With the election of a British National Party (BNP) Yorkshire & Humber MEP, BNP leader, Nick Griffin, has suggested that former mining areas like Doncaster are now hotbeds of right wing politics. Of the European elections he has said “we’re here to look after our people because no one else is”. He said that feelings were particularly strong in Yorkshire, where former pit communities felt “at the bottom of the heap”.
Indeed it was a sad day in Donny when the BNP managed to get nearly 12% of the vote in the Euro Elections and nearly 9% of the Mayoral election vote. It’s also bit shit that an English Democrat is now the most powerful man on Donny council. But does this signify a major rise in right wing politics in the former Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire?
Maybe the Mayoral election results can provide a few answers. At a provisional 35.81 per cent turn out was significantly lower than for the last mayoral election. The man who was eventually elected was not voted in as a ‘first choice’ – that went to Independent, Mick Maye with a vote of 17,150 to Davies’ 16,961; but this wasn’t deemed enough for an overall victory so the vote went to the ’second choice’ round where Davies’ 8383 second choice votes beat Maye’s 7840. This means that around 0.3% of the population of Doncaster (9% of voters) cast the deciding vote. It’s also interesting to see that Davies’ second choice voting numbers coincide almost exactly with the overall number of BNP votes.
Though it pains us to say it, this voting pattern does prove Griffin right when he says that former mining communities feel “at the bottom of the heap”. But this doesn’t mean that we believe that right-wing, nationalist or fascist parties have anything new to offer us. The real message is WE DON”T TRUST POLITICIANS.
Griffin is also right (agreeing with Griffin twice in one article, oh the humanity) when he suggests that poor, largely white, communities have been completely abandoned by the democratic process. The politicians know it and the people know it, but it’s not the people who are the apathetic ones! ALL political parties exist for the benefit of big business and the middle class – the BNP are no exception, they’re on record as saying…
“What we urgently need, and must have to survive, is very much less democracy, a very much smaller, more carefully selected and more intelligent electorate … Granting a vote to each and every one of the natives of Britain was madness … lunacy could hardly go further!”
In other words only the ‘professional’ middle class should get the vote. Unfortunately, with two thirds of the population not voting, this is already the case, but with a system of ‘representative’ democracy you have to feel that you’re being represented in order to give a shit.
The only people who get more out of central government than they give to it are prisoners and politicians, so why do we put up with this outdated system of self-abuse?
The truth is that we have the technology and the intelligence to create a system of direct, participatory democracy to replace the decadent and corrupt, Westminster based, Party-Political system that has failed us so spectacularly. Modern life is filled with change, wonder and diversity (Diversity, now they were worth voting for!), no single political party or ideology can come close to addressing our needs. The left are moribund, the right are dinosaurs. It’s time to build new, open source, grass-root community based, political movements that address our immediate needs without the usual ulterior motives of power and greed. Any ideas?
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