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In order to understand the far right of the sixties, it is necessary to start two years earlier with the 1958 race riots in west London, often wrongly described as the Notting Hill riots. Two groups had recently become active in the area, the White Defence League (WDL) and the National Labour Party (NLP), led respectively by Colin Jordan and by Andrew Fountaine and John Bean. The WDL made no secret of the fact that it was nazi and the NLP that it was a racial nationalist group. Both used the Sun Wheel and Celtic Cross symbols. Sir Oswald Mosley's Union Movement was already established there, ably led by a local man, Jeffrey Hamm, who lived near Jordan's nazi bunker in Notting Hill. The 1958 murder of Kelso Cochrane, and the failure of the police to arrest anybody although the fascists openly boasted of the murder, helped build these groups' reputation for violence and raise fears among the local black and Jewish communities.
In 1960 the WDL and NLP sunk their differences over whether they should be nazi - and openly espouse the swastika - or British racial nationalists, and formed the British National Party (BNP), not the same group as today's BNP. Their publications, the WDL's Black and White News and the BNP's Combat, were well funded hate sheets which targeted blacks and Jews along with the Cypriot, Irish and Maltese communities. Some of the leaders had started life in the League of Empire Loyalists, but Fountaine had been a parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party. Names such as John Tyndall, Jordan and Martin Webster emerged for the first time. Keen for action, the hard core formed Spearhead, an illegal paramilitary group. In the hot-house world of nazi politics unity never lasts long and in 1962, on the anniversary of Hitler's birth, Jordan, Tyndall and Webster formed the National Socialist Movement (NSM). They took Spearhead with them. Their first rally, in Trafalgar Square in 1962, ended in a riot with the speakers arrested. Before the end of the year the NSM's leaders were jailed for running Spearhead. Their militancy prompted Mosley to return to British politics with a series of failed or aborted rallies, marches and election candidacies around the country. This finally ended Mosley's political career in Britain, although he continued to set up international nazi networks abroad with top nazis including some war criminals. Three further trials - for a series of 34 arson attacks on Jewish buildings in London - ended in the convictions of two nazi commando groups that drew their members from the NSM and Tyndall's breakaway Greater Britain Movement (GBM). Jordan's ex-wife, the French millionairess Françoise Dior was also convicted. In the eyes of the public the nazi groups were inextricably linked with crime. The far right needed a new approach. Immigration was now a key issue, with the Tories publicly baying for blood and several of the Labour Party leadership urging racist immigration controls behind closed doors. Highly secretive men and women, often with substantial financial backing, started exploring the alternatives. They could see that the BNP was more successful than Mosley in national and local elections, so ballot box politics returned to the top of the far rights agenda. The mid-sixties saw the foundation of the Racial Preservation Society (RPS), made up of hard-right Tories, senior Whitehall civil servants and military personnel, a few convicted gangsters and hardline nazis. A failed prosecution under the new race relations legislation only encouraged its backers and the RPS spawned a series of regional groups. The Conservative Party was going through a crisis over issues such as Ian Smith's illegal declaration of independence in Rhodesia and what was seen as Edward Heath's softness towards the trade unions. This created a breeding ground of potential members for a new organisation. For two years the various far-right groups engaged in secret negotiations with a view to forming a unified party, sometimes excluding Tyndall and with no co-operation from Jordan or Mosley. The Monday Club, the Society for Individual Freedom and later the Anglo-Rhodesia Society became a beacon for far-right Tories and some nazis. A series of regional organisations, calling themselves Forums, formed an interface between the extreme right and right-wing Tories. In 1966 the far right succeeded in making a deal to set up the new party. It was a precondition that Tyndall's openly nazi and often criminal GBM was be excluded. The new organisation was the National Front (NF), launched in January 1967 at a rally that ended in serious violence despite huge police protection. Its constituent bodies were the League of Empire Loyalists, led by A K Chesterton, Mosley's prewar political secretary; Fountaine's BNP; the RPS and various small racist or fascist groups. Tyndall was out of the way, in prison, but within eight months the GBM with its 132 members had moved into a party with around 4,000 members and started to take it over. Certain symbols of the past remained although the NF hid behind the Union Flag. The party's magazine in the private ownership of Tyndall continued to carry the title Spearhead as a reminder to the national socialist hard core that they had not strayed too far from their roots. The NSM, which remained outside the NF, changed its name to British Movement while Jordan was in prison once again, although for a short time it retained a paramilitary inner core called the National Socialist Group (NSG), run by Dave Courtney from southeast London. Jordan had turned his attention to the international stage and had formed the World Union of National Socialists, together with the US nazi George Lincoln Rockwell, in the early sixties. It staggered on after Rockwell was killed by one of his own members. In fact nearly all the UK far-right groups had international links with overseas groups of varying strengths. While Chesterton had strong connections in white southern Africa and some members had strong European links, Tyndall began to build long-lasting links with nazi and racists in the USA.
It did not take long before the NF was able to exploit Tory disillusionment. By the end of the sixties Enoch Powell had made a series of racist speeches resulting in his expulsion from the Conservative Party by Edward Heath. Thousands of Tories with mainstream political experience flocked to the NF. Powell himself refused to join, much to Tyndall's relief. Figures now reveal that 64,000 people passed through the ranks of the NF during its first 12 years. The bulk of them came from the Conservative Party although the NF's voting base was disenchanted Labour voters in the major conurbations. Perhaps more important than any of the individual leaders of the nazi groups were the Hancock family from Sussex. They had played a major part in the formation of the RPS and the regional forums, but their main role was as printers and publishers of hard-core nazi material in Britain and internationally. Anthony Hancock's importance remains undiminished today. Small non-challenging groups such as the National Democratic Party, led by Dr David Brown, emerged but they were either swept away or absorbed into the mighty NF, which was rapidly becoming a household name through its violent but skilful publicity stunts orchestrated by its national activities organiser, Martin "We are kicking our way into the headlines" Webster. For Tyndall and his nazi crew the good times had arrived.
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1960 Keep Britain White rally in Trafalgar Square
1958 Kelso Cochrane murdered by nazi gang. Protesters marched to Downing Street
1968 Conservative MP Enoch Powell stirs up racial tensions with his "rivers of blood" speech
1962 US nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell left with Colin Jordan centre and John Tyndall