06.09.09
please don’t feed the fascists
- Creative Commons licensed image from akanekal on flickr
We woke up on Monday in a country that was a little less pleasant than it was on Sunday. The election of two BNP MEPs – one in Yorkshire and the Humber, one in the North West constituency – seems to confirm the dire predictions that the scandals dogging parliament would hand a breakthrough to the fascists.
The worst thing about this isn’t the simple fact that Britain will now send two of these vile, racist clowns to the European Parliament in our name. Rather it’s that this victory gives the BNP a platform which they’ve never previously enjoyed. As newly elected MEPs, they cannot legitimately be ignored by the nation’s broadcast media – and despite obvious distaste on the part of the interviewers, they have duly found slots on the week’s news programmes to spew their blatant, if weasel-worded, racist invective.
Worse again, the system of pay and expenses for MEPs essentially means that in the coming four years, the BNP’s operations will be funded to the tune of as much as four million pounds – by the taxpayer. That money is unlikely to temper their message, but it will improve their ability to deliver that message, which is a depressing prospect.
What went wrong? How did Britain, which for all its flaws is genuinely one of the most decent and tolerant nations in Europe, elect a pair of racist, homophobic, misogynistic, white supremacist politicians to the European Parliament? How the hell did it come to pass that this nation marked the 65th anniversary of D-Day – one of the greatest sacrifices made to combat the Nazis – by giving a platform to a new generation of fascists?
There is, at least, a silver lining. The figures speak for themselves; support for the BNP did not actually rise in the districts where their MEPs were elected. In both the North West and Yorkshire/Humber, the BNP vote was actually several thousand votes lower than it was in the last European election five years ago.
The BNP simply picked up these seats by default. With a low turnout, the vote for the Labour party collapsed; the Tory and Lib Dem votes slumped, in numeric terms, although the Tories managed to chart a very small rise in percentage share. The Green party surged, picking up 50% more votes than previously, but they already held a number of seats and it’s very hard to acquire more from that position. The BNP held steady, only slightly down on 2004’s numbers, and with an incredibly low turnout, that was enough.
I can think of no better metaphor than the one Justin at Chicken Yoghurt employed in his post on the subject on Monday morning – “This isn’t about a surge in support for fascists, it’s about a collapse in support for New Labour. The tide went out and exposed the stinking crap beneath the polluted waves.” The crap has always been there, it’s just that Labour’s muddy estuary water covered it up previously. No longer.
If that’s the silver lining, though, the reality is still sobering. Almost a million people cast a ballot for the BNP last Thursday – a million people who, on some level, see the party as acceptable, even as attractive.
I’d argue that the blame for that figure lies squarely at the doors of our major parties – and parts of our media. Britain has no truck with fascism or racism, on the whole – but in the past ten years, New Labour, the Tories and some segments of the media have done nothing but strengthen the BNP, giving credibility to their ridiculous narrative and turning them from a party on the outer fringes of lunatic politics, into a party that wins a million votes in an election.
This has happened because our political leaders, on both sides of the house, are too cowardly to challenge the BNP – or the BNP’s best cheerleaders, the tabloid newspapers who decry them loudly while simultaneously lending weight to all of their misguided, dishonest messages. We have spent ten years with a story running around this country about immigration. The story says that there is a “flood” of immigration to the UK. It says that our borders are open to whoever wants to come in, that bogus asylum seekers are clogging up our ports. Worse, it says that these people are taking jobs from British workers, and that the government discriminates against British citizens by putting immigrants at the top of the queue for housing, social services, healthcare and benefits.
These things are lies. They have been proven, time and again, to be lies. The figures cited by the BNP – and by tabloids like the Daily Mail – for immigration are based on (presumably deliberate) misinterpretations of the statistics, ably assisted by right-wing lobbyists such as MigrationWatch UK. Our borders are not open, nor are they assaulted by bogus asylum seekers. It is harder than it has ever been for a foreign person live and work in the UK, even as a qualified professional – or even as someone with many years of life in this country behind them. Our immigration system is tough as hell, our borders unwelcoming – even to the most genuine of migrants.
