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Alexander Uzerovic Wedel Andersen
Eksamens nr: 401452
The British National Party: Construction of national identity
Abstract
The focus of this paper is to analyse how the British National Party (BNP) constructs national
identity in their official ideology. The motivation for this paper is to understand why the British
National Party is so successful. A thematic analysis was conducted on the basis of the British
National Party’s official policy areas as found on BNP’s official webpage. Three themes were
identified as contributing to the research question: “cultural conception”, “group identification”
and “sovereignty”. By applying three theories of nationalism and through a discussion of these
themes, the following findings were evident. The BNP has an essentialist conception of culture
based on nationality and ethnicity. This leads the BNP to identify people by reducing them to
simplistic products of culture, creating a discourse of otherization within their ideology. Group
identification is the cornerstone of the British National Party’s national identity. They identify
groups through internal and external identification. Their internal identification is based on an
ethnic and partly racial conception of who the “real” British people consists of. The BNP’s external
identification is based on contrasting to all who is not a part of this ethnic British conception as
external enemies, targeting mainly immigrants but also the government. The BNP focuses on the
loss of sovereignty to these external enemies and paints a picture of a Britain on the edge of
destruction. They combine this negative image with rhetoric of Britain’s former glory and how
they can restore this status to Britain.
Characters, exclusive of blanks: 243
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Alexander Uzerovic Wedel Andersen
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Table of contents
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................... 2
THEORY ................................................................................................................................................. 4
LARGE/SMALL CULTURE ...................................................................................................................................... 4
WE AND US: TWO MODES OF GROUP IDENTIFICATION ............................................................................................. 5
IMAGINED COMMUNITIES ................................................................................................................................... 6
METHOD ................................................................................................................................................ 7
DATA ................................................................................................................................................... 10
ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................................. 11
THEMATIC ANALYSIS: FINDINGS .......................................................................................................................... 11
CULTURAL CONCEPTION .................................................................................................................................... 11
GROUP IDENTIFICATION .................................................................................................................................... 12
SOVEREIGNTY .................................................................................................................................................. 17
DISCUSSION ......................................................................................................................................... 18
CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 19
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................................... 21
Introduction
After the Second World War and the defeat of the Nazi and fascist regimes, far right movements
traditionally had enormous difficulty gaining a foothold in Britain. The reason for this could be
explained by the fact that an anti-fascist discourse was created that kept on long after the war
ended, based on Britain being the last champion of democracy and freedom against Nazism and
fascism that had swept across mainland Europe. In contrast, the radical right in mainland Europe
has been steadily on the rise in the past decades which can be seen by such achievements as Le
Pen’s Front National gaining 17 percent of the nationwide vote in the first round of the 2002
French presidential election and Jörg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party winning second place in the
1999 election (Schain et al: 2002: 3). Despite the traditionally low support for the far right
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movement in Britain, there is party that has experienced significant growth in support in the past
decade, the British National Party (BNP).
The British National Party was formed in 1980 by John Tyndall under the name New National Front
after a split with the National Front (NF), an openly Nazi sympathetic party (hopenothate,What is
the British National Party?) where Tyndall had held the position of chairman. In 1982 New
National Front changed name to the British National Party and ended up being the largest group
on the extreme right, due to further internal conflict and dividends in the National Front (BBC,
Roots, 1979-83). But it was not until Nick Griffin took over the party and started to modernize it in
1999 that the BNP began to gain real electoral success. The modernization has led to the BNP
being the most successful radical right winged party in British’s history. The BNP is currently the
fastest growing political party in Britain today with 50 incumbent local councillors, two Members
of the European Parliament and one seat on the Greater London Assembly (Ford and Goodwin,
2010, p.1). Their greatest success was the forementioned 2009 European Parliamentary elections
where the BNP gained 6.2 of the overall British votes. It has been argued that this growth in
popularity is due to the modernization and shift of the BNP’s ideology from an ethnic to a civic
conception of nationalism (Halikiopoulou and Vasilopoulou, 2010, p.583). If we look at the BNP
constitution, it is evident that ethnicity and what they refer to as “indigenous British” still plays a
central role in the party’s ideology.
