How can the Rise of the Far Right in the UK be Halted?
| Author | David Renton,Matthew Goodwin |
| Published date | 01 December 2010 |
| Date | 01 December 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-9066.2010.00038.x |
| Subject Matter | Debate |
One consequence has been the devel-
opment of a vast proliferation of different
fascist-type and post-fascist organisations,
which can be located on a spectrum accord-
ing to the extent of their enthusiasm for this
new politics. In Hungary, the dominant par-
ty on the far right is Jobbik, which employs
street marches and uniforms and has a very
open ideological debt to the inter-war years.
In France, Italy and Austria, by contrast,
there has been a dramatic transition away
from street politics.
The British National Party’s turn to elec-
toralism over the past two decades has
prompted a series of splits to its right, start-
ing with Combat 18, which at one stage
provided security for BNP events and was
later an organisational rival.
One way to see this process is as the
development of a series of external fac-
tions attempting to copy the synthesis of
electoral and street politics which was part
of the success of inter-war fascism, and to
‘complete’ the fascist party (albeit that com-
pletion requires the formation of a fascist
street group in partial competition with the
electoral party).
Over the past 12 months, the latest occu-
pant of this open space to the BNP’s ‘right’
has been the English Defence League (EDL),
a supposedly one-issue campaign directed
ostensibly against Islamic extremism, but
unlike most single-issue campaigns, based
on a membership structure financing a po-
litical organisation peppered with former
BNP supporters and present members of the
BNP’s far right rivals.
The EDL’s supporters sing songs glorifying
the wartime exploits of the RAF against the
Luftwaffe. At BNP events by contrast it is pos-
sible to buy literature explaining that Britain
was wrong to fight in a ‘brother’s war’.
How can the rise of the far
right in the UK be halted?
Anti-fascism is an unusual politi-
cal tradition in that its objectives
are wholly negative. Whether any
particular anti-fascist tactic succeeds is
not measured by anti-fascist membership
figures or votes, but (negatively) by the
membership figures and votes of the far
right. The proper measurement of success,
for both sides, depends on the broader
political context. Irrespective of the quali-
ties of its leadership, any fascist party in
Britain would have benefited in 1933 or
1934 from the aura of Hitler’s success; any
similar party would have suffered in 1940
during war with Germany.
Historically, we might say that anti-fas-
cists maximised the opportunities open to
them in the late 1940s, when organisations
such as the 43 Group turned the retreats of
Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement into ut-
ter rout, or in the late 1970s when the Anti-
Nazi League and Rock Against Racism had
the same success. Conversely, anti-fascists
did poorly in the early years of this dec-
ade, when fascist parties achieved electoral
victories and the anti-fascist organisations –
which, by contrast, had thrived in the early
and mid-1990s – were slow to respond.
Over the past three decades, in many
countries in Europe, the main far right
leaderships have overseen a political transi-
tion. In place of the old, mimetic post-war
fascist parties, characterised by a preference
for street politics, there are new parties for
whom electoralism dominates and street
politics is subordinated.
This is a long-term if incomplete shift,
comparable to the way in which the in-
surrectionary socialist parties of pre-1914
Europe accommodated themselves over a
period of several decades to parliamentary
democracy.
While the British National Part y failed to make any gains in the 2010 general election, the last year has seen a
marked increase in public demonstrations by far right groups across the UK. Only street resistance can effectively
challenge groups such as the English Defence League, writes David Renton.
Yet the EDL’s support rests on the turn
to the streets that it has achieved over the
past 12 months. At its peak the EDL has
been able to bring over 2,000 people to its
national events. The League’s website even
has a ‘demo calendar’.
The BNP has not tried anything similar
in years. Its meetings are not announced
publicly but built by word of mouth. The
one public space that the BNP did attempt
to occupy – with its annual Red, White
and Blue festivals – has been abandoned
under the pressure of public protests, most
recently at Codnor where the BNP was
outnumbered and besieged by protesters.
But this small victory for street politics is
uncharacteristic. The streets are a space that
the BNP has vacated. Anti-BNP activism has
become invariably a matter of intervening
in elections.
Where the EDL has called demonstra-
tions, they have ended in attacks on young
British Asians with no distinction between
the religions of the victims, or their politics
(Islamist or otherwise). The attitude of the
police has ostensibly been one of neutrality,
though notably the greatest single mobilisa-
tion of police force occurred at Bolton in
March of this year and was directly prima-
rily against the EDL’s opponents.
In the absence of state intervention to
ban EDL events, the choice is clear: do we
allow people to be attacked in their com-
munities, or rally to defend them?
Simple, basic, human solidarity dictates
the activists’ response.
David Renton is the author of Fascism: Theory and
Practice and When We Touched the Sky: The Anti-Nazi
League 1977–1982.
Debate
88 Political Insight
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