Tyndall had been involved in neo-Nazi groups since the late 1950s before leading the far-right National Front (NF) throughout most of the 1970s.
Founded in 1982, the party reached its greatest level of success in the 2000s, when it had over fifty seats in local government, one seat on the London Assembly, and two Members of the European Parliament. Taking its name from that of a defunct 1960s far-right party, the BNP was created by John Tyndall and other former members of the fascist National Front (NF).
This switch in focus owed much to the discourse of the French Nouvelle Droite movement which had emerged within France's extreme-right during the 1960s. At the same time the BNP switched focus from openly promoting biological racism to stressing what it perceived as the cultural incompatibility of racial groups.
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...
Tyndall had been involved in neo-Nazi groups since the late 1950s before leading the far-right National Front (NF) throughout most of the 1970s.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the BNP placed little emphasis on contesting elections, in which it did poorly.
Following an argument with senior party member Martin Webster, he resigned from the NF in 1980.
In June 1980 Tyndall established a rival, the New National Front (NNF).
As a result, BNP organisers began to favour indoor rallies, although street marches continued to be held throughout the mid-to-late 1980s. In its early years, the BNP's involvement in elections was "irregular and intermittent", and for its first two decades it faced consistent electoral failure.
Founded in 1982, the party reached its greatest level of success in the 2000s, when it had over fifty seats in local government, one seat on the London Assembly, and two Members of the European Parliament. Taking its name from that of a defunct 1960s far-right party, the BNP was created by John Tyndall and other former members of the fascist National Front (NF).
It faced much opposition from anti-fascists, religious organisations, the mainstream media, and most politicians, and BNP members were banned from various professions. == History == ===John Tyndall's leadership: 1982–1999=== The British National Party (BNP) was founded by the extreme-right political activist John Tyndall.
To this end, Tyndall established a Committee for Nationalist Unity (CNU) in January 1982.
In March 1982, the CNU held a conference at the Charing Cross Hotel in London, at which 50 far-right activists agreed to the formation of the BNP. The BNP was formally launched on 7 April 1982 at a press conference in Victoria.
In the 1983 general election the BNP stood 54 candidates, although it only campaigned in five seats.
In its 1983 election manifesto, the BNP stated that "family size is a private matter" but still called for white Britons who are "of intelligent, healthy and industrious stock" to have large families and thus raise the white British birth-rate.
Although it was able to air its first party political broadcast, it averaged a vote share of 0.06% in the seats it contested. After the Representation of the People Act 1985 raised the electoral deposit to £500, the BNP adopted a policy of "very limited involvement" in elections.
It abstained in the 1987 general election, and stood only 13 candidates in the 1992 general election.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the BNP placed little emphasis on contesting elections, in which it did poorly.
In the 1997 general election, it contested 55 seats and gained an average 1.4% of the vote. In the early 1990s, the paramilitary group Combat 18 (C18) was formed to protect BNP events from anti-fascists.
To counter the group's influence among militant British nationalists, he secured the American white nationalist militant William Pierce as a guest speaker at the BNP's annual rally in November 1995. In the early 1990s, a "moderniser" faction emerged within the party, favouring a more electorally palatable strategy and an emphasis on building grassroots support to win local elections.
Often characterised as a political chameleon, Griffin had once been considered a party hardliner before switching allegiance to the modernisers in the late 1990s.
In the early 1990s it produced stickers with the slogan "Our Final Solution: Repatriation".
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.
It abstained in the 1987 general election, and stood only 13 candidates in the 1992 general election.
In 1992, C18 carried out attacks on left-wing targets like an anarchist bookshop and the headquarters of the Morning Star.
In its 1992 electoral manifesto, it said that "Fascism was Italian.
In a 1993 local by-election the BNP gained one council seat—won by Derek Beackon in the East London district of Millwall—after a campaign that played to local whites who were angry at the perceived preferential treatment received by Bangladeshi migrants in social housing.
Tyndall was angered by C18's growing influence on the BNP's street activities, and by August 1993, C18 activists were physically clashing with other BNP members.
In December 1993, Tyndall issued a bulletin to BNP branches declaring C18 to be a proscribed organisation, furthermore suggesting that it may have been established by agents of the state to discredit the party.
In July 2000, it came second in the council elections for the North End of the London Borough of Bexley, its best result since 1993.
