A comparative discourse analysis of the construction of ‘in-groups’ in the 2005 and 2010 manifestos of the British National Party

Pronouns and ‘BNP’

Table 1 shows instances of self-references in the two manifestos and their total number of occurrences. Percentages of the relevant text are provided in order to account for the difference in word count between the two manifestos (25,664 words in 2005 and 29,790 in 2010).

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Table 1.

Self-references in the 2005 and 2010 manifestos.

Word	No. of occurrences in 2005	No. of occurrences in 2010
BNP	33 (0.13%)	372 (1.25%)
I	1	1
my	0	1
we	329 (1.28%)	236 (0.80%)
us	34 (0.15%)	5 (0.02%)
our	197 (0.76%)	197 (0.66%)
ours	2	0
ourselves	5 (0.02%)	0
Total	601	812

Whilst we notice a significant drop in the use of the first-person plural subject pronoun ‘we’ and the first-person plural object pronoun ‘us’, the most striking difference is the increase in the occurrence of ‘BNP’, which grew from 33 (0.13%) in 2005 to 372 (1.25%) in 2010. Closer inspection reveals that ‘BNP’ replaced ‘we’ to a large extent in the subject position and ‘us’ in the object position. The result of this is that the pronouns, which may be interpreted in numerous ways such as representing humankind, ‘ethnically British’ people, ‘civically British’ people, the BNP, the BNP leadership or the British nation state have been replaced by a single representative organ. Whereas in 2005, policies would be expressed by the use of the inclusive but potentially vague pronoun: ‘We will enact laws that will ensure that the dictatorship of the media over free debate in our society is dismantled’ (BNP, 2005: 9), 2010’s manifesto declares: ‘The BNP will enact legislation which will hold journalists and their media outlets criminally liable for knowingly publishing falsehoods’ (BNP, 2010: 43).

Such a dramatic increase in the use of the party name requires explanation. Whilst it may be argued that the change could be due to merely stylistic considerations, it may also be seen as symbolic of the growing confidence within the party in this period. Few would deny that the name BNP has historically been synonymous with street-level violence and racist thuggery. As the party began its cosmetic transformation under Nick Griffin, its first real attempt at a mainstream manifesto (BNP, 2005) seemed reluctant to mention the name which for the vast majority of the electorate would conjure up such negative associations as to turn them away immediately. It was, it seemed, the political party that dared not speak its name. Thus, in 2005, legitimisation of ideas and policies was attempted by backgrounding the name which caused such negative reactions. By 2010, the BNP’s confidence had grown to such a degree that the name of the party was constantly and proudly declared. It is, perhaps, the most potent symbol of growth in confidence that the party which once appeared to apologetically shrink from the acronym and its associations in its first foray into the wider political arena now places its name as a rallying point at the heart of the campaign. The name has subsumed the first-person pronouns. The message is clear – the in-group’s interests are identical to, and can only be served by, the BNP.

The increase in the use of the name not only demonstrates the growth in confidence and perceived legitimacy within the party, but is also an act of legitimisation in itself. Chilton (2004) outlines the dual methods of epistemic and deontic legitimisation exercised in political discourse. Whereas the latter employs methods which appeal to the emotional and moral sense of the audience, the former is grounded in rational and objective ‘facts’ which are given credibility through the authority of the speaker. In the field of party politics, the party name is an essential badge of identity which aids the construction of this authoritativeness.

Detailed study – ‘our’

A truly comprehensive corpus analysis would analyse each of these in-group pronouns by creating a concordance of their contexts and categorising their usage. Due to spatial limitations, we shall examine only one example more closely. As it appears exactly the same number of times in both texts (197 occurrences, constituting 0.76% of the 2005 manifesto and 0.66% in 2010), the first-person plural possessive pronoun ‘our’ seems a logical choice, seeing as it is the only numerous word whose regularity has not significantly altered over the five-year period (see Table 1). However, the mere fact that there has not been a noticeable change in the number of instances of the word does not provide the whole picture. In order to determine whether its usage has remained consistent, one must examine its individual instances to establish the identity of the self which is being evoked. Its selection for investigation is also appealing as it is such an important and emotive word, denoting, as it does, a collective ownership which is so central to the identity politics employed by the BNP (the subtitle of the 2010 manifesto was ‘Democracy, Freedom, Culture and Identity’). Its usage is far from straightforward, however. As Gee (2005) suggests, words may be seen as discourse models – representations of items in the world which hold very different associations for each person. For this reason, one must be extremely cautious in the interpretation of discourse items to carefully consider what associations, relevance and significance a word may have.

