Alistair Barbour is out canvassing in Carlisle city centre and he is being pretty well-received on the doorstep. In one sense there is nothing surprising about that. The 43-year-old gas-fitter is a local man. With two teenage kids and two step-children, his background is similar to those of the people on whose doors he is knocking. And he has a rough-edged charm and a good sense of when to make an easy joke, or a swift political jibe \u2013 or a diplomatic retreat when the door is opened by a bleary-eyed woman in a pink dressing gown who announces: \u201cI\u2019m on nights.\u201d<\/p>\n
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One door is slammed in his face as soon as the woman who opens it catches a glimpse of his rosette bearing the words British National Party. And another voter refuses to take the election envelope he proffers, saying: \u201cI work for the NHS.\u201d But most doors are opened and Mr Barbour is given a friendly reception.<\/p>\n
For the past six weeks, he has been pounding the streets full-time, talking to the ward\u2019s 3,500 voters ahead of a by-election this Thursday. His agenda is restoring weekly bin collections, repairing broken streetlights, filling potholes in the road, tackling litter in the street and cleaning up the dog dirt. But of those who are pleased to see him, almost all want to talk about something else: the BNP\u2019s policy of housing British people before immigrants and giving pensioners priority on hospital waiting lists.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always voted Labour,\u201d says Winifred Elliott, 80, opening the door of her terraced house on Wigton Road, \u201cbut look at the state of the country. Immigration is the main thing and Labour have made that worse. I\u2019ll definitely vote for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re too small a country to take this number of immigrants,\u201d says Thomas Brecken, 85, \u201cand as for the EU we definitely want to be out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really great that you are giving the area so much attention,\u201d says Amanda Fisher, 25, a programme support manager in the NHS, who sports a curved bar through her lower lip. \u201cNo one else bothers to come round. With all my piercings, I know about stereotypes and it\u2019s clear that what you stand for is nothing like the stereotype people have of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are far from isolated views. At the last election in west Cumbria two months ago, the BNP came within 16 votes of overturning a majority of more than 1,000 in what used to be one of the safest Labour county council seats in the region, in the Kells and Sandwith ward of Whitehaven. Revealingly, the party drew support from both the massive run-down council estate of Kells and the village of Sandwith, a previously Tory area.<\/p>\n
The BNP\u2019s electoral success there is part of a nationwide shift in fortunes. Earlier this month, the party captured a Labour council seat in Sevenoaks in Kent and had a near miss in the London borough of Bexley. It took 28 per cent of the vote at Thringstone in Leicestershire. And it is now beefing up its electoral machine across the country ahead of the local elections in June.<\/p>\n
Most significantly, its national chairman, Nick Griffin, has a realistic chance of becoming the BNP\u2019s first MEP in the European elections the same day in June. He is standing in the North West region, which includes Cumbria but stretches down through Liverpool and Manchester to Chester. The BNP polled 6.8 per cent there last time. Under the proportional representation system, an increase to just 8 per cent could secure him a seat. The party, which got 40 per cent of the vote in Kells, could well achieve the breakthrough that would give it access to \u00a3250,000 from the public purse in salaries, resources and office costs. It could gain an MEP in the Yorkshire and Humberside region too. An extra 40 voters in every ward could be sufficient.<\/p>\n
So what has brought about this change in the fortunes of the BNP, which was once regarded as an electoral no-hoper?<\/p>\n
\u201cJust three or four years ago when we gave out anti-immigration leaflets people wouldn\u2019t take them or just ripped them up,\u201d admits Clive Jefferson, the party\u2019s North West elections officer. \u201cBut we have offered the electorate a viable alternative, common-sense policies and candidates who are normal people who live amongst them. They can see that we\u2019re not tattooed skinhead thugs. And a lot of people agree with what we\u2019re saying.\u201d<\/p>\n
The evidence on the streets of Carlisle seems to bear out that contention. At one point, Mr Barbour was stopped across the road from the Cumberland Infirmary by a middle-aged woman. \u201cUntil recently I thought the BNP were just a bunch of racist swine,\u201d Mandy Foster, 42, an office systems administrator told me. \u201cBut I knew Alistair, who lives locally, and knew he was a good bloke and thought if he had got involved it was worth taking a look at. When you look at the way people can\u2019t get jobs, everything is crime-ridden and there is nothing for the kids on the street to do, the BNP are the only party who are honest about all that. I think the party has really changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
