'Hundreds' of Conservatives are in the BNP

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Up to 200 Conservative Party members have links with the British National Party, far-right leaders have claimed.

Following revelations that Iain Duncan Smith's campaign for the Conservative Party leadership had attracted the support of Edgar Griffin, father of the BNP leader Nick Griffin, it has emerged that many more Tories have extreme right connections.

The BNP has claimed they number between 150 and 200 but would give no further details. "There are a large number of activists from the Conservatives. We are not prepared to divulge names. They are just ordinary people and we don't want their houses to be firebombed," a BNP spokesman said.

Mr Griffin, 79, has now been expelled from both the Duncan Smith team – where he was one of a number of vice-presidents – and the Conservative Party. He had been a member for 53 years and now claims the BNP is "nowhere near as right-wing as the Tory party".

But this is not the first time Tories have forged links with far-right parties. Following the revelations surrounding Mr Griffin, a second Tory with links to the BNP was uncovered. Cresswell Rice, 72, from Somerset, said he had been a member of the Tory party for 15 years but had also joined the BNP a year ago.

In another case, Chris Green, who stood for the Conservatives in elections for Peterborough city council, is now an officer for the British National Party. He first joined the extremist party in 1997 then left to join the Tories in 1999 only to rejoin the BNP soon after. There was a suspicion he had infiltrated the Tories but Mr Green said: "What's the point of infiltrating the Conservative Party?"

The local Labour MP Helen Clarke wrote to Michael Ancram, then the Tory party chairman asking him to investigate the Peterborough Conservative Association. Nothing was done and Mr Ancram's reply included a suggestion that she looked to the problems Labour had with Militant instead of troubling herself with Conservative Party politics.

The Independent on Sunday has also learned that Stephen Newman, forced to resign as a school governor in May last year, is a Conservative Party member but had been an organiser for the National Front in Wales in his youth.

David Prior, acting chairman of the Conservative Party said the views of the British National Party were "abhorrent".

"They are wholly incompatible with those of the Conservative Party. Ours is an open, inclusive and democratic party which believes in and welcomes the fact that British society is the richer for contributions made by communities and people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures."

The BNP said Tory members would find the "common-sense" policies of the BNP "largely in line with their own views".

"The BNP is becoming home to large numbers of activists and members from the Conservative Party and we welcome it. A large number of BNP organisers ... are themselves ex-Tory and ex-Labour activists and left those organisations in disgust at their craven sell-out to the forces of political correctness."