‘It’s Not Just Them, It’s Whites as Well’: Whiteness, Class and BNP Support

Abstract

The emergence of the British National Party (BNP), primarily at the local level, has led to a proliferation of political, media and academic accounts seeking to explain its rise. These accounts have focused on a homogeneous, fixed construction of ‘the white working class’. This article, written during early 2010, seeks to challenge these assumptions by offering a more nuanced account of the nature of BNP support. It will be suggested that the data available on BNP supporters demonstrates that a focus on such simplistic conceptions of the ‘white working class’, ignores the heterogeneity that exists within this group, while simultaneously downplaying how BNP voters construct boundaries, drawing on both ‘racial’ and class distinctions. The article then draws on qualitative interviews conducted with BNP voters in Burnley between 2004 and 2005, exploring how notions of entitlement rest on particular, differentiated claims to whiteness — claims mediated by class and articulated through assertions of ‘respectability’ and ‘responsibility’.

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