National Front (UK)

The National Front (NF) 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 (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 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

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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.Template:Sfn The resolve to unite them came in early 1966 from A. K. Chesterton, the leader of the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL).Template:Sfn He had a long history in the British fascist movement, having been a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the 1930s.Template:Sfn Over the following months, many far-rightists visited Chesterton at his Croydon apartment to discuss the proposal,Template:Sfn among them Andrew Fountaine and Philip Maxwell of the British National Party (BNP),Template:Sfn David Brown of the Racial Preservation Society (RPS),Template:Sfn and John Tyndall and Martin Webster of the Greater Britain Movement (GBM).Template:Sfn Although everyone agreed with the idea of unification, personal rivalries made the process difficult.Template:Sfn

Chesterton agreed to a merger of the LEL and BNP,Template:Sfnm and a faction of the RPS decided to join them.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfnm 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."Template:Sfn

In October 1966, the LEL and BNP established a working committee to determine what policies they could agree on.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn They considered various names for the new party,Template:Sfn before settling on "National Front" in December 1966.Template:Sfn The National Front (NF) was founded on 7 February 1967,Template:Sfnm with Chesterton its first chairman.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Early growth: 1968–1972

The NF's first year was marked by a power struggle between the ex-LEL and ex-BNP factions.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn At the invitation of the ex-BNP faction,Template:Sfn in June 1967, Tyndall discontinued the GBM and called on its members to join the NF.Template:Sfnm Despite his own earlier commitment to keep Tyndall out, Chesterton welcomed him into the party.Template:Sfn Tyndall's magazine, Spearhead—originally sold as "an organ of National Socialist [i.e. Nazi] opinion in Britain"Template:Sfn—dropped its open neo-Nazism and backed the NF,Template:Sfn eventually becoming the party's de facto monthly magazine.Template:Sfn

File:Yorkshire NF.jpg

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.Template:Sfn In 1968, Chesterton's leadership was unsuccessfully challenged by Fountaine, who then left the party.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfnm Although Powell proposed more moderate measures for expelling migrants than the NF, his use of language was similar to theirs,Template:Sfn and some individuals on the right-wing of the Conservatives defected to the NF.Template:Sfn

The NF fielded 45 candidates in the 1969 local elections and averaged a poll of 8%, although a few secured over 10%.Template:Sfn The party focused on these latter seats in the 1970 local elections, fielding 10 candidates; almost all received under 5% of the vote.Template:Sfn The party faced militant left-wing opposition, including the driving of a lorry into its Tulse Hill building in 1969,Template:Sfn and to counter this the NF installed a spy in London's anti-fascist movement.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfnm He was succeeded by John O'Brien in February 1971.Template:Sfnm Frustrated that Tyndall maintained links with neo-Nazi groups like the Northern League,Template:Sfnm O'Brien and his supporters ultimately left the NF for the National Independence Party in June 1972.Template:Sfnm

Tyndall's first leadership: 1972–1975

Tyndall became party chairman in July 1972,Template:Sfnm centralising the NF's activities at a new Croydon headquarters.Template:Sfn According to Thurlow, under Tyndall the NF attempted to "convert racial populists" angry about immigration "into fascists".Template:Sfn 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."Template:Sfn Refocusing its appeal towards the white working class, in June 1974 it launched the NF Trade Unionists Association.Template:Sfn Britain's leftists fought back by publicising the neo-Nazi past of senior NF members, including photographs of Tyndall wearing a Nazi uniform.Template:Sfn

The NF capitalised on fears surrounding the arrival of Ugandan Asian refugees in 1972,Template:Sfnm resulting in rapid growth of its membership.Template:Sfnm 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,Template:Sfnm something that brought greater media coverage.Template:Sfn 54 candidates were fielded at the February 1974 general election,Template:Sfnm a number that guaranteed them a party political broadcast.Template:Sfnm It contested six times as many seats as in 1970, averaging a vote share of 3.2%, slightly less than in 1970.Template:Sfnm By the mid-1970s, the NF's membership had stagnated and in several areas declined;Template:Sfn all of its 90 candidates for the October 1974 general election lost their deposits.Template:Sfnm In the 1975 local elections they fielded 60 candidates, far fewer than in previous elections.Template:Sfn

A faction known as the "Populists" emerged in the party under Roy Painter's leadership.Template:Sfnm They were frustrated that the NF's directorate was dominated by former BNP and GBM members and believed that Tyndall remained a neo-Nazi.Template:Sfn They ensured John Kingsley Read's election as chairman,Template:Sfnm with Tyndall demoted to vice chair.Template:Sfnm Growing strife between the Tyndallites and Populists broke out;Template:Sfnm Read and the executive committee suspended Tyndall and nine of his supporters from the directorate, before expelling Tyndall from the party.Template:Sfnm Tyndall took the issue to the High Court, where his expulsion was declared illegal.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfnm

Tyndall's second leadership: 1976–1982

In February 1976, Tyndall was restored as the NF leader.Template:Sfn The party then capitalised on public anger at the government's agreement to accept Malawian Asian refugees, and held demonstrations against their arrival.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfn These included a march through Lewisham in August 1977, where clashes with anti-fascists became known as the "Battle of Lewisham".Template:Sfn

In the 1979 general election, the NF contested more seats than any insurgent party since Labour in 1918;Template:Sfnm it nevertheless performed badly.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.Template:Sfnm NF membership had also declined.Template:Sfn

Although Tyndall and Webster had been longstanding comrades, in the late 1970s Tyndall began to blame his old friend for the party's problems.Template:Sfn Tyndall was upset with Webster's attempts to encourage far-right skinheads and football hooligans to join the NF,Template:Sfn as well as allegations that Webster had been making sexual advances toward the party's young men.Template:Sfn In October 1979 he urged the NF directorate to call for Webster's resignation, but was refused.Template:Sfn Tyndall resigned in January 1980, complaining of a "foul stench of perversion" in the party.Template:Sfn In June, he founded the New National Front (NNF),Template:Sfnm which claimed that a third of the NF's membership defected to it.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfn Their focus was not on electoral success but on developing an activist elite consisting largely of working-class urban youths;Template:Sfnm its supporters became known as "Political Soldiers".Template:Sfn The Strasserites officially reformulated their party along a centralised cadre system at the November 1986 AGM.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

