Notes From the Underground: British Fascism 1974-92

Part 1, 1974-83

See also:

• Part 2: British Fascism 1974-92 (II) (Lobster 24)
• Part 3: British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25)
• Part 4: British Fascism 1983-6 (II) (Lobster 26)
• The 1986 National Front Split (Lobster 29)

Introduction

This essay does not set out to be a comprehensive history of fascism in this period but rather to fill in a number of crucial gaps in the extant research, notably: what overall political strategy the significant British fascist groups were pursuing, and how this intersected with more orthodox political forces — including elements of the secret state. By comparison with equivalents abroad, British fascists have been rather tame, but this should not cause us to forget that in the 1970s they blazed a trail for others, building significant pockets of support.

There are general difficulties facing the student of fascism. The bewildering complexity of the fissions — both ideological and personal — that periodically afflict the far Right, while fascinating for students of esoterica, are confusing for the outsider. There is also the general problem, common to all politicians, of ascertaining whether they mean what they say. Among the fascists this is often compounded by the desire to conceal a Nazi past and/or ideology. Further, much of what counts for ‘hard’ information on the connections of fascism to the secret state has been filtered through suspect sources such as Searchlight magazine, and fascists themselves, and lacks independent corroboration. (1)

1974-5 — an opportunity foreclosed

1974 should have been a propitious time for British fascists. Talk of military coups was in the air, involving groups inside and outside the state; and the success of the Ulster Workers’ Council strike in Northern Ireland was a real challenge to the legitimacy of the British state. Furthermore, there was an overlap in terms of interests, and sometimes of membership, between the National Front (hereafter NF) and groups on the Tory Right, such as Lady Jane Birdwood’s Choice and other anti-immigration forums. At first sight, one might have expected party fascists (i.e. those who were members of fascist political parties) to welcome the open questioning of bourgeois democracy from the right in this period, and to an extent this was the case. In January 1974, as the miners’ strike was building up to the political climax of the February election, NF Chairman Tyndall called for ‘ruthless and drastic measures by government to get the country running’, emergency legislation including ‘detention of any union leader who sought actively to sabotage the effort to get industry moving in the crisis… [and] the instant dismissal from all posts in the trade union movement of individuals with a record of past or present membership of Communist organisations’. (2) Later in the year, when coup speculation was more intense, the NF made clear that theirs was no ‘doctrinaire support of parliamentary government as an end in itself’, and that their answer to the question as to whether the ‘survival of parliamentary democracy [was] more important than the survival of Britain’ was ‘decidedly no’.

But the possibility of a military coup was viewed ‘with a great deal of circumspection’, because service officers, while they may well save the country from ‘the Left of the street mobs and militant trade unionists… would be only delivering us into the hands of the much more sinister, because concealed, Left — the Left of the sophisticated world government bureaucracy, with its tentacles of international finance and its highly matured machine of conspiracy and terror — a Left that is so adaptable in its guises that it can often look like the most Conservative and “patriotic” Right — to all except those who are versed and trained in world affairs from the counter-conspiratorial point of view. For this reason we believe that there is no foreseeable military coup in Britain that is going to do Britain any good’. (3)

Far from contemplating a role in the overthrow of the Labour government, in 1974 the NF had only just been rebuffed by the Monday Club and seen the break-down of ‘the bridge’ between the racists in the Club and other elements like the NF. While as recently as September 1972 the NF had provided stewards and 400 of the audience at a Monday Club anti-immigrant rally, after the defeat of George Kennedy Young’s challenge for the Chair of the Club in 1973, exclusion became the order of the day. (6) Ultimately the Monday Club opened their files to Lesley Wooler of the Jewish 62 Group, so as to root out NF sympathisers.(7)

More positively, at the West Bromwich parliamentary by-election in late 1973, for the first (and only) time, the NF had retained their election deposit with Martin Webster’s 16% of votes cast. Electoral breakthrough seemed to beckon to some. (8) In the event, the Front split in late 1974 following the widely-viewed TV denunciation of Tyndall’s neo-nazi ideology by a previous NF Chair, John O’Brien. Former Tory Kingsley-Read displaced Tyndall as party Chairman in October and the ensuing turmoil produced a confused alliance in the National Party of ex-Tories like Kingsley-Read and genuine Strasserites.

