Though Cowards Flinch

I have to admit, reading this article from the BBC on the BNP London mayoral candidate, I’m impressed. He almost manages to pull off the facade he is aiming at; a respectable, reasonable man who just wants what is best for all people, regardless of race, religion or whatever else. The key word, however is almost. Underneath the veneer lies the very worrying ideas which the Left continues to challenge.

Asked if you could be a British Muslim he pauses and says: “The answer is yes, but on the grounds that you follow all of the identities being described of living in this country and benefiting this country.

“You may have your religion behind your closed doors but you don’t bring it onto the streets. You can be gay behind closed doors, you can be heterosexual behind closed doors, but you don’t bring it onto the streets, demanding more rights for it.”

What is interesting are the things left unsaid. One can’t demand ‘more rights’ for a religion or for a sexual preference, but where does that leave religions, sexual preferences and other divisive concepts wherein one strand is institutionally disadvantaged? For example, the issue of gays adopting children. Campaigning on that issue is campaigning for more gay rights – yet it is redressing a fundamental inequality.

This is mixed with a criticism of Thatcher’s attack on communities. As with various far right parties a mélange exists, combining populist socialism and a vicious nationalism. Even environmentalism seems to be featuring on a BNP agenda which appears to aim at capturing every element of disaffection, in order to meld them into a contradictory mass, focused on the BNP as a party of redemption.

Particularly worrying are the racist undertones of what Mr Barnbrook has said on housing allocation. Rather than give out housing on the basis of need – i.e. judgments according to the safety of an individual if left in place, or whether or not they’ll be living on the streets, the BNP wants to give out housing according to who has been on the waiting list longest. This comes off the back of Margaret Hodge’s suggestion that British families take priority.

The result of such a policy would be that people living in the country longer (i.e. more white people than immigrants) would get housing faster, regardless of the effect this would have on homelessness etc. It’s a neat way for the BNP to put white people (the aboriginals as they say, to confuse people’s feelings over what we did to Australian and American aboriginals) ahead of coloured people, in large part, without appearing overtly racist.

One of things which is most interesting is the extent to which the BNP seem to be making headway amongst former supporters of the left. The mayoral candidate himself, Richard Barnbrook, left Labour after the defeats of the Thatcher years. Plenty of BNP material denounces the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Barnbrook himself comments, a lot of BNP supporters come from former adherents to Labour.

Though this might shock some people, anyone familiar with Trotsky’s writings on fascism in Germany will see it as a matter of course. Indeed, anyone who has done any door step campaigning will have first hand experience of people who, having voted Labour all their adult lives, have decided to switch to the BNP. This is a serious trend, but it is one that we can reverse, if we take the right steps as a Party.

Some of the defections from Labour to the BNP could be down to the traditionally left wing, populist clothes which I’ve described the BNP as wearing when it suits them. Responsibility must also be assigned, however, to a collapse in Labour activism. One feels inclined to ask, where have all the Labour educational officers gone? Each CLP has slots for an educational officer charged with encouraging ideological debate.

Far from pulling Labour members at the closest point of contact (i.e. CLPs) into debate and discussion, the overall tenor of CLP meetings is to discuss the practical goings on of the Labour movement. That’s a necessary part of running a CLP; knowing what your allies are doing, what the local and national governments are doing and what the opposition is doing. If it fills up time to the exclusion of all else, it can be extremely harmful.

The war against Iraq drove people away from the Labour Party – but it needn’t have. There were many thousands of Labour members across the country in 2003 who marched with the Stop the War Coalition. In every constituency, there was at least some basis for building up Labour opposition to the war. CLPs taking a firm grasp of anti-war sentiment would have held our base a little more solid than it currently is.

It was unlikely that this would ever happen, however, except in certain areas where the socialist groups already predominate. To do so would have required ideological debates between party members, debates which, it seems, our constituency parties have often been at pains to avoid, for fear that it would lead to division. These sort of debates only ever seem to emerge when prospective candidates are vying for favour.

That electoral focus for our ideas is harmful. In 2003, no election was on the horizon, but a national campaign against the war was. Because of the degenerate state of the left, most activists were pulled into the London-centric organisations which opposed the war, rather than being pulled towards their CLP as a way to engage with the debate. Socialists in the Labour Party did try to bring the subject up – but to little avail.

Had we succeeded in voicing the opposition of Labour members to the war, rather than being somewhat drowned out by the Stop the War Coalition, we might have retained activists. Had we on so many issues been able to make the dissenting voice within Labour heard above some of the universally attacked policy announcements by Labour’s leadership, people might not be quite so ready to defect to the BNP.

We weren’t able to do that. Indeed, even campaigns such as John McDonnell’s leadership bid only received coverage by the media in the last few weeks leading up to the nominations of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Far from being the excesses of the left which are driving people towards the BNP, it is the dominance of the right and the pressure exerted by that right on the grassroots to fall into line.

People see Labour entreating with the captains of capitalism, they see Labour taking us into several wars, they see Labour abolishing the 10p tax rate (whatever the rights and wrongs thereof) and suddenly along comes a party with the opportunist manifesto to correct these ills. Moreover, it is a party which also provides a visible enemy – the rather alien figures of immigrants who walk through our communities, “taking our jobs.”

Dissent within Labour, therefore, takes on an altogether new character when considered in this light. The right-wing policies of this Labour government defiles the reputation of the party as one that represents the working class. Coupled with the bureaucratic inefficiency and anti-activism of the Trade Unions, this will drive some people away from the traditional organs of the left towards the jingoistic, newly media savvy far right.

It is the role of the dissenters within Labour to make themselves heard. The possibility of a victory for the BNP in getting a London Assembly member elected is a warning sound for all of us. We cannot afford to tolerate the ideologically barren dominance of the managers in the (somewhat) democratic structures of the Labour Party. If we do, it won’t be long before we lose what respect Labour has for the achievements of the past and have to build them anew, in a different Party.