The devil is in the detail

Date: 9th May '02

Name: article from the Guardian

The devil is in the detail

It is not just Burnley and Oldham we should be worrying about - the British National party made progress in 16 other areas too

Alan Travis
Guardian

Thursday May 9, 2002

It would be wrong to dismiss the British National party's success in Burnley and Oldham last week as a local difficulty confined to two Lancashire towns: according to a Guardian analysis of the 66 council wards contested by the far-right party, there are a further 16 wards around the country where it made real progress last week. Among them are Sunderland, Sandwell, Wigan and Kirklees - some of which have no history of an organised fascist presence in their local politics. Overall, it was the best result for the party since its founder, John Tyndall, split from the National Front in 1982 and ranks with the NF's 1970s heyday.

But it would be a mistake to portray the election of the three BNP councillors as a "breakthrough" on to the national stage for the party. In places such as Bexley and in Tower Hamlets, both in south-east London, the party's candidates turned in performances which were a mere shadow of their former polling.

The BNP got an average of 12% in the 66 seats they contested. On the face of it that sounds worrying but presumably these were the 66 seats in which the BNP had the greatest hopes for being elected - of 6,000 seats in England and Wales being contested. The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, has made no secret of the fact that he is more interested in trying to win council seats, where turnout is low and voters more willing to cast a protest vote.

Apart from Burnley and Oldham the party averaged 10% of the vote in the contested seats. This is not a national share of the vote and so cannot be compared to the 34% the Conservatives secured last Thursday or Labour's 33%. In national terms the fascist share of the vote would be negligible. But it is more than the 5.8% the United Kingdom Independence party polled in its 160 seats or the 6.5% for the Socialist Alliance across 200 seats.

The election of the three BNP councillors in Burnley actually had more to do with the party exploiting split voting, and the way the elections work in wards in which three councillors are elected in the same ballot. In the three cases the pattern of voting in each ward appears to be the single BNP candidate polling just ahead of two independent candidates. In one of the wards where a BNP councillor was elected, the Conservatives failed to put up a candidate.

The clever tactic of targeting three-member wards with a single BNP candidate meant that the party was able to make the maximum political and media impact despite only polling 12% of the votes cast in Burnley. In two wards they were elected alongside Labour councillors and with Conservatives in the other. Even in their most successful ward, Gannow, they won the seat on only 15% of the vote.

The more disturbing achievement in Burnley comes when you look at the raw voting figures. In the 2001 general election some 4,151 people voted for the BNP candidate. Last Thursday the number of BNP voters in Burnley had doubled to 9,984 votes in the 13 out of 15 wards contested by the party. It shows that the BNP has built on its general election success, and the three council seats could provide them with the platform they need to keep a longstanding presence in the town.

In Oldham the BNP result was in some ways more alarming. It stood candidates in only five wards and took an average of 28% share of the vote in each, almost beating the Liberal Democrats to a council seat in St James ward where the Lib Dem only won by a margin of 3%.

Outside Burnley and Oldham, the Guardian analysis shows that 16 of the remaining 48 BNP candidates broke through the 10% barrier. In Sunderland the party stood in six wards and gained more than 14% of the vote in four of them. In one, Town End Farm, it took 28% of the vote, pushing the Conservative candidate into a poor third place.

The Sunderland contests took place in single councillor wards and although there is little danger of the BNP getting elected to the council they have established a firm base in a part of the country which has no history of a fascist presence. It could prove a fertile area for future BNP activity. They also established a presence in Gateshead. It was the same story in Wigan where the BNP took 23% of the vote in Abram, which they had never fought before.

The BNP's results in the Black Country reflected something of its Powellite history. Their third best result outside Oldham came in the Princes End ward of Sandwell, West Midlands, where they took 24% of the vote. But the party could not repeat the performance in neighbouring Tipton - once the scene of a BNP byelection surge - where they could only manage 7%, or 334 votes. Their ground was undercut by a local Freedom party candidate who received 1,070 votes.

The failure of the BNP in London was the untold half of the story on Thursday night. Even in Bexley Northend, once the site of the national party head- quarters and where they had polled 27% of the vote in the past, they could only manage 7% this time. In Tower Hamlets' Millwall ward the BNP candidate scraped together only 3.7% of the votes.

The collapse in the London vote was the price the BNP paid for its strategy of pushing all its resources into exploiting the growing racial tensions in northern cities. This tactic has not been without its critics inside the BNP itself.

Alan Travis is the Guardian's home affairs editor.

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