Why We Must Stop Fascist Ghost Parties

Another election is over and as the dust settles, the future of Scotland is understandably on everyone’s minds and lips.

But there’s another story. Just by paying £2500 and doing a tiny bit of graphic design, a group of 5 extreme unionists, some with a vile history of antisemitism and far right activism managed to decide 2 seats in Parliament.

A Quick History

The story begins in 2003. Alastair McConnachie from Glasgow registered a new political party called Independent Green Voice, and stood as it’s only candidate in Glasgow Kelvin constituency. The 2003 election was a spectacular one for “other parties”, and with the lack of a Scottish Green Party constituency candidate in what is probably the strongest Green territory in Scotland, there was a clear opportunity to piggyback on a massively successful Green campaign. McConnachie came in last place, but 1,300 votes was 5.9%- an impressive total.

McConnachie was back standing as Independent Green Voice in the 2005 General Election (379 votes in Glasgow South West) and in 2007, just 496 votes in the whole Glasgow region. For the next 14 years, we never heard from Independent Green Voice again, but they remained registered as a political party.

As far as I can find out, McConnachie did put in small campaigns at the time and did address classic deep green concepts like localism and radical democracy. But this 2005 leaflet shows the main focus at that election was on stopping immigration and other far right staples and dog whistles.

Even closer observers will have noticed that McConnachie was a vocal advocate of monetary reform. Now I’m not an economist, but the general idea is that money is created by banks when they issue loans, and that’s the root of a lot of problems in the world including environmental destruction. They’ll typically argue that we can solve these problems by creating money debt-free in the community and using it to fund useful things like green infrastructure.

I’ve never been particularly convinced by monetary reform myself, but there are some people I know and respect, and are genuinely committed to a fairer, greener world, who believe it is essential.

But the history of the idea is tainted by the fact that after it was pioneered in the 1920s it became popular with some deeply unpleasant elements who saw banking as a way for Jews to control the economy and social credit as a way to challenge that power.

McConnachie’s name was already out there as a man who had, in 2001, been booted from UKIP’s executive after it was alleged he’d endorsed David Irving’s holocaust denial in an email to members. He stood by this comment when questioned by the Sunday Herald.

“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… There are no photographs or films of execution gas chambers…. Alleged eyewitness accounts are revealed as false or highly exaggerated.”

There’s a good summary of the earlier dark history of McConnachie and monetary reform’s links to fascism and antisemitism from former Green Party of England and Wales principal speaker and economics lecturer Derek Wall in a blog post here.

Also relevant is the long history of extreme nationalists and anti-immigration activists claiming to be the “real” environmentalists, and this aspect of “blood and soil nationalism” has been on the rise of late.

Fast forward to the ongoing debate about Scottish Independence. Perhaps bizarrely for somebody who claims to be so interested in localism, McConnachie made a name for himself as an evangelist for the union. He formed a tiny sect called A Force for Good and became known as a counter- protester, turning up at pro-independence marches and rallies with a jacket, some Union Jacks and a megaphone.

IGV Make a Comeback

Out of seemingly nowhere, when the lists of candidates were announced for this year’s Scottish Parliamentary Elections, they included Independent Green Voice standing in 5 regions- Glasgow, South, West, North East and Central.

There was immediate reaction and concern that they’d attract voters who didn’t know what they were voting for- maybe Green voters who fancied a change, or those who saw the words “Independent Green” and assumed it was former Green MSP Andy Wightman (who unsuccessfully stood as an independent in the Highlands and Islands).

There was also an effort by some to draw attention to just how deplorable their list of candidates was, best exemplified by the Ferret’s article focussing not only on McConnachie but on 2 of his fellow candidates’ grim past in the BNP.

Don’t Call it a Comeback?

There was something different this time. This was like no other election campaign. IGV not only seemed to fail to campaign for votes, but actively avoided the chance to take votes from people who agree with them.

There’s no evidence whatsoever of any IGV campaign. No leaflets, no social media presence, and their website appears not to have been updated in 14 years.

McConnachie has, however, been highly active during the election campaign. He’s been using A Force for Good’s social media and Youtube presence to promote a “Union Day” Celebration in Glasgow with about 50 people and lots of flags, and to promote campaigns to vote tactically in order to unseat Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and other high profile SNP MSPs.

I’ve trawled through a couple of hours of footage of McConnachie from the AFFG Youtube channel from the week before the election. Most of it is about the election (when he’s not running a competition to win a union jack themed tin of jelly beans), but not once does he even mention he’s on the ballot paper. He talks about many other parties standing against him, some positively, some negatively, and has plenty of opportunity to seek support, but doesn’t.

What candidate talks about an election for an hour to his supporters on the day before an election without even mentioning he’s a candidate, and instead bigs up other candidates? The only possible answer is a candidate who is looking for support from people who don’t know him. He doesn’t want to split the Tory or Labour vote, but wants to lure in the very people who would be most disgusted at his record and politics.

In retrospect, the conclusion that could be drawn is that the plan was to stay under the radar as much as possible until people were in the polling station, and hope to ambush them with a logo.

