Notes from the underground part 3: British fascism 1983-6

See also:

• Part 1: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23)
• Part 2: British Fascism 1974-92 (II) (Lobster 24)
• Part 4: British Fascism 1983-6 (II) (Lobster 26)
• The 1986 National Front Split (Lobster 29)

‘Let a thousand initiatives bloom…’

While the piece in Lobster 24 was a (necessary) digression, treating of individual careers and various lurid allegations, this essay takes up the story where my first article left off — the aftermath of the 1983 election. The period under review is a short one, and because the split that ripped the National Front (NF) asunder in 1986 can, in retrospect, be seen as even more important than it was at the time, consideration of it will be left to the future. For organisations such as the British National Party, the years 1983-6 were spent marking time and surviving. Thus the interesting developments occurred in and on the periphery of the NF, and its political fortunes must properly occupy the bulk of this essay. (1)

The removal of Martin Webster-reasons and implications

With the walk-out of John Tyndall from the NF in 1980, Martin Webster, continuing in his position as National Activities Organiser, was left in a very powerful position (and that is exactly how he looked at things). In Lobster 23 I pointed out how the NF’s policy became more and more radical by degrees, importing elements of Strasserism. The 1983 AGM continued this process, deciding that an NF government (sic) would ban hunting (as well as the more obvious, because anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim, ritual slaughter), and the abolition of the House of Lords was confirmed as a policy aim. (2) Beneath the surface however, all was not well, and discontent began to focus around the continuing retention of power by, and baleful influence of, Webster. Both the people I have spoken to and the literature are virtually unanimous that he exercised an ultimately counter-productive grip on the day-to-day running of the NF. Ian Anderson, who at the time worked very closely with Webster and was Deputy Chairman, described him as having ‘a lousy temper, very irrational, very irregular in work habits… he liked directly to hold all the strings of power he could lay his hands on… he wanted all decisions to go back to him.’ (3)

Further, Webster had no new strategic ideas, and in the early 1980s sought to repeat, in changed circumstances, the strategy that had given the NF apparent success for a time in the 1970s — standing in elections and engaging in confrontational street marches. His position had been weakened by the increasingly evident failure of this tactic. Aside from derisory electoral votes, even on their own figures the annual turn-out for Remembrance Day — the ultimate barometer of street credibility — had declined from 2,000 in 1980 to 1,000 in 1982 and 1983. (4)

Not only was Webster’s policy evidently not working, the high ground of political initiative had been shifting against him since 1980, when the retention by Tyndall of Spearhead meant the NF was deprived of a regular theoretical journal to discuss tactics and ideology. Webster had then, reluctantly, sanctioned the emergence of Nationalism Today (NT), and the ideological chickens began coming home to roost. Steve Brady has said the aims of NT were three-fold: ‘to radicalise members, change the direction of strategy and get rid of Webster’. (5) In the summer of 1983, after the General Election, the NT editorial board (then including Brady, Derek Holland, Nick Griffin, Joe Pearce and Tom Acton) met in Suffolk and took stock of the situation. The NT line now predominated within the NF, and many of the younger, more ideologically zealous members were against Webster. Thus it was decided in general terms that ‘something’ should be done.

Webster wasn’t entirely unaware of the impending crisis facing him. In August 1983 he became worried about the ‘Rising’ seminars, held in Liss Forest, to which he had not been invited, and sent Patrick Harrington to investigate. By October 1983 Webster had persuaded the Executive Council (the day-to-day body running the NF between Directorate meetings) to mount an enquiry. (6) The preliminary findings of the enquiry were discussed at the Directorate meeting of 5 November 1983, and in the light of subsequent events, the minutes make wry reading. After assurances from Nick Griffin that no harm had been meant by it, Webster himself, normally the most paranoid of individuals, proposed successfully that in ‘view of the general opinion that there did not appear to be anything malicious in the activities of the Rising organisation, that no further action be taken in connection with the Executive Council’s inquiry into Rising.’ (7)

The resignation of Pearce and Griffin

The climb down by a contrite Griffin at the Directorate meeting, and apparent conciliatory moves towards Webster, were shown to be merely a tactical retreat by the next salvo in this affair, the widely distributed joint resignation letter of Pearce and Griffin from the Directorate and the NF, dated 12 November 1983. (8) The letter was a searing indictment of NF strategy and Webster. They declared that ‘the NF is a desperately sick organisation. Morale is at an all time low. Membership figures have risen slightly as a result of the general election…. but overall it has fallen so much that we are now back to the levels of the start of the 1970s.’ They criticised the obsession with marches, admitting that ‘marches alone, especially if they advertise our weakness rather than our strength, will not bring the NF to power’. They also pointed out that while ‘the need to sink local roots has been discussed, beyond door-to-door sales in a few wards, nothing has happened.’ After defending Holland and criticising Webster, they went on to say that necessary major change would not ‘be possible while Martin Webster continues with his present attitude and stranglehold on key party offices.’ (9) While declaring their commitment to the NF, and urging others to stay, Pearce and Griffin concluded by announcing their own resignation. The paradox was only superficial, for, as intended, the letter was a bombshell that sparked off fierce debate. (10)

According to Tom Acton (NF auditor), who was there when Webster’s copy of the Pearce-Griffin letter arrived, Webster resolved to try and split Pearce (who had charisma, working-class street credibility and intellectual ability) from Griffin. To this end, Ian Anderson was despatched, accompanied by Acton, to try and win Pearce over. At this meeting, the turning point came when Anderson was asked the ultimate question: ‘Do you think a Websterite party can become a real political force?’ Nobody serious could give a positive answer to that, and Anderson then sided with the rebels. (11)

