I recall May 1st and 2nd 1997 with clarity. I recall the Portillo moment and the pleasure it gave to watch an out of touch government swept aside. For once I was on the winning side and it felt good as I rested my feet from the day’s tramping the streets knocking people up, watching as one by one, the Tory seats fell.
Even then, I knew it couldn’t last. Politics is cyclical and I realised that the Tories would resurface one day. I wondered how I would feel when it was Labour suffering a meltdown at the ballot box. Well, the last week, I have had the opportunity to find out.
Labour has suffered its worst post-war election result as it was beaten into third place by UKIP and saw the BNP gain its first seats at Brussels.
It feels pretty damned good, actually. How our attitudes change over time.
Oh, and I’m not going to get into a fit of angst over the BNP. They are the Labour party with racism added for good measure. Their success is the Labour party’s fault and no one elses.
You did your bit to get a warmonger into office.
And I repent at leisure. The war was one of the final straws for me – along with ID cards, civil contingencies act, smoking ban and so on…
In my defence, I wasn’t to know in 1997 that he would go to war on a lie.
The problem for me is that in these rigged elections over here in the States I am invariably offered a slate of duds & shitheels who have no better morals & character than I do, myself!
As to your BNP, these Republican fools here are in the turds now, too, with that brooding sour lower tier of white working (sic) males and “their” doughy wimmen, who hate Mexicans and yet are “too good” to do the work the Mexicans do. The GOP have been lying to these halfwits for YEARS and dragging their Baby Jesus around like a dead cat & Sarah Palin at the election rallies — and then letting the “illegals” in ANYWAY, to do the dirty work so the next level up of small business operators can squeak by with low wages. (Both parties seem to have an investment in the Hispanic cultural setup, as these folk historically tend to look up to the image of a strong state, have suffered under nothing but dictatorship and yet still dream of a “good” natinal government, somewhere….)
Young conservatives here are just humiliated these days that The Two Corpses, Cheney and that fat piece of human — Rush “Pillhound” Limpprick, er, Limbaugh, even now simply will not shut up.
They are the Labour party with racism added for good measure
Oh come off it Longrider – you are more astute than that! The BNP is the direct descendant of the NF and it was founded by the leader of the NF, John Tyndall. No one in their right mind would have called Tyndall or the NF left wing or ‘Labour with added racism’. In the 1960s Tyndall wrote a tract arguing for an authoritarian Britain and the banning of trades unions.
Griffin has certainly sought to portray the BNP as a more muscular Labour party and it has adopted policies calculated to appeal to disenhanted Labour supporters. But it’s all cynical window dressing. The original Nazis also adopted policies in the run up to 1933 that were intended to woo disgruntled workers from the Communists. But Hitler quickly forgot about ruling as a socialist once he gained power and ruthlessly purged the strasserite elements from the party. So it is with the BNP.
Their success is the Labour party’s fault and no one elses
It’s the fault of mainstream politics as a whole, which has become homogenised and has moved sharply to the right, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
Stephen, I had this discussion a couple of months back. I really don’t want to go over all that again, but I stand by what I said then. The BNP manifesto is collectivist and authoritarian. They are very much a party of the left, not the right.
Hitler did, indeed, dally with the communists during the twenties. And, you are correct about the later purges. Doesn’t mean that he wasn’t ultimately pursuing a collectivist agenda, and your assessment of the BNP in this regard is probably accurate. Communism and Nazism are flip sides of the same coin. It is curious that erstwhile fellow travellers can be so bitter and brutal in their falling out – more so than with their genuine political enemies.
So, yes, I was being simplistic here, but I do stand by my comment – the BNP are left wing and their rise to prominence is a problem created by the Labour party. I would worry if they made a breakthrough in a general election, but as the LibDems have not managed it in the decades since 1918, I believe the threat inflated for political gain rather than a real one – the rather risible “vote for us or the bogeyman will get you” argument. Bear in mind here, that the BNP vote fell this time around in the EU election.
In my defence, I wasn’t to know in 1997 that he would go to war on a lie.
Absolutely. I did not support Labour in 1997, but I never, never dreamed that they would participate in a war of aggression. In fact, even in early 2003, I really didn’t believe they would do it. Whatever else one might say about Blair, he didn’t look like a warmonger. IMHO.
Yes I know that many on the internet like to accuse the BNP of being ‘left wing’ but in my opinion it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the history and practice of extreme right politics. I have been a student of the rise of Nazism and the various national socialist grouplings in the UK. It don’t object to it because I see ‘left wing’ as a term of approbation – the Communists were undoubtedly left wing and totalitarian. I object to calling the BNP ‘left wing’ because it takes the BNP at its own estimation. The key thing about all these groups is their attempt to masquerade their core beliefs – race supremacy and nationalism – behind more mainstream political concerns, such as law and order or immigration. Griffin himself admitted on film several years ago that it was not the right time for the BNP to be open about its beliefs so it couched them in code words that would be more acceptable to the wider electorate. Labour has alienated its core working class vote and the BNP has tailored its policies to appeal to such voters. But there is no evidence that it actually believes in those policies. Being left wing implies a belief in egalitarianism and a brotherhood of man. With the Bolscheviks that impulse readily segued into totalitarianism, so such principles are no guarantor of freedom. But Nazis deny those left wing principles in the first place, which is why calling them ‘left wing’ is so absurd.
I think it best to refer to something Counting Cats said during the previous discussion: That Nazis and communists may disagree about which books they will burn and whom they will shoot – but on the principle of burning books and shooting people they are in absolute agreement. Both are collectivist ideologies, both are deeply authoritarian, neither are laissez fait when it comes to such things as markets and allowing freedom of speech, association, assembly, religion and so on. There is no difference between them.
Oh, and I do not use “left wing” as a term of opprobrium, merely an observation. There is nothing right wing about the BNP. I don’t for one minute doubt your observation about concealing their real intentions, but ultimately, they are about control of the populace, control of markets, control of the means of manufacture, control of services – this is not a right wing philosophy.
Again, going back to Cats’ comment, the issue is authoritarianism and libertarianism; communists, Nazis, the BNP and the Labour party all share the same space on this one. Ultimately, they are the same. The difference is in degree, not principle.
Actually you are wrong about the Nazis not believing in ‘laissez faire’ economics. In fact the bourgeois mercantile class in 1930s Germany had little complaint with Hitler’s way of doing things. This happened within the context of a command economy that was geared to preparing for war but profits and capitalists were never in jeopardy. The purges of 1934 were partly about getting the industralists on-side by neutering the most aggressively proletarian part of Nazism, the SA. Really the only point of comparison between Nazism and Soviet Communism was the tyranny and the leader-worship. In most other respects they were quite different and those differences arose through real differences in ideology.
I do disagree with the idea that the issue is wholly about authoritarianism, and this is where I part company with card carrying libertarians. Political differences extend along many different axes. You lump The Nazis, the BNP and Labour as being distinguished only by their degree of authoritarism. But by any other political axis you could choose, they are wildly apart. In terms of nation, race and ‘blood and soil’, the Tories, the Monday Club and the BNP differ only by degree.