How community organising and member to member campaigning will defeat the BNP and rebuild the Labour movement from the bottom up

By Sam Tarry / @SamTarry

To defeat the BNP the reasons for the rise of this malevolent political force must be interrogated; and a frank assessment must be made of how that has come about.

The BNP have for a long time been modifying their message and moderating their presentation as they have professionalised their campaigning and fundraising operation. They have done this and slowly built success, despite the then benign economic situation and the high levels of employment. They have though always been biding their time, for, as their much hated ‘marxist’ (Nick Griffin actually calls New Labour ‘Marxist!’) opposition in much of the left they believe not only in the cyclical nature of capitalism and its demise under its own contradictions, but that this is more or less inevitable and that they by that point will have placed themselves in a position to capitalise when this crash happens. That economic crash has happened.

Unlike millennial cults and their numerous predictions of the end of times the BNP are dangerously near fulfilling their own prophesy – the impending European Elections will see the BNP’s leader returned on just 8.5% of the vote in the North West region and the possibility of a break through in at least three other regions.

Winning just one single seat in the European Parliamentary Elections would give the BNP not only the mainstream credibility that they crave, but the resources to establish themselves on the political map in a way that would be hard to reverse.

Each MEP not only has a number of staff both in the UK and in Brussels but has access to a £250K communications allowance, meaning that state funding allowances would boost the BNP’s capability in a way that would be totally unprecedented. Protests and debates about a ‘no-platform policy’ suddenly become an irrelevancy. They would be here to stay; on our TV’s, through our letterboxes and in our communities.

The BNP would, if they got even one MEP elected, be able to link up with far-right MEP’s from across Europe. They could then form a new political grouping in the European Parliament giving them access to more funding, more support and giving them an even wider platform to divide our country and communities. They could link up with fascist cranks like Mussolini’s daughter (shamefully an Italian Government member!), or hard-line anti-Muslim anti Immigrant, antisemitic, white supremacist MEP’s from Austria, France and Eastern Europe.

Young people and students are by no means immune to the siren calls of nationalism; and the warped prism of race through which to view society’s ills and the solutions to them.

In a chilling sign of a tide of rising support amongst young people across Europe in Austria where far right parties gained fully 29% of the votes in a general elections (equalling the traditionally biggest party the social democrats) young people were a key supporting bloc in voting for the Austrian far-right party’s. This cannot, and must not, be the case here in the UK – Labour’s youth movement must rise to the challenge.

How did we get here after over a decade of Labour Government; staring over the precipice of electing fascists to the European Parliament? Why are so many Labour supporters and those from natural Labour supporting areas turning to these extremists and what do we do about it?

People are angry, in no small part related to the fact that in the current system of elections we’re unable to properly hold to account our politicians or feel that genuine concerns are being listened too – something people acutely feel as we enter further into recession and unemployment and material concerns grow.

If you go to a ballot box in an area that is a Labour stronghold, say, a Labour council, with potentially a Labour MP, that’s not in a swing marginal constituency, then often if you’re not voting for Labour what’s actually the point of going to that ballot box and voting? There isn’t actually that much point, besides civic duty and respect for that hard won right; because Labour in that area will always be returned. The problem then, is you’re not really having your say at all.

It seems we have a system of government and a system of election that actually makes it difficult for ordinary working people and normal rank and file members of trades unions across the country to hold to account through the ballot box their representatives. In fact, not just ordinary working people but almost anyone across the country, as this equally holds true for Conservative safe seats: at the last general election more than 52 per cent of the votes, didn’t actually go towards electing an MP – a pretty shocking statistic.

It is this electoral paradigm that has seen the triangulation of policy, the idea that government rhetoric and government policy often seems to attack your own side, leaving the Conservatives in a difficult place but with progressives biting their tongues over policy direction. This Clintonesque strategy was for its time and for New Labour a tremendously successful political strategy to gain and retain power in Westminster, but in terms of trades unionists and in terms of working class people it’s meant that because we don’t actually have a genuine say electorally, that the policies of government have been more often than not focused or prioritised on less than a hundred marginal constituencies across the country.

That is not to take away from the clear gains for ordinary working people under this Labour Government – from Sure Start and the National Minimum Wage, to unprecedented investment and improvement in both education and the NHS – lifted off their knees after years of Tory neglect; but it cannot be denied that we, as Labour must take full responsibility for those working people now voting BNP – because they are our people, the ones that Labour in Government should help first and represent best.

A radical rebalancing of power in favour of the ordinary citizen and the ability to shape policy through ensuring that MP’s, and therefore Government, are reflecting the needs and aspirations of the electorate must then be a long term goal of progressives.

To truly defeat the BNP though, this redressing of the democratic deficit (promised but never delivered in 1997) and rebalancing of policy priorities must go hand in hand with the re-building of the labour movement from the bottom up – rooted through community organising in the heart of communities Labour should and does represent.

An awful lot has been said about Barack Obama’s victory in the US; not enough though has been said about the role of Labor-to-Labor organising had in securing his victory and that 26% of the electors were Trade Union members. The reason for that high turn out from union members; bottom-up organising; working at the grassroots, using peer-to-peer campaigning.

Ordinary union members enabled and encouraged to talk to others on a one to one basis in workplaces and on the doorstep, or through modern technology to talk to other Trade Unionists using virtual phone bank technology. Instead of precision bombed and targeted messages from on high the campaign is built from below. Who better to convince you not to vote for the BNP than a work colleague or community peer?

This campaign is taking shape already – Unison have in the North West alongside Unite the Union initiated a bottom-up campaign using peer-to-peer campaign techniques. In the North West Trade Unionists make up over 900,000 voters, or 490,000 combining just Unison and Unite, and if each Trades Union member means access to just one more family member – you are looking at reaching nearly 2 million voters – a full 40% of the electorate. Unions are learning quickly that their members are their best resource.

Bottom up campaigning that empowers and educates must though be coupled with longer term organising in the communities the BNP seeks to win over. Here Labour has a key role to play, not only getting out talking to people on the doorstep and genuinely listening so that policies reflect the objective needs and desires of ordinary working people – but organising people in communities to stand up and be counted. It must learn to train and organise ordinary people to campaign on the issues that matter to them – and force the political class to listen whether locally or nationally.

It is the Labour movement, and the Labour party, if it is prepared to learn these lessons and organise in communities in a genuinely empowering way – not just as an electoral transaction and ballot harvesting machine – but as a part of the very fabric of the communities it seeks represent – that will defeat the BNP and re-connect with ordinary working people.