The end came swiftly, shortly after, when on 10 December prior to a ‘strategy conference’ held (where else!) at the Hancock’s Heidelberg Hotel in Brighton, Webster attended what he believed to be a routine Directorate meeting, called, ironically enough, to formally ratify the resignations of Griffin and Pearce among other things. The first item on the agenda was the removal of Webster and his close friend (and office manager) Michael Salt from all positions within the NF, proposed by Andrew Brons as Chair and seconded by Anderson as Deputy Chair. This coup de grace took only ten minutes, and (almost uniquely) reduced Webster to speechlessness. The event was a shock from which Webster never really recovered, and, despite a flurry of High Court Writs which caused serious administrative and financial inconvenience to the new regime, he was a spent force politically. Indeed, only 12 members were expelled as a result of supporting him. (12)

The NF under Webster

Before looking at the politics of the post-Webster regime, a few comments about the state of the NF under his leadership are in order. First, as we have seen earlier, it was during this period that the first serious attempts were made to broaden and deepen the NF’s ideology. It is precisely this point — the determined efforts made by those remaining in the NF to construct a new ideological mix to avoid being again outflanked by the Tory right — that has been missed by virtually all academic studies of the NF, whose authors have remained content merely to assert ideological continuity with throwaway phrases about Strasserism and the ideas of Julius Evola (as though the two were easily compatible), and finishing off with guarded warnings culled from sundry issues of Searchlight about ‘going underground’, ‘moving towards terrorism’ etc.. (13)

Webster hadn’t consciously initiated this process of ideological reconstruction, but it had nevertheless flourished during (and even despite) his regime. Partly this was because he had no alternative ideas himself, and also because he wanted to outflank more orthodox Nazis such as Tyndall and the British Movement. Fundamentally, Webster underestimated the role and potentially subversive effect of ideas — until it was too late. He was aware of some of the problems facing the NF, expressing this in an exasperated confidential memorandum he sent to Chairman Andrew Brons and other Directorate members in September 1983 concerning ‘Internal Discipline and Morale’. This had been triggered off by events at what had been billed as a family-oriented ‘Garden Party’ held at a farm in Kent. (14)

This and similar incidents caused Webster to propose a period of probationary NF membership for new recruits, touching on a problem that has plagued the far right to this day: ‘The situation which the party faces is in part due to the fact that the gutter press during 1977 to 1980 maintained a campaign of depicting us as a party of delinquents, criminal thugs and anti-social cranks and, as a result of this, we have attracted the support of a significant number of such people, which in turn has fed the media campaign. We must make a sustained effort to break this “self-feeding” circle before it devours the whole party.’ The dilemma for the Webster regime was that while skinheads were an important constituency of NF support,(15) they also alienated other potential recruits. Inasmuch as Webster was content to mark time himself, merely repeating earlier strategy, this wasn’t so much of a problem for him. But it became one for those in the NF who wanted to break out of the political ghetto.

The real question to ask about Webster may well be the one asked about Edward II: not why did he go, but why did he last so long in a position of power? Some of the answer lies in his abilities as an organiser, as well as his alliance with Tyndall up till 1980. Once the two were split, the writing was on the wall for him. His homosexuality doesn’t seem to have been the most weighty charge levelled against him within the NF. It had been downplayed by his allies in 1980, and wasn’t even mentioned in the Pearce-Griffin letter. (16) In another sense, Webster’s sexual orientation had been a boon, ensuring that a network of sympathetic gays within local NF branches would alert him to challenges to his authority.(17)

Attacks in the News of the World (e.g. 16 September 1979) had, for some, only created a certain sympathy for him. His control over the apparatus was further enhanced by his ‘working relationship’ with Special Branch. As if this wasn’t enough, there is little doubt that the Webster regime had been maintained by fear on the part of many members: the list of proscribed organisations and individuals was long and ridiculous, Webster apparently unable to distinguish between real and imaginary threats. (18) Another factor aiding Webster, which turned out to be a double-edged sword, was the ‘inertial thrust’ within the NF of ordinary members who didn’t much care who was in charge, and would support whoever had control of the Head Office, however obtained. While it would have been very difficult to dislodge Webster if he had received advance warning of the attempt, once he was dislodged it was difficult for him to get back, for the same reason. In the end, Webster was a man who aroused a variety of emotions in many — grudging respect, fear and hatred being the most common — but very little loyalty.

Let a thousand initiatives bloom: after Webster

1984 and 1985 saw a variety of new initiatives. With Webster gone, restraints on radical policy actions (as opposed to mere theorising) were lifted. The first activity of 1984 was an all-night vigil and 100-strong march at the US Air Force base in Lakenheath, Suffolk, along the lines of ‘No to Cruise, No to CND’. (19) This marked anti-US turn in policy was certainly a new departure, and a Directorate meeting on 13 January, followed the next day by a strategy conference, set the seal on the new approach.
‘Instant Response Groups’ (IRGs) were revived, in order to mobilise for ‘lightning-style’ activities at only a few hours notice’ — opposing pro-Irish Republican marches and so on. (20) Despite some imaginative touches (e.g. the occupation of Daily Mirror offices and distribution of a fake issue in 1985), IRGs do not seem to have caught on particularly, and were in any case only a reversion to what Webster had been well capable of organising in his early seventies hey-day. (21)

