I have been taken to task elsewhere by a BNP activist, for asking why, if that party is the voice of the white working class, it can find no one in elected office in the North East to come and speak at Durham. Here follows the exchange:
"How about 50 votes away from winning a council seat in Hartlepool last time"
Pitiful. Is Hartlepool not white enough, or not working-class enough, or both?
"Two votes from a town council seat in Shildon"
Pitiful. Is Shildon not white enough, or not working-class enough, or both? And, speaking as a Parish Councillor, we are counting all the way down to that level, are we? That's a long was from Strasbourg, or indeed Westminster...
"25-30% of the vote in wards in Bishop Auckland"
Pitiful. Is Bishop Auckland not white enough, or not working-class enough, or both?
"Likewise Sunderland, Sedgefield and Newcastle"
Pitiful. Is Sunderland, Sedgefield or Newcastle not white enough, or not working-class enough, or both?
"Over 30% in Jarrow"
Pitiful. Is Jarrow not white enough, or not working-class enough, or both?
"respectable votes in Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar, North and South Tyneside"
For "respectable", read "pitiful". Is Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar, North Tyneside or South Tyneside not white enough, or not working-class enough, or both?
People often assume that, because they know that there are BNP MEPs "Up North", then that must include the North East. After all, it doesn't get much more "white working class" than the North East, does it? Precisely so. And that is why a party in the same vein as all Fascist parties ever - for people at the lower end of the lower middle class, whose life's work is looking down on their chavvy neighbours - gets absolutely nowhere here, and never will. Not that we don't have people like that. But we don't have as many as certain other places do. Evidently.
After all the hype, the BNP's failure to win a single seat this year, or even to come second anywhere, will be the end. Something else will emerge in 30 or 40 years, as the BNP itself did after the NF, and as the NF did after the BUF. But it will be exactly as successful as they were, and indeed less so than the BNP very briefly was. Which wasn't very much, anyway.
He has since given me something about expecting to come second in a forthcoming council by-election in Jarrow. To which I have replied that the BNP clearly has less than 18 months to live.
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The BNP vote in the Northeast was quite above average. Was it not about 9% even, if not higher, versus 6.4% nationwide? If it were a normal-sized constituency, the BNP would have won a seat there.
ReplyDeleteIt is obvious from polling data that BNP voters are the most working class of any of the seat-winning parties. You don't disprove that by repeating constantly that fascist parties are not based in the working class. The Nazis were competing with Social Democrats and Communists, the BNP competes with various stripes of liberalism.
Nine per cent here for the supposed voice of the white working class is laughable, indeed it is beyond laughable.
ReplyDeleteIt is obvious from that, and from the wards and boxes in question everywhere, isn't working-class at all, or at the very least does not identify as such. Like Fascist votes everwhere and always, in fact.
The BNP will not survive the failure to win a Westminster seat this year. It will go the way of noisy, over-publicised British Fascist organisations ever since the BUF, which is still treated as far more important than it really was in order to exaggerate the importance of the Communist battles against it. The BUF never really mattered. Nor does the BNP.