County council updates

Following his 16% vote in yesterday’s Preston City Council election, H&D editor Mark Cotterill today polled 8.8% in the Lancashire County Council for Preston South-East division.

Due to redrawing of council boundaries, this was always going to be a lower vote for a racial nationalist independent. Preston SE includes a very large Asian community which tends to vote as a block for Labour candidates – even Jewish ones! (Jenny Mein has held the seat for Labour for many years, and was part of an unusual tradition of Jewish female leaders of Lancashire county council, following Louise Ellman and Ruth Henig.)

Many of the White voters in Preston SE are in a very depressed council estate, where turnout is traditionally low (exacerbated by Covid restrictions on polling stations and campaigning).

In the circumstances 8.8% was a respectable result, especially as once again (in line with a nationwide trend this year) pro-Brexit voters leaned towards Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.

We await further results during the day from nationalist candidates nationwide including Dr Jim Lewthwaite of the British Democratic Party, contesting Wyke ward, Bradford.

And of course there will be a full analysis and results service on this site and in the forthcoming May-June edition of H&D.

full result – Preston SE division, Lancashire County Council

Mein (Labour) 67.9%

Walmsley (Conservative) 18.3%

Cotterill (Independent) 8.8%

Duke (Liberal Democrat) 4.9%

Police state cracks down on Patriotic Alternative

Sam Melia, Yorkshire regional organiser of Patriotic Alternative, was arrested on Wednesday under Britain’s notorious race laws and questioned for five hours.

Mr Melia and his wife – PA deputy leader Laura Towler – had their computers and phones seized.

While H&D would not normally comment on an ongoing police investigation, we can say with some confidence in this instance that Mr Melia is being persecuted for material that is well within the normal definitions of sensible, legal, racial nationalist politics.

This is emphatically not an example of lunatic fringe behaviour, as has been the case with some recent ‘political’ convictions.

While we are to some extent restricted in what we can report about this case, we are pleased to note that the heavy-handed police actions have not deterred PA from supporting the election campaign of H&D patron Dr Jim Lewthwaite, British Democratic Party candidate for Wyke ward, Bradford City Council.

Best of luck to Sam, Laura, Jim and all the activist teams working this weekend!

2021 elections: Showdown for civic nationalist and Brexiteer parties

As we explained last week, the 2021 elections for a variety of local councils, mayoralties, and the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments take place at a time of transition for the racial nationalist movement.

It’s also the end of an era for the various civic nationalist, populist and Brexiteer parties, many of which emerged out of splits in the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), a force that changed the direction of British politics during the past decade but has been in prolonged death throes for the past few years.

The largest faction of the old UKIP followed Nigel Farage into his new Brexit Party, but Farage has now retired from frontline electoral politics. His ally Richard Tice now leads a party renamed and rebranded as Reform UK, which is still the largest of the post-UKIP factions but a lot weaker than its predecessor.

According to our analysis of documents produced by more than two hundred returning officers across England, Scotland, and Wales, Reform UK has 276 candidates for English councils. In addition they are fighting all 14 Greater London Assembly constituencies as well as putting up a GLA slate. (This citywide list, elected on a proportional basis, is one of the few elections where parties such as Reform UK stand a chance. The BNP’s Richard Barnbrook was elected to the GLA via the citywide slate in 2008.)

Reform UK have candidates for 13 of the 39 Police & Crime Commissioner posts up for election on May 6th; as well as three mayoralties.

The biggest showdown between Reform UK and the rump of UKIP is in Wales, where Reform UK is fighting all 40 constituencies as well as all five regional slates. UKIP is fighting all of the regions, but only has candidates in 14 of the 40 constituencies.

At the previous Welsh election in 2016, UKIP won seven seats via the regional list system.

Across the English councils, UKIP’s relative weakness compared to Reform UK is even more marked: we estimate that they have 131 English council candidates (fewer than half Reform UK’s total), plus a London slate. Unlike Reform UK, UKIP have a London mayoral candidate, and they are also contesting the North Tyneside mayoralty.

