Popular support for the British National Party (BNP) in England reached unprecedented high levels during the early twentieth century. The BNP won a number of local council and European Parliament seats on the back of this popularity. This study seeks to provide a case study of one such poll success: Nuneaton 2008. Evidence from Nuneaton, a BNP success not previously studied, will be used to test the literature already generated addressing other locations of ‘breakthrough’, including Burnley and Stoke (Burnett 2011; Rhodes 2009). The thesis seeks to explain why the BNP was able to win elections where there had previously been no appetite for far right politics. The research focuses on the role of demand and supply-side factors contributing to the electoral success of the BNP in 2008, showing that any analysis of the far right has to be multivariate in nature. The demand-side variables identified and analysed are: socioeconomics, immigration and Islamophobia. The supply-side factors assessed are political opportunity structures, the BNP campaign strategy and the role of the media. A mixed-method approach was undertaken which included interviews with voters and politicians, focus groups, a questionnaire capturing the views 308 constituents, and archival research of socioeconomic data and newspaper reports. The findings of this research indicate that the BNP’s electoral breakthrough in Nuneaton was multivariable in nature, and it is reasonable to argue that particular variables were more significant than others. Immigration stands out as the most prominent variable. In addition, the role of the media, the press in particular, was of great significance in explaining breakthrough in Nuneaton through the sanitising and legitimising of negative stereotypes of immigrants, asylum seekers and Muslims. This case study also suggests that Islamophobia should be regarded as a key factor. Indeed, Islamophobia was an important part of the jigsaw and conflates with a number of variables tested in this thesis. In sum, this research broadly corroborates the existing literature. It does however suggest that socioeconomics has been overplayed to a degree in previous studies, while Islamophobia has been underplayed.

There have been various results in research focused on why people are attracted to religion and religious movements. This is also the case with the reasons why people are attracted to far–right nationalist movements. The focus of this thesis is to analyze British National Party’s political documents after nationalistic quasi-religious elements. If nationalism was to be seen as a form of religion or as a substitute for religion the result could be a better understanding of why people are attracted to nationalist movements in general, and also to far-right movements. By stating that nationalism is a quasi-religion which can function as a substitute for religion, this thesis attempts to show how the attraction of religion and nationalism has on people can be similar. Therefore, one of the conclusions of this thesis is that theories based upon religion, such as religious sect theories, can also be applied to nationalist and nationalist far-right movements. The main conclusion of this thesis is that British National Party’s political documents do contain quasi-religious elements.

This thesis is a study of contemporary British fascist ideology as expressed in the texts produced by or in association with the British National Party (BNP). It differs from previous studies in that it starts at the depth of the ideology and examines its rhetorical and ideological structure. Drawing on the theory and methodology of critical discourse analysis, this thesis explores the rhetorical and presentational strategies used in contemporary British fascist texts. As such, it examines how constructions of us and the Other are deracialised, warranted and constructed as fact. The thesis also differs from previous studies in that it explores the pattern of contemporary British fascist ideology and emphasises its intrinsically gendered nature. Eugenics is taken as the core ideological theme of fascism, whose focus is on breeding a racially pure and healthy nation. The notion of breeding ensures that gender lies at the core of the ideology. Drawing on the idea of a polarised rhetorical and argumentative structure, this thesis also examines how fascism constructs the ideological opposites of eugenics. The first opposite to eugenics explored in this thesis is liberal ideology and specifically feminism. The analysis examines how fascist opposition to these is based on the essentialist belief in the fixed biological nature of both race and gender. The analysis looks at the presentational strategies as well as the argumentative content of antifeminist discourse in contemporary British fascist texts. The second opposite to eugenics explored is multiculturalism. The thesis explores how stories about rape simultaneously construct race and warrant arguments about the harmful effects of their presence on our society. The analysis examines the various presentational strategies used to portray üs as the victims of the Other. It is by studying the interconnection between these three themes that this thesis argues that fascism, with its eugenic orientation, is not only a racial ideology but a gendered one. The analysis of contemporary British fascist accounts undertaken in this thesis goes some way to providing an understanding of the relationship between gender and race that is at the essentialist core of fascist ideology.

British politics at the start of the 21st century provide a good setting for examining factors associated with mobilisation for extremist politics. This thesis is concerned with the relationship between individuals' preferences, their local setting and political behaviour. With focus on two outcomes - participation in urban rioting and support for a far right party - this thesis is divided into two parts and consists of five research papers addressing different aspects of mobilisation. In the first part we focus on urban disorder and examine police arrest records from the London riot of 2011. Much of the sociological literature has focused on variation in rioting across cities; here we examine variation within London by mapping the residential addresses of 1,620 rioters onto over 25,000 neighbourhoods. Our findings challenge the orthodoxy that rioting is not explained by deprivation or by disorganisation. Furthermore, we present evidence suggesting the importance of political grievances, in particular relations with the police, and examine the process of mobilisation to show that it was aided by spatial proximity and social similarity. In the second part we look at factors associated with engagement with far right politics. We use individual attitudinal data from the British Election Study to examine whether concerns over immigration are associated with the actual experience of immigration in one's place of residence. The results suggest that local setting does play some role, although individual factors seem to be more important. Secondly, we use leaked British National Party membership list to map 12,536 far right supporters onto over 200,000 neighbourhoods in Britain. Our findings underline the importance of a larger geographic context, where some spatial configurations present particularly fertile grounds for the far right; we also report the relative unimportance of cultural threat and significance of the social distance. Lastly, we question the recently advocated 'legacy effect' and suggest that white flight mechanism may possibly be an alternative way of thinking about organisational continuity.

