The BNP - a racist party

Racism is at the very heart of the British National Party. It is its racism that differentiates it from any other political party. And it is its racism that attracts the vast majority of its members.

The BNP claims no longer to be racist. But while it has tried to moderate its language, the underlying message is the same. Virtually every page of BNP publications is consumed with racist articles, lies about immigration and asylum in order to whip up racist sentiments and distortions of figures in an attempt to portray black people as criminals and dole scroungers.

Today, the BNP has dropped its policy of compulsory repatriation and replaced it with a voluntary scheme. Make no mistake about it, this move is designed to win over supporters and is a recognition that the vast majority of people found its previous policy abhorrent. The small print of BNP policy makes clear its true aims. The BNP claims that a BNP-led government would consider forcible repartition if not enough "non-whites" took up its offer.

If the BNP does not publicly propose compulsory repatriation, it is publicly in favour of an apartheid state in Britain. Current party literature proposes to "protect and preserve the racial and cultural integrity of the British people - and of others too, the party believes in separation". According to the BNP 2001 general election manifesto, "native Britons", whom it claims can only be whites, would be given priority in the job market. "Non-whites" would instantly become second-class citizens in Britain. Any black person who commits a crime would also be thrown out of the country, even those who were born here. Mixed-race relationships would be outlawed.

Privately, the BNP leaders have contin-ually reasserted their political views. "all black people will be repatriated, even if they were born here," BNP leader Nick Griffin told Wales on Sunday in 1996. "We must preserve the white race, because it has been responsible for all the good things in civilisation."

According to party number two, Tony Lecomber, the preservation of the white race can be done through a racial eugenic programme.

What a BNP Britain would look like was offered in one party publication during the recent Kosovan conflict in which the BNP made clear its support for ethnic cleansing. "The Serbs' real crime isn't the harshness with which they have expelled so many of the Albanian Muslims who having become the majority in the Kosovan heart of Serbia by a mixture of immigration, a high birth rate, and low-level ethnic cleansing of the native Serbs...No! The real crime in the eyes of the powerful advocates of a multi-racial New World Order is for any people to demand the right to preserve their own identity and freedom."

When the BNP talks about preserving "the white race", it means rounding up and expelling all "non-whites" regardless of whether people were born here or not.

The BNP also claims to be not a party of "race hate". Another outrageous lie. The jokes, caricatures, cartoons and articles depict black people as stupid, criminally-minded and ugly. Time and again, BNP publications talk about the genetic superiority of the white race.

Several BNP members have put this racism into practice:

Former National Organiser Richard Edmonds was convicted for his part in a vicious bottle attack on a mixed-race couple in a pub in East London in 1993.

BNP supporter Stuart Kerr was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment for firebombing an Asian shop in Chichester, Sussex.

BNP leader Nick Griffin was convicted of incitement to racial hatred in April 1998.

The BNP organiser for Waltham Forest, Alan Gould, was convicted of racially abusing people in a pub in 2000.

Former BNP member David Copeland was sentenced to six life sentences after planting bombs in London. He wanted to start a race war.

On other occasions, the BNP has glorified racist attacks. In 1991, the BNP newspaper gloated after several BNP supporters stabbed an African immigrant at London Bridge station. The victim had his "kidney surgically removed", the paper boasted. In the same year, the BNP leadership whipped up a racist riot in Bermondsey, London, and led an attack on an anti-racist meeting held to protest against the BNP headquarters in Welling. Thirteen people needed hospital treatment.

A BNP presence has almost always culminated in "race hate". When Derek Beackon was elected as a BNP councillor in Millwall, racist attacks in the area soared by 300%.