A greater change was ushered in by a marked shift of attitude towards marches. As the Member’s Bulletin put it, ‘From now on the NF will not be marching for marching’s sake, but will only march where there is political capital to be made.’ (22) This meant not only fewer marches, but organising them around themes, with the emphasis on regional far more than national activities. Again, at first this didn’t seem to have had a marked effect — the highest 1984 turn-out for a non-Remembrance Day march was 300 in Stoke for St. George’s Day. (23) By late 1984, there was a recovery, and Remembrance Day saw an official figure of 1,500 marchers. (24)

Of more interest than march figures however, was the far broader conception of strategy encapsulated in a Joe Pearce article in Nationalism Today (19). In it (p. 10) he declared that ‘it is absolutely vital that we don’t restrict our fight solely to the political level. Our struggle is philosophical; our struggle is cultural; our struggle is spiritual. And if this is the case, it is crucial that our strategy is radically changed to reflect this.’ What this meant was that many new sites of ideological contest were opened up, with unpredictable effects. (25) Commencing February 1984, ‘Training Seminars’ (under the auspices of the ‘Nationalist Education Group’) were set up to explore aspects of NF ideology. (26)

On the green front

Few things excited more alarm in outside observers than the NF’s concentration on ‘green’ issues after 1983, although as we’ve seen, it started earlier. (27) Of great importance here was the Joe Pearce editorial in Nationalism Today for March 1984, which announced that there was now a fourth (new, but not acknowledged to be such), premise for NF ideology: ‘the deep-rooted belief that man must again learn to live in harmony with the forces of nature instead of waging constant war against them.’ (28) The practical (as opposed to propaganda) consequences were few, however. In 1985 one Michael Fishwick (later editor of NF News) was expelled from the Hunt Saboteurs Association. Enquiries made of the HSA have elicited the information that around that time Fishwick and (possibly) Paul Fortune attempted to join the Norwich branch of the HSA, but were turned away for their known far right views. (29) That this was the only NF case (aside from the activities of individuals such as Margaret Flynn) suggests that Fishwick and Fortune joined as individuals, rather as than part of a wider attempt to take over the HSA.

Vivisection of animals also received coverage from the NF starting at this time.(30) David Henshaw, in his sensationalist and tendentious (though intriguing) book Animal Warfare (1989) alleged the NF around this time entered into a strategy of infiltration of anti-vivisection groups, with the Blackpool BUAV being singled out for special attention. Unfortunately neither Henshaw or the BUAV were able to furnish me with evidence of this.(31) However, the BUAV were clearly worried at the time, and in June 1985 passed a motion at their AGM condemning far right involvement in the animal welfare movement. The NF’s reaction was to pass a motion at their AGM in November 1985, calling ‘upon all nationalists to become actively involved in the animal welfare campaign in their localities thereby demonstrating that the NF has a thorough consistent ideology with which to tackle all problems confronting this nation’. (32) The lack of a widespread furore after that suggests that while this issue excited some individuals, it didn’t interest most NF members. Ritual slaughter (of animals I hasten to add) was of rather more interest…

Ritual Slaughter — a kosher target

Just as the far right in the 1930s added the Jewish ritual slaughter of animals for kosher meat to their list of evils, so did the NF in the 1980s. It now had two targets, Jews and Moslems, for the preparation of Halal meat requires similar (and indisputably horrific) ritual slaughter, centrally that the animal be fully conscious while it dies. The campaign was formally kicked off with front-page coverage in the May 1984 edition of NF News (No. 56). To the charge of a racist motive, the NF pointed to their additional policies against blood-sports and vivisection, hardly conclusive proof as we shall see. In July of that year there was a further attack on the availability of Halal meat in Bradford schools, but undoubtedly the high (or low, depending on your perspective) point of the campaign was the NF’s first ever march on the theme of animal welfare.

This took place in Brighton on 22 September 1984, and even on the NFs own estimates, only 100 took part.(33) From the point of view of the NF’s traditional agenda, the issue of ritual slaughter was well-chosen. First, it allowed them to patronise the RSPCA for having ‘followed the NF’s lead’ and launched their own campaign against ritual slaughter. This then enabled them to later accuse the RSPCA of equivocation when it came to confronting the Jewish community over the question, thus leaving the NF as ‘the only organisation prepared to tackle head on the evil practice of Ritual Slaughter’.(34) A video was produced on the horrors of ritual slaughter, and the Brighton march was followed by a March 1985 North-West ‘Day of Action’, including demonstrations outside a kosher slaughter-house in Preston, and antics involving a pantomine horse in Lytham St. Anne’s and Blackpool. But the numbers mobilised were small, and there was never again a national march on the topic. But the leadership did not give up. Throughout 1985 the NF’s ‘Campaign For Animal Welfare’ had broadened its sights, and as well as the aforementioned policies on ritual slaughter, pursuit bloodsports and vivisection, there was now an advocacy of free-range eggs and humane veal production.

Despite this widening of the scope of the NF’s concern for animal welfare, an article in Nationalism Today of October 1985 showed that for some ritual slaughter was still very much near the top of the NF’s agenda. Entitled ‘Animal Holocaust’, its main target was the Jews: ‘All the Jews have to do is stop this barbaric and torturous murder of defenceless animals. When they cease the slaughter the NF will cease its campaign. Until then the NF campaign for animal welfare will continue.'(35)

Clearly, not all NF members were motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice, and some were undoubtedly moved by concern for animals. However the fact remains this was the only ‘green’ issue on which the NF felt the need to hold a march.(36) If the NF had undertaken marches and other activities in opposition to vivisection, their defence against the charge of anti-semitism might have been more plausible. One reason why Green issues weren’t given an even higher profile was the simple fact that the NF’s agenda was becoming overloaded by other matters.’

