Is Farage Treading an Old Path to Oblivion?

One of the few blessings that I have acquired in a lifetime of political interest and involvement is an exceptional long-term memory. No matter that I am more than capable of venturing out into the rain having forgotten to put my shoes on, I can nonetheless still recall verbatim particular conversations that I had with particular people in particular situations in days when we all watched TV in black and white.

I was only a boy of fifteen when I joined the National Front back in 1977, but I do remember the buzz of excitement and expectation that existed around the party at that time. Although at its heart it was an anti-democratic party the NF was committed at the time to following the electoral road to power, which after all its Austrian mentor had himself trodden successfully. Ever-increasing returns from elections, local and national, seemed to confirm that the party was on its way. There was no need to shun democracy for as long as it seemed to be working in one's favour.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL ELECTIONS

It seems incredible to reflect that even in its halcyon days of the 1970s the National Front never won a single seat on a single local council. It came exceptionally close, capturing more than 30% of the vote in several wards in its East London and other heartlands. In the Greater London Council elections of 1977 it won 119,000 votes in the capital, and a local election in Deptford saw a combined vote of 44.5% for the NF and National Party (an NF splinter group), against 43% for the victorious Labour candidate. The NP won two local council seats in Blackburn. At its absolute peak, NF membership was nudging 20,000.

The reasons why the NF never made the breakthrough to actual electoral success are manifold. The party's electoral strategy was, to begin with, designed with rapid national success firmly in mind. Subconsciously party managers were only too well aware that the whole edifice was constructed on sand. Living a lie by presenting itself as a democratic patriotic party when at its core its philosophy was national socialist it could have been forgiven for fearing that a period of "middle management" which would have exposed it to the daylight may actually have been detrimental to the realisation of its long term aims. Particularly as most of its candidates would have made noticeably poor councillors.

Secondly the party system was less fluid than it is today. With a significantly higher percentage of voters still committed to one or other of the big mainstream parties, often still according to class background or loyalties, and generally better turnouts, the prospects for an outsider party to launch a successful assault even at local council level were less promising.

Thirdly, and associated with the previous point, there was already an aura of "bad news" developing around the NF. Its opponents relentlessly opposed it as a nazi party through publicity campaigns, demonstrations, media coverage and youth culture and, whilst the Front had constructed an elaborate defence strategy to try to minimise the effect of such attacks, that strategy was somewhat compromised by the fact that, in essence, the allegations were true.

AGE OF THATCHERISM

When the general election of 1979 took place all of these facts eventually conspired to deliver the National Front a hammer blow from which it never recovered. An unwitting pincer movement by the combined forces of the anti-racist left and a dynamic new Conservative Party leadership drew the large majority of the NF's erstwhile voters away, and the age of Thatcherism began in earnest.

What comparisons can be made between the NF's adventure in the mid to late 1970s and that currently being enjoyed by Nigel Farage and the UK Independence Party?

At every level UKIP has exceeded anything the NF ever achieved even at its peak. It has a number of councillors. Recently it won its first ever parliamentary election, by a landslide, and is anticipating another as I write. At this year's elections to the European Parliament UKIP won more votes, and returned more MEPs, than any of the establishment parties.

Whilst it is important to acknowledge that, unlike the NF of yesteryear, UKIP is not an extremist party with an underlying anti-democratic agenda, many of those who follow it are of a similar ilk to those I used to share meetings with back in those far-off days. Old reactionaries, averse to Johnny Foreigner and bemoaning the loss of Empire, are not a great deal different today to what they were four decades ago. For the NF they were padding, a useful veneer with which to mask a much nastier and more sinister reality. In UKIP's ranks they are probably more genuinely welcome. But they are of a similar stock.

Like the NF, UKIP do sometimes get a bad press from the anti-racist movement - but there are two essential differences. The first is that charges of racism, and more especially those of fascism, stick far less. There are no embarrassing photographs of which I am aware of Farage parading around the English countryside in paramilitary uniform. No quotes about putting people into gas chambers. No prison sentences served for violent and unlawful political activity. The second is that much of the "left" which comprises that movement is still sufficiently emotionally attached to Labour not to want to unsettle too much a rising political party which takes most of its votes from the Tories.

Nevertheless, one has to ask whether the powers that be will ever trust UKIP, as an outsider party, enough to allow it to make the breakthrough which runs the risk of changing the character of a hitherto obedient party system forever. If it won't, then at some point they will need to act.

Currently the big parties seem to be following what is really something of a non-strategy, vying limply with one other for the UKIP vote. Doubtless the Tories, who have the most to lose, will be scouring the sewers for undiscovered dung piles which can be unveiled to the voting public at strategic times during the coming campaign. Labour loyalists meanwhile must decide just how comfortably their natural aversion the UKIP-style politics can sit with their hopes that a divided right-leaning vote will help ease Labour into office.

Wherein lies the best option when one knows both devils?

I've been watching with some interest the increasingly acrimonious spat that has been developing between current BNP Chairman Nick Griffin and his challenger in a recent leadership ballot, Eddy Butler.

