ABSTRACT
The British National Party (BNP) is the latest lineal descendant of the British nationalist movement that has emerged since the British Union of Fascists in preWorld War II Britain was succeeded by the Union Movement, then by a British National Party in 1960, which later became part of the National Front, which in turn led to the formation in 1982 of the current BNP. among its policies is repatriation of all illegal immigrants; concomitant with this is the introduction of a system of voluntary, financially-aided repatriation for existing, legally-settled immigrants, the repeal of all equalities legislation, and the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union and the pursuit of protectionist economic measures. Its existence seeks ‘to secure a future for the indigenous peoples of these islands in the North Atlantic which have been our homeland for millennia’.1 Of particular note is its contention that non-whites cannot be British. Therefore by using the term ‘indigenous’ it seeks to perpetuate an ideology that is mutually supported by a cultural heritage that complements continuities with ‘people whose ancestors were the earliest settlers here after the last great Ice Age and which have been complemented by the historic migrations from mainland Europe’. The purpose of this chapter accordingly is to examine how BNP ideology of devolution is putatively constructed as an euphemism for nationalism and as a consequence how BNP ideology is incapable of locating its devolution within the republican and liberal paradigms necessary for devolution to be realised in the first place.
