The Hindu : Anti-BNP protests across Britain

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 05, 2002

International

International

Anti-BNP protests across Britain

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON MAY 4. Anti-racist activists protested across Britain today, a day after the hard-right British National Party (BNP) won three seats in the Asian-dominated town of Burnley

in local elections despite a determined bid by major political parties to stop it.

Demonstrations were held in several racially-sensitive areas, including Burnley, even as the Labour leader of the Burnley council, Stuart Caddy, said he would not work with the three newly-elected BNP councillors calling them `fascists' and their election a `disaster'. The Labour chairman, Charles Clarke, accused the BNP of "tearing apart" the communities on racist lines, while his namesake and author of a report in last summer's race riots in Burnley and other towns, Lord Clarke, denounced BNP's "all-white Britain'' campaign as "insidious and disgraceful''.

Feelings ran high as the Anti-Nazi League members marched through city centres carrying banners which said: "Shut down the BNP'' and "Stop the Nazis''. But no incident was reported until late in the afternoon, though the police were keeping their fingers crossed. A League spokesperson, Claire Dissington, said the BNP's successes had sent "a wave of horror across Britain''.

``When they achieve council seats they begin to put on a veneer of respectability,'' she said pointing out that even though the party had won only three out of the 68 seats it contested the warning signals could not be ignored.

The sight of the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, going about Burnley showing a `V' sign and insisting that immigrants should go back `home' infuriated local residents even as political observers were surprised at the level of support for the BNP among middle-class whites who are not the "usual suspects''.

Normally, the party has drawn backing from working class whites who have tended to accuse immigrants of `sponging' on resources that, they believe, should have benefited them. But this time white collar traditional Tory voters stood up for BNP, though many said they were simply protesting against mainstream politics and not necessarily endorsing BNP's racist agenda. Some said they were angry over high council tax, which the BNP had promised to bring it down.

But many also echoed BNP's line that the Government was `pampering' immigrant communities and that the money that should have been spent on developing the whole region was `going' to immigrants.

"I don't want these people here,'' one woman said pointing to immigrant homes.

As political parties struggled to survey the `damage', there was also a sense that they were over-reacting to the BNP's performance and comparisons with Jean-Marie Len Pen were misplaced.

"It is a panic reaction,'' one commentator said but warned that if real issues were not addressed things could be a lot more `awful' next time around.

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