Ever since the May local elections, when eight out of nine of its sitting councillors lost their seats, the BNP has looked in vain for electoral cheer in a series of summer by-elections. They thought they'd find it in Nuneaton and Bedworth's Slough ward, and shamelessly hyped their chances of winning the seat, only to find themselves broken against the in-built strength of the Labour vote in a former mining town with deep Labour (not New Labour) and trade union traditions.
The BNP were further disappointed when one of its sitting councillors resigned his seat on Loughton Council, Essex, necessitating a by-election in the town's Alderton Ward.
The racist party needed this by-election like it needed a hole in the head. It needed to retain the seat to save face and to bolster the sagging morale of its supporters, and was perhaps heartened by the fact that the history of municipal by-elections shows that it is more difficult to lose a seat than it is to win one.
The BNP duly fought the Alderton ward by-election last Thursday, and won. Since then the party has been crowing to the high heavens with news of its 'victory', its members gleefully posting the result wherever they can on the Internet.
But this wasn't a 'victory'. The BNP did not increase its vote - if it had, some serious questions would need to be asked. As it was the result passed off without a great deal of comment for the simple reason that nobody seriously expected the party to lose its own seat.
What is worthy of comment is the fact that even though they retained the seat the BNP vote fell by 5% - a pretty steep drop in anybody's book and one that would have most political parties seriously worried.
To the BNP, retaining the seat on a reduced vote represents an apparent success. Well, all political parties spin bad election results, and nobody has more reason to spin than the BNP, especially in the case of its Alderton ward result, since here we (and they) have ample confirmation of what we saw in May - that the BNP has stalled and that its vote is falling.
No amount of spin can disguise the party's continuing downward electoral trend, though you'd never know there was such a trend if you were to read its own report of the by-election at its style-challenged website. Here we read that the result is an 'unprecendeted win' made against overwhelming odds - according to the whinge-prone BNP just about every other party ('who invariably choreograph their campaigns') fighting the by-election attacked it, and there is an attempt to link the party's only serious challengers in Alderton ward, the Independent Residents Association, with the anti-racist organisation Redbridge and Epping Forest Together.
Add in a few swipes at the rump UKIP, the busted flush against which the BNP likes to measure its supposed success, don't mention the massive resources the BNP poured into its campaign, and you have a long piece of nonsense designed to bolster internal morale by creating the illusion of a great victory gained in the teeth of the massed ranks of the party's opposition.
It's so much whistling in the dark. If there had been the slightest evidence of any increase in BNP support we would have seen it in Alderton ward. We did not. We saw a 5% slump in their vote, and nothing at all to justify the BNP's hyperbole.
There's still a long way to go and there may be some nasty surprises to come, but the BNP's May results, its summer by-election results, and latterly the Alderton ward result all irrevocably point to the slow but steady evaporation of the BNP's vote.
But the business of spin extends beyong simple vote-juggling. The need to bolster the seriously-flagging morale of the average BNP branch is forcing the party to madly applaud anything that can be manipulated into some show of success, no matter how ephemeral. A couple of days ago, its Regional Voices page had one example of the puffery that has become necessary to blow any little event up into something that the leadership hopes will dispel the gloom.
'Hot on the heels of the Epping Forest victory comes new [sic] of yet another recruit to add to [the] Eastern Region’s tally of local councillors. Sitting Parish councillor Simon Deacon has formerly joined the BNP and notified his parish clerk of the change...'
Simon Deacon is the only councillor in the 40-year history of his former party, the National Front. He took his position of Parish councillor completely unopposed, not a single vote being cast to let him take the seat because nobody else could be bothered to stand given the political inconsequence of the average Parish councillor.
Such is the reality of the BNP's much-vaunted recent 'successes' - a seat kept but with a 5% drop in the vote and the gain of an unelected Parish councillor from one of the most virulently racist parties in the UK. The Emperor has no clothes and these are certainly no great successes, no matter how hard they are spun.
(Article by Denise G and Antifascist)
Showing posts with label Epping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Epping. Show all posts
September 02, 2007
April 24, 2007
Far-right targets the suburbs
Revealed: How the far-right targets suburbs by stealth
A community action group campaigning to save local shops and running a May Fayre sound harmless. But its leader was a prominent member of the National Front...
Forty miles apart, two different election candidates are presenting two different faces of the Right. Ian Anderson, a community activist standing for election in Epping, is talking about the need to save the town's small shops, the iniquity of fortnightly refuse collections, and the inadequacy of the local council. But he has a past that not all his voters might know about.
