THE white working class forms the principle electoral base of the British National Party, according to a YouGov survey commissioned by the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight. A large chunk of the left is going to hate these findings.

You see, such a thing really, really should not be happening. We all know that fascism represents the political expression of the most reactionary sections of finance capital, which deliberately seeks to mobilise a mass middle class base as a weapon of last resort against an insurgent labour movement, don’t they? Trotsky and Poulantzas told us that.

And besides, how dare the BNP tread on our turf? The left and the left alone articulates the real interests of workers, in this country as in all countries. They cannot turn to the far right in any number. That’s just impossible.

Well, not according to Searchlight. According to its polling, 61% of BNP voters fall into the C2DE categories on the standard scale of class, even though this layer constitutes just 45% of the population.

Like everybody else who thinks about class in Marxist terms, I have big difficulties with the sociology textbook index being used here. But forget any methodological quibbles; the message is clear enough. There is little point in denying that the BNP’s vote largely comes from the skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled white workers.

Some socialists reject the very concept of a ‘white working class’- separate from the working class in general and with a distinct identity, often regarded as implicitly reactionary – out of hand. Indeed, it is important for the left to stress the common interest of all sectors of the exploited.

But simple observation suggests that outside of a relatively limited number of melting pot areas, an undeniable white working class cultural exists in many parts of Britain today. What is more, they are not usually shiny happy people.

Political commonsense over the last two decades has insisted that elections are won and lost in a small number of key marginals, and manifestoes have been geared exclusively to swing voter concerns.

If there are millions of ordinary people out there who think that New Labour has written them off as mere voting fodder with no viable electoral options, they are not far wrong. That, of course, potentially represents a colossal opening for the far right.

Let us avoid the all too frequent romanticisation of ’the workers’ to which upper-class and middle-class lefties are sometimes all too prone. It has always been the case that many proles are politically rightwing and viscerally racist. I don’t have to go outside some – a small minority, thankfully – of own family to know that.

On the other hand, there is something new in today’s situation, something different about today’s racism, that has made the growth of the BNP possible. It is no longer a racism based a deliberately-inculcated mass ideological basis for imperialism, which I noticed in an uncle sent to Korea in the early 1950s to shoot at gooks, for instance.

This is instead a racism rooted in the collapse of social housing, a racism born of the disappearance of blue collar employment and grassroots trade union organisation, a racism of benefit cuts, a racism centred on the perception that nobody in a position of authority really gives a shit. You might even want to call it a racism of desperation.

But whatever you call it, it is ugly and festering and dangerous, and Labour’s conscious decision to snub the white working class in favour of Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman is no small part of the explanation. In her heart of hearts, I suspect many in the cabinet know that.

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