Poll: Huge support for far right "if they gave up violence"

[Bernkastel]

From the Guardian.

Huge numbers of Britons would support an anti-immigration English nationalist party if it was not associated with violence and fascist imagery, according to the largest survey into identity and extremism conducted in the UK.

A Populus poll found that 48% of the population would consider supporting a new anti-immigration party committed to challenging Islamist extremism, and would support policies to make it statutory for all public buildings to fly the flag of St George or the union flag. Anti-racism campaigners said the findings suggested Britain's mainstream parties were losing touch with public opinion on issues of identity and race. The poll suggests that the level of backing for a far-right party could equal or even outstrip that in countries such as France, the Netherlands and Austria. France's National Front party hopes to secure 20% in the first round of the presidential vote next year. The Dutch anti-Islam party led by Geert Wilders attracted 15.5% of the vote in last year's parliamentary elections.

Anti-fascist groups said the poll's findings challenged the belief that Britons were more tolerant than other Europeans. "This is not because British people are more moderate, but simply because their views have not found a political articulation," said a report by the Searchlight Educational Trust, the anti-fascist charity that commissioned the poll. According to the survey, 39% of Asian Britons, 34% of white Britons and 21% of black Britons wanted all immigration into the UK to be stopped permanently, or at least until the economy improved. And 43% of Asian Britons, 63% of white Britons and 17% of black Britons agreed with the statement that "immigration into Britain has been a bad thing for the country". Just over half of respondents – 52% – agreed with the proposition that "Muslims create problems in the UK".

Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP who fought a successful campaign against the British National party in his Dagenham and Rainham constituency in east London, said that the findings pointed to a "very real threat of a new potent political constituency built around an assertive English nationalism". The report identified a resurgence of English identity, with 39% preferring to call themselves English rather than British. Just 5% labelled themselves European. Earlier this month David Cameron delivered a controversial speech on the failings of "state multiculturalism". The speech was seized on by the anti-Islamic English Defence League, which said that the prime minister was "coming round" to its way of thinking. BNP leader Nick Griffin also welcomed the speech as a sign that his party's ideas were entering "the political mainstream".

The poll also identified a majority keen to be allowed to openly criticise religion, with 60% believing they "should be allowed to say whatever they believe about religion". By contrast, fewer than half – 42% – said "people should be allowed to say whatever they believe about race".

To say that I find this worrying is an understatement. I suppose at least the section on a majority favouring being able to openly criticise religion can be taken as some good news from this.

[Aaron]

Is there some particular reason why Brits don't feel they can criticize religion openly?

[Bernkastel]

I would make a guess at it being a matter of politeness and not caring enough about religion to do so. Really, to me it is a fairly minor piece of news and I expected the number to be higher.

[Zaune]

Is there some particular reason why Brits don't feel they can criticize religion openly?

You can. What you can't do is ridicule it, demand it be forcibly suppressed and/or insinuate that everyone who follows it is a wannabe-suicide bomber whilst pretending to merely criticise it, because the steadily-decreasing population of civilised human beings in this country are not quite as stupid as the tabloids seem to think we are.

[Aaron]

Right, so no hate speech, just like in Canada.

[Teebs]

Isn't what the article proposes pretty much identical to UKIP? That party's success outside EU elections has been virtually non-existent despite plenty of funding and such.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

This isn't exactly a great surprise. None of the major parties have a really coherent, effective policy on immigration, whether in favour of it or not, and nobody's really willing to talk about the subject openly and frankly. As a result, people are forming more extreme views on the matter than they might otherwise, not least because the silence of the large parties on the issue allows shitheads like the BNP and EDL to monopolise the dialogue. The fact that we're still in economic trouble doesn't help; people are always more anti-immigrant during economic downturns.

[Sinewmire]

There's a lot of dissatisfaction with all three main political parties, too.

Labour have a bad track record of individual liberties, and they led us into Iraq. The Conservatives are demolishing and selling off the state as fast as they can, and generally acting like the heartless uncaring toffs they always were. The Liberal Democrats have shown their true colours with a taste of power and are as bad as the tories.

That's the broad stereotype *I* get anyway. So it's not surprising that people are looking for a new option, and in desperate times, as we all know, wackos get more spotlight.

[cosmicalstorm]

Here in Sweden the immigration system is widely abused, lies about family-relations, age, origin is widespread. There are homes for "lone coming children" which charge thousands of dollars per day/child* for their operations, its common to read about homes where there is 1 or 1.5 caretakers per child, while they are putting two cups of coffee a day limits on the retirement homes.
Sweden refuses to perform simple age-testings such as X-raying the molars of people who claim to be under the age of 18 because that might be "discrimination". When they started doing that in other European countries it was discovered that a large percent where obviously not under the age of 18. If you are an under-aged immigrant you are virtually guaranteed a permanent citizenship, and once you have that you have the right to family-reunification, the rest of you're family can be brought here and given permanent citizenship. Somehow these "lone coming children" have a strange tendency to find their families within a very short time of gaining citizenship, Swedish journalists routinely hails this as a great success of the immigration-system. The number of immigrants claiming to be underaged has exploded from a couple of dozen/year during the 90's to thousands per year recently. Nobody is willing to criticize this and other flaws in the system. In public debates it's common to equal what I just said with being a crazed Neo-nazi and the replies are often filled with empty words such as "showing solidarity, being openminded and not narrowminded" and so on. There is also a tendency to only assign cultural background with positive effects, it introduces interesting music and foodstuffs. But when there are honor-killings, anti-Semitic attacks, rapes and so on, this must always be explained with something else or quietly ignored and under reported. This and many other things creates a lot of frustration, but all the major political parties in Sweden have so far refused to touch this subject, thus giving way for extremist political parties. The growing of these parties is then explained in news-papers by inferring that the people voting for them are stupid and poor and such.

(My personal suspicion is that we would help far more poor people if we took the billions of Euros paid yearly to support 20.000-35.000 Somali and Arab immigrants, and instead used it to lobby Brussels to remove the European Unions market access restrictions, export subsidies, domestic support systems and so on.)

[Eleas]

This is not my experience with immigration in Sweden, nor with acceptable levels of discourse. Yes, it's an unfortunate fact that such arguments gets you conflated with Sverigedemokraterna and neo-Nazis, but that's in no small part due to the fact that their rhetoric is superficially similar.

cosmicalstorm, before you think I'm tarring you with the same brush, note that I said "superficially". My argument is that the extremists are using your language (that of frustration) while infusing it with a decidedly different meaning. You can say "I'm not happy about how the immigrant situation is being handled," and it's all well and good, but can't separate those words from the fact that they're a decent opening line at a BSS meeting.

Beyond that, I think you're forgetting some things. For one, we too have a plethora of honour killings; they're just not called that. For another, I have yet to see a credible study linking immigration with a preponderance of rapes; "native" Swedes are quite capable of shoring up their end of the statistics in that regard. However, the legend of the swarthy foreigner who wants to rape all the wimminfolk is an ingrained one since before The Lustful Turk first went to print, and it's all too often taken as fact.

That doesn't make the immigrant situation hunky-dory, mind, but it's not and should not be presented as an "us or them" equation. That shit's dehumanizing enough as it is.

Could we maybe go back to discussing the OP now?

[cosmicalstorm]

Yes, you make good points. Swedish people are no angels either. I get too carried away sometimes and I will not start a huge debate here.
To sum it up, my experience of immigration policy and the debate that surrounds it here in Sweden is that there is a lack of critical examination of it.
To me it seems that a lot of people in the major newspapers, TV-channels and in politics have decided that the current version of multi-culture and immigration-policy is going to be a great thing and nothing is going to stop that. Now they are blowing up the positive aspects and ignoring, downplaying and trying to shift the blame away with negative aspects. This is my subjective experience and obviously it may be wrong. I certainly don't believe in superior races and any nonsense like that.

[Eleas]

Yes, you make good points. Swedish people are no angels either. I get too carried away sometimes and I will not start a huge debate here.
To sum it up, my experience of immigration policy and the debate that surrounds it here in Sweden is that there is a lack of critical examination of it.

Appreciated. Likewise, re: your summary, not only do I agree, but I'd say the tendency extends beyond immigration and beyond Sweden. It's all those little nagging issues that a) somehow never get properly addressed and b) aren't at all minor.

(To give just one example of that, when was the last time people spoke about the fact that election promises aren't supposed to be actual promises? I seem to be alone in thinking questions of that sort deserve to be repeated until an answer is found, yet we see it happening, over and over, in every country that vaguely bothers holding elections.)

[weemadando]

Is there some particular reason why Brits don't feel they can criticize religion openly?

A lot of it would come down to the same bullshit that we get in Australia every year where some right wing "journalists" and radio hosts start bullshit stories about how Nativity scenes are banned or Easter isn't allowed to be talked about in schools, but that we all have to learn about Ramadan.

It's always just fear-mongering to create the impression amongst the populous that their culture is under attack and the government is complicit in it.

[Rye]

Right, so no hate speech, just like in Canada.

It's not just hate speech really, the main contentious point is controversial speech. There's a worrying trend of the police where a quiet life = a better life for everyone. As a result it's easy to feel a bit oppressed if you want to say something someone will inevitably call offensive or islamophobic or antireligious.

The BNP et al are protest votes more than ideological ones. Immigration is a hot potato issue that people have wildly varying opinions on, and the most popular one tends to be the "close our borders as much as we can" line because people don't really see the benefits of immigration up close. Instead all they see are insular conservative communities bringing in TB, having more babies and fostering terrorism and crime and soforth, because that's what the media will report.

You could probably resolve it in a publicly acceptable way by only allowing female immigrants in, lol.

[Hillary]

Is there some particular reason why Brits don't feel they can criticize religion openly?

I think "religion" in this case is code for "Islam".

[Big Orange]

The spread of faith schools in the UK under the blessings of Tony Blair will not help the more poorer, socially fragmented urban communites in the medium to long run (faith teaching by either by Islam or Christianity), plus when Labour let rip with the immigration we had a housing bottleneck (with home construction at the lowest ebb in eight decades).

And here's the results of the recent Barnsley by-elections, with may set a standard for local elections, with LibDems falling behind the blowhard UKIP and even more batshit BNP, though they themselves got low votes in relation to Labour (who had a MP in Barnsley who got busted):

Lib Dems slump to sixth as Labour win Barnsley poll

Labour have won the Barnsley Central by-election, while the Lib Dems slipped to sixth in the South Yorkshire seat.

UKIP, the Conservatives, the BNP and an independent all finished ahead of the Lib Dems, who came second in the seat in last May's general election.

Winning candidate Dan Jarvis said it sent a message to the coalition but Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said people should not "write off" the party.

UKIP reacted to coming second by saying they were "the winners" in the poll.

The by-election was caused by the conviction of former Labour MP Eric Illsley for dishonestly claiming parliamentary expenses.

'Poor result'

Illsley - who quit as an MP in January - held Barnsley Central with a majority of just over 11,000 in last year's general election and 47% of the vote, with the Liberal Democrats in second place.

But the MP resigned his seat after pleading guilty to falsely claiming £14,000 in parliamentary expenses. He was later jailed for a year.

Labour got 14,724 votes in the by-election, extending their majority slightly to 11,771, but the turnout fell to 36.5%, compared with 56.4% at the last general election.

Labour took 60.8% of the vote, UKIP's Jane Collins 12.19%, the Conservatives' James Hockney 8.25%, the BNP's Enis Dalton 6.04%, Independent Tony Devoy 5.23% and the Liberal Democrats' Dominic Carman 4.18%.

Mr Carman lost his deposit as the party's share of the vote fell from 17.2% in the 2010 general election to 4.1%. He said: "The voters here in Barnsley have given me and the Liberal Democrats a kicking. We can take it."

Reacting to the result, Mr Clegg said there had been an "abysmally" low turnout and all the parties had been left to "pick up the pieces".

He told Sky News that he had no doubt people would seek to "write off" the Lib Dems on the basis of a single result.

"We have proved them wrong in the past and we will prove them wrong again," he said, adding that the party was committed to continuing to work hard to clear up the "economic mess" the government had inherited.

'Talents wasted'

Mr Jarvis, a 38-year-old former soldier who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, said the people of Barnsley Central were sending the "strongest possible message" to David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

"Your reckless policies, your broken promises and unfair cuts are letting our country down," he said.

"I grew up in Margaret Thatcher's Britain. I remember how angry it made me feel. Whole communities abandoned to unemployment, public services run down, talents wasted, opportunities taken away.

"Thatcher was wrong then and Cameron is wrong now."

UKIP leader Nigel Farage welcomed the party's performance - which saw it nearly double its share of the vote. "We are the winners tonight," he said. "We have come from nowhere to come second in this election."

The by-election is only the second since the coalition government took power last May, the other being January's contest for Oldham East and Saddleworth which Labour also won comfortably.

BBC political correspondent Ross Hawkins said the result would be a real concern for the Lib Dems ahead of May's English council elections although it remained to be seen whether the slump in their support was a one-off or a sign of a wider trend.

BBC