The British National Party and Ulster

Abstract

This chapter assesses the attempts of the British National Party, now the major extreme Right formation to impact on the Ulster problem in the 1990s, a decade which would see the Provisional IRA and loyalist paramilitary ceasefires and the difficult and torturous process that would produce the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998, an agreement that effectively ended the Troubles. For the BNP, however, the decade would be one of evolution as John Tyndall’s control of was gradually broken by Nick Griffin. Influenced by the electoral success of Jean Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France, Griffin would begin the process of party modernisation that would see the BNP gain 60 local council seats a two seat in the European Parliament in the first decade of this century. As the BNP’s British fortunes brightened Ulster as an issue gradually disappeared from its literature. British progress sweetened the pill of failure in Northern Ireland as the previous unfruitful experience of the extreme Right in Northern Ireland was repeated; with even the White Nationalist Party failing to make a major impact even as Northern Ireland developed a serious racist problem.