“The English gave their name to England, the land of the English, not the other way
around and while a Civic British identity can be claimed or ascribed without reference
to ethnicity, being Indigenous British, that is English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish or an
Ulster-Scot, is not a question of place of birth, but questions of ancestral decent at
birth “(BNP constitution, 2011, p.87).
The focus of this paper is to analyze how the BNP constructs and makes use of national identity in
its official ideology to investigate why the British National Party is so successful. This will be
achieved by analysing the policy areas on the BNP’s official webpage. To conduct the analysis I will
use thematic analysis to identify the main themes that can contribute to understand how national
identity is constructed in the BNP ideology.
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The first section of the paper consists of a section where the chosen theories are explained
followed by a method section where thematic analysis is explained. Continuing this section is the
data section followed by the analysis section, which contains an account of how thematic analysis
is used in this paper and the analysis of the identified themes. Continuing the analysis section is a
discussion section where the data, thematic analysis, identified themes and the selection of
theories are discussed. The paper is ended with a final conclusion of the findings.
Theory
Large/small culture
According to Adrian Holliday there exist two paradigms of culture; large culture and small culture.
The small culture paradigm attaches culture to small social groupings or activities wherever there
is cohesive behaviour. In other words the small culture paradigm is based on culture being an
ongoing process within a social grouping. Small culture is a non-essentialist cultural conception
because it does not subscribe to notions of national or ethnic understandings of culture (Holliday,
1999, p.240)
In contrast, the large culture paradigm is essentialist and refers to something large such as British
culture or Britishness, which is also why it is relevant to this paper (Holliday, A., 1999, p. 239).
The large culture paradigm is essentialist in character, meaning that culture is viewed as essential
features of ethnic, national or international group (Holliday, A., 1999, p. 241). According to
Holliday this leads to leads culturism, which is the act of defining people and groups by reducing
them to pre-existing notions of culture (Holliday, A., 1999, p. 245). An example of this would be to
categorise a person with Indian parents, who have immigrated to Britain, but born and raised in
Britain, as being Indian because the person is perceived to have a Indian culture and not a British
culture. This
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Alexander Uzerovic Wedel Andersen
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We and Us: Two modes of group identification
Thomas Hylland Erisken’s theory of Us-hood and We-hood is based on a study of how a shared
national identity is created in Mauritius. For this report there will not be given a detailed
background of the study instead the focus is on the theory Eriksen applies in the study.
According to Eriksen it is a common fact that communities are defined in relation to what a
community is not. The same can be said for social identities and group identities who also are
defined in relation to other social and group identities. But Eriksen questions whether it is
necessary for identities to define the “others” as a negative image to create a group identity.
Eriksen proposes there are two main modes of group identification and group cohesion, us-hood
and we-hood (Eriksen, 1995, p. 427).
Us-hood
According to Eriksen us-hood is a form of group identification based on pressure from an external
agent. The external agent is often a real or imagined enemy and history contains countless
examples of us-hood being used to create internal cohesion by focusing on an external “other”. A
clear cut example was the way Adolf Hitler used and imagined enemy image of the Jews to rally
the German people for his course (Eriksen, 1995, p. 427).
We-hood
In contrast to us-hood, we-hood is mode of group identification based on internal cohesion. For a
group to see themselves as “we” they must experience a form of interdependence on the ground
of a shared task crating an internal sense of solidarity (Eriksen, 1995, p. 427).
In conclusion, according to Eriksen group identities are formed, maintained and strengthened in
contrast with others. But at the same time group identities also need to draw on a form of internal
solidarity or cultural commonality, be it political, ethnic, symbolic or even economic (Eriksen,
1995, p. 435).
