That the BNP vote comes from traditional Labour supporters is lazy drivel, and based on the assumption that Labour could ordinarily expect every vote cast in, say, the North West, or the East End of London. Well, long may the Tories continue to tell themselves that.
Without exception, ward by ward and box by box, BNP support is in the relatively more upmarket end of the given town or locality, however little that might be saying in any objective terms. In Glasgow North East, the Labour vote held up sufficiently that Labour kept the seat, while the Tory vote went down so far and the BNP vote went up so far that they were almost even at the end.
If the BNP has a consciously working-class following, then it is the only Fascist party in the world ever to have had one. It does not. It is like all the others, including the BUF and the NF in their respective days: a vehicle for those who see themselves as a cut above their chavvy neighbours; for, in British terms, Tories in Labour areas.
Far from being the voice of the self-identifying white working class, the BNP could not manage an MEP in the North East last year, and I am not sure that it has any councillor above Parish or Town level here. It certainly has no one on the newly unitary Durham County Council, nor had it on any of the preceding District Councils. Are the North East in general and County Durham in particular not white enough for them, or not working-class enough from them, or both?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
So sort of like Albert Steptoe? I love how the Old Man would say things like "with more working-class people voting for the Conservative Party, the quality of your average Tory voter has really gone down!" Of course I am paraphrasing but, I think that was the gist of it.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, on the other hand, the Steptoes were pretty working-class, perhaps even poor, so maybe Albert doesn't count. Maybe the average BNP voter is more of an Alf Garnett type?
PS: Sorry to bring TV into this, but I sometimes think television, particularly good television, can help us understand the real world, sometimes.
You may be right about the demography of the BNP's voter - I don't now enough about it to form a judgement.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the fact that no BNP MEP was elected for the North East is partly due to the small size of the region, with only 3 MEPs and thus a high quota. The BNP vote was a higher percentage in the North East than in the North West, where lower quotas (9 MEPs) meant that Griffin was elected.
Sui Juris, the white working class dominates the population in the North East, taken as a single unit, in a way which does not apply in the North West. Any claim to be the voice of that class is disproved by the failure to win a seat here, certainly considering that the Lib Dems managed it. The BNP didn't even come fourth: UKIP also took nearly double the BNP's vote.
ReplyDeleteMr. Piccolo, Albert Steptoe wasn't poor, of course. One of the recurring themes was that he had a lot of money stashed away, but refused to spend any of it. And Alf Garnett also thought of himself as better, most obviously than the non-whites, but also than plenty of other people, such as the Irish and their offspring.
If the BNP do well in Barking and nowhere else then you are going to be able to pat yourself on the back as the old line still holds. If they do well in the northern mill towns then all bets are off.
ReplyDeleteThere have always been people such as I describe in the old mill towns. Rather a lot of them, in fact.
ReplyDeleteGaining 4.9% in Glasgow North East was a very good showing for the BNP! They beat the Liberals as well as Tommy Sheridan + the SSP vote combined. The party never gets more than 1% of the vote in Scotland anyway! If it ran in southwest Edinburgh or on the Western Isles, what do you think it would receive? 0.6%?
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, a rather huge amount of polling data was calculated following the European elections which rather showed the BNP to be the most working class of the six Great Britain-wide parties to take MEPs, and it claimed the second most voters from a Labour background to Labour itself. I think you chose to write off that statistical evidence with your own mere hunches.
Obviously the BNP, just like the FN, VB, and FPÖ, does best not in all white working class areas among people who look down on chavs but in those high immigrant areas with a non-cosmpolitan white population. In such places, the vote for what you arguably falsely deem a "fascist" party is extremely high.
"Gaining 4.9% in Glasgow North East was a very good showing for the BNP!"
ReplyDeletePrecisely my point.
"If it ran in southwest Edinburgh or on the Western Isles, what do you think it would receive? 0.6%?"
Again, precisely my point.
"As I recall, a rather huge amount of polling data was calculated following the European elections which rather showed the BNP to be the most working class of the six Great Britain-wide parties to take MEPs"
Then you recall wrong. It polled well in areas that the Tories have now written off, but that is about the Tories. They used to do well in those areas, although much of their rising generation does seem to be sincerely oblivious to that fact.
"it claimed the second most voters from a Labour background to Labour itself"
I don't know where it has "claimed" this, and in its own terms I don't know why it would. In any case, it's not true, even where the 2009 European Elections were concerned. The honours for that particular booby prize would be tied between the Lib Dems and UKIP.
"what you arguably falsely deem a "fascist" party"
Well, there is no doubt where you are coming from now, is there?
<<"what you arguably falsely deem a "fascist" party"
ReplyDeleteWell, there is no doubt where you are coming from now, is there?>>
--I do not think I like what you are trying to imply. What is this terrible fascism, anyway, that "no decent person can support"? If it has something to do with launching aggressive foreign wars and occupations, hyping fear of foreigners, a corrupt corporatist, cartelised fixed "market", authoritarian suveillance of the population, etc.,...you can look to your own government and opposition parties.
If fascism is to be defined as the earlier fascist and National Socialist platforms, represented not in the least by the (Catholic) Strasser brothers...then the BNP is maybe 75% or so in agreement. But you too are not far off, and such a platform better represents **your** own views.
Do you have, then, a rational point to make about the BNP, or is it an issue of retaining Germanic bourgeois respectability?