Danger of voting UKIP as a protest

[Brighton Breezy]

Do people not realise that by voting for UKIP as a protest against the mainstream parties that they are thus giving UKIP a 'foot in the door' and a platform from which to grow?
This is a serious matter. If UKIP and the BNP do well tonight as I suspect they might, it will be a sad night for British politics. The return of the right to British politics is not worth the effect a protest vote will have.
If they do well tonight, their exposure is increased and people will start seeing them as a viable alternative.

 

[Lush]

Good article here...

 

[Wilko]

Problem is I guess Ritchie some people really just do not know which way to vote ?! Like many others I am unconvinced by either of the major parties but also feel I should vote rather than letting it go to waste. I think many people have found themselves in a similar situation.

We have it drummed into us to USE YOUR VOTING power, but when you are so disillusioned by the major parties what do you do ?

 

[Brighton Breezy]

I agree that everyone should exercise their right to vote. Ideally I think that there should be an option of 'none of the above' on the voting slip. This way people could register protest votes without raising the profile of fringe parties.

 

[Rangdo]

Unfortunately people have got so sick of the usual shit that they feel they've got no alternative. If you don't want to vote for the usual bullshit but want to make your voice heard (ie. send a message to the main parties that you're not happy) what else can you do? If you don't vote at all they're more likely to stay in power.
And no, I didn't vote UKIP.

 

[Wilko]

I agree that everyone should exercise their right to vote. Ideally I think that there should be an option of 'none of the above' on the voting slip. This way people could register protest votes without raising the profile of fringe parties.

That is a good point you have made there Ritchie - Still use your power to vote by showing your disdain towards What is on offer.

 

[Rangdo]

But then what happens if "None of the above" gets the most votes?

 

[Gangsta]

Why do you lump in UKIP with the BNP. I voted UKIP today but would never ever vote BNP, in fact why do you assume UKIP is a party of the right at all?

These kind of parties are a great way for electorate in a democracy to clearly state their views through non-violent means as a protest that can truly damage the "mainstream" parties. Cant see what isnt mainstream about UKIP however, as you will be aware that its core policy is, if not supported by the majority of people in this country, sympathised with by them.

In a similar way, I would never criticise anyone voting green.

An interesting point I heard on telly tonight from one of the polling orgs, was that if 1m more people vote Tory in the next Gen Election than labour, labour would still have a slim majority due the voters geography in this country.

 

[Brighton Breezy]

I think that when people in other nations are fighting for the right to vote it is important that we in Britain do not take this right for granted.
Also, most governments are elected by less then half the population. Therefore, althought New Labour won in '97 with a huge landslide, they had no true mandate because over half the population did not vote for them. This means there is an unclear figure of who the non voters support.
If every had to vote but people could register disdain toward government by ticking a 'None of the above' you would get a true indication as to how happy the country is with its politicians.
Also, when so many people do not vote I don't think those people have the right to complain when the government do things they do not like.

 

[Wilko]

But then what happens if "None of the above" gets the most votes?

If nothing else it is a demonstration that 'all is not well' in the eyes of the public. Obviosuly this is not a flawless plan but it is better than USING a party such as UKIP by false means to make a statement.

 

[Gangsta]

I also agree with the above idea of "None of the above". They should have to keep coming back until they've found someone popular enough to beat "none of the above" in the vote. Sounds fair to me.

 

[Brighton Breezy]

Not right wing?



The following is taken from the web archive of anti-fascist magazine "Searchlight" and referes to the 2001 General Election.


Former racists, antisemites and Holocaust deniers are among the 401 candidates listed by the UK Independence Party for the forthcoming general election. It is yet more proof that the party has lurched to the right since a series of damaging internal splits caused the resignation of several hundred activists last year.

Launching the campaign, party leader Nigel Farage announced that the UKIP would win one million votes. “We are not pretending for a moment it is going to be easy, but we do have a chance in some of these seats.”

His attempts to bring the anti-EU party into the political mainstream will be severely undermined by the revelation that several of its candidates have extremist pasts, some of which continue to this day:

Alastair Harper (Dunfermline West). Once a leading light in the nazi Northern League founded by Roger Pearson in 1958 who today funds and promotes racial eugenics. Northern League events in Brighton attracted former Nazi SS officers and British nazis, and it was also linked to the mentor of Dr Mengele, the Nazi race doctor. Harper, a former Scottish school teacher, was editor of Northern World, a Nordicist and anti-semitic journal. In 1990, Harper was photographed by Searchlight attending the Iona conference, a far right gathering organised by the former NF organiser Michael Walker. He has also been chair of the local Conservative Association.

Andrew Moffatt (Beaconsfield). A former National Front member, he once posed with a young woman for a party advertising leaflet. In September 1980 he was discharged from the Coldstream Guards without explanation. His case was enthusiastically taken up by the late George Kennedy Young, leader of Tory Action and a fanatical antisemite, and David Irving, the Holocaust denier. His connection to Irving continues to this day. He remains a close personal friend of the infamous former NF organiser, Martin Webster.

Aidan Rankin (Richmond, Yorkshire). Rankin, who co-wrote the UKIP manifesto, has been associated with the far-right Third Way, a breakaway from the NF formed by Patrick Harrington in 1989. Rankin has contributed articles and letters to the Third Way website. One letter declares, “I am impressed by the range and quality of the Third Way manifesto, but the section on green politics left me slightly disappointed”. In contradiction to his new role as a UKIP candidate, he adds, “Unlike the green movement, the Referendum Party and its poor relation the UKIP do not represent the future… I see electoral reform, not ‘Europe’, as the most important constitutional issue we shall face in the next five years”. Despite such sentiments, he is now one of UKIP’s key functionaries.

