The party was led by John Davis and campaigned on a platform similar to that of the much bigger National Front (NF) on anti-immigration, anti-European Economic Community, anti-communism themes.
[4] Nonetheless, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, a leading opponent of the Common Market, was among the figures to at least temporarily make the NIP the focus of his patronage following O'Brien's defection.
[6] Its best performance came in the February 1974 general election when Michael Coney, standing as "National Independence - Anti-Common Market" captured 4.4% of the vote in Tottenham, finishing ahead of the NF's Roy Painter.
[8] Coney was independent by the 1978 elections (the NIP having been wound up in the interim) and later served the Conservative Party, but his example of building a strong local base in a single area, which included a 20.3% vote share in the 1973 Greater London Council election, was later lauded by elements within the British National Party who supported Nick Griffin against John Tyndall, due to their support for a similar localist strategy.
The party, which was closely associated with a group calling itself the Political Independence Movement, failed to challenge the hegemony of the National Front on the far right and had disappeared before the decade was out.