Heathrow and the BNP

By Dan McCurry

They say that to make a great political speech you need a great opening line and a great end line; one to capture people’s attention and the other to leave a lasting impression. Just imagine if we applied this idea to a visitor to London who’s first and last experience was Heathrow airport. What would their impression be? Not very good. What about if travelling through Heathrow became any more intolerable than it currently is? Would the industry even survive? The British motorbike manufacturers no longer exist after they made the mistake of being scornful of Japanese competition in the 70s. What would happen to west London if Heathrow suddenly went bust?

The best comparison is to look east, to my part of London. We used to have a Ford car plant that employed many thousands. After all, no one’s ever gonna stop wanting cars, so why would it ever close. Besides the GMB wouldn’t allow it. The people of Dagenham and Barking didn’t have to concentrate on their education because they had jobs waiting for them at the factory. Unfortunately when it did close they found that having little in the way of education was a major problem. New industry grew up in the docklands in my borough of Tower Hamlets; Canary wharf may be based on finance but there are thousands of jobs in pay-role, computers, retail etc. The problem is that without high levels of education former car workers simply couldn’t compete for them. So they ended up on the dole and without hope.

We never had a problem with the BNP when everyone had jobs, but now we’ve a BNP problem that stubbornly won’t go away. Although there may be resentment at Asian professionals buying homes next to the white unemployed, but the reality is that the BNP vote is less a racist vote and more a vote against everything you and I stand for. It’s a vote of lost hope. Imagine having this type of politics in west London and then put yourself in Mr Brown’s position and ask whether you want to risk the future of this airline business which is far bigger than the Dagenham factory.

It was only 3,000 jobs that were lost in the re-structuring at Dagenham. Heathrow directly provides 70,000 plus all the indirect jobs. Should we wait till it’s too late before we act to invest in the future of our people? To make the question closer to Labour activists hearts, let me put it this way. Tower Hamlets had two Labour MPs, Oona King and Jim Fitzpatrick. With the growth of Canary Wharf and the massive number of bankers as residents in his constituency, Jim realised he had a problem and started campaigning like mad to keep his seat. Hopefully he will do after the next election. Oona suffered from a seething resentment that bubbled up from under the surface in our community. Like the British motorcycle manufacturers of the 1970s, she didn’t realise she had a problem until it was too late.

If the loss of 3,000 jobs in east London can produce a BNP council, imagine what would happen with the loss of 70,000. If there was a hung parliament, it wouldn’t be Ian Paisley we’d have to do a deal with; it’d be Nick Griffin and his mob. Think about it.