Back To Where They Came From

Edmund Standing writes:

Bad news: Out of an electorate of 44,173,690, only 15,136,932 bothered to vote in European Elections. And out of those who did, 943,598 voted for the BNP.

The good news is that means 43,230,092 people in Britain have no intention of voting for a racist party. And while it is still popular to just call all BNP voters 'racists', there's no way that there are 943,598 ideological racists in Britain today, so we have a problem. If these people were all ideological racists, the BNP wouldn't have had to tone down its rhetoric and try to build a more 'moderate' face in the hope of picking up the votes of disaffected people unaware of the real agenda.

The parties that focused highly on immigration - UKIP, BNP, English Democrats, United Kingdom First - received a combined 3,795,632 votes.

When that many choose to vote for anti-immigration parties, it should be clear that immigration is an issue that needs addressing. And with such a huge number of people not even bothering to vote at all, it should also be clear that politics are not engaging people and a mixture of apathy and the feeling that 'it makes no difference anyway' is a big problem.

The Left in particular needs to listen to the concerns of ordinary people if it wants to re-engage them.

Andy Burnham says:

"It is a sad moment ... We have got to understand why people have voted for the BNP. We should redouble our determination to take them on and take them out of British politics."

Meanwhile Bob Crow says that:

"it's the collapse of public support for the three main parties - each of which is pro-business, pro-EU and supportive of the anti-union laws - which has created the conditions for the scapegoat-politics of the BNP to thrive. The fascists' support in former mining communities like Barnsley is shocking and throws down a massive challenge to the Labour and trade union movement."

They are both right. It does seem bizarre, in the midst of economic problems and then scandals about expenses, that the Left is failing to engage voters, although I can understand it. In my first election, I voted for the Socialist Labour Party. I've always maintained left-wing convictions on many issues, in particular on workers' rights and the protection of public services, but I don't see much worth supporting on the British Left, given its descent into tiny factions and its bizarre obsession with Israel bashing and courting Islamists. I, along with many others, find myself in the situation of being essentially left-wing but finding small 'c' conservatives to often be far more sane in certain areas.

The Left has arguably overdone it when it comes to the drive against racism by condemning all forms of patriotic sentiment as being a superficial cover for underlying racial hatred. This may well be part of the reason for the rise (albeit a small rise) in support for the BNP, which uses left-wing rhetoric about supporting workers and tells them that it's also OK to say you love your country and have concerns about immigration and social cohesion. Of course, the BNP actually does have an underlying agenda of racial hatred, but the Left has failed to respond to this by developing an anti-racist patriotic alternative to the BNP. The nearest thing I've seen recently has been NO2EU - Yes to Democracy. I voted for them despite the fact they include far-left groups such as the Communist Party of Britain and Socialist Resistance among their number because they promoted policies that I consider to be sensible, but ultra-left groups like this are not the answer.

We need a patriotic Left in Britain, a Left that is pro-British and anti-extremist and that learns from the failings of the Left in recent years and the growth in support for the BNP. Whether we'll get one is another matter. If we don't, we can expect to see a rise in support for the BNP and the continuing fragmentation of society along ethnic and confessional lines.