National Front

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God Save the Queen?
No power on Earth is now going to stop this movement that we have created! No power on Earth, no threats, no lies, no words, no laws are going to stop us!
—A slightly over-optimistic statement made by John Tyndall at a 1977 National Front meeting.[1]

The National Front is a far-right British political party with an emphasis on racial nationalism. It was, for a period in the seventies, the fourth largest party in Britain; today it exists in the margins of politics, with the politically ambitious having chosen to hang up the bovver boots and skinhead gear and instead don suits and ties in order to seem more respectable as members of the British National Party.

Contents

[edit] Origins

The National Front came into existence on 7 February 1967.[2] Its initial leader was A. K. Chesterton, who saw the defeat of the Conservative Party in the 1966 election and felt that it was time for the British right to band together. Agreeing with him on this point was John Tyndall of the Greater Britain Movement, who called for a new organisation to represent "patriotic right-wing principles". "The demise of Conservatism is a boon to the Right", he commented.[3] Later in 1966 Chesterton initiated talks of a merger between the League of Empire Loyalists and an outfit called the British National Party (not to be confused with the current party of the same name). The new organisation was to explicitly disallow neo-Nazis such as John Tyndall;[4] this policy did not last for long, and so Tyndall and his Greater Britain Movement were eventually incorporated into the National Front as well.[5]

Perhaps as a result of its origins in different far-right organisations deciding to band together, the party was beset by factional disputes from its earliest years. Chesterton was eventually driven to resignation by members who resented him;[6][7] unsurprisingly bitter about the affair, Chesterton described the National Front as follows:

Eighty per cent of the movement's members are first class, honest to God British patriots. Ten per cent are drifters who will go with the tide. Five per cent place personal ambition above all else. Three per cent are totally unable to distinguish between good faith and bad faith and the remaining two per cent are really evil men - so evil that I placed intelligence agents to work exploring their background with results so appalling that I have felt obliged to entrust the documents to the vaults of a bank...[8]

Chesterton was replaced by John O'Brien as chairman of the National Front in 1971.[9][10] O'Brien caught wind that John Tyndall (then director of policy) and director of activities Martin Webster had connections to German neo-Nazis, and so decided to set about kicking them out of the party.[11] This scuffle eventually ended in a split, although it was actually O'Brien and his supporters who ended up leaving, partly influenced by the NF's poor performance in the Spring 1972 elections.[12]

[edit] Rise

National Front supporters in Yorkshire during the seventies.

At around the same time the struggling NF received a boost from - of all people - Idi Amin. Amin's government had decided to expel all Asians (as many as 75,000, according to early estimates) from Uganda, and the British government responded by giving all Ugandan Asian refugees free entry to the country; the NF used this development to capitalise on anti-immigrant sentiment, and also used Amin's regime to back up its anti-black views.[13] The party was on the rise: in the May 1973 West Bromwich by-election Webster gained 16% of the vote (marking the first time a candidate for the NF saved his deposit)[14] and in the following month's local elections the NF won an average of more than 15% of the vote.[15]

On 15 June 1974 the NF held a march through central London. It was opposed by a counter-demonstration; the ensuing violence resulted in the death of one man, Kevin Gately, and the injuries of over forty others.[16] In March 1975 around 400 NF supporters marched in a demonstration against Britain's integration with the European Economic Community,[17] and in 1976 the party held a campaign in support of Robert Relf, a Londoner who was jailed after refusing to remove a "for sale" sign from his house stating that he would only sell to an English family.[18][19]

Political opponents attacked the NF by bringing up Tyndall and Webster's neo-Nazi history; a September 1974 television programme grilled Tyndall on his racialist policies, and also featured former leader O'Brien accusing Tyndall and Webster of maintaining links to neo-Nazis in Germany. Party members, particularly newer ones, lost faith in Tyndall; a faction developed - dubbed the "Populists" - that wanted a more respectable image for the party, free from the neo-Nazi taint. Tyndall was voted out as chairman within a month of the documentary's airing and Kingsley Read, a former Tory, took over the NF.[20][21] The 1974 elections were disappointing for the party.[22]

The NF, which had been primarily an anti-immigration party, decided to branch out and address other issues, namely Northern Ireland, Europe and trade unions. It maintained that all immigrants should face compulsory repatriation. It also attacked miscegenation, while Webster delivered a speech in July 1974 on "the global struggle for survival between various species of humanity".[23]

In the Leicester local elections of May 1976, the party contested all 48 seats and took 14,566 votes: 18.2% of the total vote.[24] In the Greater London Council election of May 1977, meanwhile, the party pulled in 119,060 votes; this put it close behind the Liberal party, which won 174,405 votes.[25]