Figures 1 (2005) and 2 (2010) show the usage of ‘our’ and the version of the in-group to which it relates, whether the British nation state, the British people or the BNP. As there must exist a certain amount of subjectivity in the interpretation of the in-group to which they refer, they are presented as a Venn diagram in order to preserve the overlap of referents which it is possible to have. Taking the first instance of ‘our’ in the 2005 manifesto: ‘“Rebuilding British Democracy” is the title of our general election manifesto for a very good reason’ (p. 3), the use of ‘our’ clearly refers to the BNP only. On the other hand, the following sentence is taken from the 2010 manifesto, and may be interpreted as encompassing all three referents: ‘There is far too much emphasis on collective security, embracing nations that are not always well disposed to our viewpoint’ (p. 13). In this manner, each possible combination is accounted for.

An examination of the results reveals that the use of ‘our’ in the 2005 manifesto was fairly evenly spread across the categories, with a roughly equal number of references to each group as a unique subject, i.e. not sharing in-group identity with any other category. There is also a clear cluster of uses in which the possessive pronoun could refer to both the British nation and British people. To clarify this point, it must be stated at this juncture that when the BNP talks of ‘British people’, it is referring to what it terms ‘ethnically British’ or ‘indigenous’ British people, i.e. white people (for a discussion of this point, see the section entitled Britain and the British). By 2010, we indeed see a significant change in the word’s use, as references to the British nation state far outstrip other manifestations of collective ownership, with 92 instances of ‘our’ referring uniquely to the British nation. This is accounted for by a reduction in each of the other categories.

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Figure 1.

Referents of ‘our’ in the 2005 manifesto.

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Figure 2.

Referents of ‘our’ in the 2010 manifesto.

What, then, is the significance of such a change? This may, once more, be seen as another step in the process of legitimisation, and as symbolic of the growing self-assurance of the BNP leadership. Its relevance lies in the shift from articulating the desires of the party and attempting to speak for the ‘British’ people, to the much wider assertion of authority to speak for the country and presuming the power to influence the nation state. Such a bold authority claim of the type discussed above speaks of a party whose self-image has altered significantly, or is attempting to portray significantly loftier intentions. The claim constitutes a speech act which asserts itself on a higher political plain as yet unoccupied by the BNP.

Regarding the use of the object pronoun ‘us’, the 2005 text shows a total of 34 widely distributed references: 10 uses relate to British people, five to the British nation, and 10 could be seen as referring to both people and nation; three uses represent the BNP, and four relate to humankind; the British and Irish combined and the English have a single mention each. In 2010, only five instances occur, and the plurality of the in-group has disappeared. Gone are the references to the English, the Irish and humankind. In 2010, every remaining usage refers to Britain as a nation in the context of international relations. This is a further indication that, in terms of its manifesto at least, the party has abandoned the discourse of the little man riling against the powers that be, and has elected to adopt a more statesmanlike approach by invoking the authority of nationhood. As a single-issue party, or a ‘single-explanation party’, as Richardson (2011) has it, it may be hardly surprising that these self-references might be constructed around the concept of the British nation. It is therefore essential to define precisely what, or who, is being represented when the party speaks of ‘Britishness’.

Britain and the British

This move from the personal to the national may appear, at first glance, to be a shift from a preoccupation with an exclusive group of people to a more inclusive identification with the nation. One may be forgiven for presuming that this change marks the beginning of an outlook which embraces the nation and all within it, as opposed to one favoured group. However, this distinction is rather more pertinent when we remind ourselves of what is meant when the BNP uses the word ‘British’. Prior to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) winning the case on opening up membership to non-whites, the BNP’s racial composition was entirely white. Despite the change, there have understandably been few applicants from other ethnic backgrounds, and the EHRC has since had a subsequent ruling upheld that the revised constitution remains indirectly racially discriminatory as it requires members to oppose mixed-race relationships and support the repatriation of non-whites (EHRC, 2010). Therefore, when the BNP refers to itself, there can be little doubt that we are dealing with a group composed entirely of whites.

Moving on to the next group, that of British people, one might expect to be discussing a collection of people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, modern Britain being a multi-cultural and multi-racial society. However, whilst this group does constitute a far higher number of individuals, and encompasses a greater section of the public, we would be mistaken to assume that, when used by the BNP, it includes any non-white members. The 2005 version of the BNP Guide to Language Discipline (cited by Richardson and Wodak, 2009: 261) included the following instruction to its members:

Rule #15. BNP activists and writers should never refer to ‘black Britons’ or ‘Asian Britons’ etc, for the simple reason that such persons do not exist. These people are ‘black residents’ of the UK etc, and are no more British than an Englishman living in Hong Kong is Chinese.

It is essential to bear in mind, then, that when the BNP speaks of British people, this specifically refers to white British people. Thus, though Gordon Brown and Nick Griffin found themselves sharing the same slogan of ‘British jobs for British people’ in the run-up to the 2009 European elections (Richardson and Wodak, 2009; Summers, 2009), the two phrases entail a significant and ethnically determined difference. It is precisely this difference which we must consider when assessing whether a change to a discourse which speaks of a nation rather than one which is concerned with its people is actually more inclusive. Evidently, it is equally exclusive of any group which is not white. Perhaps more disturbingly still, this is a discourse which disguises its racism in the language of inclusivity, representing, as it does, a nation run by and for a single racial group, to the exclusion of all others. With this in mind, an analysis of the occurrence of words connected with nationhood yields interesting results. From 2005 to 2010, the instances of ‘British’ increase from 108 (0.42%) to 191 (0.64%), a rise in actual occurrences of 76.85%; ‘Britain’ grows from 117 (0.45%) to 171 (0.58%), or 46.15% overall; and ‘UK’ shoots from 14 (0.05%) to 50 (0.17%), constituting a quantitative increase of 257.14%. Clearly, this shift in self-representation in terms of nationhood is not limited to pronoun use.

‘Natives’ versus ‘indigenous peoples’

A further manner in which the in-group, that is, white Britons, is constructed is through words which imply a historical link to a point in the past which acts as a ‘year zero’. That is, certain words suggest an ancient and ongoing connection between a group of people and a geographical area and suggest an ‘original’ state. These words do not permit a view of history in which there is constant movement and mixing of people, cultures and races, but rather assign a beginning point of history which must be considered the norm. As Nick Griffin stated on the BBC’s (2009) Question Time programme (aired 22 October 2009), the BNP’s year zero, the point in time chosen to represent the ‘original’ British, is 17,000 years ago, just after the last mini ice age. The primary word chosen to express this condition in the 2005 text is ‘native’, appearing on 12 occasions (0.05%). By 2010, this word’s usage had dropped to five instances (0.02%). But, as illustrated by Griffin’s explanation on Question Time, this is not a concept which has fallen out of favour in BNP discourse. On the contrary, it has simply been replaced by the word ‘indigenous’. The word occurred only four times (0.02%) in 2005, but by 2010 had all but replaced the previous word to appear on 14 occasions (0.05%).

The reason for this is twofold. First, the abandonment of the word ‘native’ may be as a result of the imagery conjured up by a word which, for a party so preoccupied with British history and the British empire, evokes the Victorian discourse of spear-throwing savages subject to civilised Imperial rule. As Smith (2006), who discusses the use of the two words and their associations, reports: ‘How often do we read in the newspaper about the death or murder of a Native man, and in the same paper about the victimisation of a female Native, as though we were a species of sub-human animal life?’ (p. 9). This is hardly a role to which the BNP would aspire. On the other hand, the word ‘indigenous’ does not carry strong associations, as suggested above by Smith, with being ‘primitive’. It is a word more associated with efforts at a governmental level to preserve ancient and threatened cultures. It is a word more commonly used to describe noble civilisations which have suffered injustice at the hands of complacent or complicit authority, and which require nurture and protection to redress the balance. It is also a word which, in the simplest terms, drops the ‘sub-human’ and boosts the ‘victimisation’. This is another method of legitimisation, whereby the oppressor appropriates the language of the oppressed. As Back (cited in Atton, 2006) states, ‘the language of hate is increasingly being articulated through invocations of love’ (p. 576). This new approach of the evocation of victimhood by the BNP is specifically designed to suggest that ‘the implicit racism of the BNP is born out of suffering and repression, not hatred’ (Atton, 2006: 580).

