Time for nationalists to decide: are we serious?

Professional politicians are notorious for ‘spinning’ even the most unfavourable election results, looking for a silver lining to the darkest clouds.

As racial nationalists, we have to be more honest than these ‘spin doctors’. Last week’s elections were appalling. They reflected years of decline, years of factional division, years of vanity, years of crank obsessions, years of tolerating substandard conduct within our ranks.

One of the most decent and intelligent men in nationalism, Jim Lewthwaite, who was elected BNP councillor for Wyke ward in Bradford with 1,583 votes in 2004, and was runner-up with 701 votes in the same ward as a British Democrat candidate in 2019, polled only 140 votes (5.1%) in Wyke this year.

To his credit, Jim finished ahead of a Reform UK candidate, but the verdict of most of his old voters was “none of the above”.

In Hollinwood ward, Oldham, National Housing Party leader John Lawrence polled 205 votes (7.6%). Though far from the worst result in 2023, this followed twenty years of nationalist decline in Hollinwood and the surrounding area. In 2002 Oldham BNP organiser Mick Treacy achieved 736 votes (23.9%) here; a year later this fell slightly to 503 votes (22.8%) and a much diminished and divided BNP never contested Hollinwood again.

UKIP eventually picked up the disillusioned White working class vote in Hollinwood, polling 37.2% in 2014, 28.9% in 2015, 30.3% in 2016, and 25.9% in 2019.

John Lawrence and NHP grew out of activity in the Hollinwood area by ‘Tommy Robinson’ (formerly of the EDL). The party is anti-immigration though non-‘racist’. In 2022 Lawrence polled 174 votes (10.1%), falling to just 59 votes (3.7%) in a misfiring by-election campaign last November, and now bouncing back slightly to 7.6% this year.

For many reasons, partly connected to allegations of local government corruption and ‘grooming’ scandals, there should be enormous potential for racial nationalism in this ward and in the rest of Oldham. Yet quite clearly that potential is not being mined. This year three Asian Conservatives were elected in Hollinwood! The new Tory councillors include Kamran Ghafoor, who was convicted and fined in 2012 for offences under the Housing Act, after failing to ensure that a property he rented out was safe to live in.

Another nationalist failure was in Swanscombe ward, Dartford, where Britain First leader Paul Golding polled a fraction under 5%. Britain First is an anti-Islam, anti-immigration, but multiracialist party that (like the NHP) has recruited both from the EDL scene and among ex-BNP activists such as Golding himself. Golding had no opposition from Reform UK, UKIP or any of its splinter parties. This was a ward where UKIP polled 16.5% in 2019 and even higher votes in earlier years, yet despite fighting only seven wards across the whole of England this year, Britain First polled less than 5% here.

Compared to past years, when many of our potential voters were seduced either by UKIP, the Brexit Party, or Boris Johnson’s Tories, nationalists ought to have been pushing at an open door this year.

Rishi Sunak’s Tories have far less appeal to White working class Britons than their counterparts had in the Boris Johnson era. Brexit is no longer an issue, immigration remains out of control, and lower income families are hard-pressed by the cost of living crisis.

Yet British nationalism has suffered such damage (partly self-inflicted) during the past decade that hardly any of our candidates made a serious impact with voters.

There were very few honourable exceptions. Julian Leppert was an excellent councillor in Epping Forest, and although he lost his seat after four years on the council, his result (25.2%) stood out from a generally dismal crowd.

Yet even here, the question must be asked: why did the British Democrats (Julian’s party for the past year since the closure of For Britain) not begin leafletting the moment he joined their party?

Given that there were no elections in London this year, why were there not more activists out on the streets of Waltham Abbey for months before the campaign formally started, introducing the Brit Dems and highlighting Julian’s excellent record of fighting for local residents? (Again there are a few honourable exceptions: several Londoners did make the effort and should be commended for continuing to fly the flag for nationalism and avoiding disillusionment.)

Why are many nationalists in 2023 happier to protest about drag queens, or go on marches to promote conspiracy theories about CoViD, while seeming to lose interest in serious racial nationalism – especially the essential hard slog of election campaigning?

