Failure at the polls

Press, 2 September 1977, Page 13

Failure at the polls

Fascism is not about to engulf the British. Given the greater volitility of voting at by-elections, the average vote that the National Front has polled at by-elections during the present Parliament probably represents no real advance over the Front’s performance at the October, 1974, election.

In 11 by-elections the Front has contested the party has averaged 4.6 per cent of the votes cast. In terms of average votes, the Front in fact had already fallen back at each of the last two general elections, as these figures show: No. of can- Average didates 7. vote 1970 10 3.6 1974 Feb. 54 3.3 1974 Oct. 90 3.1

Where the Front has advanced is in terms of greatly increasing the number of candidates it has been able to put up, though it is far from certain that it will be able to achieve its published target of 318 at the next election. This figure was chosen symbolically — because it represents a bare majority of the House of Commons.

But familiarity appears to breed contempt and Front candidates tend to lose ground at their second foray in individual constituencies. The Front’s best performance in a

parliamentary election — and the only one of nearly 200 contests in which it has held its deposit — was at a by-election in West Bromwich in May, 1973, when the controversy over the Ugandan Asians was at its height. The Front polled 16 per cent.

Nor has the Front been all that more successful in local elections. where lower turnout and more concentrated electoral areas give greater scope for smaller parties to make their mark. It has yet to return a single councillor. (Two were elected for the breakaway National Party in Blackbum in 1976; but these were former Conservatives who were not opposed by Tory candidates). Much has been made of the Front’s success in pushing the Liberal Party into fourth place in 32 out of the 89 seats both parties contested in the Greater London council elections in May. Yet this reflected more the weakness of the Liberal Party than the strength of the Front, whose total vote in London was 5.5 per cent.

Its best effort in London was 19.2 per cent, in Bethnal Green and Bow, but it managed to poll more than 10 per cent in each of a string of 10 East End seats, where its share of

the votes was uncannily similar to that gained by Fascist candidates put up by Sir Oswald Mosley in the 19305. Yet again in most of these seats that the Front had contested before, its vote went down. Outside London there was the same picture in Mav of the Front failing to make any further progress in its areas of established strength. In Leicester its vote declined from 180 per cent to 13.5 per cent and in Bradford from 7.3 per cent to 4.4 per cent. Its highest average vote in the West Midlands this year was in Sandwell (which includes West Bromwich), where it was 9.6 per cent. The nearest that the Front has come to winning a seat was in the Abbey Ward of Leicester, in 1976, when its nominee was beaten by a mere 34 votes. There was also an extraordinary result at Deptford (the target for the Lewisham march) where at a by-election in July 1976 the successful Labour candidate polled 44.0 per cent against 26.4 per cent for the National Party and 18.0 per cent for the Front. Had there been only one racialist candidate in the field he might have been elected.

In general the Front has done best not in areas of high immigrant concentra-

tion (such as Ladywood) but in working-class wards nearby where exaggerated fears exist of the likely effects of immigrants moving in. These tend to be in safe Labour seats and the impression has grown that it is the Labour Party that is most seriously threatened by the intervention of the National Front. Yet, the Nuffield study of the October 1974 General Election concluded that where Front candidates had intervened the three major parties lost support in approximately equal amounts.

A survey published last month by the department of government at Essex University based on interviews with 2153 people found that 4 per cent of the electors said that they would be “very likely” to vote for the Front, if they thought the party would do well and a further 4 per cent “fairly likely.” Young poorly educated workingclass white voters were identified as the group most likely to support the party. Although its appeal is a cause for concern in particular areas there is little evidence that the National Front is anywhere near achieving a breakthrough in national political terms. — “Economist,” London.