In my article, ‘Beggars Belief’, in the last edition of Democratic Socialist, I reported on the Court of Appeal case of Begum v Denbridge High School.

The court decided that the school had infringed the right of Ms Begum to wear a jilbab, which is advocated by very strict Muslims to hide the shape and form of adult women. The school had sent her home from school and refused to accept her back unless she adopted the much less strict uniform it had agreed with Muslim parents and the local mosques. The court concluded that the school could not justify this infringement of the child’s right to religious freedom because it had not followed a correct procedure. Laying down a procedure, the court proposed a long and complex series of steps which overtly related to human rights law.

Reviewing that judgement, I commented: ‘When making its decision to exclude the claimant, I suspect the school did not expressly consider its justification for limiting the claimant’s human rights because it considered that to be too controversial for the headteacher and the board of governors. Instead, it decided to restrict itself to whether or not school rules had been infringed and whether those rules were consistent with the school’s policy on multiculturalism.’

It appears that the House of Lords has taken a similar view when considering an appeal from the Court of Appeal. In fact, the view that they took is very robust indeed. By a margin of 3:2 they decided that there had been no infringement of Ms Begum’s right to religious freedom and they were unanimous in concluding that even if there had been, that infringement would have been justified.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill described the Court of Appeal’s decision as: ‘admirable guidance to a lower court or legal tribunal, but [it] cannot be required of a head teacher and governors, even with a solicitor to help them’.

Lord Hoffman was even more incisive when he commented that: ‘common civility also has a place in the religious life … [Ms Begum and her brothers] sought a confrontation and claimed that she had a right to attend the school of her own choosing in the clothes she chose to wear’.

A pawn in their game

Furthermore, Lord Scott observed that: ‘the confrontational nature of the peremptory manner in which the jilbab issue was raised with the school, a manner which is very unlikely to have been chosen by Shabina [Ms Begum], not yet 14 years of age, set the tone for how the issue then developed’.

The clear implication of these comments in their context is that it was Ms Begum’s brothers who were the main players and Ms Begum was only a pawn in their game. The key principle in this important judgement is that: ‘Freedom to manifest one’s religion does not mean that one has the right to manifest one’s religion at any time and in any place and in any manner that accords with one’s belief.’

Ms Begum could have attended two other schools where she could have worn the jilbab. The school actively sought her return or her transfer to another school to maintain her education. It was the claimant’s inflexibility, presumably under pressure from her brothers, which prevented her from agreeing to a transfer early on in the dispute. She was free, in other words, to wear the jilbab, but not to do so at that school, which had properly consulted on its school uniform with religious authorities and the community.

Even if that had not been the case, and changing schools was more disruptive and difficult than the majority accepted, as Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead and Baroness Hale of Richmond contended, then the school’s decision could be justified on the grounds that the school’s uniform policy was ‘a thoughtful and proportionate response to reconciling the complexities of the situation’. This included the fear of the majority of Muslim families that allowing the jilbab would lead to harassment towards those whose interpretation of religious tradition was less severe.

It should be noted that the position arrived at by the House of Lords is a long way away from the French attitude towards religious dress in schools. It leaves the decision up to the school after proper consultation with the community and religious authorities. If the decision falls within the possible scope of what is lawful under the Human Rights Act 1998, the state, in the form of the courts, will not interfere with a decision made by the governing body of a school. This is the polar opposite to the French position which is based on a law that emanates from the nation’s constitution and which lays down one absolute standard for everyone.

“Halifax is a wonderful place and its people are not racist,” Alice Mahon MP said the day after the British National Party’s Adrian Marsden won a council seat in Mixenden Ward in January by 28 votes. In fact, making negative comments about “pakis” has the same conversational status in Halifax as complaining about the weather, although there are considerable pockets of resistance to that way of thinking, as the by-election result itself showed.

The culture of the town is insular – you are a foreigner if you come from another part of England let alone anywhere else. A former councillor of Irish heritage once said that very few people actually feel like they belong in Halifax, totally, and most people experience some degree of exclusion. Snobbery is as rife as racism, and some of the casual comments about people from Mixenden estate itself exhibit a prejudice as deep as that expressed about Asians. If David Blunkett wants more proof of “coiled anger” in the collective English psyche, then a trip to Halifax would be in order.

However, Halifax is also a place of strong contrasts – most of its council wards are mixtures of urban and rural, rich and poor. Reading the national press, you would think Mixenden was simply a big concrete estate. It isn’t. Follow the valley down from Halifax town centre, through the idylls of Wheatley, and you come to the estate. Turn up the hill and you come out in Pellon, with rows of modest but largely well-maintained terraces and some beautiful older stone cottages. Then there is the ‘middle-class’ area, Mount Tabor.

Politically, Mixenden is not a Labour stronghold in the same way as, say, an inner city ward in Newcastle or Newham. Since the creation of Calderdale in 1974 – an unpopular invention which has remained so – Mixenden has not always returned Labour councillors. In 2000, a Tory called Lorraine Stott won, when a deselected Labour councillor, Red Mellett, stood as an independent.

Calderdale council remains unloved partly because it is barely viable. It is the smallest council in West Yorkshire with a very low number of council tax payers and an aging population. Because of its demographic diversity, it is the only authority along the Pennine corridor not to qualify for neighbourhood renewal money. The ability to make political choices is, therefore, somewhat hampered by a complete lack of resources in comparison to more favoured areas like Leeds, Bradford or Manchester. More often than not, the council is hung.

Despite this, Halifax Labour Party should be in a very healthy state indeed, with one of the country’s most outspoken, though unassuming left-wing MPs representing it – at least, it should if you think along the lines of the Campaign Group. In fact, it is in a state of near-collapse, particularly in the North Halifax “Labour heartland” wards of Ovenden, Mixenden and Illingworth. Both DLP and CLP struggle to have quorums and there are possibly only four, perhaps occasionally five, branches in the constituency that meet, only one of which, Ovenden, is in the shaky Labour heartland.

Clinging to class

In Mixenden, all the active members are old and many are in declining health. The party still clings to concepts of class which define its constituency ever more narrowly, and it has been unable to work out alternative ways of involving the socially excluded and the socially aspirational home-owning classes in any meaningful political projects. However, it still knows firmly what it is against: war and Tony Blair.

The Labour group itself is actually the smallest group on the council. It had 11 seats before 23 January and has no policies, no strategy and no interest in politics. In May 2002, it did quite well and won two seats. Then it promptly entered the council cabinet with the Liberal Democrats and the Tories, against the advice of the regional director of the Labour Party in Yorkshire and Humberside, Nan Sloane. He bowed, eventually, to “local” knowledge and the NEC permitted it. A surprising number of people in Halifax believe Labour is still in control of the council, including some of the members of the group.

This year quite a number of (mainly Tory) councillors have quit for one reason or another and soon after the Mixenden by-election was announced, another seat became vacant in Rastrick. The BNP put forward candidates for both seats, but eventually withdrew from Rastrick. Apparently, this is a common tactic because it splits the forces of the opposition.

Labour’s campaign in Mixenden was run by regional officials and telephone canvassing was done from the national HQ in London, although some also took place from the Labour Rooms in Halifax. The usual “Get out the vote” materials were used, based on the marked register of those who had actually voted in general and district elections since 1997. The obvious weakness of this technique is that it does not reach those who don’t usually bother to vote.

Given that this was a mid-term council by-election caused because the sitting Labour councillor was disqualified for non-attendance, the existing Labour vote held up quite well. Encouragingly, most existing Labour voters, at least the ones I talked to, said their second choice would be Liberal Democrat, except for one or two who said Tory specifically because they felt that they would vote for anyone who stood a good chance of beating the BNP. One voter, a pensioner, said that she appreciated the extra money Labour had given her but was disappointed with Tony Blair “because he’s right up that George Bush’s arse”.

During the campaign, Mixenden ward was flooded by BNP activists who moved around in large groups, delivering newspapers and leaflets. There was even a campaign video, which is still available on the BNP website. As you will have no doubt read, the BNP activists – whose accents ranged from Scottish, through Geordie to estuary English – were dressed smartly, usually in black. Their behaviour in public was subdued, but that did not lessen their menace as they swilled round corners and swamped whole streets.

Apparently, they now model their campaign techniques on the Liberal Democrats, having downloaded the Lib Dem’s handbook on how to campaign in local elections from the internet. On the whole, their leaflets said nothing about local issues, concentrating on asylum seekers and calling for an end to racist violence (by which they meant attacks on whites by Asians). They did, of course, capitalise on the 43 per cent per cent pay rise councillors had recently awarded themselves (despite opposition from the Labour group).

Asylum seekers

One leaflet, though, is worth mentioning in particular. It was printed on yellow paper and bore the Liberal Democrat symbol. On closer inspection, the Liberal bird in full flight was made out of condoms and syringes. The first page was a parody of Liberal Democrat PC-ness, entitled “Liberal Democrats – caring for ethnic minorities”. The second page provided a list of quotes from leading Liberal Democrats about asylum seekers and gay rights. Only at the end, after another list of allegations about Liberal Democrat members being charged with child abuse, did the leaflet call for support for the BNP. The Liberal Democrats used the same parodic technique against Labour in London in the 1990s.

Targetting Liberal Democrat voters was an interesting tactic, but not unexpected as the BNP specifically look out for Labour seats which may be about to fall to the Lib Dems. Once the habit of voting Labour has been broken, it is possible to attract floating voters.

In contrast, the Labour Party leaflets avoided the issue of asylum seekers, which was something of an irony because the candidate works for the civil service deciding whether asylum seekers should be sent home or not. He is keenly aware of the abuses which take place and the desperate need of many to find refuge here. Throughout the campaign, however, the national party gagged him. Even on election night itself, he was told not to talk to the press, even though he is a former leader of the council whose trademark is loyalty to the party and self-discipline. His leaflet – “Vote Mike Higgins – the no nonsense candidate” – mentioned a number of bread and butter issues, like renewing former council housing stock, and claimed a vote for the BNP would increase racial violence and lower house prices. The whole thing was written by regional office.

