Tag Archives: UKIP

Euro election results

Last week’s elections for the European parliament were a significant national success story for UKIP, and the East Midlands echoed this unwelcome trend.  UKIP polled first in our region with 32.9% of the vote – one of the highest proportions returned from any region.  There are now two UKIP, two tory and one labour MEPs in the East Midlands.

The results for the small far-right parties were, happily, very poor.  Mirroring their national decline, the BNP polled only 1.64% of the East Midlands vote (down from 8.7% in 2009, the largest percentage downswing of any party).  They got even less votes here than the new and obscure AIFE eurosceptic party, and their disastrous electoral meltdown continues.  Ex-MEP Nick Griffin is vowing to continue as party leader – welcome news for anti-fascists, who applaud the greedy incompetent as he drags the BNP further into the political wilderness.  Keep up the good work, Nick!

The English Democrats polled just over 1%, down from 2.3% in 2009.


East Midlands local election results

 

Derbyshire BNP freefall continues

As predicted, the BNP’s four candidates in the region polled very poorly in Thursday’s local council elections.

In Amber Valley, Derbyshire, Ken Cooper came in fourth place in Ripley Ward with 80 votes – 3.2% of the poll.  In Codnor & Waingroves ward, Alan Edwards also came fourth with 39 votes, 2.8% of the poll.  However, both BNP candidates narrowly beat the LibDems into fifth place.  These results are even poorer than the 2010 elections, when the BNP polled 7.5% in Ripley and 4.2% in Codnor & Waingroves.

In Derby, Paul Hilliard came last in Chaddesden ward with 4% of the poll (136 votes), whilst Carol Tucker also came last in Derwent ward, with 3.1% (84 votes).  This is a significant drop from their performance in similar elections in 2012, when Hilliard polled 14.7% in Chaddesden and Julie Fuller polled 11.9% in Derwent.  That performance was itself a disappointment for the BNP in 2012 – how much lower can they go?

We have been enjoying Derbyshire BNP’s downhill trajectory for a few years now, and it’s good to see it continue.

 

New UKIP councillors

The most significant feature of the local elections was the dramatic rise in fortunes of UKIP.  They now have increased representation on several local councils in the region, with 8 councillors in North-East Lincolnshire, 3 in Daventry, and 2 in Derby.

Whilst enjoying the increased electoral irrelevance of the BNP and their ilk, the entry into the mainstream of a new brand right-wing nationalism in the guise of UKIP poses significant fresh challenges for antifascists.  We will be monitoring UKIP in the region closely.  This piece from the IWCA, written a year ago, is an interesting contribution to this vital issue.


Far-right election candidates in the region

There are a number of fascist candidates standing in this week’s Euro Parliament and local council elections :

European parliament

BNP : Cathy Duffy, Robert West, Bob Brindley, Geoffrey Dickens, Paul Hillard.

English Democrats : Kevin Sills, Dave Wickham, John Dowle, Oliver Healey, Terry Spencer.

 

Cathy Duffy...she's not going to be an MEP...

Cathy Duffy…she’s not going to be an MEP

Cathy Duffy from Charnwood is the obvious choice for head of the BNP list, being a rare animal – one of the party’s two local councillors in the whole country.  The inclusion of Paul ‘Aloe Vera’ Hilliard as the last candidate on the list shows how his stock has fallen in the party, with outright fruitcake and twitter twat Bob Brindley selected above him.

 

Kevin Sills - nor is he...

Kevin Sills – nor is he…

The English Democrats are the usual mix of ex-members of other far-right parties, and people who find UKIP a bit liberal.  Veteran party-swopper Kevin Sills is their lead candidate.

 

Councils

Amber Valley : Alan Edward (Codnor & Waingroves), Ken Cooper (Ripley).

Derby : Paul Hilliard (Chaddesden), Carol Tucker (Derwent).

The most interesting feature of the local candidate list is how sparse it is, with only four candidates from the BNP standing in our region, all in Derbyshire.  This reflects the general decline of the party, who are fielding 114 candidates nationwide, compared to 739 in the equivalent elections in 2010.  The party seems extremely unlikely to add to its pitiful national tally of two councillors.

 

Although these elections promise very lean pickings for the BNP and their ilk, it’s likely – and alarming – that UKIP will do well (taking votes from all parties, including the BNP).  They are standing numerous candidates in both Euro and council elections, have a huge campaign budget, and have a high national profile.  Although their politics are vague and vacuous, they are undoubtedly pushing the political discourse to the right and need to be opposed.  The results of Thursday’s elections will make interesting reading.

 


2013 Fascist Roundup

The fascists are starting 2014 in a grim place. Tommy Robinson’s desertion of the EDL has left the organisation in a shambles which barely managed to get 200 members to the organisation’s latest national demo in Exeter. EDL members are now outnumbered many times over by antifascists at their demos. As if this woeful state of affairs wasn’t enough, 32 EDL activists were recently jailed for a total of more than 55 years for their involvement in violent disorder at the EDL’s Walsall demonstration. Among those sentenced were Kirk Jones (33 months), Mick Thomas (28 months) and Christopher Boyall (24 months) from Leicestershire and Kirk Reeves from Derbyshire (18 months). They will join the vast majority of the North West Infidels who are already serving time for violent disorder and former EDL leader, Guramit Singh, who will be serving 6 1/2 years for the attempted robbery of a Hucknall garden centre.

Kirk Jones of Hinkley EDL: three years inside

Kirk Jones of Hinkley EDL: three years inside

The BNP has lost almost all of its seats and looks likely to lose the rest this year. Amusingly, Nick Griffin was declared (financially) bankrupt this month and has resorted to filming a white supremacist version of Ready, Steady, Cook! to make ends meet. He is not predicted to hold onto his MEP seat in the North West. The BNP has lost out badly to UKIP’s somewhat less amateurish political campaigning on issues such as immigration.

Various half-witted attempts to Unite the (extreme) Right have been made and all of them have failed badly. Derbyshire ex-EDL has-been, Tony “Tone the Moan” Curtis, joined up with the EVF, South East something-or-other, Casuals Divided and some other even less significant names in the English National Resistance but it all fell apart after only a matter of months when it became clear that there were only 12 of them. Curtis masterminded a demonstration at the University of Nottingham but the 6 men and a dog didn’t even make it onto the campus before surrendering and going to the pub instead.

Meanwhile, Derby BNP organiser Paul Hilliard’s attempts at unity descended into farce when all the different Nazi sects fell out with one another and he gave up in despair. Hilliard, once a BNP superactivist, may now have left the party.

Some important victories were made by anti-fascists on the streets. When the combined shambles of Casuals United, the EVF and other far right hangers-on returned to Brighton for their “March for England” they were literally kicked out of town by a large and militant anti-fascist mobilisation. Likewise, the fading EDL were massively outnumbered by anti-fascists when they returned to Tower Hamlets in September. Militant anti-fascists led a breakaway march which got to the EDL’s route before being kettled by hundreds of police. These mobilisations were the results of considerable hard work by local anti-fascist groups and the Anti-Fascist Network.

It wasn’t all good news though. The murder of serving soldier Lee Rigby by two Islamists in the summer led to an irruption of support for the EDL who exploited the event mercilessly. Large “memorial” events were held by Leicester and Nottingham EDL which were not countered effectively by anti-fascists who had been caught off-guard. Then came the Strong movement, giving racist extremists a soft patriotic veneer to cloak their organising. Mansfield Strong, for example, turned out to be run by long-time EDL activist, Stan Green. Racist abuse against people perceived to be Muslims soared in the aftermath of the Rigby murder, which showed what a reserve of reactionary and racist sentiment exists throughout the country. It is only thanks to the utter incompetence of fascist organisations in the UK that not more damage has been done.

The anti-Islam backlash that the Rigby murder generated culminated in the actions of Pavlo Lapshyn, a racist terrorist who carried out a number of unsuccessful bomb attacks on mosques in the West Midlands as well as murdering an elderly Muslim man. His campaign highlighted once again the growing rise of far-right terrorism in the UK, a phenomenon which is very real, even if reporting on it does not sell papers. In illustration, the year also saw the trial of a “neo-Nazi” Loughborough teenager who plotted massacres and stockpiled home made explosives and weapons.

Another parallel manifestation of the growing reactionary sentiment in the UK was the rise in popularity of UKIP. The party, which panders to racism and xenophobia, did extremely well in local elections winning 16 seats on Lincolnshire County Council alone. Many of these new councillors turned out, unsurprisingly, to have far right views on race and immigration as well as former membership of the BNP and EDL. At present, UKIP poses a much greater threat to values of tolerance and working class solidarity than any of the insignificant openly far right organisations, and is much harder to mobilise against due to the party’s “cleaner” image, supported by extremists and soft patriots alike.

So whilst the “traditional” franchises of far right and fascist politics are in terminal decline, reactionary sentiment, cooked up by a political and media establishment to divide and rule the working class, is alive and well. A growing number of racists are acting alone, to plot bombings and murders at one end of the spectrum, or to perpetrate racially and religiously abusive online attacks at the other. Meanwhile, UKIP provides the possibility of political respectability and a chance of power for people who hate foreignness. The fascists haven’t gone away – they’ve just changed their clothing.

In response anti-fascists need to reassess their strategies. Simply continuing to follow the increasingly demoralised EDL and BNP around the country might make us feel good, but it is not going to stop fascism. The anti-fascist movement is going to have to look for new tactics and new arenas of activity if it wants to remain relevant and effective.


Another Lincolnshire UKIP loudmouth

The recent “repatriation” rant by Lincolnshire UKIP councillor Victoria Ayling has once again shone a spotlight on the obnoxious views held by some members of the right-wing party (although it’s worth noting that she was still a Tory councillor when she launched her rant, five years ago!).  Lincolnshire UKIPites aren’t very good at hiding their less palatable opinions – they were in the news earlier in the year for posting racist nonsense on their facebook accounts.  It’s entirely unsurprising that a party which specialises in whipping up resentment about immigration will be a fertile breeding ground for racist views.  Countering the propaganda of the likes of UKIP should be a priority for antifascists in the region.

Two gurning bigots : Farage and Ayling


Three Lincolnshire UKIP councillors in racism scandal

Just a few days after Lincolnshire’s newly elected UKIP councillors refused to sign an anti-racism declaration, Linconshire Police have confirmed that they are investigating three of the councillors over racist posts made on their social media accounts. One of those to be investigated is the leader of UKIP in the county, Councillor Chris Pain, who has made appearances at BNP and EDL supporter, Dean Everitt’s anti-immigration demos.

Pain posted the following:

Have you noticed that if you ­rearrange the letters in ‘illegal ­immigrants’, and add just a few more letters, it spells, ‘Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, non-English-speaking ********* and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-********, raghead ******** with you.

Pain used the time-honoured ‘my account was hacked guv’ defence and hilariously added ““When you’ve got friends that are coloured it makes it even worse.” Perhaps you should ask those friends whether they like being referred to as “coloured” Chris! The rather dubious account hacking explanation was rubbished by the journalist investigating Pain who said that he has a “prolific habit of xenophobic, racist and far-right posting”.

o-CHRIS-PAIN-570

Also under investigation is Alan Jesson, councillor for Spalding South who posted racist and homophobic remarks on his page, threatening forced repatriation for all migrants. Jesson told a Polish woman to “fuck off” and another man that his “culture is not welcome in the UK”.

a-ALAN-JESSON-640x468

Tiggs Keywood-Wainwright, the third councillor, posting about migrants said “Put them in a box so they can’t fight back and ship them off as cargo” and “From what I know of Turks, they are not to be trusted.” In her defence, Keywood-Wainwright said “The comments I made were from months ago.”

It’s really no surprise that a party that has welcomed former BNP members into the fold and has such a xenophobic and race-baiting image contains racist and homophobic bigots. It should tell you about what kind of people that UKIP seeks to attract when some of these racists are then elevated to leadership positions within the party. I doubt this will be the last we hear of people with far right sympathies and sentiments campaigning under the UKIP banner.

