Nonetheless, if the BNP’s absolute vote is giving pause for concern, it is its trajectory that is truly worrying. The European elections saw its national vote rise by almost a fifth against a background of falling turnout. The small falls in its absolute vote in some areas, including the North West and Yorkshire and Humber, where it won its seats, are misleading as they ignore the lower turnout and factors such as the impact of moving from an all-postal ballot to a traditional election. To exaggerate the significance of these absolute figures risks obscuring the party’s continued increase in its vote nationwide and breakthrough successes in County Council level.
Contemporary anti-fascism is represented by two main groups with broadly similar approaches. First, there is Hope not Hate, an umbrella group for unions and individuals within the broad labour movement but open to all. This group was formed by the Searchlight Network. Second, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) is an organisation set up by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and National Assembly Against Racism, which also has some union and other backing. For the SWP, UAF is clearly designed to continue in a similar vein to the Anti-Nazi League and is not shy of drawing on the ANL’s reputation and experience.
Both groups concentrate their activities on two main approaches: first, exposing the criminal records, past activities and political beliefs of leading BNP members, candidates and activists; and second, calling on people not to ‘vote Nazi’. Instead electors are urged to vote anyone but BNP (with slight differences in how this is interpreted by each group) in an attempt to raise turnout and block the BNP electorally this way. This approach formed the basis of both groups’ failed interventions into the London mayoral and European elections.
What is wrong with these two approaches? The most obvious objection is that they don’t work. They don’t work today and they haven’t worked for some time. This isn’t to say that they haven’t worked in the past, just that they cannot form the central core of an anti-BNP strategy in today’s conditions.
Exposing the BNP’s various criminal and political records has had no discernible impact. In a country in which more than 40 per cent of all males can expect to have some form of criminal conviction during their lifetime, pointing out to voters in the sort of areas the BNP targets that a candidate has a conviction for assault or theft is likely to have a limited impact. If this were not the case we would today be seeing declining BNP votes and councillors not being returned post-exposure. But we’re not. We’re seeing a steadily rising vote and increasing re-elections.
This tactic has been pursued over the past decade on a scale never seen before. Every section of the media has got in on the game, every candidate has been hammering home their BNP opponents’ convictions. If this strategy was ever to make an impact it would have done so in these almost ideal conditions; instead the far right vote continues to rise. We have to conclude that this approach is ineffective.
Exposing past political views – for instance, BNP leader Nick Griffin’s association with Holocaust denial in the 1990s and earlier – has suffered a similar fate. Griffin has proved adept at moderating his most extreme opinions for the benefit of the media. He will now acknowledge the holocaust as a historical ‘fact’ and, as he put it to the Observer in 2002, he claims that the only reason ‘people like me’ are not always ‘polite and reasonable’ on the subject is ‘frustration with how it is used to prevent any genuine debate on questions to do with immigration, ethnicity and the cultural survival of the western nations’.
In doing so, he can effectively neutralise the issue.
