British National Party (1960) - Bean's BNP

Bean's BNP

Under the sole control of Bean the party, like most of its contemporaries on the far right, had a severe shortage of money and as early as 1963 an issue of the party journal Combat spoke of possible doom for the BNP if new sources of money were not found. However against this backdrop a new area of local support opened up for the BNP.

Following changes in the local demographics a group of whites set up a Southall Residents Association which, whilst not specifically anti-immigration, wanted the immigrants already in the area to integrate whilst stopping further migrants from settling locally. Whilst this was the official policy some members, notably chairman Arthur Cooney and treasurer Doris Hart, wanted stronger opposition and in the 1963 local elections they nominated two BNP candidates to stand in the Glebe and Hambrough wards. Although neither was elected their votes were respectable, 13.5% in Glebe and 27.5% in Hambrough where the Labour Party lost a normally safe seat to the Conservative Party after a swing from Labour to BNP. Bean saw the potential in this sort of local issue as a springboard to finally building the sort of mass party that he desired and as such he stood as a candidate in Southall in the 1964 general election. Adopting a platform based on ending all "coloured" immigration and offering National Assistance only to immigrants who agreed to accept repatriation Bean secured 9% of the vote, which was at that point the highest ever won by a candidate running on an avowedly racialist ticket. With a "Stop Immigration Now" campaign the party finally enjoyed some comparative success.

However within the political mainstream the major parties began to turn away from the immigration issue and this mood was reflected by the electorate in the 1966 general election with vocal anti-immigration politicians either suffering reduced majorities, as happened to Enoch Powell, or the loss of seats, like Peter Griffiths. This shift in attitudes impacted upon the BNP with Bean's personal vote in Southall falling to 7.4%, a candidate in Deptford winning 7% and a candidate in Smethwick, where much local work had been undertaken by the party, managing only 1.5%.

Under Bean the BNP grew to become the largest political party on the far right and the only one with a comparatively good track record in electoral politics yet its ambitions were consistently hamstrung by a terminal lack of money and increasingly it looked like the future for the BNP lay in working much more closely with other groups.