Mohammad goes to Brighton

There are few sights more off-putting, just before lunch, than that of Andrew Roberts's jowls quivering with glee, as John Aspinall launches into a speech about the sound instincts of English football hooligans. For those not in the know, Andrew Roberts is the young historian with the voluminous jowls and very rightwing opinions. Aspinall, or "Aspers," is the zoo-keeper, casino owner, and romantic friend of warrior tribes and endangered species. At the Referendum party conference in Brighton, Aspers, who is a parliamentary candidate for the "Refs" in Folkestone, spoke on "that great endangered species," the Englishman. It was the closest thing during the conference to good old-fashioned fascism.

Aspers delivered his speech in the manner of a seaside comic. Imagine Max Miller doing an imitation of Winston Churchill reading a speech by Oswald Mosley and you might get the picture. "The old tribesmen, the serried ranks of the massed levies, will emerge from every party from every city and every county..."

The argument of the speech was incoherent and vague. The gist of it seemed to be that a combination of American political correctness, bourgeois politicians and monstrous foreign bureaucrats was threatening "the daemon-attendant spirit or local genius of ancient nation states." The horror of the European Union appears to be that we will all be forced to "interbreed" and be turned into a "raceless continental superstate." Never mind that American political correctness stresses pluralism and separate ethnic communities, instead of the old melting pot. Never mind that race is hardly what divides the nation states of Europe (or even what defines nationhood). And never mind that nation states are hardly ancient, unless you count China.

What was interesting, and I suppose reassuring, was the cool reception Aspers received from the rank and file. This was not a Mosleyite audience. I saw none of the poujadist thugs, in their ill-fitting pin-striped suits and razor haircuts, that add their bit of nastiness to Tory party conferences. Ordinary Mr and Mrs Ref were mostly middle class, mild-mannered, upstanding, bewildered, good-humoured English subjects of Her Majesty the Queen. Alexander Chancellor wrote in the Guardian that he would feel reassured if the Refs turned out to be crazy. He has reason to be worried. Most Ref candidates are cricket-loving solicitors, accountants, retired army officers and fund managers. And so, it seemed, were most of the people in the hall-apart from a sprinkling of glitzy friends of the Leader, as Sir James is known.

I spoke to a few prospective parliamentary candidates. Getting elected appeared to be the least of their ambitions. One pink-cheeked old boy-a solicitor from Wells, or some such place-expressed horror at the prospect. "Dear me, I certainly hope not!" he said when I asked him whether he thought he might get in.

So what were they all doing there, following the Anglo-French Leader into a battle of Britain against the treacherous, weak-kneed politicians and the foreign bureaucrats? One cannot generalise. But I suspect that for most it was a matter of sentiment more than political clarity. For the Refs are not even clear what the referendum is supposed to be about: the Maastricht treaty? The common currency? To be ruled by Westminster or Brussels? All the above?

The sentiments, however, are clear. There was a streak of deep nostalgia running through many of the speeches, a longing for a simpler, older, more familiar world, when British was still best, England won test matches, Germans were hateful Huns, politicians were gentlemen, sterling was as safe as the Bank of England, and foreigners were funny not threatening, let alone richer or better at running things. It seemed perfectly fitting that Orde Wingate, son of the great general, should be minding one of the doors in Brighton, as well as organising the Ref campaigns in London. The German menace came up in most speeches, but in an oddly ambivalent way. Alan Walters got in a quip about goose-stepping, and Helmut Kohl was made to look very sinister in the Refs' propaganda video, but it takes some doing to depict Kohl's Germany as an incipient Fourth Reich. Indeed, British rightwingers are more prone to complain that Germany is not belligerent, not patriotic, not, well, German enough. Part of the nostalgia is the wish that Germany should continue to play its familiar role as the monocled foil for British heroes.

There was an air of Dad's Army about the conference; many of the ordinary Refs even looked a bit like Captain Mainwaring. While reflecting on this, I spotted a man with his foot on the brass rail of the conference centre bar and a glass of beer in his hand. He was dressed in a smart, but rather worn pin-striped suit, and a leather cowboy hat. He was of Indian origin. I asked him what he was doing there. He slipped me his card and told me to call him at his office. His name was Mohammad Hashmot Ullah. His barristers' chambers were in Brick Lane.