To be fair, the British Democrats have made considerable progress during the last year or two, recruiting several valuable activists. The real problems date back more than a decade, to the rapid collapse of Nick Griffin’s BNP.

When Andrew Brons narrowly failed to oust Griffin as BNP chairman in the leadership election of July 2011, it was obvious that a new party would soon be needed, yet it took years to get that party off the ground. More than 2,300 BNP members voted in that leadership election: 1,157 for Griffin and 1,148 for Brons. Probably fewer than 100 of these are today active in any nationalist party.

During recent weeks there have been arguments between Patriotic Alternative leaders and some of their former colleagues, now in the Homeland Party, about whether PA has made sufficient efforts to register as a political party, and to convert its undoubted success online into “real world” activity.

I don’t intend to take sides in that argument, because I don’t know the full facts.

But questions need to be asked as to why so many nationalists are happier on social media than on doorsteps. This applies to civic nationalists in Reform UK, UKIP and its splinters, even more than to racial nationalists.

Part of the problem is defeatism, engendered by a style of politics that overemphasises conspiracies and the presumed power of our enemies.

Of course we face great obstacles – legal, financial, and political – but these are far from insuperable. Nationalist campaigns have repeatedly punched above our weight and shocked the political establishment – especially in Burnley, Oldham, Blackburn, Barking & Dagenham and many other council areas during the 2000s – but for whatever reason, we no longer seem capable of delivering at the ballot box.

Some nationalists argue that elections are a waste of time, but they have so far failed to explain an alternative strategy.

As far back as the 1980s, Steve Brady (then a member of the National Front Directorate) explained a “ladder strategy” by which nationalists could establish networks of local branches by building on local community campaigning. Elections are certainly not the only element of this strategy, but if nationalists aren’t capable of organising a serious local election campaign, how are any of us supposed to believe that they can lead a racial nationalist revolution?

As we have consistently argued in H&D, there are only two good reasons to be involved in politics. First, to present an ideologically solid solution to the problems of our race and nation, educating the best of our new recruits. Second, to build towards gaining power, locally and eventually nationally, so as to put this ideology into action.

Sometimes one of these objectives has to be prioritised over the other; sometimes they can work in parallel; sometimes different nationalists have to devote their efforts to one or the other.

Tragically what we are left with in 2023 is a movement that too often fulfils neither objective – instead abandoning serious ideology to pursue crank fads (often imported online from the USA) that are of no relevance to the racial nationalist cause, but also have no substantial appeal to the British electorate.

Three good examples are a trio of intellectually flimsy, unBritish, indeed anti-British and anti-European political cults: Trumpism, anti-vaxxism, and Putinism.

If any individual nationalist truly believes that Donald Trump presents a genuine challenge to the New World Order; or that vaccinations and even the pandemic itself were some sort of scam or conspiracy; or that the brutal anti-European dictator Vladimir Putin is in some sense a champion of traditional European values – then they are welcome to pursue these eccentric views.

But once any or all of these cults infect a nationalist party or movement, they become a toxic threat to our cause. The vast majority of British voters will never believe that CoViD vaccinations were a mass poisoning plot; they will never take Donald Trump seriously; and they will never support Putin’s semi-Asiatic hordes.

The inevitable unpopularity of these causes would not matter if any of them were essential to our core racial nationalist ideology: but they aren’t. At best they are a distraction, at worst a fatal liability.

Urgent priorities for rebuilding nationalism in 2023 should involve identifying topical issues in target wards: questions of immediate local concern that can be explained to voters in ways that make the underlying ideology of racial nationalism clearly relevant to their daily lives.

We have the great advantage that truth is on our side, and truth cannot be suppressed forever. And we should avoid the tempting excuse that the system is rigged, or that ‘they’ control everything so there’s no point in any form of practical resistance other than ranting on social media.

The political conspirator Cassius, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, tells a comrade:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.“

In 2023 racial nationalists should not blame the system, or the media, or our opponents. Such obstacles will always exist. But with sufficient will and intelligence, they can be overcome.