Unfortunately the turnout was 43%, that's pathetic! We HAVE to vote against the BNP, and maybe the abstentees can learn from this time.

The hope we've gained from the BNP

The election of Nick Griffin, leader of the British National party, to the European parliament, will be near the top of the news agenda today, and for good reason: Britain has finally voted in a fascist leader. When I was twittering the results last night the whole system nearly went into an aghast meltdown.

I'm not saying we should be complacent about the threat the BNP, and the National Front, present – I hope it will start a change in the way we approach the party.

1. The BNP is not increasing its votes. In both Yorkshire and the north-west, its total number of votes fell from 2004. This absolutely does not mean that more people are being seduced by the BNP's propaganda. It means that Labour's share of the vote collapsed and went to other parties, thereby helping the BNP under a proportional system. If the party makes a comeback then there's no reason why the BNP will continue to get its MEPs elected.

2. It may stop Labour ignoring its traditional working-class origins, now so comprehensively stomped over that they're migrating to other parties in droves. This is not an indictment of high immigration and multiculturalism, as no doubt some will call it, but of a centralised party ignoring local concerns. As Sarah Ditum points out, our media tell people every day that their crumbling infrastructure is the fault of those dastardly asylum seekers (rather than lack of investment, which might mean higher taxes). Immigration wouldn't be such a big issue if local councils presented information more quickly about population movements, so resources could be poured in or taken out in response, ensuring local public services didn't suffer. This is also a result of the lack of investment in social housing.

3. I hope this result also puts an end to anti-BNP gesture politics. There are those photo-ops where all the parties come together to tell people to "vote anyone but the BNP". If such people gave us a reason to vote and didn't sound like such vacuous robotic idiots on television, then more of us might even be persuaded to vote. These sorts of gestures only reinforce the BNP's anti-establishment credentials and ensure that people who want to vote "none of the above" vote for them.

4. It shows that appropriating the BNP's language doesn't work. The Labour government is full of people who believe that if they occasionally blurt racist dog-whistles then they'll keep the working-class vote on side. This is not only patronising to working-class people, but also misunderstands that they're angry at the party that let them down, not necessarily at their black neighbours. MPs such as Margaret Hodge, Liam Byrne and Phil Woolas (especially) have for a while sounded tough on immigration and asylum seekers in the absurd hope that it will shore up their vote. They don't have an inspirational message that says, as Obama did, "your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams".

5. It might force the media to re-evaluate how their churnalism aids the BNP. Rather than simply asking them inane questions about whether it is the racist party, it would help if journalists put its activities under the spotlight. For example, Andrew Brons, now elected as a BNP member, has an illustrious past as a bona fide fascist. Much of the establishment's attitude towards the BNP is that of derision: that these people cannot be taken seriously. David Dimbleby's somewhat smirking attitude last night was a perfect example. But the BNP has to be taken seriously because it has shown it can win more than 100,000 votes in a region. This is not a party to be taken lightly and should be exposed as the bunch of incompetent charlatans it is, complete with racist histories. The election of the two MEPs may now force journalists to take the BNP more seriously rather than treat them with the sniffiness that only plays into anti-establishment anger.

6. Is the country now going to descend into a racial war? I doubt it. The BNP itself has had to increasingly temper its message as it moved closer towards power (apparently, it is not a racist party any more, which should come as a great disappointment to many of its rabid supporters, who say they're proud to be racist). Most people have enough contact with someone of an ethnic minority to know how stupid racism is. That personal knowledge will always override whatever the BNP says.

All this doesn't mean we should welcome the BNP with open arms. Only that some of the over-the-top scaremongering plays into the BNP's hands.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/08/europe-bnp-nick-griffin

DId you know that England has almost always been right wing?

If you just took England's votes (not including Scotland and Wales) then they wouldn't have had a Labour government until 1997 (which arguably wasn't particularly left wing).

But as Lampy mentioned, turnout across the whole of Europe was like 43% or something. It's obvious that the people who like voting for extreme parties are more willing to vote (if that makes sense).

Proof of this come from Yorkshire and Humber, who got one of the BNP guys in. In the last european election it was all done by postal votes, and therefore there was a far higher turnout. This time there was no postal vote. As a result, BNP got something like 6000 FEWER votes than last time, but they got more of a percentage of the vote (and won a seat) because Labour got over 100,000 fewer votes.

Come a general election, insha'Allah more mainstream supporters will be bothered. I'm including myself in that.

Ya'qub wrote:

Proof of this come from Yorkshire and Humber, who got one of the BNP guys in. In the last european election it was all done by postal votes, and therefore there was a far higher turnout. This time there was no postal vote. As a result, BNP got something like 6000 FEWER votes than last time, but they got more of a percentage of the vote (and won a seat) because Labour got over 100,000 fewer votes.

Could you tell me the source for your postal vote info?

I have a theory I woud like to take further.

Beast wrote:

Ya'qub wrote:

Proof of this come from Yorkshire and Humber, who got one of the BNP guys in. In the last european election it was all done by postal votes, and therefore there was a far higher turnout. This time there was no postal vote. As a result, BNP got something like 6000 FEWER votes than last time, but they got more of a percentage of the vote (and won a seat) because Labour got over 100,000 fewer votes.