By contrast, again, the Liberal Democrat leaflet openly dealt with racism and supported the rights of asylum seekers. Their candidate, Stephen Pearson, is openly radical. In 1997, when he was the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Calder Valley parliamentary seat, he called for the UK to become a republic. “He may be a shit,” a leading Calderdale Liberal Democrat said during the campaign. “But he’s our shit.”

At one point on election night, an organiser from Labour’s regional office looked up and said: “There’s a 39 per cent turnout. That could be bad for us.” When I pointed out, perhaps naively, that a high turnout ought to be good for Labour he boasted about the time he had orchestrated a successful defence of a Doncaster seat against a strong Liberal Democrat challenge. He had realised Labour would win, he said, when only 11 per cent of the voters turned out.

He went back to his lists and coloured bits of paper. And the rest is history.

Some points are worth noting, however: Mixenden estate voted solidly for Labour, while the BNP vote came mainly from the Mount Tabor and Rye Lane boxes, the areas of “nice” housing. The Tory vote collapsed and the Liberal Democrats only failed to beat the BNP by 28 votes with Labour third, 10 votes behind the Liberals.

Since then, Combat 18 has published photographs of Anti Nazi League activists on their website, asking for details of their names and addresses.

It could be any day in modern London. A tube pulls into King’s Cross underground station. The doors slide open and a young woman wearing a headscarfe, long skirt and woollen shawl struggles on board with a baby-shaped bundle strapped to her back in a cloth sling. A small boy sporting a tightly-plaited pig tail stumbles after her, followed by a young man with dark hair and olive coloured skin who drags a large plastic launderette bag on to the train, heaving it through the legs of London’s commuters.

Feet shuffle and newspapers rustle as the young family search desperately to catch someone’s eye. “Please, please!” whispers the woman to a middle aged man seated opposite her. But his eyes are suddenly fixed on the adverts above her head. Others gaze at the floor, or stare intently at their own reflections in the dark windows behind her.

Then the little boy hops up, plants himself in front of a beige suited woman. “Please,” he says, pointing to the tube map above his head. “Wittorie? Wittoria?” “Oh, Victoria!” she exclaims, flushed but relieved that she’s not being asked to delve deep for some spare change. “It’s three stops,” she says, holding up her fingers, pointing to a name on the blue line. The boy sits down and a shy smile creeps across his young mother’s round face. “Thank you,” her eyes say.

Just another tricky episode for one of the UK’s newest families, feeling their way through the sea of suspicion…

Marcel Malik arrived in England from the Czech Republic in October 1997. Like the family on the tube he is a Gypsy – or Roma as they are more correctly known. He fled from eastern Europe to escape regular beatings from skinheads and the police, but so far England hasn’t exactly been the haven from persecution he had hoped for.

“Marcel was sent to Rochester prison for 45 days after he arrived and has been refused asylum three times,” explained his girlfriend Suzana Gyurkovics, a 17 year-old Slovakian Gypsy who came to England to escape hostility herself nearly four years ago with her mother and two sisters. “At school in Slovakia teachers wouldn’t speak to us because we were Roma,” she says. “My mother was harassed when she was pregnant and Roma women were beaten up. It’s better here but it’s still hard.”

Marcel was attacked in a restaurant once; both of them have been threatened in the street and forced to leave shops and clubs in Folkestone, the small seaside town where they have tried to remake their lives. According to the papers Marcel and Suzana are part of the “invasion” of illegal refugees arriving at Britain’s ports over the last few years “looking for a hand out”. Those who rode the wave that brought Marcel to Dover two and a half years ago were dubbed “giro Czechs” by the papers. But the “flood” turned out to be merely 600 people, half of whom left immediately.

Those who stayed were greeted with National Front marches and media scare stories, hostilities which intensified greatly in the following months as asylum seekers from Kosovo and Albania added to Britain’s so-called ‘immigration crisis’. On the south coast, when a few lucky families found places to live, signs went up in their new neighbours’ windows saying, “No asylum seekers welcome here”. One woman even put barbed wire around her garden fence when Gypsies moved in next door.

“Some of the things people came out with was incredible,” said Charles Bourne of Kent Refugee Link, an organisation which helps immigrants with their asylum appeals and welfare advice. “Even the kids were calling them perverted, dirty thieves, scroungers, baby snatchers – all the worst prejudices about Gypsies.”

Meanwhile, in London and other cities, east European Gypsies have become the new scroungers, labelled so by press and politicians – they exploit their children for begging, we’re told, they are fraudsters, aggressive, a menace on the streets. For the family on the tube it all seems a sorry tale, a tale of our times. But for them and their Roma ancestors it’s only the latest chapter in a long, long story of persecution and discrimination.

Origins

It started over one thousand years ago on the Indian subcontinent, where the origins of all Roma people are said to lie. No-one knows quite why they began to travel, but US Romany scholar Ian Hancock suggests they came from non-Aryan tribes who were recruited as troops by Hindus to repel the threat of Muslim invasion – partly because their lives were regarded as less valuable than those of India’s Aryan rulers.

Through their military endeavours they gradually travelled through Persia and the rest of what is now the middle east, into Turkey and beyond. This is known as the first great Romany migration. The second saw them spread into Europe, which they reached in the 14th century; and in the third, after Roma slavery had been abolished in the middle of the 19th century, Roma crossed the Atlantic to the Americas. Some say the exodus of Roma people from eastern Europe since the fall of the iron curtain constitutes a fourth great migration.

Through these endless wanderings, today’s estimated 12 million Roma are dispersed throughout most countries in Asia, the middle east, Europe, and north and south America. No-one knows for sure quite how many there are because Roma are often excluded from census records and many choose to hide their background for fear of discrimination.

It’s a well-founded fear. For, despite their 600-year presence in Europe, Roma remain the least integrated and most persecuted of peoples, having suffered centuries of slavery and state-sponsored pogroms. In the 15th and 16th centuries, for example, Roma were kept as slaves in the Balkans and Spain; in the 17th and 18th centuries they were shipped by Portuguese, Spanish and English merchants to become slaves in colonies in the Caribbean, Africa, north and south America, and even India; they were made slaves of the Russian Crown under Catherine the Great in the 18th century; and were later employed “in a state of slavery” in the coal mines of Scotland. In the 20th century, 1.5 million died at the hands of the Nazis – one of the least remembered aspects of the holocaust, or Porrajmos, as it is known in Romanes, the Roma language.

Anti-Gypsy hostility in the UK is nothing new either. Roma first arrived in Britain in 1500, travelling as tradesmen, craftsmen or entertainers. In 1530 Henry VIII made it a capital offence just to be an ‘Egyptian’, as they were known (see box below), in an Act that remained on the statute book for over 300 years. More than 100 were condemned to death in York in 1596, and 13 were hanged in Bury St Edmonds in 1650. Edward VI passed a law stating that Gypsies be “branded with a V on their breast, and then enslaved for two years”. Anyone who escaped was to be branded with an S and made a slave for life.

Marginalised

Now there are more than 100,000 Gypsies in the UK, about half of whom still live a nomadic lifestyle. And although the slavery and death sentences have gone, ‘No Travellers’ signs in pubs and shops are still seen; opposition to caravan sites from local residents, press and politicians is common; and daily harassment and intimidation continue to make Romanies one of the most vulnerable and marginalised ethnic minority groups in the country.

Rachel Morris of the Traveller Law Research Unit at Cardiff University claims that Gypsies have the highest infant mortality rates of any ethnic group, the lowest life expectancy, the most appalling accommodation provision, the highest illiteracy rates, and the most racist press coverage. “Romany culture appears to be so different from the rest of society,” she says. “We live in such a controlled society, and people see Travellers as outside the norm – they find it scary.”

In fact, Romany culture is extremely diverse. Although there are attributes common to all Roma, such as loyalty to extended family and the ‘clan’; belief in God (or Del), the Devil (or Beng) and predestiny; and attachment to a code of rules on cleanliness and purity (called Marim), the standards and norms vary enormously as different tribes have adapted to changing conditions and integrated to a greater or lesser degree with different gajikane (non-Roma) societies. Some Roma are still nomadic, but not all; some speak Romanes, but not all; and some Roma groups are illiterate, but not all.

Nevertheless, like other ethnic groups, Roma have suffered from ingrained stereotypes that have been built up over centuries. “Either they are seen as a wandering, mysterious and carefree people with pretty, painted wagons,” says Morris. “Or they’re dirty, noisy thieves and baby stealers with an alien language and customs, who never do an honest day’s work.” This “good gypsy – bad gypsy” syndrome derives from a dangerous mix of fear and fascination – fear of the outsider and fascination with the romantic notion of ‘taking to the road’.

This attitude was revealed last year by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, on a local radio station. “There are few real Romany Gypsies left who seem to mind their own business and don’t cause trouble,” said the government minister responsible for good race relations. “Then there are a lot more people who masquerade as Travellers or Gypsies … these so-called Travellers seem to think that it’s perfectly okay to cause mayhem in an area, to go burgling, thieving, breaking into vehicles, defecating in doorways, and so on”.

Romantic vision

Mary Lee was born on a Traveller site more than 60 years ago and now manages a local authority site near Widnes. “I wish Jack Straw would just come and meet some of us,” she says. “Everyone thinks the true Romany is someone who lives in a fancy horse drawn wagon. But the Gypsy that goes to work in a factory or to school, they don’t want to know about them. The romantic vision is fine but not the reality.”

When she was young, Mary used to travel extensively with her family, going from farm to farm in the Cotswolds and around Gloucestershire. “There was never the hatred against us that there is now,” she says. “They see we have cars and caravans and they think we’ve all got money. Or they think we’re all on social security and living a free life.” Mary’s father never claimed benefits, she says, and her mother didn’t take any family allowances, although she had five children.

