23.06.2004

Unite Against Fascism: Establishment-friendly

Phil Hamilton reviews the website of Unite Against Fascism.

Buried beneath the acres of coverage received by the UK Independence Party in the wake of the European elections has been the success of the far-right British National Party. Having managed a net gain of four councillors in the local elections, the BNP's Euro poll performance saw it exceed 750,000 votes, improving its 1999 tally everywhere. Its post-election statement concludes that "on these foundations we can build a truly power-winning machine" (www.bnp.org.uk).

While the BNP is clearly hyping up its results, the Socialist Workers Party-sponsored Unite Against Fascism, for its own self-serving reasons, takes a diametrically opposite view. Taking its cue from the ghastly 'analysis' of the BNP's results in the June 19 edition of Socialist Worker, the UAF's leader item would have us believe: "Electorate rejects Britain's fascists", adding that the "BNP is down for the count". I presume this is based on the simple observation that the majority of the electorate chose to vote for the other options on offer, as opposed to the BNP. However, the fact that Respect polled less than a third of the fascists' vote in the same election has not stopped the SWP, with its characteristic inability to look the truth in the face, heralding the unity coalition's electoral performance as a great triumph.

The UAF's analysis begins with a simple statement of its miserable objective: "to defeat the BNP in the London assembly and European parliament elections by raising voter turnout". The feeble increase (from 32% to 37%) is given as evidence of its "mobilisation of the anti-BNP vote", ignoring the fact that a good chunk of this increase was in all likelihood actually made up of BNP voters - the 4.71% won by the BNP in the London assembly poll represents a doubling of its 2000 performance. The same banal points are made in the analysis of the North West constituency results: there is a strong implication that the UAF is responsible for the jump in turnout from 19.4% to 40.9% - nothing to do with the impact of postal voting, of course.

The 'Press release on results' also trumpets the UAF's "successes". Almost single-handedly it "thwarted the fascist BNP in its attempt to break through into mainstream politics". It ridicules Nick Griffin's pre-election claim that it was on course to win GLA seats and "three or four MEPs", but conveniently ignores a second prediction from the BNP Führer on the number of votes his organisation would win - in the event the BNP secured almost double the votes it had anticipated. The press release is positively jubilant when it comes to the London elections, noting that the fascists did not meet expectations. It argues that the stronger presence of anti-fascist campaigns in the capital ensured that "in a whole number of areas the BNP have been rumbled". So there you go: if you expose the BNP as nasty Nazis, then voters will desert them in droves (and vote instead for New Labour, Tories, UKIP …). Except that even this pathetic scheme didn't work.

Moving down the features in the navigation panel, the 'News' section treats the viewer to a selection of old material of limited value. The first item, reporting UAF's North West launch, says very little. This far from inspiring announcement briefly features Maureen Stowe, Oldham's BNP councillor turned anti-fascist. Why the web team have not included an interview with her about her experiences is beyond me. The other interesting item is the gleeful report on the pathetic 16 votes received by Young BNP organiser Anthony Wentworth when he stood for union office at Salford University.

The 'What is …' feature is a ludicrously truncated statement that does not reveal much about the UAF at all. It carries the aim (not updated since the results came in), "to unite the broadest possible spectrum of society" against the threat posed by the BNP at the June elections, describing how vote power can stop them in their tracks. A couple of associated links are included, such as snippets from the leftish establishment figures who attended the UAF press launch, and a dull report of the UAF rally.

The worst thing about this website is what it does not say. Whereas its Anti-Nazi League predecessor (see Weekly Worker April 24 2003) was equally counterproductive, at least its website provided some background information on fascism (albeit of questionable quality) and a number of campaigning tips. The UAF does neither. There is nothing on who the BNP are and where they come from, and there are no suggestions on how to combat them - outside of voting and attending the occasional UAF-sponsored gig. That the SWP played the leading role in establishing this establishment-friendly campaign serves only to confirm its own continuing degeneration.