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Imagined Communities
In 1983 Benedict Anderson wrote his now famous Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism. In it Benedict Anderson defines the nation as the following: “It is
an imagined political community- and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”
(Anderson, 1991, p.6). Anderson believes communities are to be distinguished by the way they are
imagined and not by whether they are falls or genuine (Anderson, 1991, p.6).
Anderson bases the notion of imagined communities on the fact that even in the smallest nation
the members will never know all of the other members or even hear of them. But at the same
time the nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship. According to Anderson, it is
this mechanism that has and still makes people give up their life for the nation regardless of the
inequality and suffering there may exist within the nation (Anderson, 1991, pp.6-7).
The nation is imagined as inherently limited due to every nation having finite boundaries and no
nation striving to incorporate all human beings into their nation. It is imagined as inherently
sovereign due to the fact that the concept of nation was born in a time when the legitimacy of the
ruling authorities the (church and king) were being eroded by the age of Enlightenment and
Revolutions. The known hierarchical order of the church and the king was thereby replaced with
the idea of a nation state were the people were free to decide for themselves (Anderson 1991,
p.7).
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Method
Thematic analysis is a method for identifying and analysing patterns and themes within data.
Thematic analysis is frequently used as an analysing tool but there is no clear agreement or
definition about what it actually consists of, nor how to conduct it (Braun, V. & Clarke, V. 2006,
p.79). Lack of information about the details and the process of analysing often lead to thematic
analysis being used to conduct analyses but not recognized as being a thematic analysis. Instead
themes are often described as emerging naturally or simple as being discovered, denying the role
of the active researcher who selects the themes, be it a conscious or unconscious choice (Braun, V.
& Clarke, V. 2006, p.80).
In contrast to some of the other methods of analysis there is out there, thematic analysis is not
glued together with a theoretical framework. Meaning it can be used within different theoretical
frameworks, making thematic analysis a very flexible and useful tool in the analysing process
(Braun, V. & Clarke, V. 2006, p.81).
Thematic analysis can be a realist/essentialist, constructive or a contextualist method. The
realist/essentialist method examines experiences, meanings and reality from the viewpoint of the
“speaker”. The constructive method examines how events, realities, meanings and experiences
are created by discourses within society. The contextualist method is position in between the two
other methods and is characterized by the theory of critical realism. The contextualist method
deals with how people make meaning from experiences and also how society affects these
meanings in a social context. In other words thematic analysis can be used as a method to reflect
reality as well as lifting the curtain and looking at what lies under the surface (Braun, V. & Clarke,
V. 2006, p.81).
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In thematic analysis it is important that the researcher makes it clear which of these theoretical
positions is used and a number of decisions have to be considered and made explicit to the reader
before the analysis is started. These decisions include the following:
What counts as a theme
A theme represents a pattern of meaning in the data and says something important about the
data in relation to the research question. The question of how to identify themes is not easy
answered. Is a theme measured by “size” or the number of times it is represented in the data? In
the end it is a question of prevalence. But there is no strict rule to decide how to measure
prevalence in thematic analysis, a theme can be discussed in a small part of the data set and still
be counted as a theme and vice versa a theme can be something that is discussed in the whole
data set. In another words there is no correct answer to what proportion of the data that has to
display evidence of a theme for it to be identified as a theme. In the same way the importance of
an identified theme is not measured by how many instances there is of the theme in the data but
of how the theme contributes with important input to the overall research question. This means it
is up to the researcher to determinate what counts as a theme in a particular data set and
therefore it is recommended to take a flexible approach when determining a theme and it is
importance to the research question (Braun, V. & Clarke, V. 2006, p.82).
Broad or narrow focus
The researcher needs to choose what kind of analysis is to be conducted in relation to the data
set. One way of doing this is to give a full description of the data set by making sure the themes
selected are accurate reflections of the content of the whole data set. This is a useful method
when analysing an area that is more or less unknown or undocumented. But the method may lead
to a loss of depth and complexity. Another way conducting thematic analysis is to focus on and try
to give a rich and detailed account of a particular theme of group of themes in the data set. This is
a useful method when looking at a specific area in the data (Braun, V. & Clarke, V. 2006, p.83).
