The BNP threat – and how the Left should respond 

The votes for the BNP candidates in  recent council elections - and their winning of a number of seats- underlines once more the danger that the fascists can grow in the present period. The Left needs a timely discussion on the significance of this and the strategic implications for socialists and the labour movement. Although of course it is very geographically uneven, there is no sign of a general let-up in the wave of BNP electoral advances. This is the most dangerous situation  in relation to the far right since the lates 1970s. Without a clear line of how to combat this, the Left will be driven into panic and knee-jerk responses. Here we pose three questions: why is this happening now?; what is the social base of the fascist vote ? And how should the Left respond? 

Let’s note first of all that this is an English phenomenon; the social and political relation of forces in Scotland leaves little space for the far right, a point we will come back to. It’s happening now, at the most general level, because of complete disillusionment with the traditional parties, and particularly New Labour in important sectors of the population. Invariably, a draining of support for the ‘centre ground’ (all of it right-wing in Britain) leaves a political space both to the left and the right of the main parties. But this general answer begs the question of why the BNP in particular is gaining. 

The electoral base of the BNP has two central parts, and they are classic components of fascism. On the one hand poorer sections of the working class in areas where unemployment is still high, and where the 1990s boom passed by unnoticed, feel left out and ignored. Blairism has done nothing to relieve the hopelessness in these areas. Massively reduced social benefits and social decay has led to massive levels of petty crime and drug abuse on the ‘sink estates’. Where these are mainly white, a fertile ground for fascist recruiting sergeants has been created. As has been widely noted, this applies particularly in some Lancashire and Yorkshire towns where the Asian community has been the recipient of a certain level of welfare and civic aid. “They get everything, we get nothing” is an easy slogan for these socially crushed layers which have few, if any, links with the labour movement. In traditional Marxist terminology, this is a section of the lumpen proletariat. 

Some of the highest BNP votes come however from white areas of relative affluence, centres of the petty bourgeoisie and better off sections of workers, which border multi-ethnic areas. A classic case is the Essex-London border. The BNP gets a significant vote in affluent all-white Chingford (MP: Ian Duncan Smith), whereas they rarely bother to stand in neighbouring multi-ethnic Walthamstow, where the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist party have a certain electoral base. An aging, Daily Mail-reading petty bourgeoisie and more affluent workers who feel themselves to be ‘middle class’, see neighbouring black or mixed areas as a ‘threat’. They are among the most politically and socially reactionary sectors of the British population.

Certainly these two categories do not exhaust areas of BNP support, but they are crucial to it. A classic mix of petty bourgeois and lumpen support is being created. However the existence of these layers is not enough in itself, whatever their particular grievances. The fascists need a rallying cry, a cause celèbre. Everyone knows what that is: racism in general and asylum seekers in particular. 

The unanimity in official politics and in the media that asylum seekers are a major ‘problem’, and that they are a key cause of crime, drugs and welfare ‘scrounging’ is breath taking. Throughout Western Europe the overwhelming majority of (white) public opinion, and all governments, subscribe to this viewpoint. In Italy for example anti-immigrant opinion stretches deep into centre left opinion; it is easy to find people who support the Democratic Left, but who will tell you the main source of crime, drugs and prostitution is asylum seekers. And this in a country where asylum seekers are mainly in transit, not seeking to stay there permanently. 

The ‘war in terrorism’, with its scape-goating of Muslims, only deepens the anti-asylum seeker hysteria. This we should remember is a comparatively new phenomenon. Social changes and political campaigns in the last 25 years had dealt big blows to racism. Powellite opposition to the non-white communities in Britain, while never absent, had been declining in the 1980s and early 1990s, particularly among young people. But the asylum seeker issue has revived it and given it a new lease of life. And this is particularly the case as a result of the government and media obsession with crime, easily linked to immigrants in right-wing and media demagogy.

Finally, the space for the far right depends on the strength of the Left, and the militancy and combativity of the labour movement. Both are reviving in Britain, but still suffer from defeats at the hands of Thatcherism, and the de-politicising effects of Blairism. In England and Wales there is no strong socialist party with the ear of a significant section of the masses. 

