BNP goes bourgeois as party aims for rural seats

The British National Party has launched a push for Middle England votes as it fields a record 754 council candidates - more than twice as many as last year - and attempts to take its message out of cities into rural and suburban areas.

The extreme right-wing party had previously tended to focus on the regions where it believed its appeal was strongest, including parts of Lancashire, West Yorkshire, the West Midlands and the East London/Essex borders.

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Its progress until now has mainly been in former Labour strongholds, where it cashed in on white working-class hostility to recent immigration to the areas. But the BNP has now set its sights on previously unpromising territory well away from the inner cities. From Cornwall to Cumbria, it is turning its attention to a very different group of electors, with a view to building a more widely spread national vote.

Voters in the North Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate, with no tradition of far-right activity, are to be presented with BNP candidates in 16 of its 19 wards.

Five BNP supporters are standing in Torbay, Devon, three in North Wiltshire and four in the Cumbrian council of Allerdale.

And for the first time the party will be fighting for votes in such areas as St Austell, Cornwall, King's Lynn, Norfolk, and Bridlington, East Yorkshire.

All are predominantly white areas with a much stronger Conservative tradition and presence, and anti-fascist campaigners suspect the BNP is attempting to exploit fears over the arrival of eastern-European workers to pick up support.

The BNP is also targeting right-wing voters who previously flirted with the UK Independence Party but have been put off by its in-fighting. It is confident that the new-look Tory Party under David Cameron has little appeal to these electors.

Nick Griffin, the BNP's national chairman, is leading the new strategy by making campaigning visits to areas - such as the Yorkshire cathedral city of Ripon - where the party was previously invisible.

Although many of its new representatives are "paper candidates" with no realistic hope of winning, the BNP still has a realistic chance of substantially increasing its current tally of 56 councillors on 3 May.

It has high hopes particularly in the East Midlands, where it is fielding 102 candidates, including 14 in Charnwood, Leicestershire, 12 in Lincoln, and 10 in Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire.

And it is also attempting to widen its support in the West Midlands away from the region's major urban centres, fielding up five candidates in Solihull, four in Shrewsbury and three in Worcester.

The party is also putting up 32 candidates for the Scottish Parliament and 20 for the Welsh Assembly, entitling it to public funding towards its campaigns and party political broadcasts.

It has a further strategy, targeting parish councils where it has picked up a handful of seats where it has stood unopposed. It also has 75 candidates in town and parish council elections next month.

Phil Edwards, the party's spokesman, said: "Many people are joining us - they are fed up with the situation in the country. It's going to the dogs.

"There's a widespread fear we're losing our national identity and culture through globalisation, mass migration and the expansion of the European Union. No mainstream political party will tackle this."

Weyman Bennet, the joint secretary of the Unite Against Fascism campaign, said the number of BNP candidates was a "wake-up call" that the party was trying to emulate the electoral success of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France.

He said: "It's alarming that a party that denies the Holocaust and whose members are involved in racist attacks are trying to win electoral respectability."

All the BNP's increased activity is part of a longer game, with the European Parliament elections of 2009 in the party's sights. At the last elections three years ago, the party came close to winning a big enough proportion of the vote to secure its first Euro MP.

Anti-racist activists also believe the BNP is on course to capitalise on its surprise success in last year's local council elections in Barking and Dagenham, where it captured 12 seats.

The party aims to build on that base to win one or two seats in the 2008 elections for the Greater London Authority, as well as securing a healthy vote in the elections for London Mayor.

There is little doubt that support for the BNP is on an upward curve, although it gained less than one per cent of the national vote in the last general election.

Its emphasis on "pavement politics" and the exploitation of fears over the rapidly changing make-up of community is reaping rewards in local elections. It did not win its first council seat until 1993, when Derek Beacon was briefly elected in Tower Hamlets, and 10 years ago only fielded 53 candidates.

It did not make its electoral breakthrough until 2002, when it captured three seats on Burnley council, and has since then consistently increased its number of candidates.

It is still invisible in the vast majority of the country, but has made in-roads in locations such as Dudley, Sandwell, Halifax, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent and Epping Forest.

Last year, when it picked up an average of one-fifth of the vote in the 356 wards it contested, it gained single seats in Redditch, Solihull, Leeds and the east London councils of Redbridge and Havering.

Target towns

Torbay

The BNP are fielding five candidates in the seaside town of Torbay. The retirement capital of the "English Riviera" on the south coast has a local authority dominated by Liberal Democrats. Adrian Sanders, right, became the Liberal Democrat MP in 1997 and held on with the majority of 2,000 in 2005.

Harrogate/Knaresborough

BNP candidates are standing in 16 out of 19 seats being contested on the local authority in the Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate, best known for its conference centre and tea rooms. The council is split between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, but the parliamentary seat is held by the Liberal Democrats.

Solihull

The middle-class commuter town near Birmingham was a traditional Tory stronghold until the Liberal Democrats won the parliamentary seat in 2005. Last year the BNP won a surprise foothold on the council in Chelmsley Wood, centred on a huge housing estates, and is now fielding five candidates. The Tories are the largest party in a hung council.

Shrewsbury

The Tories have a narrow majority in the council in the county of Shropshire and won the constituency back from Labour at the last election. The BNP are now trying to win their first places on Shrewsbury and Atcham Council by fielding four candidates.