The aim of this study is to describe the characteristics of right-wing populist parties in Europe. The three parties included in the study are the Swedish Democrats (SD), the British National Party (BNP) and the National Front (NF) in France. The study includes a definition of right-wing populism based on previous research and from that an ideal type of a right-wing populist party has been created. The material used in the study to verify how well the parties were consistent to the ideal type and what similarities and differences the parties in the study have are the parties’ political programs and policies. The conclusion of the results is that the parties fit the ideal type even if they differ in a few certain aspects. The BNP is the party most similar to the ideal type, followed by the NF and then the SD.

This thesis examines through the means of a comparative perspective, factors which have allowed the British National Party to enjoy recent electoral success at the local level under the leadership of party chairman Nick Griffin. Such electoral successes have arisen despite the seemingly relative obscurity of the party at the turn of the century. A number of different aspects are examined in order to achieve this aim. The history of the far right in the UK is examined to establish whether the BNP have changed their stance in comparison to previous far right movements. The BNP are also investigated comparatively with other West European parties who have enjoyed national success, as a means of discovering whether the party are similar to their far right neighbours and why they have not enjoyed similar national success. The press coverage of the BNP is examined at a local and national level, using content analysis and the LexisNexis database. The thesis looks at the role played by the BNP in local elections and the decline of participation in political activity, to establish if there is a link between these two factors. Finally a case study is taken of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, to establish directly if any of the above factors can be directly applied to BNP electoral success in this district. The research discovers that there are opportunities for the BNP to establish a connection with the electorate in local politics which are not necessarily available at times of general election.

In the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in extreme right Western European parties. Well-established parties such as the National Front (FN) in France, Vlaams Belang (formerly Vlaams Blok) in Belgium, and Lega Nord in Italy have been scrutinized. However, extreme right parties that have just recently begun to experience electoral successes such as the British National Party (BNP) have received less evaluation and discussion in the literature. Therefore, this study examines the BNP‟s electoral fortunes in the European elections of 1999, 2004, and 2009. I explore the support for the BNP using the traditional variables of unemployment, education, income, and immigration. In addition to these variables, I examine how support for other parties present in Great Britain, such as the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the center-right Conservative Party affects electoral support for the BNP. I find that support for other right-wing parties in Great Britain do exert an influence on BNP electoral fortunes (the UKIP a positive one, and the Conservative Party a negative one). I also find a strong negative link between BNP support and education and a weak positive one between BNP support and unemployment. However, income and immigration rates appear to have no effect on voter support for the BNP.

This thesis examines through the means of a comparative perspective, factors which have allowed the British National Party to enjoy recent electoral success at the local level under the leadership of party chairman Nick Griffin. Such electoral successes have arisen despite the seemingly relative obscurity of the party at the turn of the century. A number of different aspects are examined in order to achieve this aim. The history of the far right in the UK is examined to establish whether the BNP have changed their stance in comparison to previous far right movements. The BNP are also investigated comparatively with other West European parties who have enjoyed national success, as a means of discovering whether the party are similar to their far right neighbours and why they have not enjoyed similar national success. The press coverage of the BNP is examined at a local and national level, using content analysis and the LexisNexis database. The thesis looks at the role played by the BNP in local elections and the decline of participation in political activity, to establish if there is a link between these two factors. Finally a case study is taken of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, to establish directly if any of the above factors can be directly applied to BNP electoral success in this district. The research discovers that there are opportunities for the BNP to establish a connection with the electorate in local politics which are not necessarily available at times of general election.

This diploma theses presented deals with the development and electoral success of chosen populist parties and movements in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, and a comparison of the electoral success in those countries. The thesis is focused on the period between 2010 and 2019, given that the year 2010 represents a turning point considering election results in both countries. The first part of the thesis presents theoretical background of the study of populism and different understandings of the concept. The minimal definition of populism is presented there, together with three fundamental actors of populism which are then used to identify individual populist parties. The second and the third part of this thesis deal with the situation in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, respectively. We identify populist political parties and movements which are active on nationwide level and which managed to gain substantial results in parliamentary elections in the country or in elections to the European Parliament. Each party is described in terms of its development and its activity in politics, and then its electoral success in important elections is assessed. Subsequently, relevant party materials are analyzed, such as manifestos, websites, and leaders' statements which show particular...