Only the brand name remains, gone is the winning product

Our first task after forming the new movement in 1982 was to establish its name. Up till then the name of the National Front had been the one synonymous with our politics nationwide. There were some who believed that because of these factors the surviving remnant of the NF would be bound to emerge again as the dominant force in British Nationalism. These people mistook shadow for substance: they imagined that it was the Front's well-known name that had created its former strength, and that therefore that name would for ever remain a source of such strength. In fact they had got things entirely the wrong way round. The fame attached to the name of the National Front in the 1970s was wholly the result of the public impact made at the time by its growth and success, and that growth and success were above all the work of certain people, that is to say a team of capable and energetic individuals who had put the party on the map. The name had been made by the party's progress, not the reverse.

Now that the people who had been the architects of the Front's success in the 1970s had, for the most part, severed their connections with it, the idea that its impetus could be revived and then sustained just by its name was a sad illusion. Only the brand name remained; the winning product had gone.

Gradually, we started to succeed in winning recognition for the name of the British National Party by forcing our way into the public eye by a series of bold activities. Our first chance to do this came with the general election of 1983.

When this election was called, the BNP was barely more than a year old, and considerably smaller in membership and resources than the National Front had been when it took on the (up till then) unprecedented challenge of fighting 50-plus seats in the election of February 1974. We decided nevertheless that this somehow had to be done. Our reward would be to qualify for broadcasting time, and this, more than anything else, would help to make the name of the new party known to the British public. It was done - by a miracle of determination, effort and sacrifice. As expected, our votes in the election were not high, but we had made the first important move towards putting the British National Party on the map.

Tyndall J, The Eleventh Hour, Third Edition, 1998, Albion Press: Welling, p 490