A party on its deathbed: no BNP candidates in this year’s elections
Posted by admin978 on April 7, 2022 · Leave a Comment
See also updated list of candidates
Regular H&D readers will know that our editor and assistant editor were once leading activists in the British National Party. Twenty years ago our editor raised money for Nick Griffin (then party leader) and paid for the Griffin family’s holiday in the USA.
Unfortunately Griffin betrayed us all and destroyed the party, leaving a political wreck to be steered round hopelessly by his successor Adam Walker and his crooked treasurer Clive Jefferson.
The BNP now only exists to obtain donations and legacies for the benefit of its leaders, not for any sort of serious politics: and now the slow death of the party has been confirmed by its failure to field a single candidate anywhere in the UK at this year’s local council elections.
Other nationalist parties are at least making an effort, devoting their far more modest financial resources to actual politics rather than to their leaders’ personal benefit.
The National Front has two candidates this year, Chris Jackson in Calderdale and Tim Knowles in Amber Valley.
H&D expects Dr Jim Lewthwaite, leader of the British Democrats, again to run the most effective nationalist campaign, standing again in Wyke ward, Bradford. This year he has three fellow British Democrat candidates, all in the south of England and all ex-BNP: Michael Jones in Bexley, Chris Bateman in Basildon, and former councillor Lawrence Rustem in Maidstone.
Eddy Butler who masterminded the BNP’s first ever election victory in East London in 1993, is now in the For Britain Movement, a populist anti-immigration party whose leader Anne Marie Waters (a former UKIP leadership candidate) is sincerely ‘anti-racist’ but many of whose candidates and activists are ex-BNP, including its only elected councillor Julian Leppert.
Ms Waters will make a second attempt to win De Bruce ward, Hartlepool, after her near-miss last year, while Eddy Butler and former BNP councillor Patricia Richardson are contesting wards in Epping Forest. There are a total of 14 For Britain candidates nationwide.
Paul Golding, who twenty years ago was one of Nick Griffin’s young favourites, had promised fifty candidates or more from his anti-Muslim party Britain First, newly re-registered with the Electoral Commission, but has delivered only three. One of these is Golding’s girlfriend Ashlea Simon, standing in Salford; while another is ex-BNP candidate Nicholas Scanlon in Greenwich.
Robin Tilbrook’s English Democrats, at the opposite end of the spectrum from Paul Golding in terms of respectability but very much a ‘civic nationalist’ party, have five candidates including Mr Tilbrook himself in Epping Forest and Steve Morris in Bury, each of whom have been doggedly contesting the same wards for several years.
The only remaining unresolved controversy about Brexit is how it will affect the Union with Northern Ireland. We shall be looking at Ulster politics soon in another article. On the mainland it seems that the various pro-Brexit parties are steadily declining. The largest of them is Reform UK who have 123 candidates this year, and who are contesting every seat in two council areas: Bolton and Derby.
UKIP is now almost dead but has managed to find 28 candidates, while the Heritage Party (no connection to H&D!) led by half-Jamaican former UKIP leadership candidate David Kurten has 15 candidates.
H&D will have full reports on the local election campaign and analysis of the results in Issue 108 of our magazine which will be published the week after polling day in May.
Note: The statistics in this article and the accompanying candidate list have been obtained from many hours of research on local council websites across the UK during the past two days. Inevitably there is the possibility of error either by ourselves or by council returning officers. H&D will continually update and correct all facts relating to this year’s elections and this site will continue to be the most accurate and impartial source for electoral news regarding British nationalist parties across the ideological spectrum.
