Parties join forces to fight BNP

Senior politicians are drawing up cross-party plans to fight the British National party in next month’s local and European elections, amid fears the far-right party could stage advances by exploiting an “anti-politics” tide sweeping the country.

Harriet Harman, deputy Labour leader, and Eric Pickles, Tory chairman, will hold talks next week to draw up a strategy designed to isolate the BNP and to co-ordinate a united response in areas where the party is campaigning.

Ms Harman will propose that mainstream parties should not share a platform with BNP candidates and that they should avoid campaigning on issues that stoke sentiment against foreigners. There has also been talk of setting up a “hotline” where Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would share intelligence on BNP activity. The mainstream parties, and possibly church and other voluntary groups, would then knock on doors to try to raise voter turnout in an attempt to dilute the BNP vote.

Ms Harman has angered her opposite numbers by twice cancelling meetings to discuss the strategy. Lord Rennard, the veteran Lib Dem campaigner, will argue against making joint statements about the BNP on the grounds that they would give the party free publicity.

The rightwing party has long traded on its hostility to immigration and foreigners generally, but is now mining a seam of anger towards politicians, fuelled by stories about expenses claims.

Simon Darby, deputy BNP leader, said on Thursday his party aimed to exploit anger towards “professional politicians”. He said the party would field more than 400 candidates for county council elections on June 4 – nominations closed on Thursday – and that it would field a full slate for the European elections on the same day.

The proportional voting system in the European polls has raised the prospect of the BNP winning its first seats in Strasbourg, with Mr Darby claiming a target of five or six seats was “attainable”.

Hazel Blears, communities secretary, has admitted: “The BNP have got into ‘anti-politics’, which taps into a very resonant public mood.”

Labour’s discontent with the leadership of Gordon Brown is likely to be put on hold until after the polls, but could flare up if the party loses its last four county councils and fares badly in the European elections.

Financial Times

BNP leader defends policy on race

British National Party (BNP) chairman Nick Griffin has defended a party leaflet which says that black Britons and Asian Britons "do not exist". The BNP's "Language and Concepts Discipline Manual" says the term used should be "racial foreigners".

In a BBC interview, Mr Griffin said to call such people British was a sort of "bloodless genocide" because it denied indigenous people their own identity.

Mr Griffin is standing in the European Parliament elections in June.

'Politically correct fiction'

The BNP manual, leaked to an anti-fascist group and seen by the BBC, says that "BNP activists and writers should never refer to 'black Britons' or 'Asian Britons' etc, for the simple reason that such persons do not exist".

"These people are 'black residents' of the UK etc, and are no more British than an Englishman living in Hong Kong is Chinese. Collectively, foreign residents of other races should be referred to as 'racial foreigners', a non-pejorative term... The key in such matters is above all to maintain necessary distinctions while avoiding provocation and insult."

The manual describes the BNP's "ultimate aim" as the "lawful, humane and voluntary repatriation of the resident foreigners of the UK".

Commenting on the leaflet's content, Mr Griffin told The Report on Radio 4 that although "in civic terms they are British, British also has a meaning as an ethnic description".

"We don't subscribe to the politically correct fiction that just because they happen to be born in Britain, a Pakistani is a Briton. They're not; they remain of Pakistani stock.

"You can't say that especially large numbers of people can come from the rest of the world and assume an English identity without denying the English their own identity, and I would say that's wrong," he added. "In a very subtle way, it's a sort of bloodless genocide."

'Delighted'

Mr Griffin was also candid about the significance the BNP places on the ogan "British jobs for British workers".

The Prime Minister Gordon Brown famously used the phrase in a speech about skills training.

Mr Griffin claimed the prime minister borrowed the rhetoric from his party. "When I heard Gordon Brown use our slogan - British jobs for British workers - I was delighted," he said. "What Mr Brown actually meant when he said British jobs for British workers is of course down to Mr Brown.

"But there's no doubt that it was perceived - and was intended to be perceived - by millions of ordinary Brits as meaning that they would be at the front of the queue in front of economic migrants from anywhere else in the world."

"So having raised our slogan, promised it, we feel that he's legitimised our message."

'Pernicious'

Hazel Blears, secretary of state for Communities and Local Government, said she rejected Mr Griffin's charge that the prime minister's use of the phrase represents an endorsement of BNP policy.

"I certainly regret the fact that the BNP could be using language we've used in order to legitimise what I regard as divisive, pernicious policies which will actually do working class people no good at all," she said.

"What I don't regret is the fact that we need to have a proper discussion in this country about making sure that British people have a chance to get the skills, the education, to be able to get the jobs of the future."

The "British jobs for British workers" slogan was widely repeated during the BNP's recent council by-election campaign in Moston in Manchester, where the party's candidate, local publican Derek Adams, came second.

Moston is in the North West region, where the BNP hopes its supporters will elect Mr Griffin as the party's first MEP in the European Parliamentary elections on 4 June. Nominations close on 7 May.

Under the proportional representation system used in European elections, the BNP would need around 9% of the vote; in the last elections the party won 6.4%.