White people

This discussion of the appropriation of the discourse of victimhood leads us neatly on to the examination of that most blatant and open reference to the in-group: the use of the word ‘white’ in reference to race. For a party so preoccupied, as we have seen, with what Richardson and Wodak (2009) refer to as the BNP’s ‘biological racism’ (p. 261), one may be surprised to note that the use of the word ‘white’ occurs only five times in the 2005 manifesto, and that only three of those refer to race. The first talks of ‘the “positive discrimination” schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens’ (p. 14); the second bemoans ‘a quasi-Marxist cultural war against all things white, European and male’ (p. 22); and the final example, somewhat out of left field, criticises the BBC for its depiction of ‘the white working class – in the most negative and unattractive light possible’ (p. 22). All three examples paint the white majority as victims, in line with the appropriation outlined above, and the white identity evoked is both male and working-class. The fact that only three uses appear is a clear example of how far the party had already come, under Griffin’s stewardship, in disguising its ethnocentric ideology under its various euphemisms. Furthermore, the evocation of victimhood was a far cry from Griffin’s declaration in the BNP magazine The Rune in 1995, that the defence of ‘rights for whites’ would only be achieved by ‘well-directed boots and fists’ (Atton, 2006: 576).

As we have seen, by 2005, the BNP had adopted both the discourse of the victim and a discourse which, according to Rule #8 of the Language and Concepts Discipline Manual, was ‘couched in language calculated to be relevant to [the audience’s] interests’. In this, its first attempt at a fully-fledged manifesto, the party had already abandoned (in public, it must be stressed) the language of regular and overt reference to race, knowing that this would not be welcomed by a wider public. One might expect, then, that this trend would continue in the 2010 text, and that overt references to race would be rare, replaced by euphemistic usage of words such as ‘British’ or ‘indigenous’, as previously discussed. However, the 2010 manifesto yields 11 examples of the word ‘white’ and one of ‘whites’, and, this time, each one refers to race. An examination of the concordance shows two examples concerned with what the BNP calls ‘white flight’ or ‘indigenous emigration’ – that is, white people leaving the city purportedly due to non-white immigration. This group appears distinct from, or at least includes a wider range than, the white working class of the 2005 manifesto, defined as it is by ‘vital technical skills’ (p. 69), and is an indication of the party’s attempts to attract more middle-class support. The white working class appears twice in 2010, once again in its negative portrayal by the media, and also as a victim of abandonment by ‘Labour’s globalist ideals’ (p. 22), but there is no mention of males.

The discourse of victimhood is taken up a level in 2010, with the language of racial abuse appropriated and reversed. We are informed that ‘whites are overwhelmingly the victims of racially motivated crime’ (p. 18) and are presented with statistics from the ‘well known researcher Tony Shell’ (who, according to the anti-fascist group Searchlight, is the BNP’s Plymouth organiser (Gable, 2008)) that ‘white victims of racist murders are over-represented’ (Gable, 2008). In contrast to the 2005 text, we see children presented in terms of race and are told that ‘Asian pupils outnumber white children’ in primary schools (p. 17) and that the Office for National Statistics had reported that in 2005, ‘36 percent of all births in England and Wales were not “white British”’ (Gable, 2008). However, of the 12 references to ‘white’ in the 2010 manifesto, the largest number relates to girls and females. In a new approach employing the racialisation of crime (p. 33), we hear of the ‘grooming of white girls for sex’ and the ‘growing concern at the attitudes of some Asian men towards white girls’; that ‘white girls as young as 12 are being targeted for sex’ and ‘young white females are lured in sex abuse traps by Muslim males’.