A Covid-sceptic party called Freedom Alliance (and its South Wales sister party ‘No More Lockdowns’) is fighting four of the five Welsh regional lists and 15 Welsh constituencies. Across England we estimate that they have 89 council candidates. A similar but higher-profile anti-lockdown party is led in London by Piers Corbyn, brother of the former Labour leader. This party – Let London Live – is fighting three GLA constituencies, the citywide list, and the London mayoralty (with Corbyn himself as mayoral candidate).

As we have previously reported, yet another anti-lockdown party contesting the London elections is the Heritage Party, founded by former UKIP leadership candidate David Kurten. The half-Jamaican Mr Kurten is standing for the London mayoralty and heads a GLA slate, in a bid to retain the seat he won as a UKIP list candidate in 2016.

The Heritage Party (which has absolutely no connection to H&D!) has 22 candidates nationwide in various English council contests: its strongest area seems to be Surrey, where it has five county council candidates – otherwise it has one or two candidates dotted around the country.

An even smaller UKIP splinter is the Alliance for Democracy & Freedom, founded by yet another former UKIP leadership candidate, ex-MEP Mike Hookem. This has just four council candidates around the country.

Some populists and Brexiteers have quixotically rallied behind the Social Democratic Party (SDP), rump of the party founded by prominent ex-Labour politicians in the 1980s. Most of the SDP was fanatically pro-EU and eventually merged into today’s Liberal Democrats, but the tiny group that kept up the name SDP have been joined by a surprising number of Brexiteers who were unhappy about the ‘far right’ direction of UKIP and its other splinters.

The SDP have 62 council candidates across England, as well as a London mayoral candidate and GLA list.

The English Democrats have long attempted to rival the various UKIP splinters by promoting their particular constitutional argument in favour of an English Parliament, and for a while attracted a number of defectors from Nick Griffin’s collapsing BNP.

Almost all of those ex-BNP types are now in the For Britain Movement, but the EDs retain a hardcore of English nationalists led by Essex solicitor Robin Tilbrook. They will have six council candidates, two mayoral and two for Police Commissioner elections.

Independent candidates in these elections include former ED Frank Calladine, standing for Mayor of Doncaster.

The bottom line is that Reform UK is by far the biggest of the parties to emerge from the chaos of a bitterly divided Brexiteer political scene. However we expect them to poll quite badly this year, despite killing off UKIP, the Heritage Party and other splinters.

There will be some strong independent results, and we expect Jim Lewthwaite of the British Democratic Party to poll well in his Bradford City Council ward. But the biggest successes of this year’s elections on the broadly nationalist side of things are likely to be for the For Britain Movement, which will draw support from both civic and racial nationalists despite fielding several non-White candidates.

While these elections will (by the standards of the early 2000s) produce very few nationalist or even broadly populist successes, they will help to clarify the post-Brexit, post-pandemic scene.

H&D will post full reports on the results and their implications, both here and in what will necessarily be a slightly delayed May-June edition of the magazine.

Local Elections 2021: a nationalist movement in transition

Nominations closed yesterday for local elections across England, plus elections to the Welsh Assembly, and the many different local authorities have been steadily publishing lists of candidates during the past day and a half.

For H&D readers and supporters of the British racial nationalist / patriotic movement, this is a transitional election, not merely because of the Covid pandemic that has absorbed most public attention for the past year, but also because British politics is finally moving out of the shadow of Brexit.

Over the weekend, this website will analyse what has happened to the entire political tradition that was built up by Nigel Farage for the past decade or so around UKIP, the Brexit Party and its various splinters and offshoots, several of which are contesting some of these elections but on a far smaller scale than we have become used to.

But for now we shall look closer to home at some of the ‘real’ nationalist candidates and parties.

For various reasons the National Front wasn’t expected to have very many candidates this year: so far three have been confirmed. Former Burnley BNP organiser Steven Smith will be NF candidate for his home ward, Cliviger with Worsthorne, Burnley. Chris Jackson is NF candidate for Todmorden ward, Calderdale; and Tim Knowles will contest Langley Mill & Aldercar ward, Amber Valley.

