BNP ready to fill Labour vacuum in StokeThe Guardian
The Potteries have battled unemployment, urban decay and
immigration issues for four decades – so it is ground zero
in the BNP's bid for success in tomorrow's election
The BNP, led by Nick Griffin, above, believes it can
increase its presence in the six towns of the Potteries in
elections tomorrow. Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian
What will happen if Labour implodes politically, either in
the days or weeks ahead or at the coming general election?
Stoke-on-Trent is worth looking at in this context because
the party that once dominated Potteries politics underwent
its own gentle implosion a few years ago.
The result? A cross-party coalition trying to hold local
government together, supported by Labour, the Lib Dems and
the Tories – and opposed by nine councillors from the
British National party. The BNP is looking to alienated
Stoke voters to boost its share of tomorrow's poll in the
West Midlands and – perhaps – elect a BNP candidate for
Europe.
With its famous pottery museums, heritage trails and
designated "Cultural Quarter", Stoke looks at first glance
as if it has adapted to post-industrial life as well as
other British cities. But appearances on a bright spring
morning, when I visited, can be deceptive.
Over the past 40 years the six-town conurbation known as
the Potteries has suffered a string of misfortunes,
economic and political. It lost its steel mills, coal mines
– "pits and pots" – and the bulk of its pottery production.
The North Staffs regeneration plan has been late in coming,
and many lost jobs have been replaced with £6-an-hour call
centre and warehousing work.
The city's three MPs are still Labour, as they have been
since 1945, but none has been an imposing national figure
for decades. Cynthia Mosley (Sir Oswald's wife) was once an
MP here. At local level Labour hegemony has fragmented to
the point where the BNP boasts nine city councillors (to
Labour's 16) and hopes Stoke voters will help elect Nick
Griffin's lieutenant and national spokesman, Simon Darby,
as a West Midlands regional MEP in tomorrow's European
elections.
Bolder BNP strategists even claim they could get their
first Westminster MP here in 2010 if unemployment – overall
"worklessness" is above average in Stoke – stays above
three million. Labour takes the BNP threat seriously, but
not that seriously: BNP candidates saved their local
deposits in 2005 but got a maximum 15% in all three seats,
behind the main parties.
The Tory chairman, Eric Pickles, thinks the BNP may pick up
one or two European seats – or may flop. As the Financial
Times reported yesterday, Pickles blames Labour for
neglecting core voters and giving the BNP the chance to win
them over. The Dagenham MP, Jon Cruddas, who fights the BNP
in its London stronghold, says much the same: it is the
price of the Blair-Brown centrist strategy.
Privately, some of Gordon Brown's lieutenants fear there
could be four or five BNP MEPs, each with access to
£250,000 worth of funds, when the results are announced
across Europe late on Sunday. "It would change the face of
British politics," warns one minister, who cites the French
National Front's rise on the back of European votes. The
far right hopes to do well across the recession-hit EU.
"Stoke has a very resentful population; it's very upset
with Labour," explains Darby. He describes how Steve
Batkin, one of three BNP councillors in Bentilee ward on
the Alton Towers side of the city, "walks around all day
with his garden tools doing old people's gardens. They like
him. We are replacing people who treated the population
with absolute contempt."
From Kent to Cumbria this is the new "community politics"
face of the BNP, one whose hostility to immigrants, asylum
seekers and Europe is just below the surface but not on
display. Would-be BNP voters tend to be white,
working-class men who live in rented accommodation, have
low educational achievement and read anti-immigrant
tabloids, Ipsos-Mori pollsters told the FT. No surprise
there, for the alienation of "white van man" from modern
Britain has been well documented.
The BNP's ambitions for Stoke are not immediately apparent
on the ground either. Voters I spoke to in Hanley's
Potteries shopping centre – close to the statue of Stanley
Matthews, the Hanley-born legend of English football – did
not mention the BNP unless prompted.
"They frighten me. I don't like it," said an old lady,
wrinkling her nose.
"I don't get any trouble," said a rare black voter (Stoke's
black and minority population is around 5%; Polish coal
miners have long been there, too).
Just one passerby, a retired lecturer and Tory, admitted:
"I'm thinking of voting BNP because the main parties never
listen."
