Then again the BNP is a legitimate party.It chooses candidates and puts them up for election.It’s then up to folks whether or not to vote for them.That’s part of a democracy.You get all sorts of weird and wonderful parties.In most major seats you’ll always get one nutty candidate as the Goldfish Party or the Save Us All From The Aliens Party…
Having lived in Birmingham,the perception of the BNP is such areas is changing from a group of loony thugs to a protest vote by many white middle-class people who are fed up with asylum-seekers and immigrants being given freebies.
(for example,a local health centre in Derby has recently told all its patients that they will have to find other places as the centre is being given a multi-million pound makeover and will be reserved exclusively for asylum seekers.Residents are especially up in arms as they had applied for Lottery cash to improve it previously but were denied).When you have councillors spending millions on pro-Islamic exhibitions and demonstrations and refusing to allow the city to put up Christmas lights(I kid not-one year we had Christmas cancelled and replaced by Winterval,a multi-faith celebration),then it’s little wonder the BNP is seen as an attractive protest vote.Especially if you live in an area such as Oldham which had severe race riots,then the BNP promise to end them was all most people wanted to know.They didn’t mind how it was done…
lemon_martini2 has some valid points there. I really wish from the bottom of my heart that “well-meaning” councils in this country would realise that by singling immigrants out for special treatment in this way, they are making things far, far worse in the long run by getting everbody’s backs up. These people have the half-witted idea that Muslims might be “offended” by Britons displaying their national flag, or Christians celebrating Christmas. Here’s news for you, Birmingham council – Muslims are quite happy for other faiths to get on with celebrating their own identities and festivals, thank you very much.
I cannot stand this political correctness, but at the same time I cannot stand racism. Quite why the government in this country finds it so difficult to reconcile those two views, I have no idea.
The problem is more that immigrants, or “asylum seekers” to use the buzzword, are perceived by many not to be working at all, thanks in part to hare-brained schemes like the one lemon_martini2 highlighted, and also to the media constantly quoting scare stories about immigrants “being handed free houses and benefits” left right and centre. The BNP plays on this perception by portraying them as freeloaders. Of course, the fact that the BNP’s core audience, the white “working class” (oh, the irony) are the worst freeloaders of all, with benefit fraud, false disability claims etc rampant, is neither here nor there… :rolleyes:
In my neck of the woods (SW London) the people who are likely to be sympathetic to the BNP aren’t of the opinion that “asylum seekers” (ie all foreigners) are over here to sponge off benefits. They are angry that they are taking their jobs - primarily in construction.
THey are also worried that social housing is given to recent immigrants and the native communities have no access to affordable housing (this is a cross racial gripe)
This is a very real fear. No mainstream party is willing to address it so they see appeal in the BNP.
Needless to say that can’t tell the diffrence between albanian aylum seekers and polish plumbers.
I thought that there was such a shortage of construction workers in London that without making use of " asylum seekers " for these jobs nothing would get built.
The answer to this is “sort of”. The foreigners are blamed for two things - taking the jobs in the first place and depressing wages for unskilled jobs - especially at the day-labourer level.
It is also true that there would be a severe shortage of builders without them, and this is the crux.
People like myself have absolutely no fear of foreigners, indeed positively welcome anyone who keeps service industry prices down. However my family don’t use the NHS much, don’t use state education and are lucky enough not to need social housing - so these people are no threat to me.
And the Irish haven’t represented cheap labour for at least 20 years now.
Ah - don’t bother. Found it myself. Had long erudite post with links and refs and it all crashed. Short story - centre closed because of lack of any GP’s apart from a locum. Reopened with extra non NHS funding to deal with asylum seekers precisely because they were putting pressure on local services. A doctor complaining of being swamped had a giant 1% of his patients as asylum seekers.
That particular health centre changed use because it enabled the building to hold other services. No cause to be reaching for the burning crosses and white sheets quite yet.
I think this might be where lies the difference between the US and the UK. In the US the Republicans have always attracted votes from the working class, so it isn’t such a stretch for Democratic voters unhappy with that party’s (relatively) liberal immigration policies to cross over to the Republicans in protest. Whereas working class people in Britain would be far less likely to vote Tory under any circumstances.
In any case, I don’t think it’s anything to do with immigrants not being as ‘demonised’ in America as they are in Britain.
You probably have to live here and be exposed to the endless hysteria of the yellow press to understand the full extent of the demonisation of asylum seekers, which is code for’muslim’. It is quite shocking - lies being shrieked from mass circulation front pages, day after day. If the USA has a similar demonisation of Mexicans i’d be horrified, but maybe it does. I just haven’t seen it but I have no idea what might be going on in the local politics equivalent of the UK local elections, which is where the BNP have had some minor, local successes.
The Conservative Party always has had a large working class vote here.
I would bet my last 50 pence that most of those complaining vociferously about “asylum seekers taking their jobs” would run a mile (if they could drag themselves away from their Sky Sports and Trisha re-runs, that is) if asked to do the kinds of jobs that immigrants do in this country - cleaning, fruit picking, cockle-picking with the very real risk of drowning etc…
This is bigotry folks; violent, mindless bigotry; logic doesn’t enter into it - there really isn’t any particularly deep or broad thinking backing up statements of the “Pakis coming over here and taking our jobs” ilk. It is too easy to over-analyse the mindset.
That’s true in certain indusrties - indeed the government have specific schemes for casual farm labour mainly east europeans.
However the only people I have heard express pro-BNP sentiments are builders. They are fed up with people (again mainly E Europeans) taking the jobs and working for lower wages thus depressing their own income.
I know several unskilled labourers who have had enforced periods of unemplyment because of this. They are less than happy about this.
The real problem that they can’t get into their heads is that the people who are undercutting them aren’t “bloody asylum seekers” - they are people who are entitled to work here - from places like Poland and Lithuania, and irony of ironies, the biggest pool of cheap builders in SW london are white south Effrikans.
Construction has always been an immigrant profession - look at the Irish experience in the last 100 years.