Could you tell me the source for your postal vote info?

I have a theory I woud like to take further.

David DImblebee on the BBC last night

You wrote:

Is this the true face of britain? Is there racism seething under many of the citizens? Should you be afraid?

Maybe its cuz everyone did NOT vote! :X

You wrote:

"everyone" never votes and that is not a problem IMO.

I did not vote.

You wrote:

The problem is not a lack of votes for others, but that people vote for such parties and find them representative of their views. If the other parties got more votes and the bnp never got MEP's elected, that would still not hide the fact that there are people who feel the BNP represent them better than the other parties.

True

(if what ive said is contradictory ignore me!)

Thought I'd make this a blog post:

About a week before every local election my councillor, a Pakistani, goes round to several houses in the area to collect people's postal votes. He sits in the front room as the man of the house gathers the purple and white postal vote envelopes of every registered voter in his family. The councillor then tells the man of the house where to sign for himself and the rest of the family. Once the signatures have been done, the councillor takes the envelopes, ballot papers and all, with him.

All postal votes gathered in this way come from Pakistani families. Many of whom would most likely have voted for him anyway. But to save these loyal and trusted voters from the hassle of taking two minutes out of their day to go and vote at a polling station the councillor has persuaded them all to apply for postal votes – votes which can be submitted a week before polling day.

In this way, he manages to secure a landslide victory for himself and his party colleagues well before the polls even open. I would hazard a conservative guess and say that he manages to bag over one thousand votes in this way.

This doesn't just happen in my ward. And nor does it happen among Pakistanis only. It happens in neighbouring wards, among other communities and in other local authorities. I know for a fact that it happens among the Pakistani community and it happened quite openly. It's been reported in the press and cases have even been brought to court.

I would hazard a further guess and say that there are 5,000 votes are gathered like this by unscrupulous local councillors in my borough alone. Stretch this to neighbouring Birmingham and the figure there is probably 10,000. Across the West Midlands region it's conservatively 25,000.

You could extrapolate this to other parts of the country with large Pakistani populations – including Manchester, Bradford and London.

But these councillors' helpfulness stretches only to local elections. Come general and European elections and the postal vote-hoarding councillors are nowhere to be seen. Their party loyalty stretches only to their own seats.

Their postal vote-holding voters are left with no-one to make sure they manage to vote. No-one is there to help them make sense of the postal vote process. These councillors have been so involved in filling in people's votes for them that the actual voter is left helpless without them. I know of several cases where people haven't voted in a general election and the last European election because they didn't know how to cast their postal vote.

In the West Midlands region I reckon that probably meant 25,000 people were disenfranchised. In the North West, where Manchester and Oldham have significant Pakistani populations, it was around 20-25,000 people that didn't get to vote.

And how much did Nick Griffin beat the Green Party by?

4,961 votes.

These 20-25,000 people were probably overwhelmingly ethnic minorities. If they had the opportunity to vote properly at polling stations and had not been tricked into giving up their vote to corrupt tin-pot councillors, the BNP leader would not have gained elected office.

[IMG]http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/8203/bnpleadernickgriffine00.jpg[/IMG]

Nick Griffin abandons BNP press conference under hail of eggs
Demonstrators shouting 'Off our streets, Nazi scum' force BNP leader to flee for the safety of his car

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/09/nick-griffin-bnp-pelted-eggs

as much as i think nick deserved the eggs being thrown at him (maybe people should have thrown things that hurt aswell as smell lol) he can also use this to make himself look like the victim. :/

nyla... wrote:

as much as i think nick deserved the eggs being thrown at him (maybe people should have thrown things that hurt aswell as smell lol) he can also use this to make himself look like the victim. :/

Nah. Pantomime villian.

The early story of the British Isles is one of colonisation. Firstly, celtic and pict tribes arrived and formed the first communities in the British Isles.

Then came the Romans. In 250AD, Rome sent a contingent of black legionnaires, drawn from the African part of the empire, to stand guard on Hadrian’s Wall.

There is no evidence that these men stayed in Britannia and when the Romans finally quit in the fifth century, the way was clear for the Germanic tribes that would slowly become the English.

Four hundred years after the Jutes, Angles and Saxons colonised modern-day southern England, the Vikings arrived, bringing a distinctive new influence to the cultural pot. The Vikings' sphere of influence was northern Britain and modern-day East Anglia.

The most dramatic of these immigrations was the Norman Conquest in 1066. The Normans, descended from Vikings who had settled in France, brought with them their early-French language which would fundamentally change the direction of English, government and law. To this day, a number of Parliamentary ceremonies can be dated back to the Franco-Norman era.

The first Norman king, William the Conqueror, invited Jews to settle in England to help develop commerce, finance and trade.

During the Middle Ages, the few black faces in Britain appeared to be entertainers linked to royal entourages.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2002/race/short_hist...

Ya'qub wrote:

[IMG]http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/8203/bnpleadernickgriffine00.jpg[/IMG]

Nick Griffin abandons BNP press conference under hail of eggs
Demonstrators shouting 'Off our streets, Nazi scum' force BNP leader to flee for the safety of his car

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/09/nick-griffin-bnp-pelted-eggs

Is it just me or is he about to cry?

his face looks funyyyy