On Fri, 03 May 2002 08:06:12 +0100, Chris Burford wrote: >Despite the expectation of losing votes badly >compared to their high point of the general >election, Labour Party losses were modest. In >what should be a good time for them, there are >no signs that the Conservative Party is in a >position to defeat Labour at the next general >election in roughly 4 years time.
Again, we are dealing with the same problem. Tony Blair creates a climate in which the ultraright can flourish. By catering to big business through deregulation/privatization, he polarizes British society. With growing unemployment, some backward sections of the country will find reasons to blame immigrants. The Scotsman, April 29, 2002, Monday BLAIR ACCUSED OF INCREASING BNP'S CHANCES AT ELECTIONS Hamish Macdonell Scottish Political Editor THE issue of race was placed firmly at the top of the political agenda last night as politicians north and south of the Border clashed over the threat posed by the far Right. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was accused of allowing the racist British National Party the chance of electoral success by creating a vacuum between government and the people, which racists were able to exploit. And with the local elections in England and Wales just three days away, other senior Labour figures, including David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, were criticised for "talking up" the BNP's chances of success and fanning tensions over race. Alastair Campbell, No 10's director of communications and strategy, made a rare appearance out of the shadows to appeal to the people of Burnley not to vote for the BNP. Mr Campbell - a noted supporter of Burnley Football Club - warned that a big vote for the far-Right BNP in this week's local council elections would be "disastrous" for the town. Although he dismissed the BNP as a "bunch of racist misfits", he acknowledged that it did pose a threat in the elections on Thursday, when the party has 13 candidates standing in the town. In Scotland, Jack McConnell, the First Minister, became embroiled in a row with the SNP after appearing to link the Scottish Nationalists with the racist agenda of the French presidential candidate Jean Marie Le Pen, apparently condemning both when he disparaged the politics of "narrow nationalism". The theme of race and immigration has been gathering pace as a political issue since the success of Mr Le Pen, the National Front leader, in the first round of voting for the French presidency last week, stunning Europe by coming second with almost 20 per cent of the popular vote. The BNP - its profile raised by the controversy surrounding Mr Le Pen - is contesting 68 council seats in the English local elections this week. The main parties have all condemned the BNP, but a report due to be published today by the Blair-friendly think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research puts some of the blame for the increasing support for the BNP at the door of the Prime Minister. The report condemns all political parties for under-representing ethnic minorities, but Matthew Taylor, a director of the IPPR, yesterday spoke out to specifically blame Mr Blair for not giving the right leadership on this issue. He accused the Prime Minister of creating a political vacuum between voters and the government which the BNP is keen to exploit. "If you had to identify one of the greatest failures of Tony Blair after his first five years, it is that a Labour government has not strengthened the link between government and the people," he said. And he added: "We've had 40 years of declining trust in government across the developed world and, if it continues, we will get a very dangerous mix of voter apathy and its uglier sibling, electoral volatility." The Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy added to the criticism of Labour politicians by accusing senior figures of "talking up" the threat posed by the BNP. He said that there was a real danger of exaggerating the strength of the BNP, even though it was fielding fewer than 70 candidates in the elections on Thursday. He told BBC 1's Breakfast with Frost: "I am critical of David Blunkett as Home Secretary, Charles Clarke as chairman of the Labour Party in the way in which they have almost talked this issue up. At the end of the day this is a minuscule as well as a malign political element in the body politic." Mr McConnell caused angry protests from the SNP after he appeared to link the Scottish Nationalists with the French nationalists led by Mr Le Pen. Although he did not mention the SNP by name, the First Minister spoke of politicians who make the "tragic political error" of opting for the politics of national identity instead of social objectives and called on other parties to condemn "all politics based on identity and hatred". And in what appeared to be a clear swipe at the SNP, he said: "We have to put the politics of nation and hatred into the dustbin of history." The SNP is extremely sensitive to any suggestions that nationalism and racism are linked. The Labour Party insisted yesterday that Mr McConnell had not meant to link the SNP with the French National Front and that he did not believe the SNP were racist. But the SNP leader, John Swinney, immediately hit back, accusing Mr McConnell of making "petty political points". Mr Swinney also called for a "new cross-party approach to combating racism" and announced he was writing to all other party leaders to engage a unified response to the problem. The debate was also fuelled by the publication of a new poll in Scotland on Sunday newspaper which showed that almost half of Scots would back moves to return immigrants to their country of origin and a majority - 58 per cent - believe it is too easy for immigrants to enter the country. -- Louis Proyect, [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 05/03/2002 Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