Meanwhile, the split between the Populists and the pro-Tyndall faction grew even more dirty: Martin Webster attacked the Populists in Tyndall's journal Spearhead, while the Populists, somewhat bizarrely, accused the Tyndallites of mass homosexuality in October 1975.[26] Although he maintained a firmly racialist position Webster was, however, keen to lose his reputation as a Nazi, and began launching rhetorical attacks against the League of St. George and Column 88, two openly neo-Nazi groups.[27]

Kingsley Read made an attempt to expel Tyndall from the party altogether, but failed; the conflict between the two men turned into a small legal dispute. Eventually, Read decided to simply abandon his party and set up a new one, the National Party, with his supporters in December 1976. Tyndall once again became chairman of the NF.[28][29]

One of the more infamous events in this period of the NF's history is its march through Lewisham, an area of London with a sizeable black population, in August 1977. The march was met with opposition from counter-demonstrators and eventually descended into violence, resulting in bad press for the NF and anti-fascists alike.[30] The following October, Martin Webster planned a march through Hyde in Manchester, but this was vetoed by the authorities under the Public Order Act. Webster ended up performing the march by himself: a demonstration consisting of a single National Front member was apparently acceptable.[31][32][33]

[edit] Decline

The following years saw a general decline in support for the party. A key factor in this was the rise of Margaret Thatcher, who became prime minister in 1979. Thatcher had stated in 1978 that "people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture", and concluded that "there is a feeling that the big political parties have not been talking about this... that is one thing that is driving some people to the National Front." By putting a more respectable face on the anti-immigration stance, the Conservatives under Thatcher took away a large amount of the NF's appeal.[34][35][36]

There were more splits within the NF: some members left to form the NF Constitutional Movement, and in January 1980 Tyndall left to set up the New National Front, later renamed the British National Party, leaving Andrew Brons to become chairman of the NF proper.[37]

An NF members' bulletin from July 1980 openly admitted that the party "has no hope of gaining power under conditions that are stable... [so] we should not be concerned with making ourselves more 'respectable' under present conditions" and concluded that the NF's thuggish image "will be a positive asset when the streets are beset with riots". Party members who hoped for a more respectable image, meanwhile, left for the Conservative Party.[38]

Martin Webster, still an influential figure in the party, found himself the target of a backlash - one of the leaders of which was Nick Griffin, later to become head of Tyndall's BNP - and was removed from the party in December 1980. At this point the NF's policy contained an emphasis on the restructuring of British industry, envisioning a network of small private businesses, workers' co-operatives, and state-run concerns.[39] The NF found a political model in the Libya of Colonel Gadaffi, a regime which it openly praised in its journal Nationalism Today.[40]

[edit] Political Soldiers

In the following years members of the party, the devout Catholic Derek Holland chief amongst them, began promoting an unusual ideology: that of the "Political Soldier". Holland wrote an influential pamphlet on the subject in 1983[41] which laid out the basics: amongst other things, Political Soldiers should cut down TV viewing ("you are needlessly exposing yourself to the propaganda of our enemies, whether you watch a documentary or a soap opera"), avoid too much alcohol ("not only will you have more money to put at the disposal of the Cause, but your health will improve... the Crusaders were not known for their beer guts!") and stop smoking ("There will be times when you will need to move fast"). Towards its end the pamphlet presents an oath devised by the far-right Romanian politician Corneliu Zelea Codreanu:

WE SWEAR:

1. To live in poverty, destroying in ourselves any desire for material enrichment.
2. To live a hard, severe life, putting aside luxury and surfeit.
3. To avoid any attempt to exploit any man.
4. To make permanent sacrifices for our country.
5. To defend the Legionary Movement with all our strength, against everything which could lead it into the path of compromise; or against anything which might even lower its moral standards.
LONG LIVE DEATH!

This oath "can and should act as a model for the Political Soldiers who now face the unequal struggle against the New World Order", wrote Harrington.[42]

This concept of the Political Soldier - which appears to have been influenced by the Italian neofascist Roberto Fiore - was treated with skepticism in some quarters. Brent Cheetham, who was involved with the NF during the time, later described the philosophy as "farcical"."You couldn't recruit along these lines because people would think you're just barmy, quite frankly, and let's face it, the organisation was decimated", he said.[43]

In late 1984 Andrew Brons decided to resign as chairman; reportedly, he objected to violent statements made by NF supporter Ian Stuart. [44]

In 1986 the self-styled Political Soldiers successfully purged their detractors from the party; the ousted members responded by setting up the National Front Support Group, which published a newspaper entitled The Flag. Because of this the outfit was nicknamed the Flag Group. In 1986 it lifted the name "National Front" for itself; the two rival National Fronts co-existed for the rest of the eighties[45] with the original party referring to itself as the Official National Front.