I called his chambers a few days after the conference and was told that the gentleman in question no longer came to the office. So I called his home several times. I finally reached him on a Saturday morning. He invited me to come over in the afternoon. Mohammad Ullah's home was near Crouch End, in north London. He greeted me at the door in his dressing gown. The window in the door was patched over with board. His flat was a room in the basement. Boxes of cornflakes stood on the television set. The walls were grimy and cracked. The smell of lunch, prepared by the West Indian landlady, wafted into the room. It was not a prosperous household.

I must confess I was prejudiced. Here, I thought, I had found the nutter in the Referendum ranks. I would no doubt be bored for the next hour by a rambling jumble of opinions from a sad man. I could not have been more mistaken. Mohammad Ullah, a prospective candidate for the Refs, was intelligent, articulate and experienced in politics. Born in what was British India and is now Bangladesh, he first got interested in politics as a student, when Bangladesh was still East Pakistan. He explained how before independence, a resolution had been passed in Lahore (in 1940) to the effect that the predominantly Muslim areas would form a federation of sovereign states. In 1945, however, the future prime minister of Pakistan, Muhammad Jinnah, had opted for one Muslim state. This meant that East Bengal would be neither sovereign, nor autonomous, but ruled from Islamabad.

Ah, I said, "so that's why you are attracted to the Referendum party. You think the European question is similar to Pakistan's problem with East Bengal?" Mohammad looked at me strangely. "Not at all," he said very politely, "no European country is being oppressed politically and exploited economically. No, it is a very different problem. Anyway, back to my life story..." He went on to recount the invasion of East Bengal by Pakistani troops and the declaration of Bangladeshi independence in 1971. He himself had been active in the Awami League, which had fought for autonomy. He had been with the government in exile in Calcutta, and returned to practice law in Dhaka after Bangladeshi independence. In 1982, he founded the Bangladesh Social Democratic party.

In 1987, after giving a seminar on international law, he was approached by a Swedish businessman, who had lost his house in Cyprus to the Turks after partition. He asked Mohammad to take his case to the international court of justice in The Hague. If he should lose, Mohammad would be paid only his expenses, but about £10,000 would be his reward if he won. The Swede got his house back and Mohammad used the money to study law at London University. He took his bar exams and began practising in Brick Lane. He was still interested in politics and joined the Labour party, but failed to be selected as a parliamentary candidate. Only when Sir James came along, was the political animal back in business.

I put it to him that many of his fellow party members might not be so well disposed towards Bangladeshi immigrants. Was he not afraid that British nationalism might be against his interests? He said that did not bother him at all. The Refs were democratic nationalists, not fascists. Did he see a federal Europe as a threat? Mohammad wanted me to stress that there were advantages to a federal Europe as well as disadvantages, even for immigrants. In a united Europe there would be no more wars, that was surely a good thing. But he was worried about the linguistic consequences: German would be the dominant language and Commonwealth immigrants all spoke English. Besides, the British government had some affinity with the Commonwealth immigrants. A federal Europe might not.

In a way, then, Mohammad was trying to hang on to a world he knew, a largely vanished world (if it ever really existed) of Commonwealth solidarity. But the European problem was perhaps not his main concern. He liked Goldsmith because he had "a mission, a vision, and money." He liked him above all, because he allowed Mohammad to have a voice-he gave a recent Bangladeshi immigrant the chance to run for parliament.

Mohammad Ullah is an unusual case. For one thing, he has more political experience than most British Refs. But he is similar to them in an important respect. The rise of the Referendum party is a symptom of a universal modern malaise in democratic states. More and more people feel that they have lost their voice, that professional political elites are ruling over their heads-hence the enthusiasm for populists such as Ross Perot, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jörg Haider. The Refs, similarly, are voting against an "elective dictatorship" of cabinet ministers, who seem to have too much power, and too little. They are helpless against "Brussels" or "Frankfurt," yet take momentous decisions without consulting the voters at home.

That is why even rabble-rousers such as Goldsmith and Aspinall can look like democrats compared to such men as Heath, Howe and Hurd (the names were spat out by Aspers, as though they were in the dock at Nuremburg). The only answer to the Goldsmith phenomenon is to have more democracy, in Britain and Europe. If it takes the election of some distinctly rum candidates to make that point, then so be it, and good luck to the Refs.