Sustaining a mortal blow? The British National Party and the 2010 general and local elections
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0031322x.2012.655597
ISSN1461-7331
Autores Tópico(s)Political and Economic history of UK and US
ResumoABSTRACT In this article Nigel Copsey explores the British National Party's 2010 general and local election campaign and the political responses to it in two key BNP target constituencies (Barking and Stoke-on-Trent Central). As he shows, despite fractious legal action brought against the party by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, and a negligent attitude towards local activity, the BNP had approached the 2010 general and local elections in confident mood. In the biggest electoral push by an extreme-right party in British history, the BNP stood a record 338 parliamentary candidates, and no fewer than 739 local election candidates. Nick Griffin promised a major electoral breakthrough with the party expecting to make a serious challenge for the Barking parliamentary seat and to emerge as the largest single party on Barking and Dagenham council. When the results of the elections were announced, contemporary opinion had it that the BNP had taken a hammer blow, and was smashed into electoral oblivion. As Copsey reveals, the BNP was in part the author of its own electoral misfortune, but a resurgent Labour vote and a sophisticated anti-fascist campaign that created space for Labour to reconnect with its constituency were other key factors. Even though the 2010 general election was the party's best ever, the BNP sustained a major blow to its expectations. The results were a bitter pill for party members to swallow and the fortunes of Britain's leading extreme-right party have continued on a downward slide since. Keywords: 2010 UK electionsBarking and DagenhamBritish National PartyHope not HateMargaret HodgeNick GriffinStoke-on-TrentUnite Against Fascism Acknowledgement The author would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Dr Janet Dack in the preparation of this article. Notes 1BNP candidate Paul Cromie was elected in Bradford (Queensbury ward); Brian Parker was elected in Pendle (Marsden ward). 2BNP e-newsletter, 6 May 2010. 3Interview with Nick Griffin, broadcast on Radio Red, White and Blue, 10 May 2010, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lj_N-J_Euc (viewed 22 December 2011). 4Matthew Taylor and Hugh Muir, ‘General election 2010: the defeat of the BNP’, Guardian, 14 May 2010. 5 Far Right Electoral and Other Activity: The Challenge to Community Cohesion (Coventry: Institute of Community Cohesion 2011), 13. 6For commentary on the BNP's 2010 general and local election results, see Searchlight, no. 420, June 2010. See also Community Security Trust, Elections Report: Thursday 6 May 2010 (London: CST 2010). 7‘British National Party: statement of accounts year ended 31 December 2009’, Silver & Co Chartered Accountants, 6, available on the Electoral Commission website at www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/database-of-registers/statements-of-accounts/soa/pdfs/soa_20-01-11_10-57-32.pdf (viewed 28 December 2011). 8 Electoral Commission 9The Equality and Human Rights Commission was established under the Equality Act (2006). It has statutory responsibility for enforcing equality law. For a copy of the EHRC letter to Nick Griffin, dated 22 June 2009, see www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/letter_before_claim.pdf (viewed 28 December 2011). In it, the Commission expressed its belief that the BNP might be ‘failing to comply with the Race Relations Act 1976, in several respects, relating to: 1. The BNP's constitution and membership criteria 2. The BNP's recruitment and employment policies, practices and procedures 3. The provision of services by elected officers to their constituents and/or members of the public’. 10Editorial, ‘BNP's reason for its membership policy’, Identity, no. 101, 2009, 19. 11Posting by ‘british fascisti’, 17 December 2010, to the Politics and Activism Forum on Stormfront.org, available at www.stormfront.org/forum/t765142 (viewed 28 December 2011). 12Editorial, Identity, no. 103, Spring 2010, 5. 