BNP goes on attack with record number of candidates

The British National Party is exploiting widespread public concern over asylum to ride the crest of the strongest wave of support for the far right since Oswald Mosley led the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.

Next week it is fielding a record 221 candidates in local elections, although observers fear this is merely a dry run for a much more ambitious drive for electoral success in 2004.

It boasts that it could put up 1,000 candidates next year, when all the main metropolitan councils have elections. And there is a realistic prospect of the BNP winning its first European Parliament seat, through proportional representation, in 12 months' time.

The main parties – well aware of a growing disillusionment with politics that is playing into the hands of extremists – are loath even to utter the BNP's initials in public for fear of boosting the extremists' credibility. But in private they are so worried by its ambitions that they are sharing intelligence about council wards where the party threatens to add to its current tally of five seats.

Theresa May, the Conservative Party chairman, has even intervened personally to ensure Tory candidates are fielded in pockets of BNP support.

Ian McCartney, the new Labour chairman – an MP in the North-west, where BNP backing is strongest – is also acutely aware of its potential to win over disaffected voters.

On 1 May the BNP will contest 221 council seats in England and Scotland, ranging from Cornwall to the North-east, more than four times the number it fought last year. And for the first time it will field candidates for the devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales. The biggest concentrations are in the North-west (44), where it already has four councillors, Yorkshire (46), where it has one, the North-east (54), including all 25 seats in Sunderland, and the West Midlands (23).

But in a switch of strategy – and a sign of its growing ambition – the BNP is now looking to spread its message to other parts of England, including the London suburbs and the West Country.

Phil Edwards, its national press officer, refused to be drawn yesterday on how many seats the party would win on Thursday. He said: "Anything could happen. If we could get 15 per cent of the vote, then it would represent good, steady progress."

Kevin Scott, a Newcastle University graduate and the BNP organiser for the North-east, who described the asylum-seeker issue as the party's "trump card", said: "Once we get a BNP councillor in, every council in the country is going to want one. They will all go down like slow-motion skittles."

Professor Roger Eatwell, of Bath University, who has written extensively on the far right, said it was impossible to predict the BNP's prospects. He said: "There are a lot of areas where they can get 20, 25, 30 per cent of the vote and in the right circumstances can win. You don't need 50 per cent to win because you have three-cornered or four-cornered fights."

Conservative and Labour politicians believe the BNP is dipping its toe in the electoral water before a concerted push for votes next year, when changes to ward boundaries mean every seat in the metropolitan boroughs will be up for re-election. They think that wards where the party performs strongly next week will become the focus for a huge BNP drive for votes in 12 months' time.

The growth of the party – born in 1982 out of internecine splits in the National Front – from ideological obscurity dates to 1999, when Cambridge-educated Nick Griffin took over as leader. He set about modernising its image, replacing crew-cuts with sharp suits, and distancing itself from its fascist origins.

Mr Edwards said: "We've got to shake off the ancestry of the National Front and make our argument in real terms. That has to be the number one priority."

The BNP has managed to double its membership in two years, although at fewer than 5,000 it is still a fraction of that of the established parties. Moreover, it still has only a handful of articulate, credible spokesmen. In national propaganda, the BNP's race hate message has been modified, and groups disaffected with the Government, such as farmers and lorry drivers facing sharp rises in fuel costs, have been a target.

Most importantly, it has placed a new emphasis on "pavement politics", filtering its core beliefs – notably that it is impossible for different races to exist in harmony – through local grievances.

In Shipley, West Yorkshire, that has meant highlighting a car-jacking of a 72-year-old by four Asians. In Coventry, it has focused on the city council giving "free driving lessons and free garage space to asylum-seekers".

In Saltdean, near Brighton, the BNP spotlighted plans to convert the Grand Ocean Hotel into a hostel for asylum-seekers.

Even if the BNP's much- vaunted breakthrough fails to materialise, Professor Eatwell warns that it could still leave a lasting, insidious effect on the political atmosphere.

"You don't need a lot of votes to have a big influence on public policy," he said, pointing to the tough language employed by politicians on race over the past 25 years from Margaret Thatcher to David Blunkett.

THE BNP'S MOST HIGH-PROFILE MEMBERS

By Nigel Morris

NICK GRIFFIN, a Cambridge graduate, is the articulate front-man for the party. He is standing next week in Chadderton, Oldham. The former National Front member has a criminal record dating from 1998, when he received a two-year suspended jail term for distributing material likely to incite racial hatred. In his own publication, The Rune, he described the Holocaust as "a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lies and latter-day witch-hysteria".The Cook Report on ITV also secretly taped him describing his former MP, Alex Carlile QC, as "this bloody Jew ... whose only claim is that his grandparents died in the Holocaust".

KEVIN SCOTT, the BNP director for North-east England, has a first-class degree from Newcastle University. He also has criminal convictions from 1987 (for assault) and 1993 (for using threatening words and behaviour).

Two years ago he wrote an article in The Final Conflict, the newspaper of the International Third Position, an umbrella group which was set up by the Italian fascist Roberto Fiore.Last year, Mr Scott reached a confidential settlement with the DIY retail chain B&Q after the company sacked him. He blamed his dismissal on his political activities.

ADRIAN MARSDEN became the BNP's fifth councillor in January this year when he won a seat in Halifax, West Yorkshire,with a majority of only 28 votes.The father of seven children, a former taxi driver and brewery worker, Mr Marsden pledged in his campaign literature to make sure that no more asylum-seekers would be allowed into the Mixenden ward of Calderdale.He has denied that he has links to Combat 18, the violent neo-Nazi group. He was convicted of threatening behaviour last year, bound over to keep the peace and was ordered to pay £446 in compensation.

TONY LECOMBER, the BNP's national director of group development, has convictions for handling explosives and for beating up a Jewish schoolteacher. The head of the BNP party organisation, he is in charge of the project to establish a BNP branch in every town in the country. His responsibilities also include the party's "white victim support" section and "rapid reaction" teams of activists who the organisation boasts can be "hot on the scene of any political opportunity". He has claimed that the party could ultimately win "dozens and dozens" of council seats.