Author: Nick Lowles | Date: July 2001
BNP Profiting from Hate
The BNP achieved the best ever general election vote for a fascist party in Britain last month when Nick Griffin took 16% of the vote in Oldham West and Royton. Across the town over 12,000 people voted for the party. The result was the combination of rising racial tensions and violence in the town and a modern and innovative campaign strategy by the BNP. Unchecked it provides a platform for at least one election gain in the local council contest next May.
The British National Party scents blood. For the first time in its 20-year history the BNP believes it is breaking out of the political wilderness. On the basis of its general election vote, in which it averaged 3.9% and saved its deposit in five seats, the party thinks it has an opportunity to win several council seats next May. This, its leaders believe, will be a platform for future success at local and national level.
The scene for this BNP breakthrough was Oldham, where the party attracted 12,000 votes. In Oldham West & Royton, Nick Griffin, the party leader, polled 16.4%. In Oldham East & Saddleworth, Mick Treacy took 11.21%. In neighbouring Ashton-under-Lyne, Roger Wood polled 4.52%. A crude look at the ward breakdown is even more alarming. According to one councillor present at the count, the BNP gained over 50% of the vote in Fitton Hill, home of the nazi Fitton Hill Crew and the Oldham Irregulars. In the more affluent Chadderton ward, it is estimated that the BNP polled between 20 and 30%.
The BNP vote came after months of rising racial tension cleverly manipulated and exploited by the fascists. As early as February, the council and police were forming a task force to attempt to defuse mounting racial unrest. In the weeks before the election fascists and football hooligans went on the rampage and the National Front attempted to hold several demonstrations. On 26 May, following a violent assault on a predominantly Asian street by a gang of white racists, the Oldham riots erupted.
Fruitful territory
The BNP had seen Oldham as potentially receptive to the party's message for some time. As early as 1999 the BNP-supporting magazine, Spearhead, carried an article detailing attacks on whites by Asians. But until recently there was little BNP activity in the town.
For several years there had been a gentleman's agreement between the International Third Position and the BNP, under which the ITP operated in Oldham while the BNP targeted Burnley and Rochdale. On some occasions there was open dialogue between the two groups, with BNP regional organiser, Chris Jackson, able to call on Combat 18 and ITP activists from Oldham to protect BNP events and election candidates. Some people, such as Paul Harris, a local activist, were involved in both groups.
It was not until summer 2000 that the BNP established a branch in Oldham, though numbers remained small. Fewer than 20 Oldham-based BNP activists turned out for the election campaign.
In March the BNP held its northern rally in the town followed by an impromptu demonstration outside the local police station.
The BNP had decided it would stand in both Oldham seats well before the recent troubles. However, events were to prove beneficial to the party. An unfounded BBC Radio 4 report into alleged 'no-go' areas for whites was given added legitimacy with the cowardly attack on 76-year-old Walter Chamberlain by three young Asians. Despite the family claiming the assault was criminal not racial, the popular perception, reinforced by the press and the police, was that it was a racist attack and that 'no-go' areas existed.
The BNP lost no time in exploiting these events. Forty-eight hours after the attack, on St George's Day, Griffin announced his candidature in Oldham West. The day was marked by BNP members anonymously placing St George's Day flags around the town, forcing the council 'unpatriotically' to remove them.
In a 24-hour period Griffin was interviewed for Channel 4 News and Tonight with Trevor McDonald, appeared on GMTV, and debated with Lee Jasper for Radio 4's Today Programme. He was also interviewed by the Oldham Chronicle, BBC North News and the locally based Revolution Radio. The new media-friendly BNP is a far cry from the BNP of old, which viewed the press at best with suspicion and more usually with outright hostility.
Over the following few weeks the NF attempted to hold demonstrations in Oldham and gangs of football hooligans gathered in the hope of clashing with Asian youths. The BNP moved to occupy the moral high ground, publicly condemned the NF and hooligan activity as 'unhelpful' and portrayed the NF as 'extremists'.
This was rich coming from the BNP who, when the Oldham United Against Racism group held an anti-racist march in the town, BNP organiser Mick Treacy tried to organise a counter-protest in the hope of rallying the town's white community.
Privately, it revelled in the racist backlash knowing that it would only polarise communities. When 450 Stoke hooligans rampaged through an Asian area in late April, Griffin publicly condemned their actions and smugly claimed, 'this was the failure of the multiracial society'.
As the racist gangs became more active, so the Asian communities became more afraid. This soon turned to hostility towards the police for their inability to prevent the marauding racist gangs. Despite a Home Office ban on political marches, the NF was repeatedly allowed to enter the town and hooligan gangs were allowed to move from pub to pub seeking a clash with Asians. The failure to enforce the ban only encouraged the racists to continue.
The fuse ignited on 26 May after a racist gang attacked a predominantly Asian street. Several residents who came out of their houses to defend themselves were arrested and the night exploded into violence.
The BNP loudly condemned the Asian rioters but exonerated the white gangs. '[The media] are now caught up in an orgy of spin trying to pin the blame on a handful of young whites alleged to have assaulted Asians earlier in the evening. Whether this group even existed or not we don't know, but from the way in which police vans were penning groups of young whites into pubs and keeping them under close surveillance, including repeated stop and search incidents, we think it unlikely that any whites would have had a chance to go looking for trouble even had they wanted to.'
These 'young whites' were a 50-strong gang of football hooligans and Combat 18 supporters who had been trying to invade Asian areas in the hope of igniting trouble. Nick Griffin and Mick Treacy had been with this group at the Britannia pub earlier on in the day.
