The sole by-election contested by the BNP last night was at Church Gresley, Swadlincote, which elects to South Derbyshire District Council. South Derbyshire is currently controlled by the Conservatives, who have a majority of seven over Labour (there is one Independent and no Liberal Democrat representation).
Swadlincote sits squarely within an area of the Midlands noted for delivering high BNP votes, as we discussed in our report on the Charnwood District Council Shepshed by-election and for this reason we must take a particular interest in the Church Gresley contest.
The ward itself, on the south side of Swadlincote, is held by Labour. At the May elections two Labour candidates contested against two Conservatives in a straight fight. The combined voting percentages were a mathematically neat 66.6% Labour, 33.3% Conservative. There was, then, a danger of the intervening BNP candidate feeding off the Labour vote, and that some Conservative voters, knowing that the Tories could not win Church Gresley, might be tempted to switch to the BNP.
Though the BNP has never previously fought Church Gresley, in May the party fielded two candidates for South Derbyshire DC seats. Because he BNP stood single candidates in multiple vacancy wards where the other parties ran two or more candidates, their results are open to interpretation.
Contiguous to Church Gresley is Swadlincote, contested in May by last night's candidate Richard Fallows. The BNP averaged vote came in at 22.7%, placing Fallows fourth ahead of three Conservatives and three Liberal Democrats. In next door Newhall and Stanton, the BNP's Paula Bailey took an averaged vote of 23.4%, and despite coming seventh of seven (three Labour candidates convincingly beat the three Conservatives) obtained the better result of the two BNP candidates.
The closeness of the BNP's May votes and the linear contiguity of Church Gresley with Swadlincote and Newhall and Stanton gives us some idea of the yardstick by which last night's result can be judged. The BNP will have aimed at 23% of the vote or better in a three-cornered (Lab/Con/BNP) contest in a Labour-held ward.
There is, as we must concede, no avoiding the fact that the racist party did very much better than that.
South Derbyshire D.C. Church Gresley ward result:
| Lab | 639 | 43.80 |
| Con | 304 | 20.84 |
| BNP | 516 | 35.37 |
| Total | 1459 |
Though the BNP clearly ate substantially into the Conservative vote, it was the Labour vote which suffered most from the BNP's intervention. Had the Liberal Democrats stood to further split the mainstream vote in Church Gresley we could very easily be reporting a BNP gain.
Exactly why the BNP in the East Midlands has been able to buck the trend of its own performances elsewhere is not readily obvious. The wards in which it has been doing well are little different demographically and socially from those in other parts of the country where it has failed to make headway. However that may be, there can be no doubt at all now that anti-fascists and the legitimate political parties have some serious work to do if the BNP is to be prevented from launching an East Midland-led revival.
One good result does not a summer make for the BNP - but we have been warned.
