Monday 19 May 2014

Casting a protest vote: BNP



This election broadcast from the British National Party was censored, so we are told. It is available on-line, and I am presenting it in its original form, as you have to admit that it is an entertaining little piece, that will annoy all the right people.

On the subject of annoying all the right people, a vote for the BNP is probably the most sarcastic protest vote you could cast because it is guaranteed to do just that. 

I can remember back in 2012 when I lived in Nelson, Lancashire, the  Trots who all had well paid employment at the local further education college, shipped in an army of freaks to leaflet the ward where I lived, which had a BNP councillor up for re-election.

The BNP man lost by less than a hundred votes, largely because the bone-idle bugger couldn't be bothered canvassing. The Tories managed to scrape a victory by shipping in an army of canvassers and Labour agreed to only run a paper candidate, whilst the Liberal-Democrats stood down. When people complain that all the old parties are just factions of the same gang, they really do have a point, don't they?

That said, enough people were willing to vote for the BNP to make it a close run thing. Many of the people that I spoke to during the campaign made it quite clear that they were voting against the fat women and scrawny men who made up the Trot freak show, as well as registering a protest against the local elite who seemed to be doing quite nicely for themselves when everyone else was struggling to get by with a McJob or giro.

A decade ago the BNP looked set to take over all those East Lancashire councils, and had that happened they would today be on a par with the French National Front. They failed largely because of a split in their ranks which meant that far too many of their remaining members really are nutters, so unlike their French counterparts they cannot get away from their past.

When the BNP was set up in about 1980 it was expressly created as a fascist party. Under Nick Griffin, the party tried to shed its old Nazi roots, and rebranded itself as "The Labour Party that your dad used to vote for." Had Griffin accepted that he was a transitional leader and stood down in good order then a new man could have taken over and maybe the BNP would not be in such dire states as it is today. That did not happen, with the result that most of the regional organisers left the party in disgust, leaving Griffin in charge of a shell. That is probably the main reason why the party lost the 2012 election in my then ward, because there was just nobody to organise things properly.

If UKIP is made up of blazer wearing saloon bar Thatcherites, then today's BNP really does consist of the boot boys from the tap room, as almost everyone else has left. 

Maybe your hatred for the people who closed towns like Nelson down a generation ago is such that you can tolerate that? If that's the case, then the BNP is the party for you. In Brian Parker the party has a decent bloke who lives in the Marsden ward that he represents, but he is the exception is a field made up of general buffoonery.

As with UKIP, just decide who you hate more and then vote against them.

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