It’s great, isn’t it? Wherever I go, I always miss eclectic London, especially the exotic fruit and veg on the market – there’s a great Afro-Caribbean store in Walthamstow market and I particularly like the bread and sweets at the Turkish supermarket on Hoe Street. For me, this is what makes London special and I really don’t understand why anyone would want to be rid of it. If you feel secure about who you are and your identity, you’d have no problem with people who are different. Nevertheless, I don’t think nostalgia is the motivation for voting BNP, particularly as most BNP voters do not remember a country before mass immigration. And I do not think that every elderly person feels that change is necessarily bad. My grandparents still remember the hunger marches from Jarrow and other northern towns. My great-grandfather walked from Hartlepool to Cardiff for work and my grand-father was forced to leave school at 14 for work. If you think that multi-culturalism is mad hell, try speaking to those who experienced the Depression or the rationing and fear of a country under attack by the Nazis and fighting for its survival. Britain isn’t living in hell, just the problems have shifted.

The UK is not an impoverished country; we have a good free healthcare system (staffed by a lot of immigrants from the developing world), we have free education, we have high levels of literacy and long life-expectancy, no-one need starve in this country, there is relative peace and security, etc. These are the tangible things to feel proud about and to hold onto, not monarchs and empires, warm beer and spinsters on bicycles, etc. And the task is to make the country better, tackle the problems of social inequality and ensure that more people have the opportunity to choose what they want to do with their lives, not to divide people by religion and colour and make certain groups of people feel unwelcome and despised.

I really don’t understand how anyone can vote for the BNP unless they are racist. Perhaps we should introduce a new box on ballot papers: “reopen nominations”. That way, people can have a real protest against the mainstream parties, if that’s really the reason why people vote BNP. I am sure parties would campaign harder as a result, turn-out would improve and parties would be more responsive.

But since they are never going to get any power to implement those policies it doesn’t matter what they think.

Even if they hold these as policies its astounding that people vote for them and I believe their votes are increasing. In a democracy we have to respect people’s right to vote BNP even if we hate them. We then have to ask “Why DO people vote for them when they hold these views”? I happen to think that the reason is the changes in working class areas in terms of cultural appearance and what appears to be ghettoisation.

As someone from the Hackney/Clapton/Noth London area I am astounded to walk down Walthamstow market and wonder what country I am in. The same with Luton. I don’t comment about this from a racial perspective I first comment from the visual impact in the changing character of a market and town that once had the British Culture I grew up with from the 1950’s onwards.

I think its older people +40 who see cultrural change and erosion more than people who are growing up in it. Its like the frog in boiling water syndrome.

I am not arguing that contributing to the sum of “Britishness” by offering other cultural choices is bad but I can understand the description “I feel lkke an alien in my own country”. I do NOT believe its right wing fascist Nazis who feel this way but older populations who can see the changes far more than people with lower ages who were born after things changed.

Its difficult to avoid appearing to be racist by making those observations but I am truly not. I believe in Britain maintaing its historical character but evolving with the best practices of diversity.

That is why I think the BNP have votes. I would rather that the mainstream parties acknowledged the middle age to older voters because I believe they are the majority. I just don’t like ‘latecomers’ telling us what’s wrong with us. Either you are with us or against us.

“There is a reason to vote for them here to send a message to the main parties”
What the fuck is that message? The BNP’s policies include the expulsion of non-white people, an end to mixed-race marriages, the criminalisation of homosexuality, the abolition of abortion, nationalisation of the banking system, increasing gun ownership, the reintroduction of hanging and flogging, etc. Is the message people sending the mainstream parties that they want one or more of these policies?

“The BNP is becoming more and more mainstream, in part because the mainstream is less tolerant”

I agree with that.

Regarding Tower Hamlets, I lived there from 1995 to 1998 and witnessed the mobilisation of anti-fascist activism in the borough. There had been a decisive and aggressive response to the BNP win in Millwall in 1993 and the party was not able to retain the seat or win another. The tactic worked – the BNP are not a force in the borough, although I don’t think the problem of poverty has been addressed. In contrast, in Epping Forest the anti-fascist campaign has been so soft that it amounts to tickling racists with feathers. Consequently, the BNP has strengthened its position and not because of any social problem, but because racism has not been challenged and has become acceptable – at first targetting the local gypsy population (which has been present far longer than the East London influx since the 1950s/60s), then moving onto wild accusations about black students at the local FE college, lies about an imminent plan to relocate hundreds of asylum seekers here and a string of “Islam is the Enemy” leaflets.

Actually that is not true. A large part of Muslim poverty, poor housing, and social exclusion is self-inflicted. As someone else says, no White person is forcing Muslim families to take their daughters out of school at 15 and marrying them to illiterate Pakistani cousin. It is not a problem for White teens to any real extent. Nor for Hindu ones – British Asian Hindus being the richest community of all.

As for the BNP, I can’t see myself voting for them in the near future. On the other hand I do enjoy seeing them push the Labour Party down into Fifth place! There is a reason to vote for them here to send a message to the main parties. But I still don’t think I could do it. Also this is a classic case of “engagement” working. The BNP is becoming more and more mainstream, in part because the mainstream is less tolerant but also because they are getting rid of the skinheads and wearing suits. I think, ironically, voting for them encourages them to become more civilised. I still wouldn’t want to do it myself.

So IMHO kids in Tower Hamlets not even knowing what the BNP are is good (at least until they get into govt and politics lessons.)

Looking at the election results for North Southward and Bermondsey, the far-right vote was 1.9% in 1997 and 1.9% in 2005 and stayed within the region of 700-800 votes throughout that period. Hardly a BNP/NF stronghold.

Well my point was that it was no longer a BNP/NF stronghold. However it used to be and the people were tarred with the label of “racist” (even as many of them intermarried with the children of immigrants.) You don’t need to have lots of people voting BNP for an area to get the reputation that it is full of racists. The BNP/NF used to march through Bermondsey weekly to provoke as can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoRcOCO0e3A

The BNP got more votes in my ward than in the whole of that constituency. And has poverty actually fallen markedly in Bermondsey in the past 10 years?

The area is now basically part of metropolitian inner-London with a tube station, shopping centre and masses of new housing developments – so whilst poverty still exists the entire area is completely different to the abandoned old dockland it was in (say) 1983. The BNP would not march through now, nobody would suggest that there was a hard-core of racists in the area (though some undoubtedly remain – and some probably went to places like Loughton) and there is an atmosphere of hope which I rather suspect is what is missing in these wards which are referred to in the article. I realise fighting poverty will do little for you but it just might undermine core support for the BNP and take away any “legitimacy” that they may feel they are gaining.

Looking at the election results for North Southward and Bermondsey, the far-right vote was 1.9% in 1997 and 1.9% in 2005 and stayed within the region of 700-800 votes throughout that period. Hardly a BNP/NF stronghold. The BNP got more votes in my ward than in the whole of that constituency. And has poverty actually fallen markedly in Bermondsey in the past 10 years?

There may be poor areas where the BNP is strong, but the BNP has also succeeded in wards like mine where there isn’t any poverty and there are hundreds of wards where poverty is rife and the BNP has no support but where people are unhappy and disillusioned. If people only worry about poverty when the BNP wins votes, then this is probably more likely to push voters into the arms of Nick Griffin than anything I may say. As it is, I disagree that the BNP vote is necessarily linked to poverty, since middle-class people are voting for the party – in Henley, their vote was higher than Labour. The BNP vote is linked to racism.