Mary now has two children and a grandchild of her own, but she and her husband stopped travelling about 15 years ago to take on a warden’s job. “My husband used to paint barns and I would do a bit of selling door to door,” she says. “But it was hard with two kids. The way of life has completely changed now for our younger people, but then we have always changed to survive.”

They have had to. In the 20th century, as modern industrialisation grew and the need for itinerant labour decreased, many of the traditional Gypsy occupations disappeared, and land shortages reduced the number of available stopping places for caravans. The 1968 Caravan Sites Act, which made local authorities responsible for providing sites, was repealed as part of Michael Howard’s notorious 1994 Criminal Justice and Pubic Order Act, which also gave police and local authorities extra powers to remove Travellers from highways and land. Recent changes to planning laws mean that 90 per cent of planning applications made by Gypsies fail, while public money given to local authorities for house building is not available for providing Gypsy sites, forcing many young families to live in “settled” accommodation rather than caravans.

Rachel Morris estimates that councils now spend about £10 million a year evicting Travellers, and she echoes many Gypsy organisations in believing that these changes have ‘criminalised’ the Romany lifestyle. A recent report by Save the Children found that 92 per cent of Traveller families in Scotland had been forcibly moved by police and landowners, revealing a “disturbing level of institutionalised racism”. Some Gypsy groups have even taken cases to the European Court of Human Rights claiming their rights to family life and a home have been violated.

Education

Prejudice and discrimination have severely restricted Gypsies’ access to education too. According to Mary many Romany adults never went to school. “I went for six weeks but my father wouldn’t let me stay because I was called names,” she says. “My son went until he was 14, then the site we were on was closed and we had to move. My daughter left when they called her a ‘dirty Gypsy’.”

A 1996 report from OFSTED found that around 10,000 of the estimated 50,000 secondary age Gypsy children were not on school rolls, and of those that were, only one in five reached key stage three and one in 20 key stage four before dropping out. Hester Hedges is one Traveller who has bucked the trend. Now 20, she is part way through a law degree at De Montford University in Leicester, one of very few Gypsies who have ever passed A levels, never mind gone on to higher education.

“I was a lucky in a way because my parents stopped travelling when I was five so local people got used to me,” she says. “And my Mum can’t read so she was really keen on us going to school.”

Hester, who grew up in a caravan on a site near Cambridge with her parents, a brother and a sister, received help from the local Traveller education team, one of about 70 such units around the country who encourage Gypsy children to go to school, reassure their parents that education won’t dilute their own culture, and try to get schools to educate other children about Gypsy life.

“Lots of Traveller children don’t get over the initial barriers at school, which is not surprising,” says Hester. “My sister used to come back home with her lip swollen and black eyes. For some Traveller children the education was secondary – just getting there and back without being beaten up was the main thing. When you get abused as a Gypsy it carries a whole lot of meanings, it’s more than just an insult.

“I used to think I’d rather be someone else,” she adds. “It’s painful having to go through life feeling different. There are still some people who I would never tell I was from a Traveller family – you never know what their reaction might be. Even those people at school who knew would be like, ‘No, not a proper one’, or ‘But you’re not like them’.”

Certainly there are no dangly gold earings or flowery skirts on Hester, and her accent is no more mysterious than Radio 4 English. Yet, she’s acutely aware of her heritage, and is already wondering how she can use her law degree to help other Travellers. In many ways she represents the future, the hope that education can both preserve a culture and destroy a prejudice.

As Mary Lee says: “I believe in education. I want our children to be health workers, liaison officers, teachers, because I want them to be able to speak up for Romany people. But the educating has got to be done on both sides.”

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What’s in a name?

The name Romany is derived from Sanskrit for ‘the people’, whereas the term Gypsy comes from the mistaken 16th century notion that these “dark travellers” came from Egypt. Some people prefer the terms Rom and Roma, or Rrom and Rroma.

The Council of Europe has approved the term ‘Rroma (Gypsies)’ for use in its documents.

Romanies call non-Gypsy people ‘gorjer’, ‘gorgio’, or ‘gajikane’.

Language

There is a common Romany language (Romanes), with roots in ancient Punjabi or Hindi, although there are now some 100 dialects and three distinct language groups: Domari, spoken in the middle east and eastern Europe (the Dom); Lomarven, spoken in central Europe (the Lom); and Romani, in western Europe (the Rom).

Culture

Although there are still some common elements to Romany culture, it is complex. The Roma population has always been a composite of different ethnic groups brought together during the initial migration from India and fragmented by later migrations into Europe and elsewhere. Romany groups have grown differently in different places, sometimes assimilating other populations, sometimes being absorbed by them. Tribes around the world have different beliefs and tenets, but no group can claim to be the “one true” Roma.

In Britain “Romany Gypsies” were identified as an ethnic group, as defined by the Race Relations Act, in 1989.

Thomas Acton, then a student, established the first Gypsy Council caravan school in 1967 on an airfield in east London. Now Britain’s first professor of Romany Studies at Greenwich University, he has identified four groups of Gypsies in the UK: Romanichals (English Gypsies), Kale (Welsh), Nachins (Scottish) and Minceir (Irish).

Well known modern entertainers with Romany ancestry include Yul Brynner, Charlie Chaplin, Rita Hayworth, Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins and David Essex. Romany music has influenced artists such as Liszt, Bizet, Brahms, Verdi and Rachmaninov.

A spoked wheel (or chakra) was adopted as the symbol of the international Romany movement in 1971. It bears a striking resemblance to the 24-spoked Ashok Chakra found in the centre of the national flag of India.

The Romany flag is green and blue with a red chakra in the centre.

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Just over a year ago, Serbian forces – intent on cleansing their region of Albanian people – drove thousands from their homes. Many of the luckier ones, who escaped the shootings, rapes and maimings, spent the winter under canvas suffering indescribable discomfort and degradation. Some were airlifted to England.

On their arrival groups of well-wishers waved “Welcome” banners and thrust gifts into the hands of these bewildered people. There were official welcomes by representatives of the great and the good.

In June this year, as the so-called “voluntary return” flights left Leeds and Bradford Airport, there was none of this. The press were invited onto the first flight and treated to smiling “Goodbye and thank you” photo calls. There was a delegation of important people to wave off the last of them but for the many flights in between there was an air of furtive activity and secrecy. The people were herded up the ramp straight through to Departures. They made a sorry sight as the queue snaked past the “Welcome to Leeds and Bradford Airport” sign at six o’clock in the morning.

Some of the stories of individual family are heartbreaking. Many are currently receiving medical treatment for serious illnesses. There will be none available when they return to Kosovo. They know that many of those who have gone before them are being forced to live in tents while younger family members work on rebuilding homes. So why have they decided to return of their own free will?

Many were on these flights because the alternatives were clearly spelt out to them. “Go now and collect your resettlement grant and we’ll arrange transport for some of your possessions,” they were told. “Or apply to stay at the risk of leaving with nothing and arriving home in winter.”

Degrading

If they stayed they would have become voucher-wielding asylum seekers with all the degrading conditions that this status confers. If they overstayed they would have been told to expect enforced removal.

All of this has taken place despite a very clear set of guidelines from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. A spokesperson for the Home Office has said they are under no obligation to follow these and compounded their culpability by commenting: “No one can say we haven’t been generous to the Kosovans.”

When one group of teachers and other friends wanted to go to the airport to say goodbye, a Refugee Council representative went to speak to their headteacher and made a very clear request that this would not be good for the Kosovans because it would only upset them and they should be allowed to leave with dignity.

The Kosovans arrived in this country after being driven from their homes, unsure what awaited them. Now they are being removed. They return to their country in the full knowledge that the government which is returning them has been told by an all-party committee that the current structures in Kosovo can not support vulnerable people. Put plainly, this means some of them are being sent to their deaths.

Jack Straw and Barbara Roche should look at the true picture behind their paper policies, their numbers games and their pathetic attempts to justify their draconian actions. For too long they have colluded with the Widdecombe approach to human misery. It is time for some truly humane interpretation of the plight of these people and of asylum seekers generally.

Juneha Chowdhury is nearing the end of her first year as a newly qualified teacher. It hasn’t been easy but, at 27, she’s finally beginning to fulfill the promise she first made to herself as a school girl more than 10 years ago. “I remember realising quite early that I could help my friends learn,” she says. “I suppose I had a natural talent to teach.”

But Juneha’s path from school girl to school teacher has been far from smooth. She went to Mulberry girls’ school, in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets, the once struggling education authority that has recently received swathes of praise and press coverage for its vastly improved exam results and fast improving schools. She left with nine GCSEs and three A levels, but family disapproval prevented her taking up an offer from the London School of Economics to study law, which she’d applied for in secret.

Instead, aged 18, she went to Bangladesh to get married. Four years later, after struggling with the authorities to bring her husband to the UK, and with a seven month old son to look after, she eventually enrolled at East London University to study English. Despite living in a hostel, and for a time officially regarded as a homeless family, Juneha got her degree.

After that, the decision to train as a teacher was easy – made easier, indeed, thanks to Tower Hamlets council. As a resident and ex-pupil in the borough, Juneha was eligible for one of the authority’s many innovative initiatives to encourage local people to work in local schools. She received a £3000 bursary when she took her first teaching job in a Tower Hamlets school, and she’ll get a further £2000 if she stays in the borough for at least two years. It certainly helped to make up her mind.

“I had offers from schools in Wanstead and Hackney,” she says. “But the bursary helped me make the decision. It’s a great incentive.”

Now teaching English at a local secondary school, Juneha is just one of the latest among a new generation of teachers and school support staff who have emerged from Tower Hamlets’s multi-ethnic and immigrant-rich communities to help transform the borough’s schools and the academic prospects of its children. As such, she’s a symbol of the changing face and fortunes of an area that, not long ago, was synonymous with the kind of racial tension, far right activism and educational underachievement that seems to characterise those northern towns where the BNP has made such headway recently.

