By Mark Catterall
"Burnley, BNP capital of Britain" proclaimed the Lancashire Evening Telegraph on 2 May. This was the day after the fascist British National Party (BNP) increased the number of council seats it holds in Burnley from three to eight, making the BNP the second largest party on the council. Labour remains the largest party on the council with 23 councillors. However Labour fielded 16 candidates in the election and got 8,784 votes, while the BNP fielded 13 candidates, receiving 8,545 votes.
With this kind of vote the BNP could take control of the local council within a couple of years. Nick Griffin BNP leader crowed in the local press: "I think we have got a very good chance of taking control of Burnley Council."
Is Burnley unique? Obviously their success in Burnley was greater than elsewhere, but across large parts of northern England the conditions that led to the BNP success in Burnley are replicated. In the last decades many of Burnley's factories and mills have closed down. Burnley has had a Labour council for most of the last century and it is the party of the establishment. It is also the party that has delivered little in tangible improvements and has consistently failed to fight for the people of Burnley. People's lives have been blighted by industrial decline and poor housing.
Labour's failings have allowed the BNP to use a pre-existing racism to divide the community further. Labour has doled out penny packet regeneration money which has only served to pit community against community for the limited resources. Sections of the Labour Party have in the past been openly racist in their policies and today the Labour Party seems oblivious to the crisis in Burnley.
The national press have emphasised the BNP's campaigning against asylum seekers as central to their success. This can be exaggerated. In Burnley there are few asylum seekers and none have been housed in the area since the riots of 2001. BNP leaflets mention asylum seekers in passing but the core of the BNP's message is an amalgam of straightforward old-fashioned racism and Liberal-Democrat Party Focus type "dog dirt on the pavements" politics.
Glossy leaflets show candidates pointing at rubbish and promising its swift removal. But alongside this are slogans such as:
"The BNP will put the majority first", "Burnley is not a united community, it is a community of communities"; and more honestly "no to asylum seekers and no to immigration".
Learning from the more successful far-right/fascist parties of Europe the BNP have rebranded themselves. They now wear suits rather than jackboots. Women have stood as candidates. The boneheads and thugs are kept out of sight. In Burnley they mainly come out for the England football team's match days, (defeat or victory, an Asian taxi driver usually ends up bruised and bloody). But people should be under no illusion that the BNP keep their racism a secret; Griffin said in 3 May's Lancashire Evening Telegraph: "People voting for the BNP know exactly what they are getting. Our absolute ideal is an all white Britain."
What has been the left's response to the rise of the BNP in Burnley? The Anti-Nazi League and Searchlight have leafleted and canvassed large sections of Burnley saying to voters "Don't Vote Nazi." Their leaflets are a damming indictment of the violence, criminality and incompetence of the Burnley BNP but the negative campaign gives people no positive alternative. The BNP vote is down on last year's 10,000 plus vote but so is the Labour vote.
The Burnley trade union movement has been crushed by 20 years of Tory and New Labour anti-trade union laws. The largest unionised multi-racial employers in Burnley are the town council and the large supermarkets. The unions in these workplaces take no active part in the fight against the BNP. The first trades council meeting after the election had nine delegates, and it does not have an active campaigning profile in the town.
The local Socialist Alliance has tried with its limited resources to give the people of Burnley a positive alternative to both the BNP and Labour. However, the limited number of SA members in East Lancashire are split between several small groups across several towns. When SA members from outside Burnley come to help they are often co-opted into leafleting for the ANL. Yet as Avril Hesson, a SA candidate in the local elections told me, from her canvassing the SA won votes that were long lost to Labour. She said, "Voters disillusioned with Labour were offered socialist answers rather than the hate based answers of the BNP, and this had the effect of reducing the BNP vote."
The BNP success in Burnley and elsewhere in the local elections should act as a wake up call to the left. Their success on 1 May was not just in winning seats. Across the country where they stood they were able to garner large votes, coming second in a number of wards. A fightback needs to start. Identifying the BNP as Nazis and racists is not enough. Many are voting for the BNP because they believe racism is the answer. A long term fight needs to be conducted, one that combines anti-racism with a fight within the Burnley labour movement for more resources and a positive working class socialist alternative to the BNP. It can't start soon enough.
