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How Labour legitimises the BNP

People don’t vote for the BNP: they vote against New Labour and the rest.

The BNP gets a staggering amount of press coverage: columnists queue up to prove their liberal credentials by pasting them, while Nick Griffin is rarely off our screens. Yet he's the leader of a small, poorly financed, internally divided party that is never going to be a major force in a first-past-the-post political system. So what's going on?

What is going on is the betrayal of the British working class and a political symbiosis disguised as opposition. The Labour Party no longer pretends to represent working-class people: it's far too busy fluffing our spectacularly incompetent City elite. And into Labour's old role is stepping the BNP, promising not only local jobs, services and communities, but that the party has changed its old racist ways.

The liberal reaction to this is disastrous. I've written a play about the rise of the BNP, called A Day at the Racists, during which I debated Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking (where of course Griffin is challenging her). I was shocked at her argument -- basically that the BNP are a bunch of simple racists and therefore any decent person should vote Labour. That kind of patronising disrespect for the legitimate frustrations of her constituents also gives the BNP legitimacy -- it makes them seem like they have something important or original to say, something that mainstream society doesn't want you to hear.

Everybody wins -- except the disenfranchised working class, whose real needs remain conspicuously unmet by any political party.

The thing liberals fail to see about the BNP is that they are a repository for ordinary working people's desire to get their dignity back. (In that sense, they have a lot in common with Islamists. Both see liberal mainstream society as misrepresenting and exploiting them, and so they hit back in a way calculated to cause maximum offence to liberal sensibilities. Maybe they should get together.)

People don't vote for the BNP, they vote against New Labour and the rest. And those people feel treated unfairly by the unequal free-market society that not only Westminster politicians and corporate flacks, but also liberal media types benefit from. They are angry at you.

What makes the BNP important is not that they are going to win seats, but that they show the limitations of liberal capitalist democracy. In that sense, they are an outrider for the hypothesis of my play -- a post-racial, "tolerant" nationalism, a neo-fascism that anyone can join, embodied by a mixed-race Asian character who becomes a BNP candidate.

In real life, the BNP themselves are so besmirched with racism, not least in the public eye, that they will never be the party which makes that argument credibly. But somebody will, and liberal capitalist democracy right now doesn't have an answer.

Anders Lustgarten's play "A Day at the Racists" has a one-off performance at the Broadway Theatre in Barking on 16 April.

Tags: Election 2010  BNP

35 comments

Dave's picture

@Stan - why do you have to state your freakin' job? Trying to impress?It doesn't make BNP policies sound any more sensible to me at all. In actuality if someone says their profession before expressing an opinion it makes that opinion seem very shaky, like no one could possibly take it seriously so I'd better tell people I have a good career. Or something.
Opinions should stand or fall on their own merits, not because you are, according to you, a research chemist.

blueboy's picture

Seeing the defenders of the race outside the Croydon office on TV a biological question troubles me ( I know you guys like eugenics ) Why do you all look like Fred and Rose West ??

blueboy's picture

Actually I've just thought on. You could ask Nick about the Lebensborn the SS breeding programme. You could mate with proper Aryans like Swedes so that when everyone is deported we won't be left with a nation of squint eyed gargoyles. So glad I could help.

Paul Johnson's picture

Under this Labour government us in the south have had to bankroll the north.Good to see Nick Griffin coming south to Barking.

blueboy's picture

It just gets better now you want to deport Northerners, that'll play well in Stoke and Burnley

Shaun's picture

Blue boy, I know you admire the BNP, just your not able to come out the closit, because your scared of the stigma, not willing to stand up and be counted in your countrys hour of need, it takes guts something lacking by the weak labourfiles.

shaun's picture

architect Peter Phillips stands for the BNP in the next general election in winsor, looks like another top profesional has seen sence all the the pre planned mass building program the labour goverment have planned

blueboy's picture

Now,you've got your Albert " I didn't know anything guv" Speer.

shaun's picture

A latin word

SPUCATUM TAURI

Shaun's picture

TU STUPIDUS ES

poacher's picture

It is we who pay the piper and at the next election we will call the tune. VOTE BNP and save your nation

blueboy's picture

Ah yes, the guts to pick on innocent people because of their race. That was the guts of the Einsatzkommando in Poland and Russia. At least you guys are consistent.

blueboy's picture

That isn't an indigenous language. They'll chuck you out of the party. Keep doing it they'll chuck out of the country.

Bisley's picture

This is like an article that would have appeared early last century describing the rise of Labour, When the population didn't want to vote for Tory or the libs, The Bnp is attracting better and more commited persons to their ranks. The people are waking up to their future and don't like what the corrupt Lib/Lab/Con have in store for them. We are being betrayed !

Shaun's picture

In AD43 it was 1,967 years ago it was.

Ave caesar! Anguis in herba

Adam Hill's picture

"The thing liberals fail to see about the BNP is that they are a repository for ordinary working people's desire to get their dignity back"

Excellent article.

John11111111112222225's picture

this parliament have destroyed the Britain our forefathers worked so hard even fought and died for

Lib Lab Tories UKIP have raided the British coffers believing they have the divine right to steal

only the BNP can end these members of parliament traitorous thieving little corrupt world

BliarBlair's picture

It's the only vote that'll shake the machine.

