BNP, racism and apathy.

i have a bad secret to reveal: i didn't vote in the local and European elections.

no, wait, come back.......

yes, i know to some this may invalidate any political statement i make. i don't think it does, though you are right i should feel shameful for not voting.

But, being the mouth that i am, i do have some things to say.
i didn't vote for a combination of reasons: a combination of disillusion and laziness.
i had three choices for my local election:
a Labour candidate (not now, not without serious policy changes)
a Lib Dem candidate (currently shifting to the right, and virtually identical to Labour)
a Tory (well, i'm not dead yet, am i?)
its an interesting question: where does a progressive/socialist sort go with those options? as far as i'm concerned they are all now abhorrent. Obviously i don't want a Tory government, but equally i can be fairly certain i will get one even if Labour or the Lib Dems were to win the next general election.i had no Green candidate; the agreeable Independent wasn't in my ward; there weren't even any other options.maybe i should have turned out, and voted for my least disliked; but i'm fed up of having my vote taken as tacit acceptance of Labour's neo-Tory policies. the Labour Party cannot rely on voters to vote for them when we can't tell any difference between them and the Tories anymore.
the Right is the only game in town at present.

unsurprisingly the Labour vote collapsed. it either didn't turn out, or it voted elsewhere (judging by the stats, mainly the former). Unfortunately large quantities of people seem to have voted BNP again. a slight increase on last time; but they got their seats not because of a real increase in support (as they claim) but because the other parties simply didn't get their voters out. i don't blame them frankly, though some people will have had other party options.
anyhow the near-million people that voted BNP is still disturbing. i heard MPs on the election coverage desperately trying to play down this action: it was a protest, the public were conned by the BNP's presentation, they weren't really racist.
utter balls! there is no excuse for voting BNP. even if you are dissatisfied with how immigration is handled (who isn't??), this is not a reason to vote BNP unless you are stupid enough to be sold the scapegoating of the immigrant community. if you can vote BNP, you are a racist. it isn't something one can slip into by mistake.. i heard lots of talk about how the main parties(particularly Labour) weren't representing the concerns of the (presumably white) working-class people; i certainly wouldn't disagree with this, but in what way do the BNP? the only way the BNP represent working class people is if you buy that immigrants or non-white people are somehow 'stealing' resources/jobs/whatever from some romanticised white "native" populace.
and that is pure offensive shit.
the problem is that for many years we've been sold the idea that some groups are more deserving than others; largely this has mean the scapegoating of poor immigrant communities by poor white working-class communities, when they logically should be on the same side. both are occupying similar (exploited) positions in the economic chain.
recently when the 50% tax band came in we heard loud decrying from the right-wing press anxious to protect their own, not the general public (who, the surveys show, seem largely to support its introduction). this is rather typical of the situation. both the the press and the parties are guilty of protecting and deflecting attention from the wealthy, and scapegoating the immigrant community. the working-classes have been daft enough to take the dummy. thus, exploitative labour practices are fine, super-rich paying themselves huge bonuses and dodging tax responsibilities are fine, the unregulated capitalism that has led to this current economic crisis is fine, but the working-classes and the immigrant communities are left fighting each other for the scraps of what's thrown from the top table.
what i found laughable on Sunday night watching the television coverage was that:
a) no-one was prepared to admit that we have a serious racism/ xenophobia issue (UKIP are a
manifestation of this too, despite their seeming respectability they are part of the more subtle
prejudice of the middle/business classes).
b) all the other parties, especially the Tories, were keen to separate out the BNP as the only
party of racists; when its clear that within the other parties too the race issue is played
regularly. there are racists in the other parties, particularly the Tories. we shouldn't forget the
tacit vilification of the black community in the Eighties by the Tories with their allies in the
press. the racism may be better hid, but its there behind the sharp smiles and the blue-rinses
of the conference crowd. the BNP are merely more open about their disgusting attitudes.

i got this from the BBC website responses to "why i voted BNP":

"ivoted for the BNP for the first time in the European elections. I read the party's policies, they are not racist, they simply want to look after people who are British first, and that includes all races who have a right to be here.
Our elderly citizens are not getting the care they deserve
People who work and contribute to our country and society (irrespective of colour or religion) are welcome and people who come here for our benefits system and the NHS who have never contributed to this country are not so welcome. Neither are bogus asylum seekers and criminals. We have enough of our own. I have every sympathy with people from countries where the system is not so generous, but we can't look after all of them in Britain. We're full up, and our elderly citizens are not getting the care they deserve. It's because we are so generous that everyone wants to come here, to the detriment of people who have lived here all their lives, paid their taxes and deserve to have their place in the queue."
Nick, Oxford

it seemed a fairly representative email, and shows a lot of the daft assumptions made by people. the noticeable underlying thing is that old chestnut about not enough resources to go around. the immigrant community is not really taking that large a share of the resources, its merely that we aren't getting anywhere near the amount of tax revenue (in proportion to population) that we used to. the myth that they take our jobs is in there too, but ,as most people who investigate the lowest reaches of the employment market will tell you, the immigrant communities are frequently doing the worst paid jobs that others are not prepared to do. what's more they are doing this with the minimum of protection and the maximum of exploitation by employers.
our elderly citizens are not getting the care they deserve because of firstly underfunding, and secondly what funding there is is being drained away by the private sector who are contracted to provide this care for government agencies.
the middle section is another recurring theme: the view that the country is "swamped" by bogus asylum seekers, and criminals. if you read the wrong newspapers you'd undoubtedly think this, as they seize on the proportionally uncommon behaviour of a few bad examples and allow it to misrepresent an otherwise law-abiding and friendly group of people in need. note also he says "we have enough of our own". the spurious notion of "our own" somehow being preferable presumably to "the other". the language is one predicated on fear of other groups, who all present some vague threat. i didn't see a single politician on Sunday night who wanted to make the argument that these people are, in most important ways, like you.

i also liked the mention of taxes at the end. again, we're back to funds, and the idea that these people are scrounging by not having paid any taxes. but by that argument, the unemployed or the sick shouldn't get any support either. the point is that when people are doing well they pay taxes proportionate to their earnings, and their wealth; thus, when they aren't , they don't and they receive state support until they can pay again.
we need more taxation; 50% of the country's wealth is owned by 2% of its population. and the myth that they work so much harder for it is sheers balls. even if you are prepared to believe that those that earn £200,000 work harder than those that earn £20,000, do you really believe they work ten times harder??!

the saddest thing in all this is to see unemployed people berating immigrant communities as "undeserving" of state aid in the same way the Tories villainised the poor and unemployed as "undeserving", when they should be standing side by side.