tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post2034419022199711598..comments2024-03-28T11:04:16.315+00:00Comments on Boffy's Blog: Vote Labour But….Boffyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-32631101972565228942009-03-17T22:08:00.000+00:002009-03-17T22:08:00.000+00:00Actually I don't think that is true. I can't give...Actually I don't think that is true. I can't give any evidence to back that up, it would require some proper sociological and psephological evaluation, but my impressoin is that generally speaking the upper classes, even the upper middle classes see organisations like the BNP as rather tawdry. I was talking to someone the other day who was making exactly that point after having been on an anti-BNP demo. They said they had passed through a very affluent area where a rather posh woman was watching the proceedings. Expecting her to shout some abuse, he was surprised when the woman asked if she could join the demo, saying "Those BNP people are very nasty."<BR/><BR/>Given the fact that rich people are likely to mix with rich people from a variety of backgrounds and udner conditions where the same competition that leads to racism, sexism etc. in the working class is absent it is in fact far more likely that such people with have more liberal and tolerant attitudes.<BR/><BR/>Of course, as i said, all of that changes over night when their class interests are directly threatened.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-52689876725565683152009-03-17T20:39:00.000+00:002009-03-17T20:39:00.000+00:00I was trying to make the point that the BNP mental...I was trying to make the point that the BNP mentality was not just a condition of the underclass but was also held by those in the upper classes.<BR/>Now I agree that the state would do all it could to prevent the BNP gaining too much ground but this shouldn't be extended to BNP sympatheic managers or executives who I think would have no problem with their success.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-57399896685512778582009-03-14T15:35:00.000+00:002009-03-14T15:35:00.000+00:00Seam,Good to hear from you again. Yes, I think th...Seam,<BR/><BR/>Good to hear from you again. Yes, I think that much of the Left is either so isolated in its little circles of like minded people that it doesn't understand just how rampant these ideas are, or else doesn't want to believe it.<BR/><BR/>I think we are lucky that the bosses don't need the BNP for now. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't begin to clip their wings. But, forces once unleashe can tend to have a dynamic of their own.<BR/><BR/>I am sure that some of the solution lies in what I've been arguing about Co-operatives. Of course, that's not automatic. An estate with mostly white tenants if it set up a Housing Co-op could oppose non-whites being members of the Co-op. That is where the role of socialists comes in, and its where the idea that Co-ops have to be part of a National Federation also comes in.<BR/><BR/>I was hoping to have produced my article on Co-ops by now, but responding to a BNP supporter on the Public Sociologist website, and to BCFG here over the last couple of weeks have taken up some of my time, and I found that there was more research that needed to be done the more I developed it. As it is I hope to produce it in the ent week or so, but even then I think I will have to leave off some further economic analysis and criticisim of some orthodox economic models on Co-operative production to the future.<BR/><BR/>The Ravenscliffe by-eelction showed I think the need for socialists to get stuck into the Branch LP's. Our Anti-Fascist organisation shoed itself really to be useless. I spent a part of the previous week arguing with people who wanted to put out Nationalist propaganda, and some whose politics were inseparable from Cecil Rhodes!!!! Its necessary to provide workers with political alternatives to their problems, and only a Workers Party can do that, only socialists working through that party can do it. But, the LP failed to do it, and that shows to me why its necessary to get socialists back in their building the basis for such activity.<BR/><BR/>I was surprsied the BNP got the vote they did in what was not the best ward for them to stand. In fact there were not many votes that separated all the parties. Had the votes for UKIP gone to the BNP they would have won comfortably!!! Its necesary to stop concentrating on preventing the BNP from winning, and start concentrating on the LP winning, and winning by advocating politics thatc an provide solutions for workers here and now.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-55103730412731607412009-03-14T11:01:00.000+00:002009-03-14T11:01:00.000+00:00I work for a large housing trust, 15K homes. I thi...I work for a large housing trust, 15K homes. I think you are correct about the BNP ideas being very prevalent in the estates. The vast majority are on benefits or are working for around the minimum wage. They are basically dependent on corporation/rsl housing. The desperation of the housing situation is adding fuel to the fire of racist/nationalist ideas. I hear comments all the time reflecting the idea that there wouldn't really be a problem if it wasn't for immigrants. People are desperate for housing, everyone sees their own priorities as being greater than someone else's. The nationalist message chimes in really well with the fears and frustrations of people who can't afford the live in the area they were born and raised. Furthermore, these types of ideas are not far below the surface of many housing officers, managers and executives. "The ruling ideas..."