Anti-BNP/Griffin Election protests....

Robbie I think you are right to go down. You live in the same area as me but I can't make it tonight to Preston. In some areas of the north west we have worked with UAF people to prevent the bnp from organnising. The problem is their activity is limited to the "vote for anybody else" dead end. HOWEVER, having said that just to slag them off and do fuck all isn't a better strategy. I hope it goes well in Preston and Manchester. It was good to see the rednblack flag at the north west count yesterday, and at the Kimberley Hotel, Blackpool protests where the sickening bnp hold their poor excuse of a "conference". What we must also do is create networks for something better in our communities and workplaces. Maybe we could work together on a north west anti fascist leaflet that broadens the issue out into a wider struggle.

The protests, Weeler, are to say "Griffin does not represent us". I don't think people are closing the door after the horse bolted in my town they were active against the BNP before this election as well. I do agree that their are wider political causes that need to be tackled. But how do we make his name dirt and smash the party machinery without joing those who are showing their opposition? Isn't the alternative to do fuck all?

I've never voted in my life but i voted last week to counter the BNP as there is no opposition to them and they stood 4 candidates in my town! Last night makes me despair and still what opposition there is seems prosaic and stagnant and likely to repeat the mistakes of the past.I've been inactive for some time but find myself grasping for any class conscious anti-fascism i can find even a NO2EU PPB is some respite!!!Our class is being lead into a copperfastened slavery and we as Anarchists have to take some of the blame as does the Left in general for in my experience the bodypolitic of the Left is overwhelmingly middle class and no self respecting worker would trust it.Until Anarchists jettisson the psuedo-non class conscious lifestylists and embark on a consistent and organised path that encompasses working class action by working class people we will simply remain part of the Left malaise and the BNP will treat us with the contempt we deserve!They are a bigger threat now than they ever have been and to me the Left has never been so irrelovent and weak!Whither now comrades?

I think so, by about 1% or thereabouts. IMO this is as good as it gets for the BNP.

A rubicon has been crossed here in that the BNP have filled the political vacuum instead of the Left.Anarchists and Libertarian Communists need to formulate a strategem to be in the vanguard to reclaim our communities.Merely stating that they have peaked or dismissing their vote is naive at best and politically unforgivable at worst!

Where are the Left and what is it's relovence vis-a-vis the working class ? Every other person i know who voices a political opinion mentions common BNP mantras not progressive and communist sympathies.They are active and in the ascendency in working class communities-fact!We are non existant with no sign of life!

I don't see how the relevance of the 'left', which has pretty much always been the Labour party in this country, amongst the working class is a good thing. That 'left' has plenty of experience in power, and has done real, concrete things to attack the working class, immigrants etc, unlike the BNP.

Thats why I think this apocalyptic language about the BNP hammering at the gates of Rome isn't very useful. Racism, nationalism, xenophobia etc is widespread amongst the working class, even if old-school racism is declining. The BNP are a limited symptom of it.

Yeah, the anarchist movement is pretty rubbish and has lots of problems. But our ideas are difficult ones and radical ones. The movement isn't great, but better than it has been in recent years. We shouldn't be surprised that nationalistic and xenophobic ideas are widespread, as they're the dominant ideas of this society. Solidarity, class consciousness, etc, aren't. So I do agree that we need to get stuck in to make the movement better, and much more importantly make it something relevant to people's lives rather than part of a self-referential ghetto. But I don't think the BNP benefitting from a collapse of the Labour vote is a good reason to abandon anarchist principles on things like voting.

I'm not sure this is completely the case. The BNP, like every other party offers people an easy solution to their problems - the 'problem' is immigration, and a vote for BNP is the fix. The BNP have put a lot of work into marketing themselves as the political party for the average Daily Mail reader, even down to presenting themselves as being against biological racism and claiming as Nick Griffin did yesterday that they're only interested in 'illegals' and 'unloyal muslims' and that they're 'unconcerned with everyone else' (i.e. ethnic minorities). So they offer themselves as the one dimensional solution to the one-dimensional xenophobia which is common in the working class and gets thrown at it from the biggest-selling papers.

Anarchist politics are qualitatively different to those of the BNP and their ilk. We talk about struggle and the need for solidarity and direct action. We don't tell people that the world they want comes about by them nipping to the ballot station every few years, but from concerted class action over a period of time.

I think the BNP have just moved into a vacant space left by new labour. New Labour who have to many bnp voters -so blatently sold out the working class interests to bankers and the middle class. Not that new labour or the labour party were not just a bunch of parliamentary reformist statist cunts.

I agree that new alternatives have to be set up in local communities which offer something new and offer hope and an example of grassroots democracy free from any political associations and parasites. Im sure if the economic situation was all rosy the BNP would not have done so well but that is just stating the obvious.

A agree with the barn door comment. The bnps policies are ridiculous surely they cudnt get elected into government?

Aye, we talk. They knock on doors and engage with local people.

I'm sure much of it is immigration fuelled, but some of it will definitely be alienation and frustration of being powerless; these are the sort of folk we should be engaging with. I saw on Channel 4 News today that 40% of BNP voters disagreed with the statement blacks aren't as smart as whites. Granted, that doesn't mean those folk want open borders, but that would suggest isn't racism guiding their decision.

The presenter did ask a newly elected MEP for them if he liked racism, so perhaps Channel 4 News is a shower of shite.

see, most of the posters here are involved in the longer term stuff (and some of the antifa work too). if you don't know them it's easy to assume that web postings are the sum of their activity, but most of the regular libcom posters are pretty active in the real world too, and members of groups like the AF, SolFed and Organise! which share your analysis that the counter to the far right is ultimately a combative working class.

How about instead of talk we take to the streets. I live in Preston myself and was gutted when I missed the protest but in retrospect I'm glad I did. A bunch of people standing around shouting and badmouthing the BNP won't do anything. If said grou mobilized; ie took to the streets to make the BNP and any other faschist pig for that matter feel how much we dislike them through both words and action.

I'm an anarchist as much as the next guy, but at the same time I beleive in working through the system and the state to get rid of people like the BNP but how can we be expected to work through a system that has screwed us over time and time again, allowed groups like the BNP to get to where they are today and where they will be tomorrow, and at the same time keeping ourselves and everyone else totally free with the ability to say and do as we please within the law?

I'm afraid to say that we can't. It's impossible, the entire thing is a paradox and looking at it level headedly from both the "left" and the "right-wing" we find that the only option for us working class left to do is to dale matters into our own hands. Show those faschists what we think and what we beleive, show them that we are not afraid of their policies and thuggish vehavious attributed to certain members or their party. Show them that we will not take it lying down and most importantly show the government in power that they have citizens who are aware, string and pissed off with being shit on by every fucking political party out there, with their feeble attempts to control us while always falling back onto their "liberal democracy" fundamentalist crap.

Scepticism welcome

As is agreement

I hope their is a little balance to this conversation. i

60% of voters think blacks are less intelligent than whites?

I find that pretty hard to believe.

I see racism as generally promoting a nationalist identity with the bosses to divide the working class, by convincing "domestic" workers that they are likely to loose their job security to "foreign" workers. In this way it fosters indifference and segregation. These scum probably hold some form of "separate but equal" illusion which was used in apartheid - regardless of catergories they isolate for persecution (based on descent, religion, skin colour, language, etc... ad naseum).

Sorry, that's what I meant.