Despite its head office having far more money than the NF, the BNP once again has fewer candidates – and even those that are standing are really doing so on their own (creditable) initiative rather than as part of a centrally planned campaign. John Clarke will be BNP candidate for a Croydon Council by-election in New Addington ward, once considered a major target for the party; while Ray Beasley is contesting the Boothville & Parklands ward of the newly created West Northamptonshire council.

Dr Jim Lewthwaite is once again likely to have one of the most effective nationalist campaigns anywhere in the country: he is again contesting Wyke ward, Bradford, for the British Democratic Party

Some well-known nationalists are standing as independent candidates this year. As we have already reported, H&D editor Mark Cotterill is standing both for Preston City Council (in Ribbleton ward) and Lancashire County Council (in the Preston SE division). Similarly Chris Roberts, one of London’s most dedicated racial nationalist activists of recent decades, is contesting both an Essex County Council seat in South Benfleet, and his local district council seat in Boyce ward, Castle Point. The latter is a by-election that follows a typical Tory financial scandal.

Pete Molloy – an ex-serviceman and former BNP activist who is among the very few nationalists now holding public office at any level – is standing as independent candidate for the Spennymoor division of Durham County Council, as well as for re-election to his Spennymoor Parish Council seat where he has been an effective representative for his local community.

Former BNP candidate Dr Andrew Emerson is again contesting the Chichester West division of West Sussex County Council, as well as a by-election for the Chichester West ward of the district council.

With the new party Patriotic Alternative not yet registered with the Electoral Commission, so unable to field candidates in this year’s elections, one of the largest nationalist parties standing this year is the For Britain Movement, who already have borough councillors in Hartlepool and Epping Forest. H&D subscriber and former BNP councillor and mayoral candidate Julian Leppert, already an Epping Forest councillor, is standing for the Waltham Abbey division of Essex County Council.

There are four For Britain candidates for Epping Forest District Council. Veteran NF, BNP, Freedom Party, English Democrat and now For Britain campaign strategist Eddy Butler is contesting Loughton Broadway; his wife Sue is candidate for Waltham Abbey NE; former BNP councillor Mrs Pat Richardson is standing in Waltham Abbey Honey Lane; and Jim Searle in Waltham Abbey SW.

There are dozens of other For Britain candidates nationwide – in fact we make it a total of 58. They include former BNP councillor Graham Partner in Coalville North, Leicestershire.

However the majority of these candidates should not really be classified as racial nationalists: one or two indeed are non-White, and people like party leader Anne Marie Waters (a candidate in De Bruce ward, Hartlepool, this year) are avowedly and sincerely non-‘racist’ or anti-‘racist’.

We shall therefore be examining For Britain’s nationwide campaign over the weekend, in the context of its post-UKIP rivals including Reform UK, the Heritage Party, and what remains of UKIP itself, as well as longstanding civic nationalist parties such as the English Democrats.

Will the 2021 elections be postponed again?

Election officials in Lancashire have written to the government suggesting that this year’s local elections should again be postponed – or else held on an all-postal basis, due to the Covid-19 pandemic making it unsafe or impractical to hold elections as scheduled on May 6th.

The 2020 elections – including the London mayoralty and Greater London Assembly – were postponed in the early stages of the pandemic. This means that already many councillors and mayors have served an extra 12 months, and that this year’s elections were in any case going to combine the scheduled 2020 and 2021 contests.

There have been conflicting messages as to whether it’s feasible for the elections to go ahead this year. North West England was one of several regions that had an experimental ‘pilot’ project of all-postal elections in 2004, which resulted in a significantly increased turnout, but for various reasons it was decided not to continue the experiment.

For racial nationalists this year might have seen the first electoral test for the new Patriotic Alternative party, if the Electoral Commission approve its registration in time. The National Front and the For Britain Movement will certainly have a few candidates if the elections go ahead, while Dr Jim Lewthwaite intends to stand in Bradford for the British Democratic Party. The late Richard Edmonds had planned to stand for the NF in last year’s elections before they were postponed, and had he lived would have been a candidate in May this year.

