The British National Party have just won another Council seat, Mixenden Ward at Calderdale Council. It’s always a bit worrying when thugs and bigots win political power at any level, but that’s democracy.

Here are the results:

1. BNP: 679
2. Liberal Democrats: 651
3. Labour: 641
4. Conservatives: 214
5. Independent: 142
6. Spoilt: 6

(From the calderdale.gov.uk website)

That’s a total of 2133 votes cast from an electorate of 7054, so a turnout of around 30% with the BNP getting votes from only 9.6%.

This is what interests me. Whatever it is that is driving people to vote BNP, it’s not driving the majority of people to vote for anybody, and as a result the extremists get in. And they didn’t win by much, the Liberals being 28 votes behind and Labour 38.

I have enough faith in people to believe that a larger turnout would not have yielded the same result. With turnouts at levels like this, groups like the BNP don’t have to convince many people to support them to win, and each win they get will increase their credibility and make it easier for them to gain support – “look, we’re a respectable party with seats on many councils…”.

Right now the BNP have very few seats – 5, according to the BBC. But what with the current media frenzy over asylum seekers there’s plenty of scope for them to gain more converts. I’d argue that a general increase in participation in politics at all levels is one way of reducing their impact.

There are no doubt a host of reasons why people voted BNP in Mixenden, their success can’t all be put down to the low turnout. But turnouts like this are common these days, symptomatic of a growing alienation of the average person from the political process, and that’s what I’m interested in here. This is something I’d like to see the major parties addressing, and not just in the run-up to larger elections when they’re trying to get their supporters out. They could start by offering something different to each other, and not allowing fringe groups of nuts like the BNP appear to be the only people offering a real alternative to the incumbents.