We need to wake up and tackle BNP poison head on

Unless the rest of us get our act together, the British National party could easily win three seats - and quite possibly six or more - in June's European elections. To win in the north-west it needs just 8% of the vote, barely 1.5% more than it got in 2004 - the days of near full employment and before the credit crunch; in the West Midlands only an extra 1.6%; and in Yorkshire and the Humber just 4.3% more. Recently the party has won council seats in byelections, polling - according to the BBC - an average of 14% in 60 wards: close to the threshold necessary to get a seat in almost every European constituency in Britain.

Electorally the BNP has become the most successful fascist party in Britain, gaining 800,000 votes in the 2004 European elections and 238,000 votes in the 2006 local elections - up from 3,022 six years earlier. And last year it won its first seat in the London assembly, doubling its support to 130,000 votes. And now the BNP is looking to benefit from a collapsing Ukip vote; in 2004 the combined BNP-Ukip vote stood at 21%.

Winning European seats would secure an unprecedented platform, and entitle the BNP to draw hundreds of thousands of euros from Brussels indirectly to buttress its full-time personnel and organisation. At the moment, apparently, the BNP's sole London member has to spend much of his time building up support for the party outside London.

It would also be able to work with other far-right and fascist parties in Europe, as Jean-Marie Le Pen's party has done from its base in France since winning 10 European seats in 1984.

With unemployment and job insecurity rising, some major construction sites appearing to bar local unionised labour, and affordable housing in short supply, there are classic conditions for the BNP's racist and fascist politics to thrive.

Thirty years ago rising unemployment and economic decline under Labour saw the BNP's predecessor, the National Front, also do worryingly well in elections. I helped to found the Anti-Nazi League in 1977 to target the National Front, and a mass campaign helped to put it out of business a few years later. Anti-Nazi League supporters developed their own initiatives, from Miners Against the Nazis to Skinheads Against the Nazis. There was even a Skateboarders Against the Nazis. With its sister group Rock Against Racism, the ANL organised huge national carnivals and local gigs, as rock music culture reaching millions was successfully fused with radical politics that traditionally had reached only thousands.

The lesson of the Anti-Nazi League's success is that the BNP needs to be confronted wherever its supporters march or appear in public; and they must also be denied platforms to spread their hate. This was the lesson of the 1930s when Blackshirts led by Oswald Mosley targeting Jewish communities in London's East End were physically stopped in Cable Street in October 1936.

But the BNP leaders are more sophisticated than the old National Front. They wear suits rather than openly flirt with nazism. They sound smooth and plausible on radio or TV. They are exploiting alienation from Westminster politics, particularly among the white working class.

Yet their politics are fundamentally similar: the scapegoating of black people, Muslims, Jews, foreigners, gays and lesbians for social and economic problems. Whenever they are ascendant locally, racial violence and racial hatred are barely beneath the surface.

Although desperate to conceal its fascist and racist instincts, the BNP is the National Front reincarnated - albeit using modern spin and the internet, coupled with a community-based politics that thrives on grievances about "British jobs for British workers".

To confront the BNP's threat, the priority must be grassroots campaigning. Labour must win back trust by fielding candidates rooted in their communities and pledged to deliver on local issues. That was successful in Tameside, Keighley and Telford, for example - but sadly not in Sevenoaks last February, where the BNP took a "safe" Labour ward.

All the main parties, Labour especially, must shake off their complacency and take on the BNP directly. Its poison should be combated on the doorstep, through leafleting and campaigning. Labour candidates and campaigners should work with those from Unite Against Fascism (uaf.org.uk) and Stop the BNP (stopthebnp.org.uk). Both organisations are mobilising a new generation of activists and concerned people from trade unions, churches and other organisations. continues here

You see they tell us we live in a democracy, that each man has a voice and then, they tell us who to vote for, more than even this they launch a campaign of smears, lies and intimidation against their opposition. The British National Party need to succeed in this election, they need to get at least one MEP elected, this augments party funding and will perhaps help to disseminate, at the very least a quasi-nationalist message. It is of the utmost importance, that the stranglehold upon this nation, be broken and we must do whatever it takes in order to make it so.

I could rail all day about the BNP’s direction, about their lack of advocacy of the race realist position, “although I have to say, “this may of changed of late”, I could jump really quite easily, upon many of the anti-griffin bandwagons however, I simply don’t care. I take my position, from what I perceive to be right for the people, sometimes this means I take a contrary BNP line and at other times not, in this instance, placing even populist nationalism within the very citadels of power can only aid nationalism and indeed the people.

It may very well be that once they are there, if they go that far, I may lament their inaction or disagree with their approach however, just in them achieving victory in the forth-coming elections, may give hope to the many millions left behind in this race to dystopia. We must I believe, support, encourage and indeed promote the BNP in their endeavours, to do otherwise aids no-one, no-one that is except the current regime, of course in return for support the BNP must address issues of concern, primarily at least to me the race issue.

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