REPORTER: Evan Williams
In the British town of Codnor protesters recently rallied against what they fear is a rise of fascism. Their target was the annual gathering of the British National Party, a right-wing group that has just won two seats in the European parliament. At the meeting, BNP chairman Nick Griffin roused the troops by celebrating the party's landmark election victory.
NICK GRIFFIN, CHAIRMAN, BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY: Well, we have won, and we have won on a massive scale and it's thanks to every activist, it's thanks to you.
Deemed racists by their critics, the BNP is riding a swing to the right in Britain - mainly on the issue of immigration.
DEREK ADAMS, MANCHESTER BNP: No one minds a little bit of immigration, but for goodness sake, the way it's happened in this country, as I've said before, it's not immigration it's colonisation. It used to be a lovely area, this.
In the country's north-west, Derek Adams is showing me a part of Manchester, he says has become a Muslim area.
DEREK ADAMS: And here we have an Islamic bank... ..another Islamic Centre. Well, it's is a church that has been turned in to an Islamic Centre.
Derek shows me a map he's drawn up of inner Manchester.
DEREK ADAMS: You've only covered that little tiny block there.
The light green marks the area he says is no longer white and British.
DEREK ADAMS: Genuine British people are concerned about what's happening.
These changes worry Derek so much that he's become the Manchester organiser of British National Party. And he has set up his de facto BNP headquarters here, at his pub, the Ace of Diamonds.
DEREK ADAMS: Hello there, how's it goin'? Top of the morning to you, sir.
Until recently these working class men of England's north were the country's core Labour Party voters. But something new is happening. Here, and in many other places across Britain, voters like these are abandoning labour and voting for the BNP.
DEREK ADAMS: I stood in a ward that we had never ever stood in, earlier this year where we picked up approximately 23% of the vote, second place, which absolutely shocked the establishment parties to the core.
PATRICK MATHEWS, TAXI DRIVER: I'm in the Ace of Diamonds, and...
Taxi driver Patrick Mathews has voted Labour all his life - until this year. He says many in the north are angry with Labour because they feel it has abandoned the working class and done nothing to stop systematic parliamentary rorts now known as the MP'S expenses scandal.
PATRICK MATHEWS: They've been screwing the system for years and they are looking at us as if they are lily-white and saying to us "We are only just doing our job and we didn't do anything wrong."
Just an hour south of Manchester, the rolling hills of Wales provide an appropriately traditional base for the strategic brains behind the British National Party. In the garden of his 400-year-old farmhouse, BNP chairman Nick Griffin is preparing his party's next fund-raising pamphlet. Today, his target is illegal immigrants.
NICK GRIFFIN: No, still not happy, say it "Still not happy". . No... still wanting more.
MAN: Immigration detainees, scrub what you've got and put "Still not happy".
They also want Britain to withdraw from the European Union. It's an ironic demand given the BNP's election victory at the European Parliament, including a seat there for Griffin himself.
NICK GRIFFIN: We don't want to be part of the EU for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's ruinously expensive - you're talking about billions and billions of pounds every year. Secondly, we are paying that money for the privilege of being ruled by unelected foreigners so it's done away with our sovereignty, with our self-rule - with a thousand years of British freedom - and thirdly, the elite had no mandate to do this. To us it's thoroughly undemocratic. So for all those reasons, we want out.
Critics label Griffin's BNP as Nazi-loving fascists. So what do they actually stand for?
NICK GRIFFIN: We're here for the indigenous people of these islands - we regard that's English, Scots, Irish, Welsh and people who have assimilated completely to our way of doing things. Our way of being.
REPORTER: What's your position on immigration and the migrants who are already here?
NICK GRIFFIN: Our position on immigration is that Britain is now officially the most overcrowded place in Europe, other than Malta, which isn't a country, it's a postage stamp, basically. So therefore it's time to shut the doors.
REPORTER: Completely?
NICK GRIFFIN: Completely.
While I'm here, Griffin gets a call from his lawyer. The BNP has a white Briton-only membership policy which is now being investigated by Britain's Equal Opportunity Commission. If found to be illegal, the BNP could be stripped of its EU seats.
NICK GRIFFIN: If a group exists to benefit specific ethnic groups then it's exempt from the race relations laws. This is how you can get adverts in the 'Guardian' - jobs, for an enormous amount of taxpayers' money spent advertised for black applicants only, for a Bengali applicant only. These groups are exempt because they are operating for the benefit of their communities. We do the same for ours.
Griffin's BNP wants those immigrants, and their descendants, who do not accept Britain's culture, morals and democracy as dominant, to leave. The party gives special attention to Britain's growing Muslim population.
NICK GRIFFIN: They have resolutely refused to adjust their birth rate to our birth rate and each generation seems to be more radical than the previous one and more Islamic than the previous one. We have to have a serious debate about what we do when you have two civilisations, two utterly different ways of running the world, which are incompatible. So the whole Western world has to decide - does it want it become an Islamic caliphate or does it want to remain a Christian, post-Christian, secular, democratic society?
Those views may seem extreme but with 2.4 million or 8% of Britain's workforce now unemployed, there is concern that support for the BNP's message will continue to grow.
MATT GOODWIN, RESEARCHER: What the BNP has done really well is it's really stripped away its extremist baggage and presented itself as a radical anti-establishment alternative, much in the way that One Nation did in recent history.
Matt Goodwin is a leading researcher on extremist politics. He's about to release a new study of what British voters think of the BNP's far-right nationalist policies. He found 20% of British voters support aspects of the BNP platform.
