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With leader Nick Griffin no longer talking about the deportation of all non-white people from the UK, and party members no longer openly using the fascist salute, the
organization
now tries to present itself as a little more conservative than some Conservatives.
"We not a racist party," insists Griffin, a Cambridge-educated lawyer who once called the Holocaust a hoax, and who has a criminal conviction for inciting racial hatred.
Rather than speaking of an "all-white" party he now prefers to describe BNP members as "of British and kindred European descent."
It is an approach that appears to be working. Since becoming leader in 1999 Griffin, whose father Edgar was recently expelled from the Conservative Party for his allegedly racist sympathies, has seen BNP membership grow.
The party is also enjoying increasing electoral success. In the general election of June 2001, the party, while not actually winning any seats, enjoyed its best election results ever.
"This party has won and won and won," Griffin recently told a meeting of party supporters in Wales. "And that is a political earthquake."
The party made a particularly strong showing in the two northern towns of Oldham and
Burnley, where racial tensions between Asians and whites had resulted in serious pre-election riots.
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British National Party leader Nick Griffin
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"There was racial tension and the BNP went in and aggravated that and reaped the results," explains Glyn Ford, a Member of the European Parliament and treasurer of Britain's Anti-Nazi League.
Griffin himself, standing in the Oldham East constituency, gained 16 percent of the vote, a result that even he admitted was a surprise.
"They have a slick operation for a party that only has 1,000 members," says Ford. "They've got some fairly rich benefactors somewhere who are pumping resources into the
BNP."
U.S. funding
Not all of these benefactors come from the UK. The U.S. in particular has proved a fertile source of party funding through
organizations
such as the Washington-based American Friends of the British National Party
(AFBNP).
In Montgomery, Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law
Center
has spent over a year investigating the activities of the BNP in the U.S.
"This party is in the thick of some very ugly things in England," says spokesman Mark
Potok, "And Americans are paying for it."
The AFBNP is headed by UK citizen Mark Cotterill, who Potok describes as "a tried and true neo-fascist."
Since arriving in the U.S. in late 1998 Cotterill has
organized
fundraising events, and built-up a network of far-right supporters.
His associates read like a Who's Who of American extremism: Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, neo-Nazi William Pierce -- author of The Turner Diaries, the book that inspired Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh -- and Don Black, owner of the web's first racial hate site.
Cotterill's fundraising efforts, mainly through AFBNP meetings, have proved extremely successful.
"We've seen some very useful donations," says Griffin.
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Cotterill, left with Duke
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Potok says that Cotterill has raised "a minimum of $85,000 (£58, 234)." The true, figure, however, would appear to be far higher than that.
One former AFBNP donor, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNN that the total was "not quite touching $200,000 (£137,000)."
"The big money, the real money gets raised behind the scenes and dispersed behind the scenes," he said.
BNP 'breaking the law'
While he was attracted substantial sums of money and built up links with America's far-right, however, one thing Cotterill hasn't done is to register his activities with the U.S. government.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires anyone raising money in the U.S. for an overseas political party to register with the U.S. Department of Justice. The
AFBNP, however, does not appear on any Justice Department files.
Bill Shingleton of the Washington-based
Center
for Responsive Politics, said: "The People's Mujahaddin of Iran, which is actually a terrorist
organization, has registered under FARA, so it is very unusual for someone not to do it.
"It leads to all sorts of questions about why they would not do it."
One reason, according to Potok, is that the
organization
does not wish the U.S. public to have access to lists of party donors.
"There are industrialists, wealthy apartment-building owners. These are people who do not want their names in newspapers, who never want to be on television."
Cotterill insists that as soon as he arrived in the U.S. he tried to register his activities, but was told he did not need to do so.
Potok, however, believes that Cotterill is breaking the law, and has written to the Department of Justice to raise the issue.
"The opinion of our lawyers here is that in fact Mr. Cotterill is in violation of
FARA, and we certainly expect the Department of Justice will act on it."
The BNP's U.S. fundraising activities raise other legal problems.
Money laundering
British electoral law restricts overseas political donations from individuals to a maximum of £200 ($280). Any larger donations received during an electoral campaign must be registered with the UK Electoral Commission on a weekly basis.
In the run-up to the June 2001 election Griffin embarked on a fundraising tour of the U.S.
Both he and Cotterill admit that the tour raised money for the BNP. The registers of the British Electoral Commission, however, show no records of any overseas donations to the party during the election campaign.
With regard to the £200 limit for individual donations, the former AFBNP donor alleges that Cotterill developed a strategy to circumvent British law.
"Mr. Cotterill will convene a smaller meeting of ten to twelve people that he knows, and dole out money to them.
"They will then write a cheque (in their own names) in the equivalent amount (to the
BNP)."
When asked if this was money-laundering the man replied "it could be called that."
Cotterill denies any wrongdoing. He has, however, recently resigned as head of the AFBNP "for personal and political reasons."
In Britain, meanwhile, the BNP could be facing an investigation by the UK Electoral Commission.
"If we were aware of the situation , in accordance with the Act, we would investigate," said Christopher
Welford, the
Commission's
Director of Compliance. "The Act gives us both powers of civil and criminal enforcement."
It seems that the party's relationship with the U.S. might not be as trouble-free as it had hoped.
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