An hour and a half round the M25, on this St George's Day afternoon, several members of the BNP, 'Britain's foremost patriotic party', are more than half-way through their most patriotic endeavour yet: to become local councillors to the Queen.
For the first time in history, and much to the consternation of the locals, the BNP is standing candidates in the expensive environs of Windsor. From one of the wards they are contesting, you can see the Royal Standard fluttering over Windsor Castle as Her Majesty winds up her Easter break.
'I would like to feel the Queen approves of what we're doing,' says Matt Tait, 22, the BNP's own standard-bearer in Windsor's Clewer North ward, generously overlooking the fact that Her Majesty is herself of German ancestry. 'One of the main issues is to keep Windsor as an English town. We do not want to become like Slough.'
The Queen can, in theory, vote in this election, although she does not seem to be on the register (her husband is listed, under the name 'HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh'). It does, however, seem rather unlikely that she, or many other Windsor residents, will be turning out for the BNP.
The racist party's presence in this middle-class town is the result of a kind of accident: the three days of disturbances last year that followed firebomb attacks on a Muslim-owned dairy that was seeking planning permission to add an Islamic education centre on its site.
It is also supposed to symbolise what is being called the BNP's 'push into the suburbs', with far-Right candidates fanning out from their traditional council-estate territory into such unlikely places as Shrewsbury, Harrogate, and Henley-on-Thames.
In the South-East alone, the BNP is standing in 20 councils, including Horsham, parliamentary seat of the Tory chairman, Francis Maude, where the party won 13 per cent in a council by-election only five months ago.
But what Windsor actually turns out to symbolise is the BNP's enduring Achilles heel. For while it has sharpened up its suits and slickened up its rhetoric, the party is still finding it difficult to field credible candidates.
Unprecedentedly for a man seeking election, Mr Tait refuses to have his picture taken for fear of being identified. He said: 'I would rather keep my job, at least until the election. I'm not too sure my boss would want one of his staff as a BNP candidate.'
He also told a local paper that immigration will cause London to run out of drinking water, saying: 'We should not allow mass immigration, especially in the Thames area, because the more immigrants there are, the less drinking water there will be.'
The vast majority of the more than 700 BNP members standing in next month's local elections are, like Mr Tait, paper candidates, standing simply in order so that the party can claim itself to be a national force.
And even in areas where they are elected, BNP candidates' performance is often lamentable. Many have criminal records, giving new meaning to the term conviction politics; the chances of their appealing to middle England remain quite limited.
At least as worrying, perhaps, is the growth of another political species: former members of the far-Right who are re-entering politics new, respectable and community-friendly guises.
In the Essex town of Epping, there is a new party called the Epping Community Action Group (ECAG) standing candidates for the local town and district council. It seems quite unexceptional: it organises a popular annual 'May Fayre' on a recreation ground in the town, it campaigns to save local shops and wants to open a community centre.
ECAG's officers include a former mayor of Epping, Audrey Wheeler, and it has formed some links with local Liberal Democrats. It is well supported in the town, with 270 members, and says it is confident of winning at least one seat in next week's elections.
But the thing about ECAG is that its guiding light, Ian Anderson, was for more than 25 years a senior activist in the National Front. In the 1980s, he was a frequent attender of 'white power' demonstrations and stood trial after leaflets inciting racial hatred were found in his flat (he successfully argued that the flat was used by others and said he had no knowledge of the leaflets' content. He was acquitted).
His car was firebombed in a dispute between NF members over money. From 1990 to 1995 he was the NF's chairman, before leaving to form a new far-right party, the National Democrats, for whom he contested a parliamentary by-election in 1997.
The National Democrats' manifesto at that election advocated repatriation for blacks. 'We believe it will never be possible for the large non-white population currently resident in Britain to retain their culture and identity and to live harmoniously with the white population,' the document says. 'Their presence, through no fault of their own, is detrimental to the unity and cohesion of the nation and threatens our traditions and way of life.'
Members of the existing mainstream parties in Epping Forest, where there are also six BNP councillors, are deeply concerned about ECAG's rise, though none would go on the record about it.
Mr Anderson, for his part, told the Standard that he has not been involved in far-Right politics for at least 10 years. 'I think my opponents are using my past as an excuse,' he says. 'They can't attack us over anything else, so they're dragging that up.'
He insisted that he would not ally with the BNP if he was elected next week. 'I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole,' he says. In the claustrophobic world of the far-Right, the National Front and the BNP were mortal enemies.
