THE TAIL SHALL WAG THE DOG: EXERTING POLITICAL LEVERAGE AGAINST THE ESTABLISHMENT

 by Colin Liddell

"Give me a place to stand and I shall move the world" - Archimedes

John Bean’s recent article about his support for the British Democratic Party produced predictable criticisms about the pointlessness of party politics and fighting elections. This reflected the sense that many people feel about not living in real or fair democracies.

This kind of cynicism has now become a popular default position for those on the Alternative or Nationalist Right. It seems that with the media on their side and billionaires funding them, the mainstream parties have nothing to fear. Because of this, many have come to the conclusion that supporting any nationalist party is an exercise in futility. The past record of failure only adds to the sense of futility.

But such a position represents a superficial analysis. Also, opting out of party politics also raises the question of an alternative strategy. Some believe that by ignoring the electoral process, both in the sense of campaigning and voting, they will somehow undermine the legitimacy of whatever globalist puppet government is elected. Others, perhaps inspired by the rightist bugbears of the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism, believe that the political battlefield should be replaced with the cultural battlefield and that changing "the culture" is the precondition to electoral success.

The big flaw in this approach is an obvious one. The cultural institutions – the universities and the media – are for a number of reasons inherently and deeply left-wing. This means that when the cultural commandos of the New Right turn up and ask to be appointed leader writers and tenured academics, they had better not hold their breath.

The electorate is a different story. Although ordinary voters can be deceived and manipulated in various ways by the establishment parties, the fact is that on many key issues they are instinctively and irrevocably right wing. The failure of British nationalism has occurred against a backdrop of the majority of voters actually believing in most of its core ideals. This failure has been tragic but it also continues to represent enormous potential.

Furthermore, it is also unfair to talk of the failure of British Nationalism in absolute terms, for even this cloud has a silver lining. Small parties may not be able to win elections, but they are capable of making big parties sweat buckets, and, in cases where there is a close election between the two main parties, they can make a decisive difference. In American politics, would Clinton have been elected in 1992 if Ross Perot had stayed out of the race; and how did Ralph’s Nader’s vote impact on Al Gore’s presidential ambitions in 2002?

In its history, which we must now consider effectively concluded, the BNP never really stood much of a chance a chance of sweeping into power and putting Nick Griffin in 10 Downing Street, but when the party was doing well, from 2002 to 2010, it certainly started to change the political climate, with the governing Labour Party constantly looking over its shoulder and behaving differently than it otherwise would have. Back in November 2007, I wrote about this for the BNP’s magazine Identity, then edited by John Bean.

The BNP did not need to win the metapolitical struggle as most people actually agreed with its policies.

How Labour Changes its Colours
Due to the BNP’s Popularity

To BNP supporters putting in the hard work in council, by-, Euro, and general elections, it may sometimes seem a thankless task. With the entire media ranged against us, and the old parties involved in dirty tricks, like postal ballot fraud, intimidation, and secret tactical voting, it is certainly a hard, tiring, uphill struggle.

When I consider this situation, I am sometimes reminded of the scene in the movie Braveheart where a group of ordinary Scots, including William Wallace’s father Malcolm, decide to fight against the Normans who have subjugated England and are now trying to conquer Scotland. One of the faint-hearts protests, “We can't beat an army, not with the fifty farmers we can raise!” to which Malcolm Wallace delivers what I consider the best line in the movie: “We don't have to beat them, just fight them.”

The great truth in this is that only those who fight without the guarantee of winning are in, a strange way, destined to win. I see something of this spirit in the BNP. Fighting without the guarantee of winning and with the certainty of suffering and sacrificing, is the truest and greatest kind of fighting there is, and only an army, a people, or a party that fight on this principle is likely to ever triumph.

But does the BNP have to wait until it achieves electoral success for its members to reap the collective rewards of their individual sacrifices? A survey of the behaviour of the main parties, especially the governing Labour Party, has convinced me that this is not the case. It has become apparent that even without the long-hoped-for breakthrough into elected power, a healthy and growing BNP is still capable of exerting a beneficial influence on British politics and society far beyond its elected size.

This is because, with the Conservative and Liberal Democratic Parties in disarray, it is the only real threat to New Labour’s hold on power. Also, it is the only party capable of storming Labour’s fortresses and heartlands. The result of this is that the Labour Party, whether it cares to admit it or not, pays extremely close attention to the BNP’s political agenda, and, as the evidence suggests, even acts on it. This means that a party, which they dismiss as a bunch of extremists relying on protest votes, already has its hands indirectly on the levers of power. In other words, the BNP dog is already wagging the British tail.

Here in chronological order is the evidence:

2002

In April, having heard that the BNP is building up support in Northern cities for the May council elections, the Home Secretary David Blunkett publishes a package of measures to crack down on illegal immigrants to the UK and on UK employers who hire workers illegally. This includes giving immigration officers new powers to enter businesses to search for illegal immigrants, demand information, and remove the children of parents who have entered the country unlawfully. The measures also increase the maximum jail term for those convicted of harbouring or trafficking illegal immigrants from six months to 14 years, as well as requiring airlines to check the details of passengers travelling to the UK against a database to confirm they pose no known immigration or security risk.

The measures are announced only weeks before the council elections to have maximum negative impact on the BNP vote. Although clearly intended as a cynical and insincere ploy to address growing support for the BNP, the measures, which will later be watered down, evaded, and legally challenged by ‘human rights’ lawyers, nevertheless represent a small degree of progress that otherwise would not have happened.

Despite attempting to steal the BNP’s thunder by pandering to soft anti-immigration sentiment in this way, the BNP nevertheless makes an electoral breakthrough in Burnley. This and the continuing electoral successes by the BNP, including the 2003 council elections, forces the government’s hand and sees a general tightening of the major immigration loophole of false asylum seekers. After 2002, the influx of Third World economic migrants claiming to be asylum seekers falls drastically. From over 100,000 asylum applications in 2002 the number falls to around 60,000 the next year, and 40,000 the year after, and 30,500 in 2005, with the UK falling from being the top destination for asylum applicants to number three [UNCHR figures]. Without a healthy and growing BNP, hitting Labour where it hurts – in its traditional heartlands – these gains would never have happened.

2004

With the BNP punishing New Labour’s turn-a-blind-eye immigration policy, the establishment finds itself short of cheap labour. This forces the Labour Party to commit the crime it has often accused the BNP of – racism. Instead of flooding our nation’s labour market with racially different, Third World ‘asylum seekers’ from impoverished African and Asian countries, they next decide to flood the labour market with cheap White labour from Eastern Europe. The method adopted is to sign up to the enlargement of the EU, without making any attempt, like our fellow EU members, to limit the flood of immigrants from Eastern Europe attracted by higher wages. 

Massive expansion of the EU.

This policy, facilitating a vast influx of White foreigners under the guise of European economic integration rather than Black or Asian foreigners under the guise of ‘human rights,’ is essentially racist, regardless of the fact that Poles and Czechs, with their Christian values and work ethic, are more compatible with British society than Somali drug gangs and Islamic terrorists. In adopting this policy, Labour is in its own cack-handed way trying to compete with what it falsely sees as the BNP’s racism, while trying to serve the cheap labour requirements of its Globalist masters.

The immediate results of this policy, however, see the biggest vote ever for the BNP when it gains 808,200 votes in the EU Parliamentary elections of June. This number would undoubtedly have been much higher if the now discredited UKIP had not also been standing on an anti-EU and anti-immigrant platform.

2005

The Conservative Party, under the leadership of Michael Howard, is quick to take advantage of the anti-EU, anti-immigration, and pro-law-enforcement mood of the country that the BNP’s campaigns have helped mobilize. In particular, Howard broke the old parties’ long-standing ‘gentleman’s agreement’ not to raise the issue of immigration. Although savaged for this by a biased liberal media, Howard’s BNP-influenced platform nevertheless enables the Conservatives to make their best showing in years in terms of votes, although the inherent Labour-bias of the first-past-the-post system, combined with Labour’s growing immigrant vote and instances of postal ballot fraud secure another Labour majority. [Note: Even if the Conservatives had drawn level with Labour in this election, with each party polling 33.8% of the vote, Labour would have secured 336 seats to the Tories’ 220. For the Conservatives to win the 324 needed to get a majority, they would need a national lead of 11.7%.]

Unlikable politicians need popular policies.

With a close two-horse race between Tories and Labour and a chorus of cries from the media that a vote for any other party is a wasted one, the BNP’s 119 candidates poll extremely well, with a creditable average of 1,620 votes per candidate, doing especially well in Labour heartlands. The announcement a few weeks after the election that the UK is to switch to a more stringent points-based skilled immigration system, like the one in Australia, shows that Labour is worried by the BNP’s continuing power to threaten their political bedrock.

2006

This was year when the BNP tail really started wagging the dog. In the May council elections the BNP more than doubles its number of councillors, increasing from 20 to 52. Even before the election the Labour MP for Barking, Margaret Hodge starts to echo BNP statements about unemployment, high house prices, and the housing of asylum seekers in the area. She famously – and quite accurately – says that eight out of ten White working class voters in her constituency are considering voting for the BNP.