But has it? The night before I had travelled to Whitehaven to a gathering of BNP supporters in a pub in the ward in which the party\u2019s candidate, Simon Nicholson, 35, in December recorded the highest percentage ever polled by the BNP.<\/p>\n
His agenda too had been resolutely local. \u201cI stood because I was fed up of the way Labour had treated us because they had always got 80 per cent of the vote in Kells,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is a sink estate and yet it never got the attention they gave to marginals. It was 20 years since anyone knocked on my door and the kids\u2019 swings were getting wrecked, there were potholes in the road, dog shit everywhere and anti-social kids hanging around with no one doing anything about them. And there were other issues like paedophiles.\u201d About 20 of his supporters had gathered in the pub. What other issues, I asked, and set off a cataract of indignation from the assembled company: \u201cBritish jobs going to immigrants\u201d;; \u201cMy dad is a Normandy veteran; I want the borders back that he fought for\u201d; \u201cThe teddy bear called Mohamed\u201d; \u201cMy wife was spat at at a bus-stop in an Asian area\u201d; \u201cThe higher birth-rates of Asian families are putting stress on maternity services\u201d.<\/p>\n
The emphasis was more on what they are against rather than what they are for, though they were keen on capital punishment for murderers of children and policemen. A 94-year-old ex-paratrooper called Gordon Savage, who had fought at Arnhem, wanted the EU \u201cto give our fishing industry back to our fishermen\u201d.<\/p>\n
One of the things they were most against was Islam. Preachers of hate, veiled women, and the dual allegiance of British Muslims like the \u201cLeeds lads who bombed London\u201d drew particular criticism as did the Archbishop of Canterbury\u2019s statement that the advent of some sharia law in Britain was inevitable: \u201cThe Church of England is all Marxist rubbish with no traditional values left in it\u201d; \u201cI\u2019m not really a religious person but the fact that we can\u2019t celebrate our own religion in our own country annoys me.\u201d<\/p>\n
But most scorn was reserved for the Labour Government: \u201cGordon Brown is throwing billions at the banks but can\u2019t help the old people dying in Whitehaven because they can\u2019t afford to heat their houses\u201d; \u201cHBOS was worth \u00a3240bn but they can\u2019t find \u00a32,000 a month for my mate\u2019s cancer drugs.\u201d; \u201cBrown is just a Conservative, protecting the banks and privatising the Post Office.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd they\u2019ve just spent \u00a3160,000 on a private jet to bring that bloody black over here,\u201d says one supporter referring to the repatriation of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released from Guantanamo Bay. \u201cThat\u2019s enough of that language,\u201d admonishes Mr Jefferson. \u201cYou\u2019re right in what you say but be careful of your language when there\u2019s a journalist here.\u201d<\/p>\n
But if attitudes remain unchanged, the tactics are not. Next day, back in Carlisle, Mr Jefferson teams up with Mr Barbour and two other BNP activists. \u201cIn 2006, when we first stood in Cumbria, we got 88 votes in a county council seat,\u201d he says. \u201cAt the last by-election we got 40.2 per cent of the vote \u2013 the largest percentage we\u2019ve ever had. We are learning fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
The change is down to Mr Griffin. \u201cHe has modernised the party and made it electable,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have shifted from marches and protests, which are merely expressions of anger and frustration, to elections through which we can actually achieve change. We\u2019re organised; we\u2019re committed; we believe in what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Barbour is so committed that he has taken six weeks off work to canvas Castle ward in Carlisle. By voting day, each home will have received 10 BNP leaflets or newspapers. It is paying dividends. At the end of Wigton Road a middle-aged woman opens her door. \u201cMy old dad always said to have nothing to do with the BNP,\u201d Maureen McArthur told him. \u201cBut I\u2019ve read all your stuff and I have to say I agree with a lot of it. I\u2019ll definitely think about voting for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those for whom the idea of the British National Party as a part of mainstream politics has always been unthinkable would do well to start thinking about it.<\/p>\n