History of the British National Party
The BNP platform is centred on the advocacy of "firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home",[1] as well as the repeal of anti-discrimination legislation.
[2] The British National Party[note 1] was founded by the extreme-right political activist John Tyndall, who had been involved in Neo-Nazi groups since the late 1950s.
He had led the far-right National Front (NF) throughout most of the 1970s, although resigned in 1980, complaining that homosexuals like Martin Webster held senior positions within the party.
[12] Most of the BNP's leading activists, such as Charles Parker, David Bruce, Richard Edmonds, and John Peacock, had previously been senior figures in the NF.
[30] It adopted a key tactic of the NF, that of street marches and rallies, believing that these attracted publicity and new recruits as well as boosting the morale of existing members.
[28] These marches often involved clashes with anti-fascist protesters and resulted in multiple arrests, thus cementing the connection between the BNP and both political violence and older fascist groups in the public eye.
[34] Such failure was shared by other Neo-Nazi parties across Europe; while European populations were often highly critical of immigration, they were unlikely to endorse overt racial prejudice, and they rarely supported the idea of overthrowing the liberal democratic system of governance.
[48] In December 1993, Tyndall issued a bulletin to BNP branches declaring C18 to be a proscribed organisation, furthermore suggesting that it may have been established by agents of the state to discredit the party.
[50] In the early 1990s, a group of "modernisers" emerged within the party who favoured a move towards a more electorally palatable strategy and an emphasis on building grassroots support to win local elections.
[56] Tyndall opposed many of the modernisers' ideas and sought to stem their growing influence in the party,[57] declaring that "we should not be looking for ways of applying ideological cosmetic surgery to ourselves in order to make our features more appealing to the public".
[37] This broadcast featured Tyndall flanked by two British flags, and included footage of the Brixton riot, a violent clash between predominantly black local residents and the police.
[22] During the mid-1980s, Tyndall's BNP absorbed numerous existing NF Flag Group[note 4] branches including Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Glasgow.
[32] While in prison, Tyndall wrote the part-autobiographical, part-political The Eleventh Hour, making Richard Edmonds the de facto leader of the BNP during this time.
[68] The party was further damaged, by the fact a 1988 Sunday Times report revealed that BNP Deputy Chairman Richard Edmonds was once involved with a newspaper called the "Holocaust" News, published by the Centre for Historical Review.
[75][76] Following this, BNP candidate Derek Beackon—a last minute replacement for Eddy Butler—won the party its first local council seat in 1993 from Labour, during a local-by election for the Isle of Dogs, Tower Hamlets.
In the aftermath of Beackon's electoral victory and losing his seat the following year, the British National Party clashed with paramilitary organisation, Combat 18,[79] which had evolved in 1991 from a 'security force' made up of nationalists drawn from football casual firms was created to defend far-right activists, allegedly in response to a hammer attack at Kensington Central Library.
It was revealed around this time that another Searchlight mole, Tim Hepple, had infiltrated the BNP, proving controversial in far-left circles, since he was the primary organiser of the Dewsbury incident in 1989.
[102] After Griffin won he began modernising the party's image,[101] though the crucial policy change from compulsory to voluntary repatriation which had already been suggested under Tyndall's leadership.
[105] At local level, the BNP continued to improve on its electoral results in 2002–03,[106] gaining council seats in Blackburn, Calderdale and Burnley,[106][107] despite an extensive opposition campaign.
[113] Griffin claimed that this was the "cost of voting Labour",[113] attacking the government for bringing the United Kingdom into an "illegal" Iraq War and for its immigration policies.
Cobain also claimed that the membership in central London had expanded beyond the party's traditional range, now including "dozens of company directors, computing entrepreneurs, bankers and estate agents, and a handful of teachers".
The following year saw the resignation or expulsion of scores of activists from a different wing of the party and an unsuccessful bid for the leadership by Councillor Colin Auty.
Also in light of the United Kingdom Parliamentary expenses scandal, there was media speculation that the BNP could do well in the polls, as voters sought an alternative party to register their protest.
[138] Nick Griffin claimed that the success of the British National Party was down to its modernisation, having kept things "simple" and ditched the fringe in the movement who were concerned with "... genetics, Zionism and historical revisionism".
[145][146][147] In June 2013, Griffin visited Syria on a "peace mission" along with members of Jobbik to meet with the Speaker of the Syrian People's Assembly, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham, the Prime Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi, among other government officials.
[148] Griffin claims he was influential in the speaker of Syria's Parliament writing an open letter to British MPs urging them to "turn Great Britain from the warpath" by not intervening in the Syrian conflict.
Two months later, in July, Griffin lost a leadership contest and was succeeded by Adam Walker as acting chairman who had been banned from the profession for life after allegedly verbally abusing his students.
[157] A HOPE not hate report in 2015 argued that the decline of the BNP, EDL, and others was caused due to schisms within the party, combined with a rise in the right-wing populist UKIP.
[167] During Walker's second term as chairman (2019–2023), the BNP has experienced a collapse in its membership, as a large number of nationalist activists once affiliated with the party have begun coalescing around the British Democrats.
The BNP has also been essentially inactive since 2019, and have not put forward a single candidate in any elections since 2019, with the only evidence of any activity whatsoever being the occasional post on its website or Twitter account.
