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BNP and far-right candidates: local elections 2008BNP announces over 600 candidatesThe BNP announced that it was standing around 625 candidates in the English council elections on 1 May 2008. This is fewer than the BNP’s 743 candidates in English district, city and borough council elections last year but several councils where the BNP stood last year are not holding elections this time around. The BNP said the number of its candidates in England was high enough to qualify for a television election broadcast. For some strange reason the BNP was looking for a child’s drawing of a house to use in the broadcast. We have identified 614 BNP candidates at district or county level of whom 585 are in England and 29 in Wales. In addition we have listed 22 candidates for parish and town councils (although there are may be others) and 27 for their equivalent in Wales, the community councils. The BNP sees these as a stepping stone to representation on district, borough and city councils. Ten BNP candidates are known to have been elected to these lowest-tier councils unopposed. As well as this the BNP is contesting a few council by-elections on 1 May, including three in London, and, of course, the London mayoral and Assembly elections, the party’s main target this year. It hopes to get at least one candidate elected to the London Assembly, for which it needs 5% of the vote in the London list election. The London by-elections are in Hale ward, Barnet, and Millwall and Weavers, both in Tower Hamlets. Millwall is where the BNP won its first ever council seat in 1993 (and lost it seven months later), but the BNP now has little organisation or support in the area. Five BNP candidates are defending seats: three in Epping Forest, one in Burnley and one in Kirklees, though in Loughton (Epping Forest DC) the BNP has moved Pat Richardson to her husband’s safer seat and put Alexander Copland in her former seat. In 2006 the BNP fielded 363 candidates throughout Britain and in 2004 there were 221. In 1997, the BNP could only produce 53 candidates. The candidates can be found by choosing the relevant region on the left. Our list also includes candidates from three other far-right parties: the National Front (5 candidates), England First Party (7 candidates + 1 parish candidate) and Democratic Nationalists – the new party registered by the rebels who fell out with the BNP over the December 2007 January 2008 period (9 candidates, all in Bradford). We have also included a few independents who were BNP members until recently. They include Mark Leat in Stoke-on-Trent, who was a BNP councillor until May last year and is now defending his seat as an independent. Most of the BNP candidates will be paper candidates and will do little or no campaigning. However we will see a concerted effort in their target areas. To help us determine the threat posed by the BNP in each ward we need your help. It will be evident from the quality and quantity of BNP literature being distributed which wards they believe they could win, so please notify us of any BNP activity, send us copies of leaflets and let us know of any particular local issues that might make a previously safe ward vulnerable to the BNP. In the run-up to the elections Searchlight will announce a number of iniatives to help turn out the anti-BNP vote on election day. Whatever your circumstances, wherever you live, there will be something you can do to help. Searchlight has prepared this list as carefully as possible based on available information, but if you spot any omissions or errors, please let us know here |