A decade ago this area of the east end was a main BNP target. But now, while councils in towns such as Oldham, Burnley and Bradford have been criticised for policies that encourage “community apartheid” (see box) – leading to the disturbances of 2001 and, arguably, the recent BNP election successes – Tower Hamlets has won beacon status for “community cohesion”. It wasn’t always this way.

Stephen Lawrence

Nineteen-ninety-three is etched into the minds of anti-racist campaigners as the year when Stephen Lawrence was killed. But that year also saw a number of other vicious racist attacks, notably against Bangladeshi schoolboys around Bethnal Green and Mile End. For a while, the atmosphere was tense and, at times, scary. The BNP fought street battles with anti-fascist campaigners in Brick Lane, and the Anti-Nazi League organised large, noisy protests outside Bethnal Green’s York Hall, where the BNP held a rally.

Most frightening of all, the BNP won its only council seat for many years on the Isle of Dogs, benefiting from the white community’s hostility to the council’s housing policy, a hostility fuelled, in part, by the Liberal Democrats. At the time it seemed like the thin edge of a very sharp wedge. As it happened, Derek Beackon did not last long, partly because the massed ranks of the London-based anti-racist organisations concentrated their forces on the ward, and focused on exposing the BNP’s racist underbelly. Luckily, back then BNP members were still wearing lace-up boots, black bomber jackets and short hair cuts, crassly conforming to their folk devil image and falling neatly into line for a media-led moral panic.

Of course, no-one would seriously suggest there’s no longer any racism in Tower Hamlets – the numerous incidents of abuse and harassment against ethnic minorities, Muslims in particular, in the wake of September 11, are testament to its continued existence – but there has certainly been a change in what used to be called “community relations”. What’s more, that transformation has come, partly at least, thanks to a number council initiatives, the kind of policies that just might start to make a difference in Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley, Halifax, Bradford, Stoke, and the like.

None of these seem like radically new ideas – they include, for example, housing policies designed to break up ethnically homogenous estates and spread people from different communities around the borough. There’s also a rapid reaction unit which responds to aggravation between teenage gangs – a continuing problem in the Bangladeshi community – run by the youth service, not the police. And there’s a jobs programme which has helped 1500 residents get work locally, increasing the proportion of local people employed at Canary Wharf by 50 per cent.

But the biggest difference has been made in education. Back in the early 1990s, Tower Hamlets’ schools were notorious as educational graveyards. This was an area where newly trained teachers took their first jobs because there were masses available and the authority provided cheap housing as an incentive. All too often, they survived for two years, then left to further their careers in kinder pastures. When the council took control of education from the Inner London Education Authority in 1990, only eight per cent of pupils achieved the equivalent of five or more A* to C grades at GCSE, and a fifth of all pupils left school without any qualifications. By 1998 things had improved, but only slightly, and education almost passed into the hands of private management.

Most improved

Last year, however, 44 per cent of pupils got top GCSE grades, a huge nine per cent increase on 2001, compared to a one per cent rise nationally. It was the biggest improvement in England. Only four per cent of Tower Hamlets pupils left school without qualifications in 2002, and the number going on to higher education has increased by more than 200 per cent. These results were built on the success of Tower Hamlets’ primaries, whose SATS results rose more rapidly than in any other education authority between 1998 and 2001.

Of course, exam results are a crude and distorting measure of children’s education, at best, and of the standard of schools and teachers in particular (whatever the government thinks). But such improvements do indicate that something significant has changed, especially given that, socially and culturally, the area is still characterised by the kind of deep poverty and huge ethnic diversity that’s often regarded as a barrier to educational success.

Indeed, despite being squashed between the pin-striped wealth of the City and the shiny glass glamour of Canary Wharf, Tower Hamlets is still the most deprived borough in the country – 17 of its 19 wards are among the worst five per cent in England; more than 60 per cent of households have an annual income less than £9000; and 62 per cent of pupils are entitled to free school meals (compared to 18 per cent nationally).

It’s also famous for being the first area of settlement for generations of immigrants, going back centuries. It was French Huguenots, 50,000 of them fleeing persecution at the hands of Catholics, who started the famous textile trade around Spitalfields in the early 18th century. When they moved on the area was inhabited by Jewish refugees from central Europe. There were some 150,000 by the end of the 19th century. There were Chinese seamen, abandoned at the docks a couple of miles down the Thames; Indian lascars, pitched up by the shrinking Empire; and Caribbeans enticed by post-war promises of work and welfare.

In the last two or three decades the area has become home to a largely Sylheti community from Bangladesh. Brick Lane, now known as Bangla Town, is a tourist attraction because of its lines of curry houses, and Mosques have taken their place beside the churches and synagogues, sometimes in the same place.

The present Bangladeshi community now make up more than 33 per cent of the population, according to the latest Census. This is an ethnic group consistently labelled – alongside black Caribbeans and Pakistanis – as ‘educational underachievers’. More than half of Tower Hamlets’ pupils are Bangladeshis, while another 11 per cent come from black African and Caribbean backgrounds. A total of 90 different languages are spoken in the area, and 72 per cent of pupils speak English as an ‘additional language’, another long recognised barrier to educational success.

Yet, as the latest GCSE results suggest, such barriers are being broken here with increasing ease. Last year, almost half of all Bangladeshi pupils (48 per cent) got five or more A* to C grades at GCSE, a leap of seven per cent on 2001, and higher than the proportion of white pupils (32 per cent) or black Caribbeans (31 per cent). Back in 1991, only 14 per cent of Bangladeshi pupils made such grades.

Not everything is perfect – a third of the borough’s primaries are still considered below the national average, for example – but Tower Hamlets clearly has lessons to teach other authorities about educating poor and ethnically diverse children. There have been some simple initiatives to “desegregate” schools, such as encouraging pupils from different backgrounds to sit next to each other, for example. But the main change has been in the make-up of the workforce, brought about by the council’s commitment to giving people from local communities, especially parents, opportunities to work in schools.

Sarah Gale is head of the authority’s equalities and parent partnership development unit. “We’d been encouraging parents to come and help in schools for years,” she says. “But although they’re often extremely skilled, many parents in Tower Hamlets don’t feel comfortable – because of language barriers, or low levels of literacy – so we looked at ways for them to be involved that are non-threatening and can build confidence.”

Under the council’s encouragement, some schools set up informal parents’ groups, or set aside areas where parents could meet without feeling under pressure to enter the classroom. More specifically, the council began to advertise ‘family learning courses’ at its parents’ advice centre in Mile End, so that parents who wanted to could train to become more involved in school life.

A way in

The ‘helping in schools’ programme has encouraged numerous parents to take up support staff positions as nursery nurses, classroom assistants and administrators. The council also runs access courses during work time on communication skills, GCSE maths and English, an Open University specialist teacher’s assistant certificate, and, from next year, an employment-based foundation degree for TAs. The idea is that these form steps towards becoming a teacher, for those who want to, thus increasing the authority’s stock of locally-raised, locally-trained staff.

“We realised if we were going to encourage local people to become classroom assistants and teachers, we needed to address people’s personal needs and professional abilities,” says Ms Gale, who reckons about 500 classroom assistants a year take council-funded courses. “Having children in school can act as a catalyst for parents to start learning themselves. But some parents found school an ambivalent experience, others may have had no formal education in this country, and have no knowledge of it. Our strategy allows them a way in.”

There’s also a series of financial incentives designed to entice graduate teachers like Juneha to stay local. Alongside the ‘golden hellos’ for NQTs, the unit also funds a graduate teacher programme, in which mature students do one year’s ‘on-the-job’ training in schools. Further bursaries are available to local residents for a full-time, three year undergraduate course on primary and early years teaching, based at the local professional development centre. Teaching assistants and nursery nurses can be seconded to the course on full salary.

“Our aim is to give more local people greater access to careers in schools,” says Ms Gale, who is at pains to point out that none of these initiatives are specifically aimed at particular ethnic groups, just local residents. Nevertheless, there’s little doubt they’ve already begun to change the ethnic make-up of Tower Hamlets staff rooms. Of the 57 NQTs who have taken advantage of the bursaries, for example, 61 per cent are from ethnic minorities, and 90 per cent of those are Bangladeshi. More than half the people who have taken the graduate teacher programme so far are Bangladeshi, and more than half the 47 people currently on the three year training course are from ethnic minorities.

Three years ago 14 per cent of all Tower Hamlets’ teachers were from ethnic minorities, but by spring this year that had risen to more than a fifth of teachers, (and nearly 40 per cent of support staff), compared to seven per cent of teachers nationally. Juneha, for one, has seen a major change. “When I was at school it was very rare to find Bangladeshi teachers, other than teaching Bengali,” she says. “Now, the girls I teach will see me, and realise they can do it too. For me it was a dream, like trying to reach the sky. They’ll see it can be reality.”

While she’s had to endure a degree of suspicion both from white parents and Bangladeshi girls, unused to seeing one of their own in such a position, Juneha has also seen attitudes to education changing within her community. “I do see girls in my own school still not getting the parental support they need,” she says. “But teachers like me can help them to see that being in a profession is respectable.

“Nine years ago there wasn’t a community of people going to university, so how could I possibly go? Now, my parents’ attitudes have changed. My dad was heartbroken to see the trouble I went through to bring up a child while going to university, and now my younger sister is at college studying law. The whole community is changing. I just broke the mould, and what makes me proud is that now I’m able to share it.”

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Community apartheid?

Following the ‘disturbances’ of 2001 in the cities of Oldham, Bradford and Burnley, considerable attention has been focused on the lack of contact and respect between people of different racial backgrounds in those towns. The situation in some places was described as a kind of ‘community apartheid’, and numerous reports were produced to try and uncover how such segregation had come about.

Lord Herman Ouseley, former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), wrote of Bradford that: “Communities are fragmenting along racial, cultural and faith lines… Rather than seeing the emergence of a confident, multicultural district where people are respectful and have understanding and tolerance for difference, people’s attitudes appear to be hardening and intolerance towards differences is growing.”

