THE VICTORY of fascist candidate Derek Beackon in the Mill wall council by-election can be explained by local circumstances; the BNP is unlikely to easily repeat that victory.
Nonetheless this victory, together with the rash of fascistinspired racial represents much more than a local event. The political space has emerged again for the Nazis to make political gains.
In the 1970s BNP leader John Tyndall was leader of the National Front, the then most important fascist organisation.
In 1978 the NF got 40,000 votes in London-wide council elections. With Labour in power, a growing economic crisis, and mass unemployment emerging the fascists could grow.
Two things happened to stem the NF's growth. Mass anti-fascist mobilisation by the Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism and Schoolkids Against the Nazis dramatised the danger of fascism using the slogan 'Never Again'. The ANL inflicted a big political defeat on the fascists.
But more decisively in 1979 Margaret Thatcher came to power with her right wing and racist agenda: she squeezed the EVERY effort has to be political space occupied by the far right.
Anti-immigrant propaganda didn't cut much ice when the government itself was introducing racist, anti-immigrant laws.
Thatcherism thus demobilised the fascists. But they didn't go away. On the retreat, the movement went into a spin and divided.
The John Tyndall-Martin Webster leadership lost control of the NF, challenged by youth leader Joe Pearce who took the organisation in a 'Stasserite' direction involving links with Italian terrorist groups and infiltration of the Animal Liberation Front.
Out of the mess of the far right the BNP emerged as the key group, with Tyndall again as its leader. Column 18, a Nazi terror group responsible for numerous death threats and attacks on left wing bookshops, recruits from inside the BNP.
The reorganisation of British fascism was not enough however on its own to win new openings. That required major changes in politics. This was provided by the fall of Margaret Thatcher and changes inside the Labour Party.
The 1980s speculative economic boom has gone and been replaced by another recession, with mass unemployment and the BNP, the Anti-Racist Allithe impoverishment of sections of the working class the result.
Major's government is a weak government. It is not that it is more "left wing' than the Tories under Thatcher; but it is very divided on Europe, has a small parliamentary majority and is seen to have no answers to the crisis.
The Labour Party leadership has become so right wing that its policies are no further left than the Liberal Democrats. And many working class struggles, notably that of the miners in 1992-3 have gone down to defeat.
Economic crisis, a weak government, a labour movement dominated by the right wing and working class defeats: this is the situation which creates new opportunities for the fascists.
Out of these factors has come