Inductive or deductive approach
There are two primary ways of approaching the data in a thematic analysis: inductive approach
(bottom up) or a deductive approach (top down). The inductive approach is data driven, meaning
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that the themes are strongly link to the data set and not influence by the researches theoretical
interest in the research area. The inductive approach of thematic analysis is therefore the process
of coding the data without using theoretical preconceptions. In contrast, the deductive approach
is driven by the researches theoretical interest in the data. This gives a lesser overall description of
the data set but a more detailed picture of particular aspects of the date. The choice of which
approach to choose can depend on why the researches is coding the data. If coding for a specific
research question the deductive approach would be preferable and in contrast the inductive
approach would be preferable if the research question is to be articulated through the coding
process (Braun, V. & Clarke, V. 2006, pp.83-84).
Semantic or latent level
Another decision the researches must make is at what level the themes are to be identified. A
thematic analysis usually only focuses on one of two levels: semantic (explicit) or latent
(interpretative). At the semantic level the themes are identified by looking at what is said explicit
in the data and then later on interpreting what has been identified. The latent level moves beyond
the surface level of the data and identifies the underlying ideas and assumptions of what is said in
the data set (Braun, V. & Clarke, V. 2006, p.84).
In this paper a constructive method is chosen based on the fact that the research topic is, how the
BNP constructs and uses national identity in their ideology and the purpose is to investigate what
underlying assumptions there are behind what is said in the data As to the decision of what
counts as a theme, a flexible approach is taken in this paper combined with the choice of a
deductive approach to coding the data and thereby in selecting the themes. A narrow focus is
chosen to give a rich and detailed account of the selected themes that contributed to the overall
analysis of the research question. In addition to this, the themes are chosen on a latent level to
look beyond what is said in the data and investigate what the underpinning assumptions are
behind it.
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Alexander Uzerovic Wedel Andersen
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Data
Purposive or criterion sampling as it is also known as is an approach for selecting data based on
selected criterions. The data is sampled on basis of criterions the researcher has selected as
important and contributes to the exploration and understanding of the research question. There
are many different approaches to purposive sampling. The approach chosen in this report is called
stratified purposive sampling. Stratified purposive sampling is a hybrid approach where the data is
selected on basis of it being more or less homogeneous data sets (making it easy to compare
themes) and at the same time displaying a variation of a particular phenomenon (Ritchie & Lewis
p.78-79).
For this report the choice of data is the British National Party’s official policies as it appears on
BNP’s official webpage. The data set is chosen on the bases on two criterions. The first criterion
being that the data sets has to be information rich on how the British National Party’s constructs
national identity in its ideology. The second criterion is that the data has to cover a range of
different topics making it possible to investigate where the research topic is evident. This criterion
is fulfilled by choosing an overall data set that consists of nine data sets covering nine policy areas.
Following the stratified purposive sampling approach the data also has to be fairly similar but at
the same time display different aspects of the research topic. This is archived by the fact that the
nine data sets have the same format of official party policy’s which makes them more of less
homogeneous data sets but at the same time displaying different ways national identity is used an
constructed in the BNP’s ideology.
The policy areas displayed on BNP’s official webpage are the following: Crime & Justice,
Democracy, Economics, Education, Environment, Foreign Affairs, Health, Housing & Welfare and
Immigration.
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Analysis
Thematic analysis: findings
The thematic analysis is conducted on the basis of all nine data sets. The first step was to
generated initial codes on the first reading of the data set with the chosen theories in mind. After
this the initial codes were grouped together into potential themes. On this basis three themes
were identified as important for the analysis of the research question. The selected themes are:
Cultural conception, Identification and Sovereignty.
