September is shaping up to be a VERY busy month for Antifascists. There are going to be three (!) AFN actions, alongside several other non-AFN Antifascist demonstrations. The refugee crisis has pushed the far-right into a frenzy of activity and it is our social duty to combat them.
UPDATED WITH ANALYSIS OF THE RESULTS
In amongst the headline-grabbing triumphs and losses of the bigger parties in the election, another story goes rather less reported – how have the far-right and fascist parties fared?
Pretty appallingly, we are pleased to report.
The far right are finished as an electoral force. The election results for the BNP and others could not make this clearer. In 2010, the BNP stood and won 563,743 votes. In 2015, eight BNP candidates scraped together 1,667, in what must rank as one of the most humiliating collapses in British electoral history. Not a single one of their candidates polled over 1% of the vote. Anti-fascists should be congratulating BNP leader and Rotherham parliamentary candidate Adam Walker, who managed to reduce the BNP vote in the constituency from 3,906 in 2010 to 225 in 2015, on the way he has run the party’s election campaign.
Regardless of the results, next week’s general and local elections are already good news for anti-fascists. The far-right has collapsed electorally and is not mounting a serious challenge in any constituency in the UK. This is a very different from 2010, when the BNP stood 338 parliamentary candidates. This time round they are standing 8. Despite an influx of former BNP members to other far-right groups, notably the English Democrats, other fascist groups have not been able to pick up the slack. Electorally, the far-right is at its lowest ebb for a generation, although this is partly because the vote won by groups like the BNP has swung toward UKIP.
We hate to kick a man when he’s down, but this represents a golden opportunity for anti-fascists to push these racist groups out of the political arena completely.
To welcome in 2015, the Anti-Fascist Network has put together an idiots’ guide to the idiots on Britain’s far right. No need to thank us, it’s a public service.
British National Party
Introducing the man who will definitely revive the fortunes of the BNP… Adam Walker
Formerly known as Britain’s most successful and ambitious fascist group since the 1930s, recent years have not been kind to the BNP. Membership and electoral support for the party has plummeted after a disappointing performance in the 2010 local and general elections. This unleashed a series of bitter internal disputes culminating in longstanding party leader Nick Griffin being unceremoniously booted out during 2014.
Alongside Griffin, most prominent party members who were at least semi-competent and kept the show on the road have either resigned or been expelled. This has left the BNP bereft of people with the kind of basic skills necessary to do organise election campaigns or community work. Adam Walker, Griffin’s replacement, is uniquely poorly placed to lead the party. Although he lacks political skill, charisma or any observable talents, he does have a conviction for chasing children in his car and threatening them with a knife. Read the rest of this entry »
Anti-fascists have been laughing themselves silly at the spectacle of Nick Griffin being chucked out of the party he led for 15 years. For many years the most recognisable and prominent fascist in Britain, Griffin has been unceremoniously ditched by a group of non-entities he once counted as some of his closest supporters.
Opposing factions in the BNP have been eyeing each other up since Griffin was eased out of the party leadership in July. Internal rumblings burst out into the open when Griffin produced a document claiming serious financial impropriety over wills and the shocking claim that the party had become a dictatorship. Surely not! Well, here’s the thing Nick, when it comes to fascism, that’s the idea.
They’re falling like nine-pins!
This week saw BNP fuhrer Nick Griffin pushed out by his own party shortly after becoming unemployed due to losing his seat in the European Parliament. As if that were not enough, a few days later we had Britain First founder and main funder Jim Dowson quitting and pulling the plug on funding the far-right wannabe paramilitary group.
Just like when chief racist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon quit the EDL because – surprise-surprise – the organisation he founded was full of racists, long-time Christian bigot and racist Dowson’s sudden implausible discovery that Britain First was a bit racist really tells another story.
We all know that Nick Griffin is no longer an MEP following the results of the Euro elections on Sunday and we all know UKIP got a sizable share of the vote. But leaving aside the nationalism-lite of UKIP how did the more traditional fascist far-right fare in the nitty-gritty of the local council elections held last week?
The BNP vote has collapsed across the entire country. Big falls in the North-West, Yorkshire and West Midlands. Nationally, they lost 760,000 votes compared to the 2009 election and the party lost its deposit in every single region. These are damaging blows.
Over on the BNP website, Griffin is talking again about ‘media mind-benders’, ‘the ladder of revolutionary consciousness’ and condemning the political elite as ‘the willing puppets of some of the most evil humanoids ever to have walked this planet.’ He’s really lost it.
This is a list of far-right candidates standing in the upcoming local council and euro elections. This list is divided up roughly into the regions for the European Parliament for the BNP.
East Midlands
Amber Valley
Codnor & Waingroves – Alan Edwards
Ripley – Ken Cooper
Derby
Chaddesden – Paul Hilliard
Derwent – Carol Tucker
The annual council elections lets us take a snapshot of the far right groups futilely chasing electoral success (in the same way that counting 100 sorry looking blokes standing behind a wall of police outside a Wetherspoons gives a good indication of the dismal state of the EDL).
Council elections have a particular significance for the BNP. For many years, the party’s strategy has focused on steadily building up support in local council wards as a way of legitimising the party in the eyes of voters and as a stepping stone to winning seats at a regional or national level, such as in the London Assembly, European Parliament or the House of Commons. The relatively low number of far right candidates this year indicates that, for the time being, this strategy is a non-starter for the fascists.
It’s a numbers game
Hope not Hate has produced a list of most far right candidates, but have unhelpfully grouped the couple of hundred fascist candidates with the 2,000+ UKIP candidates which makes it difficult to use. The list is also missing some BNP council candidates. We will post a full list of far right candidates on our website shortly.
If you can’t make Rotherham to counter the national EDL demo there on Saturday, never fear… another useless bunch of boneheads will be out and about in the South this weekend.
The BNP are very worried about imaginary mosques being built in Hemel Hempstead and Griffin’s dwindling fascist loyalists have decided to hold a demo in the town this Saturday 10th.
Given that the last time they held a demo anywhere they were comprehensively blocked by anti-fascists from marching anywhere despite being backed up by the Met, this doesn’t bode too well for their chances in Hemel.
Local people in Hemel have organised an opposition to the BNP’s attempt to cynically exploit local issues in an attempt to save themselves from their impending electoral oblivion.
Facebook event
Anti-Fascist Network 