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It's not that important! It really isn't!” Stephen Fry got it wrong about MPs' expenses, but we could surely adopt his catchphrase for the rise of the BNP. In the past week or so, things have followed a traditional path. We speculated that falling support for mainstream politics would drive voters into the arms of the BNP, then we paid a bit of attention to the BNP — and then we realised that the bogeyman was still wearing a red nose and driving a clown-car.
The fact that the BNP's political ideas resemble those of the mid-20th-century European fascist movements is far less important than the fact that their support-base resembles that of Kajagoogoo. Your ideas are only as dangerous as they are popular.
German and Italian fascism were huge mass movements. The BNP is not. It has less than a quarter of one per cent of elected officials in local government. Even if it does win a seat in the European elections, the likelihood of it making the slightest dent in the direction of this country's politics, let alone that of Europe, is nil.
The moment the the BNP leaves the back rooms of Dagenham pubs and moves into the light of public attention, what stands out is not its evil, but its ineptitude. No sooner were a handful of BNP councillors elected in Barking and Dagenham than two of them were exposed as never having actually lived in the wards they were supposed to represent. Their attendance records have made Andrew Mackay look like a Stakhanovite: it's been calculated that each one costs the taxpayer £1,600 per council meeting to which they show up.
Last week their most senior elected member, Richard Barnbrook, was facing suspension from the London Assembly for inventing three murders in an attempt to spread alarm about knife crime — when a single call to the police would expose his claim as nonsense. Is this, I ask you, the cunning plan of a Blackadder — or of a Baldrick? Now the BNP's leader, Nick Griffin, declares that the award of the Victoria Cross to Johnson Beharry was a symptom of “positive discrimination by a PC-mad government”. Is publicly attacking a decorated war hero, I ask you again, the strategy of an electoral mastermind?
It is true that there exists a white working-class minority that feels itself disenfranchised by a middle-class liberal Labour Party. It's also true that, until the mainstream parties find a way of talking to these people, the BNP will pick up some of their protest votes.
But protest votes is all they are. The BNP's very selling point is that it is a disenfranchised outsider — and that means, in practice, that it is committed to having no credible candidates and no political effect whatever. We can sleep easy in our beds.
* At a time when most public servants seem anything but, can we have three cheers for Peter Tatchell? Here is a man of invincible probity, whose chief reward for his efforts is getting his head kicked in, rather than his moat dredged. His latest adventure was to join a Slavic Gay Pride March in Moscow — in the full expectation of getting pasted by “neo-Nazis, skinheads, ultra-nationalists and Christian fundamentalists” or the Moscow police. In the days of “outings” of closeted public figures who had spoken against homosexuality (I rather take his side) he was denounced as an extremist. But he stuck to his guns, and the times have caught up with him. If it pleased Her Majesty to create a Lord Tatchell, he'd improve the place no end.
Marriage that came with a Price attached
And so to Jordan and Peter. They always gripped the imagination because they seemed so mismatched and yet so fond of each other; so artificial and yet so genuine. More guileless a creature than Peter Andre would be hard to imagine. And Katie Price — well.
I was among massed hacks interviewing them both before they made their fateful trip into the I'm A Celebrity jungle. Jordan, I remember, bafflingly refused to play the game.
“I'm a taken woman,” she said, boredly. “No, I'm not going to sleep with anyone in the jungle. I don't fancy any of the other contestants. Forget it.”
A couple of days later, we read of how she was longing for a lesbian romp in the Aussie outdoors — in the Sunday red-top with whose representatives she'd quietly agreed a exclusive.
“Heartbroken & TOPLESS!” read yesterday's headline. What a gal.
Elementary, my dear paper vendor
At a party for my friend Philip's wedding on Saturday, the best man told a story that gave the measure of the groom. Philip was walking down the street in his favourite deerstalker hat. He passed a newspaper vendor, who interrupted his cries of “Staaayaand-aaaard!” to poke fun at Philip's headgear. “Oy!” he shouted. “Oy! All right, Sherlock! Ha ha!”
Philip turned around and gave the man a look of blank incomprehension. “Ha ha! Sherlock! Ha ha!” the vendor continued. Philip: “Sherlock?” The man tried again. Then, realising he was getting nowhere, indicated his head. “Hat! Sherlock!” Philip, as if in innocent puzzlement: “Yes. I was just wondering how on earth you happened to know my name was Sherlock.”
Reader views (4)
The white working class,50-60 years ago were just that: working. Generally working class family values and sense of community and culture were strong and important. In my family (painters and decorators) the importance of family was strong. Not much money but we were all expected to go to school to work hard, respect teachers and value education. Culture can only be maintained if people live it: Sunday lunch together, playing cricket & football in the back alley, doing things together as a family, going to church, caring for children etc.
Slowly and for all sorts of reasons (high rise estates, 70's get rich quick consumerism, nanny /benefit state) this has been diluted and almost lost.
The BNP do not represent the British Working Class Culture just the loss of it and the dreadful, bigoted attitudes that have developed in its place.
However I agree there needs to be a way to hear what the workless white community feel and want and no party seems to really care enough to do that.
- Naino, London, 25/05/2009 22:45
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"No sooner were a handful of BNP councillors elected in Barking and Dagenham than two of them were exposed as never having actually lived in the wards they were supposed to represent"
I've lived in Barking all of my life, in my current ward since 1996, and not one of the councillors representing that ward have lived in the ward, regardless of the political party they represent.
That said, I agree entirely with the main thrust of the article. The rise of the BNP in Barking & Dagenham was much more of a backlash against the local, Labour dominated council for their ineptitude, rather than any wider, national rise in popularity.
- Escobar-Alop-Lop, Camden County, 19/05/2009 16:11
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Well done for speaking up praising Peter Thatchel! He may not be my cup of tea but he does have the right to be different. He is well on his way to becoming a 'national treasure' and I second your call for him to receive an honour.
He is a brave man willing to stand up and be counted!
- Manny Goldstein, London, UK, 18/05/2009 14:12
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I think you are very wrong about the small minority who feels disenfranchised by a liberal, middle-class establishment. I grew up in a working class family and I can tell you that the majority of those that you would call natural Labour voters feel that way. None of the major parties has listened to the white working class in this country for 30yrs. The BNP are the least of our worries. If you want to prevent crime and increase social mobility then you have to listen and get involved with every part of society.
- Mark, London, 18/05/2009 13:26
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