ANALYSIS: EXTREME RIGHT IN BRITAIN

Introduction

Perhaps, one of the hotly debated issues in the electoral procedures of different nations in the European nations is about the extreme right. Based on the premise that the nation is the primary unit of social and political organization, extremist nationalism has been invigorated since the demise of communism. Unlike civic nationalism, which stresses equality and solidarity, the exaggerated, chauvinistic, and aggressive nationalism of the extreme right upholds the sanctity of the nation and national identity against any other value. Each person is defined by membership in primordial ethnic and cultural groups that are hierarchically arranged according to the "natural order." In the extreme rights view violating this natural order through racial intermingling leads to decadence and decay in society, culminating in the destruction of civilization.

Consequently, the extreme right portrays itself as the defender of the nation, protecting society's integrity and purity from the on- slaught of foreigners and unwanted change. National identity, therefore, is primary and prior, subordinating all other identifications; it divides good from evil and friend from enemy. It is a source of pride that right-wing extremists feel has been denied them by the state and liberals.

The resurgence of extreme right parties gained its first sudden and dramatic momentum when the Front National (FN), led by Jean-Marie LePen, scored 11.2 percent in the 1984 European elections. This took many by surprise, including political and social scientists, most of whom at the time had expected rightist extremism to dissipate altogether. Indeed, until the mid-1980s, the organized extreme right remained completely marginalized in Europe, enjoyed little political support, and performed poorly in elections, with the noted exception of the sustained, albeit small-scale presence of the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiana (MSI), which was mostly viewed as just another peculiarity of postwar Italian politics.

Even more surprisingly, however, LePen's breakthrough reflected not just a single incident but rather a more general watershed: a lasting upsurge of the extreme right all over Europe that reached its first peak with some dramatic electoral gains in the early 1990s, accompanied by a wave of anti-immigrant violence. Since then, several political parties have failed to generate much support, like the Dutch Centrumdemocraten (CD), or have stagnated. But overall, the revived and newly emerging variants of the extreme right did not suffer the much anticipated "periodical decline” (Epstein 21). They endured and even doubled their electoral turnout over the last two decades. Therefore it has become difficult to dismiss them as ephemeral and isolated (Hainsworth 10).

Several developments highlight and substantiate the thesis that the extreme right has re-established itself as a significant political actor in several Estern European democracies including Great Britain (Rensmann 93). Extreme and radical populist right parties are far from being a short-lived, transitory, and temporary protest phenomenon that is temporarily endorsed by alienated voters lacking identifiable beliefs; they have largely consolidated their positions in the electoral landscape and beyond. Although in many cases, extreme right actors remain somewhat at the fringe of the political system, they have often succeeded in stabilizing or broadening their constituencies, turning new voters into loyal voters, creating militant extremist milieus and generating nationalist, anti-immigrant movements across Europe. In Great Britain there also exist different extreme right parties such as the National Front, British National Party and the UK Independence Party.

Primarily the main goal of this paper is to discuss the reasons why the extreme right tradition is Great Britain has never been expressed in electoral terms. In addition, this will also provide some insightful details regarding the history of the extreme right parties in Britain.

Extreme Right Parties in Great Britain

As mentioned, many extreme right parties have emerged in different part of the European countries and one of these is Great Britain. The rise of the extreme right in British society and policy has had a more modest effect commensurate with the modest absolute size of the extreme right. There is a noticeable impact in those areas where the extreme right is strong, both in the atmosphere of fear and intimidation amongst minorities and in the policies of local councils and mainstream party constituency organizations either catering to or trying to combat right -wing growth.

The nongovernmental sector has also been affected, mobilizing to some degree but not, to date, becoming unified. The rivalry between the Anti-Nazi League and the Anti-Racist Alliance continues. And the rise of the extreme right has not only mobilized efforts to combat it but has mobilized both the government and nongovernmental agencies to combat the racism on which the extreme right feeds. Both, however, have been a good deal more active than they once were. The rise of racism and right-wing extremism in Russia and Germany has generated a sense in Britain that it may spread to that country. Britain can do little about the growth of right-wing extremism outside the country. But it can prepare its defenses, and there is a sense of urgency about doing so as quickly and deeply as possible (Braun & Scheiberg 102).