Any elections this year might also see the last gasp of UKIP and the debut of Nigel Farage’s new Reform UK party.

Perhaps more seriously, it could be the last gasp of the Union, with the Scottish National Party set to make further gains at the expense of both Labour and the Tories, and perhaps setting the scene for a second independence referendum. The decision whether to postpone this year’s elections north of the border rests with Nicola Sturgeon’s devolved government, so it’s possible there could be elections in Scotland, but none in England or Wales. No elections are scheduled this year in any case in Northern Ireland.

Many happy returns – John Bean

The editor, assistant editor and all the staff at H&D Towers, would like to wish our oldest subscriber (by two months) – John Bean – a very happy 93rd birthday.

John was born on June 27th, 1927 in Carshalton, Surrey. The family moved to Blackfen, near Sidcup in Kent, where at the age of 13 he suffered the trauma of being bombed out of the family home in February 1941.

Aged 18, John began his National Service in 1945. He was largely apolitical, although he had briefly flirted with communism whilst at school, calling for support for the Soviet Union. Initially he was a trainee navigator in the RAF Volunteer Reserve.

Later as a sailor in the Royal Navy. John became a radar mechanic and was placed on HMS Bulawayo, a fleet supply ship which made several visits to Trinidad until the end of his naval service in June 1948.

He briefly lived in India during 1950, working as a chemist in a paint factory, although he failed to settle and returned to Britain six months later.

Upon his return, John began to attend meetings of the Union Movement, being attracted by the ‘Europe a Nation’ policy and by the time Oswald Mosley had spent in prison for his beliefs. John initially served as a member of the Special Propaganda Service, the main duty of which was to sell copies of the party’s newspaper Union.

Soon however he became a leading figure active on behalf of the UM in the East End of London, before being appointed to head a branch in Putney in 1952. Despite these advancements, John grew disillusioned of the UM’s chances of making any real headway and he left them altogether in February 1953. A brief stopover in the local Conservative Party in Barnes followed but lasted only two months.

After a spell on the side-lines he then linked up with Andrew Fountaine, who had been attempting to form his own party, the National Front, and began to produce a journal, National Unity.

His work attracted the attention of A.K. Chesterton and, with the National Front idea failing to get off the ground, he decided to join the League of Empire Loyalists, serving as its Northern Organiser and then in the HQ in London. Continuing to produce his paper, now called The Loyalist, John soon became frustrated at both the lack of political activity and the links to the Conservative Party that were the hallmarks of the LEL.

He left in 1957 to set up the National Labour Party with Fountaine. Fountaine, a Norfolk landowner from a rural landowning family, was officially President of the new group, but was largely a figurehead: control actually lay with John.

The NLP gained a few minor results in elections but was always destined to be a small fringe movement, and as a result John decided to merge his party with another LEL splinter group, the White Defence League in 1960 to form the British National Party.

John Bean was made leader of the party upon its foundation. Early in the group’s life, both John and former White Defence League leader Colin Jordan were approached by Oswald Mosley, who offered them roles in his Union Movement if they agreed to its subsuming the BNP, but both men rejected the offer.

Initially gaining some support in London, the party soon ran into trouble when it became clear that Colin Jordan was emerging as its spokesman. A journalist commented in 1962 that Jordan was becoming the British Adolf Hitler. John jokingly responded to the Daily Mail reporter that that made him “the British Joseph Goebbels”. Despite this, John soon clashed with Jordan over his extremism and before long Jordan had left to form the National Socialist Movement, taking emerging figures John Tyndall and Denis Pirie with him. Matters had come to a head at the party’s national council meeting in 1962 when John proposed a motion to condemn Jordan’s open support for National Socialism. It was passed 7 to 5, but the party immediately split as a result, albeit with around 80% of the membership remaining within the BNP. John had blamed the associations with National Socialism that Jordan and Tyndall brought for the party’s marginal position in British politics.

