By Eddie Tucker

The shock of British National Party members walking around Grays town centre in south Essex openly displaying party rosettes on by-election day on 4 September showed the confidence they had built up in just one month's campaigning. With firm Labour supporters telling party canvassers they were voting BNP, a regular presence of seven or eight BNP canvassers every single day of the campaign and the open display of BNP posters in windows, the loss of one of Labour's safest council seats to the fascists was not exactly a surprise.

But how did it happen? After all, the BNP had no presence in the area, had not stood in the district in recent history and, as one of its canvassers admitted, had very few members in Thurrock.

Firstly, the Labour Party is virtually invisible between elections. In fact many of the councillors are hardworking and committed to improving their communities - it's just that they don't tell anybody. The area is run-down in places, but there are a lot worse. However, a massive council tax rise this year is not being matched by an equivalent improvement in services. Labour dominates the council and so the BNP vote was a protest vote against a seemingly uncaring and distanced party and council.

Secondly, there was a "positive" element to the BNP vote, especially from previous Labour voters. It was a positive vote for BNP policy against asylum seekers, who were blamed for all the country's ills in its leaflets, with the nearby ports allegedly putting Grays in "the front line". Nationally, Labour has fuelled the BNP's extremism by making it respectable to denigrate - and even lock up - asylum seekers, and playing along with the numbers game. The irony of the BNP's candidate, Nick Geri, being descended from an Italian immigrant grandfather was unfortunately lost on the electorate.

Organisationally, the BNP campaign had the higher profile, with canvassing teams out every night and two people on every polling station sporting BNP Union Jack rosettes. Its leaflets were regular, widely distributed and backed up with door knocking. The maintenance of a strong presence throughout the campaign and the appearance of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, in the final two days (in an open-necked shirt unlike many of his newly suited members) showed the BNP had received a lost of support early on, and the bandwagon rolled. Not that Labour failed to campaign - it didn't - it was the years of previous neglect that it paid for.

One Labour spokesperson blamed the BNP win on low turnout. This was obviously not a local person, who would have explained the turnout was actually up, from around 15% to 22%, and the logic is that many of the BNP voters previously saw themselves as disenfran-chised and hadn't bothered to vote in the past.

Although experienced local Labour party workers were not overly shocked by the BNP win, they were stunned by the scale of it, with Labour crashing from first to third after a strong Tory campaign. Unlike elsewhere in the country, the BNP did not appear to pick up Tory votes (the Tory vote went up), but gained from working-class Labour supporters and non-voters.

The other parties must no longer be afraid of countering the BNP head on, especially the appalling attendance records of its councillors, the failure to deliver its empty promises and the suspension of one of its councillors for violence against his own members. If the fascists can win a seat from nowhere inside a month, ignoring them to "starve them of the oxygen of publicity" is longer an option.

The lessons for Labour are clear locally and nationally. Active campaigning must be combined with a real connection with voters throughout the year locally and at a national level, an end to populist asylum-bashing, and a new policy that actually works with tangible improvements in rundown communities that make people proud of where they live.

There are many more council seats in Essex that mirror Grays Riverside. The BNP's first victory in the county will give the fascists a springboard if they are not challenged now.

The theme running through the fascists' literature was "Essex needs the BNP". Essex needs the BNP like a hole in the head, and local anti-fascists are now planning a broad-based campaign to challenge the BNP across the area.

This article appeared in Searchlight Magazine October 2003.

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