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THE SUN is said to have an entire team combing through it. The News of the World is on the case. Even the FT, it's claimed, is looking for financial fascists to name and shame. But to my mind one of the most interesting things about this week's leaked BNP "membership list" is that so far, nearly three days after it was published on the web, the best-known figure to have been found on it is a stand-in DJ on talkSPORT Radio.
Given some of the things they say, it would frankly be bigger news if some talk radio presenters were not sympathisers of the far-Right (the DJ concerned, it must be stressed, claims he joined the BNP as part of an "undercover investigation"). We await whatever Fleet Street's finest may find. But what struck me, looking through the list, was the comparative modesty of most of the addresses on it.
It does seem that the BNP is broadly what we always suspected, a party of relatively small numbers of the skilled working class and lower-middle class from overwhelmingly white, medium-sized provincial towns. There are relatively few from London, and remarkably few from the London postal districts, suggesting that once people live with others of a different race, they learn not to fear them (of course it might also reflect a lower-than-average pool of potential members, and fewer recruiting efforts, in these areas).
The fact that the list makes special note of those members with higher education (one is described proudly as a "chartered mechanical engineer" and "MD of high-pressure water pump firm"), and there are only five acknowledged civil servants and 15 teachers on it, also suggests we need not fear that BNP sleepers are in a position to seize the commanding heights of British society and politics.
That is not intended to be snobbish. All political parties need a wide range of supporters from all walks of life. But if Labour and the Tories have too many lawyers and lobbyists and not enough bricklayers and butchers, for the BNP the problem is clearly the reverse. And, despite a rather favourable recent political climate for racist ideas, there are so few of them! Twelve and a half thousand names from a population of 60 million, and even this probably an overestimate. The list includes many whose subscriptions have lapsed.
The BNP, as in all crises, is giving us a convincing impression of a headless henhouse (pure-breed chickens only, please). And this leak is clearly damaging. It shows a lack of discipline, competence and security, and is a clear deterrent to present and would-be members. Would you want to join "Britain's foremost patriotic party" if you thought that the fact of your membership, together with your home address, would be advertised on the internet?
But in other ways it might help them. The BNP feeds on two things: media attention, and the politics of victimhood. It's getting both this week. Membership of the BNP is legal, and it is clearly both wrong and illegal for ordinary private citizens' personal details to be published like this. The right to privacy, like any other right, is meaningless if it applies only to people of whom we approve.
And even if we cannot feel too troubled by the (probably minor) victimisation awaiting those on the list, or the capital the BNP will try to make from that, we should be troubled by the growing tendency of opportunist mainstream politicians to use the party, hateful as it is, as a whipping boy to bolster their own dodgy causes. The cry that "if you don't vote for me/ support this policy" you will be "boosting the BNP" has been abused by politicos from Ken Livingstone to Phil Woolas. Mr Woolas has used it to justify some rhetoric not a million miles from the BNP's own.
Parts of the policing establishment recently invoked the spectre of BNP evil against government plans for directly elected police authorities. Bob Jones, chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, warned (absurdly) that policing could be "hijacked" by the BNP if elections were held. Elections, said another police authority member, Saima Afzal, would mean less diversity - far better to stick with appointed people like her.
Views like these are not only repellent - we cannot be trusted with democracy because we might vote for the "wrong" people. They are not only defeatist - have you so little confidence in your own arguments and personal qualities? They are also profoundly dangerous.
The alienation on which the BNP feeds arises precisely from the fact that quangocrats such as Afzal and Jones, and the police, and a dozen other public services, are insufficiently accountable to the people they serve. One of the other things about that BNP membership list is how relatively few names it has from Barking, the party's London electoral heartland. That confirms to me that the white working class of Barking are voting BNP not because they are racists but because they are fed up.
We saw a similar, London-wide revolt, happily directed towards a mainstream candidate, during the recent mayoral election. The white working class voted en masse for Boris in protest against a mayor who showed little evidence of being interested in them, or recognising their place in London. Meanwhile, Livingstone's shameless use of the race card, and his false accusations that many of his opponents were racist, did produce a high Labour vote among ethnic-minority Londoners. Thus a mainstream politician did more to racialise the electorate than the BNP ever could.
Whenever conventional politicians either wheel out the BNP as a spectre, or pander to it, they are bigging it up. In fact, as the leaked "membership list" again confirms, the BNP is a very small party, able to make a big push in one or two places but completely lacking the numbers to break through more widely. And even where it does win, it can be beaten back, as in Burnley and Oldham, if the non-racist parties address the disaffection which causes its rise.
