Over the past year, and throughout the run up to the election, every few days we have been reminded, particularly in the liberal press, of the spectre that is haunting Britain: the BNP. These headlines have revolved around the potential dangers of the apparently increasing support for the BNP in specific areas of the country, which could lead to a BNP run council, or heaven forbid, a BNP member of parliament. Now the chances of this actually happening are remarkably slim, but lets just for arguments sake imagine that Nick Griffin defeated Margaret Hodge, and became MP for Barking and Dagenham, what would this say about Britain in 2010?

Well, needless to say, it would be a backward step, and would see Britain rubbing shoulders with forward thinking and enlightened countries like Austria and Italy, who too have fascist, xenophobic and racist parties attracting significant support in national elections. For example, Italy had leading members of its government campaigning for a ‘White Christmas’- a slogan aimed at intimidating the immigrant population, and was part of a wider strategy of hostility, persecution and scapegoating. But more substantially, what does it say about the state of British society, that a significant minority of people feel so alienated and disenfranchised that single issue, racist hate politics is the only viable option?

Unlike David Cameron, I would not conclude that it is a sign that Britain is broken, but rather, that there are pockets of the country which have simply been left behind, and did not experience the windfall that many metropolitan types garnered from spiralling house prices and easy credit. They have been inhabiting an alternate reality, living parallel lives, and they experienced none of the boom, none of the prosperity, none of the hope that the minor economic miracle of the past decade brought to many, and as such, they want to know why. This, and only this, is where the BNP have a point: whole communities have seen no improvement in their housing, educational or work prospects over the past 13 years, and have been very much on the fringes of society looking in at the affluence that many have acquired, wondering why they have not benefitted. 

Without doubt, the uncertain and indeed perilous state of the economy over the past two and a half years has also contributed to the emergence of the BNP as a real electoral threat in some areas. Economic uncertainty almost always sees a surge in nationalist support. And indeed a recent study of 150 local councils by the Institute for Public Policy Research unequivocally found that it was social factors such as poor housing, poor education and unemployment that were more important factors in areas of BNP support than immigration and race. Perhaps more surprisingly, areas such as Stoke and Burnley actually have below average levels of immigration and large majority white populations, dispelling the myth that people only vote BNP because of the high level of immigration in these areas, with Barking and Dagenham being the only exception to this rule however. With this in mind, one must conclude that labour has to shoulder a huge portion of blame if we are to see Nick Griffin becoming a member of parliament, because these are exactly the people who traditionally, would have seen Labour as the party that best represented them, but now feel alienated from everything that New Labour stand for.

But, the solution is fairly straightforward, superficially anyway - the Labour party must re-engage with their core voters in these deprived areas, address their issues on housing, unemployment and social deprivation, and provide them with a viable exposition of what they will do to help them. What they must not do however, is engage the BNP on their own terms, and pander to the hateful lies that they purport. They should not be gleefully boasting about how draconian they can and will be on immigration, because it only supports the BNP’s simplistic argument; that immigration is the only reason why Mr Joe Bloggs cannot get a job, cannot get a house, and cannot get his children into a decent school. This is counterproductive, and fails to address the wider more serious issue of inequality of opportunity in this country, and instead, expediently suggests that lower immigration is the golden calf that will solve all our problems. It is not. But until Labour reclaim the confidence of the white working class, and gives them something to believe in, some hope for the future, and form their arguments around the more substantive social issues affecting these people, i fear that the BNP will continue to find yet more despairing people who feel downtrodden, resentful and left behind.

The phenomenon of the BNP is not due to people suddenly becoming racists, but more to do with the human need to understand the world around us, to get answers about why things are the way they are. Some communities feel that they are separate from wider society, they do not know where they fit, everything that used to give their lives meaning has been broken down, they have no hope, and they need an explanation for this, somebody to blame. The white working class used to identify with Labour’s vision of society, it included them. For example, the NHS was set up so that they too could have a good level of health care, and it was no longer a privilege exclusively for the rich. But unfortunately, the epoch of ideology is no more. And political parties, including Labour, no longer appear to stand for anything in particular, and so this vacuous and nihilistic climate leaves fertile ground for the likes of the BNP to latch onto the sense of alienation and despair, allowing them to give people the answers that they so badly want, no matter how illogical these answers may be.

The problem is not one solely for the Labour party however. It is a lack of cohesive and brave social policy from all sides that has created this impasse, in which none of the major parties have any substantive answers to the growing and deepening social inequality in Britain, apart from to apportion the blame squarely on immigration levels. This is merely a smokescreen. After all, I am pretty sure that it wasn’t immigrants that ensured that not enough social housing was built in the past decade, and which allowed youngsters in some areas to leave school after 11 years of compulsory education with no qualifications, tangible skills or aspiration. Or that condemned entire communities to a cycle of poor housing, poor education, worklessness and poverty.  These problems go deeper than the screeching cries we hear about immigration from all directions. We need deep thinking, honest engagement and serious answers from government, not short term, populist rhetoric that is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

But frankly, I’m not sure if the Labour party are prepared to admit that mistakes were made on their watch. That people were disenfranchised, that whole communities have seen little or no real improvement in their standard of living, or their children’s life chances in the past 13 years. Certainly not during an election campaign when they want these communities back on side. And especially when it is easier to blame immigration levels for social problems that were born and bred in Britain, and would not disappear even if every immigrant went ‘home’ tomorrow.