Cultural conception
To analyse what cultural conception that is evident in the British National Party’s official policy
areas Adrian Holliday’s theory of large culture paradigm will be applied. The reason for not
applying Holliday’s small culture paradigm is based on the fact that during the process of coding
the data it became clear that the BNP does not subscribe to this conception of culture. On the
contrary, it was clear that the BNP has an essentialist conception of what culture is. This clarifies
that the BNP believes that culture is a static conception, a fact of nature, something found within
the boundaries of nations. According to Holliday this conception of culture leads to culturism.
Culturism is the reduction of people or groups to a set of pre-defined characteristics based on a
static cultural perception.
“Each nation has the right to maintain its own identity. The right of India to remain Indian, the
right of China to remain Chinese, the right of Pakistan to remain Pakistani and the right of Saudi
Arabia to remain Saudi does not mean that any of these nations “hate” anybody else” (Appendix
no.9, line 56-58).
In this statement is clear that the BNP has a large culture view of culture. The BNP sees the world
in terms of each nation has a fixed culture, China having a Chinese culture and Pakistan having a
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Pakistani culture. The BNP defines culture on basis of nationality, ignoring the fact that in every
nation there exists multiple cultures based on ethnicity, class, location, employment etc.
The British National Party’s conception of British culture is also based on a notion of an existing
homogeneous national British culture. “This is all the British National Party seeks for Britain – the
right to be British” (Appendix no.9, line 60). The difference being, that when the BNP speaks of
Britain and the British people they are referring to their conception of an ethnic British population,
which they call the” indigenous” British people. This concept of British ethnicity will be further
discussed in the analysis of the theme identification. The following statement shows how the large
culture conception based on ethnicity is manifested in the BNP ideology.
“ We accept that Britain always will have ethnic minorities and have no problem with this as long
as they remain minorities and do not change nor seek to change the fundamental culture and
identity of the indigenous peoples of the British Isles”(Appendix no.9, line 41-44).
An essentialist view of culture is a recurring theme in all nine policy areas and a cornerstone in the
BNP ideology. The BNP uses it to determinate what Britishness is based on who the British people
consist of. As mentioned before, large culture thinking leads to culturism and, besides reducing
people to product of a culture, it also leads to otherization. This will be discussed in the analysis of
the selected theme identification
Group identification
To conduct the analysis of the selected theme national identification, Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s
theory of Us-hood and We-hood will be applied to find out how the British National Party
constructs and uses group identification in their conception of national identity.
The British National Party makes extensive use of both we-hood and us-hood approaches to group
identification and it is evident in all nine policy areas. The analysis will start with an examination
and discussion of examples of we-hood followed by examples of us-hood and concluded with
examples of how the BNP combines the two modes of group cohesion.
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We-hood
As stated in the theory section we-hood is an approach to group identification that is based on
internal solidarity. The BNP’s main approach to creating an internal sense of solidarity is their
concept of the “real” British ethnicity which they call “indigenous British” based on “ancestral
decent at birth”, as stated in the BNP constitution “(BNP constitution, 2011, p.87).
Evidence of this ethnic conception is seen in the following quotations, indigenous and native being
the key words: “The state institutions were built by British taxpayers and there is a moral duty and
obligation on the state to give preference in the job market to native Britons” (Appendix no.3, line
27-28).
And:
“We want Britain to remain – or return to – the way it has traditionally been. We accept that
Britain always will have ethnic minorities and have no problem with this as long as they remain
minorities and do not change nor seek to change the fundamental culture and identity of the
indigenous peoples of the British Isles” (Appendix no. 9, line 41-44).
This idea of Britain having a fundamental indigenous British culture and identity is also an example
of how the BNP uses a we-hood approach to create group cohesion and can be found in all the
nine data sets:
“- The teaching of a full curriculum of British history. This will instill in our young people knowledge
of and pride in the history, cultures and heritage of the native peoples of Britain, and not the
cherry-picked politically correct drivel being fed to children today;” (Appendix no.4, line 24-26).
Here it is the native British history, culture and heritage that are highlighted. BNP tries to create a
sense of internal solidarity based on the glory and accomplishments of the past. This is also
evident in this statement: “The British people invented modern Parliamentary democracy”
(Appendix no.2, line 5).
