National Front (UK)

Formation: 1966–1967

The NF was the creation of A. K. Chesterton, a veteran of Britain's fascist movement who sought to unite the country's far-right parties.

The National Front was established as a coalition of small extreme-right groups active on the fringes of British politics during the 1960s.^[10] In early 1966, A. K. Chesterton—the leader of the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL)—resolved to unite many of these parties.^[11] Over the following months, many members of Britain's extreme-right visited him at his Croydon apartment to discuss the proposal,^[11] among them Andrew Fountaine and Philip Maxwell of the British National Party (BNP),^[12] John Tyndall and Martin Webster of the Greater Britain Movement (GBM),^[11] and David Brown of the Racial Preservation Society (RPS).^[13] In principle, everyone agreed with the idea of unification, but there were many personal rivalries that made the process difficult.^[11]

Chesterton agreed to a merger of the LEL and BNP,^[14] and a faction of the RPS also agreed to join them.^[12] The BNP was eager to accelerate integration, in part because it was running out of funds and hoped that the LEL could financially sustain it.^[12] Chesterton and the BNP agreed that Tyndall's GBM would not be invited to join their new party because of its strong associations with neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism, as well as the recent arrest of Tyndall and seven other GBM members for illegal weapon possession.^[15] Chesterton also met with the neo-Nazi Colin Jordan of the National Socialist Movement, but again deemed it political suicide to unite with this group.^[16] Chesterton wanted to keep his new party clear of the crude racist sloganeering that he thought was holding back the far-right's electoral success; he later stated that "the man who thinks this is a war that can be won by mouthing slogans about 'dirty Jews' and 'filthy niggers' is a maniac whose place should not be in the National Front but in a mental hospital."^[17]

In October 1966, the LEL and BNP established a working committee to determine what policies the two parties could agree on; it continued to meet twice a month until February 1967.^[18] Its initial policy platform revolved around opposition to the political establishment, anti-communism, support for the white minority governments in Rhodesia and South Africa, a ban on migration into Britain, and the repatriation of all settled non-white immigrants to their ancestral nations.^[19] They considered various names for the new party, among them the "National Independence Party" and the "British Front",^[20] before settling on the "National Front" in December 1966.^[21] The National Front (NF) was founded on 7 February 1967.^[22] Chesterton was selected as its first chairman.^[23] At the time it had approximately 2500 members: 1000 from the BNP, 300 from the LEL, and over 100 from the RPS.^[19] According to the journalist Martin Walker, "for the great union of the Right, the National Front was a feeble beginning".^[19] Nevertheless, the historian Richard Thurlow noted that the NF's formation was "the most significant event on the radical right and fascist fringe of British politics" since the internment of the country's fascists during the Second World War.^[24]

Early growth: 1968–1972

The NF's first year was marked by a power struggle between the ex-LEL and ex-BNP factions.^[25] The ex-LEL faction were unhappy with the behaviour of ex-BNP members, such as their propensity for chanting,^[26] while the ex-BNP faction criticised Chesterton's elitist pretensions by calling him "the Schoolmaster".^[26] At the invitation of the ex-BNP faction,^[27] in June 1967, Tyndall discontinued the GBM and called on its members to join the NF.^[28] Contravening his earlier commitment to keep him out, Chesterton welcomed Tyndall into the party.^[29] Tyndall had written a book titled Six Principles of British Nationalism in which he espoused more moderate positions than the neo-Nazi views he had previously promoted; he believed that this was the most important factor in changing Chesterton's mind on allowing GBM members to switch to the NF.^[30] Tyndall's magazine, Spearhead—which was originally sold as "an organ of National Socialist [i.e. Nazi] opinion in Britain"^[31]—dropped its open commitment to neo-Nazism and backed the NF,^[32] eventually becoming the party's de facto monthly magazine.^[33] The party held its first annual conference in October 1967, which was picketed by anti-fascist demonstrators.^[34] The Liverpool-based British Aid for the Repatriation of Immigrants joined the NF in January 1968, to be followed later that year by another Liverpudlian group, the People's Progressive Party.^[35] The following year, the NF gained further recruits from the Anglo-Rhodesian League and the Anti-Communist League.^[36]

A National Front march in Yorkshire during the 1970s

In 1968, Chesterton's leadership was challenged by ex-BNP member Andrew Fountaine. A leadership election produced a strong mandate for Chesterton, and his challengers left the party.^[37] Throughout this, Tyndall remained loyal to Chesterton.^[38] There were further arguments in the party after the lease ended on its Westminster headquarters. Ex-LEL members wanted another base in Central London, while the ex-GBM and ex-BNP factions favoured moving into the GBM's old headquarters, the "Nationalist Centre" in Tulse Hill. Chesterton backed the ex-LEL position, and rented a small office in Fleet Street.^[39] In April 1968, immigration became the foremost political topic in the national media after the Conservative Party politician Enoch Powell made his Rivers of Blood speech, an appeal against non-white immigration into Britain.^[40] Although Powell proposed more moderate policies for expelling migrants than the NF did, his use of language was similar to theirs,^[41] and a growing number of individuals on the right wing of the Conservatives defected to the NF.^[42]

The NF fielded 45 candidates in the 1969 local elections; they averaged 8% each, and a few secured over 10%.^[43] It focused on these latter seats in the 1970 local elections, fielding 10 candidates, although almost all secured under 5%.^[44] The party had faced militant left-wing opposition, including a lorry that was driven into its Tulse Hill building in 1969,^[45] and to counter this the NF installed a spy in the London anti-fascist movement.^[46] Against Chesterton's wishes, NF activists carried out publicity stunts: in December 1968 they marched onto a London Weekend Television show uninvited, and in spring 1969 assaulted two Labour Party ministers at a public meeting, thus accruing a reputation for rowdiness.^[47] While Chesterton was holidaying in South Africa, a faction led by Gordon Brown—formerly of Tyndall's GBM—launched a leadership challenge against him. On realising that his support was weak, Chesterton resigned.^[48] Brown offered the party's leadership to Tyndall, but the latter declined the offer.^[49] Tyndall instead endorsed John O'Brien, who had contacts across Britain's far right. The NF directorate was unconvinced, but with no available alternative, selected O'Brien in February 1971.^[50] He and his supporters were frustrated that Tyndall and his associate Martin Webster maintained links with the neo-Nazi Northern League and various German neo-Nazi groups;^[51] O'Brien unsuccessfully tried to expel Webster from the party.^[52] After this failed, O'Brien and his allies left the NF and joined John Davis's National Independence Party in June 1972.^[53]

Tyndall's leadership: 1972–1982

With O'Brien gone, Tyndall became party chairman in July 1972,^[55] centralising the NF's activities at a new Croydon headquarters.^[56] According to Thurlow, under Tyndall the NF represented "an attempt to portray the essentials of Nazi ideology in more rational language and seemingly reasonable arguments",^[6] functioning as an attempt to "convert racial populists" angry about immigration "into fascists".^[57] In his history of fascism, Roger Eatwell noted that with Tyndall as chair, "the NF tried hard to hide its neo-Nazism from public view, fearing it might damage popular support."^[58] Under Tyndall, the party focused on appealing to the white working-class, and in June 1974 launched the NF Trade Unionists Association.^[59] Britain's left-wing recognised the potential threat and fought back by publicising the neo-Nazi past of senior NF members, including photographs of Tyndall wearing a Nazi uniform.^[60]

The NF capitalised on fears surrounding the arrival of Ugandan Asian refugees in 1972,^[61] resulting in rapid growth of the party's membership.^[62] Among those who joined were Conservative Monday Club members with much political experience.^[63] In the 1972 Uxbridge by-election, the NF polled 8.2% of the vote;^[64] at the 1973 West Bromwich by-election it gained 16% of the vote, passing the 10% mark in a parliamentary election for the first time.^[65] This electoral breakthrough brought them greater media coverage.^[66] In the 1973 local elections, the party did well in two Blackburn wards, gaining 23% and 16.8% respectively.^[66] It also stood six candidates for that year's Greater London Council (GLC) election, gaining an average vote of 6.3%.^[67] 54 candidates were fielded at the February 1974 general election,^[68] a sufficient number to guarantee a free party political broadcast.^[69] Although contesting six times as many seats as in 1970, its average vote share was 3.2%, slightly less than in 1970.^[70] The NF fielded 90 candidates in the October 1974 general election, although none gained 10% and all lost their deposits.^[71] By the mid-1970s, the NF's membership had stagnated and in several areas declined.^[72] In the 1975 local elections they fielded 60 candidates, far fewer than in previous elections, with only five gaining over 10% of the vote.^[72] From 1975 onward the party entered a steady decline.^[73]

John Tyndall led the party from 1972 to 1980, during its heyday. He is pictured here in 2005, several decades after he left the party.

A faction known as the "Populists" emerged in the party under Roy Painter's leadership.^[74] They were frustrated that the NF's directorate was dominated by former BNP and GBM members and believed that Tyndall remained a neo-Nazi.^[75] They ensured that John Kingsley Read was elected chairman,^[76] with Tyndall demoted to vice chair.^[77] Growing strife between the Tyndallites and Populists broke out in the party; the Tyndallites claimed that the Populists were too left-wing, while the Populists accused the Tyndallite faction of being dominated by homosexuals, pejoratively referring to it as "the Daisy Chain" and "the Fairy Ring".^[78] Tyndall urged constitutional reform in the party, but failed to convince the directorate to support his proposed changes.^[79] Read and the executive committee suspended Tyndall and nine of his supporters from the directorate, before expelling Tyndall from the party altogether.^[80] Tyndall took the issue to the High Court, where his expulsion was declared illegal.^[81] In frustration at their inability to eject Tyndall and the Tyndallites, Read and his supporters split from the NF to form the National Party (NP) in December 1975.^[82] By the end of February 1976, 29 NF branches and groups had defected to the NP, although 101 remained loyal.^[83]

In February 1976, Tyndall was restored as the NF leader.^[84] The party then capitalised on public anger at the government's agreement to accept Malawian Asian refugees, holding demonstrations to protest the migrants' arrival in the UK.^[85] After a resurgence in fortunes for the party in London at the 1977 GLC election, where it improved on its October 1974 general election result, it planned further marches in the city.^[86] This included a march through the south-eastern area of Lewisham in August 1977. Their procession was countered by a rival protest, the All Lewisham Campaign against Racism and Fascism (ALCARAF), and during their march they were attacked by far-left activists in what came to be known as the "Battle of Lewisham".^[87]

In the 1979 general election, the NF contested the largest number of seats of any insurgent party since Labour in 1918.^[88] In the election, it nevertheless "flopped dismally",^[89] securing only 1.3% of the total vote, down from 3.1% in the October 1974 general election.^[90] This decline may have been due to the increased anti-fascist campaigning of the previous few years, or because the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher had adopted an increasingly tough stance on immigration which attracted many of the votes that had previously gone to the Front.^[91] NF membership had also declined, and by 1979 had fallen to approximately 5,000.^[92] Despite calls from others within the Front, Tyndall refused to dilute or moderate his party's policies, stating that to do so would be the "naïve chasing of moonbeams".^[92] In November 1979, Fountaine unsuccessfully tried to oust Tyndall as leader, subsequently breaking from the NF to establish the National Front Constitutional Movement.^[93]

Although Tyndall and Webster had been longstanding comrades from before the NF's foundation, they had grown distant over time, and in the late 1970s Tyndall began blaming his old friend for the party's problems.^[93] Tyndall was upset with Webster's attempts to encourage more skinheads and football hooligans to join the party,^[94] as well as allegations that Webster—who was gay—had been making sexual advances toward the party's young men.^[95] More widely, Tyndall complained about a "homosexual network" among leading NF members.^[93] In October 1979 he urged the NF directorate to call for Webster's resignation, which they refused to do.^[96] Tyndall responded by resigning in January 1980,^[97] subsequently referring to the party as the "gay National Front".^[94] In June 1980, Tyndall founded the New National Front (NNF),^[98] which claimed that a third of the NF's membership defected to them.^[97]

Strasserites and the Flag Group: 1983–1990

After Tyndall's departure, Webster became party chair, although was ousted in 1983 by a new faction led by Nick Griffin and Joe Pearce.^[99] In May 1985, this faction—who adhered to the Strasserite variant of Nazism—secured control of the party's directorate and suspended the membership of their opponents.^[100] Their focus was not on attracting electoral support but on developing an activist elite consisting largely of tough working-class urban youths, particularly from the skinhead subculture;^[101] its supporters became known as "Political Soldiers".^[102] The Strasserites officially reformulated their party along a centralised cadre system at the November 1986 AGM.^[100] Their ideology was influenced by their strong links with members of an Italian neo-fascist militia, the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR), who were then hiding in London as fugitives after committing the Bologna massacre.^[103] Like the NAR, the NF Strasserites emphasised the far-right ideology of the Third Position, which they presented as being opposed to both capitalism and Marxist-oriented socialism.^[104] They were also influenced by the Nouvelle Droite, a French far-right movement that advocated long-term strategies of cultural influence to achieve their goals.^[105]

In 1983, the NF was taken over by a faction led by Nick Griffin (left) and Joe Pearce (right),^[99] then followers of "Strasserism", the "left Nazism" of German fascist ideologue Otto Strasser.^[106]

The Strasserites described themselves as "radical, youthful and successful", contrasting their approach with the "out-dated conservative policies" of their internal opponents, whom they claimed wanted the NF to be a "reactionary anti-immigrant pressure group".^[107] These opponents then formed a rival organisation, the Flag Group, which officially adopted the name "National Front" in January 1987.^[108] According to Eatwell, the Flag NF "was essentially a continuation of the racial-populist tradition" used by earlier forms of the party.^[109] It had a greater number of working-class leaders than the Strasserite group and accused the latter of simply being intellectuals self-indulgently pursuing foreign ideological fads.^[109] There remained two organisations claiming the name of National Front—that controlled by the Flag Group and the Official National Front run by the Strasserites—until early 1990.^[110] In contrast to the Strasserite NF's increased centralisation as a response to perceived state repression, the Flag Group gave autonomy to its branches, seeking to focus upon local issues.^[108] Following the NF's declining vote share in the late 1970s, both groups had effectively abandoned interest in electoral participation.^[111]

Reflecting the influence of the Nouvelle Droite,^[102] the Strasserite Official NF promoted support for "a broad front of racialists of all colours" who were seeking an end to multi-racial society and capitalism,^[104] praising black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan and Marcus Garvey.^[112] Their publication, Nationalism Today, featured positive articles on the governments of Libya and Iran, presenting them as part of a global anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist third force in international politics.^[113] This may have had tactical as well as ideological motivations, with Libya and Iran viewed as potential sources of funding.^[102] Reflecting its calls for a multi-racial alliance of racial separatists, one issue of National Front News prominently featured the slogan "Fight Racism", resulting in the party's Manchester branch refusing to distribute it.^[114] This new rhetoric and ideology alienated much of the NF's rank-and-file membership.^[114] The Official NF experienced internal problems and in 1989 Griffin, Derek Holland, and Colin Todd split from it to establish their International Third Position group.^[114] In March 1990 the Official NF was disbanded by its leaders, Patrick Harrington, Graham Williamson, and David Kerr, who replaced it with a new organisation, the Third Way.^[114] This left the Flag Group as the only party using the National Front banner.^[114]

Further decline: 1990–present

The National Front cooperated with the North West Infidels and South East Alliance, groups that splintered from the English Defence League (rally depicted).^[115]

Over the course of the 1990s, the NF was eclipsed by Tyndall's new British National Party (BNP) as the foremost vehicle on the British far-right.^[116] Following the Lansdowne Road football riot of 1995, in which English far-right hooligans attacked Irish supporters, the NF's chairman Ian Anderson sought to escape the negative associations of the name "National Front" by reforming the party as the National Democrats.^[117] A small faction broke away from this to form their own group, retaining the National Front name.^[116] This party contested the general elections in 1997 and 2001, but made little impact in either.^[118] By 2001, the NF had developed close links with Combat 18, a neo-Nazi paramilitary which had been founded by the BNP before breaking from the latter.^[119] It continued to organise rallies, several of which were banned by successive Home Secretaries.^{[120][121][122]}

In February 2010, a High Court decision forced the BNP to remove the clause from its constitution prohibiting non-white membership. In response, the NF claimed to have received over 1,000 membership enquiries from BNP members and said that BNP branches in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire had discussed defecting.^[123] After the English Defence League (EDL), an Islamophobic social movement, emerged in 2009, the NF took an interest in its activities. It urged the EDL to move away from its "random anti‐Muslim protests" by politically organising behind the NF; the EDL, however, sought to distance itself from the Front and other older far-right groups.^[124] As the EDL declined in the following years, the NF collaborated with some of the street-based far-right protest groups that had split from it, like the North West Infidels and South East Alliance.^[115] In March 2015 Kevin Bryan became chairman of the party.^[125] After he was injured in a car accident, Bryan resigned and was replaced by Aberdeen-based Dave MacDonald in November 2015.^[126] Bryan retook his position before resigning in July 2018; Tony Martin became acting chair,^[127] before being appointed to the position full-time in September.^[1]

Far-right politics, fascism, and neo-Nazism

The National Front is a far right or extreme right party,^[9] having commonalities with older far-right groups while also displaying its own unique ideological traits.^[129] Political scientists and historians characterise it as fascist,^[130] or more specifically as neo-fascist,^[3] a term also used by the British press.^[131] The political psychologist Michael Billig noted that the NF displayed many of fascism's recurring traits: an emphasis on nationalism and racism, an anti-Marxist stance, statism and a support for the retention of capitalism, and a threatening stance towards democracy and personal freedom.^[132]

The NF rejected the term "fascist" to describe its ideology,^[133] and spent much time denying the "blatant past fascist associations" of its leading members.^[24] It claimed that it could not be fascist because it took part in elections, although previous fascist parties—including the British Union of Fascists, the German Nazi Party, and the Italian National Fascist Party—also took part in elections; according to political scientist Stan Taylor, this rendered the Front's argument obsolete.^[134] In seeking to avoid the "fascist" label, the NF was typical of many fascist groups operating after the Second World War.^[135] Unlike their interwar counterparts, post-war fascists had to contend with the legacy of the war and the Holocaust, and thus often sought to hide their intellectual pedigrees from voters.^[136] The NF's founders tried to present it as a British nationalist party with no links to historical fascism, recognising that this would be vital if it were to succeed as an electoral force.^[137] To do so it adopted "new labels, styles and tactics" to present itself as a "respectable political party engaged in legitimate electoral competition".^[138]

The historian Martin Durham stated that the NF—like France's National Front and Germany's The Republicans—represented "the direct descendants of classical fascism" and that it shared "many of the concerns of the pre-war extreme right".^[139] Its fascism was nevertheless not identical to the "classical" fascism of the 1930s.^[140] The sociologist Christopher T. Husbands cautioned that because the National Front remained without political office, it could be misleading to try and understand it through comparisons with Italian Fascism or German Nazism as they existed when they were in power.^[141]

As with other politically extreme groups, the Front retained its full ideology for the inner core of members, presenting a limited and more moderate image for public consumption.^[142] As noted by Billig, the NF's "ideological core, and its genocidal tendencies, are hidden" so as not to scare off potential recruits who might be sympathetic to its nationalistic and anti-immigration appeals but not to its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.^[143] While noting that its views on race departed considerably "from what is normal or acceptable to the average citizen" in the UK, the political scientist Nigel Fielding observed that many of its other views were grounded in what would be considered "popular common-sense opinion" across the political right.^[144] In the 1970s, several NF policies were similar to the positions held by many on the right-wing of the Conservative Party,^[145] although Tyndall was keen to distance the NF from conservatism, stating in Spearhead that his party did not stand "for some kind of super-reactionary conservatism — more Tory than the Tories", but was a revolutionary force pursuing a radical transformation of Britain.^[146] Its ideological world-view emphasises its ties to tradition and the past while proposing radical reforms to the country's governance that are not traditional.^[147] Fielding thus noted that it was "not blindly traditionalist" but "wishes to return to what it conceives of as the spirit of the old order", even if its conception of the "old order" was not historically accurate.^[148]

Ethnic nationalism and racism

One variant of the NF logo used by the party

The National Front is a British nationalist party,^[4] and in its early policy statements declared that it "pledged to work for the restoration of full national sovereignty for Britain in all affairs".^[155] It claimed that if all nations embraced nationalism then there would be global peace because every country would eschew internationalism and imperialism.^[156] As a result of its rejection of internationalism, the NF opposed both liberalism and communism, contrasting their internationalist espousal of universal values with its view that different nations should have their own distinct values.^[157]

It also labelled itself a racial nationalist party,^[158] with its concept of nationalism being bound up with that of race.^[159] NF members typically referred to themselves as "racialists",^[160] while Durham stated that the NF was "undeniably a racist organisation".^[161] It claimed that humanity divides up into biologically distinct races with their own physical and social characteristics.^[162] Although some of its published material referred purely to a division between "white" and "black" races, other parts of its material referred to a wider array of racial groups, among them the "Nordics", "Caucasoids", "Negroids", "Semites", and "Turco-Armonoids".^[163] It claimed that within larger racial groups can be found "nations", a form of "race within a race";^[164] many party activists nevertheless used the terms "race" and "nation" interchangeably.^[165]

The NF claimed the existence of a distinct British racial "nation", all the members of which shared common interests.^[167] It viewed class as a false and needless distinction among the British race,^[168] rejecting the concept of class war as "nonsense".^[169] Like most fascist groups, it sought to attract support across class boundaries.^[170] It also condemned Welsh nationalism and Scottish nationalism, treating them as a threat to British racial unity.^[171] For the NF, patriotism was deemed essential to the cohesion and morale of the British nation,^[169] with nationalism being regarded as a vital component of patriotism.^[172] Members of the National Front regarded themselves as British patriots,^[173] and the party made heavy use of British patriotic symbolism, such as that of the Union flag and of Remembrance Day.^[173]

Fielding expressed the view that in NF ideology, alien races were perceived as "threatening the coherence of British culture. Homogeneity is the key to heritage".^[174] He believed that this "dialectic of insiders and outsiders" was the "linchpin of its ideology",^[175] adding that the NF's "rigid boundaries between in-group and out-group" was typical of the extreme right.^[176] In its 1974 electoral manifesto, the NF called for a "vigorous birth-rate" among the white British, claiming that any ensuing overpopulation of the UK could be resolved by emigration to the British Commonwealth.^[177] Tyndall defended Nazi Germany's lebensraum policy,^[178] and under his leadership the NF promoted imperialist views about expanding British territory to serve as "living space" for the country's growing population.^[164] By 1979, the party was combining this policy with eugenicist ideas, calling for the improvement of the quality as well as the quantity of the white British racial group.^[179] By 2011, the party's website was utilising the Fourteen Words slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."^[180]

White supremacism

The National Front is a white supremacist party.^[5] It rejected the concept of racial equality,^[181] and argued that different races can be ranked on a hierarchy based on differing abilities.^[162] It believed that the "higher races" are engaged in a struggle against one another for world domination,^[182] and that that racial segregation was natural and ordained by God.^[183] It promoted the conspiracy theory that non-whites were intentionally encouraged to migrate to Britain and other white-majority countries to breed with the indigenous inhabitants and thus bring about "white genocide" through assimilation.^[184] It opposed inter-racial marriage and miscegenation,^[181] the latter of which it typically referred to as "mongrelisation",^[185] and displayed particular anxiety about the idea of black men seducing white women.^[186]

A variant of the National Front flag featuring the Odal rune

The NF espoused the view that non-white racial groups were usually genetically inferior to "Caucasoids and Mongoloids".^[187] This included the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks,^[188] and that whereas the white race established civilisation, the black race has contributed nothing to humanity.^[189] In the mid-1970s, Tyndall used Spearhead to claim that "the negro has a smaller brain and a much less complex cerebral structure" than white Europeans,^[190] while in the early 1980s, Nationalism Today carried articles maintaining that black Africans had lower average IQs than white Europeans and that as a result, "negroes […] are not fitted to go to white schools or to live in white society".^[108] In its discussion of black people, the NF conjured up what Billig characterised as "an image of savagery and primitiveness", a negative stereotype with a long pedigree in British culture.^[191] The NF's published material presented black people as dirty and unhygienic,^[188] of being incapable of governing themselves,^[188] and of spreading disease, particularly sexually transmitted disease.^[192] Spearhead featured various references to black people being cannibals, and at least one article claimed that they ate dirt and faeces.^[186]

The NF's published material rejected the idea that its racial prejudice stemmed from mere hatred, instead claiming that it was a natural reflection of an intrinsic human desire to preserve one's race. In making this claim, the NF sought to present itself—at least to supporters—as being more than just a hate group.^[193] The party was concerned with establishing academic support for its racial views, placing great importance on scientific racist publications.^[194] Its booklist offered academic and quasi-academic books endorsing scientific racist ideas,^[181] while early party literature made regular references to the work of Hans Eysenck, William Shockley, Arthur Jensen, and Richard Herrnstein.^[195] Spearhead and other NF publications also repeatedly cited articles from the quasi-academic scientific racist journal Mankind Quarterly.^[196] In citing these studies, the party claimed that its racial views were scientific and that those who rejected them were un-scientific and acting only on a pro-egalitarian political bias.^[197] Fielding nevertheless observed that the NF's racial views rely "as much on blind assertion, on faith, as on 'scientific' sources".^[181]

Anti-immigrationism and repatriation

The cornerstone of the National Front's manifesto since 1974 has been the compulsory deportation of all non-white immigrants, along with their descendants, to other parts of the world.^[198] It further stated that the white British partners in any mixed-race relationships would also be deported.^[199] It stated that the "repatriation" process could take ten years,^[200] adding that before deportation, all non-whites would be stripped of British citizenship and placed behind white Britons when it comes to access to welfare, education, and housing.^[201] It accompanied this with a call to prohibit future non-white migration to Britain.^[202] In the 1970s, the NF stated that it did not oppose the arrival of white immigrants from Commonwealth countries,^[203] but called for "firm controls" on the arrival of whites from other countries.^[204]

During its first decade, the party emphasised the claim that migrants themselves should not be blamed for immigration, but rather the blame should be placed on the politicians who enabled it.^[204] In 1969, it publicised the claim that "Your enemies are not the coloured immigrants, but the British government which let them come in hundreds of thousands."^[206] The NF claimed that non-white migration to Britain had been masterminded by communists and promoted by the Labour Party, who believed that it would boost their vote, and the Conservative Party, who believed that it would provide cheap labour for corporations.^[207] Its early manifestos and other publications generally avoided describing non-white immigrants with derogatory terms like "wog" or "nigger",^[208] although such pejorative language was present at the party's rallies.^[174] As it developed, the NF press included racially inflammatory headlines like "Black Savages Terrorize Old Folk", "Rastas Terrorize White Women", and "Asians Import Bizarre Sex-Murder Rites".^[209] This literature referred to areas with large African and Asian communities as being "immigrant-infested", a use of language comparing non-white migrants to vermin.^[188]

