Die British National Party ( BNP ) ist eine rechtsradikale faschistische politische Partei im Vereinigten Königreich. Es hat seinen Hauptsitz in Wigton, Cumbria, und sein derzeitiger Anführer ist Adam Walker. Als kleinere Partei hat es auf keiner Regierungsebene des Vereinigten Königreichs gewählte Vertreter. Die Partei wurde 1982 gegründet und erreichte ihren größten Erfolg in den 2000er Jahren, als sie über fünfzig Sitze in der lokalen Regierung, einen Sitz in der Londoner Versammlung und zwei Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments hatte.
Die BNP wurde nach dem Namen einer ehemaligen rechtsextremen Partei der 1960er Jahre benannt. Sie wurde von John Tyndall und anderen ehemaligen Mitgliedern der faschistischen Nationalfront (NF) gegründet. In den 1980er und 1990er Jahren legte die BNP wenig Wert auf Wahlen, bei denen sie schlecht abschloss. Stattdessen konzentrierte er sich auf Straßenmärsche und Kundgebungen und schuf den Paramilitär der Combat 18 - sein Name war ein kodifizierter Hinweis auf den nationalsozialistischen Führer Adolf Hitler -, um seine Ereignisse vor antifaschistischen Demonstranten zu schützen. Eine wachsende "Modernizer" -Fraktion wurde von Tyndalls Führung enttäuscht und löste ihn 1999 aus. Der neue Vorsitzende Nick Griffin versuchte die Wahlbasis der BNP zu verbreitern, indem er ein moderateres Image präsentierte und auf die Besorgnis über steigende Einwanderungsraten abzielte und auf lokalisierte Gemeindekampagnen Wert legte. Dies führte zu einem erhöhten Wahlwachstum in den 2000er Jahren, so dass es zur erfolgreichsten rechtsradikalen Partei in der britischen Geschichte wurde. Bedenken hinsichtlich finanzieller Misswirtschaft führten dazu, dass Griffin im Jahr 2014 verdrängt wurde. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt waren die Mitglieder- und Stimmenquote der BNP dramatisch zurückgegangen, Gruppen wie Britain First hatten sich getrennt und die englische Verteidigungsliga hatte sie als erste rechtsextreme Gruppe in Großbritannien abgelöst.
Die BNP ist ideologisch rechts oder ganz rechts in der britischen Politik positioniert und wurde von Politikwissenschaftlern als faschistisch oder neofaschistisch bezeichnet. Unter Tyndalls Führung wurde es spezifischer als Neonazi betrachtet. Die Partei ist ethnisch nationalistisch und vertritt die Ansicht, dass nur Weiße Bürger des Vereinigten Königreichs sein sollten. Sie fordert ein Ende der nicht-weißen Migration in das Vereinigte Königreich und die Entfernung der Staatsbürgerschaft für nicht-weiße Briten. Ursprünglich forderte sie die zwangsweise Ausweisung von Nicht-Weißen, obwohl seit 1999 freiwillige Umzüge mit finanziellen Anreizen befürwortet werden. Sie fördert den biologischen Rassismus und die Theorie der Verschwörung des weißen Völkermords, fordert globalen Separatismus und die Verurteilung interrassischer Beziehungen. Unter Tyndall betonte die BNP den Antisemitismus und die Leugnung des Holocaust und förderte die Verschwörungstheorie, wonach Juden die Welt sowohl durch den Kommunismus als auch durch den internationalen Kapitalismus zu beherrschen suchen. Unter Griffin verlagerte sich der Fokus der Partei von Antisemitismus hin zu Islamophobie. Sie fördert wirtschaftlichen Protektionismus, Euroskeptizismus und eine Abkehr von der liberalen Demokratie, während ihre Sozialpolitik gegen Feminismus, LGBT-Rechte und gesellschaftliches Freizügigkeitsgefühl ist.
Die BNP verfügt über eine stark zentralisierte Struktur, die ihrem Vorsitzenden eine nahezu vollständige Kontrolle gibt. Es gründete eine Reihe von Untergruppen - etwa einen Jugendflügel, ein Plattenlabel und eine Gewerkschaft - und knüpfte Verbindungen zu rechtsextremen Parteien in ganz Europa. Die BNP gilt als die erfolgreichste rechtsextreme Partei in der britischen Geschichte und fand die größte Unterstützung innerhalb der Arbeiterkreise der weißen britischen Arbeiterklasse im Norden und Osten Englands, insbesondere bei Männern mittleren Alters und älteren Menschen. Im Großen und Ganzen war sie äußerst unpopulär und wurde von Antifaschisten, religiösen Organisationen und Mainstream-Politikern und Medien stark bekämpft. BNP-Mitglieder sind in einer Reihe von Berufen verboten, und laut Umfragen deutete eine Mehrheit der Briten auf ein Verbot der Partei hin.
Geschichte
John Tyndalls Führung: 1982–1999
Die British National Party (BNP) [note 1] wurde vom extrem rechten politischen Aktivisten John Tyndall gegründet. Tyndall war seit den späten 1950er Jahren in Neonazi-Gruppen involviert, bevor er in den 70er Jahren die rechtsextreme National Front (NF) leitete. Nach einem Streit mit dem älteren Parteimitglied Martin Webster trat er 1980 aus der NF aus. Tyndall gründete im Juni 1980 einen Rivalen, die New National Front (NNF). Auf Empfehlung von Ray Hill, der heimlich ein antifaschistischer Spion war, der versucht, Disharmonie zwischen den Rechten der Briten zu schaffen, beschloss Tyndall, eine Reihe rechtsextremer Gruppen als eine einzige Partei zu vereinigen. Zu diesem Zweck setzte Tyndall im Januar 1982 ein Komitee für nationalistische Einheit (CNU) ein. Im März 1982 hielt die CNU im Charing Cross Hotel in London eine Konferenz ab, bei der 50 rechtsextreme Aktivisten der Bildung der BNP zugestimmt haben.
Die BNP wurde am 7. April 1982 auf einer Pressekonferenz in Victoria offiziell lanciert. Die meisten ihrer frühen Mitglieder stammten von Tyndall und stammten von der NNF, obwohl andere Überläufer der NF, der British Movement, der British Democratic Party und der Nationalist Party waren. Tyndall bemerkte, es gebe "kaum einen Unterschied [between the BNP and NF] in Ideologie oder Politik, bis auf das kleinste Detail", und die meisten führenden Aktivisten der BNP waren früher hochrangige Vertreter der NF gewesen. Unter Tyndalls Führung war die Partei neonazistisch orientiert und in Nostalgie nach Nazi-Deutschland verwickelt. Es übernahm die Taktik der NF, Straßenmärsche und Kundgebungen abzuhalten, und glaubte, dass diese die Moral stärkten und neue Rekruten anzogen. Ihr erster Marsch fand am St. George's Day 1982 in London statt. Bei diesen Märschen kam es häufig zu Auseinandersetzungen mit antifaschistischen Demonstranten. Mehrere Verhaftungen führten dazu, dass die BNP mit politischer Gewalt und älteren faschistischen Gruppen in der Öffentlichkeit gefestigt wurde. Als Folge begannen die BNP-Organisatoren, Rallyes im Innenbereich zu bevorzugen, obwohl zwischen Mitte und Ende der 1980er Jahre immer noch Straßenmärsche abgehalten wurden.
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- BNP Marschried, 1982
In den Anfangsjahren war die Beteiligung der BNP an den Wahlen "unregelmäßig und intermittierend", und in den ersten zwei Jahrzehnten war das Wahlversagen der Wähler konfrontiert. Sie litt unter geringen Finanzen und wenig Personal, und ihre Führung war sich bewusst, dass ihre Wahlfähigkeit durch die Anti-Immigration-Rhetorik der konservativen Parteichefs, Margaret Thatcher, geschwächt wurde. Bei den Parlamentswahlen 1983 kandidierte die BNP 54 Kandidaten, obwohl sie nur fünf Sitze hatte. Obwohl es in der Lage war, seine erste parteipolitische Ausstrahlung auszustrahlen, betrug der Stimmanteil an den von ihm beanstandeten Mandaten durchschnittlich 0,06%. [34]
Nachdem der Representation of the People Act 1985 die Wahlvorlage auf 500 Pfd.St. angehoben hatte, verabschiedete die BNP eine Politik von "sehr begrenzter Beteiligung" an Wahlen. Bei den Parlamentswahlen von 1987 enthielt es sich der Stimme und bei den Parlamentswahlen von 1992 nur 13 Kandidaten. Bei einer örtlichen Nachwahl von 1993 gewann die BNP einen Sitz im Rat - gewonnen von Derek Beackon im East Londoner Bezirk Millwall - nach einer Kampagne, die den lokalen Weißen zugute kam, die sich über die bevorzugte Behandlung von Migranten aus Bangladesch im sozialen Wohnungsbau ärgerten. Nach einer Anti-BNP-Kampagne, die von lokalen religiösen Gruppen und der Anti-Nazi-Liga initiiert wurde, verlor es diesen Sitz während der Kommunalwahlen von 1994. Bei den Parlamentswahlen 1997 bestritt er 55 Sitze und gewann durchschnittlich 1,4% der Stimmen. [40]
Anfang der 1990er Jahre wurde die paramilitärische Gruppe Combat 18 (C18) [note 2] gebildet BNP-Ereignisse vor Antifaschisten zu schützen. C18 führte 1992 Angriffe auf linke Ziele wie eine anarchistische Buchhandlung und die Zentrale des Morning Star durch. Tyndall war verärgert über den wachsenden Einfluss von C18 auf die Straßenaktivitäten der BNP. Im August 1993 kollidierten C18-Aktivisten mit anderen BNP-Mitgliedern. Im Dezember 1993 gab Tyndall ein Bulletin an BNP-Außenstellen heraus, in dem C18 zu einer verbotenen Organisation erklärt wurde, und deutete außerdem an, dass es möglicherweise von staatlichen Stellen zur Diskreditierung der Partei eingerichtet worden war. Um dem Einfluss der Gruppe unter militanten britischen Nationalisten entgegenzuwirken, sicherte er sich den amerikanischen weißen nationalistischen Militanten William Pierce als Gastredner bei der jährlichen Rallye der BNP im November 1995.
John Tyndall war sowohl [the BNPs] das größte Kapital als auch der größte Nachteil. Seine Beharrlichkeit, Rock-artige Zuverlässigkeit und Führung hatten die Bewegung in Gang gehalten, aber seit ihrer Gründung im Jahr 1982 mit fast unmerklichem Wachstum.
- Senior BNP-Mitglied John Bean
In den frühen 1990er Jahren entstand eine "Modernizer" -Fraktion Partei, die sich für eine eher wählbare Strategie und einen Schwerpunkt auf den Aufbau einer Basisunterstützung für die Gewinnung von Kommunalwahlen einsetzt. Sie waren beeindruckt von den Wahlgewinnen, die eine Reihe rechtsextremer Parteien in Kontinentaleuropa errungen haben - wie etwa die österreichische Freiheitspartei von Jörg Haider und die Nationalfront von Jean-Marie Le Pen -, die durch die Verlagerung des Fokus vom biologischen Rassismus auf das Wahrgenommene erzielt wurden kulturelle Unvereinbarkeit verschiedener Rassengruppen und durch Ersetzung antidemokratischer Plattformen durch populistische.
Die Modernisierer forderten Gemeinschaftskampagnen unter den weißen Arbeiterbürgern im Londoner East End und in Nordengland. Während die Modernisierer von den Hardlinern der Partei einige Zugeständnisse machten, widersetzte sich Tyndall vielen ihrer Ideen und versuchte, ihren wachsenden Einfluss einzudämmen. Seiner Ansicht nach "sollten wir nicht nach Wegen suchen, ideologische kosmetische Chirurgie bei uns anzuwenden, um unsere Gesichtszüge für die Öffentlichkeit attraktiver zu machen".
Nick Griffins Führung: 1999–2014
Nach der schlechten Leistung der BNP bei den Parlamentswahlen 1997 nahm die Opposition gegen Tyndalls Führung zu. Die Modernisierer forderten die erste Wahl der Partei, und im Oktober 1999 wurde Tyndall gestürzt, als zwei Drittel der Wähler Nick Griffin unterstützten, der eine verbesserte Verwaltung, finanzielle Transparenz und eine stärkere Unterstützung der lokalen Zweigstellen bot. Griffin, der oft als politisches Chamäleon bezeichnet wurde, war einst als parteiischer Hardliner angesehen worden, bevor er Ende der 1990er Jahre den Modernisierern die Treue gab. In seiner Jugend war er sowohl in der NF als auch in dritten Positionistengruppen wie Political Soldier und der International Third Position engagiert. Griffin kritisierte seine Vorgänger, weil er das Image der BNP als "Schläger, Verlierer und Unruhestifter" befeuert habe, und eröffnete damit eine Phase der Veränderung der Partei.
Unter der Einflussnahme von Le Pens Nationalfront in Frankreich bemühte sich Griffin, die BNP-Appelle an Einzelpersonen zu erweitern die sich Sorgen um die Einwanderung machten, aber noch nicht für die Rechtsextremen gestimmt hatten. Die BNP ersetzte Tyndalls Politik der Zwangsabschiebung von Nicht-Weißen in ein freiwilliges System, durch das Nicht-Weiße finanzielle Anreize für die Emigration erhalten sollten. Es hat den biologischen Rassismus heruntergespielt und die kulturelle Unvereinbarkeit verschiedener Rassengruppen betont. Diese Betonung auf Kultur erlaubte es, die Islamophobie in den Vordergrund zu stellen, und nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September 2001 startete sie eine "Kampagne gegen den Islam". Sie betonte die Behauptung, die BNP sei " keine rassistische Partei", sondern eine "organisierte Antwort auf den weißen Rassismus". Zur gleichen Zeit versuchte Griffin, die Basis der Partei zu versichern, dass diese Reformen auf Pragmatismus und nicht auf einer Änderung des Prinzips basierten.
Griffin versuchte auch, das Image der BNP als Single-Issue-Partei zu zerstreuen, indem er sich einer Vielzahl sozialer Gruppen annahm und wirtschaftliche Fragen. Griffin benannte die Monatszeitung der Partei von British Nationalist in The Voice of Freedom um und gründete eine neue Zeitschrift, Identity . Die Partei entwickelte kommunale Kampagnen, mit denen sie auf lokale Probleme abzielte, insbesondere in den Bereichen, in denen viele qualifizierte weiße Arbeiter der Arbeiterklasse von der Labour Party-Regierung unzufrieden waren. In Burnley setzte er sich beispielsweise für niedrigere Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen in Wohnsiedlungen und gegen die Schließung eines örtlichen Bades ein, während er in South Birmingham die Bedenken der Rentner gegen Jugendbanden angriff. Im Jahr 2006 forderte die Partei ihre Aktivisten dazu auf, lokale Aktivitäten durchzuführen, wie das Aufräumen von Kinderspielbereichen und das Entfernen von Graffiti, während sie Warnjacken trugen, die mit dem Logo der Partei versehen waren.
Griffin glaubte, dass Peak Oil und ein Anwachsen der Migranten aus der Dritten Welt ankamen Großbritannien würde dazu führen, dass eine BNP-Regierung bis 2040 an die Macht kommt.
Das Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts brachte günstigere Bedingungen für die extremen Rechte in Großbritannien mit sich, als die Besorgnis der Bevölkerung über die Einwanderung und die Gründung von muslimischen Gemeinschaften in Verbindung mit zunehmender Unzufriedenheit mit den etablierten Mainstream-Parteien zunahm. Im Gegenzug gewann die BNP in den kommenden Jahren rasch an Unterstützung. Im Juli 2000 wurde es bei den Ratswahlen für das Nordende des Londoner Bezirks von Bexley an zweiter Stelle, sein bestes Ergebnis seit 1993. Bei den Parlamentswahlen von 2001 gewann es 16% der Stimmen in einem Wahlkreis und mehr als 10% in zwei anderen . Bei den Kommunalwahlen von 2002 gewann die BNP vier Ratsmitglieder, von denen sich drei in Burnley befanden, wo sie von der weißen Wut profitiert hatte, die sich aus der unverhältnismäßig hohen Mittelausstattung der in Asien dominierten Daneshouse-Abteilung ergab. Dieser Durchbruch löste in der Öffentlichkeit Besorgnis über die Partei aus. Sechs von zehn Befragten befürworteten ein Verbot. Bei den Kommunalwahlen 2003 gewann die BNP 13 zusätzliche Ratsmitglieder, darunter sieben in Burnley, die über 100.000 Stimmen erhalten hatten. Besorgt darüber, dass ein großer Teil ihrer potenziellen Stimme an die UK Independence Party (UKIP) ging, bot die BNP der UKIP 2003 einen Wahlpakt an, wurde jedoch zurückgewiesen. Griffin beschuldigte UKIP dann, ein Programm der Labour Party zu sein, um die Stimmen der BNP zu stehlen. Sie haben viel in die Kampagne für die Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament 2004 investiert, bei denen sie 800.000 Stimmen erhalten haben, aber keinen Parlamentssitz erhalten haben. Bei den Kommunalwahlen von 2004 errangen sie vier weitere Sitze, darunter drei in Epping.
Bei den Parlamentswahlen von 2005 erweiterte die BNP ihre Kandidatenzahl auf 119 und zielte auf bestimmte Regionen. Die durchschnittliche Stimmenzahl in den von ihr angefochtenen Bereichen stieg auf 4,3%. Sie gewann mit drei Sitzen deutlich mehr Unterstützung und erzielte 10% in Burnley, 13% in Dewsbury und 17% in Barking. Bei den Kommunalwahlen von 2006 gewann die Partei 220.000 Stimmen, 33 zusätzliche Ratsmitglieder hatten im Durchschnitt einen Stimmanteil von 18% in den von ihr angefochtenen Bereichen. In Barking und Dagenham wurden 12 von 13 Kandidaten in den Rat gewählt. Bei der Wahl der Londoner Vollversammlung 2008 gewann die BNP 130.000 Stimmen, erreichte die 5% -Marke und gewann damit einen Sitz in der Vollversammlung. Bei den Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament 2009 erhielt die Partei fast eine Million Stimmen. Zwei ihrer Kandidaten, Nick Griffin und Andrew Brons, wurden als Mitglieder des Europäischen Parlaments für Nordwestengland und Yorkshire bzw. Humber gewählt. Bei diesen Wahlen wurden auch rechtsextreme Parteien für verschiedene andere EU-Mitgliedstaaten gewonnen. Dieser Sieg bedeutete für die Partei eine große Wende. Griffin wurde im Oktober 2009 in der öffentlichen Kontroverse eingeladen, an der BBC-Show (Fragestunde ) teilzunehmen. Dies war das erste Mal, dass die BNP eingeladen wurde, eine nationale Fernsehplattform mit Mainstream-Panelisten zu teilen. Griffins Leistung wurde jedoch weithin als schlecht angesehen.
Trotz ihres Erfolges gab es in der Partei Meinungsverschiedenheiten. Im Jahr 2007 forderte eine Gruppe hochrangiger Mitglieder, die als "Dezember-Rebellen" bekannt waren, Griffin heraus und forderte die innerparteiliche Demokratie und finanzielle Transparenz, wurde jedoch vertrieben. Im Jahr 2008 spaltete sich eine Gruppe von BNP-Aktivisten in Bradford in die Demokratischen Nationalisten auf. Im November 2008 wurde die BNP-Mitgliederliste bei WikiLeaks veröffentlicht, nachdem sie kurz in einem Weblog erschienen war. [91] Ein Jahr später, im Oktober 2009, wurde eine weitere Liste von BNP-Mitgliedern durchgesickert. [92] ] Eddy Butler führte dann eine Herausforderung an Griffins Führung durch, angeblich finanzielle Korruption, aber er hatte keine ausreichende Unterstützung. Die Rebellen, die ihn unterstützten, spalteten sich in zwei Gruppen auf: Ein Teil blieb als interne Reformgruppe, der andere verließ die BNP, um die British Freedom Party zu gründen.
Im Jahr 2010 gab es Unzufriedenheit in der Basis der Partei, eine Folge der Änderung der weißen Mitgliedschaftspolitik und der Gerüchte über Finanzkorruption unter der Führung der Partei. Einige traten zur Nationalen Front über oder ließen sich zu Parteien wie Britain First, der British Freedom Party, der National People's Party und der Britannica Party zusammenschließen. Antifaschistische Gruppen wie Hope not Hate hatten sich in Barking intensiv dafür eingesetzt, die Anwohner der Region für die Abstimmung zu stoppen BNP. Bei den Parlamentswahlen 2010 hatte die BNP mit einem Sitz im Unterhaus einen Durchbruch erhofft, obwohl dies nicht gelang. Dennoch erreichte es mit 1,9% der Stimmen den fünftgrößten nationalen Stimmenanteil und war damit die erfolgreichste Wahlleistung für eine rechtsextreme Partei in der britischen Geschichte. Bei den Kommunalwahlen 2010 verlor es alle Ratsmitglieder in Barking und Dagenham. In der Bundesrepublik sank die Zahl der Ratsherren der Partei von über fünfzig auf 28. Griffin bezeichnete die Ergebnisse als "katastrophal".
Abnahme: 2014 - Gegenwart
Bei einer Führungswahl im Jahr 2011 errang Griffin einen knappen Sieg und schlug Brons mit neun Punkten Stimmen von insgesamt 2.316 abgegebenen Stimmen. [101] Im Oktober 2012 verließ Brons die Partei und ließ Griffin als einzigen Europaabgeordneten zurück. [102] Bei den Kommunalwahlen 2012 verlor die Partei alle Sitze und verlor ihre Stimmenanteile dramatisch; Während er 2008 mehr als 240.000 Stimmen erhielt, waren es 2012 weniger als 26.000. Der Politikwissenschaftler Matthew Goodwin kommentierte das Ergebnis: "Einfach gesagt: Die BNP-Wahlkampagne ist vorbei." [104] Im Londoner Bürgermeisteramt 2012 Bei der Wahl belegte der BNP-Kandidat mit 1,3% der Vorzugswahlen den siebten Platz, der ärmste im Londoner Bürgermeisterwettbewerb. Die Wahlergebnisse von 2012 haben gezeigt, dass das stetige Wachstum der BNP beendet ist. Bei den Kommunalwahlen 2013 kämpfte die BNP 99 Kandidaten an, gewann jedoch keine Ratsmandate und beließ nur zwei. [107]
Im Juni 2013 besuchte Griffin zusammen mit Mitgliedern aus Ungarn Syrien -Rechte Partei Jobbik zu einem Treffen mit Regierungsvertretern, darunter dem Sprecher der syrischen Volksversammlung, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham, und dem Premierminister Wael Nader al-Halqi. [108] Griffin behauptet, er habe Einfluss auf den Sprecher des syrischen Parlaments ein offener Brief an britische Abgeordnete, die sie aufforderten, "Großbritannien vom Kriegspfad abzuwenden", indem sie nicht in den syrischen Konflikt eingriff. [109] Griffin verlor bei den Europawahlen im Mai 2014 seinen Sitz im Europäischen Parlament. Die Partei beschuldigte die britische Unabhängigkeitspartei für ihren Niedergang und beschuldigte Letztere, BNP-Richtlinien und -Slogans gestohlen zu haben. [110] Im Juli 2014 trat Griffin zurück und wurde von Adam Walker als amtierender Vorsitzender abgelöst. [111] Im Oktober wurde Griffin aus dem Verein ausgeschlossen die Partei für "den Versuch, Uneinigkeit [in the party] herbeizuführen, indem sie bewusst einen Krisenzustand herstellte." [112]
Im Januar 2015 war die Zahl der Mitglieder der Partei um 500 gesunken, [113] Dezember 2013. [114] Bei den Parlamentswahlen im Jahr 2015 hatte die BNP acht Kandidaten ausgetragen (2010: 338). Der Stimmanteil der Partei ging um 99,7% gegenüber dem Ergebnis von 2010 zurück. [115]
Im Januar 2016 wurde die Wahlkommission abgemeldet die BNP wegen Nichtzahlung ihrer jährlichen Registrierungsgebühr von GB £ 25 . Zu diesem Zeitpunkt wurde geschätzt, dass das BNP-Vermögen weniger als GB £ 50.000 betrug. [116] Nach Angaben der Kommission "können BNP-Kandidaten derzeit den Namen, die Beschreibung oder das Emblem der Partei nicht auf dem Stimmzettel verwenden Zeitung bei Wahlen. "[117] Einen Monat später wurde die Partei erneut registriert. [118]
Bei den Parlamentswahlen 2017 waren zehn BNP-Kandidaten anwesend. [119] Bei den Kommunalwahlen 2018 war Brian der letzte verbliebene Ratsmitglied der Partei Parker von Pendle - beschloss, sich nicht für eine Wiederwahl zu stellen, und ließ die Partei auf keiner Ebene der britischen Regierung vertreten. [120]
Ideologie
Rechtsextremismus, Faschismus und Neonazismus
Viele Wissenschaftshistoriker und Politikwissenschaftler haben die BNP als rechtsextreme Partei oder als rechtsextreme Partei bezeichnet. Wie der Politologe Matthew Goodwin es verwendete, bezog sich der Begriff auf "eine bestimmte Form politischer Ideologie, die durch zwei verfassungsfeindliche und antidemokratische Elemente definiert wird: Erstens sind Rechtsextremisten extremistisch weil sie." die Werte, Verfahren und Institutionen des demokratischen Rechtsstaats ablehnen oder untergraben, und zweitens sind sie rechts weil sie das Prinzip der grundlegenden Gleichheit der Menschen ablehnen ".
Verschiedene Politikwissenschaftler und Historiker haben das beschrieben BNP als faschistisch in der Ideologie. [4][126][127] Andere haben es stattdessen als Neofaschist bezeichnet, ein Begriff, den der Historiker Nigel Copsey genauer argumentierte. Akademische Beobachter - darunter die Historiker Copsey, Graham Macklin und Roger Griffin sowie der politische Theologe Andrew P. Davey - haben argumentiert, dass die Reformen von Nick Griffin nicht mehr als ein kosmetischer Prozess zur Verschleierung der faschistischen Wurzeln der Partei seien. [131] Laut Copsey Unter Griffin wurde die BNP "neu justierter Faschismus - eine Form des Neofaschismus - für zeitgenössische Gefühle". Macklin stellte fest, dass die BNP trotz Griffins "Modernisierungsprojekt" ihre ideologische Kontinuität mit früheren faschistischen Gruppen beibehielt und sich somit nicht in eine echte "postfaschistische" Partei verwandelt hatte. Dabei unterschied es sich von Parteien wie der italienischen Nationalallianz von Gianfranco Fini, denen nachgesagt wurde, ihre faschistische Vergangenheit erfolgreich niedergeschlagen und postfaschistisch zu werden.
Der antifaschistische Aktivist Gerry Gable bezeichnete die BNP als "Nazi" Organisation ", während die Anti-Nazi League Flugblätter veröffentlichte, in denen die BNP als" britische NSDAP "bezeichnet wurde. Copsey wies darauf hin, dass die BNP unter Tyndall als Neonazi bezeichnet werden könne, aber nicht "grob nachahmend" des ursprünglichen deutschen Nationalsozialismus sei. Davey bezeichnete die BNP als "populistisch-ethno-nationalistische" Partei.
Das [...] modernisierte Furnier [BNP's] ist oberflächlich. Der Kern der Partei bleibt ideologisch faschistisch, und dies war nirgends deutlicher als in dem BNP-Manifest für die Parlamentswahl 2010, die zu einer Aneinanderreihung traditioneller faschistischer Themen wie der Verbindung von Blut, Heimat, der Dekadenz der zeitgenössischen Kultur, a Nostalgie für Volkstraditionen und Erbe sowie Betonung einer strengeren Disziplin in Bildung und Gesellschaft. Während des Wahlkampfs wurden auf den sozialen Netzwerkseiten der Kandidaten Antisemitismus, Rassismus und Neonazi-Sympathien identifiziert.
- Politologe Theologe Andrew P. Davey, 2011
In seinen Schriften bestätigte Griffin einen Großteil seiner "Modernisierung" Es war ein Versuch, die Kernideologie der BNP hinter einer eher schmackhaften Politik zu verbergen. Wie die National Front unterschied sich der private Diskurs der BNP von seinem öffentlichen Diskurs, und Griffin erklärte: "Natürlich müssen wir dem Hardcore die Wahrheit beibringen ... [but]wenn es darum geht, die Öffentlichkeit zu beeinflussen, vergessen Sie die Unterschiede zwischen den Rassen und die Genetik , Zionismus, historischer Revisionismus und so weiter ... wir müssen ihnen stets ein Bild moderater Vernunft vermitteln ". Die BNP hat die Labels "Faschist" und "Nazi" gemieden und behauptet, es sei keine. In seinem Wahlprogramm von 1992 bestand er darauf, dass "der Faschismus italienisch war. Der Nazismus war deutsch. Wir sind Briten. Wir werden die Dinge auf unsere Weise tun; wir werden keine Ausländer kopieren". Im Jahr 2009 war Griffin der Begriff "Faschismus" einfach "ein Abstrich, der von ganz links kommt"; Er fügte hinzu, dass der Begriff für Gruppen vorgesehen sein sollte, die sich in "politischer Gewalt" engagierten, und forderte einen Staat, der "den Volk seinen Willen auferlegen sollte". Er behauptete, es sei die antifaschistische Gruppe Unite Against Fascism - und nicht die BNP - wer waren die echten Faschisten. [144] Im weiteren Sinne versuchten viele von Großbritanniens Rechtsextremisten, den Begriff "britischer Faschismus" wegen seiner kurzlebigen Konnotationen zu umgehen, indem sie statt dessen den "britischen Nationalismus" verwendeten.
In der Partei setzte sie zunehmend nativistische Themen ein, um ihre "britischen" Referenzen hervorzuheben. In ihrem veröffentlichten Material berief sich die Partei auf die Idee von Großbritannien und Britannien auf eine Weise, die den politischen Parteien nicht unähnlich war. In diesem Material wurde auch die Unionsflagge und die Farben Rot, Weiß und Blau verwendet. Roger Griffin merkte an, dass die Begriffe "Britain" und "England" in der BNP-Literatur "verwirrend austauschbar" erscheinen, während Copsey darauf hingewiesen hat, dass der britische Nationalismus der BNP "anglo-centric" ist. Die Partei wendete militaristische Rhetorik unter der Führung von Tyndall und Griffin an; unter letzterem sprach beispielsweise sein veröffentlichtes Material von einem "Krieg ohne Uniformen" und einem "Krieg um unser Überleben als Volk". Tyndall bezeichnete die BNP als revolutionäre Partei und bezeichnete sie als "Guerilla-Armee", die in besetzten Gebieten operierte.
Ethnischer Nationalismus und biologischer Rassismus
Die britische Nationalpartei besteht darin, den indigenen Völkern dieser Inseln in den Vereinigten Staaten eine Zukunft zu sichern Der Nordatlantik ist seit Jahrtausenden unsere Heimat.
- Die BNP, 2005
Die BNP hält sich an biologisch-rassistische Ideen und zeigt eine Besessenheit hinsichtlich der wahrgenommenen Unterschiede der Rassengruppen. Sowohl Tyndall als auch Griffin glaubten, dass es eine biologisch unterscheidbare, weißhäutige "britische Rasse" gab, die einen Zweig einer breiteren nordischen Rasse bildete, eine Ansicht, die mit früheren Faschisten wie Hitler und Arnold Leese vergleichbar war.
Die BNP hält an einer Ideologie des ethnischen Nationalismus. Sie befürwortet die Vorstellung, dass nicht alle Bürger des Vereinigten Königreichs zur britischen Nation gehören. Stattdessen wird behauptet, dass die Nation nur den Engländern, Schotten, Iren und Walisern gehört, zusammen mit der begrenzten Anzahl von Völkern europäischer Abstammung, die vor Jahrhunderten oder Jahrzehnten angekommen sind und sich vollständig in unsere Gesellschaft integriert haben. Dies ist eine Gruppe, die Griffin als die "Heimatleute" oder "die Leute" bezeichnet. Tyndall zufolge: "Die BNP ist eine nationalistische Rassenpartei, die in Großbritannien für die Briten glaubt, das heißt, Rassendifferenzismus." Richard Edmonds sagte 1993 zu Duncan Campbell von The Guardian dass "wir [the BNP] zu 100% rassistisch sind". [158] Die BNP betrachtet britische Bürger, die keine ethnischen weißen Europäer sind, nicht als "britische". und Partyliteratur fordert die Anhänger auf, sich nicht auf Personen wie "Black Britons" oder "Asian Britons" zu beziehen, sondern bezeichnet sie als "rassische Ausländer".
Tyndall glaubte, dass die weißen Briten und die breitere nordische Rasse anderen Rassen überlegen seien. Unter seiner Führung förderte die BNP die Pseudowissenschaft Ansprüche zur Unterstützung der weißen Vorherrschaft. Nach Griffins Machtübernahme in der Partei lehnte er offiziell den rassischen Supremacismus ab und bestand darauf, dass keine Rassengruppe einer anderen überlegen oder unterlegen war. Stattdessen wurde ein "ethno-pluralistischer" Rassendifferenzierung in den Vordergrund gestellt, in dem behauptet wurde, dass verschiedene Rassengruppen zu ihrer eigenen Bewahrung getrennt und voneinander getrennt werden müssen. Die globale ethnokulturelle Vielfalt sei zu schützen. Dieser Fokuswechsel war in hohem Maße dem Diskurs der französischen Nouvelle Droite-Bewegung zu verdanken, die in den sechziger Jahren innerhalb der extremen Rechten Frankreichs entstanden war.
Gleichzeitig verlagerte die BNP den Fokus von der offenen Förderung des biologischen Rassismus auf die Wahrnehmung der kulturellen Unvereinbarkeit von Rassengruppen. Es konzentrierte sich sehr darauf, dem, was es als "Multikulturalismus" bezeichnete, entgegenzuwirken, es als eine Form des "kulturellen Völkermords" zu bezeichnen, und behauptete, dass es die Interessen von Nicht-Weißen auf Kosten der weißen britischen Bevölkerung fördere. Interne Dokumente, die unter Griffins Führung erstellt und in Umlauf gebracht wurden, zeigten jedoch, dass sie sich trotz der Verschiebung in ihren öffentlichen Äußerungen weiterhin den biologisch rassistischen Ideen verschrieben hatten.
Die Partei betont, dass die Reinheit der Weißen nach der Rasse zu schützen ist Britisch. Es verurteilt die Verwechslung und "Rassenmischung" und behauptet, dies sei eine Bedrohung für die britische Rasse. Tyndall erklärte, er habe "das Kind einer gemischten Ehe zutiefst bedauert", habe aber "keinerlei Sympathie für die Eltern". Griffin erklärte in ähnlicher Weise, dass gemischtrassige Kinder "die tragischsten Opfer von erzwungenem Multi-Rassismus" seien und dass die Partei "Betrug nicht als moralisch oder normal akzeptieren würde ... wir werden es niemals tun". In ihrem Wahlprogramm von 1983 stellte die BNP fest, dass "Familiengröße eine Privatsache" sei, forderte aber weiterhin, dass weiße Briten, die "von intelligentem, gesundem und fleißigem Bestand sind", große Familien haben und somit die weiße Geburtenrate in Großbritannien anheben. Die Förderung hoher Geburtenraten unter den weißen britischen Familien setzte sich unter Griffins Führung fort.
Unter der Führung von Tyndall förderte die BNP die Eugenik und forderte die Zwangssterilisation von Menschen mit genetisch übertragbaren Behinderungen. In der Parteiliteratur ging es darum, die britische "Rasse" zu verbessern, indem "minderwertige Stämme innerhalb der indigenen Rassen der britischen Inseln" beseitigt wurden. Tyndall argumentierte, dass medizinisches Fachpersonal dafür verantwortlich sein sollte, zu bestimmen, wer sterilisiert werden sollte, während eine Senkung der Sozialleistungen die Zucht unter denjenigen abschrecken würde, die er als genetisch minderwertig erachtete. In seiner Zeitschrift Spearhead erklärte Tyndall auch, dass "das Gaskammensystem" verwendet werden sollte, um "sub-humane Elemente", "Perversen" und "asocials" aus der britischen Gesellschaft zu eliminieren.
Einwanderung und Rückführung
Die Einwanderung von Nicht-Europäern nach Großbritannien ... sollte unverzüglich beendet werden, und wir sollten ein umfangreiches Programm zur Rückführung und Umsiedlung von Völkern nichteuropäischer Herkunft organisieren, die bereits in diesem Land ansässig sind.
- Die erste Rückführungspolitik der BNP, 1982
Die Einwanderung gegen die Einwanderung war für die politische Plattform der BNP von zentraler Bedeutung. It has engaged in xenophobic campaigns which emphasise the idea that immigrants and ethnic minorities are both different from, and a threat to, the white British and white Irish populations. In its campaign material it presented non-whites both as a source of crime in the UK, and as a socio-economic threat to the white British population by taking jobs, housing, and welfare away from them. It engaged in welfare chauvinism, calling for white Britons to be prioritised by the UK's welfare state. Party literature included such as claims as that the BNP was the only party which could "do anything effective about the swamping of Britain by the Third World" or "lead the native peoples of Britain in our version of the New Crusade that must be organised if Europe is not to sink under the Islamic yoke".
Much of its published material made claims about a forthcoming race war and promoted the conspiracy theory about white genocide. In a 2009 radio interview, Griffin referred to this as a "bloodless genocide". It presents the idea that white Britons are engaged in a battle against their own extinction as a racial group. It reiterated a sense of urgency about the situation, claiming that both high immigration rates and high birth rates among ethnic minorities were a threat to the white British. In 2010, it for instance was promoting the idea that at current levels, "indigenous Britons" would be a minority within the UK by 2060.
The immigrant communities in Britain are... colonies filled with colonists. They are alien islands inside our towns and cities with their own laws and cultures. They will never integrate as they did not come here to integrate, but to re-create their own cultures in our country. The fact is that the only solution to Multi-Culturalism is not some asinine and bogus attempt to impose British cultural values on immigrants, but simply to commence repatriating them.
— Lee Barnes, senior BNP leader, 2005
The BNP calls for the non-white population of Britain to either be reduced in size or removed from the country altogether. Under Tyndall's leadership it promoted the compulsory removal of non-whites from the UK, stating that under a BNP government they would be "repatriated" to their countries of origin. In the early 1990s it produced stickers with the slogan "Our Final Solution: Repatriation". Tyndall understood this to be a two-stage process that would take ten to twenty years, with some non-whites initially leaving willingly and the others then being forcibly deported. During the 1990s, party modernisers suggested that the BNP move away from a policy of compulsory repatriation and toward a voluntary system, whereby non-white persons would be offered financial incentives to leave the UK. This idea, adopted from Powellism, was deemed more electorally palatable.
When Griffin took control of the party, the policy of voluntary repatriation was officially adopted, with the party suggesting that this could be financed through the use of the UK's pre-existing foreign aid budget. It stated that any non-whites who refused to leave would be stripped of their British citizenship and categorised as "permanent guests", while continuing to be offered incentives to emigrate. Griffin's BNP also stressed its support for an immediate halt to non-white immigration into Britain and for the deportation of any migrants illegally in the country. Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show in 2009, Griffin declared that, unlike Tyndall, he "does not want all-white UK" because "nobody out there wants it or would pay for it".[188]
Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia
My experience as a campaigner against the multi-racial idea in Britain and in favour of our country's centuries-old tradition of racial homogeneity has brought home to me beyond any doubt the fact that Jews are to be found at the forefront of opposition to British racial self-preservation.
— Tyndall's belief that a Jewish conspiracy was behind multiracial Britain
Under Tyndall's leadership, the BNP was openly anti-Semitic. From A. K. Chesterton, Tyndall had inherited a belief that there was a global conspiracy of Jews bent on world domination, viewing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as genuine evidence for this. He believed that Jews were responsible for both communism and international finance capitalism and that they were responsible for undermining the British Empire and the British race. He believed that both democratic government and immigration into Europe were parts of the Jewish conspiracy to weaken other races. In an early edition of Spearhead published in the 1960s, Tyndall wrote that "if Britain were to become Jew-clean she would have no nigger neighbours to worry about... It is the Jews who are our misfortune: T-h-e J-e-w-s. Do you hear me? THE JEWS?" Tyndall added Holocaust denial to the anti-Semitic beliefs inherited from Chesterton, believing that the Holocaust was a hoax created by the Jews to gain sympathy for themselves and thus aid their plot for world domination. Among those to endorse such anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was Griffin, who promoted them in his 1997 pamphlet, Who are the Mind Benders? Griffin also engaged in Holocaust denial, publishing articles promoting such ideas in The Runea magazine produced by the Croydon BNP. In 1998, these articles resulted in Griffin being convicted of inciting racial hatred.
When Griffin took power, he sought to banish overt anti-Semitic discourse from the party. He informed party members that "we can get away with criticising Zionists, but any criticism of Jews is likely to be legal and political suicide". In 2006, he complained that the "obsession" that many BNP members had with "the Jews" was "insane and politically disastrous". In 2004, the party selected a Jewish candidate, Pat Richardson, to stand for it during local council elections, something Tyndall lambasted as a "gimmick". References to Jews in BNP literature were often coded to hide the party's electorally unpalatable anti-Semitic ideas. For instance, the term "Zionists" was often used in party literature as a euphemism for "Jews". As noted by Macklin, Griffin still framed many of his arguments "within the parameters of recognizably anti-Semitic discourse". The BNP's literature is replete with references to a conspiratorial group who have sought to suppress nationalist sentiment among the British population, who have encouraged immigration and mixed race relationships, and who are promoting the Islamification of the country. This group is likely a reference to the Jews, an old fascist canard.
Under Griffin, the BNP's website linked to other web pages that explicitly portrayed immigration as part of a Jewish conspiracy, while it also sold books that promoted Holocaust denial. In 2004, secretly filmed footage was captured in which Griffin was seen claiming that "the Jews simply bought the West, in terms of press and so on, for their own political ends". Sectors of the extreme-right were highly critical of Griffin's softening on the subject of the Jews, claiming that he had "sold out" to the 'Zionist Occupied Government'. In 2006, John Bean, editor of Identityincluded an article in which he reassured BNP members that the party had not "sold out to the Jews" or "embraced Zionism" but that it remained "committed to fighting... subversive Jews".
Copsey noted that despite Griffin's reforms, a "culture of anti-Semitism" still pervaded the BNP. In 2004, a London activist told reporters that "most of us hate Jews", while a Scottish BNP group was observed making Nazi salutes while shouting "Auschwitz". The party's Newcastle upon Tyne Central candidate compared the Auschwitz concentration camp to Disneyland, while their Luton North candidate stated her refusal to buy from "the kikes that run Tesco". In 2009, a BNP councillor from Stoke-on-Trent resigned from the party, complaining that it still contained Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathisers.
Griffin informed BNP members that rather than "bang on" about the Jews—which would be deemed extremist and prove electorally unpopular—their party should focus on criticising Islam, an issue that would be more resonant among the British public. After Griffin took over, the party increasingly embraced an Islamophobic stance, launching a "Campaign Against Islam" in September 2001. In Islam: A Threat to Us Alla leaflet distributed to London households in 2007, the BNP claimed that it would stand up to both Islamic extremism and "the threat that 'mainstream' Islam poses to our British culture". In contrast to the mainstream British view that the actions of militant Islamists—such as those who perpetrated the 7 July 2005 London bombings—are not representative of mainstream Islam, the BNP insists that they are. In some of its literature it presents the view that every Muslim in Britain is a threat to the country. Griffin referred to Islam as an "evil, wicked faith", and elsewhere publicly described it as a "cancer" that needed to be removed from Europe through "chemotherapy".
The BNP has called for the prohibition of immigration from Muslim countries and for the banning of the burka, halal meat, and the building of new mosques in the UK. It also called for the immediate deportation of radical Islamist preachers from the country. In 2005 the party claimed that its primary issue of concern was the "growth of fundamentalist-militant Islam in the UK and its ever-increasing threat to Western civilization and our implicit values". To broaden its anti-Islamic agenda, Griffin's BNP made overtures to the UK's Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities; Griffin's claim that Jews can make "good allies" in the fight against Islam caused controversy within the international far-right.