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Us-hood
Applying Eriksen’s theory of us-hood it is evident that the BNP uses numerous different images of
external enemies to create group identification, immigrants and the government being the main
enemies.
The image of Immigration and immigrants as an external enemy is heavily used across the entire
data set where they are blamed for all kinds of problems in the British society: “Non-indigenous
crime – rapidly becoming a serious problem, as the knife and gun crime epidemic spreading
throughout our major cities” (Appendix no.1, line 31-31). And:
“Britain is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and our population is
increasing — due entirely to immigration — which necessitates the building of ever more homes,
which in turn places a strain on our infrastructure such as transport and water supplies” (Appendix
no.5, line 20-22).
The following statement sums up how the BNP feel about immigrants and how they are portrayed
as the main source of nearly all problems in the British society:
“The current open-door policy and unrestricted, uncontrolled immigration is leading to higher
crime rates, demand for more housing (driving prices out of the reach of young people), severe
extra strain on the environment, traffic congestion, longer hospital waiting lists, lower educational
standards, higher income taxes, lower wages, higher unemployment, loss of British identity, a
breakdown in community spirit, more restrictive policing, higher council taxes, a shortage of
council homes, higher levels of stress and unhappiness and a more atomised society” (Appendix
no.9, line 45-50).
By creating this image of Britain and thereby indirect the British people, in downfall and under
attack and pointing to immigration as the main course, the BNP attempts to create cohesion by
contrasting the “indigenous” British people (us) with an image portraying immigrants (them) as
the external enemy destroying Britain.
The other main external enemy image used by the BNP is the government and the political elite in
Britain.
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“Yet in recent years the British people have been denied their democratic rights. On issue after
issue, the views of the majority of British people have been ignored and overridden by a politically
correct elite which thinks it knows best” (Appendix no. 2, line 5-7).
Here the BNP tries to create group cohesion by contrasting “us” the British people from “them” an
image of an enemy government that has ignored, overridden and denied democratic rights of the
British people. Another example of the government being portrayed as an external enemy is found
in the following quotation. “The BNP exists to give the British people that choice, and thus to
restore and defend the basic democratic rights we have all been denied” (Appendix no. 2, line 1213). The rhetoric of “restoring” and “defending” the democratic rights plays on the assumption
that Britain is under attack and most stand together to “restore” and “defend”. This is a way of
creating group cohesion by contrasting to an enemy image, the government in this case.
“Britain suffers from more than 27,000 crimes per day, or more than ten million crimes per year –
the direct result of decades of softly-softly politically correct policing and a failed social engineering
policy which has put the rights of yobs and criminals above that of victims” (Appendix no 1, line 46).
Here the notion is that Britain is overrun by crime and the criminals are getting a better treatment
than the victims. Again the government is used as the enemy image to blame for the high crime
and good treatment of criminals on the expense of the British people. This should be seen in light
of the government is the BNP’s political adversaries. Many of the things the BNP blames the
government for is in fact immigration related.
We-hood and Us-hood
The BNP makes extensive use of combining both modes of group identification. By both identifying
who “we” are based on internal solidarity and identifying who we are not by contrast, makes for
an effective tool of persuasion.
“All these facts point inexorably to the overwhelming and extinguishing of Britain and British
identity under a tsunami of immigration. To ensure that this does not happen, and that the British
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people retain their homeland and identity, we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration,
the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and the introduction of a system of
voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the
opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by a generous financial incentives both
for individuals and for the countries in question” (Appendix no. 9, line 22-27).
This statement is an example of both modes of identification used in combination. Here the BNP
first creates an image of Britain and the British identity is under attack from the “tsunami of
immigration”. Thereafter the BNP uses a we-hood approach in an indirect way, by stating that the
British people must save their homeland and identity and stop immigration by supporting the BNP.
As stated earlier, The BNP identifies ethnicity with what they call the “indigenous British people”.
