ABSTRACT

In the Austrian national election held in October 1999, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) polled 27 per cent of the vote and subsequently joined a government coalition with the centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP). The result received worldwide attention and was followed by EU Member States imposing diplomatic sanctions against Austria. At the same time as these events, in Britain the British National Party (BNP) quietly elected Cambridge-graduate Nick Griffin as its new party Chairman. In stark contrast to the FPÖ, in 1999 the BNP remained in the electoral ghetto, having polled just 1 per cent of the vote in elections to the European Parliament held that year. While founded in April 1982, over the next two decades the BNP languished on the lunatic fringe, electing only a single local councillor. Against this backdrop of electoral failure, the election of Griffin (who became only the second Chairman in the BNP’s history following John Tyndall who had led the party for 17 years), was heralded as marking ‘a new beginning for British nationalism’. With Griffin at the helm, the BNP announced that it would embark on a more ‘media-friendly’ approach, develop a more professional electoral strategy and shift its programmatic emphasis toward ‘mother-hood and apple pie topics such as calling for the strengthening and extension of democracy’. Looking toward the events in Austria, the BNP encouragingly informed its footsoldiers that ‘Haider is living proof that sensible politics can work for nationalism’. 1