On June 4th we should all stand together against the BNP

Fascist. This is a word with sinister connotations. To mention it musters images which represent the darkest side of humanity. It brings to mind the jackboot, the goosestep and the gas chamber. Fascism is an ideology of hate which reached its peak in the 1930’s and, through a war which cost over fifty million lives, faced its destruction in 1945. At its height fascist flags flew over Hitler’s Berlin, over Franco’s Madrid and over Mussolini’s Rome. It is popularly believed that fascism was a European phenomenon, with Britain’s only involvement being in its destruction. However, on Sunday October 4th 1936 over 300,000 people of London’s East end rose up, stood fast and defeated the British Union of Fascists in what became known as the Battle of Cable street.

On that Sunday afternoon, seventy three years ago, the east end working class locked arms and stood in solidarity with the local Jewish community and with Anti-facist protesters to stop Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Facists from marching through the poorest areas London. Together they built barricades, formed a human wall and stood fast against the marching black shirts. The battle that followed marked the beginning of the end for main stream fasism in Britain. Simultaneously thousands of British volunteers had joined the international brigade to fight in the Spanish civil war against General Franco’s fascist forces. In solidarity to those freedom fighters battling the anti-fascists of Cable Street carried placards emblazoned with the slogan ¡No Pasarán!, “they shall not pass”. This was only three years before Britain stood together with other free nations to wage war against Hitler’s Nazi war machine. The British people, and indeed the British left, have a proud history of standing against fascism and now the time has come when we must all stand together to fight fascism once again.

Today the British National Party are the face of modern British fascism and of modern British Nazism. The BNP attempts to present itself as being a party of the working class, a party of the people but in reality its stands on a manifesto of pure hatred and racism. Their current leader is Nick Griffin, a man whose fascist credentials are beyond doubt, due to his connection to the National front and other far right organisations. For the first time since Mosley’s blackshirts attempted to march down cable street fascism is on the rise.

On June 4th the BNP will be standing candidates in the elections to the European Parliament. In Nick Griffin’s own constituancy he needs just 9 percent of the vote to be elected as the BNP’s first European Member of Parliament. That is only 1 percent more then he recived in the last election. Here in the South East the picture is not much better. There will be several BNP candidates on the ballot in this area and due to the absurdly low turn out rates and a complex system of proportional representation the chances of the BNP winning a seat in this area is high. That is unless we stop them. The fact that Griffin’s blackshirts are even standing in European elections shows that the rules of the game have changed significantly since the dark age of the 1930’s. Whilst fascism has not changed as an ideology, the method of presenting it has changed dramatically. True the BNP do not openly publicise their Nazi roots and similarly the BNP is not as straight forward to identify as the National front of the 80’s and 90’s. Whilst their fascist beliefs remain the same, it is the method of presentation which has evolved. The BNP leaders of today are, publicly at least, not knuckle dragging and brick throwing skin heads, although these types exist sure enough and they continue to make up the rank and file of combat 18 and other neo-nazi groups including the BNP. Today’s BNP leaders are graduates of Cambridge and Oxford and so attempt to present a suited, smiling and electoraly acceptable face of fascism. Their style is more subtle and their messages are more complex but their hate and their lies remain the same. It may be intellectually lazy to constantly compare the BNP to Hitler’s Nazi party, however as Griffin claims that the roots of the BNP can be found in the fascism of the 1930’s it is worth pondering on the parallels. On Mein Kampf, Hitler’s own autobiography, Griffin states that “the chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation - there were some really useful ideas there.” So whilst to the cameras Griffin attempts to distance the BNP from its nazi legacy, privately he looks back to the dark days of European fascism with nostalgia. Indeed Griffin admitted in an interview in 2006 that the Nazi era has given “fascism a bad name” yet still works tirelessly to defend dictatorships of Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. One example of this would be the fact that Griffin infamously denies the Holocaust. In an interview Griffin once stated that “it's well known that the chimneys from the gas chambers at Auschwitz are fake, built after the war ended.” This distortion of history, this attempt to forget the deaths of six million innocent people is reflected in the BNP’s core beliefs arguing, as they do in their manifesto, that denying the holocaust should be a priority of the British education system.