The miners’ strike, 1984-5

In 1972-4, the NF was opposed to the miners in practice, but the miners’ strike, commencing March 1984, was an issue tailor-made for the new radical leadership to show their colours.(37) While seeking to distance themselves from the ‘Marxist’ National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill, the official policy was to ‘support wholeheartedly the struggle of British miners to stop Ian McGregor’s pit closure plan.’ (38) In seeking to help, the NF had a poor reception. ‘Some NF branches wrote to the NUM Head Office… offering to distribute NUM leaflets and help with food and money collections. But all they received for their troubles were insulting letters from the Union bosses, rejecting their help.'(39) This was hardly surprising, and the NF decided to set up a ‘Solidarity with the Miners Campaign’. However, a planned meeting in Walthamstow, East London, on 28 August 1984, with speakers from the NUM and National Council for Civil Liberties, fell through when it was found that the publicity for the event was NF-originated, with Directorate member (and NF Trade Union Group Co-ordinator) Phil Andrews’ home address on the leaflets.

As well as opposition from without, there was also dissent within the ranks: one member later recalled that a 30-strong internal meeting in Sussex led to a bitter argument, as the AGM resolution supporting the miners was debated locally, with the branch ‘committee just saving the day, and the Conference resolution [supporting the miners] being ratified by a majority of just one vote.'(40)

As well as national self-sufficiency in coal, another theme that came to feature prominently in NF coverage was the heavy-handed tactics used by police against the striking miners.(41) The reasons for this support were broadly two-fold: the Strasserite elements in the NF’s ideology, and their own experience at the hands of the police, of which more below. The relative novelty of the NF’s stance, can be gauged by comparing their line on the strike with that of the BNP. After blaming government policy ‘errors’ for the strike, Spearhead went on to helpfully suggest that the state ‘arrest and charge those ringleaders responsible for organising the violence — starting with Scargill himself.'(42) The NF’s support for the miners was not a conversion to the class struggle, any more than Strasser’s use of ‘socialist’ language indicated he adhered to it either, but was nevertheless a clear break with the practice of past regimes.(43)

The NF and the state

The beginning of 1984 saw a marked deterioration of relations with the police. This was partly due to the loss of Webster’s previous expertise in liaising with them concerning marches, and partly to a strong anti-police attitude on the part of some members.(44) The first evidence of a new attitude on the police’s part was the NF’s annual attempt to stop the ‘Bloody Sunday’ Commemoration March on 29 January 1984. This ended in something of a fiasco, with NF coaches held up outside Wakefield for some hours, with no members allowed to get off, thus depriving the NF of a rally. (45) While this was presented as a success (in that the Republican march had been called off), there was disquiet internally. Shortly after, on 28 February 1984, Joe Pearce’s home was raided (in connection with his editorship of the NF youth paper Bulldog), and personal papers taken.(46) Thus, when similar restrictions on travel as had happened to the NF were placed on pickets in the miners’ strike, some being stopped and turned back up to a 100 miles from their destination, the analogy wasn’t lost on the NF. Their irritation led to them supplying the Guardian newspaper ‘with considerable information about Special Branch activity against the party’,(47) and Griffin in particular concentrated throughout this period on writing detailed and hostile stories covering the nefarious activities of the secret state and political police.(48)

Theoretical articles are one thing, but in this case there were practical consequences arising from this concern about ‘state repression’. For a start, it was decided at the end of 1984 that ‘all officials and members should, as a matter of routine,’ burn’ all internal correspondence and circulars no longer needed for reference.'(49) In the public domain, Phil Andrews, speaking at a St George’s Day demonstration in Stoke, is reputed to have said of the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, ‘What’s all this fuss about the police woman who was shot outside the Libyan embassy? We should not shed any tears over the death of an agent of the Thatcher regime.’ (50) His views weren’t universally shared, and by October 1985 an Organisers’ Bulletin was urging members to ‘make an effort to be pleasant to PCs they meet while leafletting, paper selling, etc.'(51)

The most tangible practical effect of the NF’s policy, and something that determined both its contours and limits, was the series of prosecutions against NF members under the Race Relations Act. Of the eight members prosecuted under the Act, only two, Joe Pearce and Martin Wingfield, were found guilty, Pearce receiving a twelve month sentence in December 1985 for his past editorship of Bulldog. (52) In the period when the outcome of most prosecutions was still pending, the NF had laid off related street actions, the most tangible result being an ‘Extraordinary General Meeting’ on 22 June 1985, called to stiffen members resolve.(53) Once Pearce was convicted, members were urged to put into action the motion passed at the November 1985 AGM: to take ‘direct action against the Tory Party and mass media’, including spray-painting, slogans and occupations of premises, in support of both him, Martin Wingfield and Ian Stuart. (Stuart was jailed for assault.) (54)

Some members got rather carried away. Paul Johnson, the Kent Regional Organiser, was jailed for sending an ingenious kind of hoax bomb to the local press calling for the freeing of Pearce on behalf of the ‘December 12th’ group; and at the January 1986 Anti-IRA Rally, Griffin, then NF Deputy Chair, suggested to the audience that they use the ‘traditional British methods of the brick, the boot and the fist.'(55) At the start of 1986, the Members’ Bulletin declared that ‘there have been at least 20 reports of direct action against the offices of Tory associations and anti-British media groups and this is increasing day by day.’ (56) Again, as with the earlier period, although there were some instances of violence which can be attributed to individuals in the NF and similar groups,(57) there is no evidence of a general overall turn towards violence as the predominating strategy. Indeed, on the NF’s part strident rhetoric coexisted with strenuous efforts to exercise their legal ‘rights’ within what was for them a surprisingly novel departure — a foray into the National Council for Civil Liberties.’

