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THE SUN is said to have an entire team combing through it. The News of the World is on the case. Even the FT, it's claimed, is looking for financial fascists to name and shame. But to my mind one of the most interesting things about this week's leaked BNP "membership list" is that so far, nearly three days after it was published on the web, the best-known figure to have been found on it is a stand-in DJ on talkSPORT Radio.
Given some of the things they say, it would frankly be bigger news if some talk radio presenters were not sympathisers of the far-Right (the DJ concerned, it must be stressed, claims he joined the BNP as part of an "undercover investigation"). We await whatever Fleet Street's finest may find. But what struck me, looking through the list, was the comparative modesty of most of the addresses on it.
It does seem that the BNP is broadly what we always suspected, a party of relatively small numbers of the skilled working class and lower-middle class from overwhelmingly white, medium-sized provincial towns. There are relatively few from London, and remarkably few from the London postal districts, suggesting that once people live with others of a different race, they learn not to fear them (of course it might also reflect a lower-than-average pool of potential members, and fewer recruiting efforts, in these areas).
The fact that the list makes special note of those members with higher education (one is described proudly as a "chartered mechanical engineer" and "MD of high-pressure water pump firm"), and there are only five acknowledged civil servants and 15 teachers on it, also suggests we need not fear that BNP sleepers are in a position to seize the commanding heights of British society and politics.
That is not intended to be snobbish. All political parties need a wide range of supporters from all walks of life. But if Labour and the Tories have too many lawyers and lobbyists and not enough bricklayers and butchers, for the BNP the problem is clearly the reverse. And, despite a rather favourable recent political climate for racist ideas, there are so few of them! Twelve and a half thousand names from a population of 60 million, and even this probably an overestimate. The list includes many whose subscriptions have lapsed.
The BNP, as in all crises, is giving us a convincing impression of a headless henhouse (pure-breed chickens only, please). And this leak is clearly damaging. It shows a lack of discipline, competence and security, and is a clear deterrent to present and would-be members. Would you want to join "Britain's foremost patriotic party" if you thought that the fact of your membership, together with your home address, would be advertised on the internet?
But in other ways it might help them. The BNP feeds on two things: media attention, and the politics of victimhood. It's getting both this week. Membership of the BNP is legal, and it is clearly both wrong and illegal for ordinary private citizens' personal details to be published like this. The right to privacy, like any other right, is meaningless if it applies only to people of whom we approve.
And even if we cannot feel too troubled by the (probably minor) victimisation awaiting those on the list, or the capital the BNP will try to make from that, we should be troubled by the growing tendency of opportunist mainstream politicians to use the party, hateful as it is, as a whipping boy to bolster their own dodgy causes. The cry that "if you don't vote for me/ support this policy" you will be "boosting the BNP" has been abused by politicos from Ken Livingstone to Phil Woolas. Mr Woolas has used it to justify some rhetoric not a million miles from the BNP's own.
Parts of the policing establishment recently invoked the spectre of BNP evil against government plans for directly elected police authorities. Bob Jones, chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, warned (absurdly) that policing could be "hijacked" by the BNP if elections were held. Elections, said another police authority member, Saima Afzal, would mean less diversity - far better to stick with appointed people like her.
Views like these are not only repellent - we cannot be trusted with democracy because we might vote for the "wrong" people. They are not only defeatist - have you so little confidence in your own arguments and personal qualities? They are also profoundly dangerous.
The alienation on which the BNP feeds arises precisely from the fact that quangocrats such as Afzal and Jones, and the police, and a dozen other public services, are insufficiently accountable to the people they serve. One of the other things about that BNP membership list is how relatively few names it has from Barking, the party's London electoral heartland. That confirms to me that the white working class of Barking are voting BNP not because they are racists but because they are fed up.
We saw a similar, London-wide revolt, happily directed towards a mainstream candidate, during the recent mayoral election. The white working class voted en masse for Boris in protest against a mayor who showed little evidence of being interested in them, or recognising their place in London. Meanwhile, Livingstone's shameless use of the race card, and his false accusations that many of his opponents were racist, did produce a high Labour vote among ethnic-minority Londoners. Thus a mainstream politician did more to racialise the electorate than the BNP ever could.
Whenever conventional politicians either wheel out the BNP as a spectre, or pander to it, they are bigging it up. In fact, as the leaked "membership list" again confirms, the BNP is a very small party, able to make a big push in one or two places but completely lacking the numbers to break through more widely. And even where it does win, it can be beaten back, as in Burnley and Oldham, if the non-racist parties address the disaffection which causes its rise.
The BNP's real asset is not its rather attenuated, and this week distinctly embarrassed, membership. It's the way in which some in mainstream politics play into its rotten hands.
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Reader views (24)
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I don't think democracy is working any longer, we should proscribe the BNP, Tories, Lib Dems et al and have a one party state, with Gordon Brown as President of the Glorious People's Republic of Britistan. And when he dies, the title immediately goes to his son.
- Dave, Swansea
the sun news can critisize about the size of the bmp bieng 13000. if you push the indienios population to for you will get what you had in 1939-1945 get the picture.
- G.Stocker, ilford essex
Now we know what little threat the BNP poses eh!
We also know that the Labour Party pose a big threat to our democracy, our economy etc.
Let us see what happens in the 2009 elections, it could get very interesting!
- Tim Brown, Essex England