In March the NF was frozen out of the 1975 National Referendum Campaign (NRC) for a ‘no’ vote in the referendum on membership of the EEC. While the far left were also rejected, it was a palpable sign of the NF’s distance from the centres of orthodox political power, and their subsequent disruption of the NRC’s Conway Hall rally in April points to their very real frustration and sense of alienation. (9)

Not only were the NF/NP excluded from the overt contemporaneous debates in mainland ruling circles on the future of Britain’s democracy (the role of the NF in Ulster politics was not so marginal, but that subject deserves a full treatment another time), there is no evidence of significant covert organisational NF/NP links with the state in this period. (Though this does not rule out individual contacts.) They were hardly awash with money, from 1970-78 the NF operated from a semi-detached house in Teddington, and dingy premises in Croydon. (10) While an NF Trade Union group had been formed in 1972, and was active supporting ‘white workers’ at the Imperial Typewriters dispute in 1974, the NF were nowhere near being able to intervene in large-scale struggles like the miners’ strike, and were thus not in a position to function as ‘shock-troops of the bourgeoisie’ in classical fascist fashion.

Apart from opposition to Marxism and ‘fraternal wars’, accompanied by a desire for mutual co-operation, its overt programme was rather bland. It soon attracted the wrath of Martin Webster, NF Activities Organiser, as a back-door attempt to gain influence by failed Mosleyites and (more annoyingly) ex-National Party members. Webster disliked its Europeanism and its (speculated) role as a recruitment pool for the neo-Nazi Column 88 para-military group. More significantly, however, was the fact that one of the constituent founders of the League was the Italian Ordine Nuovo, who organised the Las Palmas gathering in May 1975 at which British representatives of Column 88 were present. (12) Ordine Nuovo, banned in 1973, was later re-organised with the knowledge of the Italian Secret Service. (13) There is thus the distinct possibility that the secret services of various countries — including the UK — were aware of the League’s activities at this time.

1975-77 — from exclusion to exile

While not averse to violence, it was incidental to the NF’s strategy. Here there was the usual variety, ranging from the 40-strong attack on an NCCL meeting in Manchester to arson attacks on bookshops, community centres and anti-fascists too numerous to detail here. (14) An important turning-point had been the violence at Red Lion Square in June 1974, where one demonstrator against the NF had died as a result of police horse action. Despite the fact that the NF had not engaged in violence that day, thenceforth they were associated in the public mind with mayhem, and realised the Left were opponents who could not be ignored, or placated. A November 1974 members’ bulletin called for the expansion of ‘facilities for keeping ‘tabs’ on those enemies of our party who seek to oppose it by other than lawful constitutional and democratic means’ — this to include the collection of addresses and the photographing of individuals selling left-wing papers etc.. Sinister as this may seem, it was still introspective, geared at defence of the NF as an organisation, rather than taking the social offensive. On a local level, names and addresses of opponents were published, and it was during this period that Joe Pearce first became active, publishing Bulldog, a populist racist broadsheet aimed at working class white youth.

In 1976 the NF/NP made something of an electoral breakthrough. Some of the credit for this must go to their own actions — for example the 1,000 strong St. George’s Day march through Bradford in April — but some is attributable to the climate of racist hysteria whipped up by the media, rising unemployment, and the first severe public spending cuts of the Labour government. (15) In the May local (district) elections not only did fascists in Leicester receive 18.5% of the vote, two National Party councillors were elected in Blackburn. This was followed in July by a combined NF/NP vote of 44.5% in a Deptford council by-election, the victorious Labour candidate only securing 43.5% of the vote. (16) This crop of propitious results had mixed effects. On the one hand NF Chair John Tyndall thought this presaged an electoral breakthrough; on the other, those elements interested in direct action were also emboldened. With the NF’s November 1976 Remembrance Day parade turn-out of 6,000, the highest ever, matters appeared to be looking up.

In the summer of 1977, following an article advocating its creation by Derek Holland — a figure of great importance later — the Young National Front was set up. (17) Despite the ambition expressed by the formation of a youth movement, the NF leadership had neither the rhetorical nor programmatic flair to ensnare many interested in radical transformation, nor the numbers of street-hardened activists to impress significant ruling-class fractions. This was exemplified by the NF’s impotence over the Grunwick dispute. (18) Tyndall might fulminate that ‘our police, whether they be on duty at factories like Grunwick or at National Front marches attacked by red mobs in the same way…. should be empowered beforehand to take action against those responsible for organising and planning acts of violence in advance’, but the the NF was still unable to even dream of directly confronting the Grunwick pickets themselves.(19) The main public thrust of the NF towards the end of 1977 was the continued presentation of themselves as a ‘respectable’ organisation. Thus on 24 September 1977 an NF delegation to New Scotland Yard, including Tyndall, Martin Webster, Andrew Fountaine and Andrew Brons, met a police contingent led by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helm to discuss alleged attacks on the NF by the Left. While few firm promises were received in return from the NF, it does indicate a certain legalism on their part.

