The current state of British Politics

[lil_shepherd]

My flist is full of people being shocked because the BNP won two seats in the European elections.

I am just surprised that they are surprised. What surprises me is that the BNP does not gain more votes, because I meet the people who express BNP-type views (in private) often enough. I also overhear them on the bus and the tube and the train. Do

Comments

[tattercoats]

Brava! Very well put.

I read somewhere yesterday 'It's not the rise of fascism, it's the rise of apathy'.

[lil_shepherd]

Indeed.

[philmophlegm]

I think you're right.

Two thoughts on this that I expressed in my own journal ( http://philmophlegm.livejournal.com/98511.html?mode=reply ) :

If you look at the changes in the share of the votes in the two regions where the BNP got MEPs, they mostly took votes off Labour. The knuckle-dragging element of Labour supporters vote Labour because they blame their own failures on the rich. It's a small step from that position to blaming their own failures on immigrants.

Worse than the BNP's two MEPs is Sinn Fein - IRA's one (gaining more votes than anyone else in Ulster). The BNP are a nasty bunch of bigots, but they've never to my knowledge killed 1,800 people.

[lil_shepherd]

And I do agree with your thoughts.

[lil_shepherd]

As a native of one of the two areas that ended up with a BNP member (I am originally from Sheffield) and a working class area in an (ex) Council Estate at that, I am not sure it is envy of the rich so much as a nostalgia for the 40s, 50s and early 60s, when times were hard, but people survived them, and felt they had earned the good times - only there weren't any good times. Like I said, it's tribal.

It's a period where there were no black or brown faces, either. (I saw my first person of colour when I was about 14 - this in a major industrial city. There were no black kids at any of the schools I attended - well, there were two in the first year when I was in the Upper Sixth. I think I saw them half a dozen times.)

The people least likely to be racially prejudiced were, in fact, the most left wing of trade union activitists - they regarded people like the Viet Cong or the Mau Mau as Brothers in Arms against the right wing Capitalist oppressors. It's complicated.

The two should not be conflated, but they are.

[la_marquise_de_]

I agree. What depresses me is that people like this are out there. The answer is, as you say, better education. But instead with have a conflict-fanning set of red top newspapers.

[lil_shepherd]

This government (and past ones) do not actually talk about education - they talk about training.

I remember when someone suggested they replace religious education with ethics. I thought this was a great idea because ethics cannot be taught without teaching people how to think. It's all about logic and reason and working your way through to morality. The screams of rage not just from religious leaders but from politicians and teachers had to be heard to be believed. The objections seemed to be, primarily, for that very reason - that kids would be taught to think for themselves.

[steamshovelmama]

Having moaned about my kids education somewhere downstream, I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by my son's RE lessons. He's doing *issues*! In his first lessons they covered why people believe in god. Okay it's almost wholly about Christianity but rather than just covering the Bible he's done euthanasia, sex before marriage, abortion and touched on homosexuality. They look at different Christian sect's views on the different issues and then have to discuss their own opinions

[madfilkentist]

I was one of those who expressed surprise, but I don't live in Britain. Fortunately, I don't often hear things like that on the public transportation which I use.

Thanks for the perspective. I'm reminded that Hitler had vast public support, it wasn't all that long ago on a historical scale, and I've never thought those attitudes were confined to Germany.

We have our own problems. There is serious anti-immigrant hostility. There was the killing of Dr. Tiller, and the kind of people who support it. Yet lately we've avoided significant blocs based on hostility to specific segments of the population. Maybe it's because we had them for such a long time (e.g., the Ku Klux Klan) and nobody wants them back. I just hope it stays that way.

[lil_shepherd]

I live not far away from an area with a BNP elected local Councillor, which, typically, is an area of skilled manufacturing workers which has had large amounts of redundancy, and lots of immigrant population

[philmophlegm]

"...but I, personally, I a much more afraid of the gradual erosion of our freedoms by the mainstream parties than I am of the lunatic fringe."

Me too.

[madfilkentist]

We all have to be careful of our freedoms, but I, personally, I a much more afraid of the gradual erosion of our freedoms by the mainstream parties than I am of the lunatic fringe.

Yes, and that relates to the distinction I was trying to draw. In the US, we're more likely to see repression happen in a way which is superficially "fair" to all, and in some ways that's worse. For instance, the US government has built up the barriers to passage and trade at the Canadian border not because anyone's scared of Canadian terrorists, but because it would be "unfair" to do that only at the Mexican border. There are random searches of commuters because it would be "unfair" to subject only Middle-Eastern types to acts of pointless harassment. Homeless people are prevented from taking a step up to earning a living because they don't have proper documentation, since it would be "unfair" to do that only to people with foreign accents

[lukadreaming]

Well said. I wasn't in the least surprised either. Two reasons for the vote, I think -- one is, as you say, in your second par. The other is the voters' way of punishing the main parties for the expenses scandal and the recession -- a lot of people (particularly erstwhile Labour supporters) simply didn't vote.

[lil_shepherd]

Yes. I doubt that many people voted for the BNP as a protest - it just looks like it because Labour voters did not vote at all.