At the 1964 general election John Bean stood as BNP candidate in Southall and obtained 3,410 votes (9.3%), the highest post-war vote for a minority party at that time. Another BNP candidate picked up nearly 2,000 votes in Deptford. In 1966 he again stood in Southall, but his vote fell to 2,600. With BNP membership only marginally increasing, John felt the need to try to create a nationalist front with like groups and arranged, with the help of Ted Budden, a private meeting with his old mentor A.K. Chesterton and a spokesman of the Racial Preservation Society. The result of the meeting was the founding of the National Front in 1967.

John became something of a peripheral figure in the NF, as the BNP element was somewhat side-lined. He held the post of Deputy Chairman of the Executive Directorate, a body which was largely subordinate to the Policy Directorate and stood as second candidate for the Ealing constituency in the 1967 Greater London Council elections until resigning in 1968. Still an NF member, he was recalled to positions of minor influence from time to time until 1972 when he largely ceased active involvement. Retreating into political retirement, his membership lapsed in 1977

He emerged only briefly to lend some support to his old friend Andrew Fountaine’s NF Constitutional Movement and to take part in the Countryside Alliance March of 1st March 1998 – which was also attended by supporters of Nick Griffin, by then inside the BNP.

John eventually ended his retirement after the political fall of John Tyndall and joined the British National Party under the leadership of Nick Griffin. He became an active official of the BNP (mostly in administration) and was a candidate for the party in the 2004 European elections, where he was seventh on a list of seven candidates for the Scotland constituency.

He formerly ran his own website, but then wrote a regular column for the main BNP website, and served as editor of BNP magazine Identity until March 2010.

Due to dissatisfaction with his leadership, John demanded that Nick Griffin resign as National Chairman and focus more on representing the North West region as an MEP.

In May 2011, John endorsed Andrew Brons (the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber) in his challenge for the BNP leadership. He made significant contributions to the Brons team web site, including articles on ‘Genetics and Inheritance’ and ‘Nationalism and a European Confederation’. He subsequently became involved in Brons’s party the British Democratic Party, established in February 2013.

John lived in London, and later Suffolk, before retiring to Yorkshire to live nearer his expanding family – three grandchildren, and five great grandchildren (so far!).

During periods away from politics John wrote four books.

Ten Miles from Anywhere (Hedgerow Publishing 1995), looked at the changes in a Suffolk village from the beginning of the 20th century.

Many Shades of Black, (New Millennium 1999), was Bean’s political memoirs up to that date.

His first novel Blood in the Square, which fictionalized some of his political experiences in the 1960s.

And in August 2016 his historical novel Trail of the Viking Finger (Troubador Publications).

Successful CJ / JT Memorial Meeting held in Leeds

This year’s John Tyndall Memorial Meeting was again held in Leeds (for the second year running) on Saturday November 23^rd.

However, this year it was a joint Colin Jordan and John Tyndall Memorial meeting and was organised by the British Movement.

Heritage and Destiny were kindly invited to attend, and H&D deputy editor Peter Rushton was one of the main speakers, while editor Mark Cotterill manned the H&D literature table.

The attendance of around sixty (including three former Borough councillors – Dr. Jim Lewthwaite (Wyke ward, Bradford); Angela Clarke (Keighley West ward, Bradford); and Mark Cotterill (Meadowhead ward, Blackburn); and one former MEP, Andrew Brons (Yorkshire & Humber) – was very impressive. Most of those attending were BM members, but also half a dozen British Democrats, and a couple each from the National Front and English Democrats, plus the H&D team.

The speakers included: Richard Edmonds (NF Directorate member, former BNP national organiser, and right-hand man to John Tyndall); Benny Bullman (long standing BM member and lead singer of the Nationalist band Whitelaw); Dr. Jim Lewthwaite (the chairman of the British Democrats); Andrew Brons (former MEP for Yorkshire); Peter Rushton (H&D deputy editor); Alec Suchi (nationalist climate change activist); and Steve Frost (BM National Secretary).

The meeting which was ably chaired by Tony (a local BM member of longstanding), was the second successful Leeds meeting in the same venue this year, and hopefully more will follow in the new year.