Outside the NF/NP, matters were a little more exciting. In November 1975 the League of Saint George allegedly held a joint training camp with the neo-nazi ‘Column 88’ (apparently so named because the slogan ‘Heil Hitler’ uses the eighth letter of the alphabet twice). (20) Among the organisers of this event was one Peter Marriner, a prominent British Movement organiser suspected on the fascist right of having Special Branch connections. (21) Marriner was subsequently exposed as an infiltrator of some skill, having become the election agent of Labour M.P. Brian Walden and his successor John Severs at the time of the Birmingham Ladywood by-election in 1977. In early 1977 the British Movement itself commenced a programme to ‘train men to officer standards in field training, discipline, unit leadership’ of a decidedly para-military nature, but without evidence of substantial logistic or financial input. (22)

1978-79 — the Downward Spiral

The NF’s electoral success led to the development of organised resistance. In November 1977 the Anti-Nazi League was formed, with the aim of laying bare the ideology of the NF leadership and undercutting their appeal to disaffected white youth. Also at the end of 1977, according to Webster, the attitude of the police began to change, from one of co-operation to hostility. (23) Part of the reason may have been the police’s perception after the violence of the Lewisham march in August 1977 that public disorder was inevitably associated with the NF, and it was all too much bother. Racial violence continued unabated, most notably in the East End during the summer of 1978, but those incidents showing most evidence of planning began in March.

Seven crude incendiary bombs were sent primarily to left-wing bookshops by the Manchester-based SS Wotan 18, linked with Column 88. (24) As a footnote to the British Movement (BM) paramilitary activity mentioned above, three Birmingham members were convicted in January 1981 after their stockpile of machine guns, rifles and ammunition was found. (25) Given their clientele, such publicity did not do the BM much harm, and by 1983 they had recovered to 3,000 members. (26)

For the NF, electoral decline set in throughout 1978, partly precipitated by Mrs Thatcher’s speech on the tv programme World in Action of January 30 1978, in which, using the notion of ‘swamping’, she sought to appropriate concerns about immigration, previously the NF’s domain. Tyndall opened 1979 with yet more vain spluttering against trade union pickets, denouncing them as mobsters who under an NF regime would ‘find themselves in police cells so quickly they won’t know what hit them’ — closing off space to the Left just as Thatcher had drawn off support from the Right. (27) In this period there were allegations of collusion with the repressive apparatus of the state, centred around Martin Webster (which I will deal with in a subsequent article). Some NF members, however, were interested in colluding with elements of the orthodox right. In the summer of 1978 an ‘Action Committee of London Branch Organisers’ had preparatory discussions with other right-wing groups about what to do after Tyndall/Webster had been dumped. (28)

Between the NF and the ‘libertarian right’, however, was mutual ideological antipathy, especially concerning the Freedom Association (then the National Association for Freedom, NAFF), which had played such an important role in the Grunwick dispute. In 1977 Aims of Industry published a trenchant attack by the late Stephen Eyres, a NAFF activist, The National Front is a Socialist Front. (29) As well as denying the ‘socialist’ charge, the NF castigated NAFF as ‘simply echoing the voice of the new Toryism by emphasising the freedoms and rights that the individual should possess vis-a-vis the State but is afraid to mention the duties that the individual should hold towards the State and Nation’. (30)

The most interesting development in 1978 was the appointment of Steve Brady as International Liaison Officer of the League of Saint George. If there was an even remotely plausible candidate for a state-fascist political collaboration in this period, it was the League, a coalition of ex-NP members like Brady, orthodox neo-nazis and semi-Tories like Fountaine and Kavanagh. (31) Certainly Tyndall, Webster and Verrall chose to present them in a sinister light during the internal faction- fighting of 1979-80, alleging that ‘according to accurate inside sources of information, this situation of dissension and rebellion is being actively promoted by members of the League of St. George in a bid to topple the present leadership of the NF’. (32) Even if they were exaggerating this, the most hardened and ideologically committed in the NF and BM were specifically excluded from the most significant bridging attempt with both the orthodox far right and foreign neo-nazis.

It all seems very haphazard and disorganised. Few would dissent from Peter Shipley’s 1978 assessment that ‘What is noticeable…. is the total hostility of the Establishment towards the NF: the press, the professions, the universities, the senior ranks of the armed forces or civil service show no inclination towards the NF or NF-style politics. There is no NF intelligentsia and no financial backing from “big business”.’ (33) Derek Holland’s critique of this period, written in 1988, is as good a summary as any — ‘It was believed, naively, that a combination of spectacular public marches, generating enormous publicity, with widespread electioneering would bring the NF rapidly into the ambit of political power…. increasing votes and higher recruitment gave a semblance of legitimacy to this strategy, but it did not take long for the Establishment to work out that they were dealing with a March-Elections one card trick. The result was widespread violent street opposition to our marches and intensive national smear campaigns, especially at election times…… public support for the NF withered….. The then leadership clung obstinately to their strategy despite its manifest uselessness in the new circumstances.’ (34)

1979-83 — into the eye of the storm?

