The complete BNP membership list was leaked online on 18th November 2008. Whilst disclosing the list is a clear breach of the members’ privacy, publishing statistical analysis and aggregate data, free of personally identifiable information, is in the public interest — specifically, this information helps assess the veracity of BNP leader Nick Griffin’s assertion that the party has mainstream support. This article presents such an analysis, presented along with graphs of the key statistics.
The bar chart above shoes the number of members in each of the parties for which this data was available. The precise figures are: 290000 Conservatives, 176891 Labour, 64727 Liberal Democrats, 17000 United Kingdom Independence Party, 13944 Scottish Nation Party, and 12724 British National Party (sources: various news reports from 2007 — the apparent date of the BNP membership list — quoting representatives of the respective parties).
BNP membership lags far behind that of the three main parties, and is roughly comparable to that of UKIP and the SNP. Fees from members are an important source of income for the minor parties, who generally cannot rely on large contributions from wealthy donors.
The pie chart above shows the proportion of BNP members with each pre-nominal title, indicating the gender balance of the party. The precise figures are: 10297 Mr, 1422 Mrs, 556 Ms, 411 Miss, 41 Dr, 4 Rev, 2 Sir, and 1 self-declared Lord.
82% of BNP members are male, and only 18% female (most of those categorised as ‘other’ in the pie chart above were men, with only a minority of women, and so the 82% figure is higher than that shown for ‘Mr’). This compares with 60% of Labour members and 50% of Conservative Party members (source: Joni Lovenduski and Pippa Norris, Women In Politics).