The BNP's real asset is not its rather attenuated, and this week distinctly embarrassed, membership. It's the way in which some in mainstream politics play into its rotten hands.
Reader views (24)
Here's a sample of the latest views published.
I don't think democracy is working any longer, we should proscribe the BNP, Tories, Lib Dems et al and have a one party state, with Gordon Brown as President of the Glorious People's Republic of Britistan. And when he dies, the title immediately goes to his son.
- Dave, Swansea
the sun news can critisize about the size of the bmp bieng 13000. if you push the indienios population to for you will get what you had in 1939-1945 get the picture.
- G.Stocker, ilford essex
Now we know what little threat the BNP poses eh!
We also know that the Labour Party pose a big threat to our democracy, our economy etc.
Let us see what happens in the 2009 elections, it could get very interesting!
- Tim Brown, Essex England
Can i asked the question, what is the government doing about the bnp, why allow such a organisation to exist as a national party,is this not conflict of interest, or is it that thegovernment share this idelogy og the bnp movement? what is diversirty and race relation about?
- Garrick Prayogg, Merseyside
I lived in London for years and was sick to the back teeth of the political correctness. The BNP seem to be the only people not afraid to stand up to the do gooders who want to wreck your country. Ordinary british people, get some backbone stand up for your way of life.
- Mike, ireland
Yes...do limit immigration or better still , find english/british recruits to fill posts at the many hotels/tube stations/cafés and other low paid jobs that only want to pay peanuts for slave labour and then see how the economy does. (anyone for cockle picking on the Kent coast) Nah..did'nt think so.
This country was built by the British and given away to a large extent by the preceding governments for the greater good of Capitalism after the Empire imploded.
Love it or loathe it, the consequences are widespread from cheaper human resources to ghettoes of particular nations within our nation.
Those who came here and integrated, made lifelong English friendships and worked hard... still have little to shout about except maybe a home of their own and their kids in education if they are lucky.
The BNP have a right to make a stand to protect whats left of England but there are better ways to go about it than to alienate the very people who helped to make it great and stir up hatred amongst whites who may have friends of other nationalities and only wanted to make a stand, uninformed perhaps...but as you say not dangerous enough to cause concern. It is the legacies of Thatcher and Blair have seen to it that we will fight each other for what is rightfully all of ours but has now been left to a battle of religions and minds. Blame not the leaders of these parties but the mandarins of Business and whitehall in power.
- Ps, London
Pilko has a good point. LB is spot on!
- Cath, London
“It's cool and edgy for the middle classes to live in Brixton, Hackney etc …”
Yeah – I’m one of those ghastly cool, edgy, middle-classes. Actually, I can trace my family within the area back to 1850. Hackney started out as a rather naice, middle-class village, or don’t you read your local history? The “middle classes” who live here do send their children to local schools, shop at local shops, get involved in local events and invest their whole lives in the area. Inverted snobbery and class judgement is as ugly as racism.
“areas being swamped by immigrants …” – “multicultural society has been imposed on us …”
Well, as I’m the genetic product of Saxons, Normans, Celts, Vikings and more than a Roman or two, to which culture do you think I should subscribe?
- Horribly Middle Class, Hackney
I'm not for the BNP. But as our multicultural British society is being marginalised by massive immigration and all things British and Christian are deemed politically incorrect, I can see why more and more people would be pushed into such radical thinking. Not all Islamics are radicals and not all BNP's are thugs.
Instead of whipping up all these storms, fix the problem. Limit immigration. Give Britian time to regroup and strive for social cohesion. Then thugs and radicals will be the minority. Keep this open door policy and there will be so much division and hatred that the BNP will really pose a threat.
Give Britain a chance! We are not Europe.
- Maria, London
'Once people live with others of a different race, they learn not to fear them'
What a perfect way of summing up how utterly clueless and arrogant the middle classes are about the effects of mass immigration.
The reason the BNP even exists is because of areas being swamped by immigrants, changing the face and fabric of the area.
It's cool and edgy for the middle classes to live in Brixton, Hackney etc when they choose to as always in the back of their mind, they know that they can always move back to Oxfordshire, Surrey etc when their kids are old enough to go to school or they have had enough.