MATT GOODWIN: There's no question that the BNP's enjoying a surge of support. And this is a worrying development for British politics. Prior to 2000, the BNP only ever elected one councillor. It now has over 50. It has a seat on the Greater London Assembly. It has two members of the European Parliament. This is an unprecedented development in British Politics.
Just north of Manchester, Oldham, has a history of race riots and a large Asian Muslim community has been feeling the pressure. Nanu Mais is one of the Oldham Muslim Centre organisers. He personally knows of several racist attacks on Muslims, including when he saw a local man knocked over by two white men in a car.
NANU MAIS, OLDHAM MUSLIM CENTRE: The people who's done it, they've actually parked their car, they stopped their car, they got out to beat him even more. There was two white lads. Then I run down, I shouted and then they went.
Nanu and his fellow Muslims say even though they maintain their faith, they are truly British and play a positive role creating many of their own jobs. They fear the BNP is capitalising on recent anti-Muslim sentiment.
NANU MAIS: The reason they got in there is I think they've changed their tactic a little bit. If you look up many years back, when they were protesting against the Jews, and the Black and the Asians, well, now they've singled out just the Muslims.
The BNP's leadership insists that conservative Islam is incompatible with British society. It even accuses immigrants of sinister plots to sexually groom young white women.
NICK GRIFFIN: Effectively it involves young Muslim men, very often in their 20s, pretending to be 17, conning girls of 12 or 13 into thinking that they think they are beautiful and very desirable and grown-up and then involving them over a period of very often just weeks in drink, drugs, then gang rape and prostitution.
REPORTER: Is this just anecdotal or have you got proven cases where this has happened?
NICK GRIFFIN: There are proven cases, anecdotally, and without a shadow of fact, it affects hundreds of girls every Friday night, Saturday night, in places like Blackburn and Bradford, Oldham and Luton. It's an enormous problem.
PAUL JENKINS, ACTIVIST: Come to the anti-fascist protests... Stop the Fascist Rally, thank you.
Muslims and anti-BNP activists reject those claims. On the multicultural campus of the University of London, anti-BNP activists are trying to drum up support. Throwing eggs at Nick Griffin's photo replicates the moment when activists threw eggs at the real Nick Griffin as he went to make his speech accepting the EU seat. The BNP said the attack curbed their freedom of speech and the right to act as a legitimate party, but that doesn't wash here.
MAN: Well, I hate the swine. I hate the fascist bastard. I hate him because he's a fascist.
Donna is one of the organisers of Unite Against Fascism. The day the BNP won their two MEP seats she was all over the news criticising their victory and even their right to run.
DONNA, UNITE AGAINST FASCISM: I received death threats from Nazis to me, saying they know where I live, and they want to come round and kill me. This is the nature of the BNP. They call me a 'coon' a 'nigger' that they know where I live, that my life is going to change, that I will not be speaking again very shortly, that I should watch out day and night for them to come for me.
There is no proof those threats came from the British National Party itself. They deny any knowledge or involvement. But that doesn't rule out what many fear - that the BNP's election victories will lead to more attacks like this one when a 17-year-old ethnic Indian girl was hit in the face by what she believes were BNP supporters.
MAN 1: It happened in the area where Nick Griffin won his parliamentary election seat, so I suspect there is a link.
MAN 2: Also some of the BNP activities has directly threatened Muslims. They made a direct threat and after that it happened. So there is a correlation about it.
REPORTER: Was she a Muslim girl?
MAN 2: Yeah, she was a Muslim girl.
Paul Jenkins is a Unite Against Fascism activist from north-west England.
PAUL JENKINS: Stop the Fascist rally in Codnor.
He fears the BNP's growing popularity could legitimise further attacks and racist extremism.
PAUL JENKINS: The BNP is a Nazi party. The BNP is a fascist organisation. Their leader Nick Griffin has a conviction for denying the Nazi Holocaust happened.
In the BNP stronghold of Burnley, north of Manchester, Sharon Wilkinson is keen to show me some of the projects that have propelled her onto the local council.
SHARON WILKINSON: Park up anywhere around here. These bushes, all around here, can you see? They are getting a little bit overgrown and those on the side there, they were getting a little bit overgrown. So, we've been in touch with the council and they've said, yeah, they're going to come round and cut some of the trees back.
It is an area of low incomes and council houses.
SHARON WILKINSON: Hello, Linda.
REPORTER: Hello, Linda - does she do a good job?
LINDA: Oh, she does an excellent job.
REPORTER: Why's that?
LINDA: Yes, she does plenty, I mean anything we want her to do, she does for us.
REPORTER: What are people's views of the BNP?
LINDA: They seem to listen to what the people want. I think some people think they are racists but I don't think they're racists. I think they've got some good strong points. I think we have got a lot of immigrants coming in where they shouldn't be coming in and taking money out of the country instead of spending the money in the country and I think this is what the problem is and I think it should be sorted out.
SHARON WILKINSON: And I've grown up with this park...
Just up the road Sharon wants to show me a memorial to the war dead she has had repaired.
SHARON WILKINSON: People can see that we're active. We'll get a phone call from somebody - it can be anything and we're there.
REPORTER: What is your position on immigration?
SHARON WILKINSON: My position on immigration is that Britain is full. Enough is enough.
Britain goes to the polls early next year. With a fifth of British voters supporting at least aspects of the BNP platform, parts of the UK are facing an entirely new political landscape.
NICK GRIFFIN: The fact is that we have now got high elected office so it further boosts our status as the political anti-heroes. We're the Sex Pistols of British politics and we've just got a number one.
Reporter/Camera
EVAN WILLIAMS
Fixer
Editor
DAVID POTTS
WAYNE LOVE
Producer
VICTORIA STROBL
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN