BNP Imploding? Blame the Party Constitution
Nationalists have been discussing how the British National Party ended up on the verge of civil war. I feel that the moment the founder’s pen hit the paper that the party’s constitution was written on, he set off a chain of events which would escalate to the situation the party finds itself in today, 28 years later.
Tyndall
John Tyndall planted the seeds of this whole saga when he drafted the constitution. You’re right, the constitution is a product of the times and is designed to prevent the factionalism that Tyndall experienced in other organisations. The constitution gives the party an all-powerful leader, sacrificing democracy in exchange for party stability, however, in recent years, the nature of the constitution has caused many public splits in the party – mainly because John Tyndall designed his leadership role for himself, and John Tyndall is not Nick Griffin.
This autocratic role of party chairman, allows the person possessing the role to appoint people to every other position in the party. It means that the chairman can never be held accountable by elected representatives on a board which can scrutinise the chair’s performance. This forces people, who have an issue with the chairman, into a corner.
Eddy Butler does not propose a fully elected advisory council, he proposes that the body should be partly democratised, with 4(?) elected members. He also plans to take party administration out of the hands of what he calls the ‘political chairman’, a name that acknowledges that the role of leader (which is a political role) is combined with that of chairman – I don’t like it, but there we go.
Tyndall’s version of the constitution was fine for a party of 1,000/2,000 members. It is not good enough for the administrating of a party with millions in turnover and over ten thousand members covering every socio-economic band. Eddy Butler proposes a compromise, and as we have been saying, compromise is a major theme of mainstream politics. Fail to compromise and you prove to everybody watching this ‘civil war’ from the sidelines, that Britain’s most successful nationalist party is destined to remain on the fringes – powerless.
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