Want to know how it happened?
I thought about the 'how', during an increasingly unpleasant webroom chat with a Labour MP called Kerry Something, from Bristol, while the euro-results were coming in. She wrote that it was ‘revealing’ that Tories were staying quiet about the rise of the BNP. The innuendo was clear, along with the factual innacuracy (Tories in the chatroom were doing nothing but expressing angst about the BNP result), and I told her she should feel shame. She replied that it wasn't innuendo [that Tories aren't anti-racist] because the 'Left' has always been at the forefront of fighting racism.
So this is how you get the BNP elected.
First of all, decades back, you create a Race Industry, and you staff it with people whose entire life purpose is to see people through the prism of 'Race', although you deliberately rule out concerning yourself with anything to do with caucasians (the idea of 'Caucasian liberation' is innately laughable, and you feel it best not to draw anyone's attention to the logical consequence of this, that the concept of any 'race' requiring legally enforceable rights, in order to be treated with equality before the law, is inherently nonsense). There are some egregiously disgusting racist acts occurring in the country at this time, and some unspeakably hideous views being expressed; so no-one of good faith stops you at this first, crucial step.
Having put the population into its different boxes, you teach them to distrust one another, by introducing an ever-increasing sequence of laws in order to make free expression a criminal act. You have delivered thoughtcrime - not a lazy cliche, just the truth. I break the law if I utter a thought which is prohibited by the state. It doesn’t matter that decent people would not utter those thoughts anyway. Decent people have noticed that you’ve made thinking certain things a crime.
Simultaneously, you make yourself feel good about your moral purity, by spending taxpayers' money on pop events in public parks. You call this 'fighting racism', as though the mass of people who gather in Victoria Park to enjoy Billy Bragg would be liable to start shouting racist abuse at each other were they not enjoying the lefty genius' seductive way with words. (I am the singer's worst nightmare. He is not able to prevent me loving his songs. And I live so close to Victoria Park that I'd enjoy it even if he had me locked out).
In a sort of offshoot, you decide to make people feel guilty about symbols of national unity: only racists fly the flag, that sort of thing; you write long, hand-wringing articles in the press about ‘reclaiming’ the flag, which never quite spell out that which is obvious from your tone: that you have an instinctive disdain for the working-class, with their unthinking loyalty to country. Those flags! Flying from council-house windows! You never reflect on what would have happened to Britain in the mid-20th century were this not the case.
It all helps with the background mood music, designed to make people feel scared of saying anything about the changes they see in their children’s schools, in the streets where they live, lest they be breaking either a novel taboo or more likely an actual law, and to remind them that they owe their loyalty not to a nation-state, but to the identity which you have assigned them. Again, not if their identity is white; that would be 'ridiculous'. (Unless, like me, they're both white and gay. By this time, same-sex lovers have been given their own identity with which to be balkanised away from the rest of society).
By now, the white middle-classes will be feeling good about themselves and it’s not true that no good change has occurred in Britain: people are genuinely more open to others than they were in the 1950s. It never occurs to you that this is more to do with the outcome of living together, falling in love together, raising families together, working together: it’s all to do with your Identity Politics. So when working-class people in east London say something like You know, all my family used to live round here, they were all moved out after the war, it's completely Bangladeshi now, no-one asked me about that, you look down that Whitechapel Road you can scream racist! racist! racist! until they shut up. Sometimes, of course, the laments are racist. But not always. No matter; those people are dying out anyway.
Just to make sure, you cause a massive relaxation of the immigration rules, increasing the number of Muslims in inner London by a faster amount than ever before seen in history. When even thoughtful people without a racist bone in their body dare to murmur Er, you know, this talk about sharia law; I don't like it you shout Racist! Racist! Islam is a religion of peace! You ignore the look on the faces of the people you’re shouting at.
Unfortunately, you see, the thing is, an awful lot of people really don't want to understand anything about Islam. In an absolutely gorgeous act of ironical symmetry, they feel much the same way about it as they do about homosexuality. Fine, it's there, I'm glad you're not discriminated against at work and stuff now, but don't bother me about it all the time.
I’m not like that at all, as it happens. I’m one of those hand-wringing liberals who loves the multicultural state he is in. My one belief goes something like: the only change that can happen is through love, and my best love is expressed for those I can see in front of and next to me. The concept of not wanting to know – of not wanting to love – my neighbour is not one I ‘get’. But then, I’m not one of the people I’ve been talking about.
Most of those people used to vote Labour. Now some of them vote BNP.
That's how you do it.
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Postscript
I agonised over whether or not to post this piece, asking two people I trust to read it first, lest through some inadvertent verbal slip I say something which could be construed as a form of unkindness, or prejudice. However, watching right now, on C4 news, the spokesman for Unite Against Fascism telling me that he, and not the electorate, has a right to decide who can be elected to a parliament, who has a right to give a speech, has made up my mind. Agree with me or not; but the 'no platform and no discussion' policy is totally unsustainable.