Downham By Election - 19th February 2009
2 liberal democrat councillors have been forced to stand down meaning a by-election in the downham ward on the 19th February.
It’s interesting to note that Tess Culnane will be standing for the BNP in that election
Tess was a member of the BNP for many years, standing in that same ward in May 2002 and picking up 500 odd votes and 20% of the count. She contested the same ward again in November of that year again picking up 500 odd votes and 20% of the count, but lost out to Mark Morris, one of the Lib Dems whose departure has led to this current election.
In that campaign the lib dems released an anti-bnp leaflet which led Tess Culnane to sue them for libel, a case she eventually lost saddling herself and her party with legal costs of a 100 grand. During this time she had been associating with the British People’s Party (an avidly neo nazi party in favour of white separatism, criminalising homosexuality forced expulsion of non-whites and jews and holocaust deniers), a party that had been proscribed by the BNP for being too extreme. Her association with this group and the court case led to Tess Culnane leaving the BNP in November 2005, where she moved even closer to the British People’s Party
Here she is at a BPP meeting
She was in fine company at that meeting, speaking alongside her where
Eddy Morrison ‘leading’ british neo nazi
Dave Jones
Lady Michelle Renouf celebrity holocaust denier and firm supporter of the likes of David Irving
Soon after she joined the National Front where she stood as a candidate for them in the Whitefoot ward of Lewisham in November 2007 (coincidentally this election was also brought about by the departure of a lib dem ’sitting’ councilor, this time however it was even more forced due to the discovery that Sarah Kentman had been using multiple identities in relation to benefit fraud, and had also not attended a council meeting for over 6 months). Tess Culnane only picked up 95 votes at this election, but still managed to come in ahead of both the greens and the UKIP (technically she stood as an independent as the NF hadn’t filled their accounts in time with the electoral commission so they couldn’t be named on the ballot)
The following year she was busy again standing in elections for the NF, first the GLA elections in May for the Greenwich & Lewisham constituency where she picked up nearly 9,000 votes, and then again as part of the circus that was the David Davis show in Haltemprice & Howden where her paltry 544 votes still put her in 4th place in that contest
During her time as a NF member she continued to attend & speak at meetings and rallies of the British People’s Party, one such one was the BPP Nationalist Unity Rally held only a few months ago. Here’s a few snippets of the BPP’s policy manifesto that must have attracted Tess to that group
The creation of a White Workers’ State based on National Freedom, Social Justice, Duty and Responsibility
The ending of all non-European immigration and the introduction of a compulsory, phased, humane policy of repatriation
The protection of the unborn by stopping abortion on demand and allowing only it only in extreme and special circumstances
The replacement of all multi-cultural and alien art with natural, traditional British art forms
We will secure the existence of our people and a future for White children
While Tess was building up her base in the south of the borough with the NF, her former party the BNP were also hard at work there, during the GLA elections for example they’d regularly get 50 odd people out leafletting and door-stepping, despite the fact they weren’t even standing anyone in the constituency elections in that area.
With the election in February coming up the BNP and Tess appear to have kissed and made up and she will stand once again for them in that ward. It’s an odd choice on the surface for the respectability seeking euro nationalist BNP who have moved in an almost opposite way to Tess of recent years who seems far too much of an unreconstructed racist for whom the BNP were nowhere near as extreme as she would have liked them to be. No doubt the lure of her support base in the area was enough though for the true colours of the BNP, and Nick Griffin, to shine through though and accept her back into the fold - despite her firm support for the late John Tyndall in his internal battles with Griffin while Tess Culnane was still a member of that party.
No doubt in the lead up to the election we’ll see the usual round of liberal anti-fascism swoop into place, the usual impotent cries of ‘vote anyone but the BNP’ and the desperate pleas to bolster support for the various mainstream parties whose policies and actions over the last couple of decades have given rise to the conditions that lead to the ever increasing support for parties like the BNP in the first place. If this is even considered by liberal anti fascism it’s quickly forgotten and the push to return to power those who will continue to perpetuate those conditions is pursued with vigour - a defeat of the BNP at the polls is then lauded and backs are patted all round until the next time round when the whole circus starts again and no one stops to wonder why the support for the far right continues to grow.
As much as the BNP, NF and BPP are despicable extreme organisations - by far the biggest threat at the moment to the working class of all colours is those who actually have their hands on the levers of power, be they new labour or new tories - it’s their policies and behaviour that have given rise to the kind of conditions that have allowed parties like the BNP to flourish - the political abandonment by a supposedly pro working class party of their natural constituents in favour of narrow middle class middle england and the continuation and deepening of thatcherite neo-liberal policies by new labour led to a massive political vacuum as all three mainstream parties fell over themselves to ape each others policies and chase after the slither of marginal middle class middle england issues/constituencies where general elections were won & lost and delivered to the successful party the right to administer neo-liberal policies on behalf of capital
Vacuum’s, in politics, are always eventually filled - the Left in the UK proved their complete and utter incapability to do so with a parallel disengagement from what should be their natural constituency almost aping that of the mainstream parties - the issues of the working class in the UK were just not sexy or international enough for the largely academic/intellectual left who became blind to the very real issues confronting the working class in this country. The working class of this country had failed ‘The Left’ who were constantly jumping from pillar to post looking for a new agent of change whether that be students, muslims or a retreat into academic left intellectualism/ineffectualism.
The BNP however, skillfully made the most of the opportunity that had presented itself and set about reorienting itself into a trojan horse type party using an addressal of the very real issues that people are facing around housing, crime, job insecurity, education, schools, political abandonment, etc.. to improve both its standing, image and support base in communities up and down the country. The bigger that vacuum got as a result of the activities of the mainstream parties the bigger the opportunity the BNP had to get its foothold into our communities - the more this happened the more liberal anti-fascism responded by encouraging the perpetuation of those very same circumstances by their trumpeting of ‘anyone but the BNP’
The increased support for the BNP is a response to conditions - those conditions are real and cannot be rentaghosted away by a bit of extra effort on polling day for whatever party happens to be standing against the BNP. Any effective fight against the anti-working nature of both the BNP and the mainstream parties can be successful only by addressing the root cause of those conditions, not perpetuating them. Doing so, is of course far far easier to say than do, but recognition of this fact is surely the first stage.
The credit crunch has led many to believe that a corner has been turned and the excesses of the last thirty years of neo-liberalism will now be vanquished and many point to keynesian fiscal policies and ‘progessive’ or ‘redistributive’ budgets as proof of this - these measures are nothing but pragmatism designed to save the very system that got us all into this mess in the first place - keyne’s was no fan of the working class and had only one thing in mind which was to save capitalism from itself, things are no different now. We are told that the banking sector needs to be saved because it is in effect like a public utility, far too important to be allowed to be left to the ‘natural’ forces of the market - If this is the case why during a period where the losses of many large financial institutions (sorry public utilities) are being socialised through nationalisation and public support is the government pushing ahead with the privitisation, in some shape or form, of many more public utilities - the post office, defence training, schools, hospitals, the royal mint, british waterways, the met office, the land registry, ordinance survey to name just a few - surely at at time like this it should be blindingly clear that to put public services and utilities into private hands and let them be subject to the impersonal forces of the market and have profit as their primary motive is completely hatstand - yet this privatisation of profits and the eventual socialisation of risk and losses is set to continue and with it the conditions that lead to more and more support for opportunist trojan horse parties like the BNP.
It’s not hard to see why people would be attracted to a party that at least appears to be willing to listen and act on the very real concerns of the electorate - to brandish every BNP voter as racist and as some knuckle dragging goon seems to be both the mainstream and left’s response, something that’s tantamount to kicking someone while their already down - this is liberal anti-fascism at work however.
Only a credible pro working class response to the real issues brought about by the activities of the mainstream parties in relation to housing, job security, schools, education, crime, safety, political abandonment and community will have any hope of ensuring the far right do not continue to garner support in our communities - however that response should be done in and for itself as an inclusive community led working class solution to problems in our communities, not just because it offers a chance to beat the racists
I mentioned the trojan horse politics of the BNP earlier - by this I meant their supposed concern and addressing of the very real problems of communities as a way to anchor in their far right, racist and corporatist leanings - in relation to this it’s interesting to note that the Liberal Democrats are standing Duwayne Brooks as one of their candidates in the election. Duwayne was a friend of Stephen Lawrence and was with him the night he was murdered. There is a chance that this will lead to this election being made into a race thing, which will help once again to disguise the continued anti working class tendencies of all those contesting it. I can’t see the BNP winning the seat, however i’m sure they’ll get a pretty substantial chunk of the vote, but whoever wins the needle will return to the start of the song and they’ll all carry on as before - a plague on all their houses
January 27th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Amazed to see Tess Culnane making another appearance in the arms of the BNP, she is like a walking public relations disaster.
I agree with a lot of the stuff said here about liberal antifascism, the conditions that allow have allowed the BNP to grow and the painful, repeated failures of the left but what’s been said here is nothing new.
The IWCA, and before them Red Action, have been repeating stuff like this for years now.
Maybe you could argue it’s now more valid than it ever was, as BNP support continues to grow, but the difference is that you can now add the IWCA to the list of groups apparently incapable of filling the vacuum. RA and the IWCA were always scathing about the failures of other leftist groups but appear to be unwilling to acknowledge that their own strategy isn’t going anywhere fast either.
The ominous fact that when the IWCA finally did stand in an election alongside a BNP candidate they were beaten by a couple of hundred votes, and their vote went down, doesn’t seem to have prompted any sort of a reponse at all, not even on the Thurrock IWCA website.
It’s been over 10 years since the IWCA was founded and in recent years the progress they made seems to be eroding away with councillors lost, votes falling and a smaller number of active groups then previously, there’s been nothing posted on the Oxford or Blackbird Lees sites in almost a year now.
If your argument about why the far right is growing is so convincing then why is the solution you offer not looking so convincing?
January 27th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
i’m a bit confused about your post, you seem to accept the reasons for the rise in support for the BNP but somehow because the IWCA havn’t been able to single handedly reverse that trend then that somehow invalidates the analysis?
a large part of the success of the BNP of late has been it’s ability to develop the BNP brand nationwide (i.e. as a brand that steps in when political mainstream steps out) and that brand, regardless of the quality of those local activists and candidates standing on the ground, is always going to be able to pull in more support than small organisations like the IWCA is going to manage who outside of the few areas where they have a strong local base are virtually invisible - i acknowledged in my post that the response to the rise of the BNP (and more importantly the political abandonment of the working class by politics overall) is far far easier to talk about than actually do, but the evidence is there that in the few areas that the IWCA have been active they have made a difference in those communities and their success in oxford for example is surely a reason why the BNP havn’t even attempted anything there during that time - another example was Gooshays in Havering where the IWCA picked up a quarter of the vote in 2002, due to personal reasons most of those involved in that branch weren’t able to remain active and in 2006/2008 the BNP came in and swept the ward, as for thurrock well yes fairly disappointing result but then again the BNP had been standing in and around that area well before the IWCA proto branch was established, and given they pretty much contested every ward there against the one by the IWCA then there was never going to be much of an upset there
one thing though you do seem to be conflating the IWCA approach/analysis with IWCA as an organisation, the former is far more important than the later - i’d also be cautious about expecting a correlation between a group like the IWCA’s on the ground activity and volume of website content - shed load of website content letting everyone know when someone last went for a dump may play to the world of blogging and internet message boards (and fantasist trots), but it’s probably not the best use of time/resources for those who are not interested in playing to the internet crowd - so instead those scarce resources are put into producing local newsletters, activities, socials etc.. instead
as to your last question, ‘if my argument is so convincing then why is the solution not looking so convincing?’ - well the solution as you know is to address the issues that people are concerned about, the BNP are having a go at doing this and you are seeing the results - those results seem pretty convincing to me and stem from largely the same analysis of new labour that led to the formation of the IWCA in the first place
January 27th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
We’ve place a link to your blog here:
http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=277975&page=4
A relevant discussion is taking place.
regards. H.
January 28th, 2009 at 7:59 am
cheers, but i’m banned from there for upsetting the liberals
January 28th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
what an excellent article, you should repost it on the all the Daily Palestines, sorry left blogs….
January 28th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
That’s fair enough, my original comment was a bit confused.
To clarify, I agree with the analysis of the IWCA in pin-pointing the reasons why the BNP is growing is absolutely correct but I think their conclusion that the creation and building of the IWCA is the right way to prevent this isn’t so convincing.
Also, with regards to my comment that there seem to be less active groups than their used to be, fair enough the internet site one was a bad example, but to use a better example a lass from Oxford IWCA told me last year that the IWCA in Scotland has simply ceased to exist. This is surpirising since Glasgow was a big area for RA.
So even though the IWCA seems to be getting smaller and less active there is little in the way of critical comments about the progress of the group or liklihood of achieving its aims coming from the IWCA. Contrast this with the, mostly justified, harsh criticism of other leftists groups and their failings that has come from RA and the IWCA in previous times.
The confidence the IWCA has had they have basically got it right and everyone else is basically wasting their time doesn’t seem to reflect the reality of the situation.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:03 am
The IWCA had good ideas and a realistic view of several issues not matched anywhere on the Left.
On the other hand, they were a small organisation with little money, a slightly secretive aura and poor media/propaganda skills.
In other areas of life, it’s quite common for people who have good ideas to find that they are not able to capitalise on them.
The IWCA experiment should be studied and learned from, not dismissed.
January 29th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Duncan there’s no silver bullet you’re right, but we have to start from the conditions we find ourselves in, not those we’d like to be in - those conditions arguably represent the most deep rooted atomised society has ever been in the whole of human existence, so any attempt to further a genuine pro working class movement which looks to find community solutions to community problems and to define and implement those on its own terms is a monumental task and anyone looking for overnight indicators of success or fail i think have massively misunderstood, or are oblivious to, those very conditions that dictate the inertia that such a project can muster
I think we do have to be realistic though and admit initiatives like the IWCA do sometimes feel like it’s like pissing in the wind because of the sheer size of the odds stacked against success, combined with the rather energetic and almost paranoid responses that any kind of successes that are delivered by such an initative are met with - the oxford branch of the iwca can speak at length about such things that they have encountered as a result of the inroads they have made over the years - labour respond brutally and efficiently to the threat of a good example and that’s exactly what oxford iwca was doing
Also have to be realistic and accept that over time the amount of energy, time and resource that people can put into this kind of project will to an extent decline as they move through life - these are not professional politicians or navel gazing academics/intellectuals who have the luxury of working on things as a full time job with the organisational resources in place to support them , these are people doing what they can to balance the various pressures of everyday life with maintaining some kind of commitment to a project they believe in - the problem does seem to be that the IWCA approach does not have the (relatively) sexy & glamorous appeal to youngsters and students that the impotent cobweb left and liberal activism has - the allure of the mysterious and exotic goings on in far away countries that offer people the chance to become ‘political’ without actually doing anything while fetishising far away struggles while being blind to those in their own back yard, seems to suck up and render impotent most ‘fresh blood’ that could otherwise keep genuine political initiatives on the go
I still don’t agree however with your conflating of whether something is the right/wrong approach with the observed success (or otherwise) of the IWCA as an organisation - as i mentioned earlier the IWCA approach is far more important (and wider reaching) than the IWCA as an organisation, but also if something is wrong because it hasn’t universally succeeded then that implies that any kind of hankering for social or economic justice is wrong in itself because of it’s increasing non-existence in the world around us today - the fact that something is right doesn’t follow with it a guarantee of success - i realise though that this can just be seen as an excuse to defend any kind of position and then insulate ourselves from the reality of the world by just keep repeating that we are right, we are right etc.. , but we have to accept there are very strong practical obstacles in place which prevent good things from spreading/taking root, so i don’t think a simplistic reasoning that if it hasn’t already worked then it’s the wrong strategy can be applied here - there is however lots of things that can be learnt from past mistakes but that’s all part of the process and a process is what is going on here
I would say that the geographical areas where the IWCA are active have been successful (and the areas where they where active but not any more were sucessfull), the problem is obviously both maintaining and building on that success within those areas and even more problematic to somehow spread that success much more wider, therein lies the problem - the successes of the IWCA have come from a combination of a very sharp and prescient political analysis alongside a genuine deep rooted involvement in the local communities , you can export the former but not the later - it has to be built slowly and painfully through thoroughly unglamorous work over huge periods of time and it takes a huge amount of commitment and resolve by the people involved to do such a thing - the BNP, depsite the numerous failings of a lot of their local activists, have been able to build something like this in communities up and down the country, largely through the infusion of the BNP brand built and maintained from a well organised and financed central party organisation - the IWCA has something like 3% of the membership as the BNP so the difference in scale especially given the way the BNP is building the party from the centre is monumental - I’d say given the very small resources that the IWCA has and the limited areas where it has painstakenly built successful community activity then it has been successful, obviously beyond this it hasn’t been successful - although over the last decade we’ve had numerous attempts at top down initiatives, socialist alliance, respect, etc… all have come and gone and failed as a result of their own contradictions - like it or not the IWCA approach is the last man standing and the ability to apply this approach from the left rather than the right as the BNP is doing is what’s crucial. It may not seem like much in the way of success, and i admit it isn’t, but any other kind of approach weighed down with ideological ball and chain of the 19th & 20th centuries seems even more doomed to failure when trying to confront the problems of the 21st century