Graham Webster-Gardiner (Epson & Ewell). A former leading figure in the right-wing and anti-immigrant Monday Club during the 1970s, he was a hardline anti-communist, regularly attending functions at the South Vietnamese and Cambodian embassies. Today Webster-Gardiner is the South East organiser of UKIP and a member of its executive committee.

Mike Nattrass (Sutton Coldfield). The National Chairman of UKIP and its West Midlands regional organiser, Nattrass is a former member of the New Britain Party, (see opposite page).

The selection of these candidates comes soon after the UKIP was forced to expel one of its executive members for denying the Holocaust. Alistair McConnachie, its Scottish organiser and representative on the UKIP executive, explained his views to party members. “I don’t accept that gas chambers were used to execute Jews for the simple fact there is no direct physical evidence to show that such gas chambers ever existed”.

A party disciplinary hearing had earlier expelled McConnachie for five years but this was later overturned by the national executive, which commuted his sentence to a one-year suspension from the executive.

The UKIP only acted after another executive member resigned from the party and went to the press. If the UKIP leadership had bothered to take a proper look at one of its leading members, they would have found a hardline antisemite and racist.

A trained physiotherapist with a former practice in Edinburgh, McConnachie has flirted with a number of extremist groups and personalities. He once worked for the Social Credit Secretariat in Scotland, a group that preaches the economic theories of Major C H Douglas.

While the SCS denies being racist or antisemitic, its publication, The Social Crediter, has recommended the antisemitic Bloomfield Books, run by Donald Martin, and lists Anthony Cooney among its contributors. For many years Cooney was the editor of The Liverpool Newsletter, a publication that combined racist and antisemitic articles with social credit policies.

In 1998, McConnachie monitored the Bilderberg conference in Scotland in the company of Jim Tucker, a reporter from the US antisemitic paper, Spotlight. Also present were Donald Martin and Matthew J. Browning of the British Israelites World Federation (BIWF).

The same year, McConnachie fell out with the SCS leader, Alan Armstrong, and was soon sent packing. It was only then that the SCS realised that McConnachie had been subscribing to racist and revisionist material through its offices.

He soon found work, and later a directorship, with James Gibb Stewart, formerly of Western Goals and now running a publishing outfit in Glasgow. McConnachie took over the desk of Cliff Morrison, a Third Way supporter.

McConnachie is also closely linked to Iain McGregor, editor of the Social Credit International and the far-right newsletter, the Scottish Patriot. He is also been involved in the BIWF. It was McGregor who introduced McConnachie to the SCS.

Despite his expulsion, senior UKIP figures seem to have no difficulty working with McConnachie. Several weeks after he was shown the door, the UKIP’s research director, Richard North, shared a platform with McConnachie at a “Stop the Slaughter” rally in Roxburghshire.

The UKIP has swung to the right in the past two years, largely because its more moderate supporters who were attracted to the party during John Major’s leadership have returned to the Conservative Party under Hague. The UKIP now represents a hard right grouping, attracting disaffected Tory voters in the same way the BNP is gaining from working class Labour voters.

 

[Brighton Breezy]

But then what happens if "None of the above" gets the most votes?

As I said above, in every recent election more people have not voted for the government then have voted for them. First Past The Post System means that we can still get a winner,

 

[Muzzman]

I agree that everyone should exercise their right to vote. Ideally I think that there should be an option of 'none of the above' on the voting slip. This way people could register protest votes without raising the profile of fringe parties.

If you actually write 'none of the above' on the voting slip and post it then legally that vote has to be counted as a 'spoiled vote'..

That's my understanding of it anyway.

 

[Gangsta]

Monkey-thing,

Thanks for the info, feeling er...not really any guilt at all.. ...safe in the knowledge that my voting will not be allowing the next Hitler to the throne. That is of course unless I was dressed up as a labour activist with a fake ballot box outside the polling booth stuffed with tippex-corrected slips and er, some few thousand postal ballots that seem to have gone missing. Only 3 police forces involved so far but is this the tip of the iceberg?

Can you help me with this one: My mother works in a residential home for loonies... thats people with learning difficulties. Seems like that nice man Mr so-an-so has been in again for a cup of tea with the loonies. He only wants to take them all down the road for a walk next Thursday. Now its interesting that the labour party in Southampton seem to need support from people that dont know their arse from a hole in the ground but is this legal? I was surprised they were even on the electoral role. Any ideas, I mean is it enoght to go to the papers with?

 

[Brighton Breezy]

Yes but the number of spoiled votes is not a conclusive figure because it also includes the votes of people who are not clever enough to put a cross in the right place.

 

[Gangsta]

Possibly such as the aforementioned loonies?

 

[Gangsta]

R M - what is that Avatar youve got there? It looks...strangely familiar!

 

[Muzzman]

Yes but the number of spoiled votes is not a conclusive figure because it also includes the votes of people who are not clever enough to put a cross in the right place.

I understand that but obviously they have a percentage window of how many spoiled votes they can expect, if the amount of spoiled votes dramatically exceed the given percentage figure then I'd expect questions would be asked.

 

[Brighton Breezy]

Monkey-thing,

Can you help me with this one: My mother works in a residential home for loonies... thats people with learning difficulties. Seems like that nice man Mr so-an-so has been in again for a cup of tea with the loonies. He only wants to take them all down the road for a walk next Thursday. Now its interesting that the labour party in Southampton seem to need support from people that dont know their arse from a hole in the ground but is this legal? I was surprised they were even on the electoral role. Any ideas, I mean is it enoght to go to the papers with?

I can understand the negative conotations of this 'leading' people to vote but I do not think it would be fair to take these peope off the electoral list because the issue of mental health care etc is quite a big one policy wise.