The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, whites-only political party in the United Kingdom, formed as a splinter group of the British National Front by John Tyndall in 1982. The party's current chairman is Nick Griffin, himself a former national organiser of the National Front.
The BNP is not represented in Parliament. In the 2005 UK general election, the party received 0.7% of the popular vote, the eighth largest share. The BNP finished fifth in the 2008 London mayoral election with 5.2% of the popular vote. Mayoral candidate Richard Barnbrook was elected to one of the London Assembly's 25 seats. In addition to already holding several metropolitan borough council seats, the BNP won their first county council seats and European Parliament seats on 4 June 2009, winning one council seat in both Lancashire and Leicestershire, and one European Parliament seat each in Yorkshire and the Humber and North West England.
According to its constitution, the BNP is "committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948". The BNP proposes "firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home". The party also advocates the repeal of all anti-discrimination legislation, and restricts party membership to "indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘Indigenous Caucasian’". The BNP also accepts white immigrants that are assimilated into one of those ethnicities. The BNP asserts that there are biological racial differences that determine the behaviour and character of individuals of different races, although it claims that it does not regard whites as superior to other ethnic groups, and that preference for one's own ethnicity is a part of human nature.
Historically the BNP (including Nick Griffin) was overtly anti-Semitic; in recent history the BNP has instead focused on Islam. The party's racial policies have led to their ostracism by mainstream politicians and the leaders of Westminster's major parties, including Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, Conservative Party leader David Cameron, Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg, and former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell.
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