The British National Party (BNP)'s prominence in the 1990s was not an overnight phenomenon. From its beginnings in the early 1980s as John Tyndall's response to his failed attempt at an authoritarian reconstruction of the National Front (NF) its organisational structure accorded with his ideas, but its ideology and political objectives, as Nigel Copsey points out, merely followed generally in the NF Flag vein, needing no change. For the rest of the decade, the party focused on long-term organisational development – attempts to forge an alliance with the NF Flag faction in 1987 failed on Tyndall's authoritarian insistence on being leader of the merged organisation – rather than electoral conflict. Its poor performance in the 1983 general election when its 53 candidates averaged only 1.3 per cent of the vote demonstrated that fighting elections only highlighted party weakness. As it entered the 1990s, therefore, the BNP had failed to make a decisive political breakthrough; nevertheless, with the collapse of the NF it was now the major vehicle of extreme-Right opinion, while the problem of moving from the British political margins would gradually be solved mainly through the efforts of Nick Griffin.

Griffin found his way back into the extreme-Right centre initially through engaging in controversial debate on the Holocaust; and having begun the 1990s arguing against engaging in electoral contests, by mid-decade had changed tack and was now enthusiastically promoting it. Griffin's political rise was aided by Tyndall’s mistakes. As the BNP became more prominent it attracted the aggressive attention of anti-Nazi activists. In response, Combat 18 (C18), led by one Charlie Sargent, emerged from BNP ranks in 1992 as a party protection force. Openly neo-Nazi, and promoting a race war, it rapidly became a problem as it turned on party activists who favoured contesting elections. Encouraged by a BNP council by-election victory (by seven votes) in the Tower Hamlets ward of Millwall, London, in September 1993, Tyndall declared C18 a proscribed organisation. But little was done to enforce proscription and C18 continued to have a debilitating effect on the party, even creating its own political wing, the National Socialist Alliance. At this time, BNP membership, as estimated by party activist (and Searchlight mole) Tim Hepple, who accessed its membership cards, was over 3,000.