A BNP borough?

The 2008 London election results highlighted the severity of the situation we face in Barking and Dagenham. Unless urgent and real action is taken it is not implausible that the British National Party will become the largest single party on the council in 2010 and gain one or two MPs.

The BNP polled 11,279 votes across the borough in the party list section of the London Assembly elections. While this was still some way behind the Labour Party, which polled 15,264, the danger signs are there.

The BNP won comfortably in most of the wards where it has its 12 councillors. It also did well in wards where it has not contested local elections before, particularly in the Dagenham part of the borough, without a great deal of work. It came first in Heath, the seat of the Labour council leader, and finished ahead of Labour but just behind the Conservatives in Eastbrook.

If these votes were replicated in council elections the BNP would win in seven wards, giving potentially 21 seats.

These were of course not local elections and it is clear that some Labour voters refused to vote, either as a protest at Labour nationally or at Ken Livingstone specifically. And some local councillors attract a personal vote, which could alter the outcome in a local election.

However, there are factors that go against Labour. The Conservatives polled 8,563 (18.8%) across the borough, far more than in the 2006 local elections in the borough. Then, the Conservatives only managed to put forward 23 candidates for the 51 seats. In the seven wards that returned BNP councillors they only managed to rustle up four candidates out of a possible 21.

There is also anecdotal evidence that some people who voted for the Conservatives in the London elections to get rid of Livingstone would switch to the BNP locally as the best placed anti-Labour party.

The situation is dire for Dagenham’s MP, Jon Cruddas, whose constituency boundary is being redrawn. Although the Labour Party polled more votes than the BNP in the Dagenham part of his constituency, if one includes the three Rainham wards to be transferred from the Hornchurch constituency, which is being abolished, then the BNP has more votes.

In fact, with Labour polling 5,620*, the BNP 6,112 and the Conservatives 7,065 the new Dagenham and Rainham seat is a three-way marginal.

Margaret Hodge is slightly safer in her Barking constituency, though only because of the large BME vote in Abbey, Thames and Gascoigne. In the five wards where the BNP already has councillors, it remained ahead.

Where now?

Nothing is static in politics and the BNP can be beaten.

“This is really serious,” says Dagenham’s MP Jon Cruddas. “We need to really begin to mobilise the Labour movement in a way that we have not done before. We need to out-organise them, focus on local activities and build new alliances between and within communities.

“But we also need to beat the BNP politically. There are real issues making local people very angry. Many people in the area do not share the belief that we’ve had ten years of relentless improvement, in fact quite the reverse. They have seen their economic insecurities grow and feel that the Labour government has let them down.”

Housing remains the number one local issue and a consequence of successive Government failures. The “right to buy” policy has removed almost 50% of council stock over the past 20 years and an inability to build new properties, coupled with the rising cost of accommodation generally, has seen local housing lists grow.

“Landlords shifting people around on short-term tenancies is also a major problem,” the Bishop of Barking noted at a recent meeting to discuss the election results. This, alongside the borough having the lowest-cost housing in London, has resulted the greatest movement of people in the capital and made the job of rebuilding communities more difficult.

The situation has been made worse by other London boroughs “dumping” families in the borough. Despite London-wide agreements to limit this, many London boroughs still use private sector accommodation, almost always in former council properties, to house some of their most difficult families. Although they pay the rent directly to the private landlords, it is the local council that has to pay for education, health and social services.

The behaviour and policies of central government have also not helped. As punishment for refusing academies, the council was taken off the Building Schools for the Future programme, which prevents the bor-ough accessing the millions of pounds available for rebuilding or renewing nearly every secondary school in England. This sort of political vindic-tiveness, especially when education is one of the council’s success stories, only compounds the problem.

Liam Smith, deputy leader of the council, believes the government must do far more. “We need to give people a reason not to vote for the BNP and that has to do with policy.

“It is no good to say just don’t vote for the BNP because they are racist. People are feeling squeezed and are struggling.”

In addition to addressing the housing issue, Smith says that the Government needs to do more to support local councils with facilities for young people. “Crime in the borough is coming down but the perception and fear of crime is still very high. We need to encourage young people to get off the streets.

“It is no good building all these new sports facilities if local people are then priced out of using them. Surely if we want young people to stop carrying knives, to stop hanging round on street corners and to show more respect to other people then we have to offer them something to do as part of the bargain.”

For anti-fascists the work for the 2010 elections must start now. Racist myths over housing, crime and health need to be confronted in new and more focused ways. Leafleting can only achieve so much, but we need to find ways to truly engage with people directly.

Likewise the trade unions, which together have over 30,000 members in the borough, must look at new ways to engage their membership and on a level that addresses the underlying issues rather than just superficial anti-racism.

Anti-fascists have to continue to monitor the activities of the BNP councillors and highlight their mistakes and behaviour, but, if we are honest, we have not been good at letting people know. This has to change. To this end, Searchlight will begin to produce a quarterly newsletter.

Rebuilding local communities and a sense of community that unites people of different backgrounds must be a job for everyone and the faith groups could be central in this.

There is also a job for the other main parties. Even though they are hardly represented on the council (there are no Liberal Democrats and only one Conservative), both parties need to be encouraged to rebuild their local organisations. There is a strong anti-Labour vote out there and in the absence of an alternative it will go to the BNP.

None of this work is going to be easy and success requires all the elements to come together. However, it is work that has to be done. Without it we might be heading towards a nightmare scenario.

Barking and Dagenham at a glance

• The borough is experiencing the fastest changing demographics in the country. In the 1991 census 96% of people described themselves as “white”. This fell to 85% in 2001 and the Office for National Statistics estimated in 2003 that the white population was 76.3%. It is believed that the figure has now fallen below 70%.
• The age profile of the population of the borough is also changing. It had the second highest percentage of under 18s in London (10.91%) and the highest percentages in both the 0-4 (7.23%) and 5-10 (7.65%) age groups (2001 Census). The population aged 65 and over has declined by nearly 13%.
• The borough has the lowest average income level in the capital. In the Indices of Deprivation 2004 the borough was ranked 21st. Fourteen of its 17 wards are in the bottom 20% nationally. Adult basic skills are very low and levels of higher education qualifications are the lowest in London.
• The borough is ranked fourth lowest nationally for adult literacy and second lowest for numeracy skills. Twenty-four per cent of employed and 43% of unemployed residents have no qualifications. The average annual gross household income is just under £24,000, which is the lowest in London and below the national average. The borough has one of the lowest car ownership rates in London.
• The borough has the worst health inequalities in the capital.

Note: * These figures do not include postal votes as they were not available by ward or parliamentary constituency breakdown.

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