However, the BNP’s open air media conference didn’t last too long. Within five minutes, the far-right party was swamped by anti-fascist protesters determined to stop the meeting and began pelting the BNP with eggs.

Being surrounded by the crush of protesters, Nick Griffin shouted “these people are organized by the Labour Party.”

Not long after the protestors interrupted proceedings, the BNP leader was bundled into a car, and promptly drove off. The protesters then regrouped and took the media spotlight themselves. They say the right to free speech shouldn’t extend to the BNP:

“I believe that somebody like Nick Griffin who thinks that the Holocaust didn’t happen is not an honest politician. He tells lies to win votes, and we have to expose those lies and stop him from standing as a normal politician,” says Wayman Bennett from the organization Unite Against Fascism.

Nearly a million voters in the UK don’t agree. In an election result that the UK’s mainstream political parties are calling “horrific”, the British National Party has won seats in the European Parliament for the first time. It comes against a backdrop of disillusionment with politics, with MPs across the board embroiled in a scandal over padded expense claims.

Virendra Sharma, a Labour MP, admits he and his colleagues are to blame for driving voters into the arms of the BNP, but he believes they will come back when they realise their mistake.

“This is the way that people think we can punish those political parties who failed to deliver the right policies, they will come back and say they made a mistake and they will come back to the mainstream politics,” says Virendra Sharma.

Politicians and demonstrators may have misjudged the British public. Calling the electorate misguided and ill-informed may not be the right way to win them back. Even though the BNP has been shunned by mainstream politics for its extreme views, it has still not disappeared. Nick Griffin, now an MEP, will be travelling to Brussels by the end of the week to begin promoting his far-right agenda.