I thought the documentary on More4 last night about the election campaign in Barking was great. It was a shrewd move to observe the BNP with some empathy, instead of casting them as pantomime Nazis. The BNP came over as smaller and weaker; a cult of pitiable delusionists wrapping themselves in fantasies of political power.
The result was genuine bathos, as the tin pot Führer stuffed his face with all day breakfasts, and Victoria sponge; and whipped up small audiences of the lost and dispossessed in pub function rooms. And what the documentary did well was get close enough to the BNP to understand why they have been able to tap into a layer of disenchantment; as the political classes, and the Labour Party in particular, have abused and neglected the working class. Whereas once the Labour Party was deeply embedded in these working class estates with a vibrant aspiration that life and community would be improved; the spin doctors of the New Labour machine saw the working classes as safe voting fodder; and the type of polices that would help these communities were regarded as too radical for the swing voters in the marginal seats, who were the new Kingmakers.
Most of the BNP activists and voters interviewed were inarticulate, more concerned about jobs and housing than racism; but who saw immigration as the cause of their woes. Particularly effective was the moving story of Andy, a BNP activist whose son died in Afghanistan during the course of the filming, and who said his boy didn’t even know what the war was about.
The understated end of the documentary was masterly, as the puffed up hopes and grandiose ambitions of Nick Griffin and the BNP were exposed by the mundane power of the voters’ judgement. Griffin was crushed by numbers dispassionately delivered by the returning officer, with around 6000 votes; while Margaret Hodge got over 24000.
Every BNP councillor lost their seat, and Labour now runs Barking and Dagenham with all 51 councillors.
The head has been cut off the worm, but Labour now has to deliver; and to reconnect with the aspirations and concerns of working class voters. That may be a bigger challenge than seeing off the ragtag and bobtail forces of British fascism.
