Far right strategy revealed

Research published last week shows that the British National Party (BNP) is now downplaying the race card in an attempt to boost its legitimacy.

The study from the London School of Economics argues that during Nick Griffin’s leadership the BNP whilst maintaining their anti-immigration stance, the BNP has made a clear shift in narrative from one which emphasised race and ethnicity to one more about the civic elements of national identity. The authors, Halikiopolou and Vaslilopolou suggest that this is an attempt to replicate the success of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) which is seen as which is seen to be more inclusive and non non-racist while still maintaining a clear anti-immigration stance.

The authors carry out a comparison of the BNP’s and UKIPs manifesto’s in an attempt to identify trends. They found that, prior to Nick Griffin’s leadership the manifesto’s based on three types of nationalism, racial, economic and imperial with the key arguments stemming from a racial point of view. However, once Griffin has taken over as leader, the narrative around ethnicity and race is in decline and is replaces with one about civic values, rule of law and liberal sovereignty. The key area in which the BNP has borrowed UKIP’s narrative is in its use of language around political rights; indeed the policy area where the two parties are the closest is their stance on European integration and this is evident in similar discourse within both parties. The change in narrative is most evident in the 2009 European manifesto, where they find that ‘paradoxically, ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘liberty’ and ‘justice’ feature predominately’. Therefore, it is not wrong to suggest ad Halikiopolou and Vaslilopolou do that the reform agenda that Griffin is responsible for has led to a level of electoral success.

Nevertheless, the BNP were denied a breakthrough at Parliamentary level at this year’s general election but this has only resulted in the next stage of their ‘normalising’ process. They’ve recently under gone a re-branding process and their new logo bears a striking resemblance to that of the Conservative Party’s 2006 brush effect Union Jack. Another part of the re-branding process also involves dropping the ‘BNP’ acronym in official literature.

The worrying trend though lies in the fact that this right wing narrative is becoming increasingly ‘normalised’ and widespread in British Society. As the BNP attempt a move away from the fringes it leaves a gap which groups like the EDL and National Front are likely to fill. Indeed in the last 18 months we have seen the English Defence League grow from a group who caused disruption in Luton to a national organisation who are now causing a wave of violence in towns and cities up and down the country. Furthermore there is a pan-European movement of which this is only a part.

Speaking about the research, Jyoti Bhojani, Project Co-ordinator at OBV said ‘This research confirms what we’ve been aware of for some time now. It is worrying to think that the BNP are attempting change their rhetoric in a bid to improve their legitimacy. However, there are still racist undertones to what the party is saying.’