In December 2006 I travelled to the London borough of Barking and Dagenham to take part in an anti-fascist protest. Barking and Dagenham has become the centre of the BNP’s recent election success, having recently elected twelve BNP councillors. At this protest, which coincided with the first public BNP rally in London for years, I was able to see the true face of BNP voters and I began to understand why someone would vote for a fascist party. Barking and Dagenham is an area which has suffered from the post-industrial decline of Britain. There is unemployment, there is poverty and there is crime. This despair is coupled with a growing sense that the main political parties offer nothing to the real man on the street. Indeed the big three parties are now narrow reflections of each other, their polices differ marginally and it is true that they are now the parties of business rather then parties of the people. On to this scene of disillusionment and apathy enters the BNP, very much from stage right. They claim to be a party of the working class and they offer straight forward reasons and solutions based purely on lies and hatred. They target immigration, they demonise Islam, and they exploit base ideals of nationalism and race to rally around.

The average BNP voter is not a Nazi, the average BNP voter is a person who feels let down by the main political parties and has been duped by despair into believing the lies and the hatred.

The propaganda of the BNP is not a simplistic as it was in the 1980's today their leaflets and their website look 'respectable'. They have photos of average people who we are told could be you or me voicing the views we're all thinking but apparently are too afraid to say. They claim they wish to 'preserve our heritage' or 'protect the indigenous peoples of this island', which is merely a cleaned up version of the 'Paki's go home' slogans they used to spray paint on walls and shout at protests. The message is the same - only the presentation differs. Alongside their neo-fascist views you will find naked opportunism with shouts of "make the pigs pay" - a reference to MP's expenses and the bailed out bankers, because they aren't just trying to recruit their stable diet of racists and bigots, they also wish to dupe right thinking people into accepting their filth by simultaneously shouting slogans about actual issues. If this doesn't work they attempt to appeal to our base sense of nationalism or patriotism by linking their cause in with the narrative of British history.

Their propagada is littered with Spitfires, quotes from Churchill and mentions of 'dunkirk', 'the blitz', 'D-day' in a sicking attempt to connect British history with their hatefull policies. By having the audacity to even mention the Second World War the BNP are striving for the ultimate propaganda goal, to hide fascism in plain view. They are playing on the memory of the fallen to promote the very ideology they died fighting against. The sheer audacity is galling. Once we understand how and any why people are turning to the BNP we must also understandd how we can work to win people back, away from the hatred spewed by the BNP and towards a real alternative.

Whilst it is crucial that we all come together, as those Londoners did seventy one years ago, to fight fascism in all its forms, it is simply not enough to stand up and shout about what you are against. Shouting “Auswitz no” or chanting “Nazis off our streets”, as we did at the protest at Barking and Oxford, will only get us so far. In order to successfully destroy fascist ideology we must make it known what we are standing for, we must shout it from the rooftops and then we must stand face to face, toe to toe with every last racist, and with every last fascist so they know what they are fighting. We must stand up for multi-culturalism, for peace, for cooperation, for collectivism, and for a better world for all.

So, on May the 4th I will be voting in the European Elections to continue a proud tradition of standing up against the evil of fascism. When I cast my vote it will be for the RMT trade unionist who is standing on the No-2-EU-Yes-To-Democracy slate for behind that candidate stands the heroes of the British anti-fascist movement, the ghosts of Cable Street, the memories of the international brigade, and all those who fought and died to defend us against Fascism. Regardless of the election results when it comes to tackling fascism we must not be silent and we must simply to shout in vain. We must make a stand, we must fight for the rights that Nick Griffin would deny and to show that an alternative is needed in this world, that alternative is not going to be found in the darkness of fascism.

To register for the election go herewww.aboutmyvote.co.uk

To vote for a real alternative vote for this candidate:

No-2-EU-Yes to Democracy: South East – Ten candidates

Professor Dave Hill – Former East Sussex Labour Group leaderGarry Hassell – RMT executive committeeKevin Hayes – Ford worker Owen Morris –Construction worker and supporter of Lindsey and Olympic site protestsGawain Little – Teacher and CND National Council memberRobert Wilkinson – NUT Wokingham and District Secretary Jacqui Berry – Medway trades council presidentNick Wright – Graphic designer and teacher Nick Chaffey – Youth workerSarah Wrack – Student Sussex Universitywww.no2eu.com