According to Tyndall, "The BNP is a racial nationalist party which believes in Britain for the British, that is to say racial separatism." Richard Edmonds in 1993 told The Guardian's Duncan Campbell that "we [the BNP] are 100% racist".
Following an anti-BNP campaign launched by local religious groups and the Anti-Nazi League, it lost this seat during the 1994 local elections.
To counter the group's influence among militant British nationalists, he secured the American white nationalist militant William Pierce as a guest speaker at the BNP's annual rally in November 1995. In the early 1990s, a "moderniser" faction emerged within the party, favouring a more electorally palatable strategy and an emphasis on building grassroots support to win local elections.
In the 1997 general election, it contested 55 seats and gained an average 1.4% of the vote. In the early 1990s, the paramilitary group Combat 18 (C18) was formed to protect BNP events from anti-fascists.
In his view, "we should not be looking for ways of applying ideological cosmetic surgery to ourselves in order to make our features more appealing to the public". ===Nick Griffin's leadership: 1999–2014=== After the BNP's poor performance at the 1997 general election, opposition to Tyndall's leadership grew.
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 Rune, a 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.
A growing 'moderniser' faction was frustrated by Tyndall's leadership, and ousted him in 1999.
Initially, it called for the compulsory expulsion of non-whites, although since 1999 has advocated voluntary removals with financial incentives.
In his view, "we should not be looking for ways of applying ideological cosmetic surgery to ourselves in order to make our features more appealing to the public". ===Nick Griffin's leadership: 1999–2014=== After the BNP's poor performance at the 1997 general election, opposition to Tyndall's leadership grew.
The modernisers called the party's first leadership election, and in October 1999 Tyndall was ousted when two-thirds of those voting backed Nick Griffin, who offered an improved administration, financial transparency, and greater support for local branches.
Founded in 1982, the party reached its greatest level of success in the 2000s, when it had over fifty seats in local government, one seat on the London Assembly, and two Members of the European Parliament. Taking its name from that of a defunct 1960s far-right party, the BNP was created by John Tyndall and other former members of the fascist National Front (NF).
This resulted in increased electoral growth throughout the 2000s, to the extent that it became the most electorally successful far-right party in British history.
A poll in the 2000s suggested that most Britons favoured a ban on the party.
In July 2000, it came second in the council elections for the North End of the London Borough of Bexley, its best result since 1993.
This emphasis on culture allowed it to foreground Islamophobia, and following the September 11 attacks in 2001 it launched a "Campaign Against Islam".
At the 2001 general election it gained 16% of the vote in one constituency and over 10% in two others.
After Griffin took over, the party increasingly embraced an Islamophobic stance, launching a "Campaign Against Islam" in September 2001.
In the 2002 local elections the BNP gained four councillors, three of whom were in Burnley, where it had capitalised on white anger surrounding the disproportionately high levels of funding being directed to the Asian-dominated Daneshouse ward.
In the 2003 local elections the BNP gained 13 additional councillors, including seven more in Burnley, having attained over 100,000 votes.
Concerned that much of their potential vote was going to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), in 2003 the BNP offered UKIP an electoral pact but was rebuffed.
They invested much in the campaign for the 2004 European Parliament election, at which they gained 800,000 votes but failed to secure a parliamentary seat.
In the 2004 local elections, they secured four more seats, including three in Epping. For the 2005 general election, the BNP expanded its number of candidates to 119 and targeted specific regions.
In 2004, the party selected a Jewish candidate, Pat Richardson, to stand for it during local council elections, something Tyndall lambasted as a "gimmick".
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". Copsey noted that 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".
In the 2004 local elections, they secured four more seats, including three in Epping. For the 2005 general election, the BNP expanded its number of candidates to 119 and targeted specific regions.
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 the 2006 local elections the party gained 220,000 votes, with 33 additional councillors, having averaged a vote share of 18% in the areas it contested.
In 2006, he complained that the "obsession" that many BNP members had with "the Jews" was "insane and politically disastrous".
In 2006, John Bean, editor of Identity, included 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...
In 2007 a group of senior members known as the "December rebels" challenged Griffin, calling for internal party democracy and financial transparency, but were expelled.
In Islam: A Threat to Us All, a 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".
At the 2008 London Assembly election, the BNP gained 130,000 votes, reaching the 5% mark and thus gaining an Assembly seat.
In 2008, a group of BNP activists in Bradford split to form the Democratic Nationalists.