The 1979 election was a severe set-back for the NF, with their average vote down to 1.3% compared with 3.1% in October 1974. Many dropped out, and there was a powerful residue of anger and bitterness among remaining fascist activists. The time seemed ripe for determined action. After the election there was a three-way split in the NF. One group, led by Fountaine and Kavanagh, and also involving Richard Franklin, became the short-lived NF Constitutional Movement. This was a politically vacuous para-Tory grouping, opposed in a coded way to Nazism, enigmatically defined as ‘dogmatic and arbitrary insistence on political attitudes that have failed in other places and at other times, and that are largely the cause of our failure today.’ (35) The second group was led by John Tyndall, who walked out in January 1980 after the party refused to grant him dictatorial powers. He formed a New National Front which, by April 1982, had become the British National Party (BNP), characterised by an increasingly overt Nazism with a British wrapping, and the cult of the leader. (36)

The third group was those left in the NF itself. Their ideology was a rather ambitious, interesting brew. (37) At the 1980 AGM, ‘for the first time in the NF’s 13 year history, the Party [was] in the hands of Revolutionary Nationalists determined to destroy the twin evils of Communism and Capitalism.’ (38) The scenario outlined for the NF’s attainment of power was therefore changed to one of ‘Organising for the Collapse’. According to the NF’s 5-year plan of July 1980, ‘If it is true that the NF has no hope of gaining power under conditions that are stable – – economically, socially or politically — we should not be preoccupied with making ourselves more “respectable” under present conditions. We must appreciate that the “image” we have been given by the media and which may well lose us some potential support today, will be a positive asset when the streets are beset by riots, unemployment soars, and when inflation gets even beyond the present degree of minimal control.’ (39)

The agency of change was altered, signalled by Webster’s immediate reaction to the 1979 election debacle that the ‘NF won’t be built on middle class foundations’. That did not mean the NF had become genuinely anti-capitalist; it was tactical, Webster warning that ‘until we have become big enough to be a serious contender for power in a situation of a national economic catastrophe and a collapse of law and order, the NF will not be able to offer the middle class anything by way of property/status protection that the Conservative Party cannot offer with a million times more credibility.’ (40) Capitalism itself was still defined in Nazi (Strasserite) terms by the most influential radical theorist, Joe Pearce, who was careful to distinguish it from private enterprise. (41) Nevertheless, there was a greater rhetorical commitment to trade union activism and the ‘patriotic working class’ than there had been before. (42)

Increasingly, hostility towards the police developed into a full-blown fear of a burgeoning ‘Police-State’, articulated by Griffin and Pearce, who declared in 1982 that ‘today the British police force constitutes a State militia designed to suppress all ‘dissident elements’….. and that of course includes the NF!’ (43) There was a denial that the NF was ‘right-wing’, (44) followed by sympathetic noises about the Militant Tendency, though not Marx himself. (45) Long-standing sympathy for the Palestinian cause (on the principle of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’) was translated into a ‘Victory To Palestine’ supplement to Nationalism Today in April 1983, written by Derek Holland and widely rumoured to have been paid for by Middle Eastern finance. (46)

It has been alleged that from 1982 onwards Derek Holland, Joe Pearce, Nick Griffin and others involved with Rising magazine, most notably the Italian exiles, of whom Roberto Fiore was the most prominent, were involved in preparations for armed struggle and the creation of ‘political soldiers’. This contention is best discussed in the context of the take-over of the NF by Holland, Griffin and company in 1986, which I will deal with in a future essay. Whatever the truth of that, towards the end of 1983 even Martin Webster was to be found warning that ‘a society which calls itself “democratic” but which takes measures to prevent its political minorities from engaging in the democratic process is a society which is inviting minority opinion to be expressed through the only mode of expression left available to it: terrorism.’ (47) Holland was quick to criticise him, on the grounds that ‘terrorism is only the answer for those with a death wish’, a rebuttal that would now seem more convincing had not one of Holland’s later slogans not been the inimitable oxymoron ‘Long Live Death’… (48)

