National Front (UK)
The National Front is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is currently led by Tony Martin. A minor party, it has never had its representatives elected to the British or European Parliaments, although it gained a small number of local councillors through defections and it has had a few of its representatives elected to community councils. Founded in 1967, it reached the height of its electoral support during the mid-1970s, when it was briefly England's fourth-largest party in terms of vote share.
The NF was founded by A. K. Chesterton, formerly of the British Union of Fascists, as a merger between his League of Empire Loyalists and the British National Party. It was soon joined by the Greater Britain Movement, whose leader John Tyndall became the Front's chairman in 1972. Under Tyndall's leadership it capitalised on growing concern about South Asian migration to Britain, rapidly increasing its membership and vote share in the urban areas of east London and northern England. Its public profile was raised through street marches and rallies, which often resulted in violent clashes with anti-fascist protesters, most notably the 1974 Red Lion Square disorders and the 1977 Battle of Lewisham. In 1982, Tyndall left the National Front to form a new British National Party. Many NF members defected to Tyndall's BNP, contributing to a substantial decline in the Front's electoral support. During the 1980s, the NF split in two; the Flag NF retained the older ideology, while the Official NF adopted a Third Positionist stance before disbanding in 1990. In 1995, the Flag NF's leadership transformed the party into the National Democrats, although a small splinter group retained the NF name.
Ideologically positioned on the extreme right or far-right of British politics, the NF has been characterised as fascist or neo-fascist by political scientists. Different factions have dominated the party at different times, each with its own ideological bent, including neo-Nazis, Strasserites and racial populists. The party espouses the ethnic nationalist view that only white people should be citizens of the United Kingdom. The NF calls for an end to non-white migration into the UK and for settled non-white Britons to be stripped of their citizenship and deported. A white supremacist party, it promotes biological racism and the white genocide conspiracy theory, calling for global racial separatism and condemning interracial relationships and miscegenation. It espouses anti-semitic conspiracy theories, endorsing Holocaust denial and claiming that Jews dominate the world through both communism and finance capitalism. It promotes economic protectionism, hard Euroscepticism and a transformation away from liberal democracy, while its social policies oppose feminism, LGBT rights and societal permissiveness.
After the BNP, the NF has been the most successful far-right group in British politics since the Second World War. During its history, it has established sub-groups such as a trade unionist association, a youth group and the Rock Against Communism musical organisation. Only whites are permitted membership of the party, and in its heyday most of its support came from white British working-class and lower middle-class communities in northern England and east London. The NF has generated vocal opposition from left-wing and anti-fascist groups throughout its history, and NF members are prohibited from various professions.
History
Formation: 1966–1967
The National Front began as a coalition of small far-right groups active on the fringes of British politics during the 1960s. The resolve to unite them came in early 1966 from A. K. Chesterton, the leader of the League of Empire Loyalists. He had a long history in the British fascist movement, having been a member of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. Over the following months, many far-rightists visited Chesterton at his Croydon apartment to discuss the proposal, among them Andrew Fountaine and Philip Maxwell of the British National Party, David Brown of the Racial Preservation Society, and John Tyndall and Martin Webster of the Greater Britain Movement. Although everyone agreed with the idea of unification, personal rivalries made the process difficult.Chesterton agreed to a merger of the LEL and BNP, and a faction of the RPS decided to join them. 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, as well as the recent arrest of Tyndall and seven other GBM members for illegal weapon possession. Chesterton wanted to keep his new party clear of the crude sloganeering 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."
In October 1966, the LEL and BNP established a working committee to determine what policies they could agree on. The committee's initial policy platform revolved around opposition to Britain's political establishment, anti-communism, support for the white minority governments in Rhodesia and South Africa, a ban on migration into Britain and the expulsion of all settled non-white immigrants. They considered various names for the new party, before settling on "National Front" in December 1966. The National Front was founded on 7 February 1967, with Chesterton its first chairman. At the time it had approximately 2,500 members, of whom 1,000 were from the BNP, 300 from the LEL and over 100 from the RPS. The historian Richard Thurlow described the NF's formation as "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.
Early growth: 1968–1972
The NF's first year was marked by a power struggle between the ex-LEL and ex-BNP factions. The former were unhappy with the behaviour of ex-BNP members, such as their propensity for political chanting, while the ex-BNP faction criticised Chesterton's elitist pretensions. At the invitation of the ex-BNP faction, in June 1967, Tyndall discontinued the GBM and called on its members to join the NF. Despite his own earlier commitment to keep Tyndall out, Chesterton welcomed him into the party. Tyndall's magazine, Spearhead—originally sold as "an organ of National Socialist opinion in Britain"—dropped its open neo-Nazism and backed the NF, eventually becoming the party's de facto monthly magazine.The party held its first annual conference in October 1967; it was picketed by anti-fascists. In 1968, Chesterton's leadership was unsuccessfully challenged by Fountaine, who then left the party. There were further internal arguments after its lease on its Westminster headquarters ended. 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 in Tulse Hill. Chesterton backed the ex-LEL position, and offered a small office in Fleet Street. 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. Although Powell proposed more moderate measures for expelling migrants than the NF, his use of language was similar to theirs, and some individuals on the right-wing of the Conservatives defected to the NF.
The NF fielded 45 candidates in the 1969 local elections and averaged a poll of 8%, although a few secured over 10%. The party focused on these latter seats in the 1970 local elections, fielding 10 candidates; almost all received under 5% of the vote. The party faced militant left-wing opposition, including the driving of a lorry into its Tulse Hill building in 1969, and to counter this the NF installed a spy in London's anti-fascist movement. Against Chesterton's wishes, NF activists carried out publicity stunts: in 1968 they marched onto a London Weekend Television show uninvited and in 1969 assaulted two Labour Party ministers. 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. He was succeeded by John O'Brien in February 1971. Frustrated that Tyndall maintained links with neo-Nazi groups like the Northern League, O'Brien and his supporters ultimately left the NF for the National Independence Party in June 1972.
Tyndall's first leadership: 1972–1975
Tyndall became party chairman in July 1972, centralising the NF's activities at a new Croydon headquarters. According to Thurlow, under Tyndall the NF attempted to "convert racial populists" angry about immigration "into fascists". 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." Refocusing its appeal towards the white working class, in June 1974 it launched the NF Trade Unionists Association. Britain's leftists fought back by publicising the neo-Nazi past of senior NF members, including photographs of Tyndall wearing a Nazi uniform.The NF capitalised on fears surrounding the arrival of Ugandan Asian refugees in 1972, resulting in rapid growth of its membership. 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, something that brought greater media coverage. 54 candidates were fielded at the February 1974 general election, a number that guaranteed them a party political broadcast. It contested six times as many seats as in 1970, averaging a vote share of 3.2%, slightly less than in 1970. By the mid-1970s, the NF's membership had stagnated and in several areas declined; all of its 90 candidates for the October 1974 general election lost their deposits. In the 1975 local elections they fielded 60 candidates, far fewer than in previous elections.
A faction known as the "Populists" emerged in the party under Roy Painter's leadership. They were frustrated that the NF's directorate was dominated by former BNP and GBM members and believed that Tyndall remained a neo-Nazi. They ensured John Kingsley Read's election as chairman, with Tyndall demoted to vice chair. Growing strife between the Tyndallites and Populists broke out; Read and the executive committee suspended Tyndall and nine of his supporters from the directorate, before expelling Tyndall from the party. Tyndall took the issue to the High Court, where his expulsion was declared illegal. In frustration at their inability to eject Tyndall and the Tyndallites, Read and his supporters split from the NF to form the National Party in December 1975.