Government
Tyndall believed that liberal democracy was damaging to British society, claiming that liberalism was a "doctrine of decay and degeneration". Under Tyndall, the party sought to dismantle the UK's liberal democratic system of parliamentary governance, although was vague about what it sought to replace this system with. In his 1988 work The Eleventh HourTyndall wrote of the need for "an utter rejection of liberalism and a dedication to the resurgence of authority". Tyndall's BNP perceived itself as a revolutionary force that would bring about a national rebirth in Britain, entailing a radical transformation of society. It proposed a state in which the Prime Minister would have full executive powers, and would be elected directly by the population for an indefinite period of time. This Prime Minister could be dismissed from office in a further election that could be called if Parliament produced a vote of no confidence in them. It stated that rather than having political parties, candidates standing for election to the parliament would be independent. During the period of Griffin's leadership, the party downplayed its anti-democratic themes and instead foregrounded populist ones. Its campaign material called for the devolution of greater powers to local communities, the reestablishment of county councils, and the introduction of citizens' initiative referendums based on those used in Switzerland.
The BNP has adopted a hard Eurosceptic platform from its foundation. Under Tyndall's leadership, the BNP had overt anti-Europeanist tendencies. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he maintained the party's opposition to the European Economic Community. Antagonism toward what became the European Union was retained under Griffin's leadership, which called for the UK to leave the Union. One of Vote Leave's biggest donors during the Brexit referendum was former BNP member Gladys Bramall[226][227] and the party has claimed that its anti-Establishment rhetoric "created the road" to Britain's vote to leave the European Union.[228]
Tyndall suggested replacing the EEC with a trading association among the "White Commonwealth", namely countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Tyndall held imperialist views and was sympathetic to the re-establishment of the British Empire through the recolonization of parts of Africa. However, officially the BNP had no plans to re-establish the British Empire or secure dominion over non-white nations. In the 2000s, it called for an immediate military withdrawal from both the Iraq War and the Afghan War. It has advocated ending overseas aid to provide economic support within the UK and to finance the voluntary repatriation of legal immigrants.[233]
Under Tyndall, the BNP rejected both Welsh nationalism and Scottish nationalism, claiming that they were bogus because they caused division among the wider 'British race'. Tyndall also led the BNP in support of Ulster loyalism, for instance by holding public demonstrations against the Irish republican party Sinn Féin, and endorsing Ulster loyalist paramilitaries. Under Griffin, the BNP continued to support Ulster's membership of the United Kingdom, calling for the crushing of the Irish Republican Army and the scrapping of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Griffin later expressed the view that "the only solution that could possibly be acceptable to loyalists and republicans alike" would be the reintegration of the Irish Republic into the United Kingdom, which would be reorganised along federal lines. However, while retaining the party's commitment to Ulster loyalism, under Griffin the importance of the issue was downplayed, something that was criticised by Tyndall loyalists.
Economic policy
Tyndall described his approach to the economy as "National Economics", expressing the view that "politics must lead, and not be led by, economic forces". His approach rejected economic liberalism because it did not serve "the national interest", although still saw advantages in a capitalist system, looking favourably on individual enterprise. He called on capitalist elements to be combined with socialist ones, with the government playing a role in planning the economy. He promoted the idea of the UK becoming an autarky which was economically self-sufficient, with domestic production protected from foreign competition. This attitude was heavily informed by the corporatist system that had been introduced in Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy.
A number of senior members, including Griffin and John Bean, had anti-capitalist leanings, having been influenced by Strasserism and National Bolshevism. Under Griffin's leadership, the BNP promoted economic protectionism and opposed globalisation. Its economic policies reflect a vague commitment to distributist economics, ethno-socialism, and national autarky. The BNP maintains a policy of protectionism and economic nationalism, although in comparison with other far-right nationalist parties, the BNP focuses less on corporatism.[233] It has called for British ownership of its own industries and resources and the "subordination of the power of the City to the power of the government".[233] It has promoted the regeneration of farming in the United Kingdom, with the object of achieving maximum self-sufficiency in food production.[233] In 2002, the party criticised corporatism as a "mixture of big capitalism and state control", saying it favoured a "distributionist tradition established by home-grown thinkers" favouring small business.[244]
When it comes to environmentalism, the BNP refers to itself as the "real green party", claiming that the Green Party of England and Wales engages in "watermelon" politics by being green (environmentalist) on the outside but red (leftist) on the inside. Influenced by the Nouvelle Droite, it framed its arguments regarding environmentalism in an anti-immigration manner, talking about the need for 'sustainability'. It engages in climate change denial, with Griffin claiming that global warming is a hoax orchestrated by those trying to establish the New World Order.
Social issues
There is only one political party that Christians can support without betraying the Lord Jesus Christ. This Party is opposed to abortion and the teaching of homosexuality to children. This Party supports the institution of marriage and the traditional family... This Party is opposed to political correctness and the creeping Islamification of Britain.
— A 2010 BNP leaflet distributed to Christian leaders
The BNP is opposed to feminism and has pledged that—if in government—it would introduce financial incentives to encourage women to leave employment and become housewives. It would also seek to discourage children being born out of wedlock. It has stated that it would criminalise abortion, except in cases where the child has been conceived as a result of rape, the mother's life is threatened, or the child will be disabled. There are nevertheless circumstances where it has altered this anti-abortion stance; an article in British Nationalist stated that a white woman bearing the child of a black man should "abort the pregnancy... for the good of society". More widely, the party censures inter-racial sex and accuses the British media of encouraging inter-racial relationships.
Under Tyndall, the BNP called for the re-criminalisation of homosexual activity. Following Griffin's takeover, it moderated its policy on homosexuality, although opposed the 2004 introduction of civil partnerships for same-sex couples. During his 2009 Question Time appearance, Griffin described the sight of two men kissing as "really creepy". The party has also condemned the availability of pornography; its 1992 manifesto stated that the BNP would give the "pedlars of this filth... the criminal status that they deserve". The BNP promoted the reintroduction of capital punishment, and the sterilisation of some criminals. It also called for the reintroduction of national service in the UK, adding that on completion of this service adults would be permitted to keep their standard issue assault rifle.
According to the academic Steven Woodbridge, the BNP had a "rather ambivalent attitude toward Christian belief and religious themes in general" during most of its history, but under Griffin's modernisation the party increasingly utilised Christian terminology and themes in its discourse. Various members of the party presented themselves as "true Christians", and defenders of the faith, with key ideologues claiming that the religion has been "betrayed" and "sold out" by mainstream clergy and the British establishment. British Christianity, the BNP claimed, was under threat from Islam, Marxism, multiculturalism, and "political correctness". On analysing the BNP's use of Christianity, Davey argued that the party's emphasis was not on Christian faith itself, but on the inheritance of European Christian culture.
The BNP long considered the mainstream media to be one of its major impediments to electoral success. Tyndall claimed that the media represents a "state above the state" which was committed to the "left-liberal" goals of internationalism, liberal democracy, and racial integration. The party has claimed that the mainstream media has given disproportionate coverage to the achievements of ethnic minority sportsmen and to the victims of anti-black racism while ignoring white victims of racial prejudice and the BNP's activities. Both Tyndall and Griffin have claimed that the mainstream media is controlled by Jews, who use it for their own devices; the latter promoted this idea in his Who are the Mind Benders? Griffin has described the BBC as "a thoroughly unpleasant, ultra-leftist establishment". The BNP has stated that if it took power, it would end "the dictatorship of the media over free debate". It claims that it would introduce a law prohibiting the media from disseminating falsehoods about an individual or organisation for financial or political gain, and that it would ban the media from promoting racial integration.
BNP policy pledges to protect freedom of speech, as part of which it would repeal all laws banning racial or religious hate speech. It would repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.[265]
Support
Finances
In contrast to the UK's mainstream parties, the BNP received few donations from businesses, wealthy donors, or trade unions. Instead it relied on finances produced by its membership. Under Tyndall, the party operated on a shoestring budget with a lack of transparency; in 1992 it collected £5000 and in 1997 it collected £10,000. It also tried raising money by selling extreme-right literature, and opened a bookshop in Welling in 1989, although this was closed in 1996 after being attacked by anti-fascists and proving too costly to run. In 1992 the party formed a dining club of its wealthier supporters, which was renamed the Trafalgar Club in 2000. By the 1997 general election it admitted that its expenses had "far out-stripped" its income, and it was appealing for donations to pay off loans it had taken out.
Griffin placed greater emphasis on fundraising, and from 2001 through to 2008 the BNP's annual turnover increased almost fivefold. Membership subscriptions grew from £35,000 to £166,000, while its donations raised from £38,000 to £660,000. However, expenses also rose as the BNP spent more on its electoral campaigns, and the party reported a financial deficit in 2004 and again in 2005. Between 2007 and 2009 the BNP accumulated debts of £500,000.
Membership
For most of its history, the BNP had a whites-only membership policy. In 2009, the state's Equality and Human Rights Commission stated that this was a violation of the Race Relations Act 1976 and called on the party to amend its constitution accordingly. Responding to this, in early 2010 members voted to remove the racial restriction to membership, although it is unlikely that many non-whites joined.
At its creation, the BNP had approximately 1,200 members. By the 1983 general election this had grown to approximately 2,500, although by 1987 had slumped to 1000, with no significant further growth until the 21st century. After taking control Griffin began publishing the party's membership figures: 2,174 in 2001, 3,487 in 2002, 5,737 in 2003, and 7,916 in 2004. Membership dropped slightly to 6,281 in 2005, but had grown to 9,297 in 2007 and to 10,276 in spring 2010. In 2011, it was noted that this meant that the BNP had experienced the most rapid growth since 2001 of any minor party in the UK.
A party membership list dating from late 2007 was leaked onto the internet by a disgruntled activist, containing the names and addresses of 12,000 members.[277] This included names, addresses and other personal details.[278] People on the list included prison officers (barred from BNP membership), teachers, soldiers, civil servants and members of the clergy. The leaked list indicated that membership was concentrated in particular areas, namely the East Midlands, Essex, and Pennine Lancashire, but with particular clusters in Charnwood, Pendle, and Amber Valley. Many of these areas had long been targeted by extreme-right campaigns, dating back to the NF activity of the 1970s, suggesting that such longstanding activism may have had an effect on levels of BNP membership. This information also revealed that membership was most likely in urban areas with low rates of educational attainment and large numbers of economically insecure people employed in manufacturing, with further correlations to nearby Muslim communities. Following an investigation by Welsh police and the Information Commissioner's Office, two people were arrested in December 2008 for breach of the Data Protection Act concerning the leak.[282] Matthew Single was subsequently found guilty and fined £200. The fine was criticised as an "absolute disgrace" by a BNP spokesman and a detective sergeant involved said he was "disappointed" with the outcome.[283]
The leaked membership list showed that the party was 17.22% female. While women have occupied key positions within the BNP, men dominated at every level of the party. In 2009, over 80% of the party's Advisory Council was male and from 2002 to 2009, three-quarters of its councillors were male. The average percentage of female candidates presented at local elections in 2001 was 6%, although this had risen to 16% by 2010. Since 2006, the party had made a point of selecting female candidates, with Griffin stating that this was necessary to "soften" the party's image. Goodwin suggested that membership fell into three camps: the "activist old guard" who had previously been involved in the NF during the 1970s, the "political wanderers" who had defected from other parties to the BNP, and the "new recruits" who had joined post-2001 and who had little or no political interest or experience beforehand.
