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A lethal mix of race and rage

Hasan Suroor

The anti-immigrant British National Party is now being seen as a potential option by white working class voters disillusioned with mainstream parties.

CRYING WOLF? Or is the anti-immigrant British National Party (BNP) really knocking at the gates?

In an extraordinary confession, which has caused panic in Britain's mainstream political establishment, a senior Government Minister has said that eight of 10 white voters in her East London constituency of Barking are "tempted" to vote for the BNP in the coming local elections because they believe that there are too many immigrants around, and they are taking away their homes and jobs.

If true, it is a dramatic leap for a party that used to be contemptuously dismissed as the "loony brigade" and whose own supporters were slightly ashamed of it. And if this is happening in a traditional Labour stronghold in the heart of cosmopolitan London, what about the less "enlightened" areas of Britain?

Margaret Hodge, the Minister in question, said she was shocked at the level of support for the BNP among conventional Labour voters.

"When I knock on doors I say to people, `are you tempted to vote BNP?' and many, many — eight out of ten of the white families — say, `yes.' That's something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP, they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now, they are not," said Ms. Hodge, the Employment Minister and a close ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an interview to The Sunday Telegraph.

Some have dismissed her remarks as a standard election-eve tactic to jolt Labour activists into action, and get the Labour vote out on the polling day on May 4. Indeed, Ms. Hodge's own colleagues have accused her of providing oxygen of publicity to the BNP instead of countering its hate campaign, said to be based on "lies and half-truths" about immigrants and asylum-seekers.

Scare stories about the BNP gained more ground when, barely days after Ms. Hodge's "misguided" remarks — as one Labour MP put it — the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, a leading thinktank, in a report said that up to 25 per cent of voters "might vote" for the BNP in the May 4 elections. There was more scary news when a YouGov-Telegraph poll showed that seven per cent of the voters were ready to back the BNP, and that 24 per cent had considered voting for it in the past or were considering doing so now. It said that to nearly three-quarters of potential BNP supporters Britain "almost seems like a foreign country."

So, what is going on? Is it really all hype? There is no doubt that over the past few years the BNP has become more visible and, even if not too many people are voting for, it is now being seen as a potential option by white working class voters disillusioned with mainstream parties. They are seduced by its slogan of "Britain for whites" and the promise of "restoring" the country to its old "glory" before it was "swamped" by immigrants.

In its most ambitious leap into local electoral politics, the BNP is fielding 356 candidates this time — and though it is not likely to add significantly to the 15 council seats it already holds across England, a high-profile campaign fuelled by media hype would certainly help it establish its presence in areas where it dared not go before.

Labour, Tories nervous

Despite their brave public rhetoric, both Labour and Conservative parties are nervous. Searchlight, a leading anti-racist group, has warned that in some seats even "100 votes either way could help the BNP get in." "The threat is bigger than ever before," a Searchlight spokesman said as the group launched a well-publicised campaign to counter the BNP propaganda. It released a dossier containing the "lies" that, it said, the BNP was spreading to portray ethnic minorities as a threat to the country's social fabric.

The worrying part is that clearly a climate exists in which it is possible to peddle such lies, but as commentators, including those on the Left, have argued it is not necessarily racism that has contributed to a situation that groups such as BNP can exploit. In most cases, it is said to be an expression of "rage" arising out of a perception among deprived white working class families that they are being neglected by mainstream parties who are more interested in wooing the immigrant vote. These are people who have not been able to cope with the social and cultural changes taking place around them, and are looking for scapegoats. Along comes the BNP and says: "These bloody foreigners are taking away your jobs and homes — support us and we will fight for your rights." And they fall for it.

As Ms. Hodge put it, in relation to her own constituency: "When I arrived in 1994 it was a predominantly white, working class area. Now, go through the middle of Barking and you could be in (predominantly non-white) Camden or Brixton. That is the key thing that has created the environment the BNP has sought to exploit. It is a fear of change. It is gobsmacking change."

Whatever the reason, it is now widely acknowledged that large sections of white voters feel neglected and are simply waiting to be exploited by groups like the BNP. Clearly, time for Labour to take the writing on the wall more seriously.

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