The NF attempted to link many other political themes to the issues of race and immigration,^[210] and targeted concerns among the white British population about immigrants being competition for jobs, housing, and welfare.^[211] Among the "standard forms of NF propaganda" was the claim that immigrants carried diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis,^[212] that it was these diseased immigrants who were placing a heavy burden on the National Health Service (NHS),^[213] and that incompetent and poorly trained migrant staff were detrimental to the NHS.^[214] It presented the idea that school quality was being eroded by black pupils,^[210] and that the employment of black workers left many white workers unemployed.^[210] It claimed that immigrants evaded taxes, and that they were arrogant, aggressive, and unhygienic in the workplace.^[215] During the 1970s, the NF's propaganda regularly presented black people in Britain as a source of crime.^[216] This anti-immigrant discourse was similar to that employed against the recently arrived Ashkenazi Jewish community in the late nineteenth century and also echoed the response to gypsies and Huguenots in seventeenth-century England.^[217]

Anti-Semitism

The NF is anti-Semitic.^[218] It promotes the view that Jews form a biologically distinct race that is one of the world's "higher races". It further claims that this Jewish race seeks to destroy other "higher races", including the white race, by encouraging internal divisions within them and by promoting both internationalism and miscegenation so as to weaken them through racial mixing.^[219] It is this Jewish cabal, the NF argues, that orchestrated the migration of non-whites into Britain.^[220] In employing these tactics, the Front claimed, other higher races would be left in disarray, with the Jews remaining the world's dominant race.^[221] As related in Spearhead, once the Jewish conspiracy had succeeded in its aims, "the Jewish nation would be the only surviving ethnically identifiable population group amid a mongrelised world population", the latter being easier for this Jewish cabal to control.^[184] The NF profess the view that those who disagree with its claims on this issue are ignorant of reality.^[222]

This is a conspiracy theory,^[200] and is part of a longstanding conspiracist tradition about secretive groups manipulating international events that stretches back to the 18th century.^[223] The NF's specific anti-Semitic variant of this myth owes much to the 19th century Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian anti-Semitic forgery,^[224] and is also virtually identical to claims previously articulated by the British Union of Fascists (BUF).^[200] Whereas the BUF was explicit in presenting this global conspiracy as being run by Jews, the NF is more circumspect, aware that there was considerable public disapproval of anti-Semitism following the Holocaust. Instead of explicitly referring to "Jews" as being behind the global conspiracy, it has employed a range of code words, such as "Money Power", "internationalist", "cosmopolitan", "alien", "rootless", "shifty", "money-lenders", and "usurers".^[225]

In the 1970s, the NF rejected the characterisation of its policies as "anti-Semitism".^[226] Instead, it called itself "anti-Zionist",^[227] claiming that it only opposed "Zionists" rather than all Jews.^[228] Within the NF, the word "Zionism" is not used in the commonly understood manner—to describe the ideology promoting the formation of a Jewish state—but rather applied to the Jewish cabal that the NF believes secretly manipulates the world.^[229] For instance, one issue of Spearhead stated that "the twin evils of International Finance and International Communism" are "perhaps better described as International Zionism".^[230] Fielding observed that in the party, the term "Zionist" was used indiscriminately and without precision, often against any of its critics,^[231] and that its activists often exhibited anti-Semitic attitudes.^[232]

Many of the Front's central members—among them Chesterton, Tyndall, and Webster—had a long history of anti-Semitic activity before they joined the party.^[233] For instance, in 1963, Tyndall claimed that "Jewry is a world pest wherever it is found in the world today. The Jews are more clever and more financially powerful than other people and have to be eradicated before they destroy the Aryan peoples."^[234] In an early edition of Spearhead from the 1960s, Tyndall expressed the view that "if Britain were to become Jew-clean she would have no nigger neighbours to worry about... It is the Jews who are our misfortune: T-h-e J-e-w-s. Do you hear me? THE JEWS?"^[235] Over the course of the 1970s the articles in Spearhead and Britain First became increasingly explicit in their anti-Semitism.^[236] While a number of its senior members had previously called for a genocide of the Jewish people, the party itself engages in Holocaust denial, referring to the Holocaust as "the six million myth" in its literature.^[231] In promoting Holocaust denial, NF members might be trying to rehabilitate Hitler and the Nazi regime among the British population.^[237] It is possible that most senior NF figures are aware that the Holocaust really happened, but deny its occurrence solely for tactical reasons.^[238]

Government and the state

When the Strasserite faction took control of the NF in the 1980s, it based its views of future government on the ideas in The Green Book of Muammar Gaddafi (pictured).

According to Fielding, the NF's commitment to parliamentary democracy was "not ideological but functional."^[239] During the 1970s, the Front alleged that the UK's liberal democratic governance structure was "bogus democracy" and declared that it would forge "a genuinely democratic political system".^[240] As part of this, it stated that it would utilise public referenda on major issues.^[241] In making claims such as that "true democracy is that which is representative of the will of the people", the latter being presented as a monolithic entity, the NF engaged in populist rhetoric.^[242] Fielding nevertheless believed that "the essence of the NF ideology is incompatible with democracy" and instead reflects an "elitist tendency" quite at odds with the "populist rhetoric" that it used to promote its message.^[243]

For the NF, democracy was perceived as a luxury that was subordinate to the cause of preserving the nation.^[244] In his journal Spearhead, Tyndall stated that although he would support parliamentary democracy if he thought it in the national interest at a given time, "the survival, and the national recovery of Britain stand as top priority over all. We will support whatever political methods are necessary to attain that end."^[245] He called for the state to be governed by a strong, central leader,^[246] and highlighted that ideally this leader would be unencumbered by political parties and elections, thus being able to focus on the national interest rather than the special interests of sub-groups or short-term considerations.^[247] In Spearhead, Tyndall stated that "it is only in banana republics, where the 'sophisticated' Western institutions of a multi- or two-party system, powerful trade unions and a 'free' press have not yet taken root, that there is still scope for men of real personality and decision to emerge and truly lead."^[248] While the NF was critical of the UK's liberal democratic order, it expressed support for the retention of the British monarchy.^[240] Observing that "there is in NF ideology a strong orientation to charismatic leadership and authoritarian control",^[249] Fielding believed that had the NF achieved political office it would have marginalised parliament and governed in a totalitarian manner.^[250]

Under the party's Strasserite leadership during the 1980s, the NF adopted a radically different position to governance and the state, one influenced heavily by the Third International Theory developed by Libya's political leader Muammar Gaddafi and propounded in his work, The Green Book.^[251] Accordingly, it promoted the establishment of communal political structures, with street councils, area councils, county councils, and a National People's Council "for each of the British Nations".^[252] In its view of this future, the British population would be armed and trained in military tactics, allowing for the establishment of local militia throughout the island rather than a state-controlled professional army.^[252]

International institutions and relations

In its 1970s heyday, the NF called for the UK's withdrawal from the United Nations, claiming that the supranational organisation was both a "major weapon of International Finance" and unduly impacted by a "Communist and AfroAsian influence".^[253] It similarly called for British withdrawal from international defense pacts like the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation,^[254] with Britain instead boosting its defensive capabilities by obtaining larger numbers of nuclear weapons.^[255] From its early years, the Front opposed the UK's membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), deeming membership a threat to British national sovereignty,^[256] and seeing the EEC as part of the international Jewish conspiracy's plan for a one world government.^[257] During the early 1970s it called on members to obstruct the EEC bureaucracy in any way possible,^[258] urging them to "defy the law – be prepared to go to prison too as a gesture of defiance" against the EEC.^[258] In March 1975 it sought affiliation with the National Referendum Campaign (NRC)—which was campaigning for the UK to leave the EEC in that year's referendum on the issue—although the latter rejected their offer.^[72] In response, NF members disrupted the April 1975 NRC meeting at London's Conway Hall, storming the platform and having to be removed by police.^[72]

The NF called for the UK's withdrawal from the European Economic Community (flag pictured)

To replace the EEC, the NF called for the UK to establish stronger links with the "White countries" of the British Commonwealth, namely Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but also the white-minority governments of Rhodesia and South Africa.^[259] According to the Front, this would "strengthen the ethnic, cultural and family ties between peoples of British stock all over the world".^[240] It stated that it would not remain allied to the United States because the latter was dominated by the Jewish world conspiracy. ^[260] It also stipulated that it would cease the payment of foreign aid.^[261]

