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Angry White Men: Individual and Contextual Predictors of Support for the British National Party

Ford, Robert, Goodwin, Matthew J. (2010) Angry White Men: Individual and Contextual Predictors of Support for the British National Party. Political Studies, 58 (1). pp. 1-25. ISSN 0032-3217. E-ISSN 1467-9248. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00829.x) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:54405)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00829.x

Abstract

The British National party (BNP) is the most successful extreme right party in Britain's electoral history and is the fastest growing political party in twenty-first century Britain. This article presents the first ever individual-level analysis of BNP supporters, utilising a survey data set uniquely compiled for this purpose. We find that support for the BNP is concentrated among older, less educated working-class men living in the declining industrial towns of the North and Midlands regions. This pattern of support is quite distinct from that which underpinned the last electorally relevant extreme right party in Britain – the National Front (NF) – whose base was young working-class men in Greater London and the West Midlands. Extreme right voters in contemporary Britain express exceptionally high levels of anxiety about immigration and disaffection with the mainstream political parties. Multi-level analysis of BNP support shows that the party prospers in areas with low education levels and large Muslim minority populations of Pakistani or African origin. The BNP has succeeded in mobilising a clearly defined support base: middle-aged working-class white men anxious about immigration, threatened by local Muslim communities and hostile to the existing political establishment. We conclude by noting that all the factors underpinning the BNP's emergence – high immigration levels, rising perceptions of identity conflict and the declining strength of the cultural and institutional ties binding voters to the main parties – are likely to persist in the coming years. The BNP therefore looks likely to consolidate itself as a persistent feature of the British political landscape.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00829.x
Subjects: J Political Science
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Politics and International Relations
Depositing User: Matthew Goodwin
Date Deposited: 01 Mar 2016 16:43 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:22 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/54405 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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