The election of two BNP MEPs in the June European Elections sent shockwaves through the political establishment. The BNP gained nearly a million votes, massive publicity and, crucially, a degree of respectability. This is on top of the sixty or so local councillors they have won in recent years. Their MEPs - party leader Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons - will use their generous salaries and expenses to further spread the BNP’s creed of hatred in the run-up to next year’s general election.
Their success has been largely due to the influence of Nick Griffin and the group around him in re-organising and re-orienting it in an effective, electoralist direction. Griffin won the leadership in 1999, ousting the then leader John Tyndall with over 1000 votes to Tyndall’s 400. He then set about a programme of re-branding the party, its policies and its presentation to make it appear respectable and, thus, electable. Members were ordered to steer clear of violent confrontations or association with neo-Nazi extremism, football hooliganism and skinhead culture. No longer would the BNP attempt to march and control the streets or hold big, provocative rallies. Many long-standing members of the BNP who refused to toe the new line were expelled or advised to leave and join the National Front (NF) or other groups more to their liking.
Of course, the fascists’ electoral success is not entirely down to their ability to hide their real beliefs and put forward a more palatable message. In order for the BNPs message to have a purchase at all it needs to strike a chord with sections of the electorate and in this the BNP has been helped immeasurably by the tabloid press. Lurid stories about asylum seekers, mass influxes of eastern European workers and, of course, Islamic terrorists on the streets of our major cities have created a climate in which racist and xenophobic ideas can thrive. Add to this the clear failure of British imperialist adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the return of economic crisis at the heart of the system and you have a perfect storm for Britain’s fascists.
THE ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE
It is, therefore, ironic that, following the June elections, the most prominent manifestations of far right activity in England come not from the BNP but from the English Defence League. The EDL and a number of linked organisations such as Stop The Islamisation of Europe deny that they are organisations of the far right or linked with the BNP in any way. The standard media version is that it was a response to the 10th March protest by radical Islamists against a parade of British troops returning from Afghanistan. So the story goes, outraged locals in Luton, set up a group, the United Peoples Of Luton which, together with the loose coalition of football hooligan firms Casuals United, morphed into the EDL.
Of course, the reality is somewhat different and from the outset the EDL was orchestrated by long-standing fascist activists and far-right sympathisers. Key players in the Luton EDL include Davy Cooling, Chris Renton and Matt Unsworth - all known BNP members as well as current and former NF members such as David Tull.The EDL is funded by Adam Lake, a businessman with a long history of support for the European far-right.
The BNP has gone to some lengths to disassociate itself from the street violence of the EDL, declaring it a proscribed organisation and forbidding members to take part in its activities. For its part, the EDL plays its own media respectability game and Lake in particular has been keen to deny links with the BNP. The EDL, in its media statements and on its website, is at pains to stress that it is not racist, not against Asians or even Islam but against Muslim extremists, terrorists and the forced imposition of Sharia law. All of this is window dressing - quickly given the lie in You Tube videos of EDL supporters giving stiff armed salutes, chanting racist slogans, attacking ethnic minority passers-by or Asian owned business and posing in t-shirts with NF banners.
One thing is certain - the same factors which feed into the success of the BNP at the ballot box also boost the confidence of the EDL to take to the streets. Add in the insecurity felt by the working class in the teeth of a savage recession and it is a potent mix which leads some to look for scapegoats in the Muslim community. However, a key question now is how long the EDL can sustain itself and whether its rise to prominence will damage or benefit the BNP as we approach a general election. The longer the EDL remains a major player in far-right politics, the more attractive it will be to a certain layer of BNP support, but EDL activities could prove damaging to the BNP’s respectability unless Griffin is able to decisively distance the two groups.
A SUMMER OF PROVOCATIONS
After the EDL’s first inconclusive foray into Birmingham City Centre on 8th August, which saw them run out of town by several hundred local youth, came the 15th August demonstration to oppose the BNP ‘Red, White and Blue’ festival, held near the Derbyshire village of Codnor. Two thousand protestors rallied in the village centre before marching towards the festival and UAF supporters and others blockaded the roads from early in the morning to prevent BNP supporters entering.
