0
BURNLEY (England) May 3: The far-right British National Party won three council seats on Friday in Burnley, an industrial centre dogged by racial unease, in a result which one politician said “besmirched the town’s good name.”
Buoyed by the shock success of France’s National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen, the BNP exploited tensions between whites and Asians — still simmering after last summer’s race riots — to notch up their first victory in nearly a decade.
The marginal, anti-immigrant group, whose paid-up members are counted in the mere hundreds and who lack any support in the mainstream media, have only ever won one council seat before, in the east end of London in 1993.
BNP chairman Nick Griffin immediately sent an uncompromising message to the thousands of Asians, mainly Pakistanis, whose families arrived in northwest England during the 1960s and 1970s to work in the now defunct textile industry.
“If ethnic minorities in small numbers want to be in this country, as long they obey our laws, we haven’t got a problem, Griffin told Sky News.
“But the reality is that on present trends we, the British, are going to be a minority in our own homeland within 60 years, and that’s a real problem.
“Burnley is going to have a place in the history books as the town in Britain that first stood up for the British people,” Griffin said.
As the first British National Party victory was read out, minor scuffles broke out between Anti-Nazi League (ANL) and BNP supporters, many of whom want most of Britain’s roughly five million non-whites “sent back home”.
“The BNP have tried to show themselves as respectable candidates, but they’ve already managed to show their true colours — they’re just a bunch of thugs,” said ANL national coordinator Julie Waterson.
A ramshackle coalition of students and left wing supporters campaigned vigorously for voters to show solidarity against extremism, echoing massive street protests in France this week against far right presidential candidate Le Pen.
For a local election, turnouts in Burnley were high — at 50 percent or more — but ultimately not enough to banish the prospect of another summer of clashes between Asians and whites.
RACE FEARS: As with many towns near Manchester, Burnley’s population of around 90,000 comprises only a small number of Asians — around 3,000 Pakistanis and 1,000 Bengalis in its case.
But high unemployment, poor housing and the presence of a hard core of white extremists have produced a racial powderkeg which exploded last June into severe race riots and much national soul searching about “multi-culturalism”.
The BNP’s victories are sure to fan these flames yet further, and even though a Le Pen-style upset never threatened, mainstream politicians breathed a sigh of relief that the party failed to make any headway elsewhere in the country.
“We really ought to be thankful it is very small beer, very small gains for them compared to the way the extreme right has gained in the Netherlands.., in Denmark and in France,” Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes told BBC Radio.
But for the vast majority of ordinary people in Burnley, of whatever colour or creed, the result has destroyed all efforts over the last 12 months to lance the boil of racism.
Labour peer Lord Clarke, who led an inquiry into last year’s rioting in the town, said: “I am saddened by what has besmirched the good name of Burnley.”—Reuters
