New National Front

The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and its leader is Adam Walker. A minor party, it has no elected representatives at any level of UK government. Founded in 1982, the party reached its greatest level of success in the 2000s, when it had over fifty seats in local government, one seat on the London Assembly, and two Members of the European Parliament.

Taking its name from that of a defunct 1960s far-right party, the BNP was created by John Tyndall and other former members of the fascist National Front (NF). During the 1980s and 1990s, the BNP placed little emphasis on contesting elections, in which it did poorly. Instead, it focused on street marches and rallies, creating the Combat 18 paramilitary—its name a coded reference to Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler—to protect its events from anti-fascist protesters. A growing 'moderniser' faction was frustrated by Tyndall's leadership, and ousted him in 1999. The new leader Nick Griffin sought to broaden the BNP's electoral base by presenting a more moderate image, targeting concerns about rising immigration rates, and emphasising localised community campaigns. This resulted in increased electoral growth throughout the 2000s, to the extent that it became the most electorally successful far-right party in British history. Concerns regarding financial mismanagement resulted in Griffin being removed as leader in 2014. By this point the BNP's membership and vote share had declined dramatically, groups like Britain First and National Action had splintered off, and the English Defence League had supplanted it as the UK's foremost far-right group.

Ideologically positioned on the extreme-right or far-right of British politics, the BNP has been characterised as fascist or neo-fascist by political scientists. Under Tyndall's leadership, it was more specifically regarded as neo-Nazi. The party is ethnic nationalist, and it once espoused the view that only white people should be citizens of the United Kingdom. It calls for an end to non-white migration into the UK. Initially, it called for the compulsory expulsion of non-whites, although since 1999 has advocated voluntary removals with financial incentives. It promotes biological racism and the white genocide conspiracy theory, calling for global racial separatism and condemning interracial relationships. Under Tyndall, the BNP emphasised anti-semitism and Holocaust denial, promoting the conspiracy theory that Jews seek to dominate the world through both communism and international capitalism. Under Griffin, the party's focus switched from anti-semitism towards Islamophobia. It promotes economic protectionism, Euroscepticism, and a transformation away from liberal democracy, while its social policies oppose feminism, LGBT rights, and societal permissiveness.

Operating around a highly centralised structure that gave its chair near total control, the BNP built links with far-right parties across Europe and created various sub-groups, including a record label and trade union. The BNP attracted most support from within White British working-class communities in northern and eastern England, particularly among middle-aged and elderly men. A poll in the 2000s suggested that most Britons favoured a ban on the party. It faced much opposition from anti-fascists, religious organisations, the mainstream media, and most politicians, and BNP members were banned from various professions.

History

John Tyndall's leadership: 1982–1999

The British National Party (BNP) was founded by the extreme-right political activist John Tyndall. Tyndall had been involved in neo-Nazi groups since the late 1950s before leading the far-right National Front (NF) throughout most of the 1970s. Following an argument with senior party member Martin Webster, he resigned from the NF in 1980. In June 1980 Tyndall established a rival, the New National Front (NNF). At the recommendation of Ray Hill—who was secretly an anti-fascist spy seeking to sow disharmony among Britain's far-right—Tyndall decided to unite an array of extreme-right groups as a single party. To this end, Tyndall established a Committee for Nationalist Unity (CNU) in January 1982. In March 1982, the CNU held a conference at the Charing Cross Hotel in London, at which 50 far-right activists agreed to the formation of the BNP.

The BNP was formally launched on 7 April 1982 at a press conference in Victoria. Led by Tyndall, most of its early members came from the NNF, although others were defectors from the NF, British Movement, British Democratic Party, and Nationalist Party. Tyndall remarked that there was "scarcely any difference etween the BNP and NFin ideology or policy save in the minutest detail", and most of the BNP's leading activists had formerly been senior NF figures. Under Tyndall's leadership the party was neo-Nazi in orientation and engaged in nostalgia for Nazi Germany. It adopted the NF's tactic of holding street marches and rallies, believing that these boosted morale and attracted new recruits. Their first march took place in London on St. George's Day 1982. These marches often involved clashes with anti-fascist protesters and resulted in multiple arrests, helping to cement the BNP's association with political violence and older fascist groups in the public eye. As a result, BNP organisers began to favour indoor rallies, although street marches continued to be held throughout the mid-to-late 1980s.

In its early years, the BNP's involvement in elections was "irregular and intermittent", and for its first two decades it faced consistent electoral failure. It suffered from low finances and few personnel, and its leadership was aware that its electoral viability was weakened by the anti-immigration rhetoric of Conservative Party Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In the 1983 general election the BNP stood 54 candidates, although it only campaigned in five seats. Although it was able to air its first party political broadcast, it averaged a vote share of 0.06% in the seats it contested.
After the Representation of the People Act 1985 raised the electoral deposit to £500, the BNP adopted a policy of "very limited involvement" in elections. It abstained in the 1987 general election, and stood only 13 candidates in the 1992 general election. In a 1993 local by-election the BNP gained one council seat—won by Derek Beackon in the East London district of Millwall—after a campaign that played to local whites who were angry at the perceived preferential treatment received by Bangladeshi migrants in social housing. Following an anti-BNP campaign launched by local religious groups and the Anti-Nazi League, it lost this seat during the 1994 local elections. In the 1997 general election, it contested 55 seats and gained an average 1.4% of the vote.

