British Democratic Party - Formation and Naming Controversy

Formation and Naming Controversy

The BDP emerged following the 1979 general election in which the National Front (NF) had put up the greatest number of candidates in its history but with results falling way below expectations. The recriminations that followed this costly defeat saw Andrew Brons replace John Tyndall as chairman whilst a number of groups broke away, notably the New National Front and the Constitutional Movement.

Within the NF, the Leicester branch had become one of the most active in the country and, since 1972, this group had been led by Anthony Reed Herbert, a local solicitor whose talent for organisation had made Leicester a model branch. Reed Herbert took the opportunity provided by the 1979 collapse of the NF to launch his own group, selecting the name British Peoples Party. However, the name was quickly changed in order to avoid association with the earier British People's Party, a splinter group from the National Socialist League, organised either side of the Second World War. The name was thus changed to British Democratic Party even though a British Democratic Party, a minor right wing anti-communist group, had also previously existed in the 1930s.

The BDP shared with the Constitutional Movement a desire to move away from open neo-Nazism in general and Tyndall and Martin Webster in particular, with Herbert reasoning that a stream of press exposures of the more extreme views of both men had hit the NF's chances hard. Effectively therefore the BDP sought to present a more "respectable" public image in contrast to that of the NF.