During the 1970s the Front was British unionist, advocating for the continued political unity of the United Kingdom.^[262] From the late 1960s onward, it expressed support for the Ulster Unionist community, deeming Irish republicanism part of a communist conspiracy to undermine British unity.^[263] As NF leader, Tyndall insisted that Britain must "destroy [Irish] republicanism, not just violent republicanism – as represented by the IRA – but republicanism in every shape and form".^[264] Despite Tyndall's strong support of Ulster's membership of the UK, he refused to take sides in the conflict between Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland, using Spearhead to state that such "religious squabbles" were "absurd".^[265] The NF argued that the UK government had been ineffective in dealing with the Provisional Irish Republican Army and other militant Irish republicans because it was too soft; it argued that civil courts should be replaced by military ones, that the British Army should replace rubber bullets with metal ones, that IRA members should be interned, and that those guilty of sabotage or murder should be executed.^[266] In the early 1970s it alleged that the Irish Republic was harbouring republican militants active in Ulster, "an act of war against Britain" that required trade sanctions.^[267] In the 1970s the NF endorsed the right-wing Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party,^[264] but many Ulster Unionists were suspicious of the NF; in 1973 the Ulster Defence Association proscribed it as "a neo-Nazi movement".^[268] In 1985—by which time the Strasserite faction dominated the NF—it called in Ulster to unilaterally declare independence from the UK in response to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.^[100]

Economic policy

During the 1970s, the Front claimed that it was neither capitalist nor socialist in orientation,^[269] instead wanting an economic system drawing on elements of both.^[270] It endorsed the place of private enterprise in the economy but rejected laissez-faire capitalism, claiming that the latter places the interests of business above that of the nation.^[271] It promoted economic nationalism, calling for maximum national self-sufficiency and a rejection of international free trade.^[272] In this, it wanted to separate Britain from the international financial system, which it regarded as being under the control of the Jewish conspiracy.^[273] The NF opposed foreign ownership of British industry,^[272] arguing that North Sea Oil production should only be in the hands of British companies and not foreign ones.^[274] Its policies were protectionist and monetarist,^[275] advocating the state control of banking and financial services,^[272] and calling for a state bank to provide interest free loans to fund the construction of municipal housing.^[276] These economic views were common within Britain's extreme-right milieu, and were for instance akin to those promoted by Oswald Mosley and his BUF in earlier decades.^[272] Its opposition to unrestricted free markets led various Conservatives to regard it as a socialist party, a classification not endorsed by academic observers.^[277]

After the Strasserite faction took control of the party in the 1980s, it aligned its economic policies with distributism, maintaining the emphasis on the need for an economic system that was neither capitalist nor socialist.^[278] In the party's material from 1980, it claimed that "Capitalism and Communism" were "twin evils" that could be overcome by "Revolutionary Nationalism".^[279] In keeping with the Strasserite's distributist doctrine, the 1980s NF called for all large business and industry to be broken up and redistributed into a tripartite system: small privately owned enterprises, workers' co-operatives, and—in the case of financial institutions and heavy industry—nationalised enterprises.^[280] Retaining the party's longstanding economic nationalism, the Strasserite leadership called for the abolition of the stock exchange, with the introduction of import controls and bans on the export of capital.^[281] As a solution to unemployment, the party stated that it would encourage urban-to-rural migration, with heavily mechanised agriculture being replaced by small, privately owned, labour-intensive farms.^[282] This policy was also likely influenced by the far-right movement's general antipathy toward urban living and its belief that rural life is fundamentally superior.^[283]

Social issues

NF members protesting against growing legal recognition of LGBT rights at the London LGBT Pride march in 2007

The NF adopted a strong anti-permissive stance,^[284] being concerned with what it perceived as the growing permissiveness of British society, claiming that this had resulted in moral decadence and social decay.^[285] The party attributed this to a conspiracy orchestrated by Jews and other enemies of the white British race.^[286] Tyndall called for a project of moral "regeneration" that would penetrate "every sphere of work and leisure".^[286] He claimed that an NF government would render illegal "the promotion of art, literature or entertainment by which public moral standards might be endangered".^[287] During the 1970s, the party espoused a belief in absolute moral values, claiming that these had been set out by God.^[288] However, the party placed little apparent importance on religion;^[173] although it endorsed the Ulster loyalists' cause it never shared their emphasis on the defence of Protestantism.^[289]

The party censures homosexuality,^[290] supporting the reintroduction of Section 28 and the recriminalisation of same-sex sexual activity.^[291] Members of the party have sought to protest at LGBT Pride parades.^[292] From its early years, the party has opposed mixed race marriages.^[293] During the 1970s, NF activists were involved in anti-prostitution campaigns,^[294] and in 1977 also joined protests against a pro-paedophile organisation, the Paedophile Information Exchange.^[295]

The party is anti-feminist,^[296] having described feminism as "puerile Marxist rubbish".^[219] It is highly critical of changes to traditional gender roles,^[297] with Spearhead noting that the NF sees "the feminine role as principally one of wife, mother and home maker".^[298] In the party's first year, it largely ignored the recently passed 1967 Abortion Act that legalised abortion in Great Britain, although by 1974 it had adopted an anti-abortion stance, stating that abortions should only be legally permitted in certain medical emergencies.^[299] According to Tyndall, the legalisation of abortion was part of a conspiracy to reduce the white British birth rate.^[300] The issue decreased in resonance within the party during the early 1980s but was re-emphasised when the Strasserite faction took control in the mid-1980s.^[301] In 1987, National Front News claimed that abortion was "the greatest and most fundamentally evil holocaust that the world has ever seen", insisting that each human received its soul from the moment of conception.^[301] As well as opposing abortion, the NF opposed the provision of birth control to white British citizens, believing that doing so restricts the growth of the white British race.^[302] Tyndall again saw contraception as part of a conspiracy, lambasting it as a "propaganda weapon aimed at driving the White peoples to racial suicide through the limitation of births".^[303]

In the 1970s, the NF claimed that the teaching profession was full of communists,^[304] and stated that under an NF government all teachers deemed unsuitable would be removed from their positions.^[305] In 1978 it issued a leaflet to school pupils, How to Spot a Red Teacher.^[306] In the 1970s, the party stressed its belief that education should be suited to the varying academic abilities of different students although did not outright condemn the comprehensive school system.^[276] It called for far greater emphasis on examinations and sporting competitions in schools, with a rejection of what it called "slapdash Leftwing-inspired teaching fads".^[305] It stated that it would emphasise the teaching of British history to encourage patriotic sentiment among students,^[305] while also expanding the place of science and technology in the curriculum at the expense of the social sciences, lambasting the latter as "a mere form of academic Marxism".^[305] On the issue of further education, it called for much stronger emphasis to be placed on training in technology and industrial management.^[276]

In the 1970s it also suggested that national service be reintroduced to the UK.^[307] The Front exalts self-sufficiency as a virtue, asserting that the individual should be willing to serve the state and that citizens' rights should be subordinate to their duties.^[290] During the 1970s, the Front expressed opposition to the UK's welfare state as it then existed, instead promoting a self-help ideology.^[308] At the time it stated that it would end the perception of the UK as a "loafer's paradise" by ensuring that all those capable of working do so rather than subsisting on unemployment benefits.^[276] It stated that a rudimentary welfare state should nevertheless exist in order to provide support for the "very young, very old, the sick and the disabled".^[276]

Since its early years, the NF promoted a tough stance on law and order issues,^[309] calling for harsher sentences for criminals,^[309] tougher prisons,^[310] and the reintroduction of capital punishment.^[309] It has rejected the idea that an individual's misdeeds should be attributed to their societal background, placing an emphasis on self-responsibility.^[311] The party focused on crimes committed by black people, as well as crime figures involving immigrants produced by the Metropolitan Police.^[312] The party also linked racially integrated schools with crime, saying that "every white parent whose children attend racially integrated schools" would be aware of "negro crime ... Rapes, muggings, and even murder".^[312] Webster also made connections with crime statistics regarding the African-American community in the United States. These, Webster argued, showed that "adult negroids fall below other races in acceptable behaviour", lamenting that "the criminal Blacks cannot help themselves".^[312] It also called for the scrapping of the Race Relations Act 1965, arguing that individuals should have the legal right to racially discriminate against others.^[212]

Leadership and branches

As it existed in its 1970s heyday, the National Front was headed by its directorate, a body of between seven and twenty party members.^[313] This directorate was responsible for determining party policy, controlling its structures and finances, overseeing admissions and expulsions, and determining the tactics its activists would employ.^[314] It had strict control over both local and regional organisations.^[315] A third of the directorate were required to stand down every year, with a postal ballot of the membership to determine their replacements.^[316] Between 1971 and 1975, the directorate elected two of its members to be the most senior figures in the party, the chairman and deputy chairman.^[317] However, at the 1977 annual general meeting it was agreed—at Tyndall's instigation—that the chairman would instead be elected through a postal ballot of the party's membership.^[318] As the directorate met together in London only infrequently, in practice the day-to-day running of the party was left to the chairman and deputy chairman.^[319] The formal organisation resulted in the party's elite having most of the power, with the membership exerting little control over policy or the actions of party leaders.^[320] Fielding suggested that this centralisation of power would have presaged the framework of any NF government had they obtained power.^[250]