In Britain, there are three commonly known extreme right parties. One of which is the National Front (NF). The National Front was founded in 1967 which was established from a group of extreme right wing institution including the British National Party, League of Empire Loyalists, Greater Britain Movement and the Racial Preservation Society. National Fronts’ electoral success was restricted, with small number of members. In addition, in spite of the potentialities of the party, NF remained on the fringes of the British politics. The support of the NF was positioned in and around places with comparatively high immigrant population. Being a racist, the National Front is also an advocate of the repatriation of uninvited immigrants. National Front is also known for being anti-Semitic, authoritarian, anti-communist, and the one which promotes the usual compilation of conspiracy theories of extreme right.

National front is also considered as isolationist because of its advocacy in protecting the domestic industry and opposing foreign aid and the removal from the United Nation, which NF suspected as an organization of international finance (Walker 131). The National Front, once formed, achieved variable success in elections it contested, reaching a high of 19.2 percent in the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency in the Greater London Council elections of 1977. This vote, however, dropped precipitously in the 1979 parliamentary election in Bethnal Green and Bow to 6.1 percent. Elsewhere the descent was similar (Walker, 132).

The decline was attributable partly to an antifascist campaign prompted by the rise of the National Front. The initial response had been to ignore it, not to give it undue attention. As the group became stronger, neglect was replaced by active opposition. A concerted effort was made to expose the National Front as the neo-Nazi party it was, and the party was discredited. The National Front has dominated the extreme right parties in Great Britain, however, it was destabilised by a series of defections and splits. In year 1995, National Front changed its name to National Democrats, although the rump of NF remained.

British National Party

In the manner of its forerunner, British National Party has also remained on the fringes of the politics of Great Britain, having a small number of members and restricted although it is slightly increasing some electoral success. British National Party (BNP) was founded by John Tyndall in 1982, with racism as its fundamental ideology. The National Front had been able to overshadowed BNP for ten years (Margetts, John & Weir 10). However, BNP has been able to surpass NF in 1993 when it won the Milwall ward of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Nick Griffin succeeded the leadership of Tyndall in 1999. BNP’s support was positioned in places similar with NF, i.e. parts of London, the Midlands and the North. In addition, BNP mostly performed better in local government electoral procedures, specifically by-elections like the National Front.

Under the leadership of Griffin, he has been able to follow the direction common to all extreme parties of showing a respectable public image while asserting the party’s National Socialist sympathies in every in-house meeting (Renton 2). The policies of the British National Party includes the repatriation of all illegal immigrants, the abolition of positive discrimination, the introduction of a system of voluntary, financially aided repatriation for existing and legally-settled immigrants. In addition, the party also includes the withdrawal of the entire United Kingdom from the European Union and the pursuit of protectionist economic measures in its policy. British National Party also aims to restore the corporal punishment for petty criminals and vandals and the re-establishment of capital punishment for paedophiles, murderers and terrorists and the re-introduction of national services to maintain an assault rifle in their own home. Other policies of BNP consist of promotion of organic farming, spending and ending British foreign aid and increasing its defence.

UK Independence Party

The United Kingdom Independence Party more commonly known as the UKIP is one of the extreme right parties which aim at the withdrawal of British from European Union. The current leader of the UKIP is Roger Knapman, Member of the European Parliaments for South West England. United Kingdom has members of 35 local councillors, in which most of whom are defectors from other parties. United Kingdom Independence Party was formed by Alan Sked in 1993 and other members of the all-party Anti-federalist League.

Reasons why Extreme Parties Fail in Electoral Terms

The modern extreme right parties in Great Britain are facing different issues, specifically in electoral terms. It has been noticed that these extreme right parties has not been able to achieve an electoral success of its continental complements. It has been beleaguered by internal territory wars among its leaders. In addition the electoral laws of the British have crippled its entire effort to receive votes. In 1960 the extreme right parties of the British politics was disarray and composed of a half dozen parties. In this manner, the extreme right political parties eventually focused into two groups. However, the National Party would be surpassed by the National Front which remains as the dominant party on extreme right in the 1970s (Durham 82).

