Abstract
In recent years, small political parties have considerably increased their representation in British political institutions, particularly, but not exclusively, in local government. Understanding these parties is important since they play a key role in setting the boundaries of debate through the often radical demands they make on the political system. This article therefore assesses the trajectory and ideological underpinnings of two of the most controversial of these small parties, the British National Party (BNP) and Respect. At first glance, both parties would appear to be diametrically opposed. It is however commonplace in the European literature on minor parties to acknowledge similarities as well as differences between parties on the political fringes. This article will therefore argue that a number of similarities can be identified between the BNP and Respect, albeit similarities not necessarily found on the left–right or material-post-material divides. It goes on to examine the implications of this for our understanding of radical minor parties and in particular draws out the ‘populist’ nature of their approach to politics, before proceeding to highlight the limitations of such a strategy.
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Notes
When taken together, the two criteria forwarded here — success and anti-systemness — rule out other small parties such as the Greens or Socialist Alliance from comparison, as does the populist framework developed later in the article. While the Greens have certainly had success at different levels, in many ways the Green agenda is now largely seen as part of the political mainstream and therefore not, although deep-Green ecologists might dispute this, essentially anti-system. Parties such as the Socialist Alliance are excluded due to their relative lack of success and because they do not fit within a populist framework.
Oldham in the 2001 General Election.
Adopting the approach of examining the background of activists and leaders to establish party ideology would underline this. Renton (2003, 84) argues that ‘many of the BNP's local cadres are long-standing neo-Nazis with track records going back to the late 1970s’.
It is worth noting however that the BNP does have an Union-related organisation of its own, entitled Solidarity: The British Workers’ Union.
The party's subtitle is ‘The Unity Coalition’.
Galloway (2005, 24) argues for the single transferable vote, but this is not specified in statements of Respect policy.
To the extent that the BNP deals with environmental matters, it appears to be in a protectionist manner. For instance, the party talks about animal welfare in the context of banning Halal meat, while Britain appears to be idealised as a sort of ‘green and pleasant land’. Indeed, the BNP introduced a motion in Barking and Dagenham council proposing the banning of Halal meat (Goodwin, 2007, 248).
See also Mudde (2007, 30, 308). In Mudde's terms, Respect would be classed as ‘social populists’ combining socialism and populism.
An alternative way of looking at this might be in terms of Sartori's (2005 [1976]) idea of bilateral and irresponsible oppositions. However, Sartori's influential analysis is based at the parliamentary level and does not include discussion of how the parties line up on the ground against each other, nor how they attempt to align themselves with ‘the people’.
Their website is at: http://www.respectrenewal.org/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/ (22 January 2008). At the time of writing in January 2008, the website's content was not complete with, for instance, nothing available on the new group's history.
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Acknowledgements
Research for this paper was undertaken with the assistance of research grant F/094/AP ‘Small parties: Influence and effect on democratic engagement and local politics’ from the Leverhulme Trust. We gratefully acknowledge this support and assistance. The paper was initially presented in draft form at the Conference on UK Political Ideologies, School of Politics and Communication Studies, University of Liverpool in July 2007 and we are grateful for comments received from participants at the Conference. We thank the referees and editors for their thoughtful comments on the article.
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Clark, A., Bottom, K. & Copus, C. More Similar Than They'd Like to Admit? Ideology, Policy and Populism in the Trajectories of the British National Party and Respect. Br Polit 3, 511–534 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2008.20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2008.20