Having performed qualitative research among the BNP by interviewing various members, Goodwin noted that few of those he interviewed "conformed to the popular stereotypes of them being irrational and uninformed crude racists". He noted that most strongly identified with the working class and claimed to have either been former Labour voters or from a Labour-voting family. None of those interviewed claimed a family background in the ethnic nationalist movement. Instead, he noted that members claimed that they joined the party as a result of a "profound sense of anxiety over immigration and rising ethno-cultural diversity" in Britain, along with its concomitant impact on "British culture and society". He noted that among these members, the perceived cultural threat of immigrants and ethnic minorities was given greater prominence than the perceived economic threat that they posed to white Britons. He noted that in his interviews with them, members often framed Islam in particular as a threat to British values and society, expressing the fear that British Muslims wanted to Islamicise the country and eventually impose sharia law on its population.
Voter base
The BNP does not have mass appeal, but the evidence... suggests it is forging ties with 'angry white men': middle-aged and elderly working-class men who have low levels of education, are deeply pessimistic about their economic prospects and live in more deprived urban areas close to large Muslim communities. Foremost, these citizens are sending a message about their profound concern over issues they care deeply about, but which they feel are not being adequately addressed by the main parties.
— Political scientist Matthew Goodwin, 2011
Goodwin described the BNP's voters as being "socially distinct and concerned about a specific set of issues". Under Griffin's leadership, the party targeted areas with high proportions of skilled white working-class voters, particularly those who were disenchanted with the Labour government. It has attempted to appeal to disaffected Labour voters with slogans such as "We are the Labour Party your Grandfather Voted For". The BNP had little success in gaining support from women, the middle classes, and the more educated.
Goodwin noted a "strong male bias" in the party's support base, with statistical polling revealing that between 2002 and 2006, seven out of ten BNP voters were male. That same research also indicated that BNP voters were disproportionately middle-aged and elderly, with three quarters being aged over 35, and only 11% aged between 18 and 24. This contrasted to the NF's support base during the 1970s, when 40% of its voters were aged between 18 and 24. Goodwin suggested two possibilities for the BNP's failure to appeal to younger voters: one was the 'life cycle effect', that older people have obtained more during in their life and thus have more to lose, feeling both more threatened by change and more socially conservative in their views. The other explanation was the 'generational effect', with younger Britons who have grown up since the onset of mass immigration having had greater social exposure to ethnic minorities and thus being more tolerant toward them. Conversely, many older voters came of age during the 1970s, under the impact of the anti-immigrant rhetoric promoted by Powellism, Thatcherism, and the NF, and thus have less tolerant attitudes.
Most BNP voters had no formal qualifications and the party's support was centred largely in areas with low educational attainment. According to the 2002–06 data, two-thirds of BNP voters had either no formal qualifications or had left education after their O-levels/GCSEs. Only one in ten BNP voters possessed an A-level, and an even smaller percentage had a university degree. Most of the BNP's voting base were from the financially insecure lower classes. Research conducted from 2002 to 2006 indicated that seven out of ten BNP voters were either skilled or unskilled workers or unemployed. A 2009 poll found that six out of ten BNP voters fitted this profile. Goodwin suggested that it was the skilled working classes rather than their unskilled or unemployed neighbours who were the main support base behind the BNP, because they owned some assets and thus felt that they had more to lose as a result of the economic threat posed by immigrants and ethnic minorities.
Research indicated that BNP voters also held opinions that were distinct from the average British citizen. They were far more pessimistic about their economic prospects than average, with seven out of ten BNP voters expecting their economic prospects to decline in future, contrasted with four out of ten who held this view in the wider population. In the 2002–06 period, 59% of BNP voters considered immigration to be the most important issue facing the UK, compared with only 16% of the wider population who agreed. By 2009, 87% of BNP voters identified immigration and asylum as the most important issue, to 49% of the wider population. BNP voters were also more likely to identify law and order, the EU, and Islamic extremism as the most important issues facing the UK than other voters, and less likely than average to rate the economy, NHS, pensions, and housing market as the most important.
BNP voters were also more likely than average to believe both that white Britons face unfair discrimination, and that Muslims, non-whites, and homosexuals had unfair advantages in British society. 78% of BNP voters endorsed the belief that the Labour Party prioritised immigrants and ethnic minorities over white British people, to 44% of the wider population. When asked questions about immigration and Muslims, BNP voters were found to be far more hostile to them than the average Briton, and also more willing than average to support outright racially discriminatory policies toward them. Copsey believed that "popular racism"—namely against asylum seekers and Muslims—generated the BNP's "largest reservoir of support", and that in many Northern English towns the main factors behind BNP support were white resentment toward Asian communities, anger at Asian-on-white crime, and the perception that Asians received disproportionately high levels of public funding.
Research also indicated that BNP voters were more mistrustful of the establishment than average citizens. In 2002–06, 92% of BNP voters described themselves as being dissatisfied with the government, to 62% of the wider population. Over 80% of BNP voters were found to distrust their local Member of Parliament, council officials, and civil servants, and were also more likely than average to think that politicians were personally corrupt. There was also a tendency for BNP voters to read tabloids like the Daily MailDaily Expressand The Sunall of which promote anti-immigration sentiment. Whether these voters gained such sentiment as a result of reading these tabloids or they read these tabloids because it endorsed their pre-existing views is unclear.
The early stronghold of the BNP was in London, where it established enclaves of support in the boroughs of Enfield, Hackney, Lewisham, Southwark, and Tower Hamlets, with smaller units in Bexley, Camden, Greenwich, Hillingdon, Lambeth, and Redbridge. By the late 1990s, the party was increasingly retreating from its original East End heartland, finding that its electoral support had declined in the area. Griffin expressed the view that it was too dangerous for BNP activists to campaign in the East End, suggesting that they would likely be attacked by opponents. Instead the party shifted its focus to parts of Outer London, in particular the boroughs of Barking, Bexley, Dagenham, Greenwich, and Havering. After Griffin took power, the party focused on building support in the North of England, taking advantage of the anxieties generated by the ethnic riots that took place in Bradford, Oldham, and Burnley in 2001. In the period between 2002 and 2006, over 40% of the BNP's voters were in Northern England.
The decline of the BNP as an electoral force around 2014 helped to open the way for the growth of another right-wing party, UKIP. In a study Goodwin produced with Robert Ford, the two political scientists noted that UKIP's support base mirrored the BNP's in that it had the same "very clear social profile": the "old, male, working class, white and less educated". One area where the two differed, they noted, was in the fact that BNP support had been highest among the middle-aged before tailing off among the over 55s, whereas UKIP retained strong support with those over 55. Ford and Goodwin suggested that this might be because more over 55s had "direct or indirect experiences" of the Second World War, in which Britain defeated the fascist powers, resulting in them being less inclined to support fascist parties than their younger counterparts. Despite these commonalities, UKIP proved far more successful at mobilising these social groups than did the BNP. This was likely in part because UKIP had a "reputational shield"; it emerged from within the Eurosceptic tradition of British politics rather than from the far-right and thus, while often ridiculed by the mainstream, was regarded as a legitimate democratic actor in a way that the BNP was not.
Organisation and structure
On its formation, the BNP avoided the National Front's committee-rule system of collective leadership in the hope of evading the infighting and factionalism that had damaged the NF. Instead it was founded around what it called the "leadership principle", with a central chairman having complete control over the party, which was then arranged in a highly hierarchical structure. The BNP lacked any internal democracy, with the grassroots membership having no formal powers. On taking power, Griffin retained the leadership principle inherited from Tyndall. He nevertheless established an Advisory Council which would meet several times a year; the members were to be selected by Griffin himself and would serve as his advisors.
The party's branches and local groups were referred to as "units" within the party. These were designed to recruit followers, raise funds, and campaign during elections. Under Tyndall, the party operated with a skeleton organisation. It had no full-time staff and for most of the 1980s lacked a telephone number. Instead it relied on a handful of geographically scattered, unpaid regional organisers. Its early activists were recruited from within the extreme-right movement, and thus lacked the experience and skills in electoral campaigning. When Griffin took control, he introduced a variety of internal departments to help manage the party's activities: the administration and enquiries department, department for group development, legal affairs department, security department, and communications department. Griffin tried to build a more professional party machine by educating and training BNP members, providing them with incentives, establishing a steady income stream, and overcoming factionalism and dissent. He launched an "annual college" for activists in 2001 and formed an education and training department in 2007. In 2008 and 2010 he oversaw the establishment of "summer schools" for high-ranking officials. The party also began employing full-time members of staff, having three in 2001 and 13 in 2007.
To incentivise members to remain committed to the party, Griffin followed the example of the Swedish National Democrats by implementing a new "voting membership" scheme in 2007. This meant that those who had been BNP members for two years could become a "voting member", at which they would go on a year's probation. During this year they were required to attend educational and training seminars, to engage in a certain amount of activism, and to donate a specified amount of money to the party. Once completed, they were allowed to vote on certain matters at general members' meetings and annual conferences, to participate in policy debates, and to be eligible for intermediate and senior positions. This policy ensured that those who reached the higher echelons of the BNP were fully trained in the party's ideology and electoral strategy.
Sub-groups and propaganda output
Griffin hoped to build a wider social movement around the BNP by establishing affiliated networks and organisations. In many cases, these were presented to the public in a way that concealed any direct connection to the BNP. Most of these affiliated groups were poorly funded and had few members. The party established its own record label, Great White Records, a radio station, and a trade union known as Solidarity – The Union for British Workers. It formed a group for young people known as the Young BNP, although in 2010 renamed this group as the BNP Crusaders, "to pay homage to our ancestors from the Middle Ages who saved Christian Europe from the onslaught of Islam". It established a Land and People group to recruit support in rural areas, a Family Circle to recruit women and families, and both a Veterans Group and an Association of British ex-Servicemen for former military servicemen. A group called Families Against Immigrant Racism was established to counter perceived racism against white Britons, while an Ethnic Liaison Committee was created to build links with anti-Muslim Hindu and Sikh groups active in Britain. Another group was the American Friends of the British National Party (AFBNP), set up by Mark Cotterill in 1999 to gain support from sympathisers in the United States. In 2001 it had 100 members, and by 2008 had 107.
A group called Islands of the North Atlantic (IONA) was established to promote the BNP's view of British culture and identity. The British Students Association was founded to promote the party's views among university students in 2000.
Albion Life Insurance was set up in September 2006 as an insurance brokerage company established on behalf of the BNP to raise funds for its activities.[337] The firm ceased to operate in November 2006.[338] In 2006, the BNP launched the Christian Council of Britain (CCB), a group designed to rival the Muslim Council of Britain and oppose the growing "Islamification" of inner city areas. The CCB was established and run by BNP member Robert West, who claimed to have been ordained by the Apostolic Church, a claim that the church denies. West is a Calvinist and espouses a theology of nations which is influenced by Calvinist theologians like Abraham Kuyper, holding that God wishes every race and nation to remain separate until end time.
Griffin's BNP also established an annual Red, White and Blue festival, which was based on the 'Blue Blanc Rouge' organised by France's National Front. The festival brought party activists together and aimed to promote a more family friendly image for the group, although it also provided a venue for white power skinhead bands like Stigger, Nemesis and Warlord. Around 1,000 BNP members attended the party's 2001 festival.