How The Plan Came Together

Having attended counts for 3 constituencies and seen ballot papers from a wide range of locations, I’m convinced that the vast majority of IGV voters did so accidentally. They were overwhelmingly in areas with stronger Green and pro-independence support. This is borne out by the constituency-by-constituency results I’ve seen that seem to show a correlation between SGP and IGV performance. A number of Green votes I saw had initially started to mark the IGV box before realising their mistake and changing their indicated preference, and there were some spoilt papers that had marked both boxes.

So how did they do?

They got 2210 votes (0.7%) in Glasgow, 1983 (0.5%) in the West, 1854 (0.5%) in Central, 1690 (0.5%) in South Scotland and 2019 (0.6%) in the North East.

These percentages don’t look huge and in a first past the post election would probably make little impact, but in a proportional voting system in which votes count more equally these numbers of votes are far more likely to be decisive.

When we compare them to other small parties who actively campaigned, it’s clear that something was fishy.

• The Reform UK Party delivered a freepost leaflet to all houses, had a TV broadcast. IGV received triple their vote across the 5 regions. In South Scotland, where the Reform UK list was led by sitting MSP Michelle Ballantyne, IGV got more than twice as many votes.
• Abolish the Scottish Parliament were less active in campaigning, but had a clear party name at the top of the ballot paper. IGV roughly doubled their vote.
• UKIP have very clear name recognition amongst the public, but IGV got 3–5 times their vote in each region where they stood.
• The Scottish Family Party seemed to have the best resourced campaign outside the biggest 7 parties, with spending on social media ads, a TV broadcast and a freepost leaflet to the whole country. IGV beat them in 2 of the 5 regions in which they stood.

In 2 regions, if we make the (totally justified) assumption that the vast majority of IGV votes were intended as Scottish Green Party votes, the “ghost party” decided a seat by being on the ballot.

In Glasgow, the Greens were 917 votes short of taking a 2nd seat from the Tories. IGV got 2210.

In the South of Scotland, the margin between the Greens and an MSP was just 115 votes. IGV’s vote was 1690, most of whom will have been cajoled into voting for an ex-BNP treasurer.

Scotland now has a parliament for the next 5 years where 2 members are there- and 2 potential members are not there- as a result of the deceptive bad faith actions of a small group of people who did nothing more than register a logo, submit 5 sets of paperwork and pay £2500 deposit.

How Was This Allowed?

Questions have been asked about how IGV were allowed to do this. This is all down to the Electoral Commission’s decisions on registering a party name, description and emblem. The Electoral Commission’s guidance is here and worth a read if you’re interested in coming to your own opinion. The Commission can, and regularly do, reject applications on the basis of the guidance- you can see which decisions have been made in 2021.

You can see the IGV registration details online. They’ve been registered since 2003 with these logos:

Severed Arm, anyone?

Then this year, at the last possible moment, they registered a new one:

Taking a leaf….

Here’s how it appeared on a ballot paper (I’ve taken this from a stranger’s “I’ve voted green” tweet- thanks to @PeteKrykant_OPC on Twitter!). Imagine you’re seeing this for the first time and looking for the word “Green”, then you’ll see the issue.

The important bit, I think, is that the Electoral Commission are supposed to reject an “identity mark”, (ie a name, description or emblem) that “is likely to result in voters confusing it with another party identity mark that is already registered or protected”. There’s also a restriction on words in the emblem being too small, but despite “Independent” and “Voice” being very small, IGV’s emblem doesn’t quite seem to fall foul of this.

An interesting comparison is with Piers Corbyn’s “Let London Live”, whose logo was registered and approved just 4 days before IGV’s. It has the word “London” much bigger than the others. Would this have created confusion with the Alliance for London party who have been registered since 2015? And does it mean that if somebody wanted to create a “London Party” they’d now not be allowed to?

There’s no restriction to the word “Green” appearing in party names. There are currently 6 of them registered in the UK, including the Scottish Green Party and Independent Green Voice. It couldn’t be said that the IGV and SGP logos could be confused with each other. Where I believe the Electoral Commission went wrong is in failing to reject the IGV emblem on the grounds that it would result in voters confusing it with the names of other parties, given that the word “Green” is so much more prominent.

But the fact that this should even be slightly arguable shows a weakness in our democracy. No voter should be confused, and even less should any party be able to stand for election with the intention to confuse. Rules were tightened after the case of the “Literal Democrats” in 1994 and are supposed to prevent this.

This story is a flashing sign that no voter should be able to vote for a party to whom they’re actually fundamentally opposed, as nearly 10,000 Scottish Green voters did this year. While the Westminster Government claim to be supporting democracy by suppressing turnout with voter ID laws and refusal to extend the franchise, they should instead be working on improving confidence in elections by actually ensuring that people know who they’re voting for.

And we need to remember that fascism is about so much more than hatred of ethnic groups and other oppressed minorities. A key element of it is undermining democratic institutions, and we need to see these cynical acts that mess very fundamentally with the legitimacy of our elections as part of that jigsaw, and stamp it out as soon as we can.