In the data sets the BNP uses terms as: Britain, the British people, native and indigenous as
interchangeable terms for their ethnic conception. It is mostly read between the lines what they
mean by this conception of an indigenous ethnic people, that being white ethnic Britons. But there
are a few examples of direct use of racial terms: “The Labour government recently introduced
legislation to discriminate against white males in the job market. (Appendix no.3, line 23-24).
And:
“We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Britons second-class
citizens. We will also clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers’, all of whom are either bogus or
can find refuge much nearer their home countries” (Appendix no.9, line 28-30).
The above statement is also a good example of the external aspect of the BNP construction of
national identity. The BNP makes highly use of the us-hood approach by contrasting the
“indigenous British people” named; non-indigenous, immigrants, asylum seekers, foreigners and
even scroungers with the rest of the British population who are portrayed as immigrants taking
over Britain, this done to scare and rally voters behind the BNP course.
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Sovereignty
The third identified theme in the British National Party’s construction of national identity is
sovereignty. To analyse this theme Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined communities will be
applied. The point of departure is Anderson’s concept of nations being socially constructions
which can be imagined and re-imagined. While looking at the data sets it becomes clear that the
BNP imagines a future Britain that is sovereign in every aspect. They firmly believe in cutting all
ties with the European Union to regain sovereignty: “Accordingly, a BNP government will withdraw
from the European Union” (Appendix no.6, line 26).
The BNP also imagines a Briton that is political independent from the rest of the world “Maintain an independent foreign policy of our own, and not a spineless subservience to the USA,
the ‘international community’, or any other country” (Appendix no. 6, line 16-17). And a Britain
that is economy shielded by a protectionist policy.
“Britain’s survival depends on a technology-intensive manufacturing base, protected from
globalisation and rampant internationalist exploitation – the core of the British National Party’s
plan for rebuilding this nation’s economy after decades of Tory and Labour neglect” (Appendix
no.3, line 4-6).
The BNP’s imagined future for Britain is in many cases based on regaining the sovereignty of the
pre-war times and in so fact pre immigration times. A time when Britain was the leading nation in
industry, education, innovation and democracy and a time when there was discipline and order in
Britain, according to the BNP. The BNP does this by using rhetoric like regain, restore and rebuild:
“We want Britain to remain – or return to – the way it has traditionally been” (Appendix no.9, line
41) and “To combat this shocking state of affairs, the British National Party seeks a return to
traditional standards of law enforcement,..” (Appendix no.1, line 9-10). Furthermore:
“Britain once led the world in education and technology – and can do so again, but only if it follows
some basic rules to rebuild its educational system in such a way that it nurtures the innate genius
which lies in our nation’s youth” (Appendix no.4, line 4-6).
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The BNP does not only make use of an imagined sovereign future for Briton they also re-imagine
the reality of contemporary Briton. They state that the government and the rest of politicians have
denied the British people their democratic rights, thereby taken away the sovereignty of the
people.
“The BNP exists to give the British people that choice, and thus to restore and defend the basic
democratic rights we have all been denied” (Appendix no 2, line 12-13).
The most clear cut example of the BNP re-imaging contemporary life in Britain is in their
immigrations policy: “Given current demographic trends, we, the indigenous British people, will
become an ethnic minority in our own country well within sixty years – and most likely sooner”
(Appendix no.9, line 4-5). Here the BNP imagines a Britain being taken over by “non-indigenous
people”, in other words, an attack on the sovereignty of the British people right to their land. The
BNP being the only rescue: “Only the British National Party has the reasonable, sensible, fair and
just immigration policy which will guarantee that Britain remains British” (Appendix no.9, line 6667)
Discussion
In this paper the data was selected on the grounds of it being a data set that says something about
the BNP’s official ideology. Instead of choosing the nine policy areas on the official BNP webpage,
the chosen data could have been a larger data set such as the British National Party’s manifesto or
their constitution. This probably would have given the paper some more depth in regards to
answering to overall research question. Another choice could have been to base the paper on data
in the form of speeches or interviews. This option was not chosen due to the availability, or rather
lack thereof, and poor quality of these kinds of data sets. Another reason for choosing the policy
areas as the data set, is the fact that besides being official it is also the most public and accessible
data to the common voter. In other words, webpages are one of the most important tools political
parties have in their arsenal to convey their ideology to the voters.