Just as the NF’s 1979 electoral humiliation led to an upsurge in official anti-semitism from them (most notably in the pages of the theoretical journal New Nation, edited by Andrew Brons and later Nick Griffin), it also saw increasing violence against their opponents. At this time the NF was far from the disciplined organisation the would-be ‘political soldiers’ later aspired to create, and local branch committee members had a lot of scope in their own areas. In 1980 the Chairman of Southwark NF, Ken Matthews, was jailed for six years after taking part with two other members in an arson attack on Union Place Resource Centre in Lambeth. (49) Wandsworth NF (which at this time contained both Martin Webster and the young Patrick Harrington as members) hit the headlines because its branch PO Box was used as a contact address for South London News, which specialised in publishing the names, addresses and telephone numbers of Leftist opponents of the NF. The June/July 1981 issue went further, advising its readers on how to buy weapons. The NF’s official view was that this magazine had been issued in response to the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) magazine Forewarned, which, starting in October 1978, had begun to print the details of hundreds of NF members in like fashion. I recollect seeing such lists passed around the ANL in the late seventies — but who was first in the field is hard to tell at this distance. (50)

The NF’s leadership had two conflicting concerns. On the one hand, to retain the ‘respectable’ elements of their base, it was essential to avoid the blame for the instigation of political violence, which was presented as originating exclusively from the ranks of opponents, before 1979. Thus April 1977 (for marches) and early 1978 (for arson and personal attacks) were said to be the turning-points. (51) On the other hand, they wanted to avoid the haemorrhage of members to the British Movement, which was not interested in respectability and was rapidly growing. This led to some highly ambiguous statements. In April 1981, for example, the NF declared that it ‘does not encourage or condone reprisal attacks but points out that it was the Left who opened the Pandora’s Box of harassment.’ (52)

In some areas there seems little doubt that the initiative came from the NF. In Brighton, for example, with which I have some familiarity, a campaign of violence by the NF and their periphery began around November 1979, and continued until 1982. Traditionally, Brighton had been a low-profile area for the NF, given the residence locally then (and now) of luminaries such as Tyndall. Activities undertaken included regular assaults on meetings of the Troops Out Movement, a daylight axe-attack on the local Women’s Centre and the destruction by fire of the local Resource Centre. (53)

In advertising the June-July 1981 issue of South London News, the local NF bulletin Sussex Front (then edited by Martin Wingfield, who later performed the same function for The Flag newspaper) described it as containing ‘articles on Weapons and where to get them, Wogs and how to get them out, and the usual list of leading “Reds” addresses and phone numbers.’ (54) On the other side of the violence ledger there was the subsequent arson attack on the Hancock family’s printing press, a long-standing and relatively ecumenical fixture on the Far Right scene, which had printed the infamous Holocaust Denial offering by Richard Verrall, Did Six Million Really Die?. Sussex Front eventually published the names and addresses of local anti-fascists, just like the South London News.

What is instructive about this local experience is what didn’t happen, as much as what did. Aside from the Resource Centre incident, the ordnance used was crude, and the campaign never escalated to the level of attacks on individuals’ homes in the Brighton area. This did not happen for two reasons. Firstly, the NF’s local political base was undermined by mass opposition, particularly to their recruitment attempts in local schools. Secondly, local anti-fascists made it crystal clear to the NF that any attacks on places of residence would be reciprocated, swiftly and in full. These two factors demoralised the local NF, and so the campaign tapered off.

A similar pattern of early activity followed by decline was experienced elsewhere. (55) In 1981-2 the peace movement in particular was on the receiving end of sometimes violent opposition, from both BNP and NF members. (56) The Ecology (now Green) Party was not immune either, with the National Secretary Paul Ekins receiving a death-threat in 1982 for announcing his candidature in a constituency to be contested by the NF. That missive came from Column 88 though, and it is most unlikely the NF were involved; it is far more likely to have been sympathisers of the British Movement or British National Party, perhaps even as a means of discrediting the NF. During the period, the most public face of the party, NF News, under Webster’s editorship, continued with the same jingoistic racism as before, even if increasingly garlanded at the edges with economic nationalism. Such atavism was also exhibited by the NF Youth paper Bulldog under Pearce’s editorship, and in January 1982 he was given a six-month sentence (he served four) for incitement to racial hatred, after his third trial on similar charges.

The diffuse and intermittent nature of the violence, and its demise, should warn us against seeing it as much more than bitter resentment and inchoate taking of revenge — certainly not the stuff of ‘grand strategy’. Just as most members of the Anti-Nazi League never progressed beyond wearing badges and attending musical events, only a minority of NF members and their periphery ever took part in the violence. The vast majority of racist attacks then, as now, were not carried out by members of any political party. Indeed the 1991 Home Office figure of 70,000 such attacks came at a time when the far right was in the organisational doldrums.

