The Rise of The BNP

The Church of England is considering whether to ban clergy from BNP membership. The BNP is far more of a threat to Labour than UKIP ever was to the Tories, well on the way to a dozen Strasbourg seats, to third place in numerous Westminster constituencies, and to second place in quite a few.

But who are the BNP?

There are not twelve thousand Nazis in Britain today. Nowhere near that number denies the Holocaust, or really holds eugenic views. Yet there are twelve thousand people in a party whose Constitution uses the word “folkish” and is concerned that potential members be sufficiently “Norse”. A Jewish Councillor is “Norse” enough for that party. But even so.

Maps quite recently published on the Internet show a concentration of BNP members here in County Durham, and especially in the east. County Durham has fully one per cent visible ethnic minorities, and no asylum seekers at all. Its easternmost district, Easington, was the only local authority area in the United Kingdom to be one hundred per cent White British at the last census.

Perhaps someone in academia will now write off to all those on this list, to survey them confidentially as to their views, and then to publish the findings. I suspect that those findings would come as quite a shock to the main parties and to their approved pundits. But not to anyone else.

There is real concern about loss of sovereignty, whether to the European Union, to the United States, or to global capital. About the practical consequences of that loss, from the Common Fisheries Policy, to the Iraq War, to the imported credit crunch. About the importation of a new working class whose members understand no English except commands, know little or nothing about workers’ rights here, can be moved around this country at will, and can be deported if they step out of line. And about deference to Islam.

There is real concern about the erosion of the traditional family and its values, not least on the airwaves in general and (because better is rightly expected of it) the BBC in particular. About the proliferation of lap-dancing clubs. About the de facto legalisation of cannabis. About the deregulation of drinking and gambling. About how the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have effectively lowered the age of consent to 13. About the Police not patrolling the streets. And about soft sentencing, the kind that gives rise to horrific calls for the restoration of the death penalty.

There is real concern that the white working class has been left behind. That no one ever mentions manufacturing, which still accounts for more than twice the GDP of the entire financial services sector, never mind the bailout-begging City alone. That the powers that be apparently cannot distinguish between the respectable working class and the characters from Shameless. That council and housing association tenants are therefore to lose security of tenure so that Shameless characters can be moved in next door to them, or even in place of them. And that there is such indiscipline in many schools serving the working class, the kind that gives rise to horrific calls for the restoration of the cane.

There is real concern that Scottish devolution has never been supported by the majority of eligible voters in Scotland, yet is presented by all parties there, both as “the settled will of the Scottish people”, and as “a process rather than an event”, a “process” which can have no logical end except one massively unwanted “event”. That a mere twenty-six per cent of the electorate ever supported devolution in Wales, where it is being used to entrench the rule of those who live in English-speaking areas but who speak Welsh as a cordon sanitaire. That the government of Northern Ireland has been carved up between a bizarre fundamentalist sect and a fully armed, highly active terrorist organisation. And about the treatment of England, the kind of resentment that gives rise to crazy calls for an English Parliament, a potential BNP platform.

These valid and well-founded concerns are very widely, deeply and strongly shared within the visible ethnic minority communities. Those whose concerns they are, are exactly the people who have decided every General Election since the War. Yet the main parties are not addressing them. So the vacuum is being filled. By the BNP.