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news
 4th June 2006
Analysis of the BNP vote in the 2006 local elections in Yorkshire & the Humber
The 2006 local elections saw
the number of BNP councilors
nationally more than double
from 20 to 48. This again confirmed
the trend of rising BNP support,
which has accelerated dramatically
over the last six years.
Thirty-three BNP councillors
were elected on May 4th. The BNP
made their biggest breakthrough
with 11 councillors (possibly 12 after
legal appeal) elected in Barking and
Dagenham, London.
The BNP stood their largest number
of candidates and received their
largest regional vote in the Yorkshire
and Humber region — 105 candidates
in 103 wards received 88,148 votes at
an average of 19.1%.
21 of the 71 seats nationally the
BNP can win in 2007 with a 5% or less
swing are in our region — all but two of those are
in West Yorkshire. 10 wards are in
Bradford, 6 in Kirklees, 2 in Calderdale,
1 each in Leeds, Barnsley and
Rotherham.
In Bradford the BNP contested 16
wards where they averaged 25.4% of
the vote. They won the Queensbury
ward and came second in 8 wards.
Contesting every seat in Kirklees
the BNP received 22,914 votes at an
average of 18.5%, and in 22 wards in
Leeds the BNP received 22,642 votes at
an average of 16.6%.
The local elections also show that
once the BNP wins a council seat in
an area it helps in their process of
political legitimisation. As a result it
also takes longer to defeat them and
makes it easier for them to gain more
councillors. The BNP’s breakthroughs
in Burnley, Epping Forest, Sandwell,
Stoke-on-Trent, Bradford and Kirklees
are clear examples of this. The BNP
vote continues to grow in the existing
bases of Bradford and Kirklees.
Preventing the BNP from gaining
councillors in the first place is crucial,
that is why Oldham remains the model
anti-fascist campaign. The BNP never
won a single council seat in Oldham
and the BNP’s vote halved between
2001 and 2005.
Of course the BNP’s key aim is
to use local election gains to help it
win regional seats in the European
Parliament elections in 2009 and on
the London Assembly in 2008.
BNP website:
“The real target for us now is the
European Elections in 2009....
The BNP are now poised for a
real political breakthrough in
the 2009 European Elections.
The local elections are
important as they reveal that
the percentage support we
now garner in constituencies is
capable of easily translating into
MEP seats.”
In the 2004 European elections
the BNP won just over 126 000 votes
or 8.04% of the vote in the Yorkshire
region. 12.5% of the vote was required
to win the last placed seat in 2004
— but this is only a very approximate
indicator of what % will win the last
seat in 2009. Achieving a high turnout
again will be vital if we are to stop the
BNP in that election.
Another key point to note about
the May elections was the role played
by some of the media’s coverage
of the BNP during the election
period which had the effect of
legitimising their politics of hatred.
The xenophobic media coverage of
the release of prisoners described
as ‘foreign nationals’, the talking up
of the British National Party’s (BNP)
support by politicians and then
seized on by the media with the
unprecedented platform and air time
given to the BNP in the run up to
the elections, led to the BNP being
perceived by some as a legitimate
political party.
BNP website:
“The real story of this election
though is how the BNP have
become normalised with
the electorate. We have now
transcended the cordon
sanitaire that the media have
placed upon us for decades.”
An accurate assessment of
the 2006 local elections is key to
understanding what we need to do over
the next year to stop the BNP making
further progress in 2007.
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