A thick, invisible fog has settled over the British Isles of late. Call it depression, the onset of winter or maybe a Dementor attack, but everyone seems a tad ... sad. A little hopeless. A lot dissatisfied.
The recession has hit rural England particularly hard. In the counties surrounding London to the north, the winding country roads are blemished by boarded buildings, vacant pubs or orange cones. Some say that the expansive, unending road works filling the sky with concrete dust are Prime Minister Gordon Brown's last ditch attempt to prove that the Labor Party has actually achieved something in the last decade.
But despite the effort, it may be too little too late. Britain is tearing up its socialist roots and traversing a path back to conservatism. In the coming election, the Labor Party will most likely have to rescind its borrowed power to Conservative Party Leader David Cameron. The Tories will rule the Isle once again, as they did for two-thirds of the twentieth century. Brown was a disappointment, so it's natural for the British to look across the aisle for relief.
However, there is a deeper, more worrying trend as the U.K. seeks old ties for new problems. In June, the British National Party won their first ever seats in European Parliament. This victory for the BNP underlines a sentiment currently ignored by mainstream politics: the idea that immigration and over-crowding, fueled by job losses and an impertinent recession, is the reason behind Britain's misery.
Infamous BNP leader Nick Griffin, an unequivocally bigoted man with a big mouth and no concern for political correctness, believes that the answer to the immigration strain is to close the floodgates, and return majority power to the "indigenous" population of Great Britain. Griffin defines "indigenous" as those who are descended from post-Ice Age settlers. He denied, when asked, that what he really wanted to say was "white."
Despite the apparent disgust - internationally as well as at home - at Nick Griffin and his nationalism, the fact is that he is not alone. In fact, Nick Griffin is representative of a very vibrant community, whether modern Britain admits it or not. It might be a small population, but it nevertheless exists, and often quite close to home. There are more than 10,000 members in the British National Party group on Facebook, and if you happen to be British, it's likely that more than a few of them are people you know.
Contrary to popular belief, the BNP is not a figment of our imagination. When Griffin talks about preserving "British sovereignty, British freedom" and preventing Britain from being "invaded by foreigners," he is the mouthpiece of a very real portion of the population. But it is a portion that has learned to be silent over the years... unlike the Twitterers of the liberal Western World, they keep their mouths shut. It's easier. It's also much more dangerous in an age of virtual communication. We all risk underestimating the silent population by assuming that the cacophony of the Internet is an accurate summation of real life. Twitter and Facebook were filled with hateful comments aimed at Nick Griffin during the controversial - and very entertaining - episode of Question Time recently ... but no doubt plenty of people were applauding his words at home.
The big question is why? And the guests of the political debate show hit the nail on the head. Host David Dimbleby asked Secretary of State Jack Straw whether or not the "rise" of the BNP (meaning the new found legitimacy provided by the European Parliament and its voters) is due to Labor's immigration policies.
"If you want to know why the BNP won in the Northwest and in Yorkshire in June," said Straw, "it was a lot to do with discontent with all the political parties."
To which Sayeeda Warsi, the Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion, added: "There are many people who feel that the pace of change in their communities has been too fast, and that the government has not properly resourced those particular areas to respond to that change. This is a debate about resources and the mainstream political parties have a responsibility to take on this debate, and to actually tackle the underlying issues that are making some people vote for the BNP."
Whenever an idea or sentiment in the social ideology is ignored, no matter how small the population that believes it, a dangerous void is left waiting to be filled. For those who feel sidelined in the immigration debate, the BNP has become a solution - albeit an extreme one.
"There are many, many people out there who vote for the British National Party who are not racist," said Warsi. "What we have to do is we have to go out and say to those people, as mainstream political parties, [that] we are prepared to listen, we are prepared to deal with this, and you do not have to turn to a racist, fascist party who have their own agenda to deliver the solutions on your concerns."
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BNP could be on Question Time every year, says BBC
