The principal strategy of Nick Griffin, its Cambridge-educated leader, has been to escape the jackbooted, knuckle-dragging image of street-fighting neo-Nazis and to become a popular anti-immigration party. The East End of London has become a stronghold, with the BNP installed as the official opposition on Barking & Dagenham council under the leadership of the artist Richard Barnbrook. Mr Barnbrook made a breakthrough by winning the BNP’s first seat in the London Assembly. The party’s electoral success came after it began concentrating its attacks on Muslims.
See also “BNP seeks to make a martyr of activist killed by Muslim elder“. And yes, that’s a reference to Keith Brown, “an unemployed father of seven with a long criminal record” who was responsible for “a frightening campaign of intimidation, violence and racial abuse” against his Muslim neighbours – precisely the sort of racist thug who would make an appropriate “martyr” for the BNP.