Anti-far right campaigners say they “squeezed” the British National Party’s electoral support in its most popular parts of the country, after the party suffered a crushing defeat in the general and local elections last week.
The BNP lost 26 council seats nationwide, taking them down from a high of 56 seats last year. BNP leader Nick Griffin, who stood for Parliament in Barking, came third as sitting MP Margaret Hodge took over half the vote, increasing her majority to 16,555. Griffin polled 6,620 votes.
And in a surprise result he dubbed “frankly shocking”, the BNP lost all 12 seats on Barking and Dagenham council – which many anti-BNP campaigners were fearing they would take over.
BNP candidates also fared badly in their other target areas, losing two council seats in Stoke-on-Trent and failing to gain a foothold in Dudley.
Nick Lowles, editor of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, said: “If you look at Barking and Dagenham, it became a referendum on the BNP. It’s clear the anti-BNP campaign worked. There’s all sorts of stories about people voting who didn’t normally vote. Where the effort was put in, the BNP vote was squeezed.”
Labour now controls all 51 seats on the east London council, the main beneficiaries of a higher turnout than at the last election in 2006. The BNP vote also rose, but their share of the vote fell.
Mr Lowles said Searchlight’s sister organisation Hope not Hate had recruited 1,000 people in the run-up to the elections to volunteer for anti-BNP work, including 548 volunteers who distributed leaflets and newspapers across the borough during a weekend of action.
“They were always going to struggle in the general election, but even by their standards, given that immigration was a key issue, they didn’t do as well.” The BNP’s “disastrous” campaign and internal struggles had also been a factor, he said.
Sabby Dhalu, joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said: “The key areas we targeted, in Barking, Stoke and Dudley, the BNP’s share of the vote went down.” Although nationally the BNP polled more votes than ever, the bigger turnout overall hit them hardest, she added.
In a website statement this week, the BNP leader said: “Our frankly shocking wipe-out from Barking and Dagenham council is not some terrible indictment of our councillors or leadership, but simply the result of a paradigm shift in the quality of Labour’s election-winning machine. We must learn from the scientifically applied beating we’ve just received.”