Taking liberties:– the NF, the NCCL and civil rights

After the NF coaches were stopped outside Wakefield in January 1984, and Joe Pearce’s home was raided the following month, it was decided at the instigation of Nick Griffin, that Pearce should approach the NCCL and ask for their advice and help. He did so, and was advised that the police action in both cases was illegal and that he should consult a solicitor.(58) When the matter reached the public domain, there was furious criticism of the NCCL, at their AGM and in the media. They thus distanced themselves from the NF, leading to the ‘Nationalist Education Group’ (Griffin/Pearce) deciding in July 1984 that ‘all members of the NEG should join the NCCL as soon as possible.’ (59) In the event, Anderson puts the numbers joining at 15, although I have heard 20 from other sources.(60)

I haven’t been able to confirm or refute the rumour that in order to ‘weed out’ NF members, the NCCL privately allowed the ‘Searchlight team’ to scan their membership lists. Though the NCCL was officially taken off MI5’s ‘subversive’ list in 1981, it was probably still the target of state attention later, and access to the membership lists by a para-state agent such as Gable would be useful indeed. Gary Gallo (visiting from the USA) attended the 1985 NCCL AGM in April, and explained his purpose as being ‘to convince the NCCL not to refuse legal aid to NF members, or alternatively to demonstrate that the NCCL is… a political front for the left.’ (61) The vote at the AGM did go against them, but the NF were happy in that it ‘stirred up a right little hornet’s nest and got lots of stunning publicity… [showing] the NF operating as an organisation not being granted the rights everyone else gets in this country.’ (62)

A similar dispute which raged throughout 1984, in which the NF was seen as the aggrieved party, concerned Patrick Harrington’s attendance at the Polytechnic of North London. Students (and some staff) objected to his presence at the Poly, due to active NF membership,(63) and, commencing in March 1984, there were attempts to prevent him attending lectures. The Poly management responded by trying to have him taught privately on the one hand (something ultimately rejected by the courts) and taking harsh action against protestors on the other. The case gained a lot of media publicity, and the way the NF handled it was indicative of a more subtle new approach. An Organisers Bulletin stated that ‘while NF members will feel like paying these Reds back in kind, it is essential that we do not fall into this trap. Please make sure your members stay away from his college — any confrontation outside the college will prejudice Patrick’s battle in the courts.’ (64) This episode was a major propaganda victory for the NF, and also had the effect of hurtling Harrington into national prominence. (65)

Notes

1. As before, this essay isn’t comprehensive, trying to concentrate on what was different as well as what was strategically significant. I don’t mention, except in passing, the anti-Jewish policies of the fascists. For an overview there see my ‘British Fascism — the Persistence of Anti-Semitism’ in Return, 5 December 1990, especially pp. 41-5. It is taken as given below that the NF is fascist (though at times of a novel kind), with traces of Nazi and non-fascist ideologies too. Although this view of the organisation isn’t really accepted by NF members who have been so kind as to give me interviews, it can in my judgement be sustained, and will be, elsewhere.
2. See Press Statement 3 October 1983.
3. Interview with the author, 29 May 1991.
4. Estimates from NF News 29, February 1981 p. 4, NF News 44, Jan. 1983 p. 4, and NF News 52, Jan. 1984 p. 4 respectively. Outside estimates were even less charitable. For example the British National Party’s Spearhead (issue 177 p. 20) estimated the 1982 turn-out to be only 500. As for other marches, whereas in March 1980 the NF had mobilised 900 for an anti-mugging march in South London (The Times, 3 March 1980), by 1983 their highest mainland march turn-out was 300 in Fulham on 28 August 1983. See NF News 51, October 1983, p. 4.
5. Interview with author, 27 October 1992.
6. See Webster circular of 3 January 1984, Appendix, ‘The Political Background’, for his later views on this.
7. Minutes p. 5 This is significant in that it contradicts Webster’s later fulminations against the influence of Fiore et al importing terroristic methods into the NF via Rising. At the same Directorate meeting it was decided to suspend Derek Holland’s membership, for writing a letter critical of Webster in Nationalism Today 18.
8. In 1989 Griffin (with Holland this time) was to use the same tactic of resignation from the NF as a means of carrying forward political struggle.
9. Webster is reported to have been particularly incensed at having been referred to by them as merely a ‘capable journalist’.
10. The BNP’s Tyndall, as would be expected, saw the letter as a ‘vindication of our own position over the past 3-4 years’. Spearhead 182, December 1983, p. 20.
11. Interview with the author, 27 October 1992. Anderson has said he reluctantly sided with the opposition to Webster to ensure a ‘blooodless coup’, and the two accounts are clearly compatible. Interview with the author 29 May 1991. The defection of Patrick Harrington from the Webster camp also had some bearing on the matter too, in that he would have been able, should he have so wished, to rally some younger members to Webster’s cause. Harrington interview with the author, 9 March 1991.
12. Anderson interview with the author, 29 May 1991. Webster’s letters in his defence are nonetheless valuable for the gossip and allegations they contain. See those, for example, of 3 January 1984, 19 September 1984 and the especially interesting ‘Petition for Inquiry into NF Financial Affairs’ dated 8 July 1984. As Webster and Salt were dismissed without notice and with only four weeks severance pay, it may well be that, as his solicitor Tessa Sempick put it in her letter to Andrew Brons of 21 December 1983, they had been unfairly treated.
    The Webster removal episode also spawned some highly amusing factional literature, most notably the various spoof Gay Nationalists. Also of great interest was the consistently sympathetic coverage he received from Searchlight magazine, which (for a variety of reasons) as well as vastly over-estimating his prospects of regaining control, reproduced his arguments with hardly any criticism whatsoever. See e.g. see issue 105, March 1984, pp. 3-4; issue 109, July 1984 pp. 3-4; issue 110, August 1984, pp. 3-4; and issue 112, October 1984, pp. 4-5.
13. See for example Roger Eatwell, ‘Fascism in Post-War Britain’, in T. Kushner and K. Lunn (eds.) Traditions of Intolerance (Manchester University Press, 1989), where it is implied that it was because of the Italian exiles (Fiore, Morsello etc.) that Strasserite ideas ‘were disseminated in the NF’ (p. 228). Yet neither Rising nor its precursor, European Fight, of which there was only the one issue, could be said to be Strasserite (as opposed to ‘Europeanist’). Christopher Husbands also speaks of the ‘rise of “Strasserism” in the NF under the Italian Third Position influence’ in his ‘Extreme Right-Wing Politics in Great Britain’, in K. Von Beyme (ed.) Right-Wing Extremism in Europe, (Frank Cass, London, 1988) p. 72. He then makes the usual claim that ‘such future as the NF and other extreme-right groupings may have is increasingly likely to be in an extra-legal direction’ (p. 77). For some fascists, that is the path, but not for all, or even the majority. Richard Thurlow, in his Fascism in Britain 1918-85 (Blackwell, Oxford, 1987), manages to avoid even mentioning Evola, and not too much weight should be attached to his declaration that post-1980 was characterised by the ‘rise of a third generation of self-styled “Strasserites” ‘ (p. 296), when the most recent source he cites for this assertion dates back to 1975!
    I think the most important recent source of ‘Strasserism’ in the UK far right was ex-National Party activists, and only minimally A.K. Chesterton, who had very much a ‘Tory Racialist’ social agenda. The lack of sufficient rigorous, source-based, research on the NF after 1980 (and even more so after 1983) then results in the sloppy sort of article such as that by Steve Hunt, ‘Fascism and the Race Issue in Britain’ (Politics, Autumn 1992, pp. 23-28), where what purports to be an overview simply leaves out examination of any evidence for the post-1983 period, the most recent article cited based on research before 1983. This doesn’t stop Hunt from referring to ‘menacing’ BNP-British Movement links, or from (correctly) warning of the need for ‘constant vigilance’. It is just that his article hardly portrays him as a practitioner of this regarding the last ten years!
    Such sloppiness is also evident in Zig Layton-Henry’s The Politics of Immigration (Blackwell, Oxford, 1992), where his commentary on the far right ends with the aftermath of the 1979-80 split. Given his most recent source cited is a book published in 1982, he doesn’t even begin to prove his parting shot that ‘the fragmentation of the far Right and loss of support for it have not ended its activity, but appear to have diverted it away from electoral politics and more towards sporadic violence and racial attacks against black people’ (p. 97).
    Am I alone in thinking the subject of fascism in the UK deserves better and more rigorous research than such half-baked generalisations, culled from Searchlight and/or the Sunday newspaper supplements? One reason for such paucity of detail in what passes for scholarly works on the NF is the lack of available primary sources. As a result academics have been compelled to rely on Searchlight magazine for selective drip-feeding, and are thus reluctant to ‘second-guess’ the magazine’s analysis. That isn’t the whole story of course, inasmuch as virtually complete runs of publications like NF News, Nationalism Today, Spearhead etc. are available in some libraries. However,lack of primary evidence is one reason, and in that regard readers who are seriously interested should note the collection recently deposited at Warwick University Modern Records Centre by Patrick Harrington, bearing his name. This includes: a virtually full set of NF Directorate minutes 1976-83 (and quite a few after 1986); extensive runs of Members Bulletins and Organisers Bulletins throughout the 1970′ s and 1980s; and AGM Agendas and Constitutions, as well as factional literature from all the recent splits — 197980, 1983, 1986 and 1989. Quite a lot of the material used in this article is deposited there, and I am glad to say I had a small part in ensuring that Warwick (geographically central and unlike other potential recipients committed to making the documents readily accessible to all students, irrespective of institution) received the documents.
    The gaps in the collection, and Harrington’s possible motives, are not really things to be gone into here, though what I would say is that had his intention been to retain control of such invaluable research material, he would hardly have placed it in the public domain. By contrast, the Searchlight -originated Maurice Ludmer Collection housed at Southampton University Library has virtually no material of contemporary relevance, thus ensuring that important primary sources are retained under the magazine’s control, a monopoly undermined at a stroke by Harrington’s bequest. Used carefully, as evidence rather than ammunition to confirm prejudices and substitute for research, over a period of years the Warwick Collection will hopefully facilitate a drastic improvement in the generally dire state of research into the contemporary UK far right.
14. See Organisers Bulletin no. 15, 5 September 1983. The letter itself was dated 26 September 1983. Apparently, there had been ‘foul-mouthed drunken aggressive hooligan conduct on the part of the yobbo element’, who had, among other things, subjected ’11 and 12 year old little girls to a gratuitous deluge of threatening obscenities’.
15. Indeed according to Griffin ‘the skins kept the NF alive from 1980-1983’. Letter to Joe Pearce, 14 March 1986.
16. Tyndall made reference to it as the 80s progressed, although the difficult thing for him to explain was why (especially given he had at one point shared a flat with Webster) he hadn’t raised it before. Tyndall’s first public reference to Webster’s sexual orientation was in Spearhead July 1983 (issue 177, pp. 14-15). His defence against critics in the next Spearhead was less than convincing (178, p. 14). The truth was probably that Tyndall hadn’t been bothered about or was prepared to tolerate Webster’s sexual orientation while he was an ally, and for a long time felt embarrassed about raising it later precisely because he would then be criticised for evasiveness. This would explain Tyndall’s memorandum to NF officials of 18 September 1979 distancing himself during the inner-party conflict then raging from ‘libellous abuse of a very personal nature’.
17. Or in the case of Islington NF, virtually the whole branch would alert him for similar reasons. To be fair to Webster, his ‘sexual politics’ stance doesn’t seem to have been hypocritical. The 1983 election manifesto contained, at his insistence, a remarkably (for the NF) tolerant ‘Bill of Rights’, including the ‘right to choose one’s own associates at home, at work and on social occasions’. (Let Britain Live, p. 25).
18. See NF Member’s Bulletin Spring 1983, p. 4 for the full list. Expulsion from the NF was the fate awaiting anyone who even worked ‘in association with’ an individual or group so proscribed.
19. See the East Anglian Daily Times 7 and 9 January 1984 and also the article by Dave Stevens in Nationalism Today (hereafter NT) 19, p. 20. It has been suggested to me that Roberto Fiore and other Italian exiles featured prominently in this activity.
20. NT, 20 March 1984, p. 12.
21. In certain areas, ‘direct action’ by NF members was without doubt vexatious for their opponents. See e.g. Newham Recorder 24 January 1985 for an account of an intervention by Brady/Anderson in a local dispute concerning the eviction of a racist council tenant, the broad facts of which were confirmed in the Member’s Bulletin Summer 1985, p. 1.
22. Spring 1984 p. 1.
23. NF News 57, June 1984, p. 4. And this internal estimate is obviously going to have erred on the high side.
24. NF News 62, Jan. 1985, p. 6, which in 1985 was exceeded, even by opposition accounts. Time Out (23 January 1986) speculated 1,800, the NF’s own figure was 2,000. (NF News 81, October 1986 p. 3).
25. I do not see all this as flowing directly from Richard Lawson’s IONA organisation and Michael Walker’s Scorpion magazine. The successful motion proposed in their names at the 1984 AGM on ‘Cultural Diversity’ was very sparse, and merely spoke of the ‘preservation and revival of the Celtic Languages and English dialects’.
26. See Griffin’s article in NT 31, July 1985 pp. 8-9. Advance programmes for those I have seen give no hint of any ‘military’ aspects, and as I said in my last article, no proof of such aspects sustainable in court of law has as yet been forthcoming….
27. See The Times 20 October 1984, p. 2, and New Statesman 26 October 1984, pp. 16-17.
28. NT 20, p. 2, ‘On the Green Front’. Discovery of this extra premise had seemingly come about quite recently: in the programme Pearce wrote for the 7 February 1984 Training Seminar there were still only three! I suspect the NT questionnaire to subscribers sent out with issue 19 had something to do with it.
29. Letter to author dated 14 June 1990.
30. See for example Phil Andrews in NT 23, July 1984, p. 8: ‘To oppose vivisection is a crime against capitalism. To support it is a crime against civilisation’; and the interview of noted anti-vivisectionist Hans Ruesch by Derek Holland (unattributed) in NT 30, June 1985, pp. 12-13.
31. Letter to author 22 May 1990.
32. Item 10, proposed by Holland, seconded by Fortune.
33. NF News 61, November 84, p. 2. The local Brighton Evening Argus of 22 September 1984 estimated 60.
34. NF News 59, September 1984 p. 3 and NF News, March 1985, p. 7.
35. NT 34, p. 4. Logically if there were no ulterior agenda, at the very least Halal should have been mentioned.
36. There were other changes in the NF’s ideology of relevance to Green issues, most notably the articulation of ‘ruralism’ as an alternative to discredited city life. See e.g. NF News 68, July 1985, p. 5, which stated that the ‘NF believes that modern man has been uprooted from the soil and placed in an artificial concrete world where he has become a materialist wage slave. A major return to the land is essential for the cultural, spiritual and economic health of the nation… It is up to us to build a Britain where the people are united by the bonds of blood and soil’, sentiments that had even found their way into the 1985 Constitution — pt. 5, Statement of Principles. The policy had already been slightly diluted by a motion passed at the 1985 AGM calling for the setting up of nationalist communities in ‘both rural and urban areas’ (item 20, proposed by Griffin and seconded by Anderson). Given there was little practical outcome concerning the policy of a ‘Return to the Land’, save perhaps for free labour being carried out by NF members to renovate various properties owned by Nick Griffin over the years, it hardly needs consideration here.
37. It is noteworthy that in early 1983, NT had published an article regretting the failure of miners to vote for strike action in an earlier ballot: ‘Miners Defeat is Britain’s Defeat’ p. 18.
38. 1984 AGM item 30. See also ‘The Miners Strike — Answering Fleet Streets Lies’, NT 23, July-August 1984, p. 18, and NF News 62, January 1985, ‘The Miners Strike — Where We Stand’.
39. NT 25, November 1984, p. 22.
40. Michael Sutton, writing in the Flag issue 68, November 1992, p. 7. This account of dissension is supported by a letter from Batley branch printed in NT 27, March 1985 p. 18, which talked of a North-South split at the AGM on the issue in November 1984. Even a local Northern newsletter highly critical of Scargill and Coal Board Chairman McGregor, seeing them as equivalents due to their ‘commitment to twin alien ideologies’ had to be withdrawn from distribution after Directorate intervention. Blackpool NF Bulletin Nov.Dec. 1984, p. 1.
41. See for example ‘Violence? Whose bloody violence’, NT 27, March 1985, p. 17.
42. Issue 186, April 1984, pp. 2-3.
43. To see the NF’s line here as ‘leftist’ would be a mistake. See for example the NF ‘Policy Briefing’ of July-August 1985, where concerning large increases in salary for higher Civil Servants, Judges and Army officers, the official position was that, against critics, the ‘Government’s view is correct but need not be, and would not be, in a Distributive society’. (p. 1). The extent to which Distributism itself is anti-capitalist is a large theoretical issue not relevant here. The illogicality (from a radical perspective) of espousing both trade union activism and racism is well illustrated by the confusions in the article ‘Trade Unions: Red power or White Power’, in NT 35, Nov.Dec. 1985, p. 22.
44. See for example the contributions to New Nation, Autumn 1983, by Fiore (anonymously) on the ‘Italian Experience’ and Griffin on ‘Repression in Britain Tomorrow’ (pp. 12-14).
45. An account is given in NT, 21 April 1984, p. 19.
46. This is also referred to in NT 21, on p. 15.
47. Chairman’s Bulletin 2, 27 April 1984, p. 2. The articles resulting appeared on 18 and 19 April 1984.
48. See for example, NT 22, 1984, p. 15; NT 27, March 1985, p. 11; NT 29, May 1985, p. 5; NT 33, September 1985, p. 21; NT 34, October 1985, p. 21, as well as Michelle Lawrence ‘Towards the Police State’ in NT 24, September 1984, p. 8.
49. Militant (Bulletin of Central London NF) December 1984, p. 1, followed by an Organisers Bulletin, 1 October 1985, which ordered the burning of records more than three meetings old. See p. 2.
50. Exact wording from Webster’s ‘Petition for an Inquiry’ of 8 July 1984, p. 7. The broad accuracy of this rendition has been confirmed to me by others present on that day. Within earshot of hundreds of police officers, many present felt this was a somewhat infelicitous statement….
51. Issue 22, 14 October 1985, p. 2. Special Branch were excluded from this general instruction.
52. See the Guardian 13 December 1985 and NT 36, February 1986, editorial p. 2.
53. While very understandable in individual terms, the motion passed which called on ‘all individuals prosecuted under the Act to refuse to recognise the validity of any such proceedings except where the wider cause of British Racial Nationalism would be harmed’ (item 3) — was quite literally meaningless except as a piece of rhetoric.
54. Item 21. Item 18 also called for an (implicit) flouting of the proposed revisions to the Public Order Act.
55. Yorkshire Post 17 February 1986. His private explanation of this comment (which he did not deny) was that it ‘was necessary under the circumstances of the Kent ”Free Joe Pearce” lunacy to stress forcibly to the large and militant audience that we oppose terrorism, which I characterised as alien, futile and indefensible on both tactical and moral grounds’. In letter to Joe Pearce, 14 March 1986 p. 7.
    The official response to ‘December 12th’ was put by Martin Wingfield (then Chairman) in ‘The Lunatics in Our Midst’ (NT 37, March 1986, p. 17). On another aspect of the NF’s ‘sexual politics’, see Martin Durham’s excellent ‘Women and the National Front’ in L. Cheles (ed.) Neo-Fascism in Europe (Longman’s, London, 1991) pp. 264-8.
56. P. 2. But this picture of energetic activism was somewhat dissipated by Griffin’s complaint in the Organisers Bulletin of 25 April 1986 (p. 3) that though five areas had done well, others had ‘been slow to follow suit’.
57. E.g. see Racism and Fascism in West Yorkshire, Leeds Anti Fascist Action, 1987 for an overview in one locality, and the Guardian 30 July 1985 p. 8. The founding conference of Anti-Fascist Action also came under attack in that month — Red Letter 13 August 1985.
58. On this initial sequence of events both the NCCL (in Barbara Cohen’s internal report of 10 May 1984), and the NF (in the Chairman’s Newsletter, issue 2, 27 April 1984, p. 2) agree.
59. NEG circular July 1984, p. 1.
60. Interview with the author, 29 May 1991. The NCCL themselves were unwilling to discuss this matter with me, instead referring me to…. Searchlight.
61. NT 30, June 1985 p. 8.
62. Anderson interview 29 May 1991.
63. See for example the P.N.L. student paper Fuse issue 167, June 1983, and Searchlight 109, July 1984, pp. 2-3.
64. 22 May 1984, no. 10, p. 1.
65. For a full account see the Report of P.N.L. Committee of Inquiry 1985, chaired by Sheila Brown for the now-defunct Greater London Council, published by Swindon Press, 1985.