<BR/><BR/>seanyseanAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-3649950635803923802009-03-05T19:25:00.000+00:002009-03-05T19:25:00.000+00:00That used to be the case a few years ago. The typ...That used to be the case a few years ago. The typical BNP voter lived just outside the working class areas where many immigrants lived, and reflected that kind of fear of the unknown.<BR/><BR/>Today, that is far from the case. In Stoke, which is now one of the BNP's main strongholds they first began to win seats in a part of the City that was a traditional Labour stronghold, a rundown area of old terraced streets. Having consolidated there they went on to win other traditional Labour seats. They focussed attention on the deprived Council estates, they began to take part in the tenants and Residents Associations on these huge housing estates, and soon began to pick up support, and then Council seats.<BR/><BR/>That also seems to be the pattern elsewhere of the BNP replacing Labour amongst very depressed sections of the working class who have had no benefit in ten years of Labour in power. In fact, if you look at some of the areas where they have won seats in such Labour areas, they have even won votes from existing ethnic communities, precisely because they appear to be addressing the poblems those people as ordinary workers face, and the fact that they attack immigrants does not put off such settled immigrant communities, precisley because, as has happened in the past, they too see new immigrants as threatening their jobs, houses etc. as does the white working class.<BR/><BR/>For such people the facile arguments of the BNP do not seem as facile as they do to us. On the contrary, compared to the solutions offered by most of the Left, which in any of their forms do not offer any practical immediate solution, the solutions now being put forward by the BNP seem eminently reasonable and sensible.<BR/><BR/>And come on, in the last few weeks we have seen union leaders collapse into the same kind of Nationalist solutions as those being touted by the BNP. We saw the Communist Party true to its National Socialist traditions fail to offer any criticism of the "British Jobs for British Workers" slogans during the refinery strikes. Now the Communist Party and its fellow travellers appear to be putting forward a similar Nationalist programme in relation to the EU harking back to the reactionary Nationalist politics of the Alternative Economic Strategy, and the Littel Englander opposposition to the Common Market they adopted in the 1970's.<BR/><BR/>In the last week I was involved in a hubbub in my local anti-fascist group, because some of the leadership were touting a campaign against the BNP over its use of WWII imagery. I objected, pointing out that the pictures of Spitfires, the flag-waving and all that crap which they objected to WAS precisely the kind of Nationalism that the BNP represents. Painting them, in fact, as being the same enemy as Britain's WWII enemy is in fact itself nationalist and racist, because it implies that Nazism is something German!!!<BR/><BR/>In response to my criticism that at the same time as the Spitfires were flying over Britain in 1940, they and other British Empire forces were keeping prisonor millions of colonial slaves treating them not much differently from the way the Nazis treated the people they subjugated, there was a flurry of e-mails from supposed anti-racists to the effect that the British Empire was a wondrous thing that had brought civilisation to the natives. From some of the comments you would have thought you were ;oistneing to Cecil Rhodes, not an anti-racist.<BR/><BR/>That I think is an indication of the depth to which this cancer runs even within the labour movement. It can't be dealt with simply by denunciation, or by staying away from workers who hold such reactionary ideas, as sections of the left did over the refinery strikes. But, it does require the left to counter those ideas, it does require a clear critique of those like the CP and their fellow travellers who perpetrate nationalist ideas, but it also does require the left to begin to offer workers real and immediately practical solutions to their problems as opposed to pages of accounts of past revoluitonary struggles, old texts in which the average worker has no interest, pie in the sky demands and calls for the State to act in ways its never going to act, and in which workers know it isn't going to ask, let alone ridiclous calls that effectively amount to revolution now.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-91578725930921330442009-03-05T14:10:00.000+00:002009-03-05T14:10:00.000+00:00It’s funny but most people I know that support the...It’s funny but most people I know that support the BNP, A) Have a nice house. B) Have a job and C) Have never been the victims of crime.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com