During the first interval a superb buffet of both hot and cold food, was laid on, by the BM’s Women’s Division. And during the second interval an auction of classic national socialist memorabilia was held, raising several hundred pounds for BM funds.

Both the BM and H&D had literature stalls which did a brisk trade throughout the afternoon, with H&D picking up a couple of new subscribers on top – which is always good.

As at most nationalist events, there was no trouble at all at the meeting, which was held in a good old-fashioned Yorkshire pub, in a White working-class area of Leeds – not the sort of the pub the posh yuppies from Hope Not Hate or Antifa would ever set foot in! But if they had they would have been met by a large BM security team – led by Jordan Pont – who were more than capable of showing them the door – if they had dared turn up!

BM produced a nice souvenir programme of the event. Copies are still available by writing to PO Box 6, Heckmondwike, Yorkshire, WF16 0XG; or email – sunwheelteam@gmail.com – or visit the BM website at – www.britishmovement.info

Brexit dominates General Election – racial nationalist parties stand aside

Nominations closed today for the UK General Election on December 12th, and H&D readers will not be surprised to learn that there are very few candidates from racial nationalist parties.

Both the National Front and the British Democratic Party have agreed to stand aside from this General Election, recognising that it will be dominated by the Brexit issue and that most racial nationalists will wish to use their votes to support a pro-Brexit candidate. (Though there is of course a minority of our movement that takes an anti-Brexit line, following the tradition of Sir Oswald Mosley’s post-war Union Movement.)

For the BNP, David Furness will be contesting the Hornchurch & Upminster constituency in outer East London, where he seems to be the only non-Tory, pro-Brexit candidate. He is the only BNP candidate nationwide: this is the tenth general election that the BNP has contested since it was founded in 1982, and its lowest-ever number of candidates.

Former BNP activist Dr Andrew Emerson is contesting his home constituency of Chichester for the Patria party which he formed with LEL, NF and BNP veteran Dennis Whiting and fellow nationalists who broke away from the BNP some years ago. This will be Dr Emerson’s third parliamentary campaign in Chichester during the past four years: this time he has no opponent from UKIP or the Brexit Party.

Gary Butler, who was NF candidate for Maidstone & the Weald in 2010 and English Democrat candidate for Faversham & Mid Kent in 2015, is an Independent candidate this year, again for Faversham & Mid Kent.

Meanwhile in the Liverpool West Derby constituency, veteran nationalist activist Joe Owens appears as proposer on the nomination papers of Brexit Party candidate Ray Pearson – though Mr Owens has recently posted a YouTube video criticising party leader Nigel Farage for striking a deal to stand down 317 candidates in Tory-held constituencies.

Vicky Felton – councillor for the Democrats & Veterans Party in Monk Bretton ward, Barnsley – is the Brexit Party candidate for Barnsley Central. There has not been any announcement of a merger between D&V and the Brexit Party, and Mrs Felton’s husband Gavin remains D&V Party chairman, so this might be a temporary arrangement just for this election. Similarly Rebecca Rees-Evans, husband of D&V founder and leader Jonathan Rees-Evans, is Brexit Party candidate for Cynon Valley, where she was UKIP candidate in 2015.

There are five English Democrat candidates this year (only one of whom has a Brexit Party opponent and none of whom have UKIP opponents); while the Veterans and People’s Party is contesting Great Yarmouth, without Brexit Party or UKIP opposition, and Linlithgow & East Falkirk, where it has a Brexit Party opponent.

There are only 44 UKIP candidates nationwide (down from 467 just two years ago) – including two in Northern Ireland and seven in Scotland – but in thirteen of these constituencies UKIP and the Brexit Party are standing against each other, including two in Sunderland, two in Sheffield, and Oldham West & Royton.

There are ex-UKIP independents standing in several constituencies, including former party leader Henry Bolton, who will be Independent candidate for his home constituency Folkestone & Hythe. His splinter party Our Nation was deregistered last month after only a year in existence.