The BNP's weasel words played into the hands of local racists. In an echo of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the BNP called for a boycott of Asian businesses, stating: 'It's the only way to make the Asian community bring their young thugs under control, and restore peace to our Oldham'.
It was a strategy that played well with many white residents. While the national press and politicians agonised over the causes of the riot, often halfheartedly, the BNP presented itself as the voice of Oldham's whites.
Its message was clear. The Asians, and the Asians alone, were to blame for the violence. 'Surprise, surprise!' a BNP leaflet rushed out days after the riot announced. 'Mobs of Muslim rioters have caused millions of pounds worth of damage in our town, but the only thing the Labour Party plans to do about it is to reward them, by throwing £millions more of taxpayers' money into the riot areas ‘to end the deprivation that caused the riots'.
'What utter bull! Muslim riots are caused by Muslim rioters, not by law-abiding taxpayers. So why should you have to pay for all their racist attacks on the majority community and other minorities and the police?'
The choice of words was clever. 'Our town' reinforced the notion of the Asian communities as outsiders, temporary residents who should not really be there. By describing the rioters as 'Muslim' the BNP was circumventing the Race Relations Act, which ignores religious discrimination.
If many local whites understood the BNP's coded racism, the local paper, the Oldham Chronicle, inexcusably did not. Two days after the riots, the paper carried a prominent denial by Griffin of the accusation, carried in the national press, that the BNP was partly responsible for the trouble. Throughout the campaign the paper remained neutral on the BNP. After the election, an editorial went as far as to say: 'The political landscape in Oldham has changed - it has been changed through the proper democratic process by Mr Nick Griffin and his British National Party campaigning properly and legally and persuading people to vote for them - Mr Griffin and the BNP now has a mandate from 11,000 Oldham residents.'
Another coded message was hidden in the BNP call for a peace line to be erected between Asian and white districts. While this was presented as a means to defuse the violence, its real meaning was that people of different races could not live together. If that was the case, the BNP logic concluded, then multiculturalism had failed and so should be reversed.
The BNP election effort was centred on a few predominantly white wards. 'People were very receptive to the BNP message,' one journalist who spent time in Oldham told Searchlight. 'There was a mood, especially among the young whites, that the nature of their own world was being changed for the worse. They identified that change with the growing Asian population in the town whom they perceived as ‘taking over'. There was also the perception that the main political parties were ignoring their needs.'
The BNP tapped into the fears of many Oldham people. The notions that the council and government prioritised services for Asian districts and that the police dealt softly with Asian crime both played heavily in BNP literature. So too did the claim that Labour and the Lib Dems cared little for the interests of white people.
The BNP ran a highly innovative campaign, including the distribution of free CDs to young people and rapidly produced leaflets, printed locally, that were relevant and targeted. This was backed up by its Internet site, which carried a special section on Oldham. There were also a number of stunts. On the weekend before the poll, BNP activists pretending to be council officials toured the town in a loudspeaker van announcing: 'Don't read the green leaflets. Whatever you do, do not read the green leaflets.' Shortly afterwards, other BNP members distributed these 'inappropriate' green leaflets.
On election night, the BNP candidates responded to a ban on speeches at the count by wearing gags and T-shirts emblazoned with slogans. Coupled with the results, it guaranteed the BNP mass media coverage.
Oldham became the central focus of the party's election effort. A mass leafleting drive saw 50 BNP supporters travel in from across Britain, including several other BNP candidates and as many as ten activists from Scotland. It was a local campaign run by BNP nationally.
Surprise
The BNP was surprised with its election results. While it knew it was heading for a good showing in Oldham West & Royton, the performances in Oldham East & Saddle-worth and Ashton-under-Lyne were unexpectedly good. The BNP thought that Treacy would save his deposit but did not expect the 11% he polled and suggested that the party's support extended beyond the heavily deprived area of Shaw to the more affluent white districts.
In Ashton-under-Lyne, most of the BNP votes came from the Hollingwood ward of Oldham, which, along with Failsworth East & West, falls in that constituency. Hollingwood is likely to be one of the BNP's key targets in next year's local elections.
The campaign for those elections has already begun, with the BNP distributing a 'thank you' leaflet to its voters in Oldham. In order to become eligible to stand for Oldham council and thereby lead the party's challenge next year, Griffin is likely to set up a party business in the town with himself as managing director. His presence is guaranteed to keep the BNP in the local headlines.
The BNP did not cause the racial problems in Oldham or, directly, the riot, but it did manipulate and exploit existing tensions to its own political ends. The BNP cleverly distanced itself from the trouble but through its coded language it encouraged white racism and reaped the benefits. The BNP ran a highly effective local campaign in Oldham. Its opponents need to be equally innovative to prevent the fascists from winning council seats next year.
Oldham: The reality
'Rights for Whites' policy exposed The BNP claims that far from being racist, it is seeking to establish equality between non-whites and whites. It alleges that non-whites receive preferential treatment from the government and the press, and that whites have become 'second class citizens'. The 'rights for whites' slogan is described as an attempt to such 'reverse discrimination'. This is a lie. The BNP does not want equality. Racism and discrimination lie at the very heart of its policies. The type of immigration to which the BNP is opposed is 'non-white' immigration. The BNP also calls for 'preference in the job market to be given to native Britons'. When the BNP uses the term 'native Briton', it means white Britons. A BNP government would turn 'non-whites' into second-class citizens, would outlaw mixed race relationships and would encourage repatriation. |
Oldham is the 33rd most deprived area in England© Searchlight Magazine 2001
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