[edit] The last days of the original NF

At the start of the decade the National Front still maintained a racialist philosophy which argued that blacks were inferior to whites and called for racial separation. But in 1985 Nationalism Today praised the black separatist Louis Farrakhan, seeing him as a kindred spirit to white nationalists. The party began promoting a philosophy which envisioned black and white racial seperatists uniting against capitalism and communism in the name of third positionism; the NF also endorsed the regimes of Ghana and Iran. There was even an issue of National Front News with the slogan "Fight Racism", a sentiment so controversial within the party that its Manchester branch refused to distribute the issue.[46]

The party's admiration for Gadaffi's Libya was still strong, and in 1988 some of its key members travelled to the country in an attempt to obtain funding. They came back with 5,000 copies of Gadaffi's Green Book.[47]

More splits were to come. In 1989 Nick Griffin, Derek Holland and Colin Todd left to form the International Third Position, and in 1990 the remaining leaders formed a group called Third Way, disbanding the Official National Front. Only the rival National Front - the Flag Group - remained.[48]

[edit] The nineties and after

Ian Anderson, who had taken control of the Flag Group the same year, wanted to lose the party's violent image and so renamed it the National Democrats in 1995. This resulted in another split: members who objected to this change formed a breakaway group that carried on calling itself the National Front. This incarnation of the NF was run by John McAuley and Tom Holmes,[49][50][51] with Ian Edward later becoming chairman.[52] He remains in this place today.

In the mid-nineties the NF lost its title as Britain's biggest racial nationalist party to the BNP. In the 1992 general election, the NF had 14 candidates, and the BNP 13; in the 1997 election, however, the BNP was up to 57 candidates and the NF down to 6.[53]

Today, the NF seems to have found a niche as a party for people who find the current BNP too soft on racial issues. It received a boost in support in February 2010, when the BNP was forced to drop its whites-only policy. According to a National Front spokesman, several regional branches of the BNP considered defecting to the NF.[54]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOBjgMxn9AU
  2. Walker, Martin. The National Front. p.67
  3. Walker, Martin. The National Front. p.58
  4. Walker, Martin. The National Front. p.65
  5. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.73-4
  6. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.95-6
  7. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. p.106
  8. Walker, Martin. The National Front. p.97
  9. Walker, Martin. The National Front. p.101
  10. Tyndall, John. The Eleventh Hour: A Call for British Rebirth (1988). p.214
  11. Walker, Martin. The National Front. p.104
  12. Walker, Martin. The National Front. p.133
  13. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.133-5
  14. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. p.107
  15. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.142-3
  16. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/15/newsid_2512000/2512725.stm
  17. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/25/newsid_2531000/2531185.stm
  18. http://web.archive.org/web/20100410131933/http://www.national-front.org.uk/nfhistory.htm
  19. http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist//RTV/1976/06/07/510050126/
  20. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.148-9
  21. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. p.109
  22. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.150-1
  23. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.153-4
  24. http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1976/no093/leicester.htm
  25. http://www.election.demon.co.uk/glc/glcresults.html
  26. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.178-9
  27. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.185-6
  28. Walker, Martin. The National Front. pp.188-9
  29. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/programmes/2001/bnp_special/roots/1970.stm
  30. http://www.irr.org.uk/news/lewisham-77-success-or-failure/
  31. http://web.archive.org/web/20110723121101/http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2010/03/mossad%E2%80%99s-one-million-helpers-world-wide/img
  32. http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/anl/northw.htm
  33. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTNfWM-IRzA
  34. Andy Beckett, "When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies", Faber & Faber, 2009, pp. 446-7.
  35. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/6906503/Margaret-Thatcher-complained-about-Asian-immigration-to-Britain.html
  36. http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=103485
  37. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. p.115
  38. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. p.116
  39. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. pp.116-8
  40. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. pp.119-20
  41. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. pp.122-3
  42. Derek Holland (1989), "Political Soldier: A Statement," Burning Bks. ISBN 9780905109107
  43. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URkVjGIL29w
  44. "Terrified Brons quits as Front chairman", Searchlight Magazine, January 1985
  45. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. pp.124-5
  46. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. pp.126-7
  47. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/programmes/2001/bnp_special/roots/1984.stm
  48. Sykes, Alan (2005). The Radical Right in Britain. p.127
  49. "Obituary – Ian Anderson – 1953 – 2011img", England First Party, February 11, 2011
  50. John Rentoul, "New name just a Front for 'National Democrats'", The Independent, 17 July 1995
  51. "A Summary Description of the Papers of the National Front" at the University of Warwick (UK) website
  52. "UNOFFICIAL MEMBERS BULLETIN A FAKE", National Front, 17th March 2010
  53. Jessica Yonwin, "Electoral performance of far-right parties in the UK", parliament.uk, 29 June 2004
  54. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/regions/yorkshire_and_lincolnshire/8522393.stm
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