How BNP tries to hide its racist core

Voters go to the polls this Thursday for European elections. With public hostility to politicians inflamed by the recession and the revelations about their expenses, growing support for the BNP suggests that they may win a seat or two in Strasbourg.

Previously ignored, the far-right party has now started to worry people. Public figures, from Gordon Brown, David Cameron and the Archbishop of Canterbury to Robbie Williams, Amy Winehouse and Eddie Izzard, have spoken out against them. 

And the concern is certainly understandable. Since it was founded in 1982, the BNP has been characterised by thuggery, Holocaust denial and hatred. Celebrating a council victory in 1993, party leader Nick Griffin said that the party's supporters backed "what they perceived to be a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up its slogan 'Defend Rights for Whites' with well-directed boots and fists. When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate."

But now Nick Griffin and the BNP hierarchy claim to have modernised. They have discarded their black leather jackets, grown sensible haircuts and distanced themselves from the hardcore elements amongst their following. Now approaching 50, Griffin seems to have mellowed, just as the leaders of Sinn Fein did.

The BNP have steadily been seducing white working class Labour voters

This apparent conversion has left the establishment unsure about how it should respond. In many cases, shunning their representatives has served only to publicise the party and foster their sense of victimhood. This was the case with the hoo-ha over the prospect that London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook might be inviting Nick Griffin to accompany him to a Buckingham Palace garden party. Likewise, the protests against Simone Clarke, a dancer whom anti-fascist groups wanted to remove from her job with the English National Ballet when it emerged she was a BNP member, did little good.

And while these recurring furores have dominated the headlines, the BNP have steadily been seducing the white-working class, many of them disenchanted Labour voters. Their party political broadcast, which appeared on television last month, attempted to portray a party whose councillors had the political will to carry out the microscopic local initiatives - a walk-in shower for a man recovering from a hip operation, central heating, day trips for children, a war memorial restored - that improve people's lives. One writer, trailing a BNP candidate on the campaign trail, came across a man who had promised to vote BNP because they'd sorted out his rat infestation.

We might reasonably ask what broader ambitions they have. In fact, unlike many minority parties, they do at least have a range of national policies, some of which correspond to mainstream opinion. For instance, they want to give teachers more authority to run their schools; they want to invest more in public transport infrastructure; and they want to improve the lives of pensioners.

Their foreign policy proposals are more leftfield. As their name suggests, the BNP value Britain's independence. But the extent to which they would protect the country's sovereignty - by withdrawing from the EU, withdrawing from Nato, and closing all foreign military bases on British soil - is quite extreme. As for Northern Ireland, they dream of welcoming Eire as well as Ulster as equal partners in a 'federation' of the nations of the British Isles. 

Their stance on trade is equally isolationist. The BNP hate globalisation, and want to protect our economy. This entails 'the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports'.

Where possible, British factories would employ British workers to make British products. "When this is done," they ambitiously claim, "unemployment in this country will be brought to an end, and secure, well-paid employment will flourish." In addition, they want to give preference in the job market to native Britons, something which is currently illegal.

As their television broadcast showed, the BNP are trying to appeal to people over the age of 40. More than any other party, they talk about our country's history. This not only permeates the way in which they present themselves - with Churchill posters, and an online shop called Excalibur which sells DVDs about the crusades - but also their policies.

These policies include the restoration of some form of national service, corporal punishment for petty criminals and vandals, and capital punishment for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers. Their stance on agriculture recalls the era of rationing - their aim is for "maximum self-sufficiency for Britain", and a major shift to organic farming. They are opposed to supermarket monopolies, and would like to replace "the brutalist modernism of 1960s-style-architecture with a blend of traditional local styles and materials".

But the policy that the BNP have defined themselves with is immigration. After the economy, immigration is the issue which most concerns the British public, and a consensus has slowly emerged among the major parties that the country should let fewer foreigners in.

So in wanting to close our borders, the BNP isn't vastly different from several widely-read newspapers, nor, indeed, many established immigrants. Where the party diverges, however, is with its attitude to the non-white people already living in the country. It complains that on current demographic trends, white Britons will be a minority in their own country in 60 years, and that positive discrimination has already turned them into second-class citizens.

Therefore, it wants to introduce a system of voluntary repatriation, whereby non-white Britons would be generously rewarded for returning to their place of ethnic origin. This vision - of a nation defined upon ethnic grounds - is what, with all the associations of racial purity, the opponents of the BNP find the most unsettling.

The issue of racism also arises when it comes to BNP membership, as they only allow white people to join their party. Their defense against accusations of racism is that they are no different from ethnic minority groups such as Watford Asian Community Care, Southwark Black Heritage Organisation, Doncaster Chinese and Jewish.co.uk. But these are not groups with ambitions of running the country.  ·