I understand why some people vote for the BNP

I understand why some people vote for the BNP. Saying that doesn’t mean that I will vote for the BNP, or that I support the BNP, or that I am recommending the BNP; it simply means that I have a certain sympathy with people who are so far excluded from the political process that they feel they need to vote for an extreme party in order to make an extreme statement.

People are angry. They are justifiably angry. According to the Sunday Times Rich List 2010, the wealth of the richest 1,000 multi-millionaires has increased by 29.9% in the last year. This is at a time when the rest of us are being asked to tighten our belts, to accept wage cuts and austerities and a reduction in our public services.

People can see this. They know that the system is stacked against them. They recognise the political system for what it is: a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth, from the poor, to the rich.

Anti-racism is a diversion. Everyone in the political establishment is anti-racist. Gordon Brown is anti-racist. David Cameron is anti-racist. Nick Clegg is anti-racist. Politician's wear their anti-racist credentials in the same way that Nick Griffin is wearing a Remembrance Day poppy in the picture above. Being anti-racist is just a radical rosette which any politician can pin to his lapel to make it look like he is a concerned and caring person.

It has become so much a part of the political brand as a whole, that any politician who deviates from the message by just a few ill-considered words is hounded down. What this sets up is a form of self-censorship. Is the average Tory squire any less racist than he used to be? Of course not. He just doesn’t say it in public any more.

Billy Hayes, the general secretary of the Communications Workers Union - and a strong supporter of the Labour Party - is a spokesman for Unite Against Fascism, and has made a number of statements against the BNP. This is all very radical and left-wing and it shows how deeply committed he is to a progressive political agenda.

But Billy Hayes has just negotiated an agreement with the Royal Mail which sees postal workers having to take a reduction in wages and a worsening of our conditions. Maybe this is also part of his anti-racist agenda. We are all going to be shafted equally, regardless of our ethnic background.

The issue isn’t race, it is class. It always was. All working people are suffering under the strains of the neo-liberal attack which politicians have encouraged in the last 30 years; the deregulation of the banking sector to allow the kleptocrats in the City of London to steal our pension funds and our savings; the break-up and sale of our public services at knock-down prices; the export of our jobs to low-wage colonies abroad.

The myth of the asylum seeker being given priority for housing wouldn’t have such a potent appeal if it wasn’t set against the background of poor quality housing and ever lengthening waiting lists. Immigration wouldn’t be an issue if, at the same time, our living standards weren’t being driven down, if we weren’t suffering cuts to our public services and an attack upon the future we always hoped for our children.

The BNP is a vile and morally corrupt political party which has set out to exploit this situation for its own ends, but we don’t defeat it by marching up and down and shouting. The BNP thrives on confrontation. It uses violent opposition to it as justification for its own existence. Allow Nick Griffin to speak and you show him for what he is, a sinister clown with a hate-filled political agenda. Silence him and you encourage the age-old reactionary tendency of the British working class to shove a rocket up the arse of the political establishment and then to stand back and watch the reaction.

Never underestimate the bloody-mindedness of the British working class.