Election nightmare for BNP

The BNP’s election campaign turned out to be a disaster yesterday as their share of the vote was seriously cut down across the East Midlands and the country as a whole. Newcomers, the British Democrats, failed to make any impact and the English Democrats did very badly as well. UKIP’s populist right wing politics seems to have eclipsed the far right, perhaps for good.

Here’s how the BNP share of the vote looked in the wards in which they stood at the last elections in 2009 compared with the current results.

  • Derbyshire:                 2009: 19.2%    2013: 5.5%
  • Leicestershire:            2009: 14.3%   2013: 8.4%
  • Lincolnshire:              2009: 11.1%    2013: 4.3%
  • Northamptonshire:   2009: 13.2%   2013: 4.7%
  • Nottinghamshire:      2009: 10.9%   2013: 2.4%

In other words the BNP has done extremely badly, a view shared by their last remaining councillor, Cathy Duffy, who flounced out of the count in Leicestershire before her (poor) result was even announced.

Another welcome result at these elections was the booting out of Graham Partner, elected as BNP Councillor for Coalville in 2009 and being rejected by the electorate as a British Democrats candidate this year. We won’t be sad to see him go.

Whilst the further collapse of the BNP is to be welcomed, the rise of UKIP poses new questions and challenges for those who oppose anti-migrant racism and right wing populism. This analysis by the Independent Working Class Association is not a bad place to start in understanding the relationship between UKIP and the BNP and stating the challenges facing those who seek to oppose their right wing populism with a genuine working class politics.

 


Leicester UKIP candidate suspended over EDL link

A UKIP candidate in Thursday’s Leicestershire County Council election has been suspended by the party. Chris Scotton was representing the reactionary party in the Syston Ridgeway division, but fell out of favour after displaying numerous declarations of support for the EDL on his facebook page, along with various other dubious postings.  Open support for the EDL is not something that UKIP, seeking to poach votes from the Tories, wish to endorse – despite the EDL leadership endorsing UKIP…

2684_3473

Two grinning fools : Scotton with Nigel Farage

Foolish Chris is not the only fascist embarrassment for UKIP; party leader Nigel Farage has been forced to agree that his party contains “a handful” of candidates with links to fascist organisations.  There are a large number of UKIP candidates in the forthcoming elections, whilst the BNP remain in the doldrums, and there are no other far-right parties with any chance of making any impact.  Therefore, UKIP, apparently on an upsurge, will be an attractive vehicle for fascists with ambitions in local politics.  It’s no surprise that a right-wing anti-immigration party will attract such people in a time when the far-right is is disarray, and anti-fascists will be watching the political development of UKIP with interest.


Links between UKIP and the BNP

The last few desolate years at the BNP have prompted masses of defections. Many tiny hopeless extreme right parties were formed but activists also tried their luck by swapping to other far right parties. So many ex-BNP activists signed up to the English Democrats, for example, that almost half of their candidates in the 2012 elections were ex-BNP. What is less well documented, though, is that ex-BNPers also defected to the (allegedly) more mainstream UKIP.

In a recent post on his Northants patriot blog, recent BNP-to-English Democrats convert, Rob Walker, has exploded UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s myth that “[UKIP] are the only UK political party that bars you from becoming a member, let alone an officer or candidate, if you have ever been involved with the BNP.”:

I know for a fact that there are members of UKIP who have been past members of the BNP, I also know of three people in Northamptonshire alone that held memberships simultaneously of both Parties!

The truth is that many on the far right, including those in street movements like the EDL, admire UKIP and see them as a less “toxic” (and more likely to succeed) version of the BNP. UKIP’s extreme authoritarian policies on immigration and anti-crime crusades as well as their hysterical fear of multiculturalism mean they are not so far removed from their openly racist bedfellows on the far right. It is no surprise that they attract former BNP members craving the possibility of actually getting some votes.

As fascist parties like the BNP implode we might expect to see UKIP slide further to the right in a bid to mop up their supporters.