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Author: Nick Lowles | Date: March 2003
There is a perception that support for the British National Party comes from disillusioned Labour voters on some of Britain’s worst estates. This is wrong, says Nick Lowles. Recent elections have confirmed that it is traditional Conservative voters who are making the switch.
Mount Tabor does not appear a likely hotbed of BNP support. A small village, overlooking Halifax, its local residents are rewarded with beautiful countryside, clean air and apparent wealth.
Even its name suggests an aura of superiority. According to the Bible, Jesus led Peter, James and John to Mount Tabor after six days of preaching along the Sea of Galilee. It overlooks the Valley of Armageddon.
Yet despite its apparent tranquillity, it was here that the BNP won its fifth council seat in England, in Mixenden, Calderdale. According to research by both the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, the bulk of those who voted for Adrian Marsden were from the villages of Mount Tabor and neighbouring Pellan. These areas normally return a strong Conservative vote.
In the January by-election, the Conservative candidate limped home in fourth place with only 214 votes. As recently as May 2000, the Tories took the ward with over 650 votes.
In Pellan, where the Tory vote usually stands at around 150, they received just 19 votes. The BNP took 144. Similarly, Mount Tabor saw the Conservatives poll 79 votes where they would normally take 250. Again, these votes were lapped up by the BNP, which took 170 in the area. These figures are remarkable given the hardline nazi past of the candidate. That the switch was seemingly so easy is a deep cause for concern.
These figures reflect growing evidence that it is among Conservative voters that the BNP is attracting most support. Its best vote in Burnley came in Cliviger with Worsthorne, arguably the most affluent ward in Burnley.
In the Bradford ward of Eccleshill, the BNP got most of its votes in the polling boxes representing the more affluent areas of the ward. In Oldham, the BNP polled 29% in Royton North, a more prosperous ward compared to the others the BNP was contesting, despite very little campaigning. In London, the BNP secured one of its best votes in the Hillingdon ward of Harehills, another traditional Conservative area.
There appear to be three reasons for the collapse of the Conservative Party in the north of England – organisational, political and ideological.
The Conservative Party has experienced a haemor-rhaging of its membership over the past ten years. From a recent high of more than a million members, it now has only 300,000 and falling. Of those few are active and the average age of members is 64.
The party’s problems have been compounded by a dramatic decline in its local organisation. During the 1980s and 1990s it was swept from council chambers across the country. In many northern towns and cities there was no Conservative representation on councils whatsoever.
Even after six years of Labour government the Conservatives have failed to rebuild their local organisation, in terms of both activists and councillors. In many areas they are struggling to find candidates let alone run an effective campaign. In the Southwest the party has been forced to take out an advertisement in a local paper to recruit local candidates.
In Blackburn, where a BNP candidate scraped home by 16 votes, the Conservative Party leaflet was hand-drawn with a marker pen. This from a party that was once described as having the most effective political machine in Western Europe.
The fortunes of the local Conservatives are also being hampered by an ineffective and largely useless leadership. Many Conservative voters feel disinclined to support a party they perceive not to be an effective opposition. Given the growing mistrust of Tony Blair and widespread opposition to the impending war against Iraq, it is incredible that the Conservative Party still lags behind Labour in the polls. The right-wing media have replaced Ian Duncan Smith as the voice of the opposition.
Even when the Tories do try to adopt a more populist policy, such as their recent hardline statements on asylum, few voters appear interested. Private Labour Party research shows that only 20% of voters trust the Conservatives to sort out immigration.
A further problem for the Conservatives is their apparent inability to reconcile the desire to appear moderate, modern and electable for the middle ground of British politics with the natural instincts of their current membership. The party has sought to broaden its support base by appearing more moderate, tolerant and inclusive, particularly on race and sexuality, but in the process has further alienated its core supporters who are racist.
During the mid to late 1990s, the Conservative Party lost thousands of supporters to the anti-EU groups such as the Referendum Party and the UK Independence Party, particularly in the Southwest where the Tories were already being squeezed by the Liberal Democrats.
For many traditional Conservatives, opposition to the European Union and the single currency is a euphemism for the preservation of a white Britain. With the continuing decline and seeming irrelevance of the Conservative Party many of its traditional voters are becoming increasingly attracted to the BNP. In the BNP they are given a real racist alternative.
Recent leadership moves to stamp out the openly racist right from within the party have proved counter-productive and will only further alienate many of its traditional supporters. Last year the Monday Club was ordered to remove any references to race from its manifesto if it wanted to stay within the party. More recently, several Conservative MPs were ordered to break links with Right Now!. Andrew Hunter MP ignored the request, though he later withdrew his patronage of the magazine and left the Conservatives for the Democratic Unionist Party. Finally, Michael Smith, leader of the Conservative Democratic Alliance, was expelled on a technical matter, though many believe it was for his outspoken criticisms of the leadership’s “advocating gay lifestyles”. Smith took the party to the High Court and has forced the decision to be reversed.
While this may have appealed to Steve Norris’s vision of a moderate, inclusive Tory Party, it has only reconfirmed the impression in the eyes of some Tory voters that the Conservatives are no longer committed to preserving “their” Britain.
There is also evidence that some Tory Party members are switching over to the BNP. Former Tory councillors have made the switch in Calderdale and Oldham, while Tory members have joined the BNP in other parts of West Yorkshire and the South West.
Even where the Tories are confronted by an active BNP in the north of England, there is little evidence that they are prepared or able to confront the fascists. After an incident where the newly- elected Mixenden councillor was involved in a street brawl, one neigh-bouring Conservative councillor told the local paper: “For goodness sake give the lad a chance. I know some people think he has got extreme policies, some people might not, but give the lad a chance because who knows, he might turn out to be a jolly good ward councillor.”
Considering that it was Tory voters who switched to the BNP, these inappropriate comments reveal an absence of political astuteness.
There are even reports that some Conservative Party activists cheered as the BNP victory was announced at the count.
The BNP went into last year’s local elections believing that it would attract most support from disillusioned Labour voters. While there is evidence that it did in many places, the party is now aware that it is the Conservative areas which it should be targeting.
There is a further common denominator linking many of the areas where the BNP has attracted more affluent support: they border towns with large Asian populations. In many cases these villages or outlying areas do not identify themselves with the town or city to which they are attached. The people of Mount Tabor and Pellan do not identify with the rest of Mixenden. The same can be said of Cliviger in Burnley and of Queensbury, where the BNP is very active. Though part of Bradford, many of its residents see local community life being threatened by the area’s incorporation into Bradford and have become increasingly resentful. Asians and asylum seekers are merely the most visual representation of this impending urbanised doom.
Mount Tabor reflects this situation perfectly. It is also appropriate that in the Bible Mount Tabor overlooks the Valley of Armageddon, the site of the final battle between Good and Evil. Two thousand years later, another Mount Tabor is on the front line of a new battle.
© Searchlight Magazine 2003