(By David Jones, Independent Pennine Nationalist,
Todmorden, East Lancashire)
I have observed the close (second place) victory in Finland of the True Finns, a populist, right-wing party that has a platform similar to that of the UK Independence Party, in this most liberal of Scandanavian nations the Finnish voters have rediscovered a sense.
This party, which has been in the doldrums of electoral politics and was on the verge of being out flanked by the Finnish SKS-Vahapoulie (sort of their version of our BNP, whose only real asset is their popular leader, the tough guy, of Arctic politics Olavi Mäenpaa has been comfortably holding a seat on Turku City Council for over a decade) and facing political extinction.
Over the last two electoral cycles, True Finns have been rising metiorically however, their success is rare and is only comparable to the success of the "Serbian Radical Party", the Polands "Self Defence Party" and the "Union Attack" Party in Bulgaria, and far outstrips the sucess of Marine Le Pen (of France' FN Party) and even the Vlaams Belang (of the ethnically Dutch portion of Belgium).
So what catapulted this tiny right wing party in Finland most comparable to UKIP to the doors of Helsinki?
Simple, they broke the class divide and directed their appeal at the PRODUCTIVE population of the Finnish society, that is to say they broke with the concept that they must appeal to the middle-class while Mäenpaa's SKS-Vahapoulie appealed to the working-class.
The campaign of the True Finns united the working class tool machinist and his local warehouse owner, it united the timber merchant and the carpenter, the doctor and scientist with the guy that cleaned his windows. They were all behind a common patriotic populist agenda.
There is a lesson for UKIP here!
Many of UKIPs members are, lets be honest, outright snobs who just don't want to be associated with the BNP, it has nothing to do with differences of economic policy which don't matter since neither the BNP or UKIP will be picking the wallpaper for No. 10 any time soon.
Add to the snobbishness the establishment agenda, Nigel Farage is perfectly aware that he will only be able to keep his wealthy support and excessive media coverage is by banging on about how his party are going to destroy the BNP (which is doing a pretty good job at destroying itself), if you don't believe me then listen to him rouse loud cheers from the lefties of the Radio 4 studio audiences while he rants against the BNP on Jonathan Dimbleby's "Any Questions" which he appears to be on every third week.
Well the love affair between the UAF and UKIP was only useful while UKIP was needed to tap the BNP from the middle classes, and now there's no BNP votes left to tap, rest assured that UKIP will come under the same fire from the UAF that the BNP did.
So now we have plenty of despondant ex-BNP looking for a new home, where will they go? Well, not UKIP! Seems UKIP can't stand the smell of the working class BNP and have banned former members from joining UKIP.
Shame really because not only will these lads bring fresh support for them but also will most likely be less likely to leave the party, which rest assured the local wealthy donors will do, the second they see their name in the local paper printed by some National Union of Journalists hack branding them "fascists" and "nazis".
Also, we must encourage local UKIP branch officials to prepare for this and start reaching out
and recruiting solid, working class patriots - don't wait for an order from the top to do that.
Also UKIP officials can drop the use of the colour pink and use purple when they have their Rosettes stamped and literature printed, as well as start taking up a the kind of local community polticking that made the BNP so sucessful here in the Pennines.
Of course to do any of that they must lift the proscription on the BNP, gradually in needed, ie have the ban expire after having been out of the BNP for two years, or put it at the discretion of the local branch.
What are they afraid of anyway? The hardliners have already left and joined the National Front!
If UKIP made the party a no go area for the UAF, who have been infiltrating its youth wing "Young Independence" for years, lifted its proscription on the BNP, recruited some genuine working class and stopped parding around in pink to please the feminists then they could, I'm certain, enjoy the same electoral sucess that their counterparts in Finland have seen.