In the UK, enforced segregation on racial grounds is unlawful under the Race Relations Act but there are all sorts of social, economic and political reasons why ‘self-segregation’, or ‘congregation’ occurs. A report into the disturbances by the CRE found that “more than half the Pakistani population [the predominant ethnic minority group] in each of the three towns was concentrated in three wards or fewer; in the case of Burnley, in just one.”

While this can partly be explained by the understandable desire of newcomers to live near people like themselves, says the report, “economic circumstances, discrimination in the housing field, ‘white flight’, and newcomers’ experiences and fears of racism, also play a significant role in polarising communities”.

In Bradford, for example, the report found that only two per cent of council housing had been allocated to Asian households. In Oldham, between 1984 and 1993, the council had been housing Asians on different estates from white people, and in lower value properties. Even after this practice was reviewed, Asian residents tended to apply for housing in areas where others from their communities lived, reinforcing congregation. Inevitably, some estates became almost entirely white, others Asian.

It wasn’t only the council, however. In 1990, three Oldham estate agents were found to have been advising white customers to buy houses in ‘white’ areas, and pointing Asians to areas with large Asian communities. In Bradford, estate agents would contact neighbours when an adjacent house was sold to an ethnic minority family, suggesting their property’s value may decline – leading to ‘white flight’ and further segregation.

Inevitably, such residential apartheid has ‘knock on’ effects on other aspects of life, notably education. In Bradford, for example, there are 14 primary schools (out of 101) where Asian pupils form between 90 and 99 per cent of the school roll, and 26 where they make up more than 70 per cent. In Oldham, Asian pupils make up 80 per cent  of the roll in 17 of its 100 primary schools, more than 95 per cent in 13 schools, and more than 99 per cent in seven. In five (of 15) secondary schools, less than five per cent are Asian, and they make up 98 per cent in one, and 77 per cent in another.

The CRE report comments that “there is considerable ethnic segregation in education in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley”. Primary schools, it says, reflect the residential segregation of their catchment areas, but secondary schools, which from their location might be expected to have diverse intakes, have “come to be seen by many people as either ‘white’ or ‘Asian’ schools”.

Since the 1996 Education Act, ‘parental choice’ takes precedence in law over the Race Relations Act, so if parents choose to send their children to schools with other children of their own ethnic origin, or avoid schools where most children are from a different ethnic background, they are entitled to do so. Then there are faith schools, of course, which are entitled to give priority to families of their faith. Four of Oldham’s 15 secondaries are church schools, three of which were reported to have “virtually excluded” children from Bangladeshi and Pakistani families.

The CRE report concluded that: “Among the underlying tensions revealed by our research into the disturbances in the North of England, the frequent lack of connectedness and mutual understanding between adjacent but different ethnic communities stands out as the greatest threat to a socially cohesive society.”

It is into this gap between communities, it seems, that the British National Party has been able to tread.

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The local council election results on 1 May 2003 confirmed the BNP as a significant electoral force in some northern and midland towns, particularly Burnley, Halifax and Stoke-on-Trent. For those of us who live on or near the epicentre of this political shift, the tremors are still being felt. Understanding the phenomena, and how it differs from the rise of the National Front in the mid-1970s, is vital if we are to protect liberal democratic society from further damage. It is not my intention to give an authoritative statement on the reasons why the BNP has emerged as a new political force, but to provide ‘my take’ on what has happened in the hope that this may lead to further discussion and, ultimately, a more effective strategy to deal with it.

In a previous article, I outlined the socio-economic and cultural context in Halifax where I have some direct experience of the BNP’s rise (see Democratic Socialist, Winter 2002/03). I do not intend to repeat myself now except to point out that, as a rule, the BNP currently appear to be gaining support in medium sized towns which are still scarred by industrial decline, and which, if they are anything like Halifax, are deeply parochial. In addition, confining my observations to Halifax, the Labour movement as a grassroots political force has almost disappeared. Trade Union membership is very low and, although there is still some engineering and textile manufacturing, the majority work in retail, business, financial services or for small building, plumbing, joinery and electrical firms. You have to look long and hard to find traces of the organised proletariat, in the classical Trotskyist sense, but there’s an awful lot of petty bourgeois and lumpen proletariat out there.

This decline of traditional industries has also served to isolate the Pakistani community in Halifax and the rest of the country, confining the economic activity and employment of many within their own community. More than two thirds of this community come from Mirpur, in the Kashmir. Emigrants from this region to the Middle East and the UK provide 80 per cent of Pakistan’s foreign currency. This is also a trade route for heroin, thanks in part to the growth of the drugs trade after the CIA-funded war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There are reports that Pakistani criminals are now attempting to corner the heroin market in the UK.

Add to this a Mafia-style code of honour and we have, for instance, the planned and deliberate destruction of Aziz Chishti’s family in Huddersfield in May 2002 when five girls between the ages of six months and 13 years were burnt to death in an arson attack by a group of young men of Mirpuri origin aged between 19 and 25. Many white people feel genuinely intimidated by these gangs of Asian youth (who dislike white people for obvious reasons and feel the dislike whites have for them). The Left has long been ignoring such complaints. The BNP is not.

Unemployment amongst Asian youth and social exclusion has been the seedbed for this growth of crime and gang culture, which culminated in the Bradford riots. It would be crass not to acknowledge, however, that this is only part of the story. Many families struggle to get on in ‘multicultural’ Britain and find their way blocked by racist attitudes, particularly in the professions. The community tends to stick together, perhaps because of racism, but also through of its own sense of cultural difference, and some of the most talented lawyers, accountants and IT specialists in the country end up working in local high street businesses rather than taking their places among the brightest and the best of the commercial world. Many others are discouraged completely.

Despite the vigorous and creative discussions amongst young people (particularly young women, in my experience) about their identities, the political leadership of this community is almost exclusively male, and largely corrupt, sometimes to the extent that some local dignitaries may be involved in organised crime. There is no apparent political expression of the re-thinking of identity which is going on amongst sections of Muslim youth.

Political forces, such as trade unionism, for instance, are not significant in the community, partly because of its patriachal control and nepotism (though a lot of the work now done is in areas with low rates of unionisation). Between the mosque, the gang leaders and the community fathers, there is not much space for secular and democratic political organisations to grow. Criticism of this tends to attract the epithet of ‘racism’, and white multiculturalists rarely make public comment. The Labour Party is also happy to turn a blind eye so long as the vote is mobilised, although ‘twas ever thus, regardless of the ethnic origin of the vote.

Labour humiliated

Since its defeat in Mixenden in January, the Labour Party in Halifax has been largely content to plot and gossip following the announcement of Alice Mahon MP’s retirement and the search for a successor. There are attempts to organise it as a campaigning force (in other words, to do some canvassing and leafleting), but the party itself remains largely sectarian in its attitude to other groups that are campaigning against the BNP. On 1 May, it lost another two seats, one to the BNP in Illingworth and another to the Liberal Democrats in Mixenden. There, the BNP came second and Bob Metcalfe, leader of the Labour Group and a councillor since 1979, a close third. Not surprisingly, this very decent and honourable man felt humiliated.

During the campaign, the BNP had issued a leaflet with a photo of a derelict yard in Mixenden ward with the message, ‘Bob Metcalfe has been your councillor for 23 years. Has anybody noticed?’ Deeply unfair as this was, it did expose the weakness of the party and its council group. Very little has been done to get out and meet people outside the circuit of council and voluntary organisation meetings, and the modus operandi of the party has been to sort out difficulties through administrative and bureaucratic means, rather than by mobilising popular campaigns. Bob’s intense caution and innate conservatism, his fear of making a mistake and letting people down, was his downfall. Political lives seem to be built out of such terrible ironies.

Regional office, however, did respond more positively to the Mixenden defeat in January, and this contributed to Labour’s only success in May. George Pope, a regional official, produced a sketchy but perceptive analysis of what is going on, concluding, “It’s not about what they (the BNP) do, it’s about what we do. It’s not about them, it’s about us.” He told the Halifax party to build relationships with voters. Listen. Learn. Respond. This point was illustrated by the victory of Labour in Town ward. Significantly, the candidate who won was a former Liberal Democrat, who used Lib Dem electoral techniques (lots of leaflets and surveys, and just working damned hard at voter contact). He is, of course, treated with enormous suspicion by Halifax Labour party. Once a Liberal Democrat always a Liberal Democrat.

George also hit the nail on the head (in my opinion) by pointing out that, “The BNP are no longer just about racism. Yes, the racism is there, but the image is of a party that cares about you and your concerns. THEY ARE LISTENING, because the other parties are not.” For instance, Adrian Marsden, the BNP councillor who won in Mixenden in January, has (though this story may be apocryphal) placed skips at his own expense around Mixenden estate to deal with the litter problem. Written on the side of each skip is the slogan, “VOTE BNP”.

BNP policies

Therefore, it is worth turning to the BNP itself and examining its policies. The BNP describes itself as a “popular, democratic nationalist party”. Whatever the secret affiliations of its leading activists, it is careful to present a radically different face to the electorate. Reading its 2003 local government election manifesto, it is possible to identify a number of key areas.

1. Anti-crime policies

Many of these link to the BNP’s intention to revive urban spaces as economically active areas, with a strong community presence. These policies include promoting flexible working and home working amongst council employees (allowing people to work from home and be in their neighbourhoods during the day); funding school holiday activities; ensuring planning decisions reflect community needs; evicting ‘problem’ tenants; raising punitive taxes on commercial or leasehold residential premises which are left empty; encouraging the police to take race hate crime against whites seriously, “including … the use of plain clothes police officers as decoys…”; and opposing the resettlement of paedophiles in the community, passing on any information which they receive about these offenders to the public.

