  We are officially the fourth party in British politics!!!! Your having a laugh ent ya! The BNP may be the 6th largest - in England, and the 8th in the UK. See the article below out of the July-Sept 2005 issue of Heritage and Destiny.  BNP NOW ENGLAND'S SIXTH LARGEST PARTY?  The May 2005 issue of the BNP's members bulletin British Nationalist â of which a copy is kindly passed onto me each month â leads with a story entitled âBNP moves up to fourthâ. Fourth of what I donât know â but they are certainly not Britainâs fourth largest party â which of course is what they are now claiming. Tony Lecomberâs reasoning for this is that because the BNP beat the UK Independence Party and the Green Party in more seats than they beat the BNP that now makes the BNP number four!  However, if any H&amp;D reader looks at the voting figures a bit more closely a much different picture emerges. So letâs look at the facts â not Lecomber propaganda. Fact: The BNP put up 119 candidates and took 192,746 votes (not the 194,685 claimed on the BNP website). Fact: The UKIP polled 611,423 votes with 495 candidates. Fact: The Green Party took 280,330 votes with 202 candidates.  So clearly the BNP achieved a higher average vote per candidate (1,623 votes compared with 1,235 for UKIP and 1,387 Green) but it also did not have the organizational resources or money to field as many candidates as the UKIP and Greens, both of which have a membership of over 10,000 (compared to the BNPâs 4-5,000). The BNP ran candidates in those areas that offered the best prospects (they studied the Euro 2004 results and mainly ran candidates in those areas where the vote was above 8%). If the BNP had put up many more candidates and covered a bigger area â as it did in last yearâs Euro elections - they would inevitably have received a much lower average vote. It is very unlikely that the BNP could have won as many votes as the UKIP or Greens with the same number of candidates.  At the local County Council elections too the BNPâs coverage was much more restricted. The BNP ran only forty five candidates nationwide compared to the Greensâ who ran 604 (one quarter of all seats) and UKIP almost 100 local election candidates. By these criteria alone, the UKIP and Greens are both much larger than the BNP. But then there are factors like the number of Euro MPs each party has. UKIP won twelve, Greens two, BNP have none. Or the number of GLA seats each party has. The UKIP won two, the Greens have two, BNP have none. Or local councillors? The Greens have around eighty, the UKIP have about twenty five and the BNP have twenty two. Taking it one step further, seeing the far left-wing party Respect, elected one MP - George Galloway in East London â does that make them a bigger party than the BNP â who have no MPs? I would suggest no â the BNP is the bigger party taking everything into account, but Respect is not far behind now at number seven. In addition to its relatively small number of candidates â two in each country - the BNP has hardly any presence at all in Scotland and Wales. In Scotland the Scottish National Party and Scottish Socialist Party are well ahead of the BNP, pushing them into eighth place north of the border. In Wales Plaid Cymru rank well ahead of the BNP who are just number nine there, behind the Forward Wales Party and the Socialist Labour Party. In Northern Ireland the BNP has less than twenty members and is not even registered as a political party (even the tiny National Front is registered there!), so it could not run candidates even if it wanted to. So the BNPâs claim to be Britainâs (not even Englandâs) fourth party, like its predictions of winning some second places in the polls and possibly even electing an MP in Barking and a mayor in Stoke-on-Trent, are very wishful thinking and just an attempt to prove to its gullible new members that all their hard work and donations during the campaign were not in vain! It is true the BNP votes in all but four seats went up compared to 2001. But a comparison with the votes from the 1970s is also interesting. The National Front, which was Britainâs largest nationalist party during that period, ran candidates in the General Elections of 1970, February and October 1974 and May 1979. In 1970, shortly after they were formed the NF ran ten candidates and received a tiny vote. In February 1974, they ran 54 candidates, and took 76,865 votes, which was about 0.2% of the national poll and an average of 1,423 per candidate. In October that year, the NF ran 90 candidates who polled 113,843 votes, 0.4% of the number of votes nationally, an average of 1,265 per candidate. In 1979 the NF which by then had a membership of over 15,000 ran 303 candidates who took 191,719 votes, a similar total to what the BNP achieved in May 2005, although it only represented 0.6% of those who voted, compared to the BNPâs 0.74%.  Looking at these facts and figures the BNP is not really much stronger electorally than the NF was at the end of the 1970s, and has a much smaller membership. While it is beyond dispute that the 1970s NF was indeed Englandâs fourth party, it should be remembered that the NF never managed to elect a single local councillor - the BNP elected over twenty. Mr Lecomberâs claim that the BNP has advanced to become âthe fourth party in British politicsâ does not stand up. One can define such a description in different ways, and Mr Lecomber characteristically shifts his terms to suit his argument. Are we talking about total nationwide support - in which case UKIP and the Greens are far bigger - or are we talking about the strong localised support required to win domestic elections on our first-past-the-post system, in which case Respect and even the Greens again are bigger. Letâs try to keep a sense of proportion!  Heritage and Destiny, PO Box 331, Blackburn, BB1 2WU.     In 1979 the NF which by then had a membership of over 15,000 ran 303 candidates who took 191,719 votes, a similar total to what the BNP achieved in May 2005, although it only represented 0.6% of those who voted, compared to the BNPâs 0.74%.  Looking at these facts and figures the BNP is not really much stronger electorally than the NF was at the end of the 1970s    That would make sense except the BNP stood in less than half the amount of seats in 2005 than the NF stood in 1979, and yet we got more votes (just about) But I agree with you that the BNP is not Britains fourth party.