If the picture is broadened to include not just what the NF was officially up to but also the currents bubbling beneath the surface of the organisation and other groupings and individuals on the far right generally, then it does become more interesting. There was fascist infiltration of, and connections with, the Tory party, highlighted by a 1983 Young Conservative report into the subject. The report was in no doubt that ‘organised infiltration is a reality’, and particular attention was given to the ‘crucial…. role of co-ordinating groups’, named as WISE, Tory Action and the London Swinton Circle. (57) A number of Conservative MPs — Harvey Proctor, Ronald Bell, Gerard Howarth and so on — were associated with these ‘bridging’ groups. Another grouping which worried them was the neo-fascist historian David Irving’s Focus Policy Group, set up in 1980, which had been trying to purchase mailing lists of Tory activists. The NF Constitutional Movement were well represented at such gatherings, and George Kennedy Young (former deputy head of MI6), who had almost succeeded in taking over the Monday Club a decade earlier, was heavily involved in Tory Action. The most damning piece of evidence of infiltration was the July 1982 letter of Richard Franklin, former League of Saint George, NF, and more recently NF Constitutional Movement member. In it he urged a sympathiser to join the Tories, asserting that ‘those of us who have chosen to work quietly through the Conservative Party are not altering one iota of our basic ideology. Far from it. The new strategy merely represents a change of style.’ (58)

But what did this actually mean? First, shared tenets such as racialism did not mean a common strategy. Second, it is evident from Franklin that his main aim was the pursuit of electoral success for his kind of racialist ideas — and the poor 1979 showing of the NF is by far the most plausible reason to explain the flood of ex-members into the Tory Party documented by the report. While its (Conservative) authors naturally tried to play down ‘the contention that people formerly in the NF have joined the Conservative Party because they ‘feel at home in it’ ‘, this is not far-fetched for many of them. Thirdly, it was also conceded that ‘to this date, such infiltration has been poorly organized and sporadic.’ (59) If there were an overall strategy, not only would there have been rather more organisation to it, surely those sent to infiltrate would have been of better political calibre than the losers who mostly entered — populist, racist NF members and supporters of the NF Constitutional Movement, with a smattering of orthodox nazis. Reading through the report as a whole, it becomes obvious that despite the undeniable wealth of individual links and membership crossovers cited, there was not in the late 70s and early 80s any consistent and coherent attempt by organised fascists to infiltrate, as opposed to overlap with, sections of the Tory party.

As for David Irving, it was Martin Webster who pointed out at the time that Focal Point was the organ of a tiny coterie of ‘ultra-Tory undergraduates, genteel crypto-Mosleyites and sundry other political hobbyists’ — and it never became anything more. (60) Had there been elements of capital and the secret state willing to fund a project of destabilisation, Irving’s manoeuvres would have been a pretty good candidate; yet it had foundered by the end of 1983, in large part due to lack of cash, a problem which Irving has to this day. (61) Unless one is to believe that British fascists were engaged in a labyrinthine plot of dazzling complexity, what happened was as it appeared — bridging organisations of limited influence, a return to the Tory fold of sympathisers, and sundry flights of high-blown but insubstantial political escapism. While Andrew Brons, then NF Chairman, was overstating it somewhat when he wrote in early 1984 that ‘the idea that we, a radical, Racial Nationalist party, should seek to infiltrate the unsavoury corpse of the Conservative party is so ludicrous that it should not need to be denied’, (62) he did nevertheless capture the mood of the bulk of NF activists, scornful of those who had already left.

There was one other significant political development during the period. This was the foundation of the magazines Heritage and Destiny and New Democrat (later the Scorpion) in 1980 and 1981 respectively, by former National Party activist Richard Lawson and ex-Central London NF organiser Michael Walker. Both publications, especially the Scorpion, showed signs of having learned from the European New Right the importance of the battle of ideas, viewed in a Gramscian sense of a preparatory ‘war of position’. Whereas the ‘meeting-points’ afforded by the likes of WISE were mainly physical, the Scorpion rapidly developed from being yet another barely-concealed neo-nazi journal to a highly sophisticated bridge of ideas and social forces, initially intersecting with the regionalist, and later the Green movements. (63)