This is the reality – but somehow, the government and the opposition parties have allowed the BNP to get away with its lies about immigration. Of course, the BNP isn’t really talking about immigration at all; that’s one of many convenient phrases which the party uses to refer to “non-whites”. Most of the people it takes issue with aren’t actually immigrants, but are the children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants – with as much right to claim the label “British” as anyone else on the island.
Are the party’s million voters, however, racists? Perhaps. There’s certainly a big swathe of people there who fit the stereotype – angry, impotent white men who haven’t gone anywhere in life, who being too cowardly or not able enough to channel that anger into challenging the system choose to lash out at minorities who are, ironically, generally even more disenfranchised than they are. Ethnic minorities. Gays. Women.
I don’t honestly believe that there are a million angry racists swarming out to the polling stations, however. I suspect that much of the BNP’s legitimacy, if not its vote, comes from people who think they have genuine concerns about immigration. Exposed to an ongoing narrative about foreigners coming over here, committing crimes, taking jobs from honest British workers, building mosques to recruit for Terror!, and whatever else is on the front page of the Mail or the Sun this week, why wouldn’t they believe that these things are true – and that our major parties are failing to tackle serious threats to the nation?
Worse, both Labour and the Tories have done nothing but exacerbate this belief. Each has played a dangerous game where they attempt to outdo the other in being horrible to immigrants (and the disabled, and the unemployed). Each time Labour reveals a new way of making it harder for people to stay in the country – regardless of how settled and integrated they may be, or what a huge contribution they may make to the nation, as many recent cases have demonstrated – the Tories have a nastier one. Every word of vile, tabloid-pleasing rhetoric about asylum seekers that spills from a Tory mouth is immediately matched by two from someone on the other side of the House.
We are now, after twelve years of what should have been progressive government, a nation which treats those who come here as our guests as scum. We have built concentration camps to house immigrants as they pass through our increasingly cruel court system – concentration camps to which they are hauled in long trips across the country in the backs of windowless vans, with no consideration for age or illness. We have documented cases of families, of children emerging from these camps malnourished and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Meanwhile, supposedly one of the greatest democracies in the world now routinely sends genuine asylum seekers, fleeing persecution in countries where life is far cheaper than in ours, back to nations where they face torture or death. A young gay man was ordered to be deported back to Iran, which flogs and hangs gay people, with the Home Office’s advice being to keep his sexuality quiet – hardly possible, given that he had just gone through a court appeal process on the very basis of that sexuality. This ruling was quashed after an outcry; others were not. Our craven government sends people to their deaths in violent dictatorships rather than face grumpy tabloid headlines; our vile opposition says this isn’t enough, and wants even tougher rules.
The rhetoric and the reality of this evil system have emerged because Labour and the Conservatives don’t have the balls to fight the fascists on the real issues. Strong government and strong opposition would confront them on matters of genuine principle. Should we welcome asylum seekers fleeing persection? Should people from all around the world who wish to work hard and contribute to our society be allowed into Britain? They should be willing to roll out the facts, to place the isolated statistics used by the BNP or the Daily Mail into context and show the reality of immigration, the pettyness of the so-called “flood”.
They should, in other words, have spent the past decade framing this debate, forcing the fascists to fight on even ground. Instead, the phrasing and form of this whole discussion has been crafted by the BNP and its ilk. Parliament obsesses over the idea of being tough on immigration, instead of robustly responding to the idea that there’s an immigration problem. They talk about addressing the concerns of the BNP voters, rather than addressing the misinformation they have been fed. Rather than creating a new narrative, they seem content to flow with the clever and dishonest narrative of the far right.
My fear, today, isn’t about what the BNP will do with its minimal new-found power. Rather, it’s what the power-hungry, principle-free Labour and Tory parties will do in response – what new, aggressive, inhumane measure they will introduce to try to appeal to the BNP’s electorate, how much more rabble-rousing anti-immigrant rhetoric will now emerge not from Nick Griffin, but from the Home Office and the Shadow Cabinet. The fascists have dragged our democracy down to their level, and that’s more depressing than any BNP electoral victory could be.