Cornwall's picture

Excellent article labour wouldn't know what working class was if it hit them in the face. people are migrating to different parties and in many places there are only right wing alternatives, here in Cornwall most of the traditional labour and liberal vote is going to the plaid/snp esque mebyon Kernow. unfortunately elsewhere there is no left wing alternative that appeals to working class people.

Gordon Kennedy's picture

Could not have put it better!

Well written, and reflects what I hear on the doorsteps of the constituency 100%.

Gordon Kennedy
Independent
Dagenham&Rainham

www.JustVoteThemOut.com

Will Mossop's picture

"while Nick Griffin is rarely off our screens." That is not really true is it. Film and pictures of Nick Griffin are occassionally on our screens as the left wing media line up to insult and attack him to perpetuate the demonic image they are promoting but how often do we actually hear what Nick Griffin and the BNP have to say?
However, Nigel Farage of UKIP, the establishment safety valve, pops up more times than rice crispies. He's Question Time yet again this week.

9xzulug's picture

the more we engage with bnp and listen to their claims the more the(white)disgruntled,waivering voters will realise the bnp's true motives.as a black english(british)brummie who as engaged with edl followers,THEY ALL FEEL INGNORED THATS ONE OF THE REASON THEY'VE BECOME MISGUIDED RACIST.so engage and put their concerns to rest otherwise sadly we as a nation will eventually feel the angry backlash.we are sitting on a timebomb lets defuse it before it goes off.peace n unity leads to HARMONY

Lee John Barnes's picture

The BNP represent the final phase in the breakdown of the globalist liberal system. The global economic system is in crisis, the global media machines that peddle corporate and war propaganda mistrusted and despised, our nations swamped with immigrants as cheap votes and cheap labour, our governments fighting illegal oil imperialism wars abroad for the US oil companies, our political systems in the grip of the Zionists and Dhmmi-Liberals whilst a 'soft fascism' surveillance state is created here at home to monitor dissidents and the Servile State in the name of Political Correctness places the interests of minorities before the interests of the majority.

The old Left / Right Paradigm of politics is long dead - all there are now are Nationalists and Globalists.

Those who will smash the system and those who will continue to prostitute our nation and people to the system.

People vote BNP as they want their country back.

And only we can, and will, give it back them.

Steve Ransop's picture

Labour, Tory, Liberal all have the same reaction to globalized labour as commodity- they welcome and embrace it as do the entire British establishment. The fact that a 2 billion strong workforce can now be utilized by capital at a keystroke means support for the BNP and others standing on protectionism will increase across the EU. Socio-economic groups E,D are affected now but C1 and C2 are next. All want industry, manufacturing and living wage jobs, this will be a tall order and that is why the "simple racists" defense is so attractive to the political class and vested interests. The political class are unable to deliver what people want and this is why they can't even bring themselves to mention the "I word" this election.

Simon London's picture

"The thing liberals fail to see about the BNP is that they are a repository for ordinary working people's desire to get their dignity back".

No.

The thing liberals fail to see about the BNP is that they are a repository for ordinary indigenous British people's desire to get their COUNTRY back.

Shaun's picture

oh dear you can not even debate, without resorting to insults, please why dont you try to convince me that imigration works, go on I am waiting.

say no more point proved.

blueboy's picture

As a I'm fed up with these foreigners coming over here forcing their latin on us, walking round our forests in their togas, they want to build a temple to their bleedin' god Mars bloody eysore. People lived here all their lives, can't even get an oak tree. Had that Boudicca in the back of my chariot once- lovely woman.

Shaun's picture

Your mitrocodria is lacking ATP, go and have a biscuit, regenerate a glucose, dont worry if your a type 1 diabetic, insulin is not needed to cross the blood brain barrier. however your brain may not have enough dopermine a nuro tranmitter, maybe your brain cells has been invaded by the lefty virus, hence the lefty virus is controling replication in your nucleas and the new protein strands have burst the cell spreading the lefty virus with your brain effecting more cells,please go see your doctor, I think you have the lefty marxist labour virus. although no concervativesdp biotic can kill a virus, you will have to wait for your BNP antibodies to fight it and kill it.

james's picture

You know why I am voting BNP, because quite simply I am sick of the state of this country, nobody cares except the BNP.

shaun's picture

Yes silly me, your right, how stupid of me, of course we need more immigrants and we can be all benifit from a multi cultural divirse culture. looks lovely mixed up with the country cottages, and we get a better health care all for the same tax money, and yes ill just spend a few extra years working for my state pension to fund it.

Barbara's picture

@Lee John Barnes, BNP's legal director:
Hey Lee, you must be pretty busy with the problems thrown to you from EHRC and the Electoral Commission
but at least you're famous -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7riIRhdrU8

Barbara's picture

I think the article and several comments make excellent points that are difficult to dispute.
My difficulty is in exchanging faith in the old politics for fairh in the BNP. There is nothing about this party that gives me any confidence that they can or will do a better job than the traditional parties.

John Amery's picture

I don't know about imigration, but immigration is fine by me.

Stan Mason's picture

I'm a research chemist and I vote BNP because their policies are the only ones which will stop the UK becoming an Islamic state in 50 years' time. They would bring our troops back NOW, leave the EU and deal with the illegal immigration scandal. Sounds sensible to me.

blueboy's picture

Wow Dr Mengele lives ! You'll be a shoo in for the T4 programme if you take power. How it must distress you working for the NHS, all those people of different races coming together for a common purpose!

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