13Eddy Butler, ‘The Equalities Commission case’, June 2010, blog available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2010/06/equalities-commission-case.html (viewed 28 December 2011). 14Nick Griffin, ‘Anti-BNP court cases: does anyone really believe they are accidental?’, July 2010, available on the BNP website at www.bnp.org.uk/news/anti-bnp-court-cases-does-anyone-really-believe-they're-accidental (viewed 28 December 2011). 15‘British National Party: statement of accounts year ended 31 December 2009’, 24. For an overview of BNP finances after the introduction of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (2000), see the report by Searchlight Information Services, ‘Financial irregularities in the British National Party’, December 2007. 16BNP e-newsletter, 12 December 2009. 17‘British National Party: statement of accounts year ended 31 December 2009’, 6. 18Eddy Butler, ‘Paul Golding's electoral analysis’, 13 February 2011, blog available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2011_02_13_archive.html (viewed 28 December 2011). 19‘Is BNP leader quitting now while he's ahead?’, The Sentinel (Stoke), 21 December 2009. 20Butler, ‘Paul Golding's electoral analysis’. 21Eddy Butler, ‘The teardrop explodes tour’, September 2010, blog available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2010/09/teardrop-explodes-tour.html (viewed 28 December 2011). 22‘BNP unveils its 2010 campaign issues’, press release, 8 April 2010, available on the Black Country Patriot website at http://blackcountrybnp.blogspot.com/2010/04/press-statement.html (viewed 28 December 2011). See also ‘Nick Griffin launches the BNP general election campaign in Stoke-on-Trent’, Griffin interviewed by Tony Walley, uploaded by Pits n Pots, 15 January 2010, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqEL_FSl4XA (viewed 22 December 2011). 23BNP e-newsletter, 10 April 2010. 24See the BNP's ‘Campaign expenditure return by a party on the GB register’ for the Electoral Commission, 1 November 2010, available on the Electoral Commission website at www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/106763/British-National-Party-2010UKPGE-CE-Return.pdf (viewed 28 December 2011). 25‘Detailed data on expenditure and donations’, available on the Electoral Commission website at www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/party-finance-analysis/campaign-expenditure/uk-parliamentary-general-election-campaign-expenditure3 (viewed 28 December 2011). 26Robert Bailey, ‘London region Christmas newsletter’, 25 December 2009, available on the London Patriot website at www.londonpatriot.org/2009/12/25/london-region-christmas-newsletter-2009 (viewed 28 December 2011). 27Eddy Butler, ‘To hell with the expenses’, November 2010, blog available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2010/11/to-hell-with-expenses.html (viewed 28 December 2011). 28‘Nick Griffin speaks in Tameside August 2010’, Part 1, uploaded by TitansMarch, 11 August 2010, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKsItx20vhc (viewed 22 December 2011). 29David Leppard, ‘BNP support up 50% in far-right strongholds’, Sunday Times, 1 November 2009. 30Richard Barnbrook had already announced his intention to stand in Barking. A billboard publicizing Barnbrook's candidature had been displayed in the borough, and a leaflet (Barking and Dagenham Patriot) had been distributed calling on people to vote Richard Barnbrook ‘for a better Barking’. 31Eddy Butler, ‘Time to go’, June 2010, blog available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2010/06/time-to-go.html (viewed 28 December 2011). 32‘How Griffin turned nasty to oust Barnbrook from Barking’, 20 November 2010, blog on Kirklees Unity website at www.kirkunity.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-griffin-turnednasty-to-oust.html (viewed 28 December 2011). 33In late 2007 the BNP contracted Midas Consultancy, headed by James Dowson, to run the party's fundraising and administration operations. For a time Dowson was a central figure in the party but he quit in October 2010 following allegations that he had sexually harassed a female BNP activist. Dowson has recently joined up with Britain First, a new ‘patriotic’ organization, founded by two disillusioned BNP activists, Paul Golding (the BNP's former communications officer) and Andrew McBride (former South-East Regional Organizer). 