GE2010: BNP in Scotland

On election night, constituencies flicker on and off the screen. Fleeting and sylph-like, if they're more or less safe houses, the cavalcade and hurly-burly of announcement and speculation  marches hastily by them. Triumphant horns are briefly tooted and the result is quickly reduced to just one pip in an accumulating partisan pip-pile. On Friday, one tiny detail in the Banff and Buchan result snatched my attention for a moment - and I made a mental note to return to the point once the Unseelie Court of election coverage collapsed into an exhausted pile, its pixie energy all spent. Obviously, I was exceedingly pleased to see Dr Eilidh Whiteford returned for the SNP. However, my grin slipped as my eyes bounced down the results - to see the BNP received no less than 1,010 disgraceful votes in that part of the North East. Surprised at the level of support, I betook me to wondering how the party did across the rest of the country. Here is what I've found.

In the full national results I posted up yesterday, you can easily spot that they gained 8,910 votes nationally, representing 0.4% of the total and an increase on previous levels of support of 0.3%. This looks significantly less than our last electoral outing. In the European Elections, the BNP received 27,174 votes - 2.5% of the national total.  However, in the General Election this macro angle is rather misleading. The BNP only stood in 13 constituencies across the country. In this sense, their national result isn't based on standing nationally. Here is how the far-right fared. The manner in which I've broken down the results should be reasonably self-explanatory.

Constituency	Votes	% of constituency	+/- %	% of total BNP vote
Banff and Buchan	1,010	2.6	+2.6	11.3
Gordon	699	1.4	+1.4	7.8
Aberdeen North	635	1.7	+1.7	7.1
Aberdeen South	529	1.2	+1.2	5.9
Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine	513	1.1	+1.1	5.8
Glasgow Central	616	2.0	-0.4	6.9
Glasgow East	677	2.1	+2.1	7.6
Glasgow North East	798	2.7	-0.5	9.0
Glasgow North	296	1.0	+1.0	3.3
Glasgow North West	699	2.0	+2.0	7.8
Glasgow South West	841	2.6	+2.6	9.4
Glasgow South	637	1.6	+1.6	7.1
Livingston	960	2.0	+2.0	10.8
Total	8910	0.4	+0.3	100.00

If we focus on Glasgow's seven seats, they furnish 4564 votes of the BNP's total number - some 51% of their national total. Glasgow NE has the highest % of the constituency vote - however in terms of actual ballots cast, Banff and Buchan had the highest BNP turnout, 50 votes more than the second-highest, in Livingston. Interestingly as the +/- percentages make clear, most of these are seats which have not been previously contested by the BNP. However, in those seats which the BNP have previously contested - Glasgow North East and Glasgow Central - the BNP vote fell slightly. There are reasons to be happier than the slight reduction in Glasgow North East would suggest. The chart's +/- percentage figure is based on 2005 voting figures of 920 votes, not the 2009 by-election result that sent Labour's Willie Bain to Westminster. In 2009, the BNP took 1,013 votes in Glasgow North East on a much lower turnout that last Thursday. Seeing the vote drop significantly this time around is obviously welcome.

None of which quite explains to me why Banff and Buchan is the stand-out result. Presumably the party must have had some basis - some hunch - to justify standing on the shores of the North Sea. If I had to speculate, one answer might be found in the 2009 European election results. While we can't pin down the total for Banff and Buchan specifically, in the Aberdeenshire Council area of which it is a  constitutive part, the BNP took 1,167 votes in 2009. While 2.6% is admittedly a slim slice of the total - to receive 1010 votes is still vilely high. And all the more concerning, since there is no more a cardiac constituency for the SNP than Banff and Buchan. Some people are disposed to argue that we have a problem with racism in Scotland. That problem is not per se that a racialising analysis must be present in some quarters - that seems difficult to deny - but that societally, we will not, cannot face up to and concede its existence. We tell ourselves fond stories about being welcoming to immigrants and muse flatteringly on what a guid folk we are. Beneath this virtuous gloss, in the unspoken and unspeakable penumbra, lurks a reality in which discrimination and racist violence abounds. In a classic Marxist sense, our ideology of innocence masks our racist practice. On this account, the imperative felt by the clear-eyed Scottish critic, faced with this fond fiction of openness and anti-racism, is to rend and tear down our beguiling veils, dissipate our illusions and insist that Scotland knows and confesses its own corruption.

I'd reply, up to a point, Lord Copper. As I argued after the by-election result in Glasgow North East in 2009, these stories about Scottish authenticity serve more than one function. If taken as a representation of reality -  the denial of all Scots racism, whether historically or contemporarily, is patently absurd.  Just as it would be misguided rubbish to suggest the same saintliness about our attitude to women and  conduct towards those who don't cleave to the modalities of heterosexual love. However, as I've argued before, there is also an aspirational element to telling stories about Scottish openness which we ought not too hastily  squander. Concede, as we must concede, for the sake of honesty, that Scottishness can be no vaccine to racism, homophobia, vicious misogyny. Let's not turn our heads when we encounter these ugly, tragic sights.  Justice and compassion calls for sympathetic attention. So much, so easily admitted. However, it is certainly not obvious to me that in the final analysis of this recognition of fallibility, the best conclusion is to reject the political discourse which accounts for Scots authenticity in terms of openness, friendliness and crucially non-racism.  

Mythologies can be rejected, written off as unrepresentative bunkum, falsified by human wickedness. Crucially, they can also be lived up to. For reasons that cry out for closer examination, and a better explanation, the voters of Banff and Buchan aren't all living up to this better history.