The extreme right British National Party (BNP) now has five democratically elected representatives in local government. Three councillors in Burnley and one in Blackburn were joined last month by a councillor in Calderdale.
The response is unanimous: the BNP is condemned by all sections of the mainstream media. Even tabloid newspapers, which have themselves been blamed for inflammatory articles on asylum seekers, express revulsion for BNP policies. So why did the party achieve success?
One problem may be that voters do not really know what the BNP stands for. In elections, its candidates stress their local links, their patriotism and emphasise their opponents' failure to deal with issues of poverty and deprivation. They also say things that are not true.
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