Led by Nick Griffin
councillors after the June 2004 local elections
The BNP presently has a total of twenty-one elected councillors throughout the country.
In local elections in June 2004 the extreme-right party, which had made significant gains in the 2003 local elections, increased its number of councillors from 17 to 21. However it lost councillors in Blackburn, Thurrock, Dudley and Sandwell. It retained its existing number of councillors in Broxbourne, Burnley (where it has six), Kirklees, Calderdale and Stoke-on-Trent. It failed to gain any seats in the Greater London Assembly, polling only 90,365 votes (4.7 per cent). The BNP had made much of its plans to capture seats in the European parliamentary election (June 2004) and fielded 22 candidates. But it failed to win one seat, appearing to lose support to the Eurosceptic and anti-immigration UK Independence Party, which scored 16.1 per cent of the vote nationally and now has twelve MEPs.
Since Nick Griffin assumed the leadership of the party in 1999, the party's strategy has been to present themselves as 'respectable' in a bid to gain mainstream acceptance. The main target of the BNP's propaganda is now Muslims and asylum seekers, rather than non-whites generally. This strategy has worked to the extent that the party has been given increasing media exposure. However differences are emerging between Griffin and his modernisation, which includes the idea of opening the party to non-whites, and the old-guard led by former leader John Tyndall. A TV exposé showing up the anti-Semitism and racial hatred inherent in some members has led to six expulsions in July 2004. |
