National Front (UK) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids National Front
Abbreviation	NF
Leader	Tony Martin
Deputy Leader	Jordan Pont
Founder	A. K. Chesterton
Founded	7 February 1967; 57 years ago (1967-02-07)
Merger of	British National Front League of Empire Loyalists
Ideology	British fascism Neo-fascism British nationalism White supremacism Internal factions: Neo-Nazism Racial populism Strasserism Third Position Antisemitism Islamophobia
Political position	Far-right
National affiliation	Nationalist Alliance (2005-2008)
Politics of United Kingdom Political parties

The National Front (NF) is a 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 (BNP). 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 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 (LEL). He had a long history in the British fascist movement, having been a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) 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 (BNP), David Brown of the Racial Preservation Society (RPS), and John Tyndall and Martin Webster of the Greater Britain Movement (GBM). 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.

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 (NF) 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 [i.e. Nazi] opinion in Britain"—dropped its open neo-Nazism and backed the NF, eventually becoming the party's de facto monthly magazine.

A National Front march in Yorkshire during the 1970s

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 (NP) in December 1975.

Tyndall's second leadership: 1976–1982

In February 1976, Tyndall was restored as the NF leader. The party then capitalised on public anger at the government's agreement to accept Malawian Asian refugees, and held demonstrations against their arrival. After a resurgence in fortunes in London at the 1977 GLC election, when the party improved on its October 1974 general election result, further marches were planned in the city. These included a march through Lewisham in August 1977, where clashes with anti-fascists became known as the "Battle of Lewisham".

In the 1979 general election, the NF contested more seats than any insurgent party since Labour in 1918. It nevertheless performed badly, securing only 1.3% of the total vote, down from 3.1% in the October 1974 general election. This decline may have been due to increased anti-fascist campaigning over preceding years, or because of the Conservatives' increasingly restrictive stance on immigration under Margaret Thatcher attracted many votes that previously went to the Front. NF membership had also declined.

Although Tyndall and Webster had been longstanding comrades, in the late 1970s Tyndall began to blame his old friend for the party's problems. Tyndall resigned in January 1980, complaining of a "foul stench of perversion" in the party. In June, he founded the New National Front (NNF), which claimed that a third of the NF's membership defected to it.

Strasserites and the Flag Group: 1983–1990

After Tyndall's departure, Andrew Brons became party chair, with Webster remaining as National Activities Organiser. Webster was ousted from all paid positions in 1983 by a faction led by Nick Griffin and Joe Pearce. In May 1985, this faction – who adhered to the Strasserite variant of Nazism – secured control of the party's directorate and suspended the membership of their opponents. Their focus was not on electoral success but on developing an activist elite consisting largely of working-class urban youths; its supporters became known as "Political Soldiers". The Strasserites officially reformulated their party along a centralised cadre system at the November 1986 AGM. Their ideology was influenced by their strong links with members of an Italian fascist militia, the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR), who were hiding in London after the Bologna massacre. Like the NAR, the NF Strasserites emphasised the far-right ideology of the Third Position, which they presented as being opposed to both capitalism and Marxist-oriented socialism. They were also influenced by the Nouvelle Droite, a French far-right movement that advocated long-term strategies of cultural influence to achieve their goals.

In 1983, the National Front was taken over by a faction led by Nick Griffin (left) and Joe Pearce (right), who were then followers of "Strasserism", the "left Nazism" of German fascist ideologue Otto Strasser.

The Strasserites described themselves as "radical, youthful and successful", contrasting their approach with the "out-dated conservative policies" of their internal opponents. These opponents then formed a rival organisation, the Flag Group, which adopted the name "National Front" in January 1987. According to Eatwell, the Flag NF "was essentially a continuation of the racial-populist tradition" used by earlier forms of the party. It had more working-class leaders than the Strasserite group and regarded the latter as intellectuals pursuing foreign ideological fads. There remained two organisations claiming the name of National Front—that controlled by the Flag Group and the Strasserites' Official National Front—until 1990. In contrast to the Strasserite NF's increased centralisation, the Flag Group gave autonomy to its branches, focusing on local issues. Following the NF's declining vote share in the late 1970s, both groups had effectively abandoned interest in electoral participation.

