The surge in popularity and influence of far-right parties across Europe is a well documented and universally acknowledged fact of modern international and domestic politics. The AfD in Germany, Rassemblement National in France, Reform in the UK, The Freedom Party of Austria etc., all seem to paint the picture of a collective European consciousness marching decidedly to one extreme of the political spectrum.
The outburst of far-right discontent across the UK in the last few weeks served as an emblem of these rising tensions, with many of the concerns outlined by individuals involved echoing similar anxieties felt by voters across the continent. Despite the severity of the political situation, given the absence of seemingly competent opposition to the far-right wave, a look at the history of a largely inconspicuous local council in East London could hold the answers for stifling the appeal of the far-right across Europe.
When Labour MP for the London constituency of Barking in the early-mid 2000s, Margaret Hodge witnessed first-hand the alarming rise in popularity of the British National Party in local elections. The BNP, like Reform UK and similar far-right parties across Europe today, espoused the typical anti-immigrant sludge and unfunded promises of public sector investment. Thus, they positioned themselves as the alternative to the technocratic ‘elites’ of the 2006 Blair government, and won 12 out of the 13 seats they campaigned for in Barking’s local council, with almost 20% of the vote.
This same anger at the out-of-touch ‘bureaucratic elites’ in Brussels and national governments across Europe has motivated much of the rise in the far-right’s popularity on the continent, coupled with a growing sense of economic insecurity. In Germany, where the AfD is the second strongest party, citizens feel a disconnect between a government that imposes policies to deal with global issues such as climate change, and the difficulties of their lived reality. The far-right then pivots this discontent and disconnect into an anger towards the political elite that ‘don’t listen to what you want’, pushing voters away from progressive policy projects.
It is this discontent with the process of government that mobilises people towards the extreme right. Concomitantly it is this discontent, the source of their appeal, where the extreme right can be cut off at the root. Given that many far-right parties have historically never held the core of political power, they exist at the periphery of the system, allowing them to position themselves as the anti-establishment, while being themselves part of the political class.
Margaret Hodge and the Labour campaigners were well aware of this driving force behind the BNP’s growing popularity. After the embarrassing and alarming losses in Barking council in 2006, Hodge took on a new campaign strategy that would end up reconquering, in the 2010 local council elections, every single seat lost 4 years prior. Labour campaigners started meeting voters in Barking face to face, inviting them to local meetings and letting them set the agenda for what they wanted to see fixed. Very often, Labour party representatives were able to address the constituent’s concerns and, once they did, they would write back to voters to broadcast the changes they had put into place. In one instance, Labour campaigners and representatives made local councils clean up people’s gardens, billing landlords for the trouble.
Having understood the appeal of the far-right, and the reasons for its success, it is not a mystery as to why Labour won back every seat in the 2010 Barking and Dagenham local council elections. What Labour did over the course of those 4 years from 2006-10 was fundamentally restore trust in government. The strategy did not involve the waving of cold and unsympathetic statistics in voters’ faces, or lecturing about some abstract ideology it might benefit them to vote for, rather it showed people, genuinely, that their daily lives were getting better. With that knowledge in mind, voters could no longer fall for the BNP’s wailing about immigrants and ‘elites’ because they could see the evidence against their claims with their own eyes. In a time where fake news and entertainment news are ubiquitous, making a difference in the upkeep of local people’s everyday lives is indispensable, given it cannot simply be dismissed as partisan propaganda online.
Now that the dust has largely settled on the recent riots that took hold of the UK, and arrests have been made of the thugs involved in the violence, the Labour government is facing much the same problem nationally as they were locally in 2006. Reform UK frequently employs the anti-immigrant rhetoric of their predecessors having come third in the popular vote on July 4th, and although the majority of white working class Brits were appalled by the rioters’ behaviour, they still feel like their concerns have not been answered.
There is nevertheless hope that this Labour government will learn from their past. Morgan McSweeney, the Head of Political Strategy at 10 Downing Street, was part of the Labour team that defeated the BNP in Barking and Dagenham 14 years ago. Labour’s politics has changed a lot in this time however, and it is difficult to say whether this pearl of wisdom will make it through today’s Labour machine and be acted upon. Ultimately only time will tell. To strike a hopeful tone, should this initiative be proven to work on a national scale, it may well signal a new policy paradigm for dealing with the far-right across Europe, one that sets it far back to a dark, resentful, and insignificant corner of the internet.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/BritishNationalism & Parrot of Doom
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