How 'Right-Wing' Is The BNP?

The British National Party is often referred to as 'right-wing' or even 'far-right', but is this actually the case?

The former cabinet minister, Lord Tebbit, certainly believes the term 'right-wing' is erroneously applied to the BNP. The following letter was published in The Daily Telegraph's letters page on the 21st April 2006:

Left-wing BNP

Sir - It is of some comfort that the Labour Party at least, even if not yet the Tories, has woken up to the threat posed by the BNP, because it has ceased to understand or listen to its own supporters when they express their concerns about multiculturalism, the levels of immigration and lack of integration that are affecting our great cities.

However, it remains of concern that even The Daily Telegraph (Comment, April 18) persists in so misunderstanding the BNP as to describe it as "an extreme Right-wing party". I have carefully re-read the BNP manifesto of 2005 and am unable to find evidence of Right-wing tendencies.

On the other hand, there is plenty of anti-capitalism, opposition to free trade, commitments to "use all non-destructive means to reduce income inequality", to institute worker ownership, to favour workers' co-operatives, to return parts of the railways to state ownership, to nationalise the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and to withdraw from NATO. That sounds pretty Left-wing to me.

Certainly the BNP poses as a patriotic party opposed to multiculturalism, and it has racist overtones, but there is no lack of patriotic Left-wing regimes; opposition to multiculturalism is now mainstream and racialism was not unknown even in the Soviet Union.

So what is "extreme Right-wing" about the BNP?

Lord Tebbit, London SW1

Economics

Lord Tebbit is correct, at least in terms of the BNP's economic policies. This is evident from even a cursory glance at the party's website which endores the 'renationalisation of monopoly utilities and services', it elaborates:

The economy should be managed for the benefit of the nation. The other parties are enslaved to laissez-faire globalism, which means that British workers must compete against those in China and India who work for as little as a pound a day. Oriental countries such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore have managed their economies to combine private enterprise competition with the national good, and these are the models the BNP would emulate.

In a world in which irreplaceable natural resources are being depleted at an alarming rate we have a duty to our children and future generations to move towards economic growth which is socially, environmentally and economically sustainable in the long-term, rather than the present ‘boom and bust’ policies.

Immigration

I imagine that many people will say that the BNP are 'right-wing' because of the party's opposition to immigration. Conversely, I would argue that importing unskilled labour to artificially suppress wages is itself fundamentally 'right-wing'. The fact is that politicians have, for years, brazenly stated that 'immigrants do the jobs which Britons are too lazy to do'. The reality is that the wages offered are below the market-clearing equilibrium or, more likely, that the benefit system interferes with the labour market.

Importing labour is only a temporary solution, and one that has huge social and economic consequences - as it maintains unemployment, rather than addressing the problem of why there are unfilled vacancies. Furthermore the imported work force may well become dependent on the benefit system themselves, especially in times of high unemployment.

With regard to skilled labour, is it 'left-wing' to poach the third world's most able citizens? Surely the most impoverished people need their doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs more than we do? The reality is that if the NHS paid its staff a decent wage, it wouldn't be dependent on foreign doctors and nurses in the first place! Is maintaining low taxes at the expense of the most desperate and poverty-stricken peoples in the world 'right-wing' or 'left-wing'?


Globalism

The BNP is clearly opposed to globalism, as one would expect from an ethno-nationalist party. However, is that indicative of a 'right-wing' or a 'left-wing' ideology?

The biggest beneficiaries of globalism are the multinational corporations and the international finance houses. They would like to sweep away borders which they see as impediments to the free movement of labour, capital and commodities, as well as the inconvenience of having to negotiate different legal systems and currencies. This is why the European peoples have had little say in their countries' integration into a European supranational state - the European Union. Is pandering to multinationals 'left-wing' or 'right-wing'?


Law and Order

The BNP is, of course, in favour of the restitution of capital and corporal punishment. Now this is widely considered to be 'right-wing', yet China executes more criminals than any other other country, yet is ostensibly Communist! The old pre-war Labour Party was not committed to abolishing hanging, either, yet it would be considered a proper 'left-wing' party by most people, unlike New Labour.


Conclusion

Personally, I feel that the terms 'right-wing' and 'left-wing' are antiquated and simply not applicable to modern politics. Take, for example, the English Defence League, who are also castigated by the media as being 'far-right' - despite the fact they have Sikh, Jewish and gay 'divisions'. Excluding their opposition to Islamic extremism, they are exponents of multiculturalism. Yet, if one looks at extremist Islamic societies like Somalia, in which a teenage rape victim was stoned to death for adultery, one has to wonder why opposition to such an illiberal ideology is considered 'far-right'? The answer is that it is simply a slur used to stigmatise those groups that are a threat to the status quo.