Still alive and kicking

This year's local elections fall near the seventh anniversary of the Oldham race riots - and the BNP is trying to make headway in new territory.

By David Ward

Watch it: the British National party has not gone away. Nick Griffin and his crew are hard at work canvassing across the north-west of England as they seek to woo the voters. In previous years, they have not grabbed a vast number of seats - but they have won a worrying number of votes.

This year's local elections fall almost on the seventh anniversary of the race riots that erupted in Oldham, Greater Manchester, in May 2001. The BNP has tried to exploit the situation and has campaigned to seduce the Oldham electorate every year since. But, faced with tough campaigning by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats (parties with a long history of mutual antipathy in these parts), it has made no headway and never topped a poll. Not even Griffin could win a seat, although he did pick up more than a quarter of the votes in Chadderton North ward in 2003.

This year the BNP appears to be going through the motions by fielding just four candidates in Oldham. But it hasn't given up in Burnley, the east Lancashire town also hit by disturbances in the summer of 2001. The BNP, which won its first seats the following year and now has seven councillors, is fielding 10 candidates this year (including councillors seeking re-election), the largest group in any council in the north-west of England.

The Burnley BNP has gone through several leaders, shed a councillor who struck Griffin's minder in a brawl and lost another who decided that, far from being a racist, she was a fan of Nelson Mandela. It has made little impact in the council chamber.

But local activists have cleverly exploited the fears of more prosperous white people, who live in the nice parts of town and have voted for the party to keep members of the Asian community out of their districts. The party could engineer new victories this year, which could give new concern on a council on which no party has a majority.

Significantly, the BNP is also trying to make headway in parts of Greater Manchester other than Oldham, and is putting up a total of 44 candidates in the region's nine metropolitan boroughs, with eight each in Bury, Wigan and Tameside and seven in Stockport. This is a serious onslaught and it remains to be seen whether the onward march of the far right can be halted.

The party has only one candidate in Tory-controlled Trafford and just two in Manchester, where the BNP has never done well. But Griffin and co are making a determined assault on Liverpool, where they are fielding candidates in nine wards, and on Blackpool (seven candidates), where it staged its conference this year. Where the party stands on the loss of the supercasino to Manchester remains to be seen.

Not content with major centres, the party continues to flirt with the greener parts of Lancashire in Pendle and Ribble Valley - it has several times held its Red, White and Blue festivals in fields near Clitheroe. The BNP also has its eyes on Cumbria: six party candidates are standing in Carlisle and two in the rock-solid Labour stronghold of Maryport on the Cumbrian coast, where members of ethnic minorities are thin on the ground. Will local mainstream party activists be able to keep this lot at bay?

Additional research by Rumeana Jahangir

David Ward