Under Griffin's leadership, the BNP zealously embraced the use of alternative media to promote itself in a way different from the negative portrayal that featured in the mainstream media. On its website—which had been established in 1995—it created an internet television channel, 'BNPtv'. It has created blogs that cover different themes without being explicitly political in order to promote the party's message. The BNP established an online marketing platform, Excalibur, through which to sell its merchandise. In 2003, the BNP claimed that it had the most viewed website of a political party in Britain, and by 2011 was claiming to have the most viewed such website in Europe. In September 2007, The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Hitwise, the online competitive intelligence service, said that the BNP website had more hits than any other website of a British political party.[344]
Affiliations in the wider extreme-right
Under Griffin, the BNP forged stronger links with various extreme-right parties elsewhere in Europe, among them France's National Front, Germany's National Democratic Party (NPD), Sweden's National Democrats, and Hungary's Jobbik. Griffin unsuccessfully urged the NPD to move away from neo-Nazism and embark on the same 'modernisation' project that he had taken the BNP.Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French Front National was the guest of honour at an "Anglo-French Patriotic Dinner" held by the BNP in April 2004.[347]
Griffin met leaders of the Hungarian far right party Jobbik to discuss co-operation between the two parties and spoke at a Jobbik party rally in August 2008.[348] In April 2009, Simon Darby, deputy chairman of the BNP, was welcomed with fascist salutes by members of the Italian nationalist Forza Nuova during a trip to Milan. Darby stated that the BNP would look to form an alliance with France's Front National in the European Parliament.[349] Following the election of two BNP MEPs in 2009, the following year saw the BNP join with other extreme-right parties to form the Alliance of European National Movements, with Griffin becoming its vice president. The party also had close links with the Historical Review Press, a publisher focused on promoting Holocaust denial.
Britain's extreme-right has long faced internal and public divisions. Disgruntled BNP members left the party to found or join a wide range of rivals, among them the British Freedom Party, White Nationalist Party, Nationalist Alliance, Wolf's Hook White Brotherhood, British People's Party, England First Party, Britain First, Democratic Nationalists, and the New Nationalist Party. Various BNP members were involved in the nascent English Defence League (EDL)—with EDL leader Tommy Robinson having been a former BNP activist—although Griffin proscribed the organisation and condemned it as having been manipulated by "Zionists". The political scientist Chris Allen noted that the EDL shared much of the BNP's ideology, but that its "strategies and actions" were very different, with the EDL favouring street marches over electoral politics. By 2014, both the BNP and EDL were in decline, and Britain First—founded by former BNP members James Dowson and Paul Golding—had risen to prominence. It combined the electoral tactics of the BNP with the street marches of the EDL.
The Steadfast Trust was established as a charity in 2004 with the stated aims of reducing poverty among those of Anglo-Saxon descent and supporting English culture. It has many former and current BNP, NF and British Ku Klux Klan members.[356] It was deregistered as a charity by the Charity Commission in February 2014.[357] In 2014, after Nick Griffin lost the leadership of BNP, he set up British Voice,[358] but before it was launched, he decided to set up a different group, British Unity.[359]
Some members of the BNP were radicalised during their involvement with the party and subsequently sought to carry out acts of violence and terrorism.Tony Lecomber was imprisoned for three years for possessing explosives, after a nail bomb exploded while he was transporting it to the offices of the Workers' Revolutionary Party in 1985. He was imprisoned for three years in 1991 whilst serving as the BNP's Director of Propaganda for assaulting a Jewish teacher.[362] In 1999, the ex-BNP member David Copeland used nail bombs to target homosexuals and ethnic minorities in London. In 2005, the BNP's Burnley candidate Robert Cottage was convicted of stockpiling chemicals for use in what he believed was a coming civil war,[364] while a Yorkshire BNP member, Terry Gavan, was convicted in 2010 for stockpiling firearms and nail bombs.
Party leaders
- Shown by default in chronological order of leadership
| Year | Name | Period | Time in office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | John Tyndall | 7 April 1982 – 27 September 1999 | 17 years |
| 1999 | Nick Griffin | 27 September 1999 – 21 July 2014 | 15 years |
| 2014 | Adam Walker | 21 July 2014 – present | incumbent |
Electoral performance
The BNP has contested seats in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Research from Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin shows that BNP support is concentrated among older and less educated working-class men living in the declining industrial towns of the North and Midlands regions, in contrast to previous significant far-right parties like the National Front, which drew support from a younger demographic.[365]
General elections
The BNP placed comparatively little emphasis on elections to the British House of Commons, aware that the first past the post voting system was a major obstacle.
The British National Party has contested general elections since 1983.
| Year | No. of candidates | No. of MPs | % vote | Total votes | Change (% points) | Average votes per candidate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | 54 | 0 | 0.0 | 14,621 | N/A | 271 |
| 1987 | 2 | 0 | 0.0 | 563 | 0.0 | 282 |
| 1992 | 13 | 0 | 0.1 | 7,631 | +0.1 | 587 |
| 1997 | 54 | 0 | 0.1 | 35,832 | 0.0 | 664 |
| 2001 | 33 | 0 | 0.2 | 47,129 | +0.1 | 1,428 |
| 2005 | 117 | 0 | 0.7 | 192,746 | +0.5 | 1,647 |
| 2010 | 339 | 0 | 1.9 | 563,743 | +1.2 | 1,663 |
| 2015 | 8 | 0 | 0.0 | 1,667 | −1.9 | 208 |
| 2017 | 10 | 0 | 0.0 | 4,642 | +0.0 | 464 |
The BNP in the 2001 general election saved five deposits (out of 33 contested seats) and secured its best general election result in Oldham West and Royton (which had recently been the scene of racially motivated rioting between white and Asian youths) where party leader Nick Griffin secured 16% of the vote.[366]
The 2005 general election was considered a major breakthrough by the BNP, as they picked up 192,746 votes in the 119 constituencies it contested, took a 0.7% share of the overall vote, and retained a deposit in 40 of the seats.[367][368]
The BNP put forward candidates for 338 out of 650 seats for the 2010 general election[369] gaining 563,743 votes[370] (1.9%), finishing in fifth place and failing to win any seats. However, a record of 73 deposits were saved. Party chairman Griffin came third in the Barking constituency, behind Margaret Hodge of Labour and Simon Marcus of the Conservatives, who were first and second respectively. At 14.6%, this was the BNP's best result in any of the seats it contested that year.[371]
Local elections
The BNP's first electoral success came in 1993, when Derek Beackon was returned as a councillor in Millwall, London. He lost his seat in elections the following year. The next BNP success in local elections was not until the 2002 local elections, when three BNP candidates gained seats on Burnley council.[372] The BNP's first councillor for six years was John Haycock, elected as a parish councillor for Bromyard and Winslow in Herefordshire in 2000. Haycock failed to attend any council meetings for six months and was later disqualified from office.
The party had 55 councillors for a time in 2009.[372] After the 2013 local county council elections, the BNP was left with a total of two borough councillors in England:[374]
As of 2011, the BNP had yet to make "a major breakthrough" on local councils.
The BNP's councillors usually had "an extremely limited impact on local politics" because they were isolated as individuals or small groups on the council. Councillors from the main parties often disliked their BNP colleagues and deemed having to work alongside them as an affront to dignity and decency.
Questions were often raised as to whether BNP councillors could adequately represent the interests of all of their local constituents. On being elected, Beackon for instance stated that he refused to serve his Asian constituents in Millwall. There were also allegations made that BNP councillors had particularly low attendance at council meetings, although research indicated that this was not the case, with the BNP's attendance record being largely average.
There is evidence to suggest that racially and religiously motivated crime increased in those areas where BNP councillors had been elected. For instance, after the 1993 election of Beackon, there was a spike in racist attacks in the borough of Tower Hamlets. BNP members were directly responsible for some of this; the party's national organiser Richard Edmonds was sentenced to three months imprisonment for his part in an attack on a black man and his white girlfriend.
Regional assemblies and parliaments
BNP lead candidate Richard Barnbrook won a seat in the London Assembly in May 2008, after the party gained 5.3% of the London-wide vote.[383] However, in August 2010, he resigned the party whip and became an independent.[384]
In the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections, the BNP fielded 20 candidates, four in each of the five regional lists, with Nick Griffin standing in the South Wales West region.[385] It did not win any seats, but was the only minor party to have saved deposits in the electoral regions, one in the North Wales region and the other in the South Wales West region. In total the BNP polled 42,197 votes (4.3%).
In the 2011 Welsh Assembly elections, the BNP fielded 20 candidates, four in each of the five regional lists and for the first time 7 candidates were fielded in FPTP constituencies. On the regional lists, the BNP polled 22,610 votes (2.4%), down 1.9% from 2007.[386] In 2 out of the 7 FPTP constituencies contested the BNP saved deposits: (Swansea East and Islwyn).[386]
In the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, the party fielded 32 candidates, entitling it to public funding and an election broadcast, prompting criticism.[387] The BNP received 24,616 votes (1.2%), no seats were won, nor were any deposits saved.[citation needed] In the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, the BNP fielded 32 candidates in the regional lists. 15,580 votes were polled (0.78%).[388]
The BNP fielded 3 candidates for the first time in three constituencies each in the 2011 Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly elections (Belfast East, East Antrim and South Antrim). 1,252 votes were polled (0.2%), winning no seats for the party.[389]
European Parliament
The BNP has taken part in European Parliament elections since 1999, when they received 1.13% of the total vote (102,647 votes).
In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, the BNP won 4.9% of the vote, making it the sixth biggest party overall, but did not win any seats.[367]
The BNP won two seats in the European Parliament in the 2009 elections. Andrew Brons was elected in the Yorkshire and the Humber regional constituency with 9.8% of the vote.[390] Party chairman Nick Griffin was elected in the North West region, with 8% of the vote.[391] Nationally, the BNP received 6.26%.
The British Government announced in 2009 that the BNP's two MEPs would be denied some of the access and information afforded to other MEPs. The BNP would be subject to the "same general principles governing official impartiality" and they would receive "standard written briefings as appropriate from time to time", but diplomats would not be "proactive" in dealing with the BNP MEPs and that any requests for policy briefings from them would be treated differently and on a discretionary basis.[392]
Association with violence
The leaders and senior officers of the BNP have criminal convictions for inciting racial hatred.