Notes

1. Without doubt there are matters on which Searchlight is usually reliable — election results, court-cases, as well as the occasional publication of primary source documents. Outline sketches of individual careers are of rather more mixed reliability, and when it comes to actual interpretation of the significance of events on the far right, Searchlight is often very questionable indeed. This is not just due to bizarre fantasies, and guesswork and/or wish-fulfilment masquerading as fact, there is also what appears to be the passing of disinformation on behalf of MI5 and possibly others. Where possible, I have not relied on Searchlight’s analysis. That said, it always makes for amusing (and often informative) reading.
2. Spearhead 72, January 1974, p. 2, editorial.
3. Spearhead 79, September/October 1974, p.2, editorial.
4. Britain First, 24 October 1974, p. 2, editorial. Though it is unclear who Stirling was referring to, he was unequivocal that his GB 75 would ‘have no truck with the extreme right-wing and neo-fascists already appearing on the scene’. This was probably a reference to George Young, whom he hated. GB75 documents were leaked to, and reproduced in, Peace News, 23 August 1974.
5. Britain First, issues 32, ‘The Aims Behind the Rhetoric’, 34 (letters), 35 ‘The New Anti-Communists’, and 41, October 1976, p. 7.
6. Martin Walker, The National Front (Fontana, London, 1977) p. 136.
7. Ibid. p. 129. See also Martin Webster’s comments on this episode in Spearhead 95, June 1976, p. 8. In the event 12 such sympathisers were found.
8. Stan Taylor, The National Front in English Politics (Macmillan, London, 1982) pp. 25-49. More sober outside analysis showed that the NF’s percentage share of the vote in all contested seats during the two 1974 General Elections was 3.2% and 3.1% respectively.
9. Walker op. cit. p. 180. See also the special Spearhead issue on the EEC, no. 83, April 1975, pp. 18-19.
10. Martin Walker’s assessment that ‘available evidence for the NF’s source of money overwhelmingly suggests that it is a self-financing body, permanently short of funds, and constantly urging its branches to be self- supporting’ seems as valid as any, especially as much of his information was derived from NP sources with every incentive to discredit the NF. Walker p. 164
11. League of Saint George policy and programme, point (a). No date but 1974.20
12. Spearhead 88, p. 5.
13. Thomas Sheehan, ‘Terror on the Right’, in New York Review of Books, January 1981 p. 24, cites Protocol 7125 no. 21950 dated 27 August 1976 as evidence of this.
14. See the Searchlight publication The Murderers Are Amongst Us, 1985, and Searchlight 30, pp. 8-9, which give the flavour of the period.
15. Stan Taylor (op. cit.) p. 45 and Walker (op. cit.) pp. 195-8.
16. Taylor (op. cit.) pp. 46-8.
17. Spearhead 106, June 1977 pp. 9 and 108; August 1977, p. 9.
18. Centred around a union-recognition dispute involving Asian women workers at a London film-processing plant, it became a focal point for both the left and the right.
19. Spearhead 107, July 1977.
20. Ray Hill and Andrew Bell, The Other Face of Terror, (Grafton, London, 1988) p. 224.
21. Anarchy 36 (second series), Summer 1983, pp. 24-5.
22. M. McLaughlin, BM organisers’ Bulletin, 1978 (undated).
23. Martin Webster, cited in Searchlight 38, p. 12. They are apparently quoting from an article he wrote in the previous month’s Spearhead, although I cannot find it in the relevant issue.
24. See David Leigh, the Guardian 10 September 1979, and The Observer, 9 April 1978. For the NF view of these events see the editorial in NF News, 13 May 1978, and Spearhead 119, July 1978 p. 3. Nobody was killed by these devices, made of weedkiller and contained in receptacles such as toffee tins.
25. See Guardian and The Times for 21 January 1981.
26. Hill and Bell (op. cit.), 1988 p. 125.
27. Reported in the Guardian, 22 January 1979.
28. Time Out, 11 January 1980.
29. One NAFF activist from this period has pointed out (to Robin Ramsay) that Eyres was himself a racist.
30. Spearhead 109, September 1977, editorial p. 3.
31. Spearhead 132, October 1979, p. 5.
32. Statement to Organisers, 16 August 1979, p. 4. On the evidence currently available, I am disinclined to accept most of the received speculation in Searchlight circles about Steve Brady using his role in the LSG to pursue a career as an international fascist ‘godfather’ of organised terrorism (which is not to deny some pretty dubious links). This is something I will attempt to substantiate in a later article — for now, amuse yourself with the recent recapitulation of the main themes in Searchlight 202 April 1992.
33. Peter Shipley, The National Front, Conflict Study 97, Institute for the Study of Conflict, July 1978, p. 9.
34. Introduction to the Movement, NF, 1988 p.3.
35. Andrew Fountaine, Electoral Address for NF Chairmanship, Sept. 1979.
36. See his apologia, The Eleventh Hour, Albion Press, 1988.
37. The fourth group of significance on the far right, the British Movement, folded in September 1983, the bulk of its membership joining the BNP.
38. Nationalism Today, Subscribers Bulletin, 1 November 1980. See also Joe Pearce in Nationalism Today, 1 March 1980, pp. 8- 9.
39. NF Members’ Bulletin, July 1980. See also Eddie Morrison in Nationalism Today 2, p. 12. Pearce, in Nationalism Today 3 pp. 8-9; and the interview with Andrew Brons in the same issue, pp. 10-11.
40. Spearhead 128, May-June 1979, p. 8.
41. Nationalism Today, 4, February 1981, pp. 8-9. See also Martin Webster in New Nation, Autumn 1980, pp. 12-13.
42. See Nationalism Today 1, p. 10 and 9, p. 9.
43. Nationalism Today, 7, 1982 p. 11.20
44. Nationalism Today 8, 1982, p. 20.20
45. See the articles by Steve Brady in Nationalism Today 12, p 8 and no. 16, p. 5 and ‘Karl Marx: Enemy of the people’ in issue 13.
46. Nationalism Today 15, pp. 9-12.
47. Nationalism Today, 16, 1983, p. 13.
48. Nationalism Today 18, 1983 p. 16.
49. The Times 23 May 1980. The highly improbable circumstances by which Matthews was apprehended — a centre worker accidentally overhearing the planning of the attack on a crossed telephone line — point to some inside informant being responsible.
50. See Forewarned, Anti-Fascist Democratic Action, Birmingham, September 1978, for the earliest indication I have yet found of this, as well as a justification of the same. For some on the Left, especially those who took to heart the perceived lesson of 1930s Germany about the importance of controlling the streets, the continuing existence and mobilisation of the NF was seen as sufficient provocation in itself. Some working-class members of the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP) took the question of physical confrontation with fascists so seriously that they were eventually expelled by the leadership, going on to form Red Action. See We Are Red Action, Red Action, January 1983. It is to say the least rather ironic that the ANL Mark II, relaunched by the SWP in January 1992, has given the impression that physical opposition to the far right is now acceptable again — presumably if there is an escalation of violence after the recent election (and the pattern of the early 80s as well as contemporary evidence would indicate such is eminently possible, at least from the BNP) the cycle of expulsions will recommence.
51. NF News 23 June 1980, editorial, p. 2.
52. This comes from the same repertoire as the following gem which always lurked beneath the party paper’s editoral column: ‘NF News seeks to persuade its readers to feel angry about the evils of multi-racialism and to direct their anger solely at the corrupt politicians who created a racial problem in Britain, and not to the Immigrant people in general. “Racialism” is not unlawful — only “racial hatred” .’
53. This last event was attributed by the police to an ‘electrical fault’, but was widely rumoured locally (but never proved) to have been the work of a South African NF member who left the country shortly afterwards in a great hurry.
54. Sussex Front, 11 July 1981, p. 6.
55. See Mark Ereeira, The NF in Islington, London 1985 p. 25.
56. See for example The Gloucester Echo, 14 June 1982. Tony Malski (the alleged international bomb-plotter) was involved too, his part in such matters culminating in his hitting a wheel-bound Labour Party supporter with her own crutch. Reported in the Watford Observer, 25 June and 9 July 1982.
57. The Times, 10 October 1983.
58. Reproduced as an appendix to the Young Conservatives report, and also in Searchlight 101, November 1983, p. 11. Franklin was expelled from the Conservative Party in 1983. The Times, 13 May 1981, reported the attempted infiltration of Bedfordshire Social Democratic Party by local organiser of NF, Steven Harmer. This is the only incidence of attempted infiltration of the SDP I am aware of.
59. The Times, 10 October 1983.
60. Nationalism Today 12, 1982 p. 15.
61. By early 1984 the NF had debts of at least 13,600 as well as unspecified tax liabilities. Presumably the negotiations ‘with the Libyan Government with a view to obtaining funds from Colonel Gaddafi’ had not been a resounding success. (On this see Spearhead 190, August 1984, which partially reproduces the relevant petition produced by Webster’s allies.) Likewise, the short-lived British Resistance, founded in April 1980 and using as a mailing address that of the magazine Candour, set up by A.K. Chesterton the NF founder [and since his death run by Ms Rosine de Bouniaville of Liss, Hampshire] never amounted to much either. On them see the entries in Ciaran O’Maolain, The Radical Right: a World Directory (Longman, London, 1987).
62. NF Chairman’s Bulletin 1, Spring 1984.20
63. Two episodes which received wide publicity during this period, Anthony Reed-Herbert’s alleged gun-running operation and Tony Malski’s alleged involvement in a plot to bomb the 1981 Notting Hill carnival will be discussed in the second part of this essay.