>From today's London Times Newspaper:
April 30 1999 OPINION
James Heartfield explains why Britain needs neo-Nazis
United by a common hatred
Could another race war be looming? Bombs are going off in Britain's immigrant communities. Stephen Lawrence's killers still walk the streets. In America teenagers celebrate the birthday of Hitler by slaughtering their classmates. And when Oona King, MP for Tower Hamlets, received hate mail from the extremist group, the White Wolves, threatening a millennial bloodbath of all non-whites, it only added to widespread suspicions that a Fascist movement might be growing again.
With the threat of more nail bombs hanging over the country no one can afford to be complacent. But the background to these events is not the resurgence of the far Right. It is its collapse. In 1980 the British National Party and the National Front regularly occupied Brick Lane, lining up on either side of the market end on a Sunday. Their message then was that Brick Lane belonged to them and that they were not going to give it up to the Bengalis. Yet they did give it up, and you can be sure nobody will be selling Fascist newspapers there this weekend.
The police do not yet know who planted the nail bombs, but let us assume that it was one of the many far-Right groups that have claimed they were behind the attack. A descent into random bombings is a sign of these extremists' frustration at their declining influence. One Combat 18 document candidly admits: "The race war is not about to happen, so we must start it ourselves."
But instead of marking a resurgence of the far Right, the bombings are uniting the country in opposition to it. Ironically, Britain's fractious political culture is dependent on the threat of extremism to bind it together. The significance of the far Right in British politics is not the support that it gets from the public. This is minimal. Rather the role which the far Right plays is that of all-purpose bogeyman against which decent people unite. Newspapers and politicians tend to exaggerate the influence of neo-Nazi groups. Lurid tales of European networks of Fascist groups poised to seize power glamorise what is in the end a tiny group of cranks.
The poet Cavafy wrote of a city that was galvanised into action "because the barbarians are coming today". Statesmen and emperors are given a powerful sense of purpose. But the day ends in confusion when the barbarians fail to show. "And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution."
London's authorities have also been galvanised into action by the threat of barbarians. The bombings have cast the police in a new light. They have become defenders of the black communities of Brixton and Brick Lane. Where once they would have been criticised for having too high a profile in these areas, now the harshest censure they face is that the police station in Brick Lane is not fully manned.
Undercover police officers are suddenly finding something more plausible to do than infiltrate animal rights groups. Since the IRA retired from the field, the Special Branch has been looking around for an enemy worthy of its attentions. When you want to tap phones and spy on people, you need a just cause. The White Wolves fit the model of extremist danger perfectly.
Oona King has also risen to meet the challenge. At the time of the last general election, she was parachuted into the Tower Hamlets constituency and ousted the local Bengali favourite, Jalal Uddin. The demand for a black MP to replace the retiring Peter Shore had become unavoidable. But the new Labour team did not want to become hostage to Asian activists in the constituency, so they chose Ms King as an acceptably loyal candidate. Now she has become a target for the White Wolves, any criticism of her status will be silenced.
Jack Straw, on walkabout in Brick Lane, can also pose as the friend of Britain's immigrant communities, leading the search for terrorists of the far Right. But at the same time Mr Straw is steering a new Asylum Bill through Parliament that aims to limit even further the rights of foreigners to enter Britain.
The Home Secretary wants to threaten the employers of asylum-seekers with prosecution, and to get registrars to check the passports and papers of couples before they marry. His Bill - which was backed by Ms King - has a special proposal to prevent asylum-seekers from receiving welfare benefits. Instead, in measures that stigmatise those seeking asylum in this country, they will get special Home Office vouchers. By targeting asylum-seekers the Government reinforces public resentment of such foreigners. When an influx of Slovak Gypsies arrived in Kent last year they were greeted with hostility.
Yet you only have to say "Nazi bombers" to stir up deep sentiments of national unity in Britain. The blitz spirit is an enduring part of our island story. The neo-Nazis may thrive on myths of invading hordes from Asia, but the official culture, too, has its myth of foreign invasion. Except this time it is the far Right that is cast in the role of foreign invaders, always called by a German name, "Nazis", as if racism was something terribly un-British. Doubtless that is a flattering picture to the powers-that-be, but it is not necessarily true.
Today the far Right is merely a handful of embittered cranks, many of whom are in prison. Their ability to launch a race war single-handed is non-existent. But British political culture still needs them. They are the enemy that binds the country together under the safe protection of the Home Secretary and his police officers. They are the barbarians we are waiting for.
-- Jim heartfield