These people will never know what it's like to have roots in a area and see it totally decimated with the blessing of the powers that be. They will also never know the feeling of not having the blanket of mummy and daddies house in Hampshire if things get too hard
The British working classes have traditionally always been left wing and tolerant, many are looking to the BNP for a reason....deal with that reason and the BNP go back to being a bonehead street gang instead of a legit party with seats on the London Assembly
- Lb, London
There is nothing right wing about the BNP. They are a socialist party looking to restrict human freedoms in many ways and committed to a policy of nationalising much of industry.
- Pilko, London
I don't know what is wrong in being member of the BNP. The multicultural society has been imposed on us. It seems only fair some people should not agree with the big changes (and not always for the best), mass immigration had brought in our lives.
- Jacques Viollet, Cannes - France
Why do you hate the BNP so much? Labour lied to get the UK into an illegal war that has resulted in over 6000,000 dead. Now that IS disgusting. I certainly wouldn't want my children to be taught by a member of the Labour party.
No BNP support? Did you check out the recent Boston local election result (difficult to find as the media didn't cover it)
- Stan Mason, Bristol
small extreme party full of nobodys going nowhere.isnt that what was said about the natzi party and the communists
- Rob, lerwick
First off, let me point out to Mr Gilligan a fundamental mistake in his article. There may only be 13,000 members on the list, but members don't win elections, voters do. A large proportion of those on the list take time out to walk the streets posting leaflets on a regular basis, which is one of the ways we continue to increase our percentage of the vote. And that's a big percentage. In local elections across the country, the majority of results are above 20%, a fact that also dispels any idea of being able to write us off as a threat because we are smaller than the LibLabCon. Our strength lies in the depth and breadth of support we have
that hasn't yet manifested itself into votes, but this Labour induced credit crunch is opening the doors of
discontent, and the discordant voices of those with the will to vote BNP can be clearly heard. Don't make the same mistake as Bigears Brown, the squatter from number 10. He underestimates us, and it will cost him and his party dear.
- Craig Pond, Branch Secretary, Stoke-On-Trent Bnp, Stoke-on-Trent, England.
Seems to me that the bnp have often led in highlighting many issues that adversely affect the lives of all who live in this country; with regard to 'race' issues, they seem quite rightly to highlight the disparity towards the condemnation felt at and media coverage given of a race crime against a black person as compared with that against a white person.
- Helen, norwich
The BNP exists for a reason, maybe the other political parties should wonder why and redress some of the concerns their supporters have. Many feel let down by the mainstream parties and the BNP fill that gap.
- Paul Wilson, London, UK
I'm not even a member, but was on the list. My family are very scared.
- The Witch, Bucks
You are quite right about the threat being more perceived than real.
Also it is a testament to our democracy that the BNP can spout tosh.
To ban Political Parties however strange and woolly their ideas is one step too far towards totalitarianism.
- Howard Leech, Gdansk, Poland
I agree that the revelation shows that 12,000 BNP supporters is frankly nothing to get excited about, but I think the issue that has staggered many people is the political muscle that has been applied. The issue is clearly one of democracy, freedom of speech and the right to belong to a LEGAL political party or union. Take the BNP out of the equation and we see that the socialist political apparatus have narrowed our political choices without any of us noticing. The media has been clearly compliant in this act of treachery towards the British people. Our democracy is under threat from the left wing bullies that run this country and nobody raised a red flag (forgive the joke) on Fleet Street. Not one iota of dissent.
If I have this correct the police are now a politicised force since they can persecute and fire any officer for their legally held political beliefs. I find that astonishing and quite simply wrong, whether we are talking about the BNP or indeed any LEGAL political party. We have clearly entered very dangerous waters because where does this stop do the socialists then say that no one from UKIP can be hired by the police, or the conservative party or the liberal democrats. And if we want to take this example to the extremes why are Communists not banned they clearly, along with fanatic Islamists pose the greatest threat to our society.
Why are you and the other papers not exposing this attack on democracy and our right to freedom of speech and to join LEGAL parties?
- Richard K, Nottingham
Mr.Gilligan I think you under estimate the amount of support that the BNP has from the professional class. Would you knowing that you could be fired choose to openly choose Join/support the BNP? I think not.
Secondly, I actually know several people who have professional jobs and do support the BNP.
Nothing is as it seems,Mr Gilligan.
- Gary, London
Very good article, The BNP are undercover racists and everyone knows it.
- Ahmed, bradford
Theres a big differance between membership and voting for a party, how many people are members of the Labour, Conservative or liberal twat parties?
- Brandon Thomas, London UK
I have heard about the many lists this government has lost.but you are talking about one list that was stolen.
- David Chertsey, Chertsey UK