One variant of the NF flag

As with most other British political parties at the time, in the 1970s the NF's elite was overwhelmingly male, middle-class, and relatively young.^[321] The party's constitution did not acknowledge the existence of factions,^[322] although the Front had a long history of factional rivalry within its ranks,^[323] with Wilkinson noting that it had been plagued by "personal squabbles and splits" among the party hierarchy.^[324] The NF's local presence was divided into "groups", which had under twelve members, and "branches", which had over twelve.^[325] The NF was not eager to publicise how many branches were active across the UK.^[326] Fielding stated that in July 1973 the party had 32 branches and 80 groups,^[326] while Walker claimed that in January 1974, it had 30 branches and 54 groups.^[293] The majority were in south-east England, with 11 branches and 8 groups in Greater London and 5 branches and 22 groups elsewhere in the south-east.^[293] It had five branches and 3 groups in the midlands, 7 branches and 11 groups in the north, 1 branch and 7 groups in western Britain, and one group each in Scotland and Northern Ireland.^[327]

Each branch or group had its own five-person committee, with annual elections for the committee positions.^[325] NF branch meetings were much like those of other British political parties, being largely preoccupied with practical issues such as raising finances.^[328] Typically, branch meetings took place in a local pub and would be followed by a social period in the establishment.^[329] Some NF branches also established supporters' associations for individuals who backed the NF but were not willing to become members out of fear of potential repercussions.^[330] In April 1974, the party introduced regional councils to co-ordinate between the national party and its local groups and branches.^[314] These regional councils were required to contain two members from each branch in the region.^[314]

Supporter organisations were also established among white communities of British descent elsewhere in the world; in March 1977 a National Front of New Zealand was founded, followed by comparable organisations in Australia, Canada, and South Africa in 1978.^[331] After the Strasserite faction secured control of the party in 1986, it formally adopted a cadre system of leadership.^[100] This meant that the party became more elitist, becoming what the Strasserites called "a revolutionary cadre party – a movement run by its most dedicated and active members rather than by armchair nationalists".^[332] This was linked to the idea—promoted through a book by Holland—that each NF member should be a "political soldier", a "New Type of Man" who rejected the "materialist nightmare" of contemporary capitalist society and underwent a personal "Spiritual Revolution" through which they dedicated themselves fully to the nation.^[333]

Security and violence

The Front was preoccupied with security,^[334] refusing to reveal information about its leader's standard working hours or the number of staff at its headquarters.^[334] During the 1970s, it created a card-index and photo file of its opponents, which included their names and addresses.^[335] To guard its marches from anti-fascists, the NF formed "defence groups" largely made up of young men.^[336] By 1974, this group was called the Honour Guard;^[337] its members often carried makeshift weapons, like iron bars and bicycle chains.^[338] These marches often took place in areas that had experienced high levels of immigration; in doing so the NF sought to instil fear in immigrant communities, whip up racial tensions, and generate publicity by clashing with counter-protesters, all of which it could exploit politically.^[339] These tactics have continued into more recent times; in August 2017, around thirty NF supporters marched in Grantham, Lincolnshire, where they clashed with members of the Midland Anti-Fascist Network.^[340] In some instances, its marches have been banned by the local authorities; in 2012, Aberdeen City Council rejected the NF's request to hold a procession down Aberdeen's Union Street on Hitler's birthday.^[341]

Plaque memorialising the "Battle of Lewisham" in which anti-fascist protesters combatted an NF march in 1977

The Front claimed that violent incidents were instigated by its opponents, and that NF members only resorted to violence in self-defence.^[342] On observing the group during the 1970s however, Fielding noted that "the NF uses force aggressively",^[342] and was "not above exacting revenge" on its critics.^[343] Fielding believed that the most notable violent clash involving the NF was the Red Lion Square disorders which took place in central London's Red Lion Square in June 1974. The NF had planned a meeting at Conway Hall and was expecting that anti-fascist protesters would picket it. The event resulted in clashes between the NF, anti-fascists, and the police stationed to keep the peace; 54 demonstrators were arrested, many were injured, and one anti-fascist protester, Kevin Gateley, was killed.^[344] Gateley's was the first death at a British demonstration since 1919.^[345] Another prominent clash took place in Lewisham, south-east London in August 1977. The NF marchers were met by a group called the All Lewisham Campaign against Racism and Fascism (ALCARAF), although Trotskyist groups regarded ALCARAF's peaceful response as ineffective and responded by attacking the NF marchers in what came to be known as the "Battle of Lewisham".^[87][346] In April 1979, an anti-NF demonstration in Southall clashed with police seeking to keep the NF and anti-fascists apart; the violence resulted in the death of Blair Peach.^[347]

In other instances, the NF disrupted the meetings of both anti-fascist groups and mainstream politicians.^[348] In November 1975, NF activists attacked a National Council of Civil Liberties meeting at the University of Manchester, with eight people requiring hospitalisation.^[349] In another instance, eighty NF activists stormed a meeting held by the Liberal Party to discuss the Rhodesian Bush War and the transition to black-majority rule in Rhodesia. NF members threw flour bombs and chairs at the assembled delegates while chanting "White Power".^[350] Another event disrupted by the NF was a town hall meeting in Newham, where female members pelted the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins with flour bombs and manure.^[348]

There have also been actions carried out by right-wing extremists where covert NF involvement was suspected but not proven.^[351] This can result from NF members engaging in "freelance" activism not authorised by the party hierarchy.^[352] For instance, in February 1974, several men were observed putting up NF posters in Brighton, assaulting passers by whom they accused of being Jewish, and attacking staff at a socialist bookshop run by the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). The local NF branch denied knowledge of the incident or the individuals in question.^[353] In June 1978, the headquarters of the Anti-Nazi League was hit by an arson attack; the slogan "NF Rules OK" was graffitied on the building. Again, the NF denied that its members were responsible.^[354] The party's leadership showed little concern with the violent activities of such members and supporters, and openly praised some of its members convicted of violent criminal activity.^[355]

Sub-groups and propaganda output

The NF established a wide range of sub-groups and organisations through which to promote its cause. In June 1974, the party launched its NF Trade Unionists Association, seeking to promote NF membership among Britain's trade unions.^[356] It also issued a sporadic and short-lived magazine aimed at trade unionists, The British Worker.^[357] Tyndall believed that the NF should take control of the trade union movement and suppress the leftists within it.^[358] During the 1970s it also encouraged members to infiltrate other groups, such as the Hunt Saboteurs Association and ratepayers' and residents' associations, to promote the NF cause within them.^[359] In 1978, the party's directorate established a legal department to deal with the growing number of members being charged with inciting racial hatred under the 1976 Race Relations Act.^[360]

In 1973, the political scientist Max Hanna noted that because the party had made "virtually no impact in academic circles", it was planning on rearing its own academics.^[361] In that decade, the NF formed a Student Association,^[362] and issued a student magazine titled Spark.^[361] The NF Student Association initially tried recruiting students on university campuses, but on having little success it refocused attention towards recruitment in schools and particularly sixth forms.^[363] In 1977, the party held a meeting to discuss how best to attract teenagers, and in 1978 launched the Young National Front (YNF).^[364] The YNF was restricted to individuals aged between 14 and 25, and was the means by which individuals like Griffin and Pearce, who later became influential party figures, joined.^[365] The YNF issued a newsletter, Bulldog, which was edited by Pearce, and held "training seminars" for schoolchildren.^[365] The YNF distributed leaflets and copies of Bulldog at football matches and concerts that it believed would attract large numbers of white working-class people,^[366] and organised its own football competition between YNF teams from different cities.^[365] The YNF also encouraged young women to join the party and used sexualised imagery of its female members to attract young male recruits.^[367] Bulldog for instance carried an advert urging female supporters to become "a Bulldog bird" by sending in photographs of themselves, "the sexier the better", for publication in the magazine.^[368] These images were then printed with slogans such as "one good reason for joining the YNF" to entice more heterosexual men to join.^[368]

The NF observed how the left mobilised anti-fascist support through musical ventures like Rock Against Racism, and decided to employ similar techniques for its own cause.^[370] In 1979, Pearce—who was then the YNF leader—established Rock Against Communism (RAC), through which the NF held concerts featuring neo-Nazi skinhead bands.^[370] Advertising RAC, the March 1979 issue of Bulldog stated that "For years White, British youths have had to put up with left-wing filth in rock music... But now there is an anti-commie backlash."^[371] The first RAC event was held in Conway Hall in August 1979, and featured performances by The Dentists, Homicide, and White Boss; one YNC member in attendance noted that the audience largely consisted of drunk men.^[371] Tyndall and other senior NF members liked the opportunity for expanding party membership that RAC offered them, but were concerned that associations with the skinhead subculture would damage the NF's image.^[372]