H&D will feature reports and analysis on the UK General Election during the next few weeks, and our January 2020 edition will examine future strategies for our movement once the Brexit issue has (one way or another) been resolved.

Final candidate totals for 2019 local elections

With today’s release of nominations for local authority elections in Northern Ireland, H&D can now publish our calculation of the final candidate totals for the UK’s various eurosceptic / nationalist political parties.

Not all of these parties are in any way racial nationalist, and not all racial nationalists are in any way eurosceptic, but we publish this list for our readers’ interest in showing the state of British electoral politics everywhere to the right of the Conservative Party.

Perhaps even “right” is not the correct word, but it is from somewhere within this spectrum that a new force will have to be drawn to rescue the United Kingdom from its multiracial / multicultural chaos of recent decades.

UKIP has eighteen candidates in various parts of Ulster, given them a total of 1,400 candidates across the UK for the scheduled local council elections, plus three mayoral candidates and about twenty in local by-elections that are also being held on May 2nd.

In other words UKIP will be contesting 16% of the available seats this year

Anne Marie Waters’ For Britain Movement has no candidates in Ulster, so their total remains 42.

Democrats & Veterans have three Ulster candidates, giving them 20 nationwide, plus a by-election candidate in the London Borough of Lewisham.

The new party Aontú, on which H&D recently reported, is a socially conservative and eurosceptic split from both Sinn Féin and the SDLP (north of the border) and Fianna Fáil south of the border. Aontú has sixteen candidates in various parts of Northern Ireland: an impressive total for a very new party.

Jolene Bunting, originally elected as a councillor for Traditional Unionist Voice, later became associated with the anti-Islamist group Britain First, which has failed to register as a political party but is supporting two independent candidates for English councils. Ms Bunting is standing as an Independent in the Court area of Belfast. It is not clear to H&D precisely what her present relationship is with Britain First following some internal rows last year.

TUV themselves have 32 local authority candidates this year.

So the updated candidate totals are as follows:

• UKIP 1,400
• For Britain 42
• Traditional Unionist Voice 32
• Democrats & Veterans 20
• Aontú 16
• English Democrats 10
• Veterans & People’s Party 7
• Our Nation 5
• National Front 3
• Populist 3
• Britain First (standing as Independents) 3
• British Democrats 2
• BNP 2
• British Resistance 1
• Patria 1
• Independents 3

For further details check our earlier articles on election nominations here and here.

H&D will continue to report on the local election campaign, and will include a comprehensive report on the results in our next issue, which as a consequence will appear slightly later than normal in early May.

UKIP misses broadcast target as NF overtakes dying BNP

The United Kingdom Independence Party will have 1,382 candidates at the local council elections on May 2nd, according to an analysis by Heritage and Destiny. Our estimate is based on documents from 270 English councils and does not yet include Northern Ireland, where candidate totals have not yet been published. (There will also be a few UKIP local by-election candidates, and three Mayoral candidates on the same day.)

This is less than half the number that UKIP had aimed for to qualify for a television broadcast.

However even to reach this number (given the collapse of many UKIP branches) involved a colossal effort by the party’s national headquarters, twisting the arms of local members.

There are several councils where UKIP even its present state has managed to put up a full slate of candidates for every vacancy: these include Derby, Sunderland, North Tyneside, Worcester, Bolton and Eastleigh.

However there are others where the party is now reduced to a token effort or has disappeared from the electoral map: these include Blackpool, Fylde, Lincoln, Basildon, Solihull and Middlesbrough. Most notably UKIP has been almost obliterated in its former strongholds of Thurrock (where it is down to two candidates) and Thanet (a council UKIP used to control but now has only three candidates). Numerous former UKIP councillors are standing in these areas as ‘Thurrock Independents’ or ‘Thanet Independents’.

The good news for Gerard Batten’s party is that in the absence of his most important rival Nigel Farage – whose new Brexit Party is sitting out these local elections and concentrating on potential European and General Elections later this year – UKIP has comfortably outshone three other splinter parties. We are not yet aware of any local council candidates formally designated as ‘Brexit Party’, though in practice a number of ‘Thanet Independents’ and ‘Thurrock Independents’ will probably end up following Farage.

