The after-shocks of Jean Marie Le Pen's success in the first round of this year's French elections are still being felt. In France, they acted as a siren call, compelling a previously indifferent public to vote in huge numbers. In England, we experience our own little local difficulty. The Far Right British National Party has had three candidates elected in Burnley in Lancashire, and has achieved high votes elsewhere in the country, including Sunderland. What forces sustain this latest Right-wing revival, and what can be done to halt it?
The background lies in the events of the early 1980s. Aided by an electoral pact with the centre-right, Front National candidates were able to win seats in the small town of Dreux. Their support was initially a middle-class vote, although to some extent that has changed since. Le Pen's campaign gained widespread publicity, from journalists looking for an exciting story, a new politics to cover. Within a year, Le Pen had established himself as a permanent feature on the French political scene. More to the point, a European Far Right, long isolated by the memories of the war and the Holocaust, was able to re-establish itself. In the aftermath of FN successes, Far Right parties saw their votes rise, in Austria, Italy, and even (briefly) in Germany. The current BNP strategy is so closely modelled on Le Pen's early victories - that they have even re-named their party newspaper Identity after the FN's magazine.
But the process whereby Le Pen was made to appear respectable was not fixed. His movement came under attack -- after Carpentras, when Le Pen refused to denounce a racist gang that had defaced a Jewish cemetery, and again when the leader of the FN described the Holocaust as "a mere detail of history". Le Pen's first ascendancy was undermined by the huge public sector strikes that were held in France in the winter of 1995-6. Their aftermath witnessed the formation of more radical anti-fascist networks, including Ras le Front. The FN was slowly pushed onto the defensive, and finally split in 1998. There was even a brief period of retreat, during which the votes of most such parties fell. This moment then ended -- with the election of a conservative-fascist coalition in Austria, and now Le Pen's vote in 2002.
Within twenty four hours of the news of the French election results, over one hundred thousand people had taken to the streets. The recurring symbol of the protests was a young man or woman carrying a poster, or perhaps the front of a newspaper. Wherever they found it, the slogan was the same - "Non". No to racism, they shouted, No to Le Pen. The result was the most one-side election victory in French history, won by "superliar" Chirac, a man whose voters had to be led to the booth, disinfected, or with clothes-pegs on the nose, if he would win. Either the crook or the fascist -- the press said -- but the real hope lay with the movement on the streets.
In Britain, the response was equally urgent, just less radical. Tony Blair spoke out in Parliament against the threat. David Blunkett warned of the danger that the British National Party could rise on Le Pen's coat-tails. The Daily Express ran with a front cover showing Russia nationalists in uniform, "Wherever Nazis march we have to defeat them". But there was always something curious about the new-found anti-fascist consensus. Inside the Express, editorial columns argued that the lesson of France was that Europe needs tougher immigration controls, as if racist policies were the antidote to the success of racist parties. You don't beat racists by copying them. David Blunkett made this point negatively - accusing asylum-seekers of "swamping" the British education system -- and then (guess what?) the BNP vote rose.
If you want to explain how the British National Party was able to secure such a high vote, then the most basic explanation must be the disillusionment of working-class people with both main parties. In Sunderland, I have heard people saddened by the thought that in their ward the BNP had come second, try to comfort themselves with the argument that "At least, the Conservatives only got 150 votes". It sounds great for a moment -- we didn't vote for a middle-class party! -- so long as you ignore the fact that people voted for fascists instead!
The disappearance of Labour is crucial. Time was when every ward would have had its own Labour club, with someone drinking in the corner. Their job was to carry the line, if need be. The local Labour parties don't exist any more, and an inherited labour consciousness is withering. Every time people on the estates see Blair brag about how he's copying Thatcher's industrial policies, every time people watch New Labour get caught taking bribes from some rich businessman -- another potential obstacle to fascism is lost.
How did the BNP actually build its base? Different people played their apart, none intending it, all smoothing the way. The Oldham police can be blamed for a policy of only reporting racist attacks on white people -- they had their own agenda, which was to overturn the Macpherson report. The Oldham Chronicle then chipped in - repeating the lurid rumours of police officers about "no go" areas for white people. National and local politicians waded in. David Blunkett did what you would expect of him these days -- if something's moving, Blunkett doesn't want to be left behind. In the space of a few weeks, a pogrom atmosphere was whipped up. It was then that the BNP moved in.
Nick Griffin's tactics were similar to what used to be called the "strategy of tension". First you go into an area, and whip up hatred on a massive scale. Then you retreat to the sidelines, posing as a respectable politician. "We're the only one who can clear up the mess". Ever since the race riots in Oldham last spring, the BNP has been on a roll -- journalists have queued up to interview Nick Griffin. It is just like watching kids around a sweetie-box. Will that one make me sick? Too late, it did. Through stupidity on the part of the press and other forces, BNP acquired the momentum that culminated in its Burnley vote.
It is time for the left to remind itself of old slogans, and necessary campaigns. Jackie Ashley told the Guardian recently, "Leon Trotsky has not made a big impact in my life, except for the circles and the arrows. Everyone on the left in my generation probably remembers them: the symbols of the Anti-Nazi League". In the 1970s and again in the 1990s, a movement was established which forced the far right back to the fringes of politics. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in anti-racist Carnivals. Every time the NF or the BNP marched, they were opposed. "And back then", Ashley writes, "it seemed to have worked". The NF collapsed into fragments. In 1993, even the BNP was pushed back.
Where fascists have been elected in the past, as in Tower Hamlets at the start of the 1990s, their success was felt in terms of a huge rise in the number of racist attacks. People's lives suffered for the worst. From the wave of publicity that followed, the BNP was able to recruit a new generation of thugs including David Copeland, the man who set up nail bombs in Brixton and Soho. The left does have a strategy for defeating organised racism, a model that has worked for us before.
We just have to do it, all over again.