Labour MP for Barking Margaret Hodge

This is no revelation to anyone familiar with the changing mood of British society, but what it does reveal is the degree to which New Labour has been closely monitoring the situation on the ground. Not surprisingly, Labour, a party famed for using focus groups and tailoring policies to achieve power, responds to the BNP’s electoral success by turning itself into an insincere clone of the BNP for the rest of 2006.

In August, the Community and Local Government Secretary Ruth Kelly makes a speech, which signals the government’s loss of faith in the idea of multiculturalism:

“We have moved from a period of uniform consensus on the value of multiculturalism, to one where we can encourage that debate by questioning whether it is encouraging separateness,” Kelly tells her audience, before emphasizing the need for integration, cohesion, and shared values. She forgets to mention that there was never a consensus on multiculturalism and neglects to point out that cohesion and shared values are only possible in a society that is not a multiracial hodgepodge.

In October, Kelly’s call for cohesion and shared values, which was noticeably short on details, is followed by Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw’s criticisms of Muslim women wearing the full veil. Straw makes points the BNP has made repeatedly, about the veil inhibiting communication, acting as a social barrier, and being offensive to indigenous Britons.

In November, Prime Minister Tony Blair follows up his ministers, rejecting multiculturalism’s multi-value universe by talking about essential British values.

A consummate liar.

“When it comes to our essential values – belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage – then that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common,” he tells his audience.

The old clichés about diversity being ‘a strength’ have been shelved in favour of an abject admission of multiculturalism’s failure. Although Kelly and Blair’s speeches do not quite say everything the BNP would have wished, who can deny the unseen hand the BNP had in writing them? Without the BNP’s lucid opposition to multiculturalism, and its ability to mobilize popular opinion and hurt Labour at the ballot box, this left-wing Globalist party would never made such an admission in a million years. This is a tremendous example of dog wagging by the BNP tail.

Unfortunately much of the respect the BNP gained for its critique of Britain’s problems came from the tragic events of July 7th when Muslim terrorists, born and raised in the UK, showed their complete disregard for their fellow British citizens by exploding bombs on public transport in a manner that BNP leader Nick Griffin had clearly warned about years before.

2007

The BNP has long campaigned against political correctness in the police force and the one-sided application of racism and other ‘thought crime’ legislation. The extent to which this has been taken up by the media and the other political parties is seen in July, when four Islamic fanatics are finally jailed for their part in the demonstration outside the Danish embassy in London last year. During the incident, around 300 Muslim demonstrators brandished placards calling for genocide against non-Muslims, while the police stood by and did nothing. It was only thanks to photographs taken by reporters that they could be brought to justice.

BNP pressure ensured that prosecutions were made.

More recently, the party’s early focus on the issue of peak oil has started to resonate with the mainstream media, with the government looking to shadow the BNP’s energy policy. This is yet another instance of a party with intellectual integrity and real principles having the foresight to out-think and out-plan the old parties with their cobbled-together interest groups and shallow, short-term focus.

In the Prime Minister’s recent proposals to cancel the ‘Super Casino,’ review the 24-hour drinking laws, and reclassify cannabis as a class B drug, some political commentators have seen an attempt by Gordon Brown to march onto Conservative territory. But, in light of the fact that Cameron’s Conservative Party is now committed to representing rich, cosmopolitan, liberal-minded hedonists like himself, it is more likely that this attempt to inject a little moral fibre into the Labour Party is yet another example of the Labour Party paying silent homage to the BNP.

The BNP may still be a long way from full power, but even as a small party, stigmatized by the mass media and forced to wander in the political wilderness, it still does more good and can sometimes exert more power and influence on British society than either the Conservative or Labour Parties. 

As this article shows, the BNP was able to exert a degree of leverage by changing the tone of the political debate and forcing the Labour Party into positions it would not otherwise have adopted. Right now something similar is going on with the UK Independence Party. The rise of this anti-EU party and the threat it presents to the Conservative Party is now pushing Prime Minister David Cameron deep into territory Euro-skeptic territory and threatening the cohesion of the coalition.

Both the Labour and Conservative parties have long been working against the best interests of the British people. At some level they know this, and this makes them fear the rise of parties like the BNP in the past and UKIP today that are aligned with these interests. No matter how small these parties may be, their power to generate fear in the major parties is proportional to their potential to appeal to the masses.

Even without votes, even without electoral victories, this is a kind of power. As the British Democratic Party grows, it will start to threaten the old guard parties, and when it does it will start exerting influence out of all proportion to its size or vote. All that is required is that the party is well organized, dedicated, and aligned with the true interests of the British people. Give such a party a place to stand and it will move the world.