The For Britain Movement founded by former UKIP leadership candidate Anne Marie Waters will have 42 council candidates nationwide, according to H&D‘s analysis. These include eight in Leeds; four in the West Midlands racial battleground of Sandwell; three in Stoke; and perhaps most significantly two in Epping Forest. These latter two – former BNP councillor Patricia Richardson and former BNP London mayoral candidate Julian Leppert – are among the few candidates from the broad spectrum of British nationalism who have a chance of winning this year.

Another UKIP splinter group Democrats & Veterans, founded by former UKIP leadership candidate John Rees-Evans, has 17 candidates in the main local elections, plus one in a London Borough of Lewisham by-election. The strongest D&V branches are in Yorkshire, where they have three candidates in Barnsley and three in Sheffield.

The English Democrats won over a few BNP defectors during 2010-2011, and though most of this group have since left the party, ED leader Robin Tilbrook has scored a publicity coup in recent weeks after launching a legal action to rescue Brexit. The EDs have ten local council candidates this year, including six in Barnsley. In the Derbyshire borough of Amber Valley their sole candidate is former NF and BNP activist Mick Sharpe.

The Veterans’ and People’s Party has a manifesto that combines independence from European control with some traditionally socialist / social democratic policies on housing and welfare. Their interim leader is Robin Horsfall, an SAS veteran of the famous Iranian Embassy siege in 1980. VAPP have seven candidates in different council areas.

UKIP’s short-lived leader Henry Bolton, who was forced to quit in February 2018, now leads a tiny party of loyal followers called Our Nation: they have five candidates this year, all but one of them in Dover.

There are no elections this year in London or Birmingham, which has drastically reduced the number of potential National Front candidates. In fact there are just three NF council candidates this year: deputy chairman Jordan Pont in Sheffield; Chris Jackson in Calderdale; and Steven Smith in Burnley.

Despite this relatively modest campaign, 2019 might go down in history as the year the NF overtook the BNP. The truth is that the NF has for a year or two now been much the more significant nationalist organisation, in all but the financial sense. Nevertheless it will shock many observers that the BNP are down to just two council candidates this year, one in Broxbourne and the other in Sevenoaks.

The British Democrats (mostly made up of former BNP members) will have two candidates this year. Former councillor Dr Jim Lewthwaite again contests Wyke ward, Bradford, where he achieved one of last year’s best nationalist results; while Kevan Stafford contests Loughborough Shelthorpe ward, Charnwood.

Former BNP organiser Dr Andrew Emerson continues to run his breakaway party Patria, and will again be the party’s sole candidate in Chichester.

Similarly the British Resistance party, closely associated with controversial ex-UKIP candidate Jack Sen, will have just one candidate this year – Mr Sen’s ally Carl Mason in Worcester.

Several prominent nationalists are supporting the Populist Party‘s campaign in Sunderland, where they will have two candidates in the scheduled May 2nd elections, plus a third in a by-election held the same day.

There are also several veteran nationalists standing as Independents or without a party label this year. These include Pete Molloy in Spennymoor ward, Durham; Alan Girvan in Heckmondwike ward, Kirklees; and Joe Owens in Kensington & Fairfield ward, Liverpool.

The eager publicity-seekers of Britain First have failed to register with the Electoral Commission as a political party, so their name cannot appear on ballot papers. However Paul Rudge (a Britain First activist) will be standing as an independent in Rowley ward, Sandwell, as will his Britain First colleague Geoff Miles in Ware Trinity ward, East Hertfordshire.

Summary of eurosceptic / nationalist candidate totals at 2019 local council elections:

• UKIP 1,382
• For Britain 42
• Democrats & Veterans 17
• English Democrats 10
• Veterans’ and People’s Party 7
• Our Nation 5
• National Front 3
• Populist 3
• British Democrats 2
• BNP 2
• Britain First (standing as independents) 2
• British Resistance 1
• Patria 1
• Independents 3

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