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Towards a ‘Civic’ Narrative: British National Identity and the Transformation of the British National Party
Author(s) -
HALIKIOPOULOU DAPHNE,
VASILOPOULOU SOFIA
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-923x.2010.02129.x
Subject(s) - narrative , context (archaeology) , modernization theory , rhetoric , national identity , identity (music) , sociology , political science , ethnic group , griffin , gender studies , public administration , law , politics , history , aesthetics , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology
This article examines the ways in which the BNP utilises the elements of British national identity in its discourse and argues that, during Griffin's leadership, the party has made a discursive choice to shift the emphasis from an ethnic to a civic narrative. We put forward two hypotheses, 1: the modernisation of the discourse of extreme right parties in the British context is likely to be related to the adoption of a predominantly civic narrative and 2: in the context of British party competition the BNP is likely to converge towards UKIP, drawing upon elements of its perceived winning formula, i.e. a predominantly civic rhetoric of national identity. We proceed to empirically test our hypotheses by conducting a twofold comparison. First, we compare the BNP's discourse pre‐ and post‐1999 showing the BNP's progressive adoption of a civic narrative; and second the BNP's post‐1999 discourse to that of UKIP in order to illustrate their similarities in terms of civic values.