Reflecting the Nouvelle Droite's influence, the Strasserite Official NF promoted support for "a broad front of racialists of all colours" who were seeking an end to multi-racial society and capitalism, praising black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan and Marcus Garvey. Their publication, Nationalism Today, featured positive articles on the Libyan and Iranian governments, presenting them as part of a global anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist third force; they may have also seen Libya and Iran as potential sources of funding. This new ideology alienated many NF members. The Official NF experienced internal problems and in 1989 Griffin, Derek Holland and Colin Todd split from it to establish the International Third Position. In March 1990 the Official NF was disbanded by its leaders, Patrick Harrington, Graham Williamson and David Kerr, who replaced it with a new organisation, the Third Way. This left the Flag Group as the only party using the National Front banner.

Further decline: 1990–present

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

During the 1990s, the NF was eclipsed by Tyndall's new British National Party (BNP) as Britain's foremost far-right movement. Following the Lansdowne Road football riot of 1995, in which English far-right hooligans attacked Irish supporters, the NF's chairman Ian Anderson attempted to escape the negative associations of the name "National Front" by renaming the party as the National Democrats. A small faction broke away to retain the National Front name, contesting the 1997 and 2001 general elections, with little success. By 2001, the NF had developed close links with Combat 18, a neo-Nazi paramilitary which had been founded by Tyndall's BNP before breaking from the latter. The Front continued to organise rallies, several of which were banned by successive Home Secretaries.

A 2010 High Court ruling forced the BNP to remove a clause from its constitution prohibiting non-white membership, leading to defections to the NF. After the English Defence League (EDL), an Islamophobic social movement, emerged in 2009, the NF pursued links but was rebuffed by the EDL, which sought to distance itself from the Front and other established far-right groups. As the EDL declined in the following years, the NF collaborated with some of the groups that had split from it, like the North West Infidels and South East Alliance. In March 2015 Kevin Bryan became the NF's chair. After Bryan was injured in a car accident he was replaced by Dave MacDonald in November 2015, with Tony Martin taking over in September 2018.

Electoral performance

The National Front experienced its greatest success between 1972 and 1977. By the late 1970s, the party's support had drastically declined and in the 1980s it largely withdrew from electoral participation. The Front's emergence as an electoral force during the 1970s was an "unprecedented development" in British politics, the first time a far-right party gained so many votes.

General and by-elections

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

In 1977 the NF contested three by-elections, gaining 5.2% of the vote in the City of London and Westminster South by-election, 8.2% in the Birmingham Stechford by-election and 3.8% in the Ashfield by-election. In the Birmingham Stechford by-election, followed by another in Birmingham Ladywood in 1977 and in Lambeth Central in 1978, it beat the Liberals to reach third place. Within a few years the NF's electoral support had drastically declined; in the 1979 general election, it fielded 303 candidates and averaged 0.6% of the total national vote, losing £45,000 in deposits. In the seats contested, it averaged 1.3% of the vote, a number which rose to 2% in the 88 constituencies it contested in Greater London. This election "marked the beginning of the end of the movement's claim to seek political legitimacy through the ballot box". In the 1983 general election, the NF fought 54 seats, averaging 1% in each.

EU parliament elections

Local elections

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

The NF made gains in the 1977 Greater London Council elections, where it contested all but one seat. Its 91 GLC candidates gained 120,000 votes, over twice the total that the party had accrued in the whole of England in 1974. In Inner London, it gained the third-largest vote share. Its share of the London vote also increased, reflecting an average rise from 4.4% in the October 1974 general election to 5.3% in the 1977 GLC election. It averaged over 10% of the vote in three boroughs: Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets. The NF's vote share began to stagnate in the local elections from 1977 and 1978. By 1977, the party's electoral support had peaked and, by the London Borough Council elections of 1978, its support "had very noticeably declined" in the city, something that was then reflected in local elections elsewhere in the UK.

In 2010, the NF gained its first elected representative in 35 years after John Gamble, a local councillor on Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, defected to it from the England First Party. In 2011 he was removed for failure to attend meetings in six months.

Parish and community councils

The NF obtained several representatives on parish councils and community councils. In 2010, Sam Clayton, a representative for Bilton and Ainsty with Bickerton Ward in Harrogate—originally elected uncontested as a BNP candidate in 2008—defected to the NF. By 2011 he was no longer on the council. In 2011 the NF gained a representative on Langley Parish Council in Derbyshire, when Timothy Knowles was elected without opposition. On failing to attend council meetings, he was ejected from the council several months later. In October 2015, the NF chairman David MacDonald was elected to Garthdee Community Council in Aberdeen with 18 votes.

See also

In Spanish: Frente Nacional (Gran Bretaña) para niños