34Paul Golding, ‘The media lives on lies!’, Identity, no. 101, 2009, 40–3. On the BNP and the media, see Nigel Copsey and Graham Macklin, ‘“the media=lies, lies, lies!”: the BNP and the media in contemporary Britain’, in Nigel Copsey and Graham Macklin (eds), British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives (London: Routledge 2011), 81–102. 35See, for example, ‘BNP meet after publicity chief held’, Daily Star, 5 April 2010, and ‘BNP's head of publicity arrested over threats to kill Nick Griffin in “palace coup”’, Daily Mail, 6 April 2010. 36Editorial, ‘The BNP has not profited from the publicity it sought’, Independent, 5 April 2010. 37Interview with Nick Griffin, broadcast on Radio Red, White and Blue, 10 May 2010. 38Eddy Butler, ‘The Unilever case’, July 2010, blog available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2010/07/unilever-case.html (viewed 28 December 2011). 39Simmy Richman, ‘You either love or hate it. The BNP offers no choice’, Independent on Sunday, 25 April 2010. 40Eddy Butler, ‘Jim Dowson; the man with the reverse midas touch’, 15 August 2010, blog available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2010_08_15_archive.html (viewed 28 December 2011). 41Sean Carey and Andrew Geddes, ‘Less is more: immigration and European integration at the 2010 general election’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 63, no. 4, 2010, 849–65 (860). 42David Wilkes, ‘The BNP unveil a “serious piece of kit”—their 2010 election manifesto’, Daily Mail, 24 April 2010. 43 Democracy, Freedom, Culture and Identity: British National Party General Election Manifesto 2010 (Welshpool: BNP 2010). 44Ipsos MORI Political Monitor, March 2010, available at www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/poll-March10-Tables.pdf (viewed 28 December 2011). 45Griffin pointed out that just 8 of the 90 pages were devoted to immigration. On the importance of immigration to BNP supporters, see Matthew J. Goodwin, Robert Ford, Bobby Duffy and Rea Robey, ‘Who votes extreme right in twenty-first-century Britain?’, in Roger Eatwell and Matthew J. Goodwin (eds), The New Extremism in 21 st Century Britain (London: Routledge 2010), 191–210. 46The headline of The Voice of Barking and Dagenham called for ‘local homes for local people’. 47Russell Myers, ‘BNP leader's true view exposed in People investigation’, Sunday People, 25 April 2010. 48Sam Tarry, Hope not Hate organizer, interviewed by Janet Dack, 23 March 2011. 49BNP leaflets included the following warning: ‘Labour and their friends in Hope not Hate are shoving hate and lies through all our doors. Most are posh students or Muslims, some are just freaks.’ 50Over the Easter weekend, the BNP unveiled a billboard in support of Nick Griffin's campaign. It featured four military veterans with the call ‘Support our Troops. Bring our Boys Home’; see Voice of Freedom, no. 114, May 2010, 11. 51See Nick Lowles, ‘Key electoral battlegrounds in 2010’, Searchlight Magazine, April 2010, available on the Hope not Hate website at www.hopenothate.org.uk/features/article/23/key-electoral-battlegrounds-in-2010 (viewed 28 December 2011). 52When calculated using the lowest vote for a BNP candidate in multi-member wards, BNP council candidates in the Barking constituency polled over 2,300 more votes than Griffin. 53Butler, ‘The teardrop explodes tour’. 54Revealingly, one BNP general election leaflet distributed in Barking quoted a war veteran who declared that ‘it's like all the lies their canvassers tell on your doorstep—the more they try to lie and bully, the more determined it makes you to vote for a breath of fresh air’. 55For the letter, see ‘BNP election leaflet distributed to black voters in Barking’, published on the Guardian website, 5 May 2010, at www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/05/bnp-barking-election-leaflet (viewed 28 December 2011). 56 The Barking and Dagenham Sentinel, 1 May 2010. The remark that was blacked out: ‘Hodge, was born in Egypt as Margaret Oppenheimer, the daughter of a [refugee millionaire German Jewish steel trader].’ The newspaper was produced by Sentinel publications (Edinburgh), put together by Patrick Harrington, general secretary of the Solidarity trade union, which is closely linked to the BNP. Harrington, a non-party member, was founder of the diminutive Third Way (which became the National Liberal Party—Third Way) and is employed by Nick Griffin as part of his European (MEP) team. 57See ‘Asian men and BNP candidate Bob Bailey clash in Barking’, BBC News, 5 May 2010, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england/8663681.stm (viewed 29 December 2011). 58Quoted in Taylor and Muir, ‘General election 2010’. 59Quoted in ‘Former Stoke-on-Trent BNP man criticises party’, BBC News, 21 March 2010, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/8579023.stm (viewed 29 December 2011). 60See The Sentinel (Stoke), 29 April 2010. 61BNP leaflet, ‘men and women of stoke, don't you think enough is enough!’, emphasis added, available on the ElectionLeaflets website at www.electionleaflets.org/leaflets/2050 (viewed 29 December 2011). 62Phil Burton Cartledge, Stoke Central Constituency Labour Party, interviewed by Janet Dack, 10 March 2011. 63Carey and Geddes, ‘Less is more’, 863. 64The Rochdale seat was contested by the National Front, which polled 4.9 per cent of the vote (the party's best result in the 2010 general election). 65Not only are BNP voters more likely to reside in Labour constituencies but so are BNP members; see Michael Biggs and Steven Knauss, ‘Explaining membership in the British National Party: a multilevel analysis of contact and threat’, European Sociological Review, Advance Access, 3 May 2011, at http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/09/10/esr.jcr031.full.pdf+html (viewed 22 December 2011). 66Stuart Wilks-Heeg, ‘The canary in a coalmine? Explaining the emergence of the British National Party in English local politics’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 62, no. 3, 2009, 377–98 (392). 67On Labour Party opposition to the BNP, see Nigel Copsey, ‘Meeting the challenge of contemporary British fascism? The Labour Party's response to the National Front and the British National Party’, in Nigel Copsey and David Renton (eds), British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2005), 182–202; and Nigel Copsey, ‘From direct action to community action: the changing dynamics of anti-fascist opposition’, in Copsey and Macklin (eds), British National Party, 123–41. 68‘Beating the BNP’, available on the Labour Party website at www.labour.org.uk/beatingthebnp (viewed 29 December 2011). 69Sam Tarry, interviewed by Janet Dack, 1 April 2011. 70Hodge's campaign against the BNP in Barking featured in a television documentary, The Battle for Barking, directed by Laura Fairrie. It was screened by Channel 4 on 30 November 2010. 71Will Woodward, Hugh Muir and Steven Morris, ‘BNP rears its head as Labour loses heartland seats’, Guardian, 5 May 2006. 72Darren Rodwell, Barking CLP, interviewed by Janet Dack, 14 March 2011. 73Morgan McSweeney with Jessica Studdert, Challenging the BNP (London: Local Government Association 2010). 74See Rick Muir, One London? Change and Cohesion in Three London Boroughs (London: IPPR 2008). A key factor in promoting population growth in Barking and Dagenham was the fact that the borough had the lowest house prices in London. 75Margaret Hodge, Labour MP for Barking, interviewed by Janet Dack, 22 March 2011. 76Darren Rodwell, interviewed by Janet Dack, 14 March 2011. 77Darren Rodwell, ‘The campaign to beat the BNP in Barking 2010’, 2011, PowerPoint presentation supplied to author. 79Carrie Martin, Stoke Central CLP, interviewed by Janet Dack, 10 March 2011. 78See Tony Walley, ‘Elsby to stand as an “independent” Labour candidate for Stoke Central’, Pits n Pots (online), 2 April 2010, available at http://pitsnpots.co.uk/news/2010/04/elsby-stand-independent-labour-candidate-stoke-central (viewed 29 December 2011). 80Phil Burton Cartledge, interviewed by Janet Dack, 10 March 2011. 81Carrie Martin, interviewed by Janet Dack, 10 March 2011. 82Lewis Baston, The Great Local Vote Swindle: The Local Government Elections on 4 May 2006 (London: Electoral Reform Society 2006), 25. 83Sam Tarry, interviewed by Janet Dack, 1 April 2011. 