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UK: BNP makes gains at local elections

01 March 2006

The British National Party, which fielded more than 350 candidates in May's local elections, gained 32 new councillors and had one re-elected across 14 local authorities in England. The results mean that the organisation has the largest number of councillors in its history, 48. Their biggest gains were in Barking and Dagenham where it took 11 of the 13 seats that it contested to become the second biggest party, (another is being challenged in a High Court petition). The journalist Andrew Gilligan noted that "at least six [other] British National Party candidates...are standing under false addresses to get round electoral law" in what has become a long-standing practice by the organisation over the last two decades. The party also won three seats in Epping Forest and another in Redbridge.

The BNP's success in east London was boosted by the unwelcome intervention of Labour MP, Margaret Hodge, who - in what turned out to be something of a self-fulfilling-prophecy - announced that 80% of white families in the Barking area were tempted to vote for the neo-nazis. Her attempt at crying wolf only succeeded in further alienating the working class voters that her party has abandonment for wealthier friends in the business community. Even the revelation that the BNP's campaign organiser for the Barking campaign, Richard Barnbrook, was the director of a gay pornographic film (HMS Discovery, A Love Story) could not sway the voters back to Labour.

Outside of London the BNP picked up three seats in Stoke-on-Trent, where Labour lost overall control and three more in Sandwell. They won single seats in Solihull, Redditch, Pendle, Leeds and Burnley. Later in May, in Lincolnshire, a Conservative councillor, the Rev. Robert West, defected to the BNP. The party lost a seat in Bradford.

Metro 2.5.06; Evening Standard 13.4.06 (Andrew Gilligan), 19.5.06; Times 15.5.06; BBC News