Latent Support for the Far-Right in British Politics: The BNP and UKIP in the 2004 European and London Elections

The occasional electoral outbreaks of the National Front and now the British National Party are regarded, not as a danger to the body politic, but as minor parties on the fringe of the political system. Their support ebbs and flows, but they will never be a significant force in UK politics (see Eatwell, 2002 for a review of academic commentary). This paper seeks to challenge the conventional wisdom. We argue that there exists what may be called a ‘racist rump’ of electors who have strong views on immigration and would consider voting for small parties of the right even if they do not do so currently. This group is a solid and long-standing sub-section of the British electorate, present since the 1960s, but masked until the mid-1990s by the impact of the first-past-the-post electoral system across all UK elections and the strategies of the major parties. Using evidence from the 2004