In November 2008, the BNP membership list was posted to WikiLeaks, after appearing briefly on a weblog.
In the 2012 local elections, the party lost all of its seats and saw its vote share fall dramatically; whereas it gained over 240,000 votes in 2008, this had fallen to under 26,000 by 2012.
At the 2009 European Parliament election, the party gained almost 1 million votes, with two of its candidates, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, being elected as Members of the European Parliament for North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber respectively.
Amid significant public controversy, Griffin was invited to appear on the BBC show Question Time in October 2009, the first time that the BNP had been invited to share a national television platform with mainstream panellists.
A year later, in October 2009, another list of BNP members was leaked. Eddy Butler then led a challenge to Griffin's leadership, alleging financial corruption, but he had insufficient support.
In 2009, Griffin that the term "fascism" was simply "a smear that comes from the far left"; he added that the term should be reserved for groups that engaged in "political violence" and desired a state that "should impose its will on people", claiming that it was the anti-fascist group Unite Against Fascism—and not the BNP—who were the real fascists.
In a 2009 radio interview, Griffin referred to this as a "bloodless genocide".
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". ===Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia=== Under Tyndall's leadership, the BNP was openly anti-Semitic.
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.
The rebels who supported him split into two groups: one section remained as the internal Reform Group, the other left the BNP to form the British Freedom Party. By 2010, there was discontent among the party's grassroots, a result of the change to its white-only membership policy and rumours of financial corruption among its leadership.
At the 2010 general election, the BNP had hoped to make a breakthrough by gaining a seat in the House of Commons, although it failed to achieve this.
In the 2010 local elections, it lost all of its councillors in Barking and Dagenham.
At the general election in 2015, the BNP fielded eight candidates, down from 338 in 2010.
The party's vote share declined 99.7% from its 2010 result.
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 BNP calls for the non-white population of Britain to either be reduced in size or removed from the country altogether.
Griffin described the results as "disastrous". === Decline: 2014–present === In a 2011 leadership election, Griffin secured a narrow victory, beating Brons by nine votes of a total of 2,316 votes cast.
In October 2012, Brons left the party, leaving Griffin as its sole MEP.
In the 2012 local elections, the party lost all of its seats and saw its vote share fall dramatically; whereas it gained over 240,000 votes in 2008, this had fallen to under 26,000 by 2012.
Commenting on the result, the political scientist Matthew Goodwin noted: "Put simply, the BNP's electoral challenge is over." In the 2012 London mayoral election, the BNP candidate came seventh, with 1.3% of first-preference votes, its poorest showing in the London mayoral contest.
The 2012 election results established that the BNP's steady growth had ended.
In the 2013 local elections, the BNP fielded 99 candidates but failed to win any council seats, leaving it with only two. In June 2013, Griffin visited Syria along with members of Hungarian far-right party Jobbik to meet with government officials, including the Speaker of the Syrian People's Assembly, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham, and the Prime Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi.
In October, Griffin was expelled from the party for "trying to cause disunity [in the party] by deliberately fabricating a state of crisis". In January 2015, membership of the party numbered 500, down from 4,220 in December 2013.
Concerns regarding financial mismanagement resulted in Griffin being removed as leader in 2014.
Griffin described the results as "disastrous". === Decline: 2014–present === In a 2011 leadership election, Griffin secured a narrow victory, beating Brons by nine votes of a total of 2,316 votes cast.
Griffin lost his European Parliament seat in the May 2014 European election.
In July 2014, Griffin resigned and was succeeded by Adam Walker as acting chairman.
In October, Griffin was expelled from the party for "trying to cause disunity [in the party] by deliberately fabricating a state of crisis". In January 2015, membership of the party numbered 500, down from 4,220 in December 2013.
At the general election in 2015, the BNP fielded eight candidates, down from 338 in 2010.
In January 2016, the Electoral Commission de-registered the BNP for failing to pay its annual registration fee of £25.
There were ten BNP candidates at the general election in 2017.
At the 2018 local elections, the party's last remaining councillor—Brian Parker of Pendle—decided not to stand for re-election, leaving the party without representation at any level of UK government.
The BNP fielded only one candidate at the 2019 general election in Hornchurch and Upminster, where he came last. == Ideology == ===Far-right politics, fascism, and neo-Nazism=== Many academic historians and political scientists have described the BNP as a far-right party, or as an extreme-right party.
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