In short, the social base of the BNP and the political issues which propel it are a powerful mix, into which a fascist leadership with a minimal sense of tactics can easily step, capitalising on and reinforcing social and political reaction significantly. 

Against this array of problems, what should the left do? Answering this means revisiting, in a new context, some old debates. Let’s start with what not to do. The ‘tried and trusted tactics’ of the Anti-Nazi League – basically denouncing the BNP as ‘Nazis’ and holding street demonstrations against them – is hopeless in this situation. It relies totally on the abhorrence with which Hitler and the Nazis are regarded by the British population, and was rather effective against the National Front in the late 1970s, especially since it was easy to produce pictures of John Tyndall in black shirt and jackboots. You won’t find pictures of Nick Griffin doing the same thing, and among the BNP’s bases of support it is easy to reject the ‘Nazi’ charge as simple slander. ‘Anti-Nazism’ doesn’t address the core issues of asylum seekers and social collpase which are at the root of the new support for the BNP. It is incapable of propelling a real political alternative – an alternative social and political programme - which ultimately is the only weapon which can thwart the far right. 

‘Anti-Nazism’ of the ANL type implicitly, if not explicitly, tries to put the question of defeating the fascists into a separate little box, which requires a separate little campaign to periodically resolve. Once this is done, we can get on with the real struggle, real politics can resume. This fundamentally misreads what the BNP threat represents. The BNP threat derives from the whole present contellation of political and social forces, and will not be dealt with outside the Left addressing the contemporary political crisis. 

Linked to ‘Anti-Nazism’, the opposite side of the same coin (the two sides sometimes get mixed), are attempts to physically crush the fascists. The issue of physical force against the far right is a complex one and depends on tactical considerations at each point. But it is not a strategy for defeating the influence of the BNP. Ultimately that can only be dome if labour movement militancy and dynamic socialist organisation create an alternative pole of radicalisation for the dispossesed, and sections of the petty bourgeoisie. 

Many myths have been created by the defeat of the National Front in the late 1970s. The SWP line is that it was defeated by the ANL/Rock against Racism. The Socialist Party says it was defeated by labour radicalism in the 1979-80 ‘winter of discontent’. Both these arguments contain a kernal of truth. But a massive factor was the May 1979 election of the Thatcher government which seized the leadership of the hard-right away from the fascists and began to implement – or appear to – many planks of their programme. In other words, in the late 1970s political crisis, a new and radical programme and government came to the fore in the framework of official bourgeois politics. In the current situation this cannot happen, given the political disarray of the Tories. 

Demonstrations against the BNP and denouncing them as fascists continues to have a significant usefulness in the present situation. But a strategy for fighting the BNP has to unfold on a much more challenging terrain. First, the Left has to put the issue of defending asylum seekers much more at the centre of its priorities, accusing Blair, Blunkett and Straw of being recruiting sergeants for the BNP. The Socialist Alliance has to get across the facts about immigration and asylum to counter the Daily Mail myths. Not just anti-Nazi type demos, but campaigns against racism and deportations are crucial to this. 

Second, the present wave of public sector disputes against the government has to be pursued with utmost vigour. Labour militancy will deepen and strengthen social radicalism, making the organised working class a much more decisive attractive force in the wider population. 

Third, a socialist force with a mass base, albeit it a small one at first, has to be built which has significant support in local communities and can directly compete with the fascists among the poorer sections of the working class. Existing far left organisations, and the Socialist Alliance at its present level of development, are weak vessels for this, although it with them that we have to start. But it needs a unified socialist party capable of extending support in elections and in the labour movement way beyond the present Socialist Alliance. 

A broad socialist party and the organisations which prefigure it have to elaborate a programme, and consequent campaigns, which directly address the poorer sections of the working class on concrete issues of single parents, welfare benefits, housing, the prevention of crime and drug dependency, education and youth unemployment.

It is on this terrain that the Scottish Socialist Party is way ahead of socialists in England and Wales, and which explains a signifant proportion of its local support. On this, once again, the Socialist Alliance has to take the Scottish road.