In this manner, the usage of the word ‘white’ to signify the in-group has made a surprising and significant reappearance, following its near abandonment in the 2005 text. In 2005, ‘whiteness’ was perhaps seen as too blatant a badge of identity and racial preoccupation, and though associated with victimhood, the vulnerable group which was constructed was very definitely male and working class. In 2010, whilst there remain two references to the working class, this has been accompanied by an equal number of references to the ‘white flight’ of technically skilled employees, constituting a widening of the socio-economic demographic being targeted. Most significant, however, is the disappearance of men, replaced with girls, children and babies as the vulnerable victims. Perhaps the ultimate in ‘apple pie’ concepts, with which no one could argue, the protection of the most defenceless in society is guaranteed to elicit an emotive response. As expressed by Atton (2006), ‘the BNP is anti-multicultural, anti-equality and anti-freedom, yet its discourse uses the tropes of multiculturalism, equality and freedom to maintain an ideological space where racism and repression may appear natural and commonsensical’ (p. 586). Thus, the BNP has reintroduced the word ‘white’ into its discourse by distancing itself from a male identity and widening its socio-economic focus beyond the working class, whilst simultaneously stepping up its discourse of victimhood by switching the victim status from working-class white men to white girls, children and babies, which has been achieved by a process of the racialisation of crime.

Humans

To conclude this analysis of the construction of the in-group, let us briefly examine the use of what may be considered, in most other texts at least, to be perhaps the ultimate inclusive in-group – humanity. In 2005, we see 23 uses of ‘human’, two of ‘humane’ and two of ‘humanity’. These 27 references relate to general concepts such as human nature, diversity, cultures, populations, misery, tragedy and history, and speak of our ‘non-human’ animal relatives. The tone is one of the ‘celebration of diversity’ and difference. Lest we suspect for a moment that this may be translated as parity, it is also clearly stated that the BNP ‘do not accept the absurd superstition – propagated for different though sometimes overlapping reasons by capitalists, liberals, Marxists and theologians – of human equality’ (p. 17). Nevertheless, the frequent mention of ‘humans’ and ‘humanity’ does have the effect of establishing the existence of some larger unifying group, whatever the perception of groups within it. This invocation of our basic humanity conjures up ideas of our species-wide civilisation, and of unity at least at some level.

Though the previous sentence may seem to be a rather obvious statement, its relevance becomes pertinent as we examine the most recent text. In 2010, references to ‘human’ drop to 11, with one use of ‘humane’. However, it is not only the quantitative evaluation which demonstrates a discursive shift. A qualitative analysis of usage in context yields one reference to the need for a ‘just and humane’ welfare system, mirroring the meaning of ‘fairness’ mentioned earlier. One use of ‘human’ employs the word to support its ‘celebration of difference’ approach: ‘Group identity, belonging, loyalty and allegiance, in other words, are not products of “false consciousness”, economics, imperialism or sociological processes; they are an essential part of elementary human nature’ (p. 22). However, the overwhelming majority of the uses of the word are capitalised. The reason for this is that they all form the titles of organisations or laws designed to protect human rights, and, in every case, they are opposed. In all three references to the ‘Equalities and Human Rights Commission’ (the body which judged the BNP constitution to be discriminatory), it is prefixed with the verb ‘repeal’. The same is true of the ‘Human Rights Act’, which appears on four occasions, again in the context of its dissolution. The remaining three uses refer to the ‘European Convention on Human Rights’, in each case accompanied by the intention to ‘withdraw from’ it. In 2005, we also see 14 uses of ‘rights’, all of which are positive. By 2010, this figure increases to 29, half of which are negative. Between the texts, rights have moved from being something positive to be protected, to something pernicious to be feared. In what seems a conscious decision to cease highlighting the shared humanity of our species, and instead speak of humans only in opposition to organisations which support the concept of equality between people of all races, the BNP has rather subtly taken the most drastic step in the delegitimisation of ‘the other’. As Chilton (2004) stresses:

Delegitimisation can manifest itself in acts of negative other-presentation, acts of blaming, scape-goating, marginalising, excluding, attacking the moral character of some individual or group, attacking the communicative cooperation of the other, attacking the rationality and sanity of the other. The extreme is to deny the humanness of the other. (p. 47)

Taken as a whole, the total number of the most overt self-reference words (personal pronouns, the explicit acronym ‘BNP’, Britain/British/UK, native/indigenous and white/whites) sees an overall rise from 861 (3.34%) to 1254 (4.22%) as a proportion within their respective texts, and representing a rise in actual occurrences of 45.64%. This is clearly a significant change in perspective, as policies and ideas are now articulated much more in terms of the in-group.