What Now for the BNP?

[josef1878]

Yeah some groups have achieved similar results, one being the Community Action Party in Wigan and Salford. However this doesn't detract from impressive results where the far left has often failed.

I agree the IWCA does seem to right off socialism but that isn't ultra leftism, far from it in fact. The IWCA did start, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, as a coalition between Red Action and some other grouplets. Though i thought it was strange. Also working in local areas isn't a bad thing. Most left groups are strongest in a certain area, I.e. Militant and Liverpool and SPEW and Coventry.

None of your arguments are the definition of ultra leftism.

The CAP in Wigan? Your having a fucking laugh. A bigger bunch of jokers i have never seen in this town. I have known a few of the people elected in their name and believe me it's self and not community they are interested in. Daily Mail believers to the core. More splits and splinter groupings than the far left. Law and order must be upheld unless it's spending all day drinking at a wake and then driving home with a senior council official at your side. They did a good job waving uaf placards when the bnp came to town and then did a runner sharpish when it got nasty. Do not hold them up as a good example of community organising.

 

[josef1878]

Problem, and this is general to all parties, is that they become victims of their own success if they get that far.

Success attracts carbet-baggers and more centrist influence.

As I understand it, and I could be wrong, this seems to have been a factor in the development of Wigan CAP.

Not centrist no. Right wing idiots.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Not centrist no. Right wing idiots.

Sorry, you talking about Wigan CAP there? I'm not totally with the lowdown, but I know the original left tilt was severely diluted.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Sorry, you talking about Wigan CAP there? I'm not totally with the lowdown, but I know the original left tilt was severely diluted.

Well I had a few encounters with CAP in Wigan as it happens, as Red Storm will probably be able to corroborate. I remember them standing alongside RESPECT, SPEW and some other left-wing groups in a mini united-front thing called Wigan People's Alliance in the 2009, I was at the launch at Wigan Labour Club in fact, and at that time they were very keen to appear left-wing, but how deep those tendencies actually went I'm not sure about. They definitely did manage to put up a decent electoral challenge to the BNP, and were absolutely hated by the local BNP for this as I recall.I also recall meeting a few other members at a meeting to do with the Tif bid referendum in manchester who didn't seem quite so left wing, so what you're saying about the CAP's right wing tendencies doesn't come as a surprise to me either. I didn't know they were working with the English Democrats in salford now, thats news to me.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Cheers Delroy. I was probably at that Tif bid meeting too btw. I know folk in the fairly new Wigan Green Socialists. I think quite they had a contingent who were part of CAP. They did more than decent, if I recall they had at least several council seats at one point - quite something for a local operation.

 

[Red Storm]

Well I had a few encounters with CAP in Wigan as it happens, as Red Storm will probably be able to corroborate. I remember them standing alongside RESPECT, SPEW and some other left-wing groups in a mini united-front thing called Wigan People's Alliance in the 2009, I was at the launch at Wigan Labour Club in fact, and at that time they were very keen to appear left-wing, but how deep those tendencies actually went I'm not sure about. They definitely did manage to put up a decent electoral challenge to the BNP, and were absolutely hated by the local BNP for this as I recall.I also recall meeting a few other members at a meeting to do with the Tif bid referendum in manchester who didn't seem quite so left wing, so what you're saying about the CAP's right wing tendencies doesn't come as a surprise to me either. I didn't know they were working with the English Democrats in salford now, thats news to me.

Yeah I remember them being left-ish. We were asked to do security for that meeting because the BNP had disrupted an earlier meeting. Peter Franzen was particularly hated.

I never kept up with them though. I know one of the guys running Wigan Green Socialists he's a sound guy.

The CAP working with the ED is from a good source Delroy, you know him.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Yeah I remember them being left-ish. We were asked to do security for that meeting because the BNP had disrupted an earlier meeting. Peter Franzen was particularly hated.

I never kept up with them though. I know one of the guys running Wigan Green Socialists he's a sound guy.

The CAP working with the ED is from a good source Delroy, you know him.

yeah I remember that, was the same the day we had a trip out to Wigan Mike's house?

Peter Franzen gave a banging speech at the Wigan People's Alliance thing, giving it 10-0 about Palestine, the BNP, New Labour, Academies, the lot. To the untrained eye it would've sounded like any other socialist speech. Although I remember speaking to Franzen and he was also convinced the security services were bugging his phone and other such stuff, so I dunno what to make of him tbh.