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

Reflecting the Nouvelle Droite's influence,Template:Sfn 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,Template:Sfn praising black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan and Marcus Garvey.Template:Sfnm 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;Template:Sfn they may have also seen Libya and Iran as potential sources of funding.Template:Sfn This new ideology alienated many NF members.Template:Sfn The Official NF experienced internal problems and in 1989 Griffin, Derek Holland and Colin Todd split from it to establish the International Third Position.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn This left the Flag Group as the only party using the National Front banner.Template:Sfn

Further decline: 1990–present

File:EDL2.jpg

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

During the 1990s, the NF was eclipsed by Tyndall's new British National Party (BNP) as Britain's foremost far-right movement.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfnm A small faction broke away to retain the National Front name,Template:Sfnm contesting the 1997 and 2001 general elections, with little success.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn The Front continued to organise rallies, several of which were banned by successive Home Secretaries.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}
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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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn In March 2015 Kevin Bryan became the NF's chair.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> After Bryan was injured in a car accident he was replaced by Dave MacDonald in November 2015,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> with Tony Martin taking over in September 2018.<ref name="Martin"/>

Ideology

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Far-right politics, fascism and neo-Nazism

A far-right or extreme-right party,Template:Sfn the NF has both commonalities and differences with older far-right groups.Template:Sfn Political scientists and historians characterise it as fascist,Template:Sfnm or neo-fascist,Template:Sfnm with the historian Martin Durham stating that the NF—like France's National Front and Germany's The Republicans—represented "the direct descendants of classical fascism".Template:Sfn The political psychologist Michael Billig notes that the NF displayed many of fascism's recurring traits: an emphasis on nationalism and racism, an anti-Marxist stance, statism and support for private enterprise, and a hostile view of democracy and personal freedom.Template:Sfn

Rejecting the term "fascist" to describe itself,Template:Sfnm the NF sought to conceal its connections to older fascist movements,Template:Sfn denying its leaders' previous fascist activities.Template:Sfn It claimed that it could not be fascist because it took part in elections; the political scientist Stan Taylor argues that this claim was obsolete, for many earlier fascist parties—including the BUF, the German Nazi Party and the Italian National Fascist Party—also contested elections.Template:Sfn In avoiding the "fascist" label, the NF was typical of fascist groups operating after the Second World War;Template:Sfn having to contend with the legacy of the war and the Holocaust, they tried to hide their intellectual pedigrees from voters.Template:Sfn

As with many political extremists, the image the NF presented to the public was more moderate than the ideology of its inner core of members.Template:Sfn As noted by Billig, the NF's "ideological core and its genocidal tendencies, are hidden" so as not to scare off potential recruits sympathetic to its nationalism and anti-immigration stance but not its antisemitic conspiracy theories.Template:Sfn While noting that the party's views on race departed considerably "from what is normal or acceptable to the average citizen" in the UK, the political scientist Nigel Fielding observes that many of its other views were grounded in what would be considered "popular common-sense opinion" across the political right.Template:Sfn

Factions

During its history, the NF contained various factions with distinct ideological positions. From the party's early days until the 1980 Tyndall/Webster split, its ideology was dominated by the ex-GBM faction.Template:Sfn According to Thurlow, the ex-GBM faction oversaw "an attempt to portray the essentials of Nazi ideology in more rational language and seemingly reasonable arguments",Template:Sfn while Wilkinson observed that this faction's leadership was "deeply imbued with Nazi ideas" and retained "intimate connections" with both domestic and foreign neo-Nazi groups.Template:Sfn Taylor also regarded the NF of the 1970s as a Nazi organisation because of its fixation on antisemitic conspiracy theories.Template:Sfn In his words, the NF's "full ideology" was, "in a large number of respects", identical to the original German Nazism.Template:Sfn

According to Thurlow, the members of the "Populist" faction that challenged the ex-GBM faction's dominance in the late 1970s were "pseudo-Conservative racial populists", representing the party's "non-fascist and ostensibly more democratic element".Template:Sfn After Tyndall and Webster were ousted and replaced by Brons and Anderson, a new faction took control whose members regarded themselves as Strasserite, drawing inspiration from German Nazi Party members Otto Strasser and Gregor Strasser.Template:Sfn This faction embraced the Third Position ideology and drew inspiration from Muammar Gaddafi's Third International Theory.Template:Sfn

Ethnic nationalism, racism and eugenics

The National Front is a British nationalist party;Template:Sfnm its early policy statements declared that it "pledged to work for the restoration of full national sovereignty for Britain in all affairs".Template:Sfn It rejected internationalism and thus opposed both liberalism and communism, contrasting their internationalist espousal of universal values with its view that nations should have their own distinct values.Template:Sfn Labelling itself a racial nationalist party,Template:Sfnm the NF's concept of nationalism was bound up with that of race.Template:Sfn NF members typically referred to themselves as "racialists",Template:Sfn with Durham stating that the NF was "undeniably a racist organisation".Template:Sfn The party claimed that humanity divides into biologically distinct races with their own physical and social characteristics.Template:Sfn Although some of its published material referred only to "white" and "black" races, elsewhere it listed various racial groups, among them the "Nordics", "Caucasoids", "Negroids", "Semites" and "Turco-Armonoids".Template:Sfn It claimed that within racial groups can be found "nations", a form of "race within a race";Template:Sfn many party activists nevertheless used the terms "race" and "nation" interchangeably.Template:Sfn

The NF claimed the existence of a distinct British racial "nation", all the members of which shared common interests;Template:Sfn Welsh and Scottish nationalisms were condemned as threats to British racial unity.Template:Sfn It viewed class as a false distinction among the British nation,Template:Sfn rejecting the concept of class war as "nonsense",Template:Sfn and—like most fascist groups—tried to attract support across class boundaries.Template:Sfn For the NF, patriotism was deemed essential to the cohesion of the British nation,Template:Sfn with nationalism regarded as a vital component of patriotism.Template:Sfn Members regarded themselves as patriots,Template:Sfn and the party made heavy use of British patriotic symbols like the Union Flag and Remembrance Day.Template:Sfn

Fielding believed that the "dialectic of insiders and outsiders" was the "linchpin of its ideology",Template:Sfn and noted that the NF's "rigid boundaries between in-group and out-group" were typical of the far-right.Template:Sfn In its 1974 electoral manifesto, the NF called for a "vigorous birth-rate" among the white British, claiming that any ensuing overpopulation of the UK could be resolved by emigration to the British Commonwealth.Template:Sfn Tyndall defended Nazi Germany's lebensraum policy,Template:Sfn and under his leadership the NF promoted imperialist views about expanding British territory to create "living space" for the country's growing population.Template:Sfn The party also promoted eugenics, calling for the improvement of the quality as well as the quantity of the white British people.Template:Sfnm Under Tyndall, it called for the sterilisation of those with genetically transmittable disabilities.Template:Sfnm By 2011, the party's website was utilising the Fourteen Words slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."<ref name=BBC1>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

White supremacism

A white supremacist party,Template:Sfn the NF rejected the concept of racial equality.Template:Sfn It argued that different races can be ranked hierarchically based on differing abilities,Template:Sfn and that the "higher races" compete for world domination.Template:Sfn It believed that racial segregation was natural and ordained by God,Template:Sfn but that non-whites had been encouraged to migrate to Britain and other white-majority countries to breed with the indigenous inhabitants and thus bring about "white genocide" through assimilation.Template:Sfn It opposed inter-racial marriage and miscegenationTemplate:Sfn—typically referring to the latter as "mongrelisation"Template:Sfn—and displayed particular anxiety about black men seducing white women.Template:Sfn It claimed its racial prejudice arose from a natural desire for racial preservation rather than hatred of other races.Template:Sfn

The NF claimed that most non-white racial groups were inferior to "Caucasoids and Mongoloids".Template:Sfn In the mid-1970s, Tyndall used Spearhead to claim that "the negro has a smaller brain and a much less complex cerebral structure" than whites;Template:Sfn in the early 1980s, Nationalism Today carried articles maintaining that black Africans had lower average IQs than whites and thus were unfit "to go to white schools" or "live in white society".Template:Sfn Its published material presented black people as dirty and unhygienic, infected with disease and incapable of governing themselves.Template:Sfn Spearhead featured references to black people being cannibals; at least one article claimed they ate dirt and faeces.Template:Sfn

The NF sought academic support for its views, placing great importance on scientific racist publications.Template:Sfnm Its booklist offered academic and quasi-academic books endorsing scientific racism;Template:Sfn early party literature often referenced the work of Hans Eysenck, William Shockley, Arthur Jensen and Richard Herrnstein,Template:Sfnm while Spearhead and other NF publications repeatedly cited articles from the Mankind Quarterly.Template:Sfn In citing these studies, the party claimed that its views were scientific,Template:Sfn although Fielding observed that the NF's racial views relied "as much on blind assertion, on faith, as on 'scientific' sources".Template:Sfn

Anti-immigrationism and repatriation

The cornerstone of the Front's manifesto since 1974 has been the compulsory deportation of all non-white immigrants and their descendants,Template:Sfnm as well as the white British partners in mixed-race relationships.Template:Sfn It stated that the "repatriation" process could take ten years,Template:Sfn adding that before deportation, non-whites would be stripped of British citizenship and placed behind white Britons when it came to access to welfare, education and housing.Template:Sfnm It accompanied this with a call to prohibit future non-white migration to Britain.Template:Sfnm In the 1970s the NF stated that it did not oppose the arrival of white immigrants from Commonwealth countries,Template:Sfnm but called for "firm controls" on the migration of whites from elsewhere.Template:Sfn

During its first decade, the party emphasised the claim that it was the politicians who enabled immigration—rather than migrants themselves—who were to blame.Template:Sfn In 1969, it stated: "Your enemies are not the coloured immigrants, but the British government which let them come in hundreds of thousands."Template:Sfn It claimed that Labour had promoted migration to boost their vote and that Conservatives had seen migrants as cheap labour.Template:Sfn Its early publications generally avoided derogatory terms for non-whites like "wog" or "nigger",Template:Sfnm although such language appeared at party rallies.Template:Sfn As it developed, the NF press included racially inflammatory headlines like "Black Savages Terrorize Old Folk" and "Asians Import Bizarre Sex-Murder Rites",Template:Sfn also comparing non-white migrants to vermin by describing areas as "immigrant-infested".Template:Sfn

The NF linked other issues to race and immigration,Template:Sfn targeting concerns among the white British about immigrants being competition for jobs, housing and welfare.Template:Sfn Common NF claims included that immigrants carried diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis,Template:Sfn that they were a burden on the National Health Service (NHS),Template:Sfnm and that incompetent migrant staff were detrimental to the NHS.Template:Sfn It claimed that immigrants evaded taxes and that they were arrogant, aggressive and unhygienic in the workplace.Template:Sfn It maintained that blacks were a source of crime,Template:Sfnm and that black pupils eroded school quality.Template:Sfn

Antisemitism and Holocaust denial

The NF is antisemitic.Template:Sfn It claimed that Jews form a biologically distinct race—one of the world's "higher races"—and that they seek to destroy the white "Caucasoid" race.Template:Sfn The Front alleged that a Jewish cabal orchestrated non-white migration into Britain,Template:Sfn hoping to weaken the white race through racial mixing, as well as through internationalism and encouraging internal division.Template:Sfn The party propagated the conspiracy theory that Jews did this to plunge other "higher races" in disarray so that they would be left dominant.Template:Sfn As mentioned in Spearhead, this achieved, "the Jewish nation would be the only surviving ethnically identifiable population group amid a mongrelised world population", the latter being easier for Jews to control.Template:Sfn This conspiracy theory owed much to the 19th-century Russian antisemitic forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion,Template:Sfn and was previously articulated by the BUF.Template:Sfn Whereas the BUF explicitly claimed Jews were behind this global conspiracy, the NF were aware of considerable public disapproval of antisemitism following the Holocaust so used code-words and dogwhistles such as "Money Power", "internationalist", "cosmopolitan", "alien", "rootless", "shifty", "money-lenders" and "usurers" instead of "Jews".Template:Sfnm