Thematic analysis was the chosen method in this paper. Initially it was found to be quite hard and
a rather confusion method of conducting analysis. This was due to the non-existing clear definition
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of what thematic analysis is and what it consist of. The strength of thematic analysis proved to be
the clarity and overview it provided when the themes had been identified. As mentioned earlier,
the thematic analysis was conducted with the selected theories in mind. In other words a
deductive approach to coding the data, making in reality the thematic analysis conducted in this
paper more like a grounded theory approach.
In regards to the selected themes, it would have been possible to have additional themes to give a
wider account of the research question. Themes like symbols and signs of nationalism or national
narrative would have been a good addition in relation to investigating more aspects of how the
British National Party constructs and makes use of national identity in their ideology.
Looking back, Benedict Anderson’s theory of Imagined Communities was perhaps not the best
possible choice of theory for this paper. Not because it is not applicable to investigate nationalism,
but because it is a very vague theory and in my opinion more of a definition of a constructivist’s
conception of what a nation is, which makes it quite difficult to apply when doing an actual
analysis.
Conclusion
Through the process of coding the British National Party’s official policy areas, I ended up with
three themes I identified as contributing to answering my research question: How does the British
National Party construct and use national identity in its official ideology?
The analysis of the first identified theme Cultural Conception contributes with answering what
kind of conception of culture the BNP has in its official ideology. From the findings of the analysis it
is evident, that the British National Party has an essentialist conception of culture or larger culture
conception using Holliday’s terminology. The BNP’s cultural conception is based on nationality and
ethnicity which leads the BNP to identify people by reducing them to simplistic products of
culture.
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Group identification is the cornerstone in the British National Party’s construction of national
identity. By analyzing the theme identification with Eriksen’s theory of We-hood and Us-hood, I
found, that the BNP makes use of both of these approaches to group identification. The BNP uses
an Us-hood approach to identify who is not a part of this national identity. This is achieved by
creating an image of a Britain in complete downfall due to immigration and the government. The
chosen image of an enemy government is most likely due to the BNP’s main objective which is to
gain supporters and the government is seen as their main competition. Most of the negative
issues they are to blame for are immigration related. The BNP regards immigration as the main
external enemy of the British people and blames it for nearly all the problems in the British
society. By doing this, the BNP creates a discourse of otherzation which is a process of identifying
who “we” are by contrasting to who “we“are not. The BNP also uses an internal approach of
identifying national identity. The BNP’s has a made-up conception of an “indigenous British
ethnicity based on ancestral decent at birth”. In the data they use direct references to this
conception of national identity by using native and indigenous. But for the most part the BNP uses
indirect terms like Britain and the British people when referring to their concept of the “real”
British people. On a few occasion in the data the BNP uses a racial term of “white” in their
identification of the British people. I believe that, this is their true conception of British ethnicity
and the reason it is only use a few times in the data, is because the BNP wants to gain popularity
and attract voters by appealing to a larger demographic than just the right-wing movement.
This brings us to the last identified theme Sovereignty. This is an important piece in the BNP’s
construction but also of how they use national identity to gain votes. They wish to restore Britain’s
sovereignty by isolating Britain from globalization by cutting the relations with the European
Union and the rest of the world to become independent “once again”. The BNP uses Britain’s
former glorious past as a sovereign superpower and leading innovator, to create cohesion with the
voters by playing on notions of nostalgia. They use this notion to contradict with an image of a
contemporary British society that is dissolving under the pressure from immigration and losing its
sovereignty to a globalized world. Stressing again and again that only the British National Party has
the plan to turn the tide and restore Britain to its former glory. This is BNP’s main strategy in
persuading the British people to vote for them.
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