After Tyndall left the party, in 1982 RAC was revived with Skrewdriver as its flagship band; they had been having difficulty finding venues willing to host them due to the violence that often accompanied its performances.^[373] In 1983 the NF launched a record label, White Noise Records, which became a new means of disseminating NF ideas and an important source of revenue for several years.^[374] The RAC had difficulty finding venues willing to stage its concerts, although in 1984 it got around this by staging its first large open-air concert at the rural home of Nick Griffin's parents in Suffolk.^[375] The assembled crowd responded to Skrewdriver's performance with Nazi salutes and calls of "sieg heil" while the band's Ian Stuart responded with "Fucking right Seig Heil, fucking nigger bashing".^[375] To further promote this music scene, senior NF members also established the White Noise Club which distributed the White Noise magazine internationally.^[376] Later in the 1980s, Skrewdriver broke from the NF and the White Noise Club to establish its own extreme-right music promotion network, Blood & Honour.^[377]

Finances

The National Front was not open about its finances,^[381] but often stressed that it was short of funds and required more money to finance its operations.^[382] It is likely that in its heyday, it had just enough money to pay for its two full-time officials, three head office secretaries, and party expenses.^[383] Walker noted that in 1974, the NF raised at least £50,000.^[384] That same year, it went into debt to finance its electoral campaigns.^[384]

Its central funds came from several main sources: membership dues, the sale of its publications, donations, and lotteries.^[383] During the 1970s, branches were given financial targets they were expected to attain through selling Spearhead and the NF's newssheet Britain First.^[56] Branches also held jumble sales, totes, and social events as a means of raising funds.^[385] Branches were not held responsible for providing funds for the party's headquarters, but were expected to finance their own candidates in election campaigns.^[386] The party also succeeded in raising additional funds during its rallies and meetings, where donations were specifically requested from the attendees.^[387] It had several wealthy supporters who provided donations of up to £20,000,^[388] including sympathisers in apartheid-era South Africa,^[378] and in France.^[389] It also received funds from individuals in the Arab world to finance the publication of material espousing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.^[389]

Membership

Profile

While the party attracts significant numbers of working-class people the role they play in the branch is contingent on their political ability and zeal, and there is no doubt that it is those drawn from the upper ranks of the working class who predominate... It is noticeable that the more sedentary members at branch level are those drawn from the lower middle-class and the few remaining elderly upper middle-class members.

— Fielding, on the class composition of NF branches, 1981^[397]

No adequate sociological sampling of NF members took place, but impressionistic interviews with members were carried out during the 1970s by Taylor, Fielding, and Billig.^[389] Max Hanna noted that as of 1973, most NF members were "from the skilled working class and lower-middle class" but that there was variation according to branch.^[361] Fielding observed that most party members during the late 1970s were working-class,^[398] but that the party's South Coast branches had a higher concentration of lower middle-class members.^[399] He furthermore observed that party activism was generally carried out by upper working and lower middle-class members rather than by their lower working-class and upper middle-class counterparts.^[400]

Fielding noted that the party's membership contained individuals of all age ranges, although added that there were branches with a particular concentration of retired persons.^[330] He also observed that branches exhibited a greater number of men in their thirties or fifties rather than their forties, suggesting that the latter were typically too preoccupied with raising their families to involve themselves heavily in NF matters.^[330] Hanna also noted that "men in their thirties" appeared to be the party's main cohort.^[361] The male dominance of the membership was in common with most other British political parties in the period, although the Front differed from these other parties in cultivating an image of "overwhelming masculinity" and "virulent machismo".^[401]

NF members were sociologically regarded as political deviants, and thus parts of the cultic milieu.^[402] Fielding's interviews with NF members in the 1970s led him to conclude that "there is something exceptional about the NF member, and particularly about the activist", for they differed from other members of society in their willingness to join a politically extreme group.^[403] Fielding found that NF members were concerned about their image and sensitive to ideas that they were "fascistic" or "cranky", instead thinking of themselves as "patriots" or "nationalists".^[404] He found that they were usually more accepting of the term "racist", with some referring to themselves as such.^[404] He noted that race was the main issue that led members to joining the Front,^[166] and that these members generally perceived their racial ideas to be "common sense".^[405] He added that members commonly expressed "harsh expressions of prejudice" against non-white Britons,^[406] for instance reporting on one woman member who called on members to "get out there and smash that bleedin' wog filth", a group she juxtaposed with "respectable people like us".^[403]

NF flag variant

Fielding found that "ordinary members feel uneasy about Britain's present political life but cannot express why this is".^[407] A common perception among members was that life had changed for the worse in Britain, something that they commonly expressed using the saying "the country is going to the dogs".^[407] As evidence, they cited what they believed were declining standards of living, the erosion of British identity, and the collapse of the British Empire.^[408] Members typically looked with pride on the UK's past military and colonial exploits,^[409] and wanted the country to return to a preeminent position on the world stage.^[410] There was a widespread perception among NF members that the country's political leaders were both corrupt and cruel,^[408] and a tendency toward believing and espousing conspiracy theories.^[408]

Fielding also believed that some of the membership were "motivated by a search for community and reassurance in a world they find difficult to understand".^[411] For some, joining the NF was a psychological act of defiance against society,^[407] while many had joined because their friends and relatives had also done so.^[407] Fielding suggested that the NF's moral indignation regarding perceived slackers and anti-social elements had particular appeal for upper working and lower middle-class Britons because these were the sectors of society which felt that they worked hardest for the least reward.^[285] The large number of individuals who joined and soon left the party might in part be due to the fact that many had joined on the basis of its populist appeals against immigration, only to express shock or dismay upon discovering its underlying fascist ideology.^[412] In other cases, individuals may have left because they felt that the hardship they encountered—which could include ostracisation by friends and colleagues, job losses, verbal abuses, and on rare occasion physical assault—became too much to endure, particularly as the party's fortunes declined in the latter 1970s.^[413]

During the 1970s, the NF consistently attempted to attract youth to its cause, having formed specific sub-groups to focus on this campaign.^[414] Many of the youth attracted to the group may have done so as a form of youthful rebellion, enjoying the "shock value" that party membership offered; in this they had similarities with the contemporary punk movement of the late 1970s.^[415] Ryan Shaffer stated that the party's shift away from traditional campaigning during the 1980s and its growing affiliation with neo-Nazi youth groups resulted in its appeal becoming restricted to "mostly young people".^[416]

Voter base

During its 1970s heyday, one of the strongest areas of NF support was Bethnal Green (pictured), part of London's East End.^[417]

The NF's electoral support had "a distinctive geographical distribution", coming from "some voters within certain towns and cities".^[418] This support was overwhelmingly urban and English, with little support in rural parts of England or in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.^[419] According to Walker, the 1974 election results suggested that at the time the NF's electoral heartlands were in London's East End and in the north-east inner London suburbs.^[210] He noted that it typically gained much of its support from "respectable working-class" areas, where many traditional Labour voters who felt let down by Labour governments were attracted by its racial appeals.^[420] In 1978, the psephologist Michael Steed argued that comparing the voting data of the NF to older far-right parties suggested that "there has been a very constant level of potential N.F. support for at least ten and perhaps twenty years, simply awaiting an opportunity to express itself."^[419]

Examining the party's East End support in greater depth, the sociologist Christopher T. Husbands argued that NF support was not evenly distributed across the region, but was constrained to a "relatively restricted area", the two or three square miles containing Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, Hoxton, and Haggerston.^[417] He noted that even in urban strongholds such as these, "only a minority even of their white residents were sympathetic" to the NF.^[421] A 1978 survey in the East End by New Society found that while most white residents thought the rate of immigration was too high, many related positive encounters and friendships with Afro-Caribbean and Asian migrants and opposed the NF. A number mocked the Front—one called them "a load of ponces" who did not want to work, another satirised "all the blokes in their Action Man gear"—although were cautious about doing so publicly, fearing violent retaliation.^[422]

A 1977 survey conducted by Essex University found that 8% of those polled were likely to vote for the Front, and that the party had "strong support amongst the working class, the young and the poorly educated".^[423] This survey found that support for the party was strongest in the East Midlands (10%), followed by London (8%), East Anglia (7%), the West Midlands (6%) and then Yorkshire and Humberside (6%).^[380] A report published in 1980 instead found that Greater London and the West Midlands were the NF's greatest areas of support, together making up 48% of the party's national vote share.^[424] However, this study similarly found a strong link to class, with 72% of NF supporters being working class; it noted that support was "somewhat stronger among the skilled working class than among the semi- and unskilled workers."^[425] This study also found that 71% of the NF's support came from men.^[426] This close link with majority male support was also evident in other far-right movements of the period, such as the George Wallace Movement in the United States, and echoed the disproportionate number of men who worked for the party.^[426]

The 1980 study also examined views of the NF among the British electorate more broadly.^[427] This found that only 6% would "seriously consider" voting for the NF, while only 1% would "strongly agree" with the idea of voting for it.^[428] Two thirds of respondents believed that the NF stirred up racial tensions to advance its own cause, while 64% believed that there was a Nazi element to the party.^[429] 56% believed that the NF wanted Britain to become a dictatorship.^[428] However, Taylor suggested that many of those who voted for the NF did so not because they wanted to see the United Kingdom become a fascist state but because they were attracted by its anti-immigrant appeals.^[430]

