How do we deal with the threat from the BNP?

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Phil Andrews. He is a councillor representing the Independent Communities Group in Hounslow. I don't know much about this group, but I have found out reading his blog, that he was a leading light, along with Nick Griffin, in the National Front. Mr Andrews saw the error of his ways, for want of putting it another way, and in this post gives his views on how to deal with the BNP threat. I have published his full blog post for you to read. I have also been busy with my mobile phone and recorded my views on the voting system that gave us two BNP MEPs. I am not saying changing the PR voting system is the simple way of solving the problem, but it has given European Parliamentary representation to a party that only polled around 6% of the popular vote. 

As an aside, I know the picture quality is not great when I use my phone and I know there are times when my lips are out of sync with my voice, however, I find it an easy and convenient way to express my views straight to you. Give me your comments on what you think.

Old mucker of mine though he may be, I can understand why there are people who would want to throw eggs at British National Party Chairman Nick Griffin. Denounced for years as the leader of a party which can trace its genealogy directly back - via the National Front, John Tyndall's Greater Britain Movement and Colin Jordan's National Socialist Movement - to Arnold Leese, the man who first conceived of gas chambers as the solution to the "problem" of Jewish people living in the world and who rejected Sir Oswald Mosley for his moderation, Griffin is now one of two men representing the BNP at the European Parliament.

The problem with Tuesday's egg-throwing protest of course, quite apart from the public order problem it presented, was not only that it allowed Griffin to emerge as the poor innocent victim making a stand for free speech against an intolerant political establishment, but also that he was granted airtime to talk about the egg throwing which he would otherwise have spent having to explain his confused and contradictory policies.

Rather than allowing him the opportunity to explain to the world why his "non-racist" party refuses to admit non-white members, or how it defines "Britishness" according to skin pigmentation rather than place of birth or length of residence, Nick Griffin was able not only to present himself as the champion of democracy and free speech, but even to implicate the three major parties in the egg-throwing protest by virtue of the fact they have given in-principle support to the organisation he alleges to have been responsible for it.

As such there can be little doubt that this exhibition, provoked as it may have been by the powerful call of a justified indignation, came across to most as a display of petulance and an own-goal of not inconsiderable proportions.

But own-goals are what the thing once known as the "Labour movement" has become rather good at. Let us not forget that in both the North West and Yorkshire & Humber the number of votes received by the BNP actually decreased. In both cases the BNP was able to scrape home as a direct consequence of traditional Labour voters, embittered by the betrayal and arrogance of their elected representatives, staying away in protest.

As a result of Labour's failure the rest of us are compelled to share the humiliation of having sent two men to Europe to make common cause with all manner of madmen and lunatics, with all the taxpayer-funded financial benefits that will bring to themselves and their organisations.

But if the failure today is Labour's, then at other times and in other places it will be someone else's. The cyclical nature of British politics is such that the big parties take it for granted that they will have their years in the limelight and their periods in the wilderness. Who is to say that after a spell in governement it will not next time be Conservative voters who are sitting at home sulking, while the BNP sends its people to Brussels on the strength of the votes of three percent of those on the Register of Electors?

Allegiance to the big political parties, allegiances which once were handed down from father to son and which centred around whole communities, are breaking down. There is no longer any clear ideological water separating the main protagonists, and it is not today a contradiction in terms to speak of a working-class Conservative or a "socialist" millionaire. With the advance of internet technology which creates a more level playing field between those with the resources to print and distribute millions of leaflets and those without, smaller parties are becoming less small. At last Thursday's Euro elections nearly 43% of those who voted in the United Kingdom placed their cross next to the name of a party outside of the big three.

In consideration of all this, those who would have us believe that the big established parties are our only defence against the relentless onward march of fascism are short changing us. A few more votes for UKIP or the Green Party in the North West and Yorkshire & Humber would have kept both successful BNP candidates out of Europe. Big party politics didn't protect us, it failed us.

In the London Borough of Hounslow we have six political groups on the local authority where once there were two. Our own, the Independent Community Group (ICG), holds six seats and with it the balance of power on the council. In the community we talk about the issues that local people want to talk about. We get things done. With 1,500 members spread out largely over two wards signed up to a program of positive community action, radical but outspokenly anti-racist, imaginative, unconventional and people-centred there is no space in which the BNP or any other racist party could successfully operate.

And yet this is the Politics That Dare Not Speak Its Name. A popular anti-fascist blog on which I frequently post only ever blocks my contributions when I dare to suggest that it is the community itself, not the Labour Party, to which we should be looking in the fight against fascism.

The concept is not restricted to my own neighbourhood. There are residents' groups and action parties springing up all around the place which strike the same chord as we do with voters who are fed up the mainstream politicians and their parties. They are organic, supported and often joined by those whom conventional politics could never reach, and are fairly much insulated against the ebb and flow of political trends. There is not the slightest shadow of a doubt in my mind that they are, by some considerable margin, the most effective defence against organised fascism taking hold in our communities.

The problem for us for the moment is that, anti-fascism nothwithstanding, we still have more eggs thrown at us than the leader of the BNP does.