Центр-Демократы: История нидерландской праворадикальной партии

Defunct right wing political party in the Netherlands

The Centre Democrats (Centrum Democraten, CD) was a political party in the Netherlands. Founded in 1984 by members who split out from the Centre Party (CP), the Centre Democrats was joined one month later by the only CP Member of Parliament—Hans Janmaat. Janmaat went on to become the leader of the party, which subsequently became strongly centered on his person. The newly formed Centre Democrats represented the more moderate faction of the Centre Party, but espoused an anti immigration and nationalist ideology. Their claims of standing in the centre of the political landscape have thus been disputed by political scientists. The Centre Democrats did not gain enough votes for parliamentary representation in the 1986 general election, but Janmaat won back his seat after the following election in 1989. In 1994 he was joined by two additional representatives won by the party. The CD was subject to a cordon sanitaire by the other parties in Parliament, although some parties rather sought to confront it following its 1994 success. The CD failed to win any seats in the 1998 election, and it fell into disarray until it was finally dissolved in 2002.

The Centre Democrats was founded on 7 November 1984 by a few low key members who broke away from the Centre Party (CP). On 5 December the same year the only Member of Parliament for the Centre Party, Hans Janmaat, changed party to the Centre Democrats and became its seventh member. After Janmaat joined the Centre Democrats, the party became known as "his" party. Despite widespread media coverage generated by Janmaat's reputation, party membership remained small in the first few years. During its early years, the Centre Democrats received extensive media attention on two occasions. The first occurred when the Centre Democrats and Centre Party met on 29 March 1986 in Kedichem. A group of anti fascist activists believed that the two parties were planning to merge, and firebombed the hotel where the meeting was held. The venue was severely damaged, Janmaat narrowly escaped death and the party secretary Wil Schuurman had one leg amputated after jumping from a window to escape the conflagration. Janmaat's attempt to be reinstated as a teacher at his old school following his failed re election to parliament led to the second media frenzy. Although he was legally permitted to go back to his job, the protests of some students and parents due to his reputation as a "racist", led him to be bought off by the court from pursuing a return to his old job. Unable to go back to his former job, Jaanmaat returned to politics. This marked the start of prosecutions of Centre Democrats party members on charges of racism, as well as the decision by the other parties in Parliament and government to place a cordon sanitaire around the party. Due to its growth, and questions arising amongst the other parties over the development of a multicultural society, political opponents began to confront the Centre Democrats directly rather than maintain a strict cordon sanitaire around it. Despite attempts to broaden their appeal, the issue of foreigners remained central to the party's rhetoric. Janmaat was convicted of "inciting racial hatred" by the Dutch courts for speaking out against multiculturalism. His conviction later came to be seen as unwarranted by mainstream observers. Janmaat and Schuurman, who were to marry in 1996, dominated the party. With Schuurman's son head of the party office, the Centre Democrats became almost a family affair. In the 1998 general election two months later, the party lost all its seats in Parliament.

After the 1998 election, Janmaat became increasingly worried by legal pressure, believing that the Centre Democrats could become the government's next target after CP'86 was officially banned in 1998. He founded the "Conservative Democrats" as a potential successor party in the event that the Centre Democrats was proscribed. The new party contested the 1999 European elections as the Lijstverbinding Centrumdemocraten/Conservatieve Democraten, a supposed two party cooperation, where the two names in reality represented the same party. It won only 0.5% of the vote in the election, a showing widely seen as the last spasm of a dying party. Janmaat's increasing physical exhaustion only served to exacerbate the situation. Nonetheless, with a new political climate following the September 11 attacks and the rise of Pim Fortuyn, Janmaat sought political rehabilitation in his final years. The reason was that his earlier criminal convictions arose from stating things that had now become accepted. As a result, it did not participate in the 2002 general election, where the recently emerged Pim Fortuyn List attracted votes based on an appeal similar to that of the Centre Democrats.

After the split from the Centre Party, the ideology of the Centre Democrats was broadly similar to that of its originator, although the Centre Party became increasingly radical in the following years. The Centre Democrats did not publish a party or electoral manifesto before 1989, and until then its policies were known primarily through the small scale distribution of pamphlets, which were almost exact copies of old Centre Party pamphlets. Nevertheless, the party focused mainly on the issue of immigration, and mainstream observers considered the party's ideology to be a populist form of nationalism. Also opposed to "multicultural marriages," and wanting to limit the possibility of adoptions from the Third World, the CP generally sought a return to the old Dutch society with its singular Dutch culture. According to political scientist Cas Mudde, the party's ideology is best described as civic nationalism. Nevertheless, by 1994 the party had moved more towards ethnic nationalism by asserting that its program began "from the indissoluble unity and solidarity of the Dutch ethnic community [ ] based on the common history and the culture that originated from that history."

The Centre Democrats opposed any limitation of the sovereignty of the Dutch state and was thus skeptical of the European Union and European integration, seeing the Maastricht Treaty as one of many international defeats inflicted on the Dutch government. In its 1998 program, the Centre Democrats included a call for the "reunification with Flanders and other Dutch speaking territories", thereby promoting the idea of a Greater Netherlands. Supporting a generous welfare state for the Dutch people, it was otherwise sceptical of state interventionism in the economy; notably by high taxes which would hinder private initiative, or overspending on subsidies.

The original scientific bureau, or think tank, of the Centre Democrats was the Stichting Wetenschappelijke Onderbouwing Centrumdemocratische Ideologie (Foundation for the Scientific Elaboration of the Centre Democratic Ideology, SWOCI). In 1992 its name was changed to the Thomas Hobbes Stichting (Thomas Hobbes Foundation), after Janmaat's favorite political philosopher. Over time the Centre Democrats published a variety of party papers of varying quality. The Centrumtaal and the Middenkoers were the original newspapers first published in 1986. Although the former was intended for general party news, and the latter aimed at a more intellectual readership, they did not differ much in content. By 1987–1988, Centrumtaal was more or less succeeded by CD info, and Middenkoers by CD actueel. CD actueel was distributed for the last time in 1993, with CD info succeeded by the CD Nieuwsbrief in 1997, although in later years it had been published less and less frequently.

The CD regarded itself as related to other European "patriotic parties", but its official contact was limited to the German People's Union, the French National Front and the Belgian Vlaams Blok. The party regularly attended annual meetings of the German People's Union and the National Front, and Janmaat spoke of his good contacts with the latter party's leader Jean Marie Le Pen. Relations with the Vlaams Blok created a conflict of interest given VB's arguably better contacts with CP'86, the Centre Democrats' main rival in the Netherlands. Even so, the Centre Democrats maintained official contacts domestically with both the Centre Party and its successor, the CP'86.

+ House of Representatives Election year # of total votes % of overall vote # of seats won 1986 12,277 0.1% 0 1989 81,527 0.9% 1 1994 220,621 2.4% 3 1998 52,226 0.5% 0

+ European Parliament Election year # of total votes % of overall vote # of seats won 1989 40,779 0.8% 0 1994 43,300 1.0% 0 1999 17,740 0.5% 0