In the early 1990s, the paramilitary group Combat 18 (C18) was formed to protect BNP events from anti-fascists. In 1992, C18 carried out attacks on left-wing targets like an anarchist bookshop and the headquarters of the '' Morning Star''. Tyndall was angered by C18's growing influence on the BNP's street activities, and by August 1993, C18 activists were physically clashing with other BNP members. In December 1993, Tyndall issued a bulletin to BNP branches declaring C18 to be a proscribed organisation, furthermore suggesting that it may have been established by agents of the state to discredit the party. To counter the group's influence among militant British nationalists, he secured the American white nationalist militant William Pierce as a guest speaker at the BNP's annual rally in November 1995.

In the early 1990s, a "moderniser" faction emerged within the party, favouring a more electorally palatable strategy and an emphasis on building grassroots support to win local elections. They were impressed by the electoral gains made by a number of extreme-right parties in continental Europe—such as Jörg Haider's Austrian Freedom Party and Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front—which had been achieved by both switching focus from biological racism to the perceived cultural incompatibility of different racial groups and by replacing anti-democratic platforms with populist ones.
The modernisers called for community campaigns among the white working-class populations of London's East End, and Northern England. While the modernisers gained some concessions from the party's hard-liners, Tyndall opposed many of their ideas and sought to stem their growing influence. In his view, "we should not be looking for ways of applying ideological cosmetic surgery to ourselves in order to make our features more appealing to the public".

Nick Griffin's leadership: 1999–2014

After the BNP's poor performance at the 1997 general election, opposition to Tyndall's leadership grew. The modernisers called the party's first leadership election, and in October 1999 Tyndall was ousted when two-thirds of those voting backed Nick Griffin, who offered an improved administration, financial transparency, and greater support for local branches. Often characterised as a political chameleon, Griffin had once been considered a party hardliner before switching allegiance to the modernisers in the late 1990s. In his youth, he had been involved in the NF as well as Third Positionist groups like Political Soldier and the International Third Position. Criticising his predecessors for fuelling the image of the BNP as "thugs, losers and troublemakers", Griffin inaugurated a period of change in the party.

Influenced by Le Pen's National Front in France, Griffin sought to widen the BNP's appeal to individuals who were concerned about immigration but had not previously voted for the extreme-right. The BNP replaced Tyndall's policy of compulsory deportation of non-whites to a voluntary system whereby non-whites would be given financial incentives to emigrate. It downplayed biological racism and stressed the cultural incompatibility of different racial groups. This emphasis on culture allowed it to foreground Islamophobia, and following the September 11 attacks in 2001 it launched a "Campaign Against Islam". It stressed the claim that the BNP was "''not'' a racist party" but an "organised response to anti-white racism". At the same time Griffin sought to reassure the party's base that these reforms were based on pragmatism and not a change in principle.

Griffin also sought to shed the BNP's image as a single-issue party, by embracing a diverse array of social and economic issues. Griffin renamed the party's monthly newspaper from ''British Nationalist'' to ''The Voice of Freedom'', and established a new journal, ''Identity''. The party developed community-based campaigns, through which it targeted local issues, particularly in those areas with large numbers of skilled white working-class people who were disaffected with the Labour Party government. For instance, in Burnley it campaigned for lower speed limits on housing estates and against the closure of a local swimming bath, while in South Birmingham it targeted pensioners' concerns about youth gangs. In 2006 the party urged its activists to carry out local activities like cleaning up children's play areas and removing graffiti while wearing high-vis jackets emblazoned with the party logo.

Griffin believed that Peak Oil and a growth in Third World migrants arriving in Britain would result in a BNP government coming to power by 2040.
The close of the twentieth century produced more favourable conditions for the extreme-right in Britain as a result of increased public concerns about immigration and established Muslim communities coupled with growing dissatisfaction with the established mainstream parties. In turn, the BNP gained rapidly growing levels of support over the coming years. In July 2000, it came second in the council elections for the North End of the London Borough of Bexley, its best result since 1993. At the 2001 general election it gained 16% of the vote in one constituency and over 10% in two others. In the 2002 local elections the BNP gained four councillors, three of whom were in Burnley, where it had capitalised on white anger surrounding the disproportionately high levels of funding being directed to the Asian-dominated Daneshouse ward. This breakthrough generated public anxieties about the party, with a poll finding that six in ten supported a ban on it. In the 2003 local elections the BNP gained 13 additional councillors, including seven more in Burnley, having attained over 100,000 votes. Concerned that much of their potential vote was going to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), in 2003 the BNP offered UKIP an electoral pact but was rebuffed. Griffin then accused UKIP of being a Labour Party scheme to steal the BNP's votes. They invested much in the campaign for the 2004 European Parliament election, at which they gained 800,000 votes but failed to secure a parliamentary seat. In the 2004 local elections, they secured four more seats, including three in Epping.

For the 2005 general election, the BNP expanded its number of candidates to 119 and targeted specific regions. Its average vote in the areas it contested rose to 4.3%. It gained significantly more support in three seats, achieving 10% in Burnley, 13% in Dewsbury, and 17% in Barking. In the 2006 local elections the party gained 220,000 votes, with 33 additional councillors, having averaged a vote share of 18% in the areas it contested. In Barking and Dagenham, it saw 12 of its 13 candidates elected to the council. At the 2008 London Assembly election, the BNP gained 130,000 votes, reaching the 5% mark and thus gaining an Assembly seat. At the 2009 European Parliament election, the party gained almost 1 million votes, with two of its candidates, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, being elected as Members of the European Parliament for North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber respectively. That election also saw extreme-right parties winning seats for various other EU member-states. This victory marked a major watershed for the party. Amid significant public controversy, Griffin was invited to appear on the BBC
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