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news
1st February 2006
Stop the BNP: Stand up to racism
by Ken Livingstone, Chair, Unite Against Fascism
An important set of elections takes place this May across local government, including all the seats of the London borough councils. A crucial question in this will be the firm stand Labour needs to maintain on supporting multi-culturalism and diversity.
Since the beginning of the Iraq war, and in particular since the bombings in London last July, the tabloid press has been stepping up its racist campaigns — trying to pretend Britain’s ethnic minority population, ‘asylum seekers’, and others create threats to our security rather than US and British policy in the Middle East.
Racism is to be opposed first and above all because it is immoral, an ideology which has been used to justify the greatest crimes in history, and not for any electoral reasons. Nevertheless for Labour, as the party of progress, taking the firmest stand against racism in both its open and hidden forms is of the greatest electoral importance. Support for the Iraq war, for example, led to wholesale desertion of Labour by the Muslim community — losing a number of seats at the general election.
It is crucial to Labour’s success that it maintains its alliance with black and Asian voters who are vital to Labour in achieving majorities in many towns and cities across Britain. They form a disproportionate share of Labour support because of their higher levels of poverty and because Labour’s record of campaigning for equality is stronger than the other mainstream parties.
Challenging racism is also essential to pushing back the fascist BNP, who are seeking to extend their local government bases beyond their current 21 local councillors. Although it has not yet broken through onto the national political stage the BNP in 2004 secured the highest vote ever in Britain for a fascist party. Last year it quadrupled its previous general election vote.
The BNP makes its advances on the back of racism, exploiting situations where institutions or the media legitimise or make concessions to racism. Its progress can only be reversed by convincingly defeating its arguments. That requires rebutting various divisive misrepresentations and myths about community relations that are currently being promoted by some commentators, and setting the record straight.
In the first place it needs to be stressed that community relations have actually improved and tensions decreased in recent years. This, for example, is demonstrated strikingly in London by figures showing that racial attacks have fallen by 35 per cent over the last five years. It is further borne out by Greater London Authority (GLA) research showing that 85 per cent of people enjoy the capital’s diversity and 71 per cent believe that there are good relations between different racial, ethnic and religious communities.
Secondly, it is necessary to re-assert that Britain is becoming more, not less racially integrated. Considerable evidence exists that, over the past decade, the pattern of location of ethnic minorities is not one of increasing segregation but of increasing dispersal. On the basis of recognised criteria of segregation there are no ‘ghettos’ in England and Wales. This has been confirmed by census data analysis carried out by the GLA and also by the academic work of Professor Daniel Dorling whose research indicates that ethnic minority groups are becoming less geographically concentrated over time.
Further areas where the correct picture needs to be painted include that the increased number of non-white Britons over the past decade is due to demographics rather than immigration, and that ‘white flight’ from inner cities is just another myth. These two points have been established by Dr Ludi Simpson of Manchester University whose analysis also refutes claims that Muslims are ‘self-segregating’. His work suggests that factors such as poverty have to be taken into account more than racial tension in explaining the situation behind the recent disturbances in the Lozells area of Birmingham.
Setting the record straight on Britain’s community relations
helps to arm up Labour’s core voters, thus assisting the campaign to stop the BNP. Correcting the misrepresentations and myths assists black and Asian communities in their fight for equal rights and strengthens their alliance with the Labour party. These are essential components of a strategy to ensure there is a progressive Labour majority won in May.
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