The National Front
In the United Kingdom, the National Front (more commonly called the NF) was an extreme right-wing political party that had its heyday during the 1970’s and 80’s and was led by John Tyndall and Martin Webster, who liked nothing more than to play and dress up as Nazis in anticipation of some British putsch they would engineer.
Origins of the National Front in 1962. Tyndall left and Colin Jordan middle at a camp meeting with the leader of the American Nazi party John Rockwell right. Looks like a lovely camping trip!
By 1974 it had as many as 20,000 members and in 1977 was challenging both Labour and the Liberals in certain by-elections as the country’s fourth largest party. In London, it was the third largest party and racist manifestos were being pushed through people’s doors alongside the major parties. The NF fought on a platform of opposition to communism and liberalism, support for Ulster loyalism, opposition to the European Economic Community and, most notoriously, the compulsory repatriation of new Commonwealth immigrants. What helped it flourish was that British society was intrinsically racist from employment to light entertainment.
Left Martin Webster, leader of the National Front marches. Right – take out a couple of the bullets above and replace ‘National Front’ with Conservative Party and it really is frightening how little has changed.
Its base was largely working-class, who resented the influx of immigrant competition (Blacks and Pakistanis) into the labour market. The party also appealed to a few disillusioned Conservatives, who gave the party much-needed electoral expertise and respectability. In essence, though, the party was extremist.
The National Front got the headlines through the well-worn methods of violence and confrontation. Marches through sensitive areas, heavy police presence, inflammatory speeches and violence got them the headlines and publicity.
Confusingly, alongside the NF there was another political formation – in many ways interchangeable – called the British Movement (BM). It too was on the margins of the far right but openly Nazi, parading Nazi swastikas and literature featuring Adolf Hitler, and it too was coupled with a reputation for violence and extremism.
Both the NF and BM shared a strategy of using violence at football matches and music gigs to attract publicity and members, but where the NF aimed at some sort of respectability to attract votes, the BM were unashamedly extremist, appealing to the worst of young working-class males and females to engage in confrontationist, violent racist activities; this included punks and skinheads.
Joe Pearce, a now repentant ex-member who led the NF’s youth wing (YNF) from 1977, was the editor of the notoriously racist magazine Bulldog and later a close friend of Skrewdriver’s Ian Donaldson. He used to write propaganda and recruit and explains their underlying intent, hidden underneath their PR.
Right Ian Donaldson and Joe Pearce
Joe Pearce We were trying to think about race wars. Our job was to basically disrupt the multicultural society, the multi-racial society, and make it unworkable. Our goal [was to] make the various different groups hate each other to such a degree that they couldn’t live together…and when they couldn’t live together you end up with that ghettoized, radicalized society from which we hoped to rise like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes. Don Letts, The Story of Skinhead with Don Letts, Film, BBC, 2016
Pearce had already had success with recruiting at football grounds, where they could access a massive audience, and selling their propagandist magazine Bulldog, which peddled their racist views. Pearce reckoned at places like Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge they could sell around 10% of their 8,000 run.
An example of the type of racist bonehead the BM/NF actively sought as provocateurs was Nicky Crane. 6’2″ and a formidable psychopath Crane served a couple of prison sentences for such things as attacking an Asian family at a bus stop with a broken bottle and leading a gang of skinheads armed with iron bars, clubs and knives and attacking a queue of people in a queue for a film. Crane became head of security for the then overtly racist band Skrewdriver. In later years the irony was that Crane was a repressed gay and later died of aids. Before thst thoigh
Dreamy!
Unfortunately, a burgeoning Oi scene which was a strain of punk orientated to the white working class and skinheads whose key activities were activities football, fighting and drinking. This became inevitably associated with this nationalistic bent (sic). The above compilation album, which featured Crane on the front with nazi tattoos airbrushed out and a play on the nazi slogan ‘Strength through Joy,’ meant a spectacular own goal with the first kick (sic).
Now with the skinhead resurgence, Pearce saw a chance to recruit young, impressionable kids, infiltrate the group and raise a tailor-made intimidating army. Playing on their already nationalistic tendencies, white working-class fears and the historical racism of the original skinhead movement, these kids found the view of the NF attractive. Gigs were an easy target and gangs of nationalist skinheads disrupted bands like Sham 69, Menace, The Ruts, Lurkers, 999 and Crass attacking punks both in and out of the gig venues and taking the stage like football hooligans took the away end at matches sieg heiling and chanting.
While the National Front actively recruited at schools and concerts another opposition front came from Rock Against Racism and in particular an unlikely pairing of punk and reggae in carnivals and concerts which effectively halted this campaign. While in the beginning NF publications attempted to use punk songs like White Riot and I Feel Like A Wog as declarations of support from leading punk figures they were put straight in no uncertain terms. To balance this it’s worth bearing in mind that Bulldog also suggested songs by The Enid Dambusters Theme and Cockney Rebel Red Is A Mean Mean Colour.
Given the nature of punk rock and its prominence in the weekly music papers, Rock Against Racism won the hearts and minds of the youth and whether you believe in the motives of all who took part put on black and white acts on the same bill in a genuine multicultural exchange. The scale of the mobilisation was huge driven by the Anti Nazi League/SWP (Socialist Workers Party).
The NF says “… the opposition mobilised its forces, lavishly funded and supported by the media, the powerful Zionist lobby and International Capitalism. One response was the forming of the ‘Anti-Nazi League,’ a front organisation for the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party with a gloss of respectability being provided by show business dupes and extreme-left Labour MP’s.”
What killed the NF though ironically was the Conservatives who hoovered up all the centre and centre right voters when they went harder on immigration and law and order.
Oh the fucking irony!
That left the NF and BM to fight among themselves in a fracturing party (Tyndall was ousted as leader following an arrest for shoplifting women’s underwear. Webster lasted a fair while though his overt homosexuality eventually did for him in a party where there was that unhealthy tension between male brotherhood and an anti-gay stance) while still maintaining their extremist violence and love of dressing up in crytpo military fashion in gangs while coming up against an equally violent and extremist Anti-Fascist action group intent on kicking the shit out of them.
Like a festering wound though, it didn’t die. It splintered and went underground and became even more violent and extreme.
Today the far right, bigotry, conspiracy theories and white power ideology are still there and still a threat all with a myriad of names, but better connected now across the world through technology.
What happened to far right politics after the National Front failed to make the breakthrough it was expecting at the 1979 general election? Shown as part of the ‘Fear and Loathing’ series of programmes about racial conflict, Ben Lewis’ documentary tells the story.
TalkPunk
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