Now I think about it, there is some sense in them working with the ED's coz of this elected mayor business. The ED's got a mayor elected in doncaster on a ritually low turnout, and no doubt the CAP see an opporunity for themselves there as well.

 

[Red Storm]

yeah I remember that, was the same the day we had a trip out to Wigan Mike's house?

Peter Franzen gave a banging speech at the Wigan People's Alliance thing, giving it 10-0 about Palestine, the BNP, New Labour, Academies, the lot. To the untrained eye it would've sounded like any other socialist speech. Although I remember speaking to Franzen and he was also convinced the security services were bugging his phone and other such stuff, so I dunno what to make of him tbh.

Now I think about it, there is some sense in them working with the ED's coz of this elected mayor business. The ED's got a mayor elected in doncaster on a ritually low turnout, and no doubt the CAP see an opporunity for themselves there as well.

Haha forgot about that.

Yeah I don't either to be honest. He was a bit of an egomaniac.

 

[josef1878]

Sorry, you talking about Wigan CAP there? I'm not totally with the lowdown, but I know the original left tilt was severely diluted.

I am yes. Was there ever a left tilt?

 

[josef1878]

Peter Franzen was particularly hated

 

[josef1878]

yeah I remember that, was the same the day we had a trip out to Wigan Mike's house?

Although I remember speaking to Franzen and he was also convinced the security services were bugging his phone and other such stuff, so I dunno what to make of him tbh.

I wouldn't be surprised if he pops up here, megaphone in hand and a few leaflets to hand out. Think he stood down and his daughter Louise stood in his place.

Wigan Mike lived in Leigh, nobody from Leigh admits to being from Wigan.

 

[Delroy Booth]

What you on about lad?

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Now I think about it, there is some sense in them working with the ED's coz of this elected mayor business. The ED's got a mayor elected in doncaster on a ritually low turnout, and no doubt the CAP see an opporunity for themselves there as well.

Not quite worthy of a separate thread, but Salford voted to have an a elected mayor last night on a 15% turnout.

 

[josef1878]

What you on about lad?

Wigan CAP are not a good example of community organising. They are a good example of tories sneaking in through the back door on a 'community' ticket. I know where 'Wigan' Mike lived and it was in Leigh. Outsiders may not know the difference. hth.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Little more than email based rumour, but interesting nonetheless, especially regarding the admittance of the decline of the EDL.

http://www.blottr.com/uk/breaking-news/exclusive-british-far-right-about-merge

 

[malatesta32]

yet another call for far right unity. and then they all fall out!

 

[The39thStep]

yet another call for far right unity. and then they all fall out!

isn't that pretty much where the left and anrchists are at?

 

[malatesta32]

there arent those desperate calls for unity tho are there? folk tend to just get on with their own thing locally - whether its antifash, occupy, anticuts or other issues with their own groups. big turnouts like the anticuts demo last year are something way beyond the abilities of the fash.

 

[frogwoman]

also there isn't the fatal (literally) consequences in an anarcho/trot split that a fash split can have. Have any trot parties' members ended up killing each other over their differences on the transitional programme? I don't think so.

 

[Red Storm]

Wigan CAP are not a good example of community organising. They are a good example of tories sneaking in through the back door on a 'community' ticket. I know where 'Wigan' Mike lived and it was in Leigh. Outsiders may not know the difference. hth.

Were talking about Wigan Mike the mad Neo nazi. Is that who you are talking about?

 

[josef1878]

Were talking about Wigan Mike the mad Neo nazi. Is that who you are talking about?

Yes

 

[malatesta32]

wigan mike fresh out of the pokey. some old blokes never know when to pack it in.
http://malatesta32.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/aryan-strike-farce/
http://malatesta32.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/nazis-jailed/

 

[Red Storm]

I've seen him once in Wigan. Drove past him. He is a big cunt.

Do the older urbs know if he was about back in the day?

 

[butchersapron]

Ex-BNP chiefs accused of £1m fraud on GLA and taxman

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/stand...ccused-of-pound-1m-fraud-on-gla-and-taxman.do

 

[DaveCinzano]

Here's Eddy Butler's take on it, spilling bean-by-bean:

http://eddybutler.blogspot .com/2012/01/gla-in-news.html

 

[The39thStep]

Here's Eddy Butler's take on it, spilling bean-by-bean:

http://eddybutler.blogspot .com/2012/01/gla-in-news.html

In the comments sections in the next article down on Butlers blog is a response to the present recession:

Bring back manufacturing to England.
Double the minimum wage
Exposing the Banksters bailout and bonuses
Quantitative easing ( Printing Money, buy, buy savings)

One of the things that 'anti fascists' miss when discussing the far right is that not only do they chime with sentiments on the EU, immigration, Islam but also on the economy.