John Hagan claims that the BNP has conducted right-wing extremist violence to gain "institutionalized power".[398] Critics of the BNP, such as Human Rights Watch in a 1997 report, have asserted that the party recruits from skinhead groups and that it promotes racist violence.[399]
In the past, Nick Griffin has defended the threat of violence to further the party's aims. After the BNP won its first council seat in 1993, he wrote that the BNP should not be a "postmodernist rightist party" but "a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up its slogan 'Defend Rights for Whites' with well-directed boots and fists. When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate". In 1997 he said: "It is more important to control the streets of a city than its council chambers."[400]
A BBC Panorama programme reported on a number of BNP members who have had criminal convictions, some racially motivated.[401] Some of the more notable convictions include:
- John Tyndall had convictions for assault and organising paramilitary neo-Nazi activities. In 1986 he was jailed for conspiracy to publish material likely to incite racial hatred.[402]
- In 1998, Nick Griffin was convicted of violating section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to incitement to racial hatred. He received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was fined £2,300.[403]
- Joseph Owens, a BNP candidate in Liverpool's local elections, served eight months in prison for sending razor blades in the post to Jewish people and another term for carrying CS gas and knuckledusters.[404]
- Colin Smith, who in 2004 was the BNP's South East London organiser, has 17 convictions for burglary, theft, possession of drugs and assaulting a police officer.[405]
- Richard Edmonds, at the time BNP National Organiser, was sentenced to three months in prison in 1994 for his part in a racist attack. Edmonds threw a glass at the victim as he was walking past an East London pub where a group of BNP supporters was drinking. Others then 'glassed' the man in the face and punched and kicked him as he lay on the ground, including BNP supporter Stephen O'Shea, who was jailed for 12 months. Another BNP supporter, Simon Biggs, was jailed for four and a half years for his part in the attack.[406]
Reception
In 2011, Goodwin described the BNP as being "the most successful party in the history of the extreme right in Britain". That same year, John E. Richardson noted that it had achieved "a level of electoral success that is unparalleled in the history of British fascism". The historian Alan Sykes stated that "in electoral terms", the BNP achieved "more in the first three years of the twenty-first century" than the British far right "as a whole achieved in the previous seventy". However, Copsey noted that the party's belief that one day the conditions would be right for it to win a general election belonged to the "Never-Never Land of British politics". Copsey also noted that the BNP's electoral successes had been modest in comparison to those achieved by extreme-right groups elsewhere in Western Europe such as France's National Front, Italy's National Alliance, and Belgium's Vlaams Blok.
The BNP's growth met a hostile reaction, and in 2011 the political scientists Copsey and Macklin described it as "Britain's most disliked party". It was widely reviled as racist and even following Griffin's "modernisation" project it was still heavily tainted by its associations with neo-Nazism. For many years it remained closely associated with the National Front in the British public imagination.
The BNP remained unable to gain a broad appeal or widespread credibility. In a 2004 poll, seven out of ten voters said that they would never consider voting for the BNP. A 2009 poll found that two-thirds would "under no circumstances" consider voting BNP, while only 4% of respondents would "definitely consider" voting for them.
The Conservative leader Michael Howard stated that the BNP were a "stain" on British democracy, adding that "this is not a political movement, this is a bunch of thugs dressed up as a political party". His successor David Cameron described it as a "completely unacceptable" organisation which "thrives on hatred". The Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, called it a "nasty, extreme organisation", while the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg termed it a "party of thugs and fascists". In 2004, the General Synod of the Church of England declared that supporting the BNP was incompatible with Christianity, comparing it to "spitting in the face of God". Christian groups throughout Britain have maintained that the BNP's hostility toward cultural and ethnic diversity in the country was at odds with mainstream Christianity's emphasis on inclusiveness, tolerance, and interfaith dialogue.Winston Churchill's family has criticised the BNP's use of his image and quotations, labelling it "offensive and disgusting".[418] The singer Vera Lynn condemned the party for selling her CD on its website.[419] In 2009, the Royal British Legion asked Griffin—at first privately and then publicly—to not wear their poppy symbol.[420]
The British police, Fire Brigades Union, and Church of England, prohibited its members from joining the BNP.[422] In 2002, Martin Narey, banned BNP membership among prison workers; he subsequently received death threats.[423] In 2010, the Education Secretary Michael Gove announced bans allowing headteachers to ban their staff from being party members.[424][425]
Individuals whose membership of the party was made public sometimes faced ostracism and the loss of their job: examples include a school headmaster who had to resign, a caretaker who was sacked after attending a BNP rally, and a police officer dismissed from his position. After BNP membership lists were leaked on the Internet, a number of police forces investigated officers whose names appeared on the lists.[426]
In 2005, an invitation to Nick Griffin by the University of St Andrews Union Debating Society to participate in a debate on multiculturalism was withdrawn after protests.[427] The BNP says that National Union of Journalists guidelines on reporting "far right" organisations forbid unionised journalists from reporting uncritically on the party.[428][429] In April 2007, an election broadcast was cancelled by BBC Radio Wales whose lawyers believed that the broadcast was defamatory of the Chief Constable of North Wales Police, Richard Brunstrom.[430] The BNP claimed that BBC editors were following an agenda.[431]
Mainstream media and academia
Attitudes toward t he BNP in both mainstream broadcast media and print journalism have been overwhelmingly negative, and no mainstream newspaper has endorsed the party. This hostile coverage has even been found in right-wing tabloids like the Daily MailDaily Express and The Sun which otherwise share the BNP's hostile attitude toward issues like immigration. In 2003, the Daily Mail described the BNP as "poisonous bigots", while in 2004 The Sun printed the headline of "BNP: Bloody Nasty People". Senior BNP figures nevertheless believed that these tabloids' hostile coverage of immigration and Islam helped to legitimise and normalise the party and its views among much of the British public, a view echoed by some academic observers. When, in 2004, anti-racist activists picketed outside the Daily Mail office in central London to protest against its negative coverage of asylum seekers, BNP members organised a counter-picket at which they displayed the placard "Vote BNP, Read the Daily Mail".
The BNP initially faced a 'no platform for fascists' policy from the broadcast media, although this eroded as Griffin was invited on to a number of television programmes amid the party's growing electoral success. When the BBC invited him to appear on Question Time in 2009 it was criticised by several trade unions, sections of the media, and several Labour politicians, all of whom believed that the BNP should not be given a public platform. Anti-fascist protesters assembled outside of the television studio to protest Griffin's inclusion.
The first academic attention to be directed at the BNP appeared after it gained a councillor in the 1993 local elections. Nevertheless, throughout the 1990s it remained the subject of little academic research. Academic interest increased following its victories at local elections from 2002 onward. The first detailed monograph study to be devoted to the party was Nigel Copsey's Contemporary British Fascismfirst published in 2004. In September 2008, an academic symposium on the BNP was held at Teesside University.
The wider extreme-right and anti-fascists
Opposition to the BNP also came from the organised anti-fascist movement. By the mid-1990s, the BNP's attempts to stage public events in Scotland, the North West and the Midlands were largely thwarted by the militant disruption of the Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) group. The BNP's modernisation and move away from street demonstrations and toward electoral campaigning caused problems for the AFA, who proved unable to successfully change their tactics; on those occasions when AFA activists tried to forcibly disrupt BNP activities, they were prevented and arrested by riot police.
More liberal sections of the anti-fascist movement sought to counter the BNP through community-based initiatives. Searchlight encouraged trade unions to establish localised campaigns that would ensure that ethnic minority and other anti-BNP locals voted. It suggested that such campaigns should avoid associating with the mainstream parties from which BNP voters felt disenfranchised and that they should not be afraid of calling out Islamic fundamentalists and extremists active in the area. The Unite Against Fascism group also sought to maximise anti-BNP turnout at elections, calling on the electorate to vote for "anyone but fascists". Evidence suggests that such anti-fascist activities did little to erode the far-right vote; this was in part because anti-fascist groups had encouraged the stereotype that BNP candidates were violent skinheads, something which conflicted with the more normal, friendly image that BNP activists cultivated when canvassing.
The BNP often received a hostile response from other sections of the British extreme-right. Some extreme-right-wingers, such as the British Freedom Party, expressed frustration at the party's inability to moderate itself further on the issue of race, while those such as Colin Jordan and the NF accused the BNP—particularly under Griffin's leadership—of being too moderate. This latter view was articulated by an extreme-right groupuscule, the International Third Position, when it claimed that the BNP "has been openly courting the Jewish vote and pumping out material which confirms what most us knew years ago: the BNP has become a multi-racist, Zionist, queer-tolerant anti-Muslim pressure group".
In ASLEF v. United Kingdomthe European Court of Human Rights overturned an employment appeal tribunal ruling that awarded BNP member and train driver Jay Lee damages for expulsion from a trade union.[448] In Redfearn v United Kingdom, the court ruled that members of racist organisations could lawfully be dismissed on health and safety grounds if there was a danger of violence occurring in the workplace.[449] In November 2012, the European Court of Human Rights made a majority ruling (4 to 3) that in Redfearn's case against the UK government, his rights under Article 11 (free association) had been infringed,[450] but not t hose under Article 10 (free expression) or Article 14 (discrimination).[451]
See also
Notes
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- Trilling, Daniel (2012). Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britain's Far Right. London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-959-1.
- Tyndall, John (1988). The Eleventh Hour: A Call for British Rebirth. London: Albion Press. ISBN 978-0-9513686-1-9.
- Wood, C.; Finlay, W. M. L. (2008). "British National Party Representations of Muslims in the Month after the London Bombings: Homogeneity, Threat, and the Conspiracy Tradition". British Journal of Social Psychology. 47. pp. 707–726. doi:10.1348/014466607X264103.
- Woodbridge, Steven (2010). "Christian Credentials?: The Role of Religion in British National Party Ideology". Journal for the Study of Radicalism. 4 (1). pp. 25–54. JSTOR 41887643.
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Further reading
- Abbas, Tahir (2005). Muslim Britain: communities under pressure. Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-84277-449-6.
- Art, David (2011). Inside the Radical Right. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-49883-8.
- Backes, Uwe; Moreau, Patrick (2011). The Extreme Right in Europe: Current Trends and Perspectives. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 978-3-525-36922-7.
- Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (2005). Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th century. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8.
- Boothroyd, David (2001). Politico's Guide to the History of British Political Parties. Politico's. ISBN 978-1-902301-59-4.
- Betz, Hans-Georg (1998). The new politics of the Right: neo-Populist parties and movements in established democracies. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-21338-1.
- Butler, David (1983). The British General Election of 1983. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-34578-8.
- Brinks, Jan Herman (2006). Nationalist Myths and Modern Media: Contested Identities in the Age of Globalization. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-038-3.
- Cook, Chris (2000). The Longman companion to Britain since 1945. Pearson Education. ISBN 978-0-582-35674-0.
- Copsey, Nigel (2004). Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and its Quest for Legitimacy. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-0214-6.
- Davies, Peter (2002). The Routledge companion to fascism and the far right. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-21494-0.
- Eatwell, Roger (2004). Western democracies and the new extreme right challenge. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-36971-8.
- Geddes, Andrew (2002). Labour's second landslide: the British general election 2001. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6266-7.
- Human Rights Watch (1997). Racist violence in the United Kingdom. Human Rights Watch. ISBN 978-1-56432-202-9.
- Gottlieb, Julie V.; Linehan, Thomas P. (2004). The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-86064-798-7.
- Ignazi, Piero (2003). Extreme right parties in Western Europe. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929159-5.
- Heitmeyer, Wilhelm (2003). International Handbook of Violence Research. Springer ISBN 978-1-4020-1466-6.
- Hill, Ray; Bell, Andrew (1988). The Other Face of Terror: Inside Europe's Neo-Nazi Network. Grafton Books. ISBN 978-0-586-06935-6.
- Larsen, Stein Ugelvik (1998). Modern Europe after fascism, 1943–1980s. Social Science Monographs. ISBN 978-0-88033-973-5.
- Liang, Christina Schori (2007). Europe for the Europeans: the foreign and security policy of the populist radical. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
- Passmore, Kevin (2002). Fascism : a very short introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280155-5.
- Plowright, John (2006). The Routledge dictionary of modern British history. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-08846-3.
- Saggar, Shamit (1998). Race and British electoral politics. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-85728-830-8.
- Szajkowski, Bogdan (2004). Revolutionary and dissident movements of the world. John Harper Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9543811-2-7.
- Thurlow, Richard C. (2000). Fascism in Modern Britain. Sutton. ISBN 978-0-7509-1747-6.
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