But when asked if he had changed his views, he replied: 'Only to the extent that times change and practical politics have changed. There were sillinesses that went on with the NF – stupid marches in silly areas. It was a very negative organisation. We are trying to do something positive here.'
The Standard has established that, according to its latest official return to the Electoral Commission, Mr Anderson remains chairman of the National Democrats, an avowedly racist party, although an inactive one.
He also publishes a journal entitled The Flag, a name also once used by the journal of the National Front. Back issues include articles on topics such as 'Ethnic diversity – Britain's timebomb?'
And the current issue proclaims: 'The world is overpopulated – but not by us. Every day there are an extra 221,000 on our planet, almost all from underdeveloped countries.'
One of Mr Anderson's colleagues in the Epping Community Action Group is Tony Bennett, who was expelled from the UK Independence Party in 2004 after publishing a pamphlet describing Mohammed as a paedophile.
Yet Mr Anderson insists that his political ambitions no longer extend any further than the town boundaries. And he may well have good grounds for confidence in the forthcoming election.
Among the people of Epping, his racist history is of little interest. 'I do know about them and I think they are doing good work,' said Tony Baker, a local resident. 'As far as I'm concerned all that NF stuff is in the past.'
But what the people of Epping should know is that ECAG is just one of a number of respectable-looking community organisations set up by former members of the National Front.
In the borough of Hounslow, the Isleworth Community Group now has six councillors, and actually runs the council in coalition with the Tories. The Isleworth Community Group is controlled by Phil Andrews, a former NF activist with a criminal conviction for a race-hate attack on a black policeman.
In Havering, a party called the Third Way has sprung up with a community-based agenda to save local shopping centres and fight 'overdevelopment'. Third Way's leader, Graham Williamson, is a former senior activist in the NF.
'Epping is a small market town,' says a leading member of one of the other political parties. 'People don't really want to believe that anything as nasty as the NF and the BNP is taking hold in their community. They want to think well of people. But the trouble is, you vote for the ECAG and you really don't know what you're getting.'
Islamophobia Watch
A community action group campaigning to save local shops and running a May Fayre sound harmless. But its leader was a prominent member of the National Front...
Forty miles apart, two different election candidates are presenting two different faces of the Right. Ian Anderson, a community activist standing for election in Epping, is talking about the need to save the town's small shops, the iniquity of fortnightly refuse collections, and the inadequacy of the local council. But he has a past that not all his voters might know about.
An hour and a half round the M25, on this St George's Day afternoon, several members of the BNP, 'Britain's foremost patriotic party', are more than half-way through their most patriotic endeavour yet: to become local councillors to the Queen.
For the first time in history, and much to the consternation of the locals, the BNP is standing candidates in the expensive environs of Windsor. From one of the wards they are contesting, you can see the Royal Standard fluttering over Windsor Castle as Her Majesty winds up her Easter break.
'I would like to feel the Queen approves of what we're doing,' says Matt Tait, 22, the BNP's own standard-bearer in Windsor's Clewer North ward, generously overlooking the fact that Her Majesty is herself of German ancestry. 'One of the main issues is to keep Windsor as an English town. We do not want to become like Slough.'
The Queen can, in theory, vote in this election, although she does not seem to be on the register (her husband is listed, under the name 'HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh'). It does, however, seem rather unlikely that she, or many other Windsor residents, will be turning out for the BNP.
The racist party's presence in this middle-class town is the result of a kind of accident: the three days of disturbances last year that followed firebomb attacks on a Muslim-owned dairy that was seeking planning permission to add an Islamic education centre on its site.
It is also supposed to symbolise what is being called the BNP's 'push into the suburbs', with far-Right candidates fanning out from their traditional council-estate territory into such unlikely places as Shrewsbury, Harrogate, and Henley-on-Thames.
In the South-East alone, the BNP is standing in 20 councils, including Horsham, parliamentary seat of the Tory chairman, Francis Maude, where the party won 13 per cent in a council by-election only five months ago.
But what Windsor actually turns out to symbolise is the BNP's enduring Achilles heel. For while it has sharpened up its suits and slickened up its rhetoric, the party is still finding it difficult to field credible candidates.
Unprecedentedly for a man seeking election, Mr Tait refuses to have his picture taken for fear of being identified. He said: 'I would rather keep my job, at least until the election. I'm not too sure my boss would want one of his staff as a BNP candidate.'
