'It’s not a matter of putting white, working-class people into a room with some Muslims and laying on a few samosas,' says author Matthew Goodwin, who talks to Chris Arnot. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
How can divisions between communities be closed?
Matthew Goodwin, the author of a new book on the British National party, talks to Chris Arnot about building stable communities
Matthew Goodwin was born around the same time that the British National party (BNP) evolved from the remnants of its forerunner, the National Front. It was the year after the riots in Handsworth, Toxteth and Moss Side – three decades ago next month – exploded on a national consciousness already reeling from unrest in Brixton.
Goodwin, who lectures in political science at Nottingham University, lives in Manchester and has been advising local authorities in former mill towns in the north-west on ways of breaking down the antipathy between communities from different ethnic backgrounds.
He knows that the electoral defeats visited on the BNP in May's council elections do not mean that the attitudes underpinning the party's appeal have been dissipated. Far from it. For his recently published book, The New British Fascism: Rise of the BNP, he undertook face-to-face interviews with more than 50 party activists, including leader Nick Griffin and the few surviving councillors, which suggest that these are people preparing for a race war or "a clash of civilisations," as Goodwin puts it.
"A lot of people that I interviewed believed that the white British group was in danger of becoming extinct unless they take action," he says.
Which begs the question: what sort of action? If their only viable organisation has failed to garner enough support at the ballot box, where do they channel their grievances?
"One option is the English Defence League," he suggests. And certainly there are signs EDL has stepped up its campaign of intimidation and violence in recent months, attacking not only Muslims but also anti-racist groups.
Lone-wolf activism
"The other worrying development," he goes on, "is what you might call lone-wolf activism. I'd find it difficult to say for certain how widespread the problem is. But there have been a number of cases of individual activists being caught stockpiling potential weapons." He quotes a couple of examples before adding: "Until 9/11, the worst atrocity committed on United States soil was by Timothy McVeigh [the far right-winger behind the Oklahoma City bombing] so there are good reasons to take the issue seriously."
For his book, Goodwin interviews two Jewish members of the BNP who say they support the party, despite its Holocaust denial, because it was the only one "prepared to take on what they saw as the threat from Islam", says Goodwin.
BNP support is now highest in areas with large Muslim communities. "That's a major change in the landscape since the riots of 30 years ago. The Muslim issue [Islamophobia] then was nowhere near what it is now. So the party is capitalising on anxieties about a community that is already settled here and is making a valuable contribution to British society, despite suffering significantly higher-than-average levels of deprivation," he says.
Boosted by what he maintains are Islamophobic columns in tabloid newspapers, those anxieties have spread far beyond the BNP heartlands. "A survey by YouGov in 2009, the year that Griffin was elected to the European parliament, suggested that 44% of all respondents agreed with the statement that even in its milder form, Islam posed a threat to western civilisation," he says.
"That debate has been played out in the Netherlands and France, but has yet to penetrate British political discourse to any great extent. Admittedly, David Cameron has claimed that multiculturalism isn't working and has tried to flesh out his notion of muscular liberalism."
This appears to take the form of withholding funding for groups with "un-British" views. Does Goodwin agree with this new approach? "It's difficult because some of the groups that he's talking about excluding were the only ones providing linkage into Muslim communities. My questions to Mr Cameron would be: what's the alternative to multiculturalism and what does muscular liberalism mean for local authorities?"
Goodwin believes that local initiatives to build stable and sustainable bridges between communities can have a positive effect. "It's not a matter of putting white, working-class people into a room with some Muslims and laying on a few samosas," he insists. "You have to be prepared to have difficult conversations about sensitive issues, such as the allocation of public housing. It can be highly charged and incredibly fragile and you have to bring in mediators to manage these conversations.
"But 50 years of research in areas from the US to South Africa to Northern Ireland suggests that these initiatives can work if they're done well."
Social engineering
But Goodwin is under no illusion that such programmes are a high priority for a Conservative-led coalition government seeking deep spending cuts. "In the Conservative mindset," he says, "there is a sense that attempts at social cohesion are at best fluffy and at worst social engineering. These initiatives are often the first things to go."
Meanwhile, the political argument about which party has been most successful in managing immigration goes on in front of an increasingly sceptical public. "Competence on immigration has become one of the most important issues for voters over the past de cade," says Goodwin. "Since 2007, it has been viewed as being as important as public services." At the same time, he points out, politicians have far less leeway than they like to pretend when it comes to looking as though they're "getting to grips" with the issue.
One major drawback for those seeking to look tough on immigration is the law allowing migration between the countries within the European Union. Another has been a UK Border Agency officially declared "unfit for purpose" by the Commons home affairs select committee. A third would seem to be the far right's apparent success in portraying as "immigrants" the descendants of Muslim families who won the right to settle here generations ago.
It was Goodwin's grandfather, who had lived in the East End of London during the 1930s, who helped to feed his growing interest in the politics of race. "As soon as I mentioned the BNP to him and my grandmother, they both said: 'Oh yes; they are just like the Blackshirts.' Since then, I've thought that their reaction says a lot about the BNP's failure to connect with the vast majority of British people," he says. "We're a country that defines ourselves by our key role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. It's so ingrained in our national psyche."
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