
black and Jewish students which precipitated a breakthrough on NUS policy
on racism.
This orientation responded to the priorities of the black communities,
combated racism in the political mainstream and helped strengthen the
core alliance needed in the leadership of the anti-racist communities — that
between the black and Jewish communities and the most anti-racist elements
of the labour movement. As a result all these components came together
in the campaign against the BNP. The pickets were led by representatives
of black and Jewish organisations alongside trade unionists, students
and others in the National Assembly Against Racism. Black and Jewish
activists, along with representatives of the churches and trade unions,
were central to the National Assembly’s legal action against the
BNP broadcast. The racist tenor set by the government’s whipping
up of racism through its asylum policies had been met by mass campaigning,
thus weakening the racist ground for the fascists to build upon.
The alternative approach, proposed previously by the ANL to focus solely
on the fight against the ‘nazis’ and to try to separate the ‘soft
racists’ from the fascists, would have been disastrous. The experience
of the last year, with the National Assembly Against Racism taking the
anti-racist movement onto a new, much more mass and united level, underlined
once again that the only way to halt the fascists is to attack the racism
on which they base themselves.
The election of a Labour government poses the challenge of ensuring
that the anti-racist movement continues to be led by this orientation,
and in this framework that the priorities of the movement are informed
by those subjected to racism. This means an anti-racist movement which
continues to meet every manifestation of racism head-on, from whatever
quarter and avoids the pitfalls, for example, of SOS Racisme in France
which, at the crucial moment subordinated the anti-racist struggle to
the interests of the Socialist Party government.
The results of the BNP in the election campaign show they remain a tiny
force. But to ensure that this remains the case and the experience of
France, Italy, Austria and Germany — in all of which a rise of
mass support for fascists would, a few years ago, have seemed remote — are
not repeated in Britain, the unity of the last year must be built on
as rapidly as possible. The anti-racist movement must be ready to tackle
the prospect that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown may provoke just the sort
of racist and extreme right backlash already on the march elsewhere.