Kenny Farquharson: No room for complacency

Published on Saturday 7 November 2009 19:03

FORECASTING the results of by-elections is a mug's game. So here goes. It's pretty much a dead cert that Labour will win the Glasgow North-East by-election this coming Thursday, with the SNP in second place. What's less certain, and what could end up being the story of the night, is who will come in third. And in particular, whether that prize will go to the British National Party.

There is enough anecdotal evidence from the constituency to suggest the BNP's message of intolerance, ignorance and fear has found a ready echo among a minority of Glasgow voters. Friends of mine who have spent time in the constituency in recent weeks – some as journalists, some as canvassers – have been taken aback at the nakedly racist comments they have heard in the streets and on the doorsteps.

Those of us who adhere to a noble concept of Scotland as "a mongrel nation", inclusive and welcoming, where regardless of colour or creed or sexual preference we're all Jock Tamson's bairns, are sometimes too easily lulled into believing this is a truth. It isn't. It's an aspiration requiring a constant process of persuasion against deep prejudice. The mistake too often made by well-meaning people – those in charge of housing asylum seekers in Glasgow, to use one pertinent example – is that everyone shares this feeling of generosity and munificence. Many do. Many don't. This shouldn't be a surprise.

If the BNP fail to come third on Thursday it will be scant consolation. The reason will be that many of its natural supporters come from a section of society not known for its engagement with the political process. The fact that supporters of fascists can't be arsed to vote should lend us only a little comfort. They are still part of the fabric of Scottish society, drinking in the same bars as the rest of us, shopping in the same Tesco and sending children to the same schools.

I've no truck with the commentators who argue that BNP supporters are just ordinary decent people who have simply become disillusioned with the political process, as if this somehow explained or even excused their behaviour. Nonsense. They're bigots and racists, and no amount of disconnect with mainstream politics can justify or excuse their hateful white supremacist tosh.

It's a comforting cop-out to dismiss them as stupid or misguided. The alternative – that they are sentient citizens who genuinely believe what they say – is far less comforting, but we mustn't shrink from it. Nor is it in any way more "understandable" to support the BNP if you are poor, ill-educated, unemployed or living in a deprived area. That's an insult to those in such circumstances whose response to hardship is an instinctive and generous communitarianism. My instinct on this is similar to John Major's on violent criminals – that we should "condemn a little more and understand a little less". Because are BNP supporters really that hard to understand?

This by-election campaign, coinciding as it did with Nick Griffin's appearance on the BBC's Question Time, may end up doing Scotland a service if it allows us to take a good long look at what some of our fellow Scots think and forces us to stop making assumptions that simply flatter our self-regard. The kind of pluralist, multicultural Scotland that I want my sons to grow up in needs to be fought for, not taken for granted. We need to face a disagreeable and inconvenient truth: that some Scots are deeply unpleasant racists.

For some politicians at least, the penny seems to have dropped. They are beginning to realise that cack-handedness and lazy assumptions have tainted policies on which the vast majority of the population should be able to agree – for example, the fair and humane treatment of genuine asylum seekers and the pressing need for suitably skilled immigrants to boost our economy. Home Secretary Alan Johnson last week admitted that Labour had been complacent in its assumptions, underestimating the breadth and depth of public anger on such issues. Johnson said the problems of unreturned foreign prisoners and failed asylum-seekers "continued to be ignored for far too long on our watch". It was a brave admission from an admirable politician (albeit one who, disappointingly, seems to lack the appetite for the top job).

So, how worried should we in Scotland be about the BNP? There is a view I've encountered among political strategists that the BNP could do disproportionately well here because the other party of refuge for those disillusioned with mainstream politics – the UK Independence Party – has so little traction north of the Border. (It's Nigel Farage's blazers, if you ask me – he just looks too much like the captain of a stockbroker belt golf club.) There may be something in this, and it's a worry.

So is the effect of the recession. The housing market may be picking up but we're not out of the slump yet, and unemployment continues to rise. And yes, some will use this as a justification to give voice to unjustified resentments about "them" taking "our" jobs. It's times like these we need to be extra vigilant.

I hope the BNP get a real gubbing on Thursday night. I hope they lose their deposit by a country mile. I hope the people of Glasgow North-East show us all that no matter how angry they are with money-grabbing politicians, no matter how worried they are about their jobs, no matter the distance between their daily experience and the preoccupations of a smug political elite, they will recognise the BNP for what it is – a gang of thugs wearing rosettes.

But regardless of the result, complacency about the far right in Scottish politics would be foolish and naive.