The EDL planned its second Birmingham incursion for the 5th of September and wide opposition began to grow in the city. However, this opposition was expressed in two main ways. First there was a call for the police to ban the EDL from marching, as had happened in Luton where a three month blanket ban on demonstrations was in place. This call came not only from community leaders, the mosques and local councillors but also from some sections of the left who voiced either open approval of the idea or who refused to publicly speak out against this disastrous policy.
Second, plans were floated for a ‘Birmingham United’ rally to present a positive image of multicultural harmony, in a different location to the EDL march. Of itself such a gathering was not a bad idea. If it brought out several thousand people not normally reached by the left and anti-fascist organisations, then it could only be a good thing. However, this was counterposed to the idea of mobilising to halt the fascists, and the local UAF leadership fell into line so that when the City Council refused to give permission for the Birmingham United event, there was no fallback plan.
It was then left to socialists - including, to their credit, the SWP without their UAF hats on- to call an 11th hour counter-demonstration. Not to have done so would have left the Asian youth, who gathered to defend their streets, dangerously exposed and isolated and open to the accusation that this was little more than a race-riot. Faced with mass opposition from Asian youth, anti-fascists and trades unionists, the EDL ended up being bussed out of the city by police - literally sent to Coventry - and detained until the small hours of the morning!
Stop The Islamisation Of Europe called a march against the Mosque in Harrow for September 11th, 2009. The hastily formed Brent and Harrow Unite Against Fascism group came together and thousands of leaflets and posters were issued, and names collected for a petition showing support for the Mosque. On the day, some 2000 locals and anti-fascists came to defend the mosque against what turned out to be a pitifully small band of EDL supporters.
With lessons learned from Birmingham and Harrow, anti-fascists in Manchester mobilised 2000 people to oppose the October 10th EDL march. This may have been the biggest EDL turn out to date with estimates of up to six or seven hundred. They were able to march in Manchester- albeit under a heavy police escort but, so far, they have not been able to made a significant breakthrough and make a decisive display of controlling the streets in a major city.
TOWARDS A SOCIALIST ANTI-FASCIST STRATEGY
The anti-fascist movement now needs to take stock and discuss and evaluate recent events and the tactics employed.
As the principal anti-fascist organisation, Unite against Fascism must take a lead. We need to build it and ensure it grows not just bigger but broader, pulling in wider forces from beyond the left and minority communities. We have to sink roots in communities and workplaces. UAF should reach across the political, cultural and religious spectrum- any anti-fascist platform should have the widest array of speakers including Labour, Liberal-Democrats, Respect, Greens, Jews, Christians and Muslims as well as local trades unionists and campaigners.
Yet, this must not be counterposed to physical defence of our streets and communities. We need to work hard to win the hearts and minds of community leaders to put the case for self-defence clearly, against local politicians and the police who paint fascists and anti-fascists with the same brush. A weakness in Manchester was that the elders of the Asian community were able to persuade Asian youth not to join the anti-fascist demonstration in significant numbers.
Socialists, with a clear analysis of fascism and the conditions which allow it to breed, need to go still further. We have a responsibility to build an alternative not just to the BNP’s politics of hate but to the politics of despair represented by the other parties which offer no solutions to economic crisis, unemployment and environmental degradation. This means building a broad, socialist party. It is a distinct project from the wider anti-fascist movement but is not opposed to it. A broad party would be centrally involved in Unite Against Fascism but would also seek to explain the growth of the fascists and real offer solutions.
The arguments to ‘Vote anyone but BNP’ or simply ‘Don’t vote Nazi’ founder when the ballot paper offers no positive choices, just a promise of more of the same. We cannot ask workers under attack from a viciously anti-working class Labour government to vote tactically for that same government in order to keep out the fascists.
FOR A BROAD SOCIALIST PARTY
For a glimpse of what is possible, we need only look to France where the Nouveau Party Anticapitaliste groups together the Left with anti-capitalist youth or Die Linke in Germany. They are involved with the day-to-day economic and social struggles of the working class, black and white, actively oppose the fascists, solidarise with the struggles of Muslim youth and contest elections at local, regional and national levels. The fight to drive back the BNP will be long and hard, the fight to destroy the sewer of capitalism which allows such rats to breed, longer and harder still, but what we start to do now can lay the foundations of the future.
Brian Standish