The fascist British National Party is standing more than 260 candidates in next month’s local council elections.

The number is a sharp drop on the 655 BNP candidates who stood in the same local authority areas last time they went to the polls in 2007.

This fall is a reflection of the crisis inside the BNP, admitted publicly by the party’s Yorkshire and Humber MEP Andrew Brons last month.

Die-hard Nazi Brons warned his followers that party feuding could destroy the BNP “by the end of the year”.

No complacency

But there is no room for complacency. The BNP is standing large clutches of candidates in target areas, including 19 in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and 15 in Birmingham.

The BNP is standing lots of candidates in areas where the racist street thugs of the English Defence League – which has fascists in its midst – is active. It is important to make sure fascist and racist politics are not given a boost in the elections here.

Other Nazi parties are also standing candidates, including the National Front and the England First Party – which uses the fascist code phrase “14 words” to describe its hopes for “the future for white children”.

Resurface

And some former BNP activists have jumped ship only to resurface elsewhere, including Andrew Brons’s own assistant Chris Beverley, who is standing for the English Democrats in Leeds.

The English Democrats have happily absorbed a number of BNP defectors ahead of the elections, and its highly racist nature is spelled out in its public policies which claim multicultralism is “dangerous” and that cities are being “colonised by immigrant communities”.

It says this “begs the question: why did they come here in the first place? And leads to the second question: why not go back to wherever they feel they actually belong and give us back our cities?”

Stoke-on-Trent

In the key target area of Stoke-on-Trent – once dubbed the BNP’s “jewel in the crown”, and where it has five current councillors – the Nazis appear to have divided the seats between them, with the BNP standing nine and the white supremacist England First Party standing in another six.

Along with its 15 Birmingham candidates, the BNP is also putting up 13 in Coventry and more across the West Midlands.

There are nine BNP candidates in Newcastle plus more in North and South Tyneside.

Yorkshire is being heavily targeted. Along with the 19 BNP candidates in Barnsley, there are six in Calderdale and more in a slew of Yorkshire towns.

North West

The North West region has the most BNP candidates with 66, including seven in Burnley and six in Allerdale, Cumbria. There are 20 BNP candidates across Manchester, Salford, Stockport and Thameside.

But the fascist party has run scared in Oldham, once one of its stronger areas, where it was humiliated in a parliamentary byelection earlier this year and lost its deposit.

The East Midlands BNP effort includes eight candidates in Bolsover, five in Derby and five in Amber Valley, where there is also an NF candidate.

There are seven BNP candidates in Thurrock, Essex, where it has scored significant votes before.

Longtime Nazi party the National Front has fallen back from its 1970s heydey, when its thugs attacked Black and Asian people in the street and it scored significant votes in elections. But it is putting an effort into Hull, with five candidates – to accompany one from the BNP – and has a handful of others across the country.

In the South East, five BNP members are standing in Arun Valley and four in Portsmouth.

Both the BNP and the NF are standing in the Scottish Parliament elections, and the BNP is standing a slate for the Welsh Assembly.

Campaigning

We will have details soon of local UAF leafleting and canvassing campaigns to urge people to use their votes against the fascists.

We want to repeat the success of last year, when BNP councillors were wiped out in Barking and Dagenham, and its leader Nick Griffin took a pasting in the Barking parliamentary seat.