In the 1970s, the NF denied it was "antisemitic".Template:Sfnm Instead, the party called itself "anti-Zionist",Template:Sfn and claimed to oppose "Zionists" rather than all Jews.Template:Sfnm Within the NF, the word "Zionism" was not used in the commonly understood manner, which is to describe the ideology promoting the formation of a Jewish state, but rather applied to the alleged Jewish cabal secretly manipulating the world.Template:Sfn For instance, one issue of Spearhead stated that "the twin evils of International Finance and International Communism" are "perhaps better described as International Zionism".Template:Sfn Fielding observed that party members used the term "Zionist" indiscriminately, often against any critics.Template:Sfn

Many of the Front's central members, among them Chesterton, Tyndall and Webster, had long histories of antisemitism before joining the party.Template:Sfn For instance, in 1963, Tyndall claimed that "Jewry is a world pest wherever it is found in the world today. The Jews are more clever and more financially powerful than other people and have to be eradicated before they destroy the Aryan peoples."Template:Sfn In an early edition of Spearhead, Tyndall stated: "if Britain were to become Jew-clean she would have no nigger neighbours to worry about ... It is the Jews who are our misfortune: T-h-e J-e-w-s. Do you hear me? THE JEWS?"Template:Sfnm While some of its senior members had previously called for a genocide of the Jews, the party itself engaged in Holocaust denial, referring to the Holocaust as "the six million myth".Template:Sfn It is possible that most senior NF figures were aware that the Holocaust really happened, but denied its occurrence for tactical reasons,Template:Sfn hoping that the spread of Holocaust denial would facilitate a more positive attitude toward Nazi Germany among Britain's population.Template:Sfnm

Government and the state

File:Stevan Kragujevic, Moamer el Gadafi u Beogradu.jpg

When the Strasserite faction took control of the National Front in the 1980s, it based its views of a future government on the ideas in The Green Book of Muammar Gaddafi (pictured).

During the 1970s, the Front alleged that the UK's liberal democracy was "bogus democracy" and declared that it would forge "a genuinely democratic political system",Template:Sfn utilising referendums on major issues.Template:Sfnm In making claims such as that "true democracy is that which is representative of the will of the people", the NF espoused populist rhetoric.Template:Sfn Fielding nevertheless believed that "the essence of the NF ideology is incompatible with democracy" and instead reflected an "elitist tendency" at odds with its "populist rhetoric".Template:Sfn

The NF saw democracy as a luxury that was subordinate to the preservation of the nation.Template:Sfn In Spearhead, Tyndall stated that although he would support parliamentary democracy if he thought it in the national interest, "the survival, and the national recovery of Britain stand as top priority over all. We will support whatever political methods are necessary to attain that end."Template:Sfn He called for governance by a strong leader,Template:Sfn an individual unencumbered by political parties and elections so that they could focus on the national interest rather than the interests of sub-groups or short-term considerations.Template:Sfn In Spearhead, Tyndall stated that "it is only in banana republics, where the 'sophisticated' Western institutions of a multi- or two-party system, powerful trade unions and a 'free' press have not yet taken root, that there is still scope for men of real personality and decision to emerge and truly lead."Template:Sfn Fielding believed that had the NF achieved political office it would have marginalised parliament and governed in a totalitarian manner.Template:Sfn

Under its Strasserite leadership during the 1980s, the NF adopted a different position on governance, influenced heavily by the Third International Theory propounded by Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi in The Green Book.Template:Sfn It promoted the establishment of communal political structures, with street councils, area councils, county councils and a National People's Council "for each of the British Nations".Template:Sfn In its view of this future, the British population would be armed and trained in military tactics, allowing for the establishment of local militias rather than a state-controlled professional army.Template:Sfn

International institutions and relations

Regarding international institutions as part of the Jewish conspiracy's plan for a one world government,Template:Sfn the Front opposed UK membership of the United NationsTemplate:Sfnm and the European Economic Community (EEC).Template:Sfnm To replace the EEC, the NF called for stronger UK links with the "White countries" of the British Commonwealth, namely Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but also the white-minority governments of Rhodesia and South Africa.Template:Sfnm According to the Front, this would "strengthen the ethnic, cultural and family ties between peoples of British stock all over the world".Template:Sfn It stated that an NF-led UK would not remain allied to the United States because the latter was dominated by the Jewish conspiracy,Template:Sfn and called for withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation,Template:Sfnm with Britain instead boosting its defensive capabilities through nuclear weaponry.Template:Sfn

During the 1970s, the Front was British unionist, advocating for the unity of the United Kingdom.Template:Sfn From the late 1960s onward, it supported the Ulster Unionists, deeming Irish republicanism a communist conspiracy to undermine British unity.Template:Sfnm The NF argued that the UK had been too soft in dealing with militant Irish republicans; it argued that military courts should replace civil ones, that Provisional Irish Republican Army members should be interned and that those guilty of sabotage or murder should be executed.Template:Sfn In the early 1970s it alleged that the Irish Republic was harbouring republican militants, "an act of war" that required trade sanctions.Template:Sfn In that decade the NF endorsed the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party,Template:Sfn but many Ulster Unionists were suspicious of the NF; in 1973 the Ulster Defence Association proscribed it as "a neo-Nazi movement".Template:Sfnm In 1985 – by which time Strasserites dominated the party – the NF called on Northern Ireland to declare independence in response to the Anglo-Irish Agreement.Template:Sfn

Economic policy

During the 1970s, the Front identified as neither capitalist nor socialist,Template:Sfnm advocating an economic system drawing on both.Template:Sfn It endorsed private enterprise but rejected laissez-faire capitalism, claiming that the latter places the interests of business above that of the nation.Template:Sfnm It promoted economic nationalism, calling for maximum national self-sufficiency and a rejection of international free trade.Template:Sfn By this approach it wished to separate Britain from the international financial system, which it believed was controlled by the Jewish conspiracy.Template:Sfn It opposed foreign ownership of British industry,Template:Sfn endorsing protectionist and monetarist policies,Template:Sfn advocating the state control of banking and financial services,Template:Sfn and calling for a state bank to provide interest-free loans to fund municipal housing construction.Template:Sfn These economic views were common across Britain's far-right, being akin, for example, to those of the BUF.Template:Sfn

