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When major civil disorder broke out in the early 1980s, first in Bristol, then in Brixton, Toxteth and elsewhere, the fascists found it difficult to capitalise on it. The racial element of what appeared to many to be a black uprising was the kind of change in the political climate on which the far right might have thrived. However, the main fascist response was to cry "Enoch was right", a reference to Enoch Powell's infamous 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech. In the early 1980s the prospects for Britain's fascists looked bleak. Membership of the National Front (NF) was down to under 4,000 and of John Tyndall's New National Front to around 2,000. British Movement (BM) supporters were involved in football violence, but as the decade progressed the organisation became invisible at street level, suffering from a series of splits. It was Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government that was able to present itself as the party of "law and order" in the face of "mob" violence. Throughout the 1980s the largely Tory-run press carried stories about race and "loony" left-wing councils that would not have been out of place in fascist publications. The fascists' clothes had well and truly been stolen by the Conservative Party, and former Tories who joined the NF in the 1970s largely returned to their old political home. The writing should really have been on the wall; after all, even Powell never joined a fascist party, opting to become an Ulster loyalist MP.
Significantly, it was not only on the issue of race that the fascists were eclipsed. The Conservative government waged a war on Britain's left, striking at its very heart, the trade union movement and the National Union of Mineworkers. The defeat of the miners in 1985, after one of the country's most bitter strikes, was to be a watershed for Britain's labour movement and a severe blow for the left. The radical right-wing agenda pursued by the Thatcher government, breaking the postwar political consensus, was the product of what became known as the New Right. A series of pressure groups and think-tanks around the Conservative Party, such as the Monday Club, Tory Action and the Salisbury Group, pushed an agenda that called for tough immigration controls (even repatriation) and widescale privatisation of industry. While to some extent these groups were disparate and had some conflicting ideas (representing authoritarianism and libertarianism), what they had in common was largely implemented by the government. The Federation of Conservative Students, the party's official campus wing, became so extreme that it was closed down.
The NF embraces the "Third Position"
The most significant developments took place in the NF, with activists looking to pre-Hitlerite national revolutionary and Strasserite ideas as a way of taking the movement forward. Michael Walker's magazine, Scorpion, provided a forum for these discussions. During the early 1980s in the United States, the extreme-right terror organisation The Order became engaged in armed robberies and activities intended to destabilise the state. In Germany, France and Italy a wave of extreme-right bombings took place. In Italy, the bombings, which took over 100 lives, were carried out by the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR), a cell-structured organisation that advocated a style of fascist politics known as the third position. It transpired that the NAR was linked to the security services. These terrorist activities proved inspirational to the NF.
Italians wanted for a series of killings and bank robberies and for questioning in connection with the worst postwar atrocity carried out by the far right, the bombing of Bologna railway station, were provided with safe housing in Britain. This was facilitated by the League of St George, a small fascist umbrella organisation. Led by Roberto Fiore, the Italians made contact with the NF's young guard - most notably Nick Griffin, Derek Holland and Joe Pearce. Fiore, Holland and others worked jointly on a magazine called Rising, which put across the new thinking of the younger faction. Holland went on to produce a booklet, The Political Soldier, which became their guiding publication. It was paid for by Fiore and his friends. In 1983 Griffin and his co-conspirators forced Martin Webster out of the NF. The new regime ran down the party's membership as it sought to retain only those who were committed to the ideological shift and would become "political soldiers". The idea was to carry forward a leaner but fitter NF armed with both anti-communist and anti-capitalist rhetoric.
In 1986 a second purge took place in the NF. The NF expellees were to become known as the Flag Group, after their newspaper. Traditionalists, their main activity at street level was an annual march to London's Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. By the late 1980s, the political soldier wing of the NF had made drastic changes to its policies, dropping public racism and replacing it with support for black nationalists such as Louis Farrakhan. Members travelled to Libya and came out in support of Colonel Gaddafi's regime. The leaders of this group were Griffin, Holland and Patrick Harrington. Harrington had received a huge amount of press publicity after he became a student at North London Polytechnic in 1983 and fellow students refused to study with him.
The birth of Blood and Honour
Skrewdriver and other racist bands played concerts across Britain, building their following and gaining a legendary status abroad. A major venue for these music events was Griffin's father's farm in Suffolk. After the demise of Bulldog in 1985, and the short-lived New Dawn, a music paper by the name of White Noise began production. With Britain's industry in decline it was unusual to see a new export, but skinheads and the nazi music scene, along with football hooliganism, bucked the trend during the 1980s. In many countries skinhead fanzines sprang up and looked to Britain for their orientation.
In 1987, fed up with being ripped off financially and unprepared to indulge in political gymnastics, Donaldson, Crane and others split from the NF and brought out their own magazine, Blood & Honour. This was to become one of the most significant events of the period both in Britain and internationally. With them they took an emergent international movement, linked by subculture as much as organisation. Their main objective was to remain independent of the fascist parties. The scramble for the sums of money that the music scene could generate made this a difficult task and has dogged the movement ever since. In June 1989 the BNP held a Rights for Whites rally in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. Mainly Asian youth came out to confront them and 82 anti-fascists were arrested. By the end of the 1980s the BNP had begun to emerge as the main fascist street force. The NF Flag group, now led by Ian Anderson, was still street active, though on the decline. By January 1990 the Flag group was able to claim the NF mantle as the political soldiers officially closed down the NF. Before long the political soldiers split into two: the International Third Position led by Griffin and Holland and the Third Way, led by Harrington and Grahame Williamson. The decade closed with the most significant political events happening elsewhere - fascist movements were reborn once again in eastern Europe with the collapse of the socialist bloc. Blood and Honour capitalised on this in the climate of a new-found fascist internationalism. Within a short time, in Germany, eastern Europe and the United States fascist youth were sporting the dress style of Britain's skinheads and listening to the music of the Blood and Honour bands. Britain's fascists entered the 1990s with brighter prospects than when the decade began. |
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1986 NF Remembrance Sunday march, Right Nicky Crane
1982 John Tyndall founds the BNP
1982 Lady Jane Birdwood, who thought that the NF was "too left-wing", spent the decade producing large amounts of racist literature
1985 Patrick Harrington centre marching through Maidstone
1981 Italian fascist Roberto Fiore arrives in London
1988 Nick Griffin left and Derek Holland in Libya
1987 Ian Stuart Donaldson founds Blood & Honour