ABSTRACT
Over the period from 2000 to 2008, Great Britain has seen a range of approaches by different actors to combat its domestic extreme right. The Home Secretary has formally proscribed some extreme-right terrorist organizations, though the greater focus on Islamist terrorism has meant that some cases of right-wing terrorism were located only serendipitously, when individuals previously unknown to the authorities were arrested after committing criminal offences. A further strategy has been the use of legislative provisions against racial or religious harassment or incitement by invoking, for example, the Public Order Act 1986, as amended. There have also been private initiatives by trade unions or employers who wanted to exclude or dismiss members or activists of racist political parties such as the British National Party (BNP). British law has intruded heavily upon the internal affairs of trade unions and made much more difficult an exclusion from membership of those not wanted as members because of their political views. An important case was taken successfully by one trade union to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in favour of excluding from membership a BNP supporter whose principles clashed with those of the trade union. There have also been examples where employers have sought to dismiss employees who had overtly expressed views that interfered with the contractual duties of their job – one case involved a member of the BNP whose ferrying duties as a bus driver meant frequent interactions with large numbers of ethnic-minority schoolchildren. On the other hand, the electoral successes of the BNP in at least one local authority area were such that the mainstream parties and the officials of that local authority found that attempting a distancing ‘cordon sanitaire’ around those elected was difficult to implement.
