As the European elections have shown, the British National Party has moved from the extremist fringes to becoming the first fascist party in the UK's history to win seats in a national vote. It's also trying to appear more moderate and respectable in an attempt to win more voters - what the party bosses call "the suits not boots" strategy. Scratch the surface of the party and you'll discover racist politics of hate masquerading as mainstream politics.
Run by hardline fascists who claim the Holocaust did not happen, the BNP is against racial integration and peddles white supremacy. Its leaders are determined to impose extremist rule in Britain and want to create a system where black and Asian people are relegated to the status of second-class citizens. The BNP may have got cleverer but its political views remain the same. Here we explore the truth about the most controversial party in British politics today.
Party Leaders - Nick Griffin - Fresh from winning an MEP's seat, the BNP chairman presents himself as a modern, respectable politician, but he's nothing of the sort. For more than 30 years he has been a hardline fascist and is a champion of the politics of factionalism, which he uses to shore up and preserve his own position against those who challenge his authority. In his run-up to the European elections he has been building links with openly Nazi and fascist politicians internationally. Griffin thought the publication of the entire BNP membership on the internet was "good publicity". But it was an unmitigated disaster and risked the personal security and employment prospects of party members. Griffin has for a long period tried to emulate the mainstream success of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right leader of France's National Front.
Andrew Brons – The BNP’s other successful candidate in the European elections, where he won one of the Yorkshire and the Humber seats, Brons is a veteran of far-right politics. He joined the neo-Nazi British National Socialist party as a teenager and stood five times for the National Front in the 1970s after a brief spell as its leader. The 61-year-old was fined £50 by Leeds magistrates in 1984 for abusive chanting that included calling an ethnic minority police officer an "inferior being".
Race - Theparty has publicly toned down its repatriation message, but it still wants an all-white Britain. The party's constitution says anyone who cannot prove a link to Britain before 1948 can never be considered British. Several articles penned by its leaders clearly show its opposition to any form of racial integration. Not only can ethnic minorities never be British, even if they are now third-generation citizens, but the BNP believes any form of mixed-race relationship would lead to the "dilution of the white race". The BNP supported apartheid in South Africa and wants to introduce a similar system in Britain. Its 2005 general election manifesto called for white British people to be given preference in jobs, housing and education which would see ethnic minorities become second-class citizens under the law.
The Holocaust - The BNP’s leaders realise the Holocaust is the worst-possible advert for Nazi policies, so they deny it ever happened. Party leader Nick Griffin is one of the biggest Holocaust deniers and once described it as the "hoax of the 20th century". The party produced a newspaper called Holocaust News which denied the existence of the Holocaust and referred to it as the "holohoax". It continues to host meetings with some of the world's leading Holocaust deniers, including Robert Faurisson who was a witness at Griffin's trial for inciting racial hatred in 1998 where the BNP leader was found guilty. The German Günter Deckert, who has been jailed for denying the Holocaust, spoke at a London BNP meeting in 2001. British Holocaust denier David Irving has also addressed BNP meetings and his recent imprisonment in Austria prompted protests from BNP members in London.
This week it emerged that white supremacist James Von Brunn, who shot a security guard at Washington's Holocaust Museum on Thursday, had attended fundraising events for the British National Party. Two weeks ago, the Sunday Herald revealed the party was setting up "youth camps" in Scotland. The nightmare scenario of burning crosses, Nazi salutes and extremist indoctrination was found in a video of a BNP camp. The outdoor event, held in Scotland several years ago, saw BNP activists joking about concentration camps and burning a wooden cross in an undisclosed Highland location. The BNP admitted it will roll out camps across Scotland in the next year, and adult activists are using social networking sites such as Bebo to recruit youngsters to the BNP's cause.
The Future - Political experts said the BNP were unlikely to win enough power to enforce its views on the majority. Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University said: "The BNP has demonstrated persistently a relatively high level of support in certain parts of the country, but it's not clear that it is making much of an advance beyond what it's been achieving. "A relatively small increase in support was enough to take them the right side of the PR threshold and to pick up support. "Are they currently in a position where they are likely to secure a significant amount of power? The answer to that is no, partly because their support is not enough, and partly because none of the other parties are willing to work with them."
All this and more, a great degree of ignorance in my community, apathy and self interest all indicate that we are on the verge of political collapse. A ripe and fertile recruiting ground for right wing white supreme extremists such as the BNP!
There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child.