Butlers comments on the BNP's decline might contain some sour grapes but he does provide some insight:

The fundamental reason is that the inherent weaknesses and contradictions that exist within a fringe and unnecessarily ‘extreme’ party came home to roost.

The BNP never shook off its ‘far far right’ legacy. It had positioned itself on the margins of society and attracted far too many fringe players and not enough people who were grounded and ‘normal’

 

[The Black Hand]

to paraphrase stalin, how many divisions does tradition have?

your catchphrases Pickyman are irrelevant. But really, you agree with me, thats the fragmentation I spoke of in my earlier post.

 

[The Black Hand]

The IWCA started pilot schemes in inner Glasgow, Hatfield, Islington, Hackney, Havering, Nottingham, Newtown in Birmingham, Manchester, Thurrock and in a series of wards in Oxford. Not all stood candidates. Not all lasted the course. It was in 2002 that the IWCA first stood candidates. The last election contested was in 2008. From 2002 -2008 the average return was around 25%. Including 4 Cllrs and a 100 votes shy of two others in Clerkewell and Hackney. Meanwhile In Havering in the IWCA candidates in just two wards took 5,000 votes, roughly half of what the SLP took nationally. Guess who still has high hopes for the SLP?

PS:
{ BH plainly isn't numerate and has an unfortunate tendency to make things up when losing an argument, call people names and so forth, which some find very annoying.

However such behaviour though tiresome, can be more easily understood and forgiven, when you realise he really is only 6.]

I could never lose an argument to you lot, its so basic around here its embarrassing As you well know the discussions and events IWCA started in the early 1990s which is 20 yrs ago, so you're being disingenuous at least and positively muddying the water quite deliberately.
You've mentioned areas which afaik have had very very little happening in them, to those with the bulk of your main groups in them, such as Oxford (one of the 3 core areas I identified), you've got next to nothing across the country and that is why I call it ultra left, the deluded belief, like some anarchists by the way, that their minute organisation is 'doing it'. This is just more purist fragmentation, as I have already said. The struggles lie elsewhere. I do not pretend there is an easy answer btw, but what I do know is that poverty of expectation leads to nowhere.

 

[intersol32]

I could never lose an argument to you lot, its so basic around here its embarrassing As you well know the discussions and events IWCA started in the early 1990s which is 20 yrs ago, so you're being disingenuous at least and positively muddying the water quite deliberately.
You've mentioned areas which afaik have had very very little happening in them, to those with the bulk of your main groups in them, such as Oxford (one of the 3 core areas I identified), you've got next to nothing across the country and that is why I call it ultra left, the deluded belief, like some anarchists by the way, that their minute organisation is 'doing it'. This is just more purist fragmentation, as I have already said. The struggles lie elsewhere. I do not pretend there is an easy answer btw, but what I do know is that poverty of expectation leads to nowhere.

The people involved in the IWCA have always been quite frank regarding the limitations or mistakes that were made over that time period. The basic premise however was solid (that the Working Class needed an alternative voice rather than being told to vote Labour, vote for the usual 60's/70's lefty throwbacks or "vote for anyone but the BNP"). Pretty sure most can surmise that because the greater part of the Left have never been willing to accept this, it guaranteed that the success of the IWCA project would always be small.

Deluded, is defined in every post where you bang on about the bloody Durham Miners Gala being representative of some sort of bulwark against Fascist or Ultra-Nationalist ideas. It's a bit like saying that the collective number of folks who've paid for a Billy Bragg ticket during his career is indcative of how the people of this nation will never submit to Fascism.

You never had to be a member of the IWCA (nor Red Action previous to that) to agree with the analysis. That's why the appeal was originally sent out to other groups. We weren't so much thinking we were "doing it" but more of the opinion that "something must be done". Unfortunately, many of those groups declined to acknowledge it and felt safer retreating back into the routine of organising Saturday paper sales and 'Marxist Coffee Mornings'.

 

[Pickman's model]

I could never lose an argument to you lot,

that's because you're like the knight in monty python and the holy grail who shouts 'come back and i'll bite you' after having his arms and legs lopped off. you don't know when you're beaten.