He also told a local paper that immigration will cause London to run out of drinking water, saying: 'We should not allow mass immigration, especially in the Thames area, because the more immigrants there are, the less drinking water there will be.'
The vast majority of the more than 700 BNP members standing in next month's local elections are, like Mr Tait, paper candidates, standing simply in order so that the party can claim itself to be a national force.
And even in areas where they are elected, BNP candidates' performance is often lamentable. Many have criminal records, giving new meaning to the term conviction politics; the chances of their appealing to middle England remain quite limited.
At least as worrying, perhaps, is the growth of another political species: former members of the far-Right who are re-entering politics new, respectable and community-friendly guises.
In the Essex town of Epping, there is a new party called the Epping Community Action Group (ECAG) standing candidates for the local town and district council. It seems quite unexceptional: it organises a popular annual 'May Fayre' on a recreation ground in the town, it campaigns to save local shops and wants to open a community centre.
ECAG's officers include a former mayor of Epping, Audrey Wheeler, and it has formed some links with local Liberal Democrats. It is well supported in the town, with 270 members, and says it is confident of winning at least one seat in next week's elections.
But the thing about ECAG is that its guiding light, Ian Anderson, was for more than 25 years a senior activist in the National Front. In the 1980s, he was a frequent attender of 'white power' demonstrations and stood trial after leaflets inciting racial hatred were found in his flat (he successfully argued that the flat was used by others and said he had no knowledge of the leaflets' content. He was acquitted).
His car was firebombed in a dispute between NF members over money. From 1990 to 1995 he was the NF's chairman, before leaving to form a new far-right party, the National Democrats, for whom he contested a parliamentary by-election in 1997.
The National Democrats' manifesto at that election advocated repatriation for blacks. 'We believe it will never be possible for the large non-white population currently resident in Britain to retain their culture and identity and to live harmoniously with the white population,' the document says. 'Their presence, through no fault of their own, is detrimental to the unity and cohesion of the nation and threatens our traditions and way of life.'
Members of the existing mainstream parties in Epping Forest, where there are also six BNP councillors, are deeply concerned about ECAG's rise, though none would go on the record about it.
Mr Anderson, for his part, told the Standard that he has not been involved in far-Right politics for at least 10 years. 'I think my opponents are using my past as an excuse,' he says. 'They can't attack us over anything else, so they're dragging that up.'
He insisted that he would not ally with the BNP if he was elected next week. 'I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole,' he says. In the claustrophobic world of the far-Right, the National Front and the BNP were mortal enemies.
But when asked if he had changed his views, he replied: 'Only to the extent that times change and practical politics have changed. There were sillinesses that went on with the NF – stupid marches in silly areas. It was a very negative organisation. We are trying to do something positive here.'
The Standard has established that, according to its latest official return to the Electoral Commission, Mr Anderson remains chairman of the National Democrats, an avowedly racist party, although an inactive one.
He also publishes a journal entitled The Flag, a name also once used by the journal of the National Front. Back issues include articles on topics such as 'Ethnic diversity – Britain's timebomb?'
And the current issue proclaims: 'The world is overpopulated – but not by us. Every day there are an extra 221,000 on our planet, almost all from underdeveloped countries.'
One of Mr Anderson's colleagues in the Epping Community Action Group is Tony Bennett, who was expelled from the UK Independence Party in 2004 after publishing a pamphlet describing Mohammed as a paedophile.
Yet Mr Anderson insists that his political ambitions no longer extend any further than the town boundaries. And he may well have good grounds for confidence in the forthcoming election.
Among the people of Epping, his racist history is of little interest. 'I do know about them and I think they are doing good work,' said Tony Baker, a local resident. 'As far as I'm concerned all that NF stuff is in the past.'
But what the people of Epping should know is that ECAG is just one of a number of respectable-looking community organisations set up by former members of the National Front.
In the borough of Hounslow, the Isleworth Community Group now has six councillors, and actually runs the council in coalition with the Tories. The Isleworth Community Group is controlled by Phil Andrews, a former NF activist with a criminal conviction for a race-hate attack on a black policeman.
In Havering, a party called the Third Way has sprung up with a community-based agenda to save local shopping centres and fight 'overdevelopment'. Third Way's leader, Graham Williamson, is a former senior activist in the NF.
'Epping is a small market town,' says a leading member of one of the other political parties. 'People don't really want to believe that anything as nasty as the NF and the BNP is taking hold in their community. They want to think well of people. But the trouble is, you vote for the ECAG and you really don't know what you're getting.'
Islamophobia Watch
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