BNP’s Nick Griffin to stand in Euro elections
Article published: Saturday, January 10th 2009
A victory for the BNP this summer would be the first time a member of the far-right nationalist party was elected to this office.
The North West offers the BNP chance of a breakthrough. The battle for the eighth and last seat will be a close fight, with the BNP and the Green Party both narrowly missing out in 2004. The BNP polled 134,000 votes (6.4 per cent) across the region in that election, only 32,000 short of the figure required for victory.
The BNP says it expects to increase its vote and win the seat. Their opinion is echoed by the anti-Nazi group Searchlight, who claim that the current economic climate means that the threat from the BNP will increase. They believe the party will make significant gains in white working class areas, the partys main support base, where there will be an inevitable drop in living standards and increased unemployment. The effects of the economic crisis are already filtering through to working class areas and the BNP is jumping on the recession as a key tool to increase its vote. As David Hannan, the BNP deputy treasurer, told a party meeting recently, “The BNP must take advantage of this mess all the other parties have made of the economy.”
The BNP claim several other factors will also work to its advantage. They expect a drop in the share of the vote won by the UK Independence Party (UKIP), who take a similarly hostile stance towards Europe and won the fifth seat in the 2004 elections and hope to capitalise on the collapse of Labours support in white working class areas. The BNP has made major domestic gains since the last euro elections. The party has more than doubled its number of councillors, who have increased from 20 to 52 since 2004. It also ran a high profile campaign for London Mayor and subsequently won its first seat on the London Assembly.Since Griffin replaced John Tyndall, an open Nazi sympathiser, as BNP leader in 1999 the party has attempted to change its image and present itself as a legitimate political force. However, several TV documentaries in recent years have revealed how little the party has changed and show that racism is still the driving force behind the partys policies. Griffin was himself charged with incitement to racism in 2005.
A victory for the BNP in the 2009 election would be likely to increase the prestige and status of the party, possibly leading to domestic election victories. The French far right party and ally of the BNP, the Front National, saw itself thrust into the media limelight and went on to make considerable gains at home after it won seats in the European Parliament in 1984.
For their part the Green Party remain confident about their chances of winning the seat. The Greens will beat the BNP positive politics delivering real change in ordinary communities, will triumph over hatred and distrust, said Peter Cranie, the Greens candidate in the election, as he addressed an anti-war rally in Manchester.
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