After the Strasserite faction took control in the 1980s, the NF adopted distributist policies, maintaining the emphasis on an economic system neither capitalist nor socialist.Template:Sfn In the party's material from 1980, it claimed that "Capitalism and Communism" were "twin evils" to be overcome by "Revolutionary Nationalism".Template:Sfn In keeping with the Strasserites' distributism, the 1980s NF called for large business and industry to be redistributed into a tripartite system: small privately owned enterprises, workers' co-operatives and, in the case of financial institutions and heavy industry, nationalised enterprises.Template:Sfn To solve unemployment, the party stated that it would encourage urban-to-rural migration, with heavily mechanised agriculture being replaced by small, labour-intensive farms.Template:Sfn

Social issues

File:National Front protesting at London Gay Pride 2007.jpg

National Front members protesting against growing legal recognition of LGBT rights at the London LGBT Pride march in 2007. The party has tried to protest against various Pride parades in the past.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The NF adopted a strong stance against liberal and socially permissive policies, claiming that what it perceived as the growing permissiveness of British society was orchestrated by the Jewish conspiracy.Template:Sfn Tyndall called for a moral "regeneration" penetrating "every sphere of work and leisure", including prohibitions on "art, literature or entertainment by which public moral standards might be endangered".Template:Sfn Although placing little importance on religion,Template:Sfn during the 1970s, the party claimed that God had set forth absolute moral values.Template:Sfn

The party opposed changes to traditional gender roles.Template:Sfn Spearhead stated that the NF saw "the feminine role as principally one of wife, mother and home maker".Template:Sfn In the party's first year, it largely ignored the 1967 Abortion Act that legalised abortion, although by 1974 had adopted an anti-abortion stance, stating that abortions should only be legal in medical emergencies.Template:Sfnm According to Tyndall, the legalisation of abortion was part of a conspiracy to reduce white British births.Template:Sfn The issue decreased in resonance within the party during the early 1980s but was re-emphasised when the Strasserites took control.Template:Sfn The party condemned homosexuality,Template:Sfn mixed-race marriages,Template:Sfn and prostitution.Template:Sfn

In the 1970s the NF claimed that the teaching profession was full of "communists",Template:Sfnm and stated that under an NF government all teachers deemed unsuitable would be fired.Template:Sfn That decade, it stressed that education should be suited to the varying abilities of students although did not outright condemn comprehensive schooling.Template:Sfn It called for greater emphasis on examinations and sporting competitions, with a rejection of "slapdash Leftwing-inspired teaching fads".Template:Sfn It stated that it would emphasise the teaching of British history to encourage patriotism while expanding science and technology in the curriculum at the expense of the social sciences.Template:Sfn

The Front exalted self-sufficiency, asserting that the individual should be willing to serve the state and that citizens' rights should be subordinate to their duties.Template:Sfn During the 1970s, the Front criticised the UK's welfare state, stating that it wanted to end the perception of the UK as a "loafer's paradise".Template:Sfn From its early years the NF promoted a tough stance on law and order,Template:Sfnm calling for harsher criminal sentencing,Template:Sfnm tougher prisons,Template:Sfn and the reintroduction of both capital punishment,Template:Sfnm and national service.Template:Sfn Emphasising self-responsibility, it rejected the idea that an individual's misdeeds should be attributed to their societal background.Template:Sfn

Organisation and structure

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Leadership and branches

During its 1970s, heyday the National Front was headed by its directorate, a body of between seven and 20 party members.Template:Sfnm With strict control over local and regional organisations,Template:Sfnm the directorate determined party policy, controlled its structures and finances, oversaw admissions and expulsions, and determined tactics.Template:Sfn A third of the directorate were required to stand down every year, with a postal ballot of the membership to determine their replacements.Template:Sfnm Between 1971 and 1975, the directorate elected two of its members to be the chairman and deputy chairman.Template:Sfnm However, at the 1977 annual general meeting it agreed—at Tyndall's instigation—that the chairman would instead be elected through a postal ballot of the membership.Template:Sfnm As the directorate met in London infrequently, in practice the running of the party was left to the chairman and deputy chairman.Template:Sfn

File:NF Flag (Red Variant).svg

One variant of the National Front flag

The NF's local presence divided into "groups", which had under twelve members, and "branches", which had over twelve.Template:Sfn Fielding stated that in July 1973 the party had 32 branches and 80 groups,Template:Sfn while the journalist Martin Walker claimed that in January 1974, it had 30 branches and 54 groups.Template:Sfn Most were in south-east England, with 11 branches and 8 groups in Greater London and 5 branches and 22 groups elsewhere in the south-east.Template:Sfn It had 5 branches and 3 groups in the Midlands, 7 branches and 11 groups in the north, 1 branch and 7 groups in western Britain and 1 group each in Scotland and Northern Ireland.Template:Sfn Each branch or group had its own five-person committee, with annual elections for the committee positions.Template:Sfn Typically taking place in pubs,Template:Sfn branch meetings focused largely on practical issues like raising finances.Template:Sfn Some NF branches established supporters' associations for sympathisers unwilling to become members.Template:Sfn Supporter organisations were established elsewhere in the world; in New Zealand in 1977 and in Australia, Canada and South Africa in 1978.Template:Sfn In April 1974, the party introduced regional councils to co-ordinate between the national party and its local groups and branches.Template:Sfn

After the Strasserite faction secured control in 1986, it formally adopted a cadre system of leadership.Template:Sfn This made the party more elitist, creating what the Strasserites called "a revolutionary cadre party; a movement run by its most dedicated and active members rather than by armchair nationalists".Template:Sfn This was linked to the idea that each NF member should be a "political soldier", a "New Type of Man" who rejected the "materialist nightmare" of contemporary capitalist society and underwent a personal "Spiritual Revolution" to dedicate themselves fully to the nation.Template:Sfn