2. Low taxes and the promotion of volunteering or self-help schemes

The BNP wants to be seen as a party which will reduce the tax burden on small businesses and promote the civic culture of volunteering; forcing asylum seekers to clean up the streets (although with no job substitution); establishing credit unions, Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) and micro-currencies; and allowing poorer people to pay their taxes via these schemes.

3. Protecting the environment and promoting healthy lifestyles

These include ending canteen style school meals and having one supervised sitting per day, providing healthy food; promoting organic food and healthy eating; restoring school milk; protecting the greenbelt and ensuring new housing developments occur on brownfield sites.

4. Returning to the values of traditional education

By not employing anyone from teacher training college; running campaigns to allow smacking and demanding referenda if Clause 28 is abolished; re-introducing Christian worship; promoting healthy eating in school (see above); and banning halal meat on the grounds of animal cruelty.

5. ‘Equal treatment’ policies

Removing council employment quotas (even though they don’t exist); conducting a full audit into spending bias on ethnic minorities and, where such bias is found, correcting it; awarding licences on the basis of “the average make-up” of the local population.

There are two sources for these policies: Tory party ideology (traditionalism, low taxes, protecting the countryside, ‘family values’, volunteering), and Green and environmental concerns. Beneath most of these policies is an undercurrent of racism and homophobia. Some of it is barking; some mere gesture politics. Is it fascist though? There is not the slightest touch of militarism, nothing about destinies, heroism, or willpower.

There is a very useful essay by Umberto Eco in which he defines Ur-Fascism – or a list of features typical of all forms of fascism. Some of them like ‘the cult of tradition’, ‘rejection of modernism’, the ‘appeal to the frustrated middle class’, ‘fear of difference’, are clearly there. Others, such as ‘life is permanent warfare’, ‘everybody is educated to become a hero’, or being against ‘rotten parliamentary governments’, are not present, at least not yet. However, Eco warns that wherever even one of these features is present fascism may “coagulate around it”. This is certainly a dangerous far right politics which seeks to promote racism and division. How much more do we need to say?

Shadow organisation

It is important to re-iterate that the BNP does have a shadow organisation: Combat 18. There are analogies between its relationship with this openly fascist organisation and the relationship between Sinn Fein and the IRA. Some members of the BNP are reputedly also Combat 18 members, and photographs of ANL activists and sympathisers have appeared on the Combat 18 website, which asks for details of names and addresses. The strap line of this organisation says, “While it is time to be ‘legal’, we must stolidly endure what the puppets of the capitalist system see fit to inflict. And when it is time to revolt, we must be prepared to unleash all the furies of hell.”

Whether the leadership of the BNP are as close to Combat 18 as Adams and McGuiness are to the IRA, personally, I doubt, although, of course, I could be wrong. What I suspect is that the BNP has its own factions, some still clinging to the ways of the old NF, some who see the BNP’s current direction as a ‘sell-out’, and a political leadership which is electorally pragmatic, and prepared to re-think assumptions.

Whether the BNP is fascist or not, attempts to undermine its vote by calling the BNP a nazi party are not working. The Anti-Nazi League concentrated its campaign on Illingworth, which was lost, and in Sowerby Bridge, where only the renewal of the Tory vote by a team of young Tory activists, pushed the BNP into a close third place. ANL and Searchlight literature did not prevent a haemorrhaging of the Labour vote to the BNP. The left clearly had little credibility with voters, new, old, Labour or Tory.

The end result of this is that following the May elections a plethora of new organisations have been created, reflecting either the genuine concerns or weird obsessions of the left in Calderdale.

In the weird corner is the Calderdale Red and Green Party. Its intention is “to replace the Labour Party”. So far it has produced a circular accusing new Labour of poisoning people through floridisation of the water supply. Another anti-nazi, but more broadly based organisation (in intent), called Communities Against Racism, has been launched. There is also something called Unity (against the BNP), which appears to be much the same thing, but is more active in Halifax. All this tends to point towards deep uncertainties and confusions among the anti-nazi left. Everyone is, of course, saying that they want to work with everyone else, so the two broad-based organisations seem to exist side by side rather than sorting out a merger.

From the outside, the situation does not look promising, particularly because the Calderdale Red and Green Party circular carried a Unity leaflet whilst wishing death and destruction on the Labour party. This is Life of Brian meets The League of Gentlemen, although, hopefully, Unity (despite its lefty name) will make genuine efforts to get all sorts of people involved, including Tories and the established business community (which is aghast at the rise of the BNP).

I wish them well. However, at their first public march and rally, I have to say, the ratio of Socialist Worker sellers to marchers was way too high, and the shouts of “Smash the BNP” made us look like the thugs. The leaflet it produced – meant to appeal to a wide cross-section of people – concentrated on celebrating the diversity of a multicultural society. Whilst I appreciate the genuine effort to present something reasonable, I have doubts about whether this is sufficient. It smacks too much of public sector political correctness, which is a big turn off for the kind of audience we must connect with. The authors of the leaflet are clearly trying, however, and there are no obvious formulas which will magically dispel the BNP.

Far left articles usually end up with some arrogant list of the lessons to be drawn from the defeat just inflicted. I do not propose to do that. But some tentative conclusions have been drawn by others and are worth repeating:

1. The BNP can be defeated (as in Oldham and Halifax Town Ward) through hard work and voter contact.
2. Broad-based campaigning, rather than the ANL, is also a way forward.
3. There is no point accusing the BNP of being nazis. It doesn’t work.

The problem with the Labour Party solution of voter contact, however, is that it does nothing to promote progressive politics or anti-racism – it is mainly about doing more leaflets and communicating directly with people. That needs to be challenged. As do its own anti-democratic practices, even if that means challenging vested powers in the Asian community, and working with groups outside the party. The Labour Party must acknowledge its role in creating the conditions for the rise of the BNP. That is not just because of poor campaigning techniques – those techniques have arisen because of its politics and political practice.

Broad-based groups need to be genuinely so. Let us hope that they develop in that direction – otherwise they will have no credibility.

The phrase “Mavis Grimett is out”, incidentally, arose when I was campaigning in Mixenden in January. I was sent to her house to canvas it. It just seemed to sum up where the Labour Party was at. Since the elections in May, the one Labour councillor in Sowerby Bridge has left the party, apparently because her husband failed to become chair of the local government committee. There’s nothing like taking the broader view.

The title of this article, ‘Racisms, Multiculturalisms and Fascisms’, may at first, appear perverse. But it is not meant to be. The reason for adding an ‘s’ to the three terms, is to expand their range of meanings and stress their complexity. Hopefully, this makes us less likely to see them as static and ahistorical. We are dealing here with dynamic, social and political processes that take many forms. These are meanings on the move and we have to struggle to keep up with and, if possible, to get ahead, of them.

Because we live in a society characterised by continuing social change and upheaval, largely generated by the instabilities of capitalism, we cannot stand still. To have any relevance as socialists, we regularly need  to review and, if needs be, revise our understanding of a world that we want to change. Racism has been around a long time, fascism for long enough, and multiculturalism now occupies significant parts of the political landscape. But where are they today and where are they likely to be tomorrow?

I should add that the term ‘racisms’ is not particularly new. To my knowledge, it has been knocking around the academic world for almost a decade. Multiculturalism is also recognised as taking a variety of forms and, I would argue, that this is also true of what we call fascism. So I am making no claims for great originality here. Only a desire to embed more plural ways of thinking into our politics, better to meet the challenges they pose. To clarify how the far right can best be tackled, for example, we have to understand the mercurial nature of the beast.

Racisms

Perhaps it is useful to see racisms as processes that inferiorise, discriminate against, marginalise and, sometimes, exclude social others. These actions can take different forms in different places and they can vary over time. Clearly, some people have more power to implement their prejudices than others (not that I want to see power simply in zero-sum terms). Some forms of racism become institutionalised. But even when particular forms of racism decline in significance, they can leave a social residue that, in certain circumstances, can be reworked and resurrected.

Two main forms of racism are often identified: ‘scientific racism’ and ‘cultural racism’. The former is particularly associated with colonial justifications for conquest and colonisation in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is based upon notions of biological difference. From this perspective, physical differences between peoples are seen as reflecting a natural, global hierarchy. At the pinnacle are white Europeans while the rest of the world’s peoples are graded into varying degrees of subordination – intellectually, culturally, economically, morally, and so on. ‘Whiteness’ is the standard against which all else is measured. One’s biology determines one’s fate. Distinct races with different biological and social characteristics exist and the future of civilisation itself depends on upholding these divisions.

Arguably, the Jews did not fit neatly into this particular schema but, for anti-Semites, that made them an even greater threat to European order. While most Africans and ‘Orientals’ were at least in their rightful geographical spaces and usually ‘occupied’ by European colonisers, the Jews were ‘occupying’ European space: the enemy was within.

Although such crude notions of distinct biological races have been widely discredited today, clearly this has not put an end to racism. The earlier forms of racism have been replaced or, more accurately, overlaid by cultural versions.

Culture now replaces biology as the significant determinant of difference. Cultural variations between European and other peoples are seen as quite fixed, particularly in the short-to-medium term. All peoples are seen as having distinct cultures and so, accordingly, ‘we’ have the right to protect our own version. An approach exemplified by Margaret Thatcher who, in 1978, said that the British people were fearful of being ‘swamped’ by people from alien cultures. Social and cultural differences, from this perspective, construct firm barriers between people with different historical legacies. To prevent contamination, these borders have to be patrolled and protected (although some gradual assimilation of more pliable others may be allowed).

Both broad versions of racism draw deep from the well of the European tradition based upon justifying capitalism and conquest. That is perhaps why racisms still have such a powerful resonance in modern European society, something which the far right is currently exploiting. The ideas are based upon deep structures in European discourses and history. While this is not something that can be examined here, I suggest that it comes from an in-built duality in western thought: primarily, how Europe thought of itself. Thus, while ‘we’ are civilised, modern, progressive, forward-looking, fair-minded, tolerant, reasonable and rational, and so on, ‘they’ are composed of various elements of the opposite. Not only do these ‘others’ fail to match up to ‘our’ fine values and virtues but, as a result, close contact with them threatens our ‘way of life’.

