The shifting sands of the BNP

By David Higgerson on Sep 4, 09 04:50 PM

IT'S a good three months since the BNP won their first national-level representation in the form of two MEPs in the European parliament thanks to the quirky voting system and they've largely disappeared off the political radar.

They've popped up one or two times, most recently in an article in the Lancashire Telegraph - which covers what could be considered the BNP's heartland of East Lancashire - which revealed the party was struggling to find somewhere to base their office, which was oddly heartening.

Then today came the news, in The Times, that they are abandoning plans to fight a legal prosecution by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over its "you can only come in if you're white and of celtic/anglo-saxon descent" membership policy.

Nick Griffin, between known as Fat Hitler on Twitter, has decided the party will modify its rules to allow in anyone, rather than take a stance against the Commission and, in his word "go down in a blaze of glory."

So, is it a victory for democracy or equality, or an own goal which plays to the BNP's favoured electoral tactic of sticking up for what it sees as the oppressed homeland majority?

The BNP's election tactics vary little from year to year. On a local level, they'll find an issue which plays to racist politics - in Burnley it was that Asian areas received money from the council, white areas didn't - and then use it to paint a picture of a white population forced to bend to political correctness.

A similar tactic was in play in the European elections when it asked the question "How do you feel to be in the minority" as it showed fuzzy pictures of streets which - shock horror - had people of more than one colour of it.

So by insisting the BNP adapts its policies and lets in non-whites, has the commission not effectively handed the party another string to its general electoral bow - an election, which thankfully, will be determined by the familar first past the post system? If the European election figures are replayed next summer, it's highly unlikely the BNP will come anywhere close to landing a parliamentary seat.

Will the BNP go to front doors now, pointing out it no longer has the right to just admit who it wants, trying to play up some social injustice, mixed in with some of the lies it likes to trot out - such as its misguided claim that the Black Police Association only admits blacks. If the BNP is good at one thing - it's propaganda, especially if it involves dressing something up as something else, such as racism as nationalism.

I simply cannot see what the commission hoped to get out of this action. Are there people from ethnic minority groups queuing up to become members of the BNP? Even now as the BNP changes its constitution, can we really expect non-whites to be treated equally within the party?

As Griffin is quoted as saying during his recent party in Derbyshire (via the News of the World):

"Since if we want to survive we will be forced to let them in, the key will be before we do so to change the party - to ensure that whoever's coming in doesn't have any control."

So to that end, legal action against the decision has achieved little, other than revealing that the BNP's bullish claims about funds are now questionable. Its retreat from the legal action has, more than anything, got to be about money - it's already been hit with legal costs once, and admits that having to pay more would have wiped it out.

That's a party unable to rent premises in its core area and which doesn't have members prepared to stump up to take a stand against the issues that are supposed to be what it stands for?

Interestingly, Nick Griffin insists the party is united behind his decision. The far-right blogs paint a different picture - one of members want to go down in a blaze of glory.

And it appears the definition of who the BNP is fighting for has changed. Andrew Brons, the Yorkshire MEP, claimed after the election he felt anyone based in the country prior to 1948 who was of foreign birth - ie before his concept of mass immigration - should be allowed to stay. Everyone else should be offered the chance to go.

In his statement, Griffin says he wants to "secure a future for the true children of our isles." That sounds like a shift to me - or further proof the BNP's racism is as muddled as it is dangerous.

Maybe the commission took the view it had to challenge institutionalised inequality wherever it discovered it. I can't help but think that all they've done is added weight to the BNP's propoganda machine come the next elections.