BNP Threatened with Winding-Up Order

[claphamboy]

Agree with most of what you say LD, but like Tom I am still enjoying this situation play out, the BNP is seriously damaged, most likely beyond repair, whichever way things play out it's going to be many, many years before any far-right party manages to get the electoral gains that the BNP peaked at. If ever.

Although, whilst I suspect an element of 'growing pains and state intervention' could have played their part in the down fall of the BNP, it's Griffin's leadership that has paid the largest part in its problems, and whilst some hold the view that he's a state agent, that is an idea I do not subscribe too.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

While I join the gloaters - over the slow collapse of the BNP, and the possible fizzling out of the EDL - My concern is that this will breed complacency among those who over the last few years on both the far left and mainstream left have woken up to the growth in support for far right and racist ideas in space opened up by the hollowing out of social democracy, and remove the sense of urgency about providing a progressive aspirational alternative.

 

[The Black Hand]

While I join the gloaters - over the slow collapse of the BNP, and the possible fizzling out of the EDL - My concern is that this will breed complacency among those who over the last few years on both the far left and mainstream left have woken up to the growth in support for far right and racist ideas in space opened up by the hollowing out of social democracy, and remove the sense of urgency about providing a progressive aspirational alternative.

Tbh Spanky, there's not a lot left of the state/'our' nationalised industry, or collective 'social wealth'. Maggie sold lots of it, Labour continued, and thats at national as well as local level. We are in the death throes of those structures, though the ramifications are still to follow. At the minute, the informal welfare state, where people support their families with what remains of the pensions is going to die out, then welfare will be worthless, (and its not a lot better now). So my suggestion is that it will take about a generation for levels of poverty to generalise to such an extent that new, more urgent and collective forms of working class responses to economic conditions will occur. It takes a level of critical mass to be achieved within the class, beyond individualised cases and experiences, before we can expect such new political experiments.