General and by-elections

The National Front never gained a seat in the British House of Commons.^[430] In the 1970 general election, the NF fielded ten candidates and averaged 3.6% of the vote share in those constituencies.^[440] It did better in subsequent by-elections; in the 1972 Uxbridge by-election it received 8.2% and in the 1973 West Bromwich by-election it received 16%, the first time that the party saved its electoral deposit.^[441] In the February 1974 election, 54 of its candidates averaged 3.3% of the vote, while in the October 1974 election, 90 candidates averaged 3.1%.^[426] In the October 1974 general election, the Front gained over twenty-five times as many votes as the BUF had gained ay any election; this suggested that "politically speaking", fascism was "far stronger" in 1970s Britain than in 1930s Britain, making it the only country in Europe where this was the case.^[442]

In 1977 the NF contested three by-elections, gaining 5.2% of the vote in the City of London and Westminster South by-election, 8.2% in the Birmingham Stechford by-election, and 3.8% in the Ashfield by-election.^[443] In the Birmingham Stechford by-election, followed by another in Birmingham Ladywood in 1977 and in Lambeth Central in 1978, it beat the Liberals to reach third place.^[444] This was partly due to the unpopularity of Liberal leader David Steel's "Lib–Lab pact" with the Labour government.^[444] Within a few years the NF's electoral support had drastically declined; in the 1979 general election, it fielded 303 candidates and averaged 0.6% of the total national vote, losing £45,000 in deposits.^[445] In the seats it contested, it averaged 1.3% of the vote, a number which rose to 2% in the 88 constituencies it contested in Greater London.^[446] This election "marked the beginning of the end of the movement's claim to seek political legitimacy through the ballot box".^[447] In the 1983 general election, the NF fought 54 seats, averaging 1% in each; this was better than its main rival, the BNP, which gained an average of 0.6%.^[448]

EU parliament elections

Local elections

The National Front performed better in local elections than in general ones,^[449] although in its heyday it never won a seat on a local council.^[430] In October 1969, two Conservative councillors on Wandsworth London Borough Council—Athlene O' Connell and Peter Mitchell—defected to the Front, although returned to the Conservatives in December.^[450] In the May 1974 London council elections, the party averaged 10% of the vote in the boroughs of Haringey, Islington, Brent, Southwark, and Lewisham, while its best result was in Hounslow.^[451] In the April 1976 council elections, the NF boosted its vote in many towns, securing 21% of the vote in Sandwell, 20.7% in Wolverhampton, 18.54% in Leicester, and 17% in Watford.^[451]

The NF made gains in the 1977 Greater London Council elections, where it had contested all but one seat. Its 91 GLC candidates gained 120,000 votes, over twice the total that the party had accrued in the whole of England in 1974.^[452] In Inner London, it gained the third largest vote share.^[453] Its share of the vote in London had also increased, reflecting an average rise from 4.4% in the October 1974 general election to 5.3% in the 1977 GLC election; in some places the rise was far higher.^[454] It averaged over 10% of the vote in three boroughs: Hackney, Newham, and Tower Hamlets, and in doing so it mounted a challenge to the Liberals' position as the third party in London.^[455] The rise in the NF's London vote between 1974 and 1977 can be explained in various ways. One possibility is that growing electoral support represented how growing numbers of working-class Londoners were turning to the NF as the party of protest against the Labour government's failure to stem urban decay.^[456] An alternate explanation is that the NF's actual voter base did not significantly increase between 1974 and 1977, but rather that their vote share increased due to a lower turnout from voters for mainstream parties.^[457] More broadly however, the NF's vote share began to stagnate in the local elections from 1977 and 1978.^[423] By 1977, the party's electoral support had peaked, and by the London Borough Council elections of 1978, its support "had very noticeably declined" in the city, something that was then reflected in local elections elsewhere in the UK.^[458]

In March 2010, the NF gained its first elected representative in 35 years after John Gamble—a local councillor representing Brinsworth and Catcliffe on Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council—defected to them. He had been elected to the council in May 2008 as a representative of the BNP, before defecting to England First Party in June 2009, and then to the NF. In December 2011 he was removed from the council for failure to attend its meetings in six months, and faced disciplinary proceedings for allegedly abusing staff.^[459] In April 2012, the NF declared its intention to field 35 candidates in that year's local elections—the highest number for 30 years—aiming to revive what it called its 1970s "glory days".^[460]

Opposition

The Rock Against Racism movement was established to combat the NF in the 1970s

The existence of an "avowedly racialist nationalist party" was a provocation both to the political left and the "whole range of established political opinion",^[440] with the NF's opponents perceiving it as "a loathsome graveyard echo of the old Nazism".^[478] The NF's rise in 1973–74 was noticed by the leaders of major social and political groups but they generally chose to ignore it, desiring to give it no additional publicity and hoping that in doing so it would fade away.^[479]

Two groups that adopted a different approach were the Jewish community and the far-left. The Board of Deputies of British Jews for instance began producing anti-NF literature, aware that the Front's anti-Semitic message was a threat to the Jewish community.^[480] The British far-left followed the older arguments of Marxist thinkers like Leon Trotsky that a fascist movement was being prepared by the ruling bourgeois class amid capitalist crisis in order to crush the working-class movement by replacing the liberal democratic order with a far more repressive authoritarian state.^[481] Approaches to the NF differed among British far-left groups; the Communist Party of Great Britain and Labour Party Young Socialists sought to mobilise the labour movement against racism to diffuse the NF's appeal.^[345] The International Marxist Group and International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party instead favoured direct action to disrupt the NF's abilities to promote their views, holding to the slogan "No platform for fascists".^[345]

At its April 1974 annual conference, the National Union of Students—which was then influenced by the International Marxist Group—adopted a 'no platform' policy with regard to the NF.^[482] Also in the mid-1970s, the National Union of Mineworkers called for the government to ban the NF.^[483] By the October 1974 election, the Labour Party forbade its candidates to share either a public platform or a radio or television slot with NF candidates.^[484] 120 Labour-controlled councils banned the party from using local municipal halls for its activities.^[485] In the mid-1970s, Labour and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) helped to mobilise the trade union movement at the grassroots level against the NF.^[486] The TUC had previously been reticent about launching large-scale anti-racist campaigns, aware that much of their membership would disagree with them; however, they had been convinced to do so after growing far-left pressure and an awareness of the threat to trade unionism posed by a resurgent fascist movement.^[487] In 1977, a joint project between Labour and the TUC resulted in the creation of a political broadcast in which footage of the NF was interspersed with that of Hitler and Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.^[488] The TUC and Labour also issued a leaflet titled "The National Front is a Nazi Front" containing the phrase "Yesterday – the Jews; today coloured people; tomorrow you".^[489]

Anti-fascist and anti-racist groups developed throughout Britain in response to the NF and other racist activities, and in September 1977 a 'broad front' organisation, the National Co-ordinating Committee, was established to co-ordinate their efforts.^[491] In November 1977, the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) was established by various left and far-left groups to counter the NF and broader far-right in Britain.^[492] The ANL gained the public endorsement of several Labour politicians, trade union leaders, academics, and figures from the acting and sporting industries.^[493] In 1978 it established a sub-campaign, School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN); some supporters of the ANL distanced themselves from the group amid fears that it was politicising school pupils with far-left propaganda.^[494] In 1976 a music-oriented organisation, Rock Against Racism, was also created to counter the NF's growth; in 1978 it held two well attended music festivals in London, where bands like The Clash and Steel Pulse performed.^[495] In 1977, the assembly of the British Council of Churches agreed to launch its own anti-fascist and anti-racist organisation, resulting in the creation of Christians Against Racism and Fascism in January 1978.^[488]

Many opposed to the NF were cautious about joining groups with prominent far-left contingents, and as a more moderate alternative to the ANL, in December 1977 the MP Joan Lestor founded the Joint Committee Against Racialism (JCAR), which brought together members of Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberals.^[496] JCAR was endorsed by Labour, the Liberal Party, the Executive Council of the National Union of the Conservative Party, National Union of Students, Board of Deputies of British Jews, British Council of Churches, Supreme Council of the Sikhs, Federation of Bangladeshi Organisations, Indian Workers' Association, the West Indian Standing Conference, and the British Youth Council.^[496] Taylor later noted that by the end of 1977, an "unprecedented range of groups from almost every section of British society spreading right across the political spectrum had declared an intention to oppose the NF and the racism upon which it fed".^[496] In June 1978, the Anti-Racist Anti-Fascist Coordinating Committee (ARAFCC) and the National Co-ordinating Committee held a joint conference to which delegates came from student unions, trades councils, political parties, and groups representing women, ethnic minorities, and the gay community. Although designed to organise a united front against the NF and racism, it failed to do so amid arguments about tactics and approach.^[497]

Far-left activists demonstrated outside NF meetings and encouraged landlords to bar the NF from using their premises.^[484] In other cases, these activists physically attacked NF members.^[484] Many anti-fascists and leftists seeking to obstruct the NF were basing their strategy on a quote attributed to Hitler: "Only one thing could have stopped our movement – if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement."^[498]

Footnotes

Sources