SP11: BNP in Scotland...

In the Westminster General election of 2010 that punted the present mottled coalition into power, a queer thing happened in Banff and Buchan. Nationally, the British National Party attracted only 8,910 votes, standing in thirteen Scottish constituencies. Elsewhere, in primarily urban seats such as Glasgow and Dundee, the party managed only hundreds of votes - but Alex Salmond's old waddling ground up in the North East cast some 1,010 votes in favour of the BNP.

As I have noted here before, I'm from the opposite side of Scotland myself - head down and west and squint into the stinging surf of the Atlantic - so I could only examine Banff and Buchan's outstanding BNP result with a measure of bemused perplexity. At the time, commenter Doug Daniel, himself a north eastern loon, offered this account of the constituency's Westminster results. With that tucked away in the back of my mind, I was interested to see how the racist British Nationalists fared this time around, in particular in the North East Scotland regional ballot. 

In 2003, the BNP did not stand in the Scottish Parliament elections. In the 2007, they polled at 24,616 votes across the Scottish regional lists, 1.2% of the national poll and secured no parliamentarians. In the North East Scotland, the party secured only 2,764 votes, constituting just over 11% of the national BNP total.  Elsewhere in 2007, they attracted 4,125 votes in Central Scotland (16.8% of the party's national poll); 3,865 in Glasgow (15.7%); 2,152 in the Highlands and Islands (8.7%); 2,637 in the Lothians (10.7%); 2,620 in Mid-Scotland and Fife (10.6%), 3,212 in the South of Scotland (13.0%) and 3,241 in the West of Scotland (13.2%). In contrast with the Westminster result in Banff and Buchan, more generally, the North East comes in fifth of eight regions in terms of the magnitude of the BNP vote. 

So how fared the party, four years on? The answer, gratifyingly, is pretty disastrously.

Nationally, the BNP only managed 15,580 votes this time around - a vote share of 0.78%, a fall of 0.42% on their 2007 performance - and a whopping 9,036 fewer regional votes than they secured in the preceding Holyrood election. And on a regional basis? A shrinking BNP vote across the board. In Central Scotland, the most promising region for the BNP based on 2007's results, the party's support was cut in half, decreasing by 1,911 votes to only 2,214 in this election. 

In the Highlands and Islands, the region where the BNP vote was at its lowest ebb in 2007, recorded a contraction of a similar magnitude, the party's support decreasing by 1,018 votes to 1,134.

In my own region of Glasgow, BNP support fell by 1,441 votes to 2,424. 

In Lothian, 1,978, voters continued to exercise their franchise in the party's favour, albeit deserted by 659 erstwhile fellow travellers of 2007. 

In South Scotland, 2,017 voted BNP in 2011, a decrease of 1,195 votes. 

In Mid-Scotland and Fife, 1,726 folk supported the BNP, down by 894 on their 2007 support, while in West Scotland, 2,162 electors chose Nick Griffin's crew, a decreased turnout of 1,079. 

And our old eldritch friend, the North East? This time around, the region cast only 1,925 votes for the BNP, down 839, meaning the region casts fewer ballots for the racist BNP than every other region except Mid-Scotland and Fife and the Highlands and Islands.  If anything, the results simply makes more bemusing 2010's relative successes for the BNP in Banff and Buchan - suggesting that the result may best be explained by some curious local element which escapes my ken at this inscrutable distance. However, as a helpful mustelid has pointed out, all is not quite what it seems on the basis of the BNP figures. The National Front also stood in the North East region this time around, but nowhere else in the country. While the 640 votes it polled are easily overlooked in national terms (and I did precisely this), all of these votes were from the North East Region. When this divided racist vote is combined, National Front and BNP, the North East cast 2,565 votes for racist parties - overleaping the others as the pre-eminent fascist-supporting part of the country. While this bloc vote fell in 2011, the decrease was only in the magnitude of a couple of hundred.

In any case, it is cheering to see that the villains got the bum's rush all across the country, deserted by over a third of those Scots who supported them in 2007 and crashing to less than 1% of support nationally.  A re-elected SNP majority, the Labour Party crushed, the Liberals confounded, the Tories stymied and the BNP rapidly atrophying across the nation? As my classically effusive Scottish grandfather might have said, with a fond twinkle, "Not bad".

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.