British Nationalist Party

British National Party
Founder	John Tyndall
Country	the United Kingdom
Headquarters	PO Box 213 Wigton Cumbria CA7 7AL
Newspaper	Identity
Colours	Red      White      Blue
Website	bnp.org.uk

The British National Party (BNP) is a Fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria and is currently headed by Adam Walker. A minor party, it has no elected representatives at any level of the UKs Government.

Founded in 1982, the party reached its apex 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 a defunct party of the 1960s, the BNP was created by John Tyndall and other former members of the Fascist National Front. During the 1980s and 1990s, the BNP placed little emphasis on contesting elections, in which it did poorly - instead, it focused on street marches and rallies, creating the organizations "Blood and Honour" and "Combat 18" .

A growing modernist faction was frustrated by Tyndall's leadership leading to his loss in the 1999 party election. The new leader Nick Griffin sought to broaden the BNP's electoral base by presenting a more moderate image, targeting concerns about rising immigration rates and emphasising localised community campaigns. This resulted in increased electoral growth throughout the 2000s, to the extent that it became the most electorally successful Fascist party in British history.

Ideology

The BNP uses the iconography of the Union flag prominently on its published material.

Various political scientists and historians have described the BNP as being Fascist in ideology. Others have instead described it as Neo-Fascist, a term which the historian Nigel Copsey argued was more exact. Academic observers — including the historians Graham Macklin and Roger Griffin, the political theologian Andrew P. Davey—have argued that Nick Griffin's reforms were little more than a cosmetic process to obfuscate the party'sfascistroots. According to Copsey, under Griffin the BNP was "fascism recalibrated – a form of Fascism to suit contemporary sensibilities". Macklin noted that despite Griffin's modernisation project, the BNP retained its ideological continuity with earlier Fascist groups and thus had not transformed itself into a genuinely "post-Fascist" party.

The party employed militaristic rhetoric under both Tyndall and Griffin's leadership; under the latter for example its published material spoke of a "war without uniforms" and a "war for our survival as a people", calling it a "guerrilla army operating in occupied territory".

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