Often people are unaware that they are drawing from these discourses. But, I suggest, it is why liberal and well-meaning sentiments, such as ‘there are good and bad in all’, don’t take us very far. Certainly not when tackling the arguments from the far right. Nor does the hope that ‘education’ will provide a simple antidote to racist ‘ignorance’ help very much. We need to engage in a more thoroughgoing re-education process that scrutinises, de-centres, the European tradition itself. That does not mean wholly rejecting it, but subjecting it to a critical review. In sum, simply seeking to be fair-minded provides a welcome starting point but it is no more than the first step on a long journey.

Racism is not simply found on the streets and the football terraces, or in the melodramatic speeches of reactionary politicians. It does not have to take the violent forms commonly associated with the death of Stephen Lawrence a decade ago. Most people are horrified by such actions. Anti-racists do not have the monopoly of such emotions. Racism does not have to be shouted, it can be spoken in soft tones, sometimes by people who are not necessarily aware of what they are saying. Sometimes by people who know exactly what they are doing.

Nor is racism the exclusive preserve of white people. In our society, we have to be very alert to the racism directed towards the black and Asian populations because it tends to carry more clout. But we cannot, indeed must not, pretend away racisms towards white people. Or those forms directed by members of one particular ethnic minority towards another. We have to be honest about it all, or we play into the hands of those who seek to exploit such social divisions.

Multiculturalisms

When it comes to multiculturalism, the picture is complicated. There are, I suggest, clear signs of growing tolerance in our society. There are layers of people today for whom racism is a dangerous nonsense. Or, as Stuart Hall puts it: “One group can’t understand modern life without it [multiculturalism]; they are mainly young and live in cities.” There are others, who as he says are “militantly hostile” to living in a cosmopolitan society. And presumably there are a lot a people ranged somewhere between.

Perhaps what it is important to recognise is that living in a multicultural society is about living with changed social conditions. Everyone is adjusting in some form or another and this is not easy. Recently, when I visited the part of the city where I spent my childhood, it had visibly changed. What was once a white working class ‘community’ (a too generous term in some respects) is primarily populated by a Muslim working class with high levels of unemployment and students from the nearby university. My white friends, who have chosen to remain there, have had to make adjustments, something which is insufficiently acknowledged. I guess that this has not been entirely easy.

In other words, many people are working out lives for themselves in a cosmopolitan society, while alongside that is a range of communal conflicts taking place at different levels of intensity. The trouble is that all these matters are largely left to drift, that is until something gets out of hand. Only when people riot is some attention paid to what is happening on the ground and, by then, it is rather late. A great deal of damage has already been done.

If we want a future with societies composed of people from different cultures and backgrounds (although it is often forgotten that we have interlocking histories), then it has to be worked at. Neglect and silence leave social tensions to fester.

We have to delineate what forms of multiculturalism we find acceptable and what forms we reject. As Hall argues, conservative multiculturalism seeks to absorb ethnic minorities into the dominant majority. Liberal multiculturalism subordinates difference to claims of universal citizenship (and pretends away difference).

Pluralist multiculturalism recognises difference but tends to sectionalise people into sealed cultural groupings. It fails to address what people share, or to recognise that cultures interact and change over time. It overlooks how conflicts are endemic within cultures and that some forces should be supported while others opposed. It tends to confirm and consolidate difference, and thus plays into the hands of those who want to preserve ‘white culture’ by socially excluding non-whites.

A pro-active, democratic multiculturalism (as I define it) has to acknowledge the differences and tensions that exist, as well as seeking what unites people across cultural divides. So often, we see one group of victims of the system blaming other victims. Different voices have to be heard, even when they jar sometimes, especially when they jar. The question is how best can this be done.

We should not dismiss any section of the community as intrinsically beyond redemption, however objectionable their views may sometimes be. We should try to avoid erecting barriers. When the Anti-Nazi League failed to leaflet the white community in Oldham because of their presumed racism, this left the field open to the British National Party (BNP). Not a wise move.

Fascisms?

The emergence of the BNP as a small but significant electoral presence in parts of the North and Midlands has sent a shudder across the political system. Its political arrival raises four related questions:

• What is the political character of the BNP?
• What are the internal factors that have allowed it to rise to some prominence and notoriety?
• What are the external factors working in its favour?
• How are we to respond?

Only a very sketchy answers can be attempted here but I hope that it provides sufficient encouragement for more extensive discussion.

It should be noted that, compared with the formidable far right presence in Europe, the BNP remains relatively small fry. This is no argument for complacency, however. The question is whether the party has the potential to grow and, in my view, it does. In part, this will depend upon whether an effective opposition to its politics emerges. There have been earlier waves of far right, political currents. In the 1970s, the overtly fascist National Front was met by an explosion of opposition (including Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League) which helped to stunt its development. Today, the BNP poses more subtle challenges.

In relation to the first two questions, I think it necessary to offer an ambivalent answer about the party’s political character. It is possible to chart its rise to a new leadership which, over several years, has carefully studied the far right in Europe and seeks to emulate its electoral successes. It has carefully honed its political message, utilising a democratic and liberal discourse for the purpose. All this has required a substantial change in its presentation and style. Whether this signifies a change in character is harder to determine. Certainly the BNP presents itself as a nationalist and populist party, not a fascist one.

A cursory examination of its politics suggests to me that it has also borrowed from the ‘parochial’, community politics of the Liberal Democrats, from the environmental movement and the left, from the co-operative movement, and from Sinn Fein. It is radical, conservative and reactionary but liberal in tone. It can be argued that earlier forms of fascisms were also contradictory, eclectic mixes and this has to be conceded. On coming to power, Hitler cancelled peoples’ debts to the state, a radical move which, understandably, won great support. It can also be argued, however, that the BNP’s political mixture is equally the stuff of right-wing populism.

Without doubt, scratch the membership of the BNP and there, aplenty, are an unsavoury set of political thugs, fascists and racists with criminal records. The BNP counters this evidence by claiming that its people have changed, that they have learnt the lessons (playing upon the liberal discourse). Equally true, there exists the Red List website which gives details of people known to oppose the far right. This cannot be attributable to the BNP but it presents a not-so-subtle threat to those who wish to contest any form of racist politics.

My guess is that the BNP includes a mix of people with fascist ideas and an increasing number of people who are right-wing populists. The party may be in a process of transition from the former to the latter (which is grotesque enough), or it may be caught in a tension between the two. Whilst it gains electorally, the trend towards ‘respectability’ will be strengthened, in the short term at least.

The opposition towards the National Front that grew quite rapidly in the 1970s does not appear to be happening today. The exposure politics of the Anti-Nazi League, that portrays them simply as Nazis, is having rapidly diminishing returns. Before the local elections in May 2003, the Daily Express ran a sustained campaign against BNP council candidates with fascist or violent pasts. It does not appear to have had much effect.

People associate fascists with uniforms, flags, parades and insignia, not the two polite, well-dressed people on the doorstep. People listen to their messages and it is these that have a resonance – it is the arguments of the BNP that must be responded to in full. The BNP goes with the grain of a conservative culture and with the widespread unease over a range of liberal ideas and values. In other words, whatever its precise character, if that can be determined, the party must be tackled on the terrain that it has chosen to fight. Sure, where its members have chequered pasts, this should be recorded. But that kind of politics cannot provide the focal point to any opposition.

It is also a matter of some concern that, if the BNP continues to establish itself, then many of us will be dealing with its presence in our ‘communities’ and at work.  At the moment, its arrival in a few council chambers is mainly a matter for a few local politicians and parties. The BNP will be eager to exploit any ‘unfair treatment’ it receives. It will be happy to play the underdog and this requires people to tread rather carefully. Purely gestural politics against it will not suffice.

The third question suggests that the BNP’s advances are not entirely of its own making. There are a range of social and political factors that have fed its growth. What are they? Again this is a big issue but, for me, crucial here is the crisis in liberal democracy. This is exemplified by the decay of the mainstream political parties at local and national levels and by poor electoral turnouts. We have also seen a decline in social deference, not of itself a bad thing, but coupled with an increase in cynicism about mainstream politicians, and all accompanied by materialism and a series of moral panics encouraged by tabloids.

A recent edition of the Daily Express, which showed outrage at the BNP, also carried an article expressing alarm about asylum seekers. There has been a barrage of material in the popular press on these issues and it  has had an effect. The result is that many people think our society is being ‘flooded’ by illegal immigrants, that they are simply an economic burden paid for by taxpayers, that our usual tolerance is being taken for a ride, and that Britain has for too long been a ‘soft touch’ and it is time to take a stand.

Labour politicians have bent with these populist pressures (while in other moments denouncing racism). They have thereby fed the fears. Local white people see a mosque being built and proclaim that Muslims are taking over the country. They fear that in our ‘overcrowded’ island white people will soon be minority.

It’s terrible stuff. This nonsense, which so many are ready to believe, needs counter arguments. But it also needs more than that. It requires initiatives in which robust dialogues can take place at local level within a framework of reconciliation. It needs properly funded activities to bring people of different ages together from various communities. These already take place. A lot of valuable but unrecognised activities take place although they tend to be very local and, of necessity, small scale. Well-resourced community centres where people can meet, mix and, where needs be, argue, are a must. Public awareness of what is happening needs to be encouraged.

We need spaces where people can learn their histories together. Our history is not only of racism and exploitation, although there is plenty of that. British working people also have histories of opposition to slavery and racial injustice too. But where the history is one of slavery, then it needs acknowledging and symbolic reparations made. I am a great enthusiast for encouraging those stately homes, based on slavery in the Caribbean, to acknowledge where their great wealth came from.