BBC

Comment is free: Blears' fears

If anything has fostered the anti-immigrant backlash Hazel Blears warns of, it is Labour's neglect of its core working-class support

Hazel Blears' sudden concern for what she refers to as "the ignored poor" is a little hard to stomach, given that New Labour has continually taken its traditional voters for granted, believing they had nowhere else to go. Now, with a resurgent Conservative party and an election less than 18 months away, they are suddenly in need of core support. The Labour party was founded 100 years ago to represent low-paid workers, and continued to serve that constituency until the 1980s. During its recent period in power, however, New Labour has courted big business in a manner that would disgust the party's founders. As a result, average earners have seen their standard of living remain static, at best, while the incomes of the top 1% have rocketed to unprecedented levels.

Of the 13 million UK citizens who are living below the low-income threshold, just over three million were either unemployed or unavailable for work in 2007. That means there are almost 10 million people out there who are working hard, yet are unable to make ends meet. They are the working poor and Labour, the party that was once their champion, has ignored their plight, leaving them vulnerable to the poisonous racism peddled by the far right. Over the past few years, the British National party has been picking up votes in those places where house prices are lower than average, where local residents have to face a constant influx of people seeking cheap accommodation and casual employment.

While Middle England has felt the benefit of this growing pool of cheap labour, the working poor have faced ever greater competition for scarce resources such as housing and those other vital social services that make it possible, just, to survive on a low income. Is it any surprise that they see immigration as a threat? However, if the vast majority of the working poor are racist, why didn't they vote in greater numbers for the anti-immigrant platform shamefully offered up by the Conservative party in the last two elections?

Could it be they recognise that the real problem is not immigration, but a global market that has no respect for local communities or national borders? That the unimpeded movement of capital is the root cause of their predicament rather than the mass movement of people? That immigrants are merely a convenient scapegoat for the failure of trickle-down economics?

Yes, they do vote for the BNP in worrying numbers, but more out of frustration than in any hope of getting a solution to their problems. Anyone who has seen BNP councillors in action knows that they are an electoral dead end. Yet, at a time when people are fearful of what the future holds, when the ranks of the working poor are about to be swollen as a result of a bafflingly complex breakdown of the free-market system, then the simplicities of bigotry offer an easy explanation for their dire predicament.

If the Labour party wants to combat the BNP, it needs to lay off the anti-immigrant rhetoric and address the real problem that keeps the incomes of working poor below the poverty line – the inequalities that have been created by globalisation.

Billy Bragg
Comment is free

Fighting poverty 'key to better racial integration'

Fighting poverty is the key to better integration between whites and Asians in a town which suffered race disturbances seven years ago, MPs heard today. People in Burnley, Lancashire, still lived "parallel lives" in segregated communities but increased economic prosperity would help break down those barriers.

Burnley Council's chief executive Steve Rumbelow told a cross-party parliamentary select committee that fixing the economy was the "real issue".

The Communities and Local Government Committee completed a two-day visit to the town as part of their investigation into community cohesion and migration.

In June 2001 up to 200 white and Asian youths clashed in a night of violence which involved attacks on pubs and shops. Two years later the British National Party (BNP) won enough seats in the local elections to become the second largest party on the borough council.

The select committee has already visited Peterborough, where there has been a large influx of Eastern European migrant workers, and will next go to Barking and Dagenham, where the BNP won 11 of the 13 local election seats it contested in May 2006.

Today, the committee was told by Mr Rumbelow that community relations were better than 2001 despite raised levels of deprivation.

He said: "The real issue is fixing the economy and making sure we have opportunities for all the communities. That will deal better with cohesion issues. It is true to say that living, to a degree, in segregated communities is not in itself a problem. The biggest problem is deprivation. The most urgent need is to turn the economy around. It is not the total answer but is the biggest part of the answer."

Economic development would help people crawl out of poverty and move away from poor areas and enable them to mix better, he said.

He said the council had not always got it right in the past with communicating how and why regeneration funding was distributed but their thinking was now clear. This had previously led to a perception that poor white areas were being neglected in favour of poor Asian areas.

Clive Betts, Labour MP for Sheffield Attercliffe, asked if it was accepted different communities lived parallel lives then was there a need to integrate unless it led to a riot.

Burnley Council leader Coun Gordon Birtwistle replied: "You do have parallel lives in Burnley but providing the parallel lives meet and achieve cohesion I do not have a problem."

Shufqat Razaq, Chair of Burnley Action Partnership, told the committee the historic matter of the distribution of regeneration funds and, to a greater extent, the knock-on effects of violent acts committed by Muslim extremists were the main sources of racial tension in the town.

He agreed that the downturn in economic fortunes in Burnley was also a factor. He said: "When you speak to my parents, thing did not start out bad. They were made welcome.

"There were racial tensions in the late 60s and 70s but it was not bad. There were plenty of jobs in the factories. When the decline started the jobs disappeared. There is a correlation between the tensions building up between the communities."

Yesterday, committee chairman and Labour MP for Milton Keynes South West Dr Phyllis Starkey said she was surprised that communities in Burnley were still living separate lives as they were in 2001. She added there were not enough jobs and a lot of poor housing, and those things affected the whole community.

The committee is expected to reports its findings and recommendations to Hazel Blears, Minister for Communities and Local Government, next month.

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