The news reached us standing in the gallery. "Have you heard about the fighting?" Forty anti-fascists were gathered outside the count. When the Sunderland BNP contingent finally arrived, they did so with fists flying. Soon the police outnumbered both groups. Even candidates were frisked on the way in.
Everyone was talking about the threat posed by the fascists. With twenty-five candidates standing, this was their biggest bloc across the whole country. It was their plan B for a second front, after previous success in Oldham and Burnley.
On St. George's Day, British National Party leader Nick Griffin had even used the opportunity to speak in Sunderland. Everywhere, the cameras followed. "We are the socialist alternative to New Labour", he told one journalist. "National socialist?", he was asked back. In his warm-up speech to the boys, Griffin used the fact of soft press interest as a means to jeer up an indifferent crowd. "Yesterday I was talking to the Financial Times, today it's Channel Four."
The reason for his audience's scepticism was the debacle of Griffin's entrance. A medium-sized crowd of sixty anti-fascists had been enough to keep Griffin scared. He waited for over two hours before entering, until all opposition had left.
Meanwhile, the entire regional organisation of the BNP had been insufficient to turn out more than forty people. The faces were all familiar- broken neck, ape face, career criminal, the one with body odour, the one with the Union Jack tie. "People like you", they boast, "are joining the BNP". It wouldn't take more than five minutes in a room with this lot to scare off the Sunderland majority.
And that's the rub. For how on earth did these misfits take permanent control of pubs in Southwick, or the Working Man's Club in Town End Farm? How did they get ten thousand votes across the city? How did they persuade so many Wearsiders that the greatest threat facing the city was the presence of just a thousand refugees?
Back in the count, the woman from the Sunderland Echo was talking to her friend. "I don't understand it. I grew up here. I've been to the pubs where the BNP go. I mean ... There are good people, ex-miners, who buy this racism."
It wasn't just the British National Party, either. Tory candidate in Paul Maddison stood on a programme of "No more asylum seekers in Sunderland". "Please vent your displeasure directly on Labour", he told the voters, "it's their mess".
As it happened, the BNP failed to win the "multiple victories", which Griffin had predicted. In their key target ward of Town End Farm their vote rose only marginally from 28 to 29 per cent. But they closed on a second target -- outpolling the Conservatives to become the main opposition to Labour in the city.
It was a close-run thing. The people who went leafleting against the BNP included a generation of shop stewards from the 1980s. The shop workers union USDAW sent a coach from their training day. Steve Cram, David Puttnam, Niall Quinn, and the Bishop of Durham all spoke out against racism.
But despite all that, of the British National Party's vote consolidated. Where before they had one or two good areas, now there is hardly a ward where they haven't won ten percent in the past. The Echo publishes their letters. The news of BNP victories in Halifax and Burnley shows the threat ahead.
The BNP's success has also manifested itself in a rise in racist attacks. One victim was an Iranian refugee, Pehman Bahmani, killed in Sunderland in August 2002. Bahmani had complained to the police of racial abuse and demanded action to halt persistent attacks. Afterwards, the police conceded that there was a mood of "anger and apprehension" among minorities in the city.
Unless the North East left can win a simple argument -- that you can't beat poverty with racism -- we will have more bad election nights ahead.