It is not a devaluation of the West that’s needed (which leaves many people with nothing) but a revaluation. One of the few things that the former leader of the Conservative Party did which I admired (to dark mutterings from Norman Tebbit) was to participate in the Notting Hill Carnival. We need more of this. Anti-racism has to have its fun as well as a serious side. The far right is best exposed for retreating into closed worlds that never existed, that offer little, that fail to recognise that creativity is often at its best when there are cultural crossovers – in music, dance, fashion, drama and the arts generally.

In racisms and fascisms/populisms we face dangerous foes. We have to respond on a variety of fronts against the undoubted threat that they represent. That response has to be based on genuine forms of democracy and participation, and it is better served by greater control of our economic life, so that there can be a redistribution of resources to those communities living on or near the edge. This is not something that can wait for some ideal future. It has to be undertaken now and we all have a part to play.

Outside London, the June 2004 council elections were particularly significant. Following boundary changes, in large swathes of the country all seats were up for election, meaning that instead of having just one vote, many electors got to vote for three candidates.

As a result, this election was billed as a make or break event for the British National Party. Would it remain a party restricted to the political backwaters or become a mainstream contender?

In Calderdale, as in most other areas, the results were inconclusive. The BNP did not make great gains but it did consolidate its position. Calderdale is divided into two constituencies, Halifax and Calder Valley. By and large the BNP concentrated on Halifax and ignored Calder Valley where the Liberal Democrats have already exploited the decline of both the Labour and Tory parties.

The BNP started the election with three councillors in Halifax, and ended it with three. However, boundary changes meant Mixenden ward, where the BNP had two councillors, and Illingworth ward, where, because of a Tory defection, it had one, had been merged. On the whole, the BNP concentrated on only three wards: Mixenden and Illingworth, Town, and Ovenden.

Many players in North Halifax scrambled for seats elsewhere. Jennifer Pearson, widow of the Liberal Democrat Stephen Pearson, who had defeated the BNP the previous year, went to nearby Warley, and won. When the results were announced, the Liberal Democrats’ vote disappeared in North Halifax as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving one long-serving Labour councillor and two BNP in the new Illingworth and Mixenden ward.

Adrian Marsden, the BNP victor in January 2003, secured a seat in central Halifax (Town ward). Although this was hardly a breakthrough, it did represent a marginally improved position for the BNP. In Ovenden, they gathered a respectable number of votes but failed to gain a council seat, allowing the Labour Party to retain its rump in Halifax.

In other Halifax wards, they fielded only one or two candidates in an attempt to cash in on the fact that these were all-out elections. Their thinking is that if electors have three votes, they might cast one for a new party, for the sake of novelty, while casting their other two votes for the party they normally support. The Greens tried the same trick in Calder Valley ward and slipped into fourth place just ahead of the most popular Labour candidate.

In the wards where they fielded one or two candidates, the BNP’s vote was respectable, but got them nowhere near winning a seat. In contrast, the Red and Green Party, an anti-Blair alliance unique to Calderdale, which issued a populist left-wing shopping list of a manifesto, fell far short of achieving anything significant, rarely getting more than 300 votes per candidate. Perhaps most significantly, in Town and Illingworth and Mixenden wards, the BNP’s unsuccessful candidates lost by only a handful of votes.

Conspicuous braver y

Calderdale Unity against the BNP was very active during the campaign and at least one of its activists showed conspicuous bravery by turning up alone, sporting a Unity ribbon, to a BNP public meeting. The attack on the BNP in its leaflets concentrated on the substantial criminal records of some of the BNP’s leading activists, the BNP’s inactivity on Calderdale council, and their councillors’ acceptance of the vastly increased council allowance, which the BNP initially said its councillors would not pocket. I thought the leaflet was good and showed that the anti-racist organisations were thinking on their feet, but I could not honestly say that the results of such thinking had any impact.

Although many activists in the Labour Party are sympathetic, others are not and believe Unity does more harm than good by attacking the BNP directly. The Liberal Democrats by and large dismiss Unity entirely. The sceptics tend to advocate ‘concentrating on the issues’ such as dog-shit, road crossings and the like. They may have a point in the short term, however uninspiring the strategy, as negative campaigning is conspicuously ineffective. It is common in local council campaigns for negative references to other parties in election literature to alienate voters. However, in the long term, the ‘issues’ strategy hardly challenges the underlying causes of the BNP’s limited success, and it is difficult to let the racism, hypocrisy and, in some instances, criminality of BNP activists go unmentioned.

Helpfully, before the election one Burnley BNP councillor defected because of her horror at the BNP’s racism and she spoke to the press about it. This was widely reported, especially in The Yorkshire Evening Post, and one was left wondering why she joined the BNP in the first place. Perhaps she genuinely believed that the BNP was a community party concerned about crime and asylum seekers, and that its attitudes to race were neutral. However, her testimony had little discernible effect in Halifax, although the Post‘s stand may have had an impact in Leeds where it is more widely read.

In any event, the BNP’s racism doesn’t worry some voters. When I challenged a work colleague in Halifax, who’d expressed sympathy for the BNP, to name one actual BNP policy, she was stumped until she came up with ‘sending all the Pakis home. I agree with that one.’ Exposing the racism of the BNP will not worry voters such as her. It may have had some effect in Burnley where the BNP won only one more council seat, but there was no sign that the defection overturned their apple cart.

Regionally, the BNP did well in Bradford, where they now have four councillors, mainly in and around Haworth’s Bronte country. Readers familiar with Wuthering Heights will recall that Heathcliff, a dark-skinned outsider, was not exactly welcomed to the area in the 19th century either.

However, in Leeds the BNP failed to make much of a showing. In every ward where the BNP stood, save Kippax and Armley, it only fielded one candidate. Whereas the BNP vote put the Alliance for Green Socialism (and often the Green Party itself, which did exceptionally well in only one ward to get three councillors), in the shade, it never seriously challenged the status quo. By and large, it didn’t embarrass itself either, but if it is to gain seats in Leeds, it must be prepared for a very long and arduous haul subject to the usual vagaries of political fortune.

It certainly had nothing like the success of ‘The Morely Borough Independents’, which wiped out the main political parties in Leeds City Council’s disgruntled southern satellite. How much this lack of success was due to the strongly negative coverage in the Yorkshire Evening Post is hard to measure, but it would be surprising if its unrelenting exposure of the BNP failed to make an impact. The Post is not famed for its progressive politics and it may have had more credibility with the electorate than those ‘broad-based’ campaigns organised by a left that flopped in every Leeds seat it stood in, even Chapel Allerton.

Ethnic mix

Another feature which may have made a difference is the ethnic mix in Leeds, which is very diverse. The same can be said for Huddersfield in Kirklees. The BNP is doing noticeably better where white communities are close to strong concentrations of Pakistanis or, in the south, Bangladeshis, but meets more scepticism from white voters in genuinely multi-ethnic areas.

In Kirklees, the picture was very similar although the BNP did pick up a council seat in Heckmondwike and made a strong challenge in Cleckheaton and the three Dewsbury seats. However, balanced against that is the fact that once again it fielded only one candidate per ward and, as a result, its percentage of the total vote still puts it on the political fringes. It still seems incapable of making an impact in even slightly cosmopolitan areas.

Nationally, the BNP plateaued, getting a slightly smaller percentage of the vote than before, although turnout was much greater because of postal voting and the desire of the electorate to give new Labour a warning after Iraq. Significant gains were only made in Epping Forest and the BNP struggled to retain its position in the West Midlands.

Crossroads

Where this leaves the BNP is hard to say. There now appears to be a split in the BNP between the Nick Griffin wing of the party, which is electorally pragmatic and perhaps prepared to go down the route of xeno-phobic right-wing populism rather than fascism, and the BNP’s founder John Tyndall and his supporters. They seem to want to reclaim the party for blood-and-guts fascism, which, if successful, would perhaps make the left’s job in combating it a sight easier.

The BNP, therefore, stands at a crossroads. If it can become a serious political party (or at least as serious as the Liberal Democrats), then it has some prospect of building a significant and odious presence in local politics. Alternatively, it may just start arguing among itself and decline. The left needs to be prepared to meet it, and should have a long-term, effective strategy to challenge it.

Whether the BNP will survive or not is open to question. The recent TV documentary showing the psychotic racism of some BNP activists appears to have led to calls from Nick Griffin for a purge of members who are ‘hate-filled’ because of the scars they have suffered ‘living in a multi-cultural society’. As he sees it, ‘The BNP is facing a wave of co-ordinated attacks, both administrative and propaganda. The aim is to disrupt our campaign to turn the thousands of inquiries we received during the election campaign into members, and to criminalise the party in the eyes of a sufficient proportion of the public to “justify” the temporary internment of senior BNP officials in the event of a major Islamist terror strike against the UK.’ It is difficult to imagine anyone voting for this sort of rubbish, or to believe the BNP’s leaders can move very far into the terrain of sane, let alone normal politics.

The election results tell a different story, however. They imply that the left needs pro-active and developing policies based on community engagement, rather than just negative campaigns or merely more of the same at a local level.

There are some positive developments in Calderdale, albeit very nascent. The Art Gallery held a black and white photographic exhibition showing the ethnic diversity in Halifax (which has a Serbian church as well as a Mosque) and the Refugee Council organised a Refugee Week publicising the plight of asylum seekers. In particular, one event concentrated on the situation in Darfor just before it really hit the headlines. The desperate requirement for asylum, and the public sympathy this event has provoked, may provide the sort of information and human interest stories that will counter the attitudes the BNP currently plays on.

Of course Calderdale being Calderdale, there was one final, ludicrous twist. After the elections the Council remained hung, with the Tories as the largest group. One of the first acts of the Tory group was to appoint the BNP’s Adrian Marsden to Calderdale’s Racial Equality and Community Cohesion Working Party Committee. This caused a national outrage and the committee was scrapped ‘because it has achieved its objectives’. Oh, yes. Then a new one was created without the BNP.

On occasions, Halifax politics would be too weird even for The League of Gentlemen.