Comments on: Who are the people who voted BNP last week?

By: Amateur psephology and the rise of the far-right « Left Luggage

Amateur psephology and the rise of the far-right « Left Luggage — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:51:23 +0000

[...] argument that is being put is that BNP are gaining support from at the expense of the Tories, not Labour. Evidence cited [...]

By: Fido

Fido — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:21:50 +0000

Jim Jam – yes yes youre right i shouldnt have assumed that i’ll blame it on trying to get post finished before shift started!

By: Promsan

Promsan — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:17:18 +0000

Whatever has been said (and I haven’t bothered to read it since my last post), I can’t see how you will ever get useful or reliable information on the BNP.
They are an issue that the establishment simply don’t understand, and as long as any association with them is treated with the irrational cult-like vitriol and pariah/taboo status that it is: I don’t see how you will ever get honest answers about who votes for them and why; as long as you never get honest questions about them.

By: Jim Jam

Jim Jam — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:48:05 +0000

Fido – you may not get this as the thread is old but my remarks about religion were in response to the notion that a good christian family could be racist from Mickey.
I feel you are confusing prejudice with racism and would ask you to address why having ‘Black’ candidiates in seats with mainly white Electorates (e.g. Ashok Kumar in Lanbaurgh/South Middlesbrough) only cost labour around 1% off the average swing in 1997.
Of course the issues of poor people of whatever race need to be addressed.
Of course I want to see and end to prejudice as well but this will take centuries and I will settle for now for conscious racism to be in decline and marginal.
I agree withy you aboiut the UAF but please don’t assume that I am middle class – I make no assumptions about other posters.
We will just have to disagree about votes by mainly young people in TV shows

By: Fido

Fido — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:24:41 +0000

It’s the utter naivety of Jim Jam who seems to live in some kind of multiracial paradise that needs to be addressed if we’re to stop the BNP.
As Mickey (and I’m sure anyone who has any kind of day to day contact with working class England) knows the vast majority of such people are undeniably proud of white England and amongst their own will have views in respect of non-white Britain far from those of the middle class media and broadly in line of what the BNP are saying. But as Mickey said whilst the BNP has connotations of fascism and is beset by the kind of characters with their extremely chequered pasts that are currently found in its ranks they would never vote for it. In fact amongst the working class people I meet every day in my community job across West Yorkshire you’d find it hard to find many people who do conform in any way to those surveyed who give the enlightened answers about race connoted in that survey at the top of this thread. As MIckey says what people give as answers to pollsters and what they really think amongst their own on such issues are two completely different things. And this isnt just confined to Yorkshire etc as part of my family come from that most ignored sector of society the usually hidden working class sector of the South East and the views of similar people I meet when visiting are exactly the same.
And i’m flabbergasted that black people winning pop idol has been mentioned hasnt JImJam heard of minstrelsy which I believe some of the KKK were quite keen on.
As Mickey says we’re not saying that the white working-class are “fascists” and a large proportion would never admit to racism just that their views are broadly supportive of what they see as the “indigenous white majority” and theyd rather live amongst those they perceive as ethnically similar.
That’s why its vital that the other parties step out from their middle class cocoon and realise just how downtrodden and ignored the whire working and lower middle class think they are. And while theyre at it distance themselves from the UAF who are surely the biggest recruiting device that the BNP could wish for.
ie could you imagine anything more likely to turn off white working-class voters than what theyd perceive as some scrawny middle class students trying to tell them how to vote if anything its more likely to make them think “if these people are against them maybe the BNP have a point…”

PS although I don’t know why Jim Jam went off on a tangent at the end of his post about secularism – but I think the gist of it was pretty ill thought out eg “no-one has been killed by secularism in the name of God” probably true but a few millions have been killed by secularism in the name of Stalin, Hitler (who in his writings/speeches defined himself as an atheist with occasional “pretend” leanings to a pre-Christian paganism). Mao. Lenin etc etc.