I have recounted in previous articles how I knew Griffin back in his National Front days. I worked closely with him on the NF's National Directorate and often saw him at close quarters. He is, or at least was, a man who has both qualities and weaknesses in great abundance.

I also knew Eddy Butler. I recall him during the mid-1980s as a fairly competent member of a fairly competent organisational team that ran the NF in Tower Hamlets, in London's East End. I often spoke at their meetings at Butler's invitation.

On a personal level I liked Butler. I can't recall recognising him at the time as being national leadership material, but I did always feel he was "one for the future". He was bright, and seemed to slot in well within the team at Tower Hamlets, a branch which was not massive in numerical terms but was considered consistent and dependable.

So I look upon the current BNP leadership squabble with a blend of voyeuristic curiosity and, as an anti-fascist, with an interest in the eventual result. Whilst no BNP at all would be the desired outcome, I am realistic enough to accept that it won't be. So a battered and divided BNP, possibly supplemented by the creation of a dead-duck rival party destined from the day of its launch for Boot Hill, would appear to me to be the next most desirable option.

The case against Griffin's leadership appears to have most of its roots in his appointment of a consultant, one Jim Dowson, to help market the BNP and raise funds in a way in which it is alleged by Griffin the party could not have managed using its own resources. Despite having procured donations and other income under Dowson's guidance on a scale that the NF of yesteryear could only have dreamed of, the party would appear to be skint. So much so, say Griffin's critics, that it is heading relentlessly for the abyss. Not unreasonably, assuming for the sake of this argument that there is some truth in the allegations, Butler's supporters are curious to know where all the cash raised as a consequence of Dowson's efforts has actually gone.

As is always the case when the far-right ventures forth into the chaos of internecine warfare a number of secondary, although in some cases even more serious, allegations have been levelled at Griffin and his entourage. Dowson himself has been accused of serious sexual assault, even rape. Lurid stories of illegal detention, the unlawful recording and bugging of members considered not to be in good standing, gratuitous suspensions of "malcontents" and suspected malcontents, accusations of being enemy infiltrators and incidents of what we in the 1980s used to describe as "petty terrorism" - threats, harassment and rumour-mongering - dominate the far-right websites as well as those of their active opponents. This is fairly much how fascist leaders facing the threat of impeachment invariably respond.

Furthermore it is claimed that Griffin has cost the BNP hundreds of thousands of pounds in court costs as a consequence of his reckless disregard for the law and its processes. An out of court settlement paid to Unilever after his bizarre inclusion of its Marmite product on the BNP Party Political Broadcast had clearly breached copyright is a case in point.

Despite clearly having a few disgruntled neo-Nazi hardliners on his team, Butler is generally considered to present a more moderate image (by BNP standards) than Griffin. Having gone to some considerable effort in recent years to repackage himself as a more touchy-feely kind of fascist - dropping compulsory repatriation and arguing the case for allowing a very limited and powerless non-white presence into BNP membership - Griffin now finds himself back in the position of having to appeal to the party's "hardliners" to support him against the encroachment of the "civic nationalism" allegedly promoted by Butler.

Butler's campaign to relieve Griffin of the party leadership was always going to be an uphill struggle under the rules laid down by the BNP's constitution, rules made even more draconian following a political sleight of hand by Griffin (and ironically supported at the time by Butler) at a recent Emergency General Meeting. Under these rules a challenge can only ever take place after the challenger has acquired the nominations of 20% of the party membership meeting the appropriate requirements according to length of service. Unsurprisingly Butler failed to achieve this, but the acrimony between the two factions (as in the NF split of 1976 the majority of the party's middle-management would appear to be behind the challenger whilst the core membership remains behind the leader) has rendered it nigh on impossible that the two sides will ever be able to bury their differences and rebuild their relationship.

And so we are faced with an almost inevitable two-party solution. Members of Butler's team seem to be in some disagreement as to whether to break away and form a new party now, to hang around and prepare for the demise of the BNP under a sea of debts before doing so, or to fight to take over ownership of the party. One thing though is certain - Griffin will not give up and call it a day so there will soon be two political factions emerging from the party formerly known as the BNP.

The question that anti-fascists everywhere will be asking is whether a BNP, or even part of a BNP, led by someone who is ostensibly "cleaner" than Griffin (who seems to be losing control in every direction in any case) would be a blessing or a bane. Is the desire for harmony across the community (and that's wherein lies my own anti-fascism, not in some sordid calculation of which scenario creates which particular party advantage) best served by a Griffin victory or a Butler victory?

Let us not forget that both sides are arguing over control of a fascist party. There is no democratic alternative, acceptable to most normal people, on the table.

For me the best outcome would be to see the two factions fight each other to an exhausted stalemate. Better still would be if such a process was to take place over a period of years rather than months, taking us to and beyond the next GLA, European and also hopefully Parliamentary elections.

In the meantime we can take a step back, watch and enjoy. In my considerable experience inter-fascist feuds are never resolved by consensus. BNP watchers should be prepared for the imminent emergence of two or even more fascist parties where once stood the BNP.