Security and violence

File:Plaque for the Battle of Lewisham, New Cross Road and Clifton Rise (cropped).jpg

Plaque memorialising the "Battle of Lewisham" in which anti-fascist protesters combatted a National Front march in 1977

Preoccupied with security,Template:Sfn during the 1970s, the Front created a file of its opponents' names and addresses.Template:Sfn To guard its marches, it formed "defence groups"Template:Sfn—later called the "Honour Guard"Template:Sfnm—who often carried makeshift weapons.Template:Sfn These marches often took place in areas with high migrant populations to instil fear in the latter, whip up racial tensions and generate publicity.Template:Sfn These tactics have continued into more recent times.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Local authorities sometimes banned its marches; in 2012, Aberdeen City Council rejected the NF's request to hold a procession on Adolf Hitler's birthday.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The NF also disrupted anti-fascist and mainstream political meetings.Template:Sfn In 1975, NF activists attacked a National Council of Civil Liberties meeting, with eight people requiring hospitalisation;Template:Sfn in another instance they stormed a Liberal Party meeting discussing the transition to black-majority rule in Rhodesia, chanting "White Power".Template:Sfn

The Front claimed that its members only resorted to violence in self-defence,Template:Sfn although in the 1970s Fielding observed the group using force "aggressively".Template:Sfn Fielding believed the most notable violent clash involving the NF was the Red Lion Square disorders in June 1974, during which an anti-fascist protester, Kevin Gateley, was killed.Template:Sfn Another prominent clash took place in Lewisham in August 1977, when Trotskyist groups attacked the NF marchers, resulting in the "Battle of Lewisham".Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In April 1979, an anti-NF demonstration in Southall clashed with police, resulting in the death of Blair Peach.Template:Sfn

There have also been actions where covert NF involvement was suspected but not proven.Template:Sfn For instance, in 1974, several men put up NF posters in Brighton, assaulted individuals they accused of being Jewish and attacked the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist) bookshop. The local NF branch denied involvement.Template:Sfn In June 1978, the Anti-Nazi League headquarters was hit by an arson attack; the slogan "NF Rules OK" was graffitied on the building. The NF denied responsibility.Template:Sfn The party's leadership showed little concern with the violence of its members and supporters, and openly praised some of its members convicted for violent activity.Template:Sfn

Sub-groups and propaganda output

The NF formed various sub-groups. In 1974, it launched the NF Trade Unionists Association,Template:Sfn and issued a short-lived trade unionist magazine, The British Worker.Template:Sfn During the 1970s, it encouraged members to infiltrate other groups, such as the Hunt Saboteurs Association and ratepayers' and residents' associations, through which to promote the NF.Template:Sfn In 1978, the party's directorate established a legal department to deal with the growing number of members being charged with inciting racial hatred under the 1976 Race Relations Act.Template:Sfn Also in the 1970s, it formed a Student Association,Template:Sfnm and issued the student magazine Spark.Template:Sfn The NF Student Association initially tried recruiting students at universities, but later refocused attention towards schools and sixth forms.Template:Sfn In 1978 it launched the Young National Front (YNF):Template:Sfnm membership was restricted to 14 to 25 years olds.Template:Sfn The YNF issued a newsletter, Bulldog,Template:Sfn and organised a football competition between YNF teams.Template:Sfn

The NF observed how the left mobilised anti-fascist support through musical ventures like Rock Against Racism and decided to employ similar techniques.Template:Sfn In 1979, Pearce—then the YNF leader—established Rock Against Communism (RAC), through which the NF held concerts featuring neo-Nazi skinhead bands.Template:Sfn Tyndall and other senior NF members liked the opportunity for expanding party membership that RAC offered them, but were concerned that associations with the skinhead subculture would damage the NF's image.Template:Sfn After Tyndall left the party, in 1982 RAC was revived with Skrewdriver as its flagship band.Template:Sfn In 1983 the NF launched a record label, White Noise Records, which became an important source of revenue for several years.Template:Sfn The RAC had difficulty finding venues willing to stage its concerts and in 1984 got around this by staging its first large open-air concert at the Suffolk home of Nick Griffin's parents.Template:Sfn Later in the 1980s, Skrewdriver broke from the NF to establish its own far-right music promotion network, Blood & Honour.Template:Sfn

Support

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} There was regional variation in the support that the NF received during the 1970s, reflected both in its vote share and the size and number of its branches.Template:Sfn Paralleling the earlier support of the BUF, the NF's strength was centred heavily in England; its support was far weaker in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.Template:Sfn In England, its support clustered along the South Coast and in London and Birmingham.Template:Sfn

Finances

The National Front was not open about its finances,Template:Sfnm but often stressed that it was short of funds.Template:Sfnm It is likely that in its heyday, it had just enough money to pay for its two full-time officials, three head office secretaries and party expenses.Template:Sfn Its central funds came from several sources: membership dues, the sale of its publications, donations, and lotteries.Template:Sfn Donations were requested at rallies and meetings,Template:Sfnm and also provided by wealthy supporters, some from abroad.Template:Sfnm Branches were expected to finance their own candidates in election campaigns,Template:Sfn raising funds from jumble sales and social events.Template:Sfnm

Membership

Numbers

The NF faced a high membership turnover.Template:Sfn In 1977, Walker described its membership as being "like a bath with both taps running and the plughole empty. Members pour in and pour out."Template:Sfnm Fielding echoed this, stating that the NF's "stable membership" was lower than the number of people who have "passed through" it;Template:Sfn Taylor suggested that during the 1970s, "at least 12,000" people joined and then left.Template:Sfn Many of those attracted to the party because of its anti-immigrationism may have departed on discovering its fascist ideology.Template:Sfn In other cases, individuals may have left because the hardship they encountered — social ostracism, job losses, verbal abuse and, on rare occasions, assault — became too much to endure, particularly as the party's fortunes declined in the latter 1970s.Template:Sfn