86Sam Tarry, interviewed by Janet Dack, 23 March 2011. HnH also had differences with Hodge over the ‘top of the ticket’ strategy. HnH felt that Labour should campaign around local people rather than focus almost exclusively on Hodge. HnH worked more closely with Dagenham and Rainham Labour MP Jon Cruddas. According to Hodge, Cruddas had criticized her for selecting Muslim candidates (Cruddas apparently believed that putting up Muslim candidates would not win back the white working-class vote). Like in Barking, the Labour campaign in neighbouring Dagenham prioritized voter contact; see John Greenshields, ‘“Tight-loose” campaigning in Dagenham & Rainham’, Labour Values (online), 10 May 2010, available at http://labourvalues.org.uk/tight-loose-campaigning-in-dagenham-rainham/ (viewed 29 December 2011). 84Sam Tarry, interviewed by Janet Dack 85See especially articles in the Daily Mirror, 5 May 2010. 87Margaret Hodge, interviewed by Janet Dack, 22 March 2011. 88Quoted in UAF leaflet, ‘Unite Against Fascism: stopping the Nazi BNP in the 2010 elections’, 10 May 2010, available on the UAF website at http://uaf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/2010elections2.pdf (viewed 29 December 2011). 89Darren Rodwell, interviewed by Janet Dack, 14 March 2011. 90Community Security Trust, Elections Report: Thursday 6 May 2010, 5. 91Nick Lowles, ‘The politics of HOPE and hate’, Searchlight Magazine, April 2010, available on the Hope not Hate website at www.hopenothate.org.uk/features/article/22/the-politics-of-hope-and-hate (viewed 29 December 2011). Compared to Unite Against Fascism, which spent £34,859 on campaigning against the BNP, Searchlight Information Services (Hope not Hate) spent £319,231. 92Gareth Harris, ‘The British National Party: “A small large party or a large small party?”’, paper presented to EPOP 2010 (Elections, Public Opinion and Parties Annual Conference), University of Essex, 10–12 September 2010. 93Nick Griffin, ‘Deadline 2014: the convergence of catastrophes and what the BNP needs to do’, 6 July 2010, available on the BNP website at www.bnp.org.uk/news/deadline-2014-convergence-catastrophes-and-what-bnp-needs-do-nick-griffin (viewed 30 December 2011). 944,200 members were eligible to vote. Of the 1,219 votes cast, Butler won 214 votes; Griffin won 971. 95For the reasons for Butler's expulsion, see Eddy Butler, ‘Expelled!’, blog, October 2010, available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2010/10/expelled.html (viewed 28 December 2011). At the time of writing, Butler had applied for membership of the English Democrats Party. 96Nick Griffin, letter to BNP membership, dated 6 June 2011. 97‘Democracy—The British way: constitutional improvements’, available on the BNP website at www.bnp.org.uk/PDF/GMM-MOTIONS.pdf (viewed 30 December 2011). 98For a lively portrait of Richard Edmonds, see Matthew Collins, Hate: My Life in the British Far Right (London: BiteBack Publishing 2011). 99BNP e-newsletter, 25 July 2011. 100‘The leadership contest’, 26 July 2011, available on Andrew Brons's website BNP Ideas at http://bnpideas.com/?p=1053 (viewed 29 December 2011). 101BNP, ‘First edition: Central Party Report—May 2011’. 102As many as 36 former BNP activists (including sitting councillors) contested the 2011 local elections either as independents or as candidates from other far-right parties. No fewer than 15 of 136 English Democratic Party candidates were former members or supporters of the BNP. 103Eddy Butler, ‘Mid term report: must do better (actually couldn't do worse)’, blog, May 2011, available at http://eddybutler.blogspot.com/2011/05/mid-term-report-must-do-better-actually.html (viewed 27 September 2011). 104Community Security Trust, Elections Report: Thursday 5 May 2011 (London: CST 2011), 4. 105 Elections Report: Thursday 5 May 2011 106‘Party overview: a report on the mismanagement of the BNP’, a document circulated by the Independent Andrew Brons Support Group in July 2011 claimed that the BNP was over £600,000 in debt. The BNP's failure to settle an outstanding debt of around £45,000 owed to Romac Press forced the Belfast printing company into liquidation in September 2011. 107Nick Lowles and Anthony Painter, Fear and Hope: The New Politics of Identity (London: Searchlight Educational Trust 2011).
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