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Fear And Loathing In Middle Britain
State of the nation
A look at two towns in England which have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. First, the Guardian investigates how the Labour stronghold of Stoke-on-Trent is proving fertile territory for the far-right British National Party, which has captured nine of the sixty seats on the city council.
Then, in the Times, a look at Dewsbury. A year ago most Brits had never heard of this Yorkshire town of around 55,000 people. Now, it is one of England's most notorious addresses.
Earlier this year, the press was gripped by the story of 9 year old schoolgirl Shannon Matthews, who disappeared presumed kidnapped. Some commentators griped that the media paid little attention to her family's plight, as the working-class Matthews lacked the televisual appeal of Madeleine McCann and her parents. They got more than they bargained for, however, when Shannon showed up in the home of a "family friend" - police suspicions that Shannon's mother and other family members faked the kidnap in order to extract cash from the McCann appeal sent the story spinning into the stratosphere. Newspapers picked apart the complex love lives and parenthood of the Matthews clan with fascinated revulsion; the Dewsbury Moor estate where they lived became a by-word for the exotic livestyles of Britain's white underclass, who are as distant and unreal to metropolitan reporters as the tribesmen of New Guinea.
Dewsbury didn't really need more attention. One of the July 7 suicide bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, lived there in his final months. Earlier, a girl of twelve was reported to be under investigation for the attempted lynching of a five-year-old. And this weekend, seven children aged between 15 and 12 are being held in connection with the death of Amar Aslam (17), who was beaten so badly police had trouble identifying his body.
Initial reports claimed Amar's death was race-related: These appeared to be the results of over-eager reporters, imagining that racist killing was another curse for Dewsbury. It has since been revealed that the boy was killed by an "Asian" gang (Asian being British for Muslims from Pakistani or Bangladeshi backgrounds).
The Times has more:
"This is where Mohammad Sidique Khan, leader of the suicide bombers who attacked London in July 2005, lived in his final months. His wife, Hasina Patel, worked at the same Church of England junior school where Aishah Azmi gained notoriety in 2006 by refusing to remove her full-face veil in the classroom.
"Ms Azmi’s father was the headmaster of the Islamic seminary attached to Dewsbury’s giant Markazi mosque, which has adopted an isolationist approach to life in a non-Muslim country. The Markazi is the European headquarters of the global Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jamaat, which wants to build Europe’s biggest mosque alongside the Olympics site in London.
"One of its leading British ideologues has argued that Muslims should feel the same hatred for the ways of Jews and Christians as they do “for urine and excreta”."
Although the TImes does not mention them, there are reports that Muslim elders are running Sharia courts in the town.
The newspaper reports that whites and Muslims live in a state of "mutual incomprehension" in the town. Although race-related crime is said to be rare, the BNP won its biggest vote here (5000 people).
Ourselves Alone
And it's the appearance of the BNP which exercises the Guardian's man in Stoke-on-Trent, where some fear that the hard-right party may wrest control of the council in the next three years.
On the face of it, it sounds unlikely. The BNP has nine councillors out of sixty, well short of a majority, even though Labour insiders fear that the party now has more support than any other in the city. Labour, with 15 seats, is running the council as a minority: To win control, the BNP would need a clear majority, as Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives will be obliged to follow national level guidelines and refuse to go into coalition with the far-right. We're not sure how many independents on Stoke's council are of an extremist bent, so the party's chances of forming a ruling council via this route are unclear.
The BNP's strategy has been studiously grass roots. According to the newspaper's investigation, would-be councillors and workers are on hand to ensure pensioners' lawns are kept tidy and work hard to appear respectable. They offer a sympathetic ear to those with grievances - especially those which mainstream politics have deemed impolite. "The men and women of the BNP look like your neighbours," complained one former Labour councillor.
It's a line which worked well for Irish extremist outfit Sinn Fein in the 1990s. The mainstream Ulster nationalist party, John Hume's SDLP, looked out of touch compared to the hands-on opportunism of SF party activists, who leant on the council to mend roofs and could also bring their "influence" to bear in keeping unruly youths off the street. Coupled with their ceasefire strategy and the British government's indulgence, Sinn Fein went from unspeakable to electable in a decade: It is now the largest Catholic party in Ulster and its leaders occupy many local government offices in Northern Ireland.
Could the BNP share Sinn Fein's success? The British nationalists don't have an armed wing at their disposal and few predict that the government is likely to make concessions to BNP demands, whatever they might be.
The BNP's "success", such as it is, has been concentrated in places like Stoke and Dewsbury. Interestingly, its major issue - immigration - doesn't have the same impact in Stoke as it does in Dewsbury. In Dewsbury, between a third and a half of the population of 55,000 is thought to be "Asian." In Stoke (pop. 250,000) non-whites make up only 5 percent of the population. The Guardian reports that while unemployment in the city has fallen in recent years (it had high jobless levels when its potteries and pits closed) there is a long-standing problem of people on incapacity benefits who may never work again. Locals refuse to countenance voting LibDem or Conservative. Only a few years ago, all sixty of Stoke's council seats were Labour: "In this one-party state, the BNP has stepped into the vacuum," the newspaper reports.
Still, nine seats to control of a council is quite a leap; to translate these local inroads into a national impact is more implausible still. A look at national figures suggests that the threat from the BNP is being exaggerated.
There is still no BNP Member of Parliament - in the 2005 general election, the party won 0.7 percent of the national vote. In the 2005 General Election, the BNP won 192,746 votes for its 119 candidates nationwide; Sinn Fein, who only contest seats in Ulster, won just a few less with 174,530.
The BNP ran in the Welsh Assembly elections, winning 4.3 percent of the vote (and coming 5th), but no seats. The party has one seat on the 25-person London Assembly. First past the post results had the BNP's man coming nowhere but the party list system gave them 5.3 percent of the vote, enough for one "London-wide" seat. Some predicted the BNP would win two or even three seats on the Assembly.
As for the broader picture in England and Wales, the BNP has around 100 councillors out of a total of 20,000 councillors in the two countries. That's a half of one percent of Britain's local government councillors; hardly the sort of figure that shakes the foundations of the state.
Perhaps there is a fear that the large number of people who refuse to vote in British elections harbour BNP sympathies - but when the BNP has enjoyed electoral success, turnout has been down. The BNP's biggest share of the vote, 52 percent in Barking in a local election in 2004, was won on a 29 percent turnout. The councillor retired from his seat less than a year later, complaining other councillors wouldn't work with him. The seat swung back to Labour when it was contested again. Do the mainstream parties, and particularly Labour, suspect that the British are closet fascists, and will stream to the BNP if they're not warned constantly about the dangers of this tiny party?
Compared to the success of far right parties in some European nations, this level of support is risible. But the level of attention from the press and the main parties, all of whom make solemn statements on the "rise" of the far right, far exceeds their vote and influence. Why should this be?