The Front refused to disclose the number of members that it had.Template:Sfnm Thurlow suggested that "the most reliable estimates" were produced by the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight.Template:Sfn Searchlight claimed that from its origins with 4,000 members in 1968, the party reached a peak membership of 17,500 in 1972, which had declined to 10,000 in 1979, to 3,148 in 1984 and to 1,000 in 1985.Template:Sfn An estimate of party membership in 1989 put adherents of the Flag Group at about 3,000 and of the Strasserite faction at about 600.Template:Sfn Even at its 1970s peak, the Front's membership was half that of the BUF during its 1930s heyday.Template:Sfn

Profile

No adequate sociological sampling of NF members took place, but interviews with members were conducted during the 1970s by Taylor, Fielding and Billig.Template:Sfn Max Hanna noted that as of 1973, most NF members were "from the skilled working class and lower-middle class" but with variation among branches.Template:Sfn Fielding observed that party activism was generally carried out by upper working- and lower middle-class members rather than by their lower working-class and upper middle-class counterparts.Template:Sfn Fielding also noted that the party contained individuals of all age ranges, although added that men in their thirties and fifties predominated over those in their forties, suggesting that the latter were typically preoccupied with raising families.Template:Sfn

Fielding found that NF members were sensitive to ideas that they were "fascistic" or "cranky", instead regarding themselves as "patriots" or "nationalists".Template:Sfn He noted that race was the main issue that led members to join the Front,Template:Sfn that they perceived their racial ideas to be "common sense",Template:Sfn and that they expressed harsh prejudices against non-white Britons.Template:Sfn A common perception among members was that life had changed for the worse in Britain, often outlined by the expression: "the country is going to the dogs".Template:Sfn The members Fielding encountered widely perceived Britain's political leaders as corrupt and cruel and tended to believe conspiracy theories.Template:Sfn

Fielding believed that some of the membership were "motivated by a search for community and reassurance in a world they find difficult to understand".Template:Sfn For some, joining the NF was a psychological act of defiance against society, while many joined because friends and relatives had done so.Template:Sfn Fielding suggested that the NF's moral indignation regarding perceived slackers and anti-social elements had particular appeal for upper working and lower middle-class Britons because these were the sectors of society which felt that they worked hardest for the least reward.Template:Sfn

During the 1970s, the NF attempted to attract youth through new sub-groups.Template:Sfn Many young people attracted to the group may have done so as a form of youthful rebellion, enjoying the "shock value" that membership offered; in this, they had similarities with the late 1970s punk movement.Template:Sfn Ryan Shaffer stated that the party's shift away from traditional campaigning during the 1980s and its growing affiliation with neo-Nazi youth groups restricted its appeal to "mostly young people".Template:Sfn

Voter base

File:Bethnal Green Road - geograph.org.uk - 688386.jpg

During its 1970s heyday, one of the strongest areas of National Front support was Bethnal Green (pictured), part of London's East End.Template:Sfn

The NF's electoral support was overwhelmingly urban and English, with little support in rural parts of England or in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.Template:Sfnm According to Walker, the 1974 election results suggested that the NF's electoral heartlands were in London's East End and inner north-east suburbs.Template:Sfn He noted that it gained much support from "respectable working-class" areas, where many traditional Labour voters were attracted by its racial appeals.Template:Sfn

Examining the party's East End support, the sociologist Christopher T. Husbands argued that NF support was not evenly distributed across the area, but constrained to Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, Hoxton and Haggerston.Template:Sfn He noted that in these urban strongholds, "only a minority" of white residents sympathised with the NF.Template:Sfn A 1978 survey in the East End by New Society found that while most white residents thought the immigration rate too high, many related positive relationships with Afro-Caribbean and Asian migrants and opposed the NF. Some mocked the Front, although were cautious about doing so publicly, fearing violent retaliation.Template:Sfn

A 1977 survey by the University of Essex found that 8% of those polled were likely to vote for the Front, reflecting "strong support amongst the working class, the young and the poorly educated".Template:Sfn This survey found that support was strongest in the East Midlands (10%), followed by London (8%), East Anglia (7%), the West Midlands (6%) and Yorkshire and Humberside (6%).Template:Sfn A report published in 1980 instead found that Greater London and the West Midlands were the NF's greatest areas of support, together making up 48% of its national vote share.Template:Sfn Determining that 71% of the NF's support came from men,Template:Sfn this study also found a strong link to class, with 72% of NF supporters being working-class; it noted that support was "somewhat stronger among the skilled working class than among the semi- and unskilled workers."Template:Sfn The 1980 study also examined views of the NF among the broader electorate, finding that 6% would "seriously consider" voting for the NF.Template:Sfn Two-thirds of respondents believed that the NF stirred up racial tensions to advance its cause, 64% believed that there was a Nazi element to the party and 56% believed that the NF wanted Britain to become a dictatorship.Template:Sfn

Explanations

Increasing levels of non-white immigration have been cited as an explanation for the NF's electoral growth in the 1970s. One argument was that areas with large non-white immigrant communities were most susceptible to NF support, and the higher the non-white population, the higher the resentment among local whites and the greater the support for the NF. An alternate explanation is that the NF did particularly well in areas where the non-white population was moderately sized; and whites turned to the NF because they feared that the local non-white population would grow, particularly if neighbouring areas already had large non-white populations.Template:Sfn

On examining voting data from the 1977 Greater London Council election, the political scientist Paul Whiteley argued that the NF's vote share was best explained by the "working-class authoritarianism" phenomenon examined in the United States by S. M. Lipset.Template:Sfn Christopher Husbands instead believed that the "territorial sensitivity" prevalent in English working-class culture was key. He argued that the English working-class largely created personal identities based on their neighbourhood rather than their profession, leaving them susceptible to far-right appeals based on location rather than leftist ones based on workplace solidarity.Template:Sfn He argued that there were parallels with the Netherlands, where urban working-class communities had also expressed support for the far-right, although not in France, Germany, or Italy, where the urban proletariat had not offered substantial support for far-right parties.Template:Sfn

Electoral performance

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The National Front experienced its greatest success between 1972 and 1977.Template:Sfn By the late 1970s, the party's support had drastically declined and in the 1980s it largely withdrew from electoral participation.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