Ignazi recounts the stories of country-specific failures from which people can also learn about the conditions of successful extreme right mobilizations. The extreme right never took hold in Great Britain and has also failed so far in some post-authoritarian, recently democratized Mediterranean nation-states, such as Greece, Portugal, and Spain. The British National Party (BNP, the political heir to the fascist, racist, anti-Semitic National Front of the 1970s that temporarily gained some noticeable electoral support) today remains virtually the only relevant extreme right party in Britain.

With the exception of a few local and regional elections in the 1990s, the BNP, which portrays itself as somewhat more "democratic" than its European counterparts, although it never really surpassed its original proto-Nazi mould, has always performed poorly. Ignazi credits inner factionalism and lack of party renewal, the successful Tory strategies to raise and suffocate the immigration issue, and the strong liberal-democratic and civic political culture in Britain for the failure of the extreme right, which "never benefited from full political legitimacy" (185).

Another reason that can be attached to the failure in terms of electoral terms is that the support for the Britain’s extreme right parties has been relatively low and has not been able to show the course apparent in a number of European nations (Heath, 199). There is no sense of the development of the far right as a mass movement in Britain. Although electoral support for the extreme right has grown, its membership has remained stagnant and it remains electorally insignificant. The increase in the vote has been from an extremely low base. The far right contests very few seats in both national and local elections. For those seats it has contested, it generally registers a vote of less than 5 percent, usually in the range of 1-2 percent. It is uncommon for the extreme right to get votes for any one seat in more than the three-figure range.

Several arguments have been considered in order to explain the historic weakness of the extreme right parties of Britain. For many, specifically for structuralist, one consideration is the notion that Britain has been less influence than some of the European countries by sudden socio-economic changes including major depression. In addition, factors such as the prophylactic powers of a fundamentally rooted democratic traditions and the association of the British with anti-fascism.

On the other hand, for the political science institutionalists, they give more emphasis on the First Past the Post election to party scheme (Eatwell, 65). In this system, the extreme right parties of Britain are doomed electorally. the security and continuity of government is to be preserved, it is undesirable that the institutional framework within which it is conducted should be the subject of continued party controversy. But as a matter of fact and of precedent it has been the exception rather than the rule for changes in the electoral system to be agreed party measures.

It is only under the unnatural circumstances of two war-time coalitions that electoral reform has been initiated by inter-party agreement. Both in the nineteenth and the twentieth century’s drastic changes have been proposed without any suggestion of inter-party agreement or even consultation. If inter-party agreement were a prerequisite to constitutional innovation, each party would have a permanent veto on all change. It is hardly realistic even to argue for inter-party consultation as a prerequisite.

Apart from the vexed question of the 1944 'bargain', would a Labour Government have been bound in honour or by constitutional tradition to consult their opponents before abolishing the business vote? The views of all parties on the question were well known and surely no useful purpose would have been served by such consultation. If there is a chance of carrying through a constitutional reform by agreement every effort should be made to do so, and it behoves a party to try as far as it can to avoid any suspicions that it is rigging the constitution for its own benefit.

On the whole, classical approaches to extreme right parties have analyzed the question of their relationship to European democratic political systems in four different ways: first, by considering extreme right movements as a danger for democracy; second, by examining the responses of democratic regimes to extremist challenges); third, by evaluating the impact of extremist formations on political systems; finally, by interpreting the phenomenon’s emergence in Britain as the consequence of factors such as the transformation (Eatwell, 110)

Conclusion

It seems that each extreme party in Britain has been able to provide an objective which is beneficial for Great Britain as a whole. However, there are some factors that affect the overall performance of each extreme right party which also lead to failure in terms of electoral terms. In this manner, the electoral system of the United Kingdom is perceived as one of the reasons why the extreme right is never been successful in electoral terms. Another important factor to consider is the little support that the extreme right parties are receiving.

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