Anger against the council is strong and includes favourite
BNP themes such as preference allegedly given to immigrants
in the housing queue and the "sweetheart" land deal
(officials deny it) that is allowing Muslims in Shelton to
build their own mosque.
In Abbey Green ward, on the edge of 250,000-strong Stoke,
the story is the same. "I think the BNP nearly got elected
here last time," said a man walking with his children in
what is an overwhelmingly white estate of neat, red-brick,
interwar housing, a mixture of private and council.
He's wrong. Here and elsewhere BNP candidates took all
three seats, including Alby and Ellie Walker, who Labour
critics privately admit would be "pleasant and cheery
people if you met them in the pub". Some say the couple's
attitudes on race and multicultural are little different
from Labour's of yesteryear.
There are two basic answers to the BNP challenge, says
Geoff Bagnall, who runs the Unity ceramics-based trade
union whose membership has fallen from 31,000 to 5,000
during years of economic decline.
"The Labour party must go back to its roots and represent
people properly," he said. "And there must be long-term
government regeneration, bringing new jobs and better
education to the city."
Easier said than done. Mike Wolfe, the energetic ex-Labour
man who led the campaign for a directly elected mayor in
Stoke in 2002 and won the post himself, says Stoke has
great potential and fantastic road, rail and [nearby] air
communications; it's "virtually a roundabout" at the heart
of Britain. Other cities reinvented themselves. Why not
Stoke?
But Wolfe proved too much of a loner, and Labour's 60-seat
monopoly of the council was fast collapsing into seven or
eight rival groups. His Labour successor since 2005, Mark
Meredith ("the least unpopular candidate for the
nomination"), has alienated much of his base, not least by
bringing controversial private contractor Serco in to
manage a disruptive reorganisation of local schools.
To add to the woes in Stoke, Meredith and the Tory group
leader, Roger Ibbs, have both been arrested this year on
suspicion of corrupt dealings, and police investigations
continue. Officials, eager to promote overdue regeneration
plans, are largely running the town hall, where paid
councillors in all three main parties are now part of the
mayor's coalition.
As for the BNP, it is fielding candidates for the first
time across the municipal boundary in the two most deprived
wards of adjacent Newcastle-under-Lyme. The campaign is
buttressed by "Punish the pigs" leaflets – a gesture to the
expenses row that has tainted Labour in Stoke, as
elsewhere.
So Stoke is the place where Old Labour faltered, but many
New Labour ideas have collided with harsh realities on the
ground. Alarmed by the BNP, ministers in London are finally
taking it seriously. The wife of the local government
minister, John Healey, hails from Stoke. The message that
Stoke's introverted political culture – its talent is too
often lured to Birmingham or Manchester – needs more help
from outside has finally got through. Many things are
getting better, but slower and later than elsewhere.
Last October, punch-drunk Stoke residents in the six
Potteries towns (Arnold Bennett's "five towns" novels
deliberately ignored Fenton) voted to reverse the elected
mayor experiment in favour of a cabinet-style council.
Speculation persists that Whitehall may take over to fill
the vacuum until fresh elections. The BNP has stepped in to
fill a Labour vacuum that Lib Dems (just five councillors
here) have filled elsewhere.
It amounts to a major political train crash, but Mike Wolfe
says Stoke is just a more dramatic version of what is going
on in other troubled northern cities. The famous name of
Wedgwood has been bought from administration by a US firm.
"The BNP is a symptom, not a cause" of Stoke's problems,
admits the local MP Mark Fisher.
Simon Darby knows all the regional percentages needed under
the European elections' regional voting system to elect a
BNP MEP here and elsewhere. Nick Griffin, a regular visitor
to Stoke, has the best chance in the nearby North West
region (8.5% – just 2% more than last time) compared with
an 11% hurdle in the West Midlands.
Turnout among supporters of the mainstream parties is
therefore crucial tomorrow to minimise the impact of the
BNP's still-modest base (they have barely 100 party members
in Stoke, according to last year's leaked party list). But
as the PM's colleagues whisper, it does no good just to
condemn the BNP, as Gordon Brown sometimes thinks
(yesterday's Guardian letter, for example).
"Be sure to vote on June 4 if you don't want the BNP," has
become a campaign slogan endorsed by all the main parties.
But what if many angry voters decide they do?
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