General and by-elections

The Front never gained a seat in the House of Commons.Template:Sfn In the 1970 general election, the NF fielded ten candidates and averaged 3.6% of the vote share in those constituencies.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfnm 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%.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn This election "marked the beginning of the end of the movement's claim to seek political legitimacy through the ballot box".Template:Sfn In the 1983 general election, the NF fought 54 seats, averaging 1% in each.Template:Sfn

Template:Sronly

Year	Number of candidates	Total votes	Average voters per candidate	Percentage of vote	Saved deposits	Change (percentage points)	Number of MPs
1970	10	11,449	1,145	0.04	0	N/A	0
Template:Sort	54	76,865	1,423	0.2	0	+0.16	0
Template:Sort	90	113,843	1,265	0.4	0	+0.2	0
1979	303	191,719	633	0.6	0	+0.2	0
1983	60	27,065	451	0.1	0	−0.5	0
1987	1	286	286	0.0	0	−0.1	0
1992	14	4,816	344	0.1	0	+0.1	0
1997	6	2,716	452	0.0	0	−0.1	0
2001	5	2,484	497	0.0	0	0.0	0
2005	13	8,029	617	0.0	0	0.0	0
2010	17	10,784	634	0.0	0	0.0	0
2015	7	1,114	159	0.0	0	0.0	0

EU parliament elections

Template:Sronly

Year	Candidates	MEPs	Percentage vote	Total votes	Change	Average vote
1989	1	0	0.0	1,471	N/A	1471
1994	5	0	0.1	12,469	+0.1	2494

Local elections

Although performing better in local elections than general ones,Template:Sfn the NF never won a local council seat.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn In Inner London, it gained the third-largest vote share.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn It averaged over 10% of the vote in three boroughs: Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets.Template:Sfn The NF's vote share began to stagnate in the local elections from 1977 and 1978.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

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.<ref>Template:Cite news; Template:Cite news</ref>

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<ref>Template:Cite report</ref>—defected to the NF.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> By 2011 he was no longer on the council.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In October 2015, the NF chairman David MacDonald was elected to Garthdee Community Council in Aberdeen with 18 votes.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Reception

By the late 1960s, the National Front was "the principal electoral force" on the British far-right,Template:Sfn and still dominated that scene at the start of the 1980s.Template:Sfn By 1977, the NF was England's fourth largest political party in terms of electoral support,Template:Sfnm a level of success which—according to Thurlow—"testified to the significance" of the immigration issue in 1970s British politics.Template:Sfn Along with Tyndall's BNP, the NF was the most significant far-right group in Britain in the second half of the 20th century, according to Durham.Template:Sfn

File:National Front flag (Union Jack Variant).svg

One variant of the National Front logo used by the party

The party also helped shape new far-right subcultures, for instance by cultivating the early white power skinhead music scene.Template:Sfn Billig suggested that the NF's long-term importance might have been in keeping anti-Semitism alive in Britain at a time when, following the Holocaust, it was weakened.Template:Sfn Billig also argued that the NF helped tilt British politics to the right, encouraging the Conservatives to take a harder stance on immigration under Thatcher's leadership.Template:Sfn

During the NF's 1970s heyday, the mainstream media only occasionally paid it attention;Template:Sfn the NF claimed that this was part of a conspiracy against the party.Template:Sfn It often had a better relationship with local newspapers, which were more likely to publish letters sent in by the NF.Template:Sfn In the 1970s, NF branches often sought good relations with police to ensure protection of NF events.Template:Sfn While the party acknowledged sympathy for its views among the lower ranks of the police, it maintained that the police hierarchy was part of the conspiracy against it.Template:Sfn During the 1970s, the party had cells among prison officers.Template:Sfn By 2011, both the prison service and police had forbidden their employees from being NF members.<ref name=BBC1/>

Opposition

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File:Rock Against Racism 1978.jpg

The Rock Against Racism movement was established in order to combat the National Front in the 1970s.

Major social and political groups largely ignored the NF's rise, hoping that depriving it of publicity would hasten its decline, although Jewish and leftist groups took a more proactive approach to opposing it.Template:Sfn Leftist approaches varied: the Communist Party of Great Britain and Labour Party Young Socialists mobilised the labour movement against racism to diffuse the NF's appeal, while the International Marxist Group and the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party favoured direct action to disrupt the NF, holding to the slogan: "No platform for fascists".Template:Sfn

In 1974, the National Union of Students adopted a "no platform" policy regarding the NF,Template:Sfnm while the Labour Party forbade its candidates from sharing public platforms, radio, or television slots with NF candidates.Template:Sfn 120 Labour-controlled councils banned the party from using local municipal halls.Template:Sfn Labour and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) helped mobilise the trade union movement against the NF;Template:Sfn the National Union of Mineworkers called for the government to ban the party.Template:Sfn Far-left and left-wing activists demonstrated outside NF meetings, encouraging landlords to bar the NF from using their premises,Template:Sfn and sometimes assaulted NF members.Template:Sfn

Anti-fascist and anti-racist groups formed the National Co-Ordinating Committee in September 1977.Template:Sfn That November, various left and far-left groups launched the Anti-Nazi League (ANL),Template:Sfnm which gained public endorsements from several Labour politicians, trade union leaders, academics, actors, musicians and athletes, some of whom later distanced themselves from it amid concerns that its sub-campaign, School Kids Against the Nazis, was politicising schoolchildren with leftist propaganda.Template:Sfn A more moderate alternative, the Joint Committee Against Racialism (JCAR), was launched in December 1977, uniting Labour, Conservative and Liberal Party members.Template:Sfn Rock Against Racism was formed in 1976, holding two well-attended music festivals in London in 1978.Template:Sfnm In January 1978, both Christians Against Racism and Fascism and the British Council of Churches' own anti-fascist organisation were formed.Template:Sfn Taylor noted that by the end of 1977, an "unprecedented range of groups from almost every section of British society spreading right across the political spectrum had declared an intention to oppose the NF and the racism upon which it fed".Template:Sfn

References

Sources

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Further reading

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External links

• Template:Official website
• 2005 Manifesto
• 2010 Manifesto
• BBC 1975: National Front rallies against Europe
• Catalogue of Wayne Ashcroft's papers on the National Front, held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
• The Lost Race BBC documentary about the National Front and other far-right groups produced in 1999