The defeat and self destruction of the BNP:
In the next 12 hours, Griffin’s worst fears were realised – and even exceeded. The party was thrashed in its two key parliamentary constituencies of Barking and Stoke Central. Its record number of council and parliamentary candidates failed to make a single breakthrough; and of the 28 BNP councillors standing for re-election, all but two were beaten.
But the Barking and Dagenham council election result was the most dramatic. The BNP had plans to take control of the authority – instead, it lost every one of its councillors there. Twelve elected in 2006. Twelve thrown out in 2010. A ruthless purge, more shocking because they didn’t see it coming. Neither, for that matter, did their opponents. It was the miracle of Barking.
According to one analyst quoted in the article, Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, the reason the BNP was so soundly defeated was that Labour pulled its finger out of its ass and started campaigning against them:
“It would appear that the vote for the BNP in 2006 was some kind of political cry of anguish, based on the perception that the Labour party simply didn’t understand the concerns of that part of the electorate. The fact that the BNP has been dropped in 2010 heavily suggests this section of the electorate now believes it has got the attention of the Labour party.” Back in 2006, the morality of supporting an intrinsically racist party wasn’t an issue, says Travers. “The voters simply used the most shocking mechanism they could to get Labour’s attention.”
But there is good and bad in that conclusion. Good because it suggests people in Barking voted BNP for reasons other than racism and antisemitism. Bad because if it was all a means to an end, did no one consider the impact on community relations of voting for the far right?
The BNP vote as a form of protest? Perhaps, but there is a hardcore of racist voters as well, as well as more people who more or less agree with the BNP’s (public) views on immigration etcetera but who usually vote out of other concerns. It might also just be that the more serious economic concerns, as well as the genuine three way race this time made voting for racists a bit of a luxury. Finally, it should always be remembered that defeating the BNP does not matter if it means other parties taking over parts of their rhetoric and political programme. Under New Labour we’ve had a gradual rightward march on immigration and treatment of refugees, which, even if it was just embraced as a tactical measure, has led to real misery on the ground — see Chickyogs passim for evidence.