It’s difficult to explain this in a few sentences because the problems

Comment on BNP Immigration Policy by Ray Bolton.

It’s difficult to explain this in a few sentences because the problems are so complicated.

My argument is not that the BNP should refrain from exploiting people’s anxieties, but that they exploit them for their own ends (as all parties do). I agree that the mainstream political parties have caused these anxieties (perhaps that is the wrong word, try ‘incandescence’ or even ‘fury’).

We are angry about the effect of immigration rather than immigration itself: we look at the pressure it puts on local services, we look at the way employers pay immigrants less for cheap work and wonder why nothing is done about it. We wonder why new council houses are not being built, etc. etc.

What does the Labour Party do? Years ago, they would have tried to regulate employment law to stop employers from paying migrant workers less money than British workers. They would have tried to unite communities on the basis of class rather than dividing communities on the basis of shallow ‘identity’ politics. They would have built more council houses rather than trying to privatise them. New Labour has written the working class out of its ideology and concentrates on identities. Hence they actually legislate to divide working class communities.

This creates a political vacuum – and who tries to fill it? The BNP of course. They extend the ‘identity’ politics of the mainstream parties to its logical conclusion, namely segregation on the basis of religion and ethnicity. That’s